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mysticsparklewings · 10 months ago

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Karla Choupette, but make her Winx!

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It’s been so long since I posted art, I kinda forgot how to caption it 😅

So I’ll stick with facts: Exactly 1 year ago today, I brought home my very first Rainbow High doll, Karla Choupette. Shortly after, I wanted to draw her, and since I was on a roll with Winx-Club-Style art at the time, this is the result! 🤍

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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This won't be much of surprise to Sparklers that read my most recent Museletter, but to those that didn't: Hi! Longtime no art; How've you been? 👋 😅 If you're curious about how & where I've been, I'm going to direct you to that Museletter for the full details.

Also as you'll see in the Museletter, I had actually started on and mostly finished this piece right before my accidental half-year hiatus actually began (in December). There are many reasons (discussed at length in the Museletter) as to why I've held onto this piece for so long, but chief among them are 1. A lack of motivation to type this description and 2. Even months later, I was still not 100% sure about the background I originally picked out.

We'll talk more about the background in a bit. Firstly, especially for those that didn't read the Museletter, I should probably tell you who/what exactly this is and why you're staring at it. 😆

This lady, dear Sparklers, is one Karla Choupette of Shadow High, which is a...sub-line? I guess is the best way to put it? of the Rainbow High doll line. Except, per my usual art shenanigans, she's been drawn in the Winx Club art style. 😅

Karla is also known as: The Doll that Broke My (also unintentional) 5-6 year Doll Buying Hiatus. And in fact, that was the final key to me dusting off my typing fingers to finally bring this art to you Sparklers today.

I'll try and keep this story brief, but...Well, loyal Sparklers know how me and "brief" usually go, so I'll just apologize in advance for how very not-brief this actually will be...

In a way, this story starts in 2016 with the second generation of Monster High.

The first generation of Monster High was, pretty indisputably, my "true doll love" even though until it's beginning in 2010 I'd been raised on mostly Barbie and some Bratz. But the second generation was almost completely canned by the fan base, including me.

By 2018, most Monster High merchandise had disappeared from stores entirely. It all happened so fast for a franchise that had been such a lightning-in-a-bottle success before; It was depressing. (It's still depressing, to be completely honest, even with G3 now alive and well.)

And after that, for years the was really nothing for me in the doll space. With Monster High and Ever After High gone, Barbie's quality having taken a nosedive, Bratz's presence be wildly inconsistent...Whatever options were left either didn't appeal to me personally or didn't stick around long enough for that to matter.

So for the next few years, my attention in the toy aisle was pretty squarely on Shopkins, Num Noms, and the occassional other surprise toys that tempted me enough to try at least once. 🤷‍♀️

In 2020 (so I've been told by the internet—I couldn't have remembered the date if my life depended on it because that's how little attention I was paying to them at the time), Rainbow High dolls started appearing in store. And I do believe I remember seeing them in-store, possibly even an enclosed display. And I remember really not liking them at the time!

And I didn't like what I saw of Rainbow High for a considerably amount of time after that. But somehow, someway, I did very slowly start to come around to them. I think the biggest factor was when I started to understand that despite what sounded like a cutesy name to me, Rainbow High was not effectively a line of CareBears dressed as teenage girls.

Though, at this stage, when I say "come around to," I really mean I stopped viewing the line with active disdain. It would take a while longer of random images popping up on my Instagram and Pinterest feeds (mostly Instagram) before I started to think, "Oh well maybe I'd buy one if xyz..."

But I don't think it was too much longer after the "if xyz" phase that I was browsing around on Pinterest

And there, that was the moment—*Gasp*, Who is she? She looks like Ivy if Ivy were pink! She's so pretty!!

Karla Choupette had appeared.

And for the record, yes—I did and still do think Karla looks a lot like what I envision for my Winx OC Ivy aside from the pink coloring. So if in the future you see me draw Ivy and her outfit looks suspiciously familiar, now you'll know why!

But, to be fair, that's not the only thing about Karla's design that appeals to me. The stark contrast of colors is one for sure, as well as the slight contrast of the punk-ish boots with the more formal/business-like dress/top situation. And after I did (spoiler alert) bring Karla home, I realized she bears some resemblance to one of my favorite Monster High dolls of all-time, Zomby Gaga, so there was almost definitely some subconscious influence coming from that.

Anyway. It was a little bit of a slow burn, but eventually the desire to actually get a Karla doll was rattling around in my head so loudly it was was very nearly literally keeping me up at night.

I completely lucked out in the timeline that Karla had already been out for a while at that point and last year's Amazon Prime Day wasn't too far around the corner. Sure, I could have just bought her at any time, but considering I'd been out of the doll-buying game a while and my "first doll back" was going to be one completely unlike the rest of my collection [..and I use that term kind of loosely here], so I didn't want to put too much money on the line when it was fully possible I'd get her home and unboxed and decide I didn't actually like her all that much.

The funny thing is, the story could've even there. Or at least taken a significant detour. Because, sure enough, Amazon did mark Karla down for Prime Day at the time, but before I could go through with the purchase, she sold out. 🙃

On a whim though, I decided to check Walmart a little later in the day, and lo and behold—Apparently they really wanted to compete with Amazon for sales that week, so they'd dropped their price on Karla to match and actually still had her in stock!

I ordered her for local pickup to avoiding paying for shipping, and the next day—Exactly one year ago today!—Karla came home with me. [And you can see a picture of my exact Karla in that Museletter I mentioned before, for those curious!]

It would be another couple of days before I actually opened her; Both in the store when we picked her up and while I was opening her, I was honestly a little scared that physically being able to hold her would somehow break whatever magic hold this doll had had over me up until either point.

But as you can probably guess by the way I'm telling this story and the fact that this art exists—Nope! And even a year and 20 (...soon to be 21...) more Rainbow/Shadow High dolls later, Karla is still my favorite. She is, in fact, the only one I currently have 2 of, as I found an incomplete-but-in-great-shape Karla for cheap on eBay about a month later.

To be fair, I should back up a bit and clarify: If you're familiar with the doll space, you may be wondering why/how Karla was the buying-hiatus-breaker for me even though Monster High G3 started releasing new dolls in 2022.

Technically I suppose she wasn't because I did get some of the MH G3 dolls and Howliday Draculaura for Christmas 2022, but for space/storage related reasons, it would be much longer before I actually opened any of my new MH dolls, and there were various aspects that made G3 still feel kind of rocky and uncertain at the time.

Karla was the one that really sparked my excitement for dolls in general again, though the excitement manifested as a rolling snowball instead of a roaring fire—I started out, as many doll fans across all brands have, insisting Karla would be the "only" Rainbow High doll I wanted/needed.

And if you'll remember I quoted a collection of 20 Rainbow High dolls a few paragraphs ago, then you'll already know exactly how that well-intended insistence turned out. 😆 [And this isn't even touching on the fact that, as also mentioned in the Museletter, that Karla and the Rainbow High girls also ignited a "make things for the dolls from scratch" spark in me that I have felt in...Mm, probably not since the earliest days of Monster High, sometime before 2013.]

Some of you are also now probably doing the math on how we arrived at the concept for this artwork—This is very much not the first (or even second or third) time that I've used the Winx Club art style as a vessel to express my love for some other thing.

It's been a while since the idea began by now, but I remember I had inklings of wanting to draw Karla for a while—I think in particular I wanted to play with Karla's white eyelashes in illustrated form since it's both something I've never seen on a doll before and also white eyelashes in general are just a unique and interesting concept to me—And since I was sorta on a roll with the Winx Club stuff/style, it wasn't too long or too far of a leap in logic to decide this is the way it would be done.

Likewise, if you've seen any of my most-recent Winx art, you'll already be fairly familiar with my process for how the art comes together in the most literal senses. So because of that and because it has been long enough that I don't remember finer details like areas that were particularly tricky so well, I'm going to skip over a lot of that here.

However, I do remember and can tell you a few things that make Karla here a little different from some of those other attempts of mine, so I will now start rambling about that in whatever order things come to mind.

Firstly and possibly the most obvious, Karla you could say Karla's wasn't "Winx-fied" as intensely as Helena or The Nanny, which was a very purposeful choice. I love Karla's original design so much that I really didn't want to touch it too much, and so while a fairy form like those other two artworks can often be more fun, I opted to keep Karla "casual."

To that end, I followed what patterns and "rules" I've observed for the Winx's Season 2-3 "casual outfits" as best I could without making any serious alterations. [The linked screenshot isn't the best example of said patterns/rules—You kinda have to take in multiple screenshots to get the best feel for that—but it's a decent enough point of reference for which outfits I'm talking about.]

So the main thing you'll notice are the things I took away or simplified because I think thy pushed Winx Club's style "limits" a bit too far—Karla has her fan but it's missing the word "Shadow" across the front, the zippers on her shoes aren't well-defined, the charm/pin from her tie is missing, you can't see the pinstripes on her dress (though if this were meant to be the Seasons 2-3 promo art style and not true-to-show style, I would've left those in)...things like that.

I did make small exceptions for things I felt would take away too much if I left them out like the details on her belt, the buckles on her boots, giving her eyeshadow, etc. But I tried to balance it all out. The belt is probably still pushing it, but I genuinely wasn't sure how else to handle it and I think everything else worked out well enough.

Now, I did make the decision to approach the line work more so how Season 4 would do it—There are more colored lines here than is really typical for Season 3, especially when you count Karla's hair. This was mostly done to try and preserve some of Karla's own "feel" when you look at her, but also a little for contrast of the different elements/textures at play. [For example, I thought lining her hair in black would look too harsh.]

...I should also probably mention that while I still stand by Karla looking a lot like what I want for Ivy, I really was focused on trying to capture Karla as herself here—I can't say Ivy never entered my mind during the drawing process because that's kind of impossible given that she lives and dies entirely in my imagination, but I did not consciously at any point use Ivy as reason or justification for any changes made to Karla's design.

Oh, and if this pose feels a little familiar, much like with Fran, I opted to re-use a pose I'd already been working with around the time I started this project. It's hard to tell from my sketches in the linked image, but in this case I did decide to re-draw the arms to nearly the opposite position because it made figuring out what to do with her fan so much easier.

Ironically, this pose is not at all the best way to get a good look at her white eyelashes, but I worked with what I had to make something nice without it taking 2-3 (or more) times as long, so I'm not actually too upset about that.

You could say that's sorta what happened with the background—I can't say this is my most favorite background I've ever put together, but I really did not have any better ideas, so...🤷‍♀️

Maybe it's obvious, maybe it's not, but I decided to try combining a design formula that's been used in a lot of the Rainbow High boxes as a background (and sometimes in other promotional material) with some general ideas from promotional images/profiles you may have seen of the Winx before.

So if you thought you were seeing Alfea castle edited into a rainbow gradient back there, you would be absolutely right. 😉

This is also why Karla's name is just kinda randomly hanging out over there on a "true to show style"—It's a little more consistent with the Winx profiles/images and added a little extra something I felt was missing from the full package.

And while not my primary motivation, I did kind of like the idea that with a background situation like this, if I decide I ever want to draw more Winxify-ed Rainbow High girls, I can re-use it and have them all a little more visually united as a series.

I have no current plans to do that, but I like being able to leave the door open for it, y'know?

...I think those are all the main things I wanted to mention. This is the real trouble with not writing these descriptions as soon as I'm able—I forget too much! But there's not much to be done about it now, so oh well I guess.

In such case, the important thing really is that I'm still happy with how the art turned out. Or at least Karla and some of the other details. Even at this very moment I still have my quibbles and doubts with the image of Alfea hanging out back there, but at this point I really don't want to put off uploading this any longer solely because of that, of all things.

Since I did find it in me to scramble what was left of this description together though, coupled with things I mentioned in that last Museletter, I really hope this means I've finally turned some kind of internal corner and and that it won't be another block of months before you Sparklers see more art from me.

At the very least, I can now say I've tried this new submission portal from dA and...It's not my beloved Sta.sh, but...eh, it's okay I guess. I still miss my editing/formatting tools being more available like in a proper text editor, but in some ways I do think I like this better than the previous submission portal, if I'm going to be forced to type out my descriptions in here from now on.

I think at least knowing that—that I'm marginally more familiar with this new portal now—will be a step in the right direction.

One last thing before I leave you Sparklers for today—I plan to give this description a once-over before I submit, but I've written most of it late at night after a busy shopping day and may or may not have caught myself almost dozing off a couple of times, so on top of my faulty memory, if you notice any exceptionally weird mistakes, that's probably where those came from and I missed them on my second read-through. 😅

In any case, Sparklers, I thank you for still being here and being patient with me—Like I said before, I sincerely hope this is just the beginning of me finally being "back," at least for a while, but ultimately only time will tell if it is or not.

But if it is, then I expect to see you all again much sooner rather than later...😉

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Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings

Karla Choupette/Rainbow High © MgA Entertainment

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⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

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dogbanebouquet · 3 months ago

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Hey, hi, and hello! My name is Ammy or Bee! I’m the moderator and silly animal of this blog! I’m 19-years-old, nonbinary, a therian, and a host of a system! This blog is mainly going to be a “I am cringe but I am free” area for myself. The main idea I had when creating this blog was for self-shipping— which will still be a major recurring theme— but I’ll also use this for things such as therian/otherkin posts, stuff about my headmates, and other such things!

To keep in mind, my main is @bees-among-the-okami! So if you receive a follow, it’s likely me!

I’m a multishipper, and a sharer! I have a whole list of f/os! And more to come bc it is eventual that I fall in love with another… it is my curse… Too much love in my little body!!

I might be inconsistent when it comes to posting, so I apologize in advance! I’m pretty heavily neurodivergent so I can have spikes and dips in my motivation! I can attempt to stay active, and I will try to respond to asks/messages! There’s more information below, but to keep the post short on the timeline, please take a look under the Read More!

Thon/thons/thonself (< big fave!)

Now, when it comes to pronouns, I’m down for anything if it isn’t any of the binary pronouns (he/she/they). As someone who is neurodivergent, I connect majorly with neopronouns; to the point I’m okay with any of them! The only ones I am not okay with are ones that are derogatory, or clearly directed at a group of people to bring them down. Besides that, anything is game! Here’s some examples:

Ze/zer/zerself & variants

It/its

Noun/nounself pronouns

Emoji/emojiself pronouns

And more!

Here’s a link to my tag dump, it’ll doubly act as a list for my F/Os and their ship names, so no one is confused!

And here is my translation post! It’ll also have a tag in it just so one can find it easily. On more serious posts, I’ll talk normally, such as this! But on regular posts such as answering asks, reblogging, et cetera; I use a dog/puppy puns typing quirk! There’s a reason why there’s dog in the blog’s name!

Thank you very much for reading!

#❝Sniffs you… Wags tail… Touches noses with you!❞ ★ Introduction #pinned post #pinned intro #self ship #self shipping #self shipper #self ship community #yumeship

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kolsmikaelson · 2 years ago

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hey guys!! it's been a long few months that i've been gone (i can’t remember when exactly i started being inactive but that’s not the point) and i've been missing this hellsite so much in the time that i’ve been gone. there wasn’t ever really a reason for me going ia all of the sudden but what i do know is that my mental state definitely needed a longer break from here, and while i'm still not in the best place mentally i still wanted to hop back on here and give a bit of an update on my life and my blog and try to be a bit more active like i used to be.

writing and the future of this blog —

as i mentioned before, i haven't been in the best mental state lately but i’ve decided i want to try and come back here and start writing again! i love writing and i think getting back into it and getting into the groove of things here would help me out some. now with that being said, i’ll be going through who i write for and updating things, unfortunately this also means a new taglist most likely but if you’d rather i have a writing sideblog where i reblog all of my fics so if that’s more your thing go ahead and follow it @rodrickhefley !! i’ll still be writing for and posting about hockey so don’t worry about that, but i also want to try writing for other things (such as ted lasso, star wars, scream, avatar, hotd, etc.) i have a few things up my sleeve at the moment but none are quite ready to see the light of day unfortunately. i’m hoping to gain some new, active mutuals from this as well :). i’m gonna be trying out some different formats for my fics so when there’s inconsistencies please ignore that! i’ll also be doing some social media aus / insta posts again!! with all of this being said, i've decided to either post all of the requests that are currently sitting in my inbox so that another writer can take over and write it or delete them all. i may or may not keep a few depending on if i feel inspired by them or not but we’ll see what i decide:) (poll maybe??)

personal life —

my life has been an absolute rollercoaster of events since about mid april i’d say? ever since then i’ve been so incredibly busy and haven’t had a moment of peace honestly but now that i’ve got more time i’m back!!! i turned eighteen back in july, woohoo!! so i’ve been trying to figure out how to navigate life as a real adult now. it’s been going somewhat okay, i’m not in college at the moment (won’t dive too deep into this bc it’s so scary but i’ll have plenty of time to write fics so ;) ). part of my absence here was caused by the fact that i started getting really active on twitter, where i went through so much shit but also made a pretty good friend group!! a few days back i took a trip and saw arctic monkeys in concert (i had tickets for over a year and it was well worth it) . it was such a fantastic show!!! i’ve not got much of an update other than that so if you enjoyed my rambling and made it this far thank you sm. i’ve missed it here <3.

also, not sure when this happened but thank you all sm for 1.8k followers?? that’s so crazy to me but it means so much <33

since i'm not sure which of my moots are active anymore i’ll just tag who i can think of off the top of my head — @ilyasorokinn @2manytabsopen @ang3lik @angryblondechick @boqvistsbabe @timstuetzle @lavenderacademia @conniesanchor @stfukie @sunshinefarabees @hockstuff @typical-simplelove @dmonchld + i know i'm probably missing so many people but it's been so long i don't remember everybodys usernames anymore

#this is all over the place so tldr i’m back baby!!!#missed this place and missed everyone on here so hopefully being back will actually stick :)#˗ˏˋcait speaks ´ˎ˗#my mutuals ❥

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chcrrysprite · 3 years ago

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a note

hey all :) because of how inconsistent i’ve been with being active on here and that it’s been a good...seven months or so since i posted anything on ao3, i’m not really sure how many people are still reading these posts (and how many people might’ve started rolling their eyes at my URL because maybe i’ve gotten annoying), but i read a really good fic today that made me think about how much i miss writing and it made me want to post something explaining my absence a little. i’m leaving this as my pinned for the time being, but my chapter/fic posts can still be found under “#cherrysprite.”

since i’ve always been kind of transparent, i’m not gonna lie now - i haven’t been in the best place as of late. back in april two of my friends and i crashed a fucking golf cart on a public road and all three of us sustained varying degrees of injury, and i’ve been hesitant to say anything about it because it’s been such a ridiculous game of mental tug-of-war after the fact. on one hand, it was a golf cart, the least dignified way of injuring yourself i can think of, so it shouldn’t have screwed me up so bad. on the other hand, the further i got away from the day of the incident, the less funny the circumstances got and the more i realized any or all of us could’ve easily been killed. it’s something i’ve struggled with a lot.

besides the risk factor of being in the passenger seat of a flipped-over cart, i got the least of the injuries with just a badly sprained wrist and foot + all the random scrapes and bruises. i couldn’t type for a while because of the wrist, but what’s effected my writing the most has been the aftermath. i wouldn’t blame you if you think it sounds stupid, but i was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (yeah, sounds stupid typing it out, but anyway) and things honestly haven’t been the same since then. a lot of fallout happened with it including cutting some ties (none of which being the friends in the cart...kind of have to be 4lifers after that), being in a HORRIBLE mood all the time because of the depression side of it, and losing pretty much all motivation i had to do schoolwork or put in any kind of effort, which obviously didn’t translate well for writing. at the end of the school year, i was mostly just focused on passing my shit and not LOSING my shit, so it didn’t leave me a lot of time.

but to finally get to the point, my lack of activity recently is because i’ve kind of felt like a different person ever since then. i lost so much interest in a lot of things i loved, including both writing and keeping up with the tumblr community, and for the first time in a while, i’ve kind of just been...trying to build it back up. if i’m being honest, i haven’t had a whole lot of success. for the first time in years, i was finally able to take a step back from what i’ve been doing, and...i was okay with it. it felt fine. it was even kind of a relief. in my heart i know that i love writing and will always want to get back to it one day, but for now, i feel like my time with it has come to a natural plateau.

one of the things i’ve grappled with the most since i stopped writing was how hard it would be to just give up entirely and let go of all of the different paths and lines i’ve created for my favorite characters, so this is not a goodbye post. if anything, this is a, “hello, i’m still here, even if it’s just in spirit” post. i am so incredibly grateful for all of the support i’ve been given in my years on ao3 and tumblr. i started posting my writing so young i’ll probably have gone through all of high school growing and improving with all of the kindness and support i’ve gotten even when my stories were bad. i’d be lying if i said it was all sunshine and rainbows with everybody in this community, but to the people who have been there for any length of time - i see you, i remember you, and i appreciate you. thank you so much for everything. and i hope to get back to you with something new soon.

- emma

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eleutheramina · 4 years ago

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Is Scoopshipping Good Writing? An Extremely Long Text Post

This is partially a response post to criticism of the ship and Jack’s development in the Dark Signers arc, and partially my own analysis of Jack and Carly’s relationship--specifically whether it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization and whether it says anything meaningful besides just invoking the Power of Love.

Introduction

It’s been over 10 years since 5D’s first aired, which is surreal. I still remember thinking the whole concept was ludicrous at first, but it eventually became my favorite Yugioh series (though I usually ignore the series post-episode 64 and consider the first 64 episodes by themselves). It was really primarily because of these two fools that I started watching in earnest:

I shipped them big time. Even now, I still really adore their relationship. Most of my ships I end up becoming less obsessed with over time, but Jack/Carly continues even to this day to captivate my heart and imagination.

Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about the question, is their relationship good writing? Especially in how consistent it is with Jack’s characterization in the Fortune Cup arc, and whether or not it works to develop him as a character afterward.

(Of course, my personal stakes in the question is, should I be shipping them? While ships obviously don’t have to be well-written in canon or anything like that for someone to ship them, it’s significant to me because so much of the reason I liked Jack/Carly in the past is because it did feel decent character development, especially in contrast to what came after the Dark Signers arc.)

Why I’m Writing This

This sense of doubt about the writing of their relationship is especially spurred on by this character analysis of Jack:

“A lot of people seem to think that the introduction of Carly and the whole romancey subplot developed Jack as a character and for the better. I could not disagree more. If there's one word I'd associate with Jack prior to his entire development and dignity as a character going down the crapper, I'd have to say it's 'ego'. How did Rex/Jaeger get him to sell out his friends, steal Yusei's stuff and join him? He appealed to Jack's ego. How did he persuade him to stay after his first loss to Yusei? By telling him about the signer and reassuring him, again, that he was special. Overall, Jack just struck me as a very focused and driven character, intent on achieving his own goals on his own. He actively pushed away everyone who tried to get close to him, most obviously Mikage, who is consistently worrying over him but whom he never spares as much as a thought or a kind word for in return. Ever. This egocentric attitude is also, at the risk of over-analyzing, consistent with Red Dragon Archfiend, both in its moving away every defensive obstacle in its way and in its actively destroying any monsters that didn't join it in attacking. I generally don't like going onto this level of symbolism because it so easily devolves into semantic nonsense, but given the parallels here and the similarly fitting effects of Yusei's Stardust, I thought it worth mentioning. This would also lend a bit of further significance to him handing the card over to Yusei before the tournament, not only affirming his egocentric wish to beat Yusei at his strongest (and thus redeem himself for their last duel) but also his rejection of the self-sacrificing/others first mentality that the card represents. His obsession with Red Dragon Archfiend after that duel is also consistent with this interpretation, with Jack pushing himself even harder to prove to himself that his way is correct.

“Overall, I don't object to the notion of Jack learning to be less ego-centric as development, but the way the dark signer arc handled it was beyond contrived and ham-fisted, pushing him into an impromptu romance that was completely inconsistent with egocentric personality thus far and completely glossing over the far more interesting questions of how he'd rebuild his ego after essentially losing his entire self-image as the king in front of everyone. Instead, apparently all he needed was for a crazy lady to abduct him from hospital, blackmail him for the sake of her own career, then give a few lines of generic encouragement and invoke the power of love. From where I'm standing, it was obvious that he was intended to be Yusei's main foil, representing a pragmatic, egocentric worldview to contrast with his idealistic views on bonds and friendship, but equally clear that that idea was quickly scrapped in favor of shipping bait and deifying Yusei.

“Jack Atlus, he deserved a far better closure to his development than Stockholm syndrome.” --Aea (http://neoarkcradle.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=26&pid=735)

Before I get to what I think is actually pretty solid about this analysis, I want to address some points. The idea of Carly being “crazy” is pretty hyperbolic. Calling what she did “abduct[ion]” is just inaccurate--after all, Jack asks her to take him out of the hospital, and he also refuses to return when Mikage and Ushio go to get him. Of course, he tries to leave her place in episode 31, but he also seems to willingly return there at the end of the episode. Because she wasn’t really kidnapping him or holding him at her home against his will, their relationship isn’t Stockholm syndrome.

I do think there’s some validity to the idea of her blackmailing him for her career. She does try to draw attention to him when they’re out in public in episode 31 in order to get him to stick around so that she can get a scoop from him. As comically as it is presented in the episode, that’s nonetheless what she does (and she also tries to leverage his lack of gratitude, too!). But she does ultimately feels remorse for that and resolves to not write any article that would hurt a duelist (even despite the fact that Jack lets her write what she wants about him), which is glossed over in this analysis of Jack.

I also don’t think that the encouragement she gave Jack was super original. Here’s the exact quote (which she says in response to Jack divulging his past to her):

“If you get the picture that much, why don’t you just start your life over again? The old Jack died in that battle with Yusei. Now it’s time for the real Jack Atlas to live. Plus, it’d help you in becoming a real King, right?”

Essentially, she tells him that he can get back up again after his loss and be even better than he was before. Yeah, at face value, it is pretty generic. But I do think that it does speak into a lot of what he was struggling with, at least as it is depicted after his defeat. Now, whether these are things that make sense for him to struggle with is a different issue that I’ll discuss in a later section.

And finally, I do think that Jack/Carly invokes the power of love trope. At least, Jack invokes it himself when he is talking back to Godwin in episode 63: “No matter how much I deny it, I cannot escape from what’s known as ‘bonds.’ And what helped me understand that was one woman’s love!” I don’t think the power of love is necessarily a bad thing, and I think it makes sense for someone who gave up their bonds from the past to pursue his own goal to be able to be moved and changed by someone genuinely caring for them.

Now, whether or not it was a good decision to have love be the driving force in Jack’s character development during the Dark Signers arc is a different question, which brings me to the points of Aea’s analysis that I find really compelling and want to grapple with.

What I read Aea as primarily saying is that Jack in the Fortune Cup arc is depicted as a highly egocentric person, and that his plotline with Carly in the Dark Signers arc is a) inconsistent with that previous characterization and b) not as interesting as a plotline in which his egocentrism could continue to serve as foil to Yusei’s worldview.

I think a lot of that makes sense. I do think Jack was driven by his ego, and I do think that it might’ve been more interesting if his self-driven worldview were able to be given as much validity as Yusei’s idealistic, others-driven worldview, which is ultimately what is privileged. I can also see how Jack being primarily motivated by saving Carly during the latter half of the DS arc may be incongruous with his egocentrism just 20 or so episodes before.

At the same time, though, I think there are a lot of directions 5D’s could have gone which have the potential to be more interesting than the one it actually went, so rather than wondering about what could have been, it would be more worthwhile to examine Jack/Carly’s plotline and see whether or not it is inconsistent with Jack’s previous characterization, and also to see if it has any merit of its own as far as it develops Jack’s character.

Particularly, I am going to argue that a) although perhaps not as well executed as it could be, it made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

Also, b) Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

Point A: It made sense for Jack’s character to need to change after the Fortune Cup arc, and the way it changes is not incongruous with his previous characterization. Indeed, Jack’s character development in the Dark Signers arc centers around him reconceptualizing what being a King is.

So throughout the course of one arc, Jack goes from being a man who is motivated primarily by himself and his desires (to the point of being willing to put down others for them), to a man whose main reason for action is someone else’s well being. It does seem like a stark change. Rewatching the Jack/Carly duel, the sheer amount of concern for Carly that Jack shows is pretty astounding.

But I think that it’s understandable for there to need to be a change. For one, the particular reason why Jack lost to Yusei in episode 26 in the first place is because he tried to win using the same strategy as before--he wanted to redeem himself for his first near loss. Clearly there is a need for a change: Jack loses not once but twice to Yusei in the same season, and Yusei also cites Jack’s pride as a King as his reason for his loss.

The drama between Yusei and Jack during the Fortune Cup arc is driven by Jack losing to Yusei and needing to duel and beat him again to redeem himself and prove he’s the better duelist--that he truly deserves the title of King. In episode 6, when Jack realizes he would have lost to Yusei, it’s clear that he’s not driven by how his fans perceive him. While his fans have no idea that he lost, he’s nonetheless still bothered because he, the King, knows. In episode 8, Jack feels like he’s not the King anymore, even though Mikage says he still seems like one. The cheers of his fans sound hollow because he knows he doesn’t deserve them.

Something I find interesting is Jack’s awareness of his counterfeit Kingship revealed through his calling himself a clown. After his initial defeat, Jack asks Mikage if he’s a clown in episode 8, in episode 25 he asks Godwin to release Rally and co as “reward for a clown,” and in episode 31, he also uses the language of a clown when he talks to Carly: “Back then, I gave up everything, and what I gained from it was the path to being a King who continually acts like a clown as he lies about his true identity.”

Because of this, the way I see Jack’s character is that his identity as the King was made counterfeit at almost the very beginning of the series (episode 5). He then spends the entire rest of the Fortune Cup arc trying to regain his original conception of his King identity, only to ultimately fail. From Jack’s own language, I think we’re meant to see this as Jack’s foolishness. While it may have seemed fine for two years, the King identity that he had held onto no longer worked for him. When confronted by someone from his past, his King identity starts to crumble--first he’s defeated not once but twice, then it’s revealed he’s actually from Satellite, etc. In episode 25, he even shows awareness that Godwin baited him with the idea of being a duel king; when Godwin asks if that isn’t what he wanted, Jack says that he wanted to rule as “the King [he] truly desired to be.” Indeed, it’s revealed that he wasn’t even valued by Godwin for himself, but rather as a means of getting to Yusei. It makes sense, then, that his development after his defeat should center around letting go of his original conception of his King identity and discovering something more true.

All of these realizations are those that Jack comes to more or less on his own; Carly even says that Jack already “get[s] the picture.” So I do think it is congruous with Jack’s Fortune Cup characterization for him to need to find a new way of being King in the Dark Signers arc. Hence the need to start over, as Carly suggests. (And which is revisited in episode 37 when Jack talks to Mikage again, episode 59 when Carly does her fortune telling stuff, etc.)

I think it’s because Carly gives him hope after he loses his King identity that she makes such a mark on him and effectively becomes his main motivation in the DS arc. And I mean, Jack in the DS arc is still pretty aloof and pushes others away—he makes it clear to Yusei that he “hasn’t become anyone’s friend” in episode 45, and he really doesn’t rely on anyone else even as he angsts over Carly. No one even knows the identity of the Dark Signer he’s fighting. While Yusei still draws on his friends for strength, we see Jack continue his independent streak. Heck, he even pushes Carly away! (And she honestly probably would have been better off and not have gotten killed if she had just stuck with him, but that’s for another AU...)

An aside - I sometimes read people saying that they think Mikage could have filled the same role Carly did. Maybe, if written differently, she could have. But I think it’s notable that when Jack is angsting about having lost his sense of being a King in episode 8, Mikage is not really able to understand or speak to him in a way that actually meets him where he is. She clearly cares about him, but I think she’s not able to get past the image of the King that she and his fans project on him. I think Carly is able to empathize with his pain more. When Jack calls himself foolish and a clown, Carly doesn’t try to convince him he’s wrong--instead, she says something more like, “Sure, that’s true--but that doesn’t have to still be who you are.”

Point B: Jack and Carly’s relationship ultimately deals with and says interesting things about the idea of being driven by oneself that, rather than totally undermining the mentality that initially drove Jack to abandon his friends to become King, gives it some nuance.

I would argue that this is because Carly’s own character, as well as their relationship in general, deals a lot with themes of selfishness. While not presented as starkly as Jack’s self-drive is, it is obvious that Carly is someone who is self-driven and desires to achieve her goals, not completely unlike Jack. Her first appearance has her going past a swath of reporters to talk to Godwin, and her subsequent interaction with her boss shows that her job is precarious and that the scoops she seeks after are at least in part to keep her job. Like Jack, she came from a lower class background (although “the streets” rather than Satellite), and she doesn’t seem to have any close ties (Angela the reporter might count, but that’s a stretch). And when she goes to talk with Yusei and Dick Pitt after their duel, her concern is not with their wellbeing but about getting information from them for a scoop. “Straight ahead is the only way for me,” is something she repeats, showing that she knows where she wants to go and is determined to get there.

Indeed, Carly would not have met Jack at all if she had not snuck into the hospital trying to learn if he was truly from Satellite. She is someone who is driven primarily by herself, albeit more innocuously than Jack is. This also underlies why she was willing to “blackmail” Jack into going to the amusement park with her. She needs a scoop and is ready to do what it takes to get it.

But, we see how in the same episode, she starts thinking less of herself and more about another--Jack. She thinks, “He’s really hurting inside. And here am I trying to write an article about it. Am I a bad person for that?” She considers what he is going through, rather than just her own needs. When she defends Jack to Angela, she is driven not by her desire to keep Angela from getting her scoop, but a genuine care for Jack. And when she figures out he’s going to the tower to look at Satellite, it’s only by inhabiting his point of view and thinking about what he may want. Yet the question she asks herself--whether or not it’s bad to be writing a scoop about him (after all, it is her job, as Angela points out)--is an important one for her.

As self-driven as Carly is, she realizes she has limits--that is, she would not go as far as to hurt another person to achieve her own goals. Jack, on the other hand, has already done that, putting Rally in peril and taking Yusei’s card in order to get to Neo Domino City and become King.

We see again how Carly can be self-driven when she tries to get closer to Jack after he leaves, and when it is ultimately an illusion of happiness with Jack that causes her to fall back into her Dark Signer persona. Yet even then, it is clear that she does not want to hurt anyone, and Jack repeatedly reiterates this.

This culminates in the conversation she has with Jack before she dies: Carly: I loved cheering people on who tried their hardest like you, Jack. Despite that, because I tried to wish for such selfish happiness, I must’ve been wrong for doing so, huh? Jack: That’s nonsense! Everyone has the right to wish for happiness. If you’re saying that’s a crime, then I’m just as guilty!

Carly says herself that she was motivated by her own desires. Jack, in affirming her desire to obtain happiness, also affirms the ambition that drove him to abandon his friends. However, we see in how Carly is reluctant to hurt others that while it is not bad to want to pursue one’s goals and happiness, it is important to consider the impact on other people. It wasn’t bad for Carly to want to be with Jack, but it would obviously be bad for that to necessitate the deaths of many; it’s not bad for her to want to write a successful story, but it’s bad for her to take advantage of duelists’ like Jack’s pain to tell that story. This allows us to view the Jack in the FC arc in a new light: his desire to escape Satellite and become a King wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t right of him to harm others in order to get there.

Ultimately, Jack and Carly’s relationship is about two people learning how to pursue their happiness and also learning to put each other’s happiness first.

#jack atlas #carly nagisa #scoopshipping #meta #yugioh 5d's #i have way too many thoughts about this card game anime #retributionshipping #carly carmine #yugioh #otp: you can't even ride the monorail

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snarktheater · 4 years ago

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Ready Player Two — Opening Cutscene & Chapter 0

Hello again.

It’s been a while. I haven’t been active on this blog since, fittingly enough, Ready Player One. I was going to do this sooner—even had an alarm set up and everything—but then, it turns out, I’m feeling so much negativity about the world in general that a book just pales in comparison.

Seriously, I had to scrap this post’s entire intro because it’s not even 2020 anymore as I write this. And you know, maybe that’s for the best. I’m not really in the mood for doom and gloom and bitching anymore. I uninstalled Twitter from my phone a while back, I’ve been doing good at my daily writing sprints, my biggest fanfic project concluded on a positive note from people I didn’t even realize had been following it for years.

So I don’t know what this is going to be like. My commentary, I mean; I’ve heard echoes of what the book is like, so I’m not expecting a surprise there.

The book opens right after the end of Ready Player One, in a “Cutscene” where Wade recounts to us what happened after he won Halliday’s contest. It also assumes you remember exactly who the main characters of the book are, which is a bold move for a sequel that came out almost a decade after the original.

Technically, I could just look up the details I’m fuzzy about. But also, I think it’s more authentic if I don’t. I trust my memory enough that if I’m wrong, it’ll be in subtle enough ways that it’ll almost be a private jokes between all of us. An “if you know, you know” sort of error system. And I don’t think there’s anything more true to the spirit of this book than that.

Shoto had flown back home to Japan to take over operations at GSS’s Hokkaido division.

So Wade starts his tenure with nepotism. Wasn’t Shoto really young? Why is he qualified to run anything?

Aech was enjoying an extended vacation in Senegal, a country she’d dreamed of visiting her whole life, because her ancestors had come from there.

You know what, I’m not touching “send the token black character back to Africa.” This isn’t my lane.

And Samantha had flown back to Vancouver to pack up her belongings and say goodbye to her grandmother, Evelyn.

Why is she saying goodbye? Why, she’s moving to Columbus to be with Wade, of course! It’s not like there was anything else in her life. Was there? And why isn’t she referred to as Art3mis? I’m pretty sure Wade found out all of their offline names in the last book, and the inconsistency mildly bothers me.

These three sentences are back to back, by the way. Someone—I forget who—once described Ready Player One as a book that’s fun to write a wiki about, because it’s got fun concepts to summarize about until you realize that all the emotional connective tissue you need to turn a list of things into a story is missing, and that’s roughly how this first page feels.

Hell, the first line of the book is Wade telling us he remained offline for nine whole days after winning the contest, but by the end of the second paragraph we’re already to him logging back into the OASIS to "distract himself from [his and Samantha’s] reunion.

I’ll give Ernest Cline one thing: it feels like he wrote this opening nine days after the first book and did about as much maturing as a teenage boy would do between the two books.

Way more time is spent describing Wade’s OASIS rig, or the in-game planet where the climax of the last book happened, than anything else in this introduction. He is immediately greeted by a crowd of adoring fans who have been waiting over a week for him to come back in the game, because they’re all grateful that our protagonist and his friends restored their avatars after they were annihilated by the Sixers.

You’d think the adoring fans would serve some kind of purpose, or that something would happen, but no. Wade immediately goes “ew, people” and teleports away, since he essentially has ultimate powers within the game. With a caveat: the powers are actually coming from the Robes of Anorak he’s wearing, and I’m mentioning that in the hopes that it will pay off sometime in the book’s future, assuming Cline at least learned to do that. But still, let’s not skip too fast the fact that we introduced that crowd of adoring fans for no other purpose than to tell us they’re out there, because it fits right in with the last book’s attempts at saying as little as humanly possible in as many words as possible.

Anyway, Wade went back into Anorak’s study, where he arbitrarily checks out the Easter Egg he got at the end of the last book, and finds an inscription on it. I was dreading another riddle, but no, it’s just straight-up instructions to a vault in the GSS archives, so Wade logs off and goes to check it out.

Of course Halliday had put [the archives] [on the 13th floor]. In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

I’m equally shocked that it took two whole pages (on my ereader) to get to the first slew of references, and that one of these references is from 1999. I didn’t know we were allowed to think of anything that isn’t the 80s. Speaking of which, I’ll spare you the whole paragraph, but the book does feel the need to explain why it’s vault 42.

Inside the vault, there’s another egg containing a super-fancy and advanced OASIS headset. The egg also has a video monitor that plays a video message from James Halliday shortly before his death.

But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.

That oh-so-important message? An infodump about the headset’s working. He called it an OASIS Neural Interface, ONI for short. It basically lets you experience the OASIS through all your senses with sensory input just like the real thing, you know, that thing Wade had to get a fancy suit and massive rig to do in the first book. And yes, Wade does spend a paragraph or two comparing it to other works of science fiction. Of course he does.

More importantly, it also records all the sensory input into a separate file, which can then be replayed over to re-experience said sensations, or live someone else’s experiences. Halliday tries to frame it as a tool to generate communication and empathy, seemingly all without acknowledging the potential creepiness of that. But hey. Who knows. Maybe that’s because this is the setup stage, and it’ll pay off eventually.

I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

Add “reducing Japan to anime” to the list of things the book has failed to improve upon. By the way, the narration insisted on spelling out ONI letter by letter earlier, so it’s weird to make that link now. It’s also just kind of inelegant to just tell us “this is the symbolism behind the name”, but that’s just the sort of thing I’ve come to expect from this book.

Anyway, the reason Halliday kept this for his successor to find is he wants Wade to test out the technology and decide if humanity is ready for it. Why Halliday thinks the most glorified pop culture trivia / video game competition qualifies you for such a decision should be a problem, but sadly, a lot of billionaires have said and done a lot of dumb and eerily similar things in the past few years since I read Ready Player One, so actually, I can’t fault the book for that one. Tragically, our fates really are in the hands of people who should rightfully be cartoon villains.

To his credit, Wade does question Halliday’s motives in keeping this under wraps at all rather than releasing it himself. So hey, maybe it really is setting something up.

Wade goes back to his office with the ONI, and we’re treated with this lovely piece of narration:

I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)

There’s a lot to unpack about the implications this has for their relationship, but it’s way too early in the book for me to editorialize when one character hasn’t even been on the page yet. So I’ll just leave it here for the record. Hopefully you see the problem without me needing to point it out anyway. If not, feel free to hit my inbox.

So Wade, confident in the fact that Halliday would have warned him if there were any risks to using the ONI, decides to try it out. Even though he immediately follows up that statement with this:

According to the ONI documentation, forcibly removing the headset while it was in operation could severely damage the wearer’s brain and/or leave them in a permanent coma. So the titanium-reinforced safety bands made certain this couldn’t happen. I found this little detail comforting instead of unsettling. Riding in an automobile was risky, too, if you didn’t wear your seatbelt…

Wade. My dude. What the fuck is this simile. And why don’t you see that maybe a machine where you’re forcibly trapping yourself inside a virtual reality might be dangerous? Hell, when I said this was setting something up, I was expecting something vaguely interesting about the potential breach of privacy, or how you don’t need to literally walk in someone’s shoes to feel empathy for them, or anything substantial, but now I’m worried it’ll just end up as “man, sometimes science fiction machines will scramble your brain, isn’t that weird”?

Like, I don’t know, to me “it will put you in a coma” sounds like a good reason for Halliday not to release the ONI. Maybe we can still make it into a commentary on how corporations will sell stuff they know is directly harmful if it can make them a profit. Who knows.

The book waffles on about more risks, and the mechanics of how the ONI activates, and the warning disclaimer when it does turn on. Specifically, there’s a time limit of twelve consecutive hours, after which you’ll be automatically logged out, because yes, using the thing for too long can also cause brain damage.

Gregarious Simulation Systems will not be held responsible for any injuries caused by improper use of the OASIS Neural Interface.

See, now there’s the sort of thing that could be a source for commentary, but no, instead it’s thrown in there like it’s nothing and Wade glosses over the entire warning, and instead keep wondering why Halliday didn’t just release the ONI if even the safety disclaimers were in place.

By the way: this whole system has apparently gone through several independent human trials already, so I’m finding it hard to imagine that it’s actually a secret Halliday took to the grave as Wade says. Unless he also had everyone involved in those trials killed afterwards. Or maybe they all ended up with brain damage which rendered them incapable of talking about it.

And before you think I’m being unfair and maybe we’re supposed to understand that ourselves even if the protagonist doesn’t, I’ll remind you that the book didn’t trust its reader to know what the number 42 is a reference to, or what an oni is, even though I don’t think anyone in the target audience wouldn’t know about these two things.

There’s also the fact that, since this book came out, a video game did release with a scene intentionally designed to cause seizures, and it had countless fans flocking to defend it over that fact. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m not assuming this book’s stance on whether your video game console causes brain damage and possibly coma is actually a bad thing, or just an acceptable risk.

Wade certainly seems to think so, since he agrees to the terms of service.

As the timestamp faded away, it was replaced by a short message, just three words long—the last thing I would see before I left the real world and entered the virtual one. But they weren’t the three words I was used to seeing. I—like every other ONI user to come—was greeted by a new message Halliday had created, to welcome those visitors who had adopted his new technology: READY PLAYER TWO

Well now that’s just silly.

And that’s our opening cutscene. And while this post is already long enough, I feel like I have to go on to chapter 0, because it feels like barely anything has happened so far. We didn’t even introduce any new character motivation or conflict, or a mystery to set the plot into motion, unless I’m supposed to think “why didn’t Halliday release this?” counts.

So Wade is back into the OASIS, and tells us about how much more real it all feels thanks to the ONI. I especially have to question how he can smell or taste anything—both of which he tells us he can. Like, who coded that? Did Halliday implement every single smell and taste himself, without anyone noticing? I hope you don’t need me to tell you that’s not typically how features are added to a large-scale video game.

If it feels like I’m nitpicking at the logic of the book, even though I always say I’m not very interested in that and would rather talk themes, it’s because I am, because there isn’t much else to discuss so far. Wade is happy about tasting virtual fruit. That’s the scene.

He tests out if he can feel pain, but no, the ONI reduces pain (a gunshot is translated as “a hard pinch”). On one hand, good, it would be a nightmare otherwise. On the other hand, I sort of hope there’s a setting for that in there, because otherwise, you just lost an entire clientele of kinksters.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

Ah, now we have some juicy themes. Because if you think this is the inevitable final step in the evolution of video games, I invite you to look at literally any other art form, and what happened to them once hyperrealism became easy. Hint: they didn’t stop evolving, because it turns out realism isn’t the only goal one can achieve with art.

The realism discussion is not a new one in video games, mind you. In case you’re out of the loop: most of the big-budget blockbuster games (“AAA” as they’re known) are aiming for hyperrealism nowadays, and it results in development teams being forced to work in horrible conditions (known with the equally horrible euphemism of “crunch”). And, because it turns out that 1) humans working themselves to the bones isn’t healthy and 2) racing for realism with little to no vision besides it makes for poor creativity, a lot of these games come out as disappointments. Oh, there are hordes of Gamers™ who will defend them to the bitter end, but inevitably, in the months following release, the defense cools off while the criticism keeps on going, because the defense was a knee-jerk reaction born of a mix of people hyping themselves up for a game they hadn’t seen that much of yet, then attaching a part of their identity to liking that thing.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that this throwaway line feels like it comes from someone who is so out of touch as to accidentally support a world view that has in fact resulted in the biggest part of the industry stagnating artistically while growing more toxic for the people working in it. All the while, more and more independent games come out every year, proving that that realism is nowhere near the most important thing to making a game good, and that you can achieve much better results with a small team.

What I’m trying to say is: watch Jim Sterling’s channel, they’ve been bleeding out subscribers since they came out as nonbinary and make much better commentary on this topic than I could, and play Hades.

Back to the book, which sadly hasn’t become any more interesting since I decided to go on a tangent. Wade tests the ONI functions some more, all the while musing on how he knows Samantha would disapprove but that he doesn’t care, because what loving relationship doesn’t consist of that?

Among the functions, he tries the ONI files, the aforementioned recordings of someone else’s experiences. Specifically, a woman, which Wade tells us by telling us he suddenly has breasts, I suppose because Ernest Cline saw that subreddit about men writing women and went “I want a piece of that”. Oh, and also, those sample files were recorded from real people, in the real world. And yes, this goes exactly where you think it does.

SEX-M-F.oni, SEX-F-F.oni, and SEX-Nonbinary.oni

Look, I actually started writing a complaint about the boobs thing, and I deleted it, but now Cline is doing it on purpose. So, here goes: I saw a quote from this book on Twitter that looked like Cline attempting to make up for Wade’s casual transphobia in the first book. It wasn’t good, but it at least sounded like he was trying. So to immediately get this is…a lot? Let’s go for a lot.

I can almost excuse the use of “M” and “F”. You gotta name your files and you could excuse a non-exhaustive list. But…nonbinary? On one hand, I want to know what Cline means. On the other hand, I don’t think he can come up with an answer I’ll find satisfactory.

We are thankfully spared from finding out because Wade has just lost his virginity to Samantha a few days ago and he’s 1) not ready for this and 2) pretty sure this counts as cheating. You could make a case that this is more like porn, but I can see that this is more of a personal distinction anyway, and I can respect that one. Plus, you know. I don’t want to find out.

Wade logs off, and he can’t tell the difference between the OASIS with the ONI, and decides this will change the world. And then it’s back to the “how did he do it and keep it a secret”, even though Wade now finds out in the documentation that this had been in development for twenty-five years, basically since the OASIS launched. So it’s not really that it’s a secret, so much as there are a lot of people under very strict NDAs out there. Or, again, they’re all dead and/or otherwise incapacitated.

The ONI is the product of the Accessibility Research Lab, and Wade tells us about other stuff that the lab has produced using similar technology, mostly for medical purposes.

GSS patented each of the Accessibility Research Lab’s inventions, but Halliday never made any effort to profit from them. Instead, he set up a program to give these neuroprosthetic implants away, to any OASIS users who could benefit from them. GSS even subsidized the cost of their implant surgery.

Look, it’s nice that you want Halliday to be the good guy through and through, but it��s kind of hard to take any social commentary seriously when you think this is how a billionaire is made. Hell, even when he shut down the lab and fired its entire staff, he gave them a big enough severance package to set them for life. You know. Capitalism!

Hey, remember when Samantha said she was going to end world hunger if she won the contest, a thing billionaires right now could be doing, but aren’t, and she is now the co-owner of GSS? Yeah, I kind of hope the book remembers that too.

Speaking of the co-owners, the book just completely skips over the debate that our four main characters have over whether or not to release the ONI to the world. All we know is that they voted, and the vote goes in favor of releasing it. I mean, why have characters who could have opinions and feelings that could create a discussion? That might make us care about them! And who wants to care about characters in a story?

We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.

What exactly is “the lowest possible price” here? Your company literally owns money. Like, OASIS money is real money. There is literally nothing stopping you from giving them away, especially because what you’re giving away is access to the platform you’re already running for a profit.

It’s almost like, even trying to make “good billionaires” out of its protagonists, the book can’t stop and actually make them significantly good.

Oh, I should mention. If you thought my Ready Player One review was angry at capitalism, wait until you see what the past couple years have done to me.

Anyway, once they his 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a new riddle shows up on Halliday’s website. Because yep: our plot is apparently not about the implications of releasing the ONI, or any of the potential ideological discussions associated with that, it’s another riddle. Oh boy, do I wish I’d known that.

Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role For each fragment my heir must pay a toll To once again make the Siren whole

I cannot wait to have the book give me just not enough information to solve the riddle until it’s solved by the book itself. That was so much fun the other…what was it, five times? Six times? Something like that. Wade already tells us the Siren might be Kira Morrow, because her alias was named after one of the sirens of Greek myth, so I can’t wait for that plot point to stick around. It was so fun to hear all about this man pining for another man’s wife the first time!

So this is the “Shard Riddle”. People are apparently convinced it was made by Wade and his crew as a publicity stunt, but of course, they know that that isn’t the case, and they also don’t know what that riddle is supposed to lead to. So, that’s great. We have a puzzle, and we also don’t know what the stakes are. All we know is that Wade wants to solve the puzzle essentially because it’s a challenge.

We skip over a year, and Wade tells us about how IOI collapses and gets absorbed by GSS because of the ONI’s launch. Remember IOI? They were the bad guys, so I guess we have to cheer?

GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform.To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.

On one hand: good for the slave. On the other hand: not gonna cheer for a monopoly, you guys.

Another year’s skip, and now 99% of the OASIS users are using the ONI, and yes, that includes trading their experiences with one another too. And I guess we’re still hand-waving any possible problems associated with that technology, because the technology is made so that all recordings must be shared and played through the OASIS.

This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users.

How? Do you know any of the problems associated with content moderations on the current platforms? I don’t know if I want to point to Youtube’s extremely faulty algorithm, Twitter’s complete apathy towards its Nazis, or Facebook doing moderation by making underpaid staff watch all potentially problematic content, which resulted in serious psychological damage to said staff.

You can’t just say that as if it solved everything. The chapter later says this is handled by an AI called “CenSoft”, and as an AI engineer myself, let me tell you: this is not going to work. Again: Youtube is the way it is for a reason.

It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.

And again, monopolies are totally a good thing as long as it’s in the right hands!

When I’m implying that the book does not care for any of these potential problems, I mean it. These enormous ethical issues are sidestepped in cold narratin, and we just keep going on introducing new slang that I hate, but have to quote so help you keep up.

“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” (A term derived from the initialism IRL.) And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.

There. You have been infodumped.

In the midst of all this (still extremely dry) exposition about how this changed media, we also get this tidbit:

You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences.

Now, I was going to rant about this, but then, a page later, this happens and spares me the trouble:

I’d struggled with OASIS addiction before the ONI was released. Now logging on to the simulation was like mainlining some sort of chemically engineered superheroin.

So, you are aware that addiction isn’t just possible, but extremely facilitated by this. But sure, no worries! It’s perfectly safe! Because our protagonists are good.

Also, remember how the last book ended on a weak attempt at having a moral that maybe the real world is good, actually? Yeah, Wade tells us the ONI helps poor people live enjoyable lives in the OASIS. So. Fuck that message, I guess. It only applies if you’re the literal wealthiest man on Earth.

And me? All my dreams had come true. I’d gotten stupidly rich and absurdly famous. I’d fallen in love with my dream girl and she had fallen in love with me. Surely I was happy, right? Not so much, as this account will show.

Aside from the aforementioned returning OASIS affiction, there’s the Shard riddle that Wade is now obsessed with, to the point of offering a billion-dollar reward to anyone with information about the riddle’s answer.

I announced this reward with a stylized short film that I modeled after Anorak’s Invitation. I hoped it would seem like a lighthearted play on Halliday’s contest instead of a desperate cry for help. It seemed to work.

On one hand: good, Wade finally has a character flaw that the book actually acknowledges as a character flaw. I can work with that. On the other hand: this is all told to me in such a dispassionate that I am dreading how the book will handle this character flaw. Which is to say, I’m not expecting it to be very good.

(For a brief time, some of the younger, more idealistic shard hunters referred to themselves as “shunters” to differentiate themselves from their elder counterparts. But when everyone began to call them “sharters” instead, they changed their minds and started to call themselves gunters too. The moniker still fit. The Seven Shards were Easter eggs hidden by Halliday, and we were all hunting for them.)

Especially when this is something the narration feels is more important to tell me about.

Anyway, skip another year, and a gunter finally leads Wade to the First Shard. Solved that riddle, I guess. And wait, wasn’t part of why IOI was ~evil~ in the first book that they were paying people to find the Easter Egg for them? How is this any different, Wade?

And when I picked it up, I set in motion a series of events that would drastically alter the fate of the human race. As one of the only eyewitnesses to these historic events, I feel obligated to give my own written account of what occurred. So that future generations—if there are any—will have all the facts at their disposal when they decide how to judge my actions.

And that is the end of our chapter 0. And can I just say: what a mess already. I don’t think my snark can properly convey how utterly devoid of emotion this book’s writing is, and that alone is honestly more of a turn-off than anything else in the book so far. Even, knowing that I railed about it in the first book, I still feel newly unprepared for it. And it’s not like this double-prologue is making me hopeful that the book will show an ounce more critical thinking—or decent fucking humanity towards marginalized groups—as its predecessor.

So, that’s a lot to look forward to! For the sake of my sanity and schedule, don’t expect me to do such big posts every time. I’ll probably do one chapter a week from now on, if that. We’re in for a long ride, but I hope it’s worth it, at least.

#ready player two #ernest cline #st: ready player two #book reviews

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daturanerium · 5 years ago

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okay. i’m seeing a lot of misinformation being spread about the whole “veth is homophobic” thing and as someone who’s active on that side of the fandom i’d like to clear up some stuff because this has been blown way out of proportion.

1. “veth is homophobic” has always been a joke shared among this subsection of fandom. it’s been around for months and has about the same energy as me calling something homophobic when it inconveniences me (ie, no energy; not at all serious). very few, if any of us actually believe veth (or sam) is homophobic. as far as i/we are aware, homophobia doesn’t exist in exandria! we’d like to keep it that way.

2. a lot of us in this little subsection used to be huge nott/veth fans, including me. i was a whole nott stan for like a year and a half! we’re confused, sad, and disappointed with veth’s current characterization. her sudden change in....just about everything feels very uncomfortable and forced to a lot of us. characters are allowed to have flaws, we’re not denying that! it’s just that, to us, a lot of veth’s many flaws don’t make sense or fit with her character and situation. and that makes us sad, because veth was a character we really used to like.

3. re: veth and beau’s relationship issues. veth has always been a little antagonistic towards beau, unfortunately. it seems like their rift has only grown within the last few episodes. now, again, character relationships shouldn’t be perfect and conflict in games is interesting! i think the main issues lies in not having any known basis; veth’s negative words and actions towards beau seem to be coming from nowhere. it’s disappointing to watch. if veth had a reason to act negatively toward’s beau we would be a lot more content with the situation. but, as things currently stand, we are unaware of any reason why veth is acting this way.

4. re: “shipping discourse”, which is a term that shouldn’t be used for this situation. the problem that a lot of fans are having with veth isn’t about beaujester or beauyasha or beau-whatever. it’s about veth knowing about beau’s crush, saying “i’ll do some work!”, and then actively trying to push fjord and jester into a relationship. whether or not you think jester still has feelings for fjord doesn’t matter; it’s clearly making jester uncomfortable and annoyed, and her “work” has almost seemed to turn into an obsession. veth has done a lot of odd/uncomfortable stuff around relationships and romance (her pushing f/j despite neither fjord nor jester having asked her to, her constantly making sex jokes out of the blue, her writing a letter to astrid without caleb’s permission and later making jokes about him reuniting and having sex with her, etc.). on their own, these instances look pretty harmless. but when you put them together, we start to notice a trend of veth being inconsiderate towards other people’s relationships in favor of herself. now, what i said before still stands: character flaws are important in fleshing out a character and allowing them to grow. the problem is that we really haven’t seen veth grow in this sense at all. she’s been (to a certain degree) inserting herself into relationships for a while now. so, when beau confessed her feelings for jester to veth, we assumed that it would go the same way--veth would see an opportunity to play matchmaker and snatch it up, since this is a trend we’ve been witnessing happen to other potential relationships in the group. but instead, veth essentially forgets about it, instead pushing f/j even more. last episode we even saw her pretend to be the traveler and write suggestive things about fjord in jester’s sketchbook. the question quickly became: what’s different about beau’s crush on jester? why did veth latch onto jester’s crush on fjord and caleb’s past relationship with astrid but completely ignore beau’s crush on jester? i’ve seen a lot of people say “beau didn’t want her to interfere!” and that’s true, but the thing we’re noticing is that someone not wanting veth to interfere hasn’t stopped her before. why is it stopping her now? so, tl;dr: our problem isn’t with “our ship not being canon”. it’s about a lesbian being treated differently than m/f relationships in-game. that’s where the hurt and suspicion comes from--the implications and context make the situation a little more noticeable, and to some upsetting. (it would be nice if sapphics, especially lesbians, could voice our opinions and criticisms without them being reduced to “shipping discourse”. unfortunately, i don’t think that will be stopping anytime soon).

5) re: “death threats”. i haven’t personally seen any directed at sam but if they’re out there i would like to sincerely apologize for them. we do not stand for anything of the sort. i have also seen some threats directed at my friends who are a part of the side of cr twitter that is currently in focus since the “discourse” has gone mainstream. it’s frightening to see, but thankfully it hasn’t happened a whole lot. some of us have tagged sam in various threads/tweets about our concerns with veth (with varying levels of passion and professionalism). we do not condone death threats in any way shape or form, and anyone who sends death threats does not represent us.

so, tl;dr: current cr discourse actually revolves around veth’s current inconsistencies in her characterizations and actions. this “discourse” has been around for a lot longer than most people realize, and most of it comes from a point of love for veth’s character and potential. and, of course, we don’t condone death threats.

if anyone wants clarification, examples, etc, feel free to reply and/or message me. i wanted to keep this post fairly short but i can go into more detail if you’d like!

sincerely,

emmy, @acefjords (a former veth/nott stan)

#critical role #cr discourse #there's a whole other post i could do about s*m but that's discourse for another time #please feel free to hmu with any questions!

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authenticcadence18 · 4 years ago

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For the sending you a character thing could you maybe do Candace Flynn please? :)

Hi anon! And of COURSE!!

Favorite thing about them: I love how relatable she is! Candace being overwhelmed with life and feeling stuck/discouraged and frustrated is just, a big ‘ol mood, especially as I’ve gotten older. “The Universe is Against Me” is very therapeutic to sing for those reasons! I also love the moments when she is genuinely a kind older sister, like in “Dude We’re Getting the Band Back Together” or the end of “Summer Belongs To You.” I also love her friendship with Isabella (especially in the later seasons), it’s just really sweet! Candace helping Isabella out with her crush on Phineas (or just reacting to it in a deadpan way) is so so soooo so great! (Basically big sister Candace. Yes.) Candace is also just, SO FUNNY. Both with her dialogue and physical comedy. She’s a great character. (On a personal note, I also relate to her struggle with not wanting to drive right away! I was the same way, and thinking about Candace made me feel better about my own struggles!) Also her SINGING. YES. I love Ashley Tisdale. ...Ok, now that I’ve said lots of nice things about Candace...onto the next question😅

least favorite thing about them: sometimes Candace is just, very unkind. Like, I KNOW she has her own struggles and I’d never want to invalidate those.....but she is just so MEAN to Phineas and Ferb sometimes for no real reason (particularly in earlier episodes). Like, in the Christmas special for instance, she continuously laughs off Phineas and Ferb’s desire to write letters to Santa (but then USES this idea in a scheme to figure out what gift Jeremy wants, so it’s hypocritical on her part) (EDIT: i wouldn’t change the “letters to Santa??” bit, btw, it’s pretty funny!! but it illustrates my point) and THEN puts the thought in Phineas’s head that he might be the reason all of Danville was deemed naughty, which DEVASTATES him. I think the saddest part is that, 95% of the time, Phineas and Ferb are nothing but kind to her. It makes her occasional spitefulness towards them seem so JARRING. (And again I KNOW she struggles with her own issues and feeling inferior, CATU especially made that apparent, and I get it! But that doesn’t make it okay for her to be mean to her brothers, you know?). Also scenes where she says something nice to Jeremy and then rude to her brothers...idk, it just rubs me the wrong way. (I also dislike it STRONGLY when she is condescending to Isabella. I think this only happens, like, twice...but Isabella is my fave so I’ll never forget, LOL)

Favorite line: oh MAN how do I CHOOSE??? She’s got so many iconic lines. Maybeeee: “It’s SO not fair! I mean why am I still on sock detail when Gladys from accounting got promoted to commander and she doesn’t even know hold to hold a blaster!!! No I mean, really, she failed that part of the exam three times, she held it backwards AND upside down but she’s a second cousin to some mid-level darth and so SHE gets the promotion?? What about ME??? If they would just open their eyes, they’d see that I’ve got everything it takes, I COULD BE THE STORMIEST STORM TROOPER EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!” Oh i also like (in reference to lumpy tables) “it’s the new hip-thing, it’s so European!!!” And also “Though I’ve often thought of you as just a nuisance and a bother, today I can’t imagine havin’ better little brothers!”

BrOTP: Candace and Stacy, 100%!! I love them and their friendship SO much, it really feels genuine (especially as their characters develop more). Their subplot in “Canderemy” is one of my favorite Candace plot lines in the show, it’s so funny and so sweet at the end (and a welcome distraction from a certain OTHER subplot in that episode.....yes I’m still mad about the ending🙃)

OTP: CANDEREMY! I’ll be honest, when I was younger, Canderemy kind of annoyed me because Phinabella was my fave and I always got mad when Candace had better luck with love than Isabella (because Candace was mean and Isabella wasn’t and I identified with Isabella and like, I’m just trying to give y’all a picture of younger me😂). But now that Phinabella is canon and I’ve gotten older, I really, REALLY appreciate Candace and Jeremy. Candace doesn’t have to act a certain way for Jeremy to like her: he likes her just the way she is and actively DISCOURAGES her from changing her identity just to appeal to him more. That’s so refreshing and wonderful to see in media aimed at kids/teens. I love that, for the majority of the show, they’re either “talking” or in a relationship and it’s just, a healthy relationship! No multi-episode arcs about them breaking up, no love triangles, no petty arguments (sometimes the show leans into these tropes for an episode, but that’s it. And it’s always resolved). They genuinely care about one another, and I think it’s really sweet. (Plus a Canderemy wedding is RIFE with possibility for pre-relationship Phinabella moments👀)

nOTP: I don’t have any specific nOTPS for Candace, so I’ll just say I’m fine with any ship between her and someone her age (that she isn’t related to, obviously. AND THAT GOES FOR ALL MY SHIPS. I don’t want to say that on every one of these character posts so like, just know. That is where i stand.)

Random headcanon: Candace and Jeremy adopted Fred. I just think it’s a sweet headcanon 🥺. Alsooooo ok this doesn’t specifically revolve around Candace, but when she and Jeremy got married, Isabella and Phineas were both a part of the wedding party and Candace made SURE they were paired together to walk down the isle💕. And Candace continues collecting Ducky Momo memerobilia well into adulthood!

Unpopular opinion: Candace isn’t a terrible, irredeemable character.....but she’s not a purely amazing character who can do no wrong either. I feel like some fans either despise her fully or love everything about her. I’m in the middle. I see her as a flawed character who was written by numerous people and thus is somewhat inconsistent in her characterization. I like it when she is characterized as kindhearted but easily overwhelmed and longing for validation, so that is how I choose to portray her in my own writing/headcanons.

Song I associate with them: look Candace sings so many FANTASTIC songs in the show that I can’t associate her with any other music. Like I guess Ashley Tisdale’s “Kiss the Girl” because there’s fics of her singing that to Phineas and Isabella and I think that’s adorable? (I know I wrote one of those waaaaaaay back in the day, LOL). But in general, every Candace song is great. “The Universe is Against Me” ESPECIALLY.

favorite picture of them: you know what Y’ALL GET FOUR PICTURES BECAUSE BIG SISTER CANDACE IS THE BEST OK

Thank you so much, anon! As you can see, I’ve got quite a few thoughts on Candace😅. At the end of the day, I think she’s a great character and I relate to her a lot! I had a ton of fun writing all these answers out.

This is the last ask I’m going to answer tonight, but I’m looking forward to answering more tomorrow!!!! 😁

#cadence rambles #Candace Flynn #(I KNOW i say some salty things about her BUT I SAY A LOT OF NICE STUFF TOO. so i think it’s ok to put this in the main tag)#omg i have an ask!!#anon #ask game #character asks #phineas and ferb #long post

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ikdrama · 4 years ago

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≫❥ hi, hope everyone's doing good. so um i've been inactive on tumblr for a long time for many reasons; whether it was 'cause of losing interests, life getting in the way, etc. i neglected this blog and kept leaving and coming back. i've been on this platform for years now and kept switching between other platforms for the times i've been mia on here. i've tried out instagram, then came back to tumblr, but switched again. i changed between interests—from photo editing to gif making to graphic design to video editing and now back to using photoshop again for making gifs, hopefully. for topics from kdramas to kpop to western back to kdramas, etc.

≫❥ however, i feel like tumblr still holds a space in my heart closer to home unlike instagram. perhaps because it's where i initially started out that i grew more attached to this platform. also maybe i'm getting older and most people on here are the og ones, they're more at the same age range as me, unlike instagram. age has never been an issue to me, i have friends who are much younger than me and those who are older (but mostly young ones) and they all are very dear to me. but i guess i just needed some friends with a closer age range too.

≫❥ i have made some lovely friends on here and i'm forever grateful for those sweet times. however, over the years when i abruptly left tumblr, i had also lost touch with them. so, i might have no friends left on here which saddens me a little but that's all on me and it's okay, i can always try getting in touch with them again, right ? but i'd love to make new friends and reunite with my old ones, so please feel free to message me anytime you wanna be friends, my dms and askbox are always open <3 (doubt anyone's reading this at all lol but it's worth the try i guess heh).

≫❥ anyways, what i'm saying is, i'm coming back this time for real, or at least try making a better effort into taking good care of this blog. i used to be a content maker (mostly creating gifs) but stopped at some point and only rb posts now. frankly, over the time dramas would have a less impact on me, i wouldn't be as much interested in them as before and switched interests but then again came back to them, just now i'm not up-to-date with the on-air ones, i would watch a drama that i find being interested in, so it's random and inconsistent, i don't watch a lot of dramas like i used to (surely my list of watched dramas became quite poor too oof). but i do watch some every once in a while when i find the time and am in the mood for it. my personal favorite genres nowadays are thriller/action/fantasy/comedy dramas with slight romance (teenage romance makes me cringe now when watching those, idk maybe i'm just getting old lol).

≫❥ but another reason to why i stopped creating content was also because i was too focused on whether my post reaches a wider range of audience ? i would get scared it wouldn't get much attention compared to the time and effort i would give into working on my original content. surely, this would bring the content creator down but at the end of the day i chose to be here because i find joy in making the content i wish the world to see and it's still okay if the whole world wouldn't see it as long as i shared it on my blog and me myself am satisfied with what i'm posting. this applied to all the platforms i would use as a content creator. so, one day i just stopped looking at the numbers. and my mind was much more at ease. now every time a post of mine blows up or it would get more recognition than usual, it would make me happy inside and i would be grateful but on the other hand if it would flop, i wouldn't care anyway and still be okay. and why is that ? well, that's because life comes in the way. other things happening irl outside of social media would keep my mind busier than having myself wasting my time by sulking over some digital numbers online. and i guess that's when one's perspective on wanting to gain more recognition on social media changes.

≫❥ anyways, i went a little off topic there heh. so, my blog would mostly consist of the dramas i've already watched or the ones on my watch list or if i find a pretty gifset, i'd rb it too :) i'm rambling on for too long now, oh god, my apologies (i mean i doubt anyone's reading this but that's fine, it's like more for me to get this off my chest).

≫❥ i guess with this post i'm trying to announce that i'll be back to this blog being more active with rb posts and i will also start making content again, but this time it'll be mostly different from the content i've been making so far. my usual content would be creating simple gifsets of scenes/dialogues but i've come across so many artistic and beautiful gifsets that i'd like to give it a try. also since i'm not up-to-date with on-air dramas, making gifsets of the dialogues and scenes from those dramas wouldn't happen—by the time i'd start those dramas people would have made gifsets of the scenes already anyway. this would mean for that kind of content i would give in a much greater effort into making the gifs looking more artistic/aesthetic and that's why i'd post less of my original work. but i'll still try to keep the blog active by rb other people's posts in q of course. however, right now my life is a little bit of a mess, i'm standing on a thin line between education and career, so i'd need some more time to sort this mess out first and then i'll change things up with my blog. i'm excited to come back though; this blog is still getting love from people even at times when it was completely dead and it's still growing which surprises me a lot and i am truly thankful for each of your support. i feel like i don't deserve this, i've been a terrible owner. but i'm willing to change that once i get my life atm together hahah.

≫❥ though i'm not sure how tumblr works now with the changes over the years, i'll just do me and somehow try and revive this blog again. i come back on here because i feel content browsing my dashboard seeing all these beautiful posts on here and i truly wish to come back to being a content maker like these wonderful artists too.

≫❥ ngl, i miss getting on/off anon asks in my askbox (although i wouldn't get that many but it still made me smile every time i received one no matter what it was about as long as it wasn't offensive <3). i missed talking to my friends and people on here. i missed rb ask game posts and get excited whenever someone reacted to it. i miss posting original content and reading other users' tags and them fangirling about a certain topic. i missed the times when i was interactive with my followers/mutuals. i miss the old times on tumblr. when i would have friends on here and a community that was warm and supportive. i wish to experience all of that again.

≫❥ lastly, thank you for listening (if you're still here, doubt so though hah) and so sorry you had to read through this all, i rambled on too much i guess oof. but if you're reading this please know that you're an amazing person. hope we could become friendsʕっ•́ᴥ•̀ʔっ~♡

。.❁stay beautiful:·ﾟ*

·☾ﾟir。

#personal #did not expect this to be that long but um hi hello let's be friends;w;#<send me anything nice in my askbox on/off anon & i'll wuf u 4eva:3 #announcement #ily

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fontofmercy-archived2 · 5 years ago

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Rethinking The Unkiss: Sansa Stark and Trauma

“The Unkiss” refers to the (confirmed as intentional) inconsistency in Sansa’s recollection of her interaction with Sandor at The Battle of Blackwater. Many fans interpret that this inconsistency is a sign that Sansa is romantically interested in Sandor, but I would like to offer a different perspective. The perspective of Sansa not as a self-insert for adult women who are attracted to Sandor, but as the traumatized child she is in canon.

I’m not going to explain in depth that Sandor is verbally, physically, and sexually abusive to Sansa because that is just blatantly in the text; it’s not a debate or a theory, it’s a canonical fact that Sandor is Sansa’s abuser. Just because he had a few good moments and is arguably a little better than other abusers doesn’t change that. There is a great meta that does explain that though if you want a refresher: https://stardyng.tumblr.com/post/181474608232/a-song-of-birds-and-burns-anti-sansan-meta by @stardyng

1.) First things first, let’s just take a look at the actual scene:

“The blood masked the worst of his scars, but his eyes were white and wide and terrifying. The burnt corner of his mouth twitched and twitched again. Sansa could smell him; a stink of sweat and sour wine and stale vomit, and over it all the reek of blood, blood, blood.

"I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."

Her throat was dry and tight with fear, and every song she had ever known had fled from her mind. Please don't kill me, she wanted to scream, please don't. She could feel him twisting the point, pushing it into her throat, and she almost closed her eyes again, but then she remembered. It was not the song of Florian and Jonquil, but it was a song. Her voice sounded small and thin and tremulous in her ears.” - A Clash of Kings, Sansa VII

Does that sound like a girl who wants to be kissed? No. That is a child who is genuinely afraid for her life. She thought he might kiss her (planting the seed for the false memory) and she wanted it to be over. It is clear here that Sansa is disgusted by and terrified of Sandor, not attracted to him.

2.) Sansa does not have adult desires

Sansa Stark is not an adult woman fantasizing about kissing someone she likes. Firstly, she is not an adult. Even if child sex was the accepted social norm in ASoIaF (it’s not, it’s a rarity and frowned upon) that still wouldn’t change the fact that children’s sexual development is based on their brain development not social norm. Children who live in locations where child sex is the norm are not adults, they aren’t magically ready for sex just because adults think it’s normal to rape them. The reader cannot analyze Sansa’s sexuality as if it is developed, it is not. Her sexuality is premature and being warped by prolonged abuse.

Secondly, Sansa is not fantasizing about kissing Sandor, she’s not actively choosing to indulge the thought because it’s pleasant; she truly believes that the kiss happened because her brain altered the memory without her conscious knowledge. Sansa’s memory of The Battle of Blackwater is a trauma memory and cannot be treated as a normal memory. For a child to be restrained and held at knife point by an adult who is threatening to kill her and verbally belittling her, for a child to truly believe she may be murdered, is a trauma. There is no child in the world who is “mature” or “understanding” or anything enough to not be traumatized by that.

Let’s look at when Sansa thinks about The Unkiss, because it’s not when she is daydreaming for fun and certainly not for arousal:

“If I close my eyes I can pretend (Sweetrobin) is the Knight of Flowers. Ser Loras had given Sansa Stark a red rose once, but he had never kissed her . . . and no Tyrell would ever kiss Alayne Stone. Pretty as she was, she had been born on the wrong side of the blanket.

As the boy's lips touched her own she found herself thinking of another kiss. She could still remember how it felt, when his cruel mouth pressed down on her own. He had come to Sansa in the darkness as green fire filled the sky. He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak.” - A Feast for Crows, Alayne II

Here, Sansa is being nonconsensually kissed by Sweetrobin and tries to think about Loras (who she was attracted to). If Sansa’s memory changes were a result of her desires, she would have remembered Loras kissing her but she can’t because none of her memories with Loras were traumatic and therefore she remembers them correctly. It is trauma that causes Sansa’s memories to be warped, they are not warped by Sansa’s desires.

Now, let’s go back to right before the above quote so I can further explain why Sansa’s Unkiss memory coming up here is not her using it as escapism:

“Before she could summon the servants, however, Sweetrobin threw his skinny arms around her and kissed her. It was a little boy's kiss, and clumsy. Everything Robert Arryn did was clumsy...” - A Feast for Crows, Alayne II

Anything that reminds a PTSD survivor of their trauma can be a trigger, and what Sweetrobin does here is almost step-for-step what Sandor did at The Battle of Blackwater:

“Then something stirred behind her, and a hand reached out of the dark and grabbed her wrist.

Sansa opened her mouth to scream, but another hand clamped down over her face, smothering her.” - A Clash of Kings, Sansa VII

Sansa is suddenly grabbed and prevented from calling out...then kissed without consent? It is not uncommon for trauma survivors to imagine the abuse that’s happening to them happening in a “better” way or even just in a different way so it feels more under their control. That’s what Sansa is doing, Sweetrobin triggered her and she thought of a romantic version of BoB. Another example:

"Oh, yes. He died on top of me. In me, if truth be told. You do know what goes on in a marriage bed, I hope?"

She thought of Tyrion, and of the Hound and how he'd kissed her, and gave a nod.” - A Feast for Crows, Alayne II

Here Sansa is feeling uncomfortable and trying to feel like she has more experience than she does. Notice that she doesn’t think of Littlefinger or Sweetrobin here even though they’ve both already kissed her, and she glosses over Tyrion’s groping: because those were sexual traumas that really happened, it’s easier to imagine The Hound. A kiss that was “cruel” and unwanted like the rest in her life, but one that is at least under her control because she subconsciously knows it’s not real.

3.) Why The Unkiss?

So, I’ve established that Sansa’s change in memory is a result of trauma and not her desires, and that she doesn’t remember The Unkiss in positive context, but why would she remember the trauma as a kiss at all?

If The Unkiss were real, it would have been Sansa’s first real kiss. It would have been a kiss before Littlefinger’s molestation began. Sansa inventing The Unkiss was not because she wanted Sandor to kiss her, nowhere in the scene is that the case, but because when Sandor is safety far away from her the memory is a convenient way for Sansa’s brain to kill two birds with one stone; to establish autonomy over her sexuality and to repress the trauma of that memory.

I’m no expert in the human brain, but I am a psychology student and I do know a lot about trauma and I know that the human brain loves convenient compartmentalization, especially when someone (like Sansa) is in a situation where she’s captive and unable to escape danger. From a psychological standpoint, Sandor’s assault is the ideal opportunity for Sansa’s autonomous first kiss to have occurred because no one else was there during that interaction, Sandor is far away, and she told no one about it. That event is a secret place in Sansa’s mind, a perfect place to hide a little piece of autonomy from other abusers such as Littlefinger.

If The Unkiss were real, it also would have happened in place of the most traumatic part of the memory when Sandor puts the knife to her throat and she thinks she’s going to die. Look back at the scene and you’ll see Sansa thinks Sandor is going to kiss her right before he puts the knife to her throat.

I could not find one single line where Sansa thinks about Sandor putting the knife to her throat, where she thinks about her mind going blank with terror and internally begging for her life. Instead, Sansa remembers the kiss and the cloak and the times Sandor protected her because that’s easier. Sansa clings to the parts of that night that are easy to romanticize, that are not actually linked to her feelings of terror and violation.

4.) Other SanSan “evidence”

Beyond The Unkiss, other “evidence” of SanSan all boils down to Stockholm Syndrome. Sansa has been a captive most of her storyline and no one around her is truly on her side. Anyone, especially a child, who is trapped in a dangerous environment with no one on their side is going to cling to anyone who can offer any relative safety even if that means compartmentalizing the abuse they’ve inflicted.

Sansa does this with every single one of her abusers. To say that there’s something romantic and genuine about her Stockholm Syndrome symptoms towards one abuser but not all the others is just pure bias.

Sansa thinks of Littlefinger as being half-Petyr who is her friend and half-Littlefinger who does deeply troubling things. She despises and fears his sociopathic behavior, but she still has to think of him as her protector because if he’s not then she has no one.

Sansa looks on Tyrion’s moments of protecting her and ignores the fact that he forced her to marry him and groped her. Tyrion isn’t as bad as the other Lannisters and she doesn’t have a choice but to be around them so she ignores all he’s done that harmed her.

Sansa thinks about the times that Sandor protected her and his Knight’s cloak and ignores the fact that he made her fear for her life and was constantly abusive towards her. If Sandor can’t protect her, none of the other Knights will and so she minimizes the terror he’s caused.

Sandor is no different. It is not romantic longing for Sansa to “wish The Hound were here” because she doesn’t want to be beat. That’s just survival.

I don’t know how to end this but please stop reducing my girl’s arc to “saving” some abusive man from himself. Sansa Stark is a main character, Sandor isn’t, and her arc is so so much more than becoming a consolation prize to a man who literally abused her as a child ok bye.

#my meta #ch: sansa stark #asoiaf meta #anti sansan #sansa defense squad #sansa stark

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kumoriyami-xiuzhen · 4 years ago

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Translation Plans

Well... my break was pretty good. was finally able to download the clean fresh live version of the cxm secret mission that i had my eye on since i ranked up, saw the 1984 wonder woman movie (it was okay and I could write an essay on what didn’t sit well with me as a fan of the comics [im kinda of a comic book purist when it comes to the way characters think and their behaviour] but I really liked Lynda Carter’s cameo).... made a lot of progress on one of the hakumyu piano arrangements i’m working on (have now probably listened to certain parts of that song over a hundred times now), watched a bunch of the original hakuoki musicals in hd.... and I finally got my dad to play Batman: Arkham Asylum. My bro and I have been trying to get that to happen for years lol... especially since it has Conroy and Hamill doing the Batman and Joker voices (the animated series is the best!). super steep learning curve tho since it’s being played on the ps3 and the last console he used was the Nintendo Gamecube.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stock up on translations as much as I would have liked to during this time on account of my hardware seriously acting up... to the point that I needed to send my laptop in for repairs and get a new one. Aside from how unresponsive my keyboard was and how hot it got, the laptop itself had become quite slow... though that might have been because my passport [external storage drive] took a bad fall which made a lot of my files harder to access since it was barely able to handle files being accessed/copied/moved off of it (this is after diagnosing it and repairing it via command prompt chkdsk x: / r), with the latter being what I spent most of my break waiting for as i avoided using my laptop since the majority of my drama rips and game capture videos were on it... To give you an idea of how long this took (and how long it is still taking), I went from being able to transfer my 50mb of files in a few seconds... to sometimes taking more than a day (tho other times i’d be able to get 4gb moved in >24 hours, making the timing super inconsistent. also i don’t have access to a cd drive now so i can’t just re-rip things)... which is why I haven’t been able to work on any videos since my last post (I have more than 1.3TB of stuff to move, so my new laptop isn’t exactly at its best right now and won’t be for a long while since I’m not going to be using a recovery service as waiting out the transfers for everything out will definitely be cheaper... the ballpark estimate I got was being anywhere from $500-2000, which is money that i am not exactly eager to part from just for the sake of saving time)... meaning I also probably won’t get to videos for a while since subtitling requires accurate timing and im not fond of things freezing on me while working on videos... ugh. i still have to do an insane amount of grinding later in warframe once my current batch of files finishes transferring...

Anyway, below is a list of what I’ve mostly managed to schedule (anything with a “?” is something that I haven’t committed to) and a list of what I’d like to get done this year (can’t make any guarantees... however, im probably going to try and translate some things with souma this year cuz of hakumyu), while the stuff in bold text is on my shortlist of things I intend to prioritize (Saito’s Ginsei no Shou chapters and Shinsengumi Oni-tan are still being worked on though not as actively since they’re a lot longer...).

Also, aside from December, the month that CNY falls on (February this year) and March (bday) will be the only foreseeable times when I put out less translations tho I’ll probably be playing video catch-up during that time this year since i’m not sure what i’ll be able to get done as i wait for my files to get moved.

oh well. I’m still aiming towards posting stuff on a weekly basis for the rest of the year... here’s hoping that it’s less volatile.... tho i unfortunately have non-existent expectations given what made the news yesterday. just glad i don’t live there.

YAISA!

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January

Yuugiroku 3 Saito Fall story today!

Chapter 7 of Saito’s route from Ginsei no Shou + 4-koma

Hakuoki Kyoka-Roku Kazama CG Character Perspective [no vid. havent beaten this game and im not sure when i’ll feel like speed running through it]

Hakuo Gakuen Q & A

February

Stellaworth Hana no Shou After Story - Harada

Chapter 1 of Saito’s route from Ginsei no Shou

Web drama 8

March

Yuugiroku 3 - Short Episode #8 (Kazama/Amagiri/Shiranui) [still need to get video and screenshots]

Yuugiroku Drama CD Thumb Sized Samurai Track 1-4 (4 is WIP)?

Char monologue?

April

2017 Otomate Hakuoki SSL April Fool’s Day

薄桜鬼遊戯録隊士達の大宴会店铺特典「教えてくださ��山崎さん！」 (completed yesterday)

Yuugiroku 3 - Short Episode #6 “Yukimura the page’s secret”?

char perspective?

Other

Hijikata Biyori (cuz these are short)

Yuugiroku 3 Short Episodes (these are longer than the ssl cross and daily stories)

Kyoka Roku Conversation in the Rain - Okita/Toudou/Kazama

Kyoka-Roku CG perspectives

2013 Otomate Party Hakuoki drama “Ideal place for a disagreement”

Saito Ginsei no Shou Chapters

Shinsengumi Oni-tan

Stellaworth Hana no Shou After Stories - Souji, Heisuke (THIS YEAR FOR SURE DAMMIT!)

2011 Hakuoki Reimeiroku Otomate Party drama

Stellaworth Nightshade Kuroyuki CD

薄桜鬼遊戯録弐祭囃子と隊士達 A店特典「あなた好みの想いの形」

薄桜鬼真改 ~風華大全~ 特典「稽古の痛み」

2016 Otomate Party Code:Realize drama* (this is almost 30 min so i will probably translate less that month if i get to it)

2019 ????????????? Halloween SS?*

????????????? Stellaworth Vocal CD (8 tracks)*

*have to check these 3 since I don’t actively follow these fandoms/tags tho im pretty sure no one has translated anything from the fandom for the last 2 items.

also, re:patreon goal - i am currently not able to access the files for the drama i am looking to get a translation commissioned for as it is in the process of being moved off of my damaged passport. 29gb remains as part of that transfer, which is the result of me trying to move all 865 files from where i keep the majority of the hakuoki dramas i’ve saved all at once... ended up doing that because every time I access that hard drive, each time i open up a folder, and every time I highlight a file to move, the file explorer goes “not responding” for an uncertain amount of time, and have instead opted in doing something that would hopefully reduce the likelihood of something crashing.

#personal post #update post

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love-takes-work · 6 years ago

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Ace/Aro Amethyst headcanons

Some people headcanon Amethyst as asexual and/or aromantic. I think that's pretty cool.

Unfortunately, some people are really hostile to this idea. Sometimes in a way that's problematic.

No, I'm not going to tell you you have to headcanon Amethyst as asexual and aromantic or else you're an acephobe. That's silly. Here's the problem: I recently came across a post on Reddit where a member of the Steven Universe subreddit demanded to know where the "stupid" headcanon of ace Amethyst came from and opined that it's ridiculous because that orientation does not "fit her personality."

Think about that for a sec, y'all.

Sexualities don't have personalities. This is a problem.

If you follow some of the interviews Rebecca Sugar has done over the years, especially lately, she sometimes talks about her growth toward understanding herself as bisexual and why it took her so long to figure it out. It was partly because media representation of characters follows a certain system, and as a result she'd been led to believe bisexual people were aggressively sexual, greedy, unfaithful, and extremely desirous of attention.

"I didn't know you could be a SHY bisexual," she said, and you can hear the wonder in her voice at that idea.

So let's really consider that, please. Any orientation can have any type of personality. And if you pigeonhole someone into what their orientation is likely to be because of how you interpret their personality and what messages you've internalized about what traits go with the way they are, you are probably contributing to this damaging message.

Moving on: full disclosure. I'm an asexual Steven Universe fan. I'm also aromantic. And anybody who says asexual people wouldn't have a personality like Amethyst has probably never hung out in a room full of asexual people. (Uh, I have.)

There are shy people in the groups. There are conservative people in the groups. There are easily offended and sensitive people in the groups. But you will also find bawdy asexual people cracking gross jokes, asexual people who nevertheless turn everything into a sex joke, asexual people who are sex positive and even occasionally promiscuous or interested in sex. (If you don't understand how that's not a contradiction, I'll just leave you on your own to read some asexual education, because I'm not actually trying to go there with this post.)

Personally, I was raised by a rather crass mom whose sense of humor led her to blurt "IS IT A PENIS? BWAHAHAHA!" at the start of every round of Pictionary. She taught her daughters sex education early because she wanted us to know the facts, and though she joked about sex a lot, she also made it very clear that she expected us to make sex a part of our lives when we were older, and didn’t want us to think it was shameful or should be hidden. She gave us access to birth control in our mid teens and made sure we had the resources to make good choices about sex. It wasn't embarrassing or weird in our house. And even though I turned out ace, my siblings are straight and married. I grew up making ridiculous sex jokes and not being at all shocked by sexual humor or sexual situations. It was all just a good time and an accepting atmosphere. It was also okay that I didn't desire it myself. It didn't mean I couldn't dish out the innuendo with the best of them.

And yet, sometimes when I've come out as ace to someone and then they notice I use swear words, or am not horrified into covering my face during the movie's kissing scene, or have done things they really don't expect asexual people to enjoy, I'm treated to this weird mixture of shock-and-mock:

"Whaaaaat? Aren't you too PURE to use language like that, young lady?" "Plug your virgin ears, girl, we're talking about ADULT THINGS." "Don't worry, I won't mention S-E-X. LOL triggered." "She wouldn't be interested. It's about relationships and she thinks that's ICKY." "GASP! You just used the F word! Wait isn't that ironic?"

No, having a vocabulary that includes vulgarities and being tolerant of other people's desires is not inconsistent with being asexual. Being asexual means I don't feel sexually attracted to other people. It says absolutely zero about my behavior, and nothing I do is "wrong" behavior for an asexual person, because I am doing it.

Back to Amethyst.

Asexuality is a dicey issue for discussing Gems because technically they're all asexual. They are not a sexually reproducing species, so there really shouldn't be any reason for them to desire each other sexually. But they do seem to want intimacy and closeness in some situations, and there's definitely romantic attraction between some of them. It's sometimes hard to tell whether "sex" would be a concept available to them (besides Gems who shapeshift to mimic how humans do it), because it is after all a family show and sometimes you have to wonder if the relative chastity of some of the romantic scenes is due to the intended audience.

Amethyst has been more than once described by Rebecca Sugar as Dionysian. She was set up as an opposite to Pearl's Apollonian nature. If you don't know, Apollo vs. Dionysus is a concept of Greek origin that's often used in literature to set characters at odds with each other. Apollo is everything Pearl is: rational, clean, proper, perfect. Dionysus instead embraces the mess, just like Amethyst: Dionysian characters are sloppy, unruly, chaotic, and (this is important) hedonistic. They do what feels good.

Given this, I understand the root of why some people feel asexuality and Amethyst wouldn't go together well. And all things considered, it's true: Amethyst seems, to me, like the kind of Gem who would try anything, especially if other people seemed to enjoy it and especially if abstaining is portrayed as prudent and restrained. She's a let-it-loose kind of character. It's hard to imagine someone like her, who loves to eat, sleep, hoard, and be lazy, wouldn't have tried a few rolls in the hay, right?

Well, sure. Maybe.

And yet we've seen no specific evidence of it.

She could choose any form but she's never seen trying to change herself to look sexy; she's displayed no particular intimate or romantic interest in anyone beyond casual physicality and warmth; she's the only main-four Crystal Gem who hasn't been pursued romantically by a human; she's a little insecure and seems to crave attention sometimes but never spins it as a need to be fulfilled by romantic attention; she never expresses that she wishes she was someone's partner. Who knows? Maybe she's tried it out, found nothing she liked, said "Eh," and decided it's not her bag.

Hedonism is about embracing what feels good. If those kinds of relationships just didn’t feel good for her, I could see her just deciding they were boring and still fully embracing her other Dionysian qualities. She can indulge in naps and eat all the food in the fridge and hoard all the garbage she wants . . . without that indicating she must also possess and pursue amorous relations.

There’s also the fact that a minority of asexual people are like “eh, screw it, I’ll try it,” and don’t find sex completely objectionable or might even like it. (Not all, not most, not me, but this does exist.) They still may not desire it the way non-asexual people do, or may experience no attraction despite having neutral or positive feelings about the act itself. Who knows? Amethyst could be like that. We’ve seen her eat food that she doesn’t even like, just ‘cause it’s there. Some people take or leave sex like that.

And if you say her "type" necessarily incorporates promiscuity or a large sexual appetite, or you say she couldn't be ace because she's not uptight and strait laced, you're buying right into the damaging stereotypes about asexual people.

It's certainly not acephobic to headcanon Amethyst as bisexual or pansexual or lesbian or whatever you want. And it's fine if you believe the closeness she’s displayed with others that I interpret as friendship or non-romantic intimacy is actually a different flavor. What's NOT fine is saying Amethyst CANNOT be asexual or aromantic because of weird beliefs you have about what ace/aro people would be like.

Further, asexual people unfortunately don't have that much representation, and usually we're reduced to embracing absence as evidence. If a character isn't shown to "like" anyone that way, whoa, they might be ace! It's so very rare that a character does actively say or do something that indicates their lack of attraction. We often have to see ourselves in the "not yet" if we want any representation at all, running the risk of having our headcanons smashed as soon as a writer decides a certain type of attraction in a relationship will make that character interesting. But at least we're in the same boat as every other fan there. What we want to happen isn't necessarily what will happen.

And for those who think Amethyst might be ace and/or aro, she's such a great example of someone who isn't defined by the overly cautious, conservative germophobe who's obsessed with logic and conflates their abstention with purity and righteousness. I get really tired of asexuality being tied in with those traits because non-ace writers can't imagine ace people without sucking fun and flexibility out of their souls. (And on the flip side, isn't it wonderful to have the logical, organized, clean, perfect character be a giant lesbian? This is one box queer women rarely see themselves put in, but I know they're out there. I'm friends with a few.)

As for me, do I headcanon Amethyst as asexual or aromantic? Honestly, I am not very invested in this theory.

I can see it and I could support it in a debate if someone asked me to. But I think Amethyst could turn out to be anything; really, the most likely thing for her to be is fluid. I think she's cute with Pearl sometimes, though Pearl having a mom vibe and being so much older and having other attractions does give me pause. I think the idea of her with Peridot or Vidalia is interesting, though Peridot more than Amethyst reads as possibly ace and there's more built up between her and Lapis now. I could even see her with another tertiary character someday; I wouldn't bat an eye.

But Amethyst as ace and/or aro would also make complete sense to me and might even fit best with her livin' free and unbound attitude, and when you look at the asexual flag, Amethyst is certainly dressed for it.

#steven universe #amethyst #asexual #aromantic #gif #ace characters #aro characters #su analysis #my su analysis #myblog

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naughtynutboy · 5 years ago

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i feel like no matter how hard i try or how well things might be going, i'll never be able to sustain an online fandom presence for more than a few months tops before i relapse back into my cycle of not doing anything. this blog is a perfect example of that and i hate it to my core

don't get me wrong, i love this blog and everyone who decided to follow it as well as the sanders sides fandom as a whole, this whole thing has brought me the most amount of joy from an online space i have ever had in my 10+ years of being on the internet. but i feel like i just don't deserve it, you know?

back in the Glory Days of this blog, absolutely! in that short period of june/july/august of 2019 where i was drawing fanart nearly every day, getting involved in the fandom, talking to people, making friends and just generally Living It Up, it was genuinely one of the best periods of my life

i've had terrible social anxiety for as long as i can remember and you would think the anonymity of the internet would alleviate some of that, but nope, not for me! i've always dreamed of being a part of a community and having a circle of online friends to talk to but i was always too scared to actually reach out and do it. until i made this blog, and i actually started talking to some people! it was amazing! i couldn't believe i missed out on all of that and just stood to the sidelines for most of my life! it was the most positivity i've ever gotten for any of my artwork as well, and i still look back on some of my posts to see all the sweet comments and keysmashes in the notes when i need uplifting

but now i feel like i just threw all of that away and i'll never be able to get back to that point in my life. i know everyone gets burnt out and taking breaks is okay, but my issue isn't burn-out. i just switch interests so fast that i can't possibly keep a consistent prescence in pretty much anything

i can pin-point the exact moment when this blog went down-hill and that was when school started up for me in the fall. i was surprised i even managed to last the whole summer, and as soon as school started i could just Feel my interest in sanders sides slipping from me. i didn't want it to go, i wanted sooo bad for it to stay so i could keep posting, keep drawing, keep talking to fandom friends because those are all things that i love to do. but it was like my mind just forgot about all of that and next thing i know i didn't draw anything for nearly 6 months.

i still have unanswered asks in my inbox from when i was taking drawing requests to celebrate 1,000 followers. in fact, i think i only answered/drew one in total. that shit HAUNTS me to this day and i feel so bad. i know they are free requests and i don't have to draw anything if i don't want to, and hell i'm sure a majority of those people who sent requests have forgotten by now or would be totally understanding, but it's a pattern for me. this has happened so many times in my life with things i'm interested in to the point that i don't even know what i'm actually passionate about. i don't know if i actually even like to draw or if it's just a passing hyperfixation that shows up every once in a while. i don't know if i like to write or if i was just hyperfixated on writing for a brief time in the past.

i just want to be active. i don't want this blog to end up like my mineblr. i want to be a Cool Blog with Funny Jokes And Quips that you see on your dash everyday because i follow so many other blogs like that that i look up to. i don't want to be an abandoned ass blog with 1,000+ followers that just goes to waste because my stupid little peanut brain has all the attention span of a goldfish and all the motivation of a rock. i have so many ideas for things to draw, things to write, and i know i can do it because i've done it before and it felt so good. but i know it will all come crashing down in a few months when i inevitably lose interest and then stop posting. how do i stop that from happening.

idk but here's my closing thoughts: i'm sorry for being inconsistent in pretty much everything i do, i'm sorry for all the things i get excited about and commit myself to doing that never get done, and i'm sorry for going inactive for months at a time. this started off not sad but now im sad because i just keep remembering how shit was last summer and how i want that again. also sorry to anyone i've ever talked to one-on-one that i just stopped talking to, i remember all of you and feel really bad for constantly going off the radar. maybe this summer it'll be better but who can say anymore

#this got sad :(#i almost cried but i pulled through lads #now i gotta lighten the mood in the tags #i know a lot of this is an adhd thing but its like #it's just running a blog bro.... like how fuckin hard does my brain really have to work????#why can't i just do this one simple thing????#idk i guess it's just sad boy hours rn #probably gonna look at this in the morning and cringe #cause even my feelings aren't consistent :^)#m wont shut up #this wasn't meant to be a vent btw but i guess that's what it became

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rwdestuffs · 4 years ago

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I need to vent a bit right now, so forgive me if I go a bit… defensive of the show and its characters… Like all the stans I tend to make fun of.

Recently, Soku dropped this and vagued about a “rwde poster” who was defending Yang and Salem.

Now, I know he’s talking about me. I’m literally the only person who defends Salem in any capacity. Like I said before, in a setting where names are significant to a character (ie: Pyrrha = “Pyrrhic victory”), Salem being named after the period in time where women were falsely accused of crimes is significant. Which is why I tend to lean towards defending her, and bashing the nameless gods who pretty much decided to not give advice, and decided to act like entitled douchebags who treated humanity like a science experiment that they could scrap at any time. Humanity was sentient, and they wiped them out because they couldn’t handle one person being uppity. Seems to me that they were being spoiled brats about the whole thing more than Salem was about Oz’s death. If you’re not willing to fight god for the people you love, then you didn’t really love them in the first place (Looking at you, Abraham).

Now, should Salem had shown more remorse for what happened during the fight?- Absolutely. But the way that she’s being treated right now is that she’s irredeemable. She’s a total monster who can’t handle loss, and was terrorizing people. Last I checked, she was bumming around in her cabin until Light God was all “I know I had this whole thing about balance that I ignored when my brother and I wiped out humanity 1.0, but I’m bringing you back so that you and your ex-wife can fight for my amusement. Try to unite humanity, or else you’ll all get wiped out again!”

For a bunch of supposedly omnipotent gods, they seem to need Oz to solve all their problems… Well… Mainly Light God, but that’s beside the point.

Like… Maybe it’s because I have my own issues where I want Salem to adopt me, and I was also spoiled by fanfics that made her sympathetic and also the ones that outright made her irredeemable in a more blatant sense, but I can’t hate Salem. It’s just not for me. Like… Sokumotanaka claims that Salem could have broken out at any time with her own power.

Okay. Then why didn’t Blake beat up Adam before Volume 5? Why didn’t any of the abuse victims beat up their abusers prior to the show?

Answer: Emotional Manipulation. They get gaslit into thinking that they’re weak. Now, obviously, this should have been shown in the flashback that the writers decided should only last one episode because they think that the audience hates backstories… Because they’re idiots who don’t actually listen to feedback, but they decided to put it in supplementary material. More on that in this video.

Now, onto Yang.

Now look: I’ve said this before. Yang is pretty much the only reason I still watch the show. I recall being pretty miffed about her being stiffed on screentime back in Volume 4, and being very upset and vocal about her being written inconsistently.

But the bar? It has to be a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” at all times for it to be considered a criminal hotspot? I really don’t want to use this card, but… Ever hear of a front? It’s a front so that they can do their shady dealings in the background. Junior’s sure as hell not going to sell out his customers! Now, it could be inferred that he is in fact, telling the truth, and that he genuinely didn’t know any of that. And yes, Yang endangering the patrons should have been a point that should have been brought up in Volume 3. Does anyone have a count for how many posts I’ve made about how that should have been a thing?- I genuinely want to know.

So really, treating me as if I’m blindly defending Yang is honestly flawed at best. And deliberately blind at worst. If Yang, or any of these characters are supposed to be “perfect” as Soku seems to imply that they should be, then the characters would be boring. There would be no flaws. Now admittedly, they really should be treated as flaws that they should overcome. But people aren’t just going to solve all of their problems. Show me a man who has made no wrong, and I’ll show you a man who has accomplished nothing. These characters are always going to have flaws to them, and while it would be nice to have the show actually acknowledge them as flaws, one has to accept that.

This is all on bad writing, and really… I think those anons that I had to deal with from before burned me out on resenting the show. This show is improving in a sense, but it ignores past transgressions that made it hard to watch back then. It’s only in the recent episode (8:4), that any past transgression was called out on… And it was Miles’ pet.

So excuse me for having opinions conflicting with yours because I focus on other details that you don’t! There are details that you focus on that I don’t. I’m not here to blindly hate the show. I’m here to try to provide an introspection on the show, what mistakes were made, how it can improve, and to provide a source of something that other people can come to for gripes, questions, or opinions.

And really… You’re a coward for vaguing about me in the first place Sokumotanaka. You could have called me out or contacted me directly, and we could have had a calm discussion about this. But instead, you comment in such a way that makes it hard to actually reply to you, and then you go on and vague about me doing things like… Having a take about Salem that you disagree with. Or defending Yang’s choices. I’m not saying that these are good choices, but if you want a perfect character that does no wrong… Then we’d be talking about the show for far different reasons. Pyrrha was the perfect character who did no wrong. And outside of her brash decisions to follow through on Oz’s ultimatum and her not turning Jaune in for forging his way in, what character flaws can you really name about her?

Pyrrha was boring. The most notable thing about her was that she was a good fighter (which didn’t matter since that applied to all the characters except Jaune at the time), and that she was attracted to Jaune of all people. And she was an attractive young woman, but outside of that, there was nothing to Pyrrha. She was a boring character. If Yang was as perfect as you seem to want her to be (I assume, considering your weird resentment of her for daring to have flaws), then we wouldn’t be talking about her being “Bad.” We’d be talking about her being boring. Same with Blake. If Blake was a flawless character who spouted everything right about how to combat oppression, then we wouldn’t be talking about her. If Weiss was actually genuine about wanting to end her company’s racism from the very start, and never had to learn a lesson on not being racist (that for some stupid as fuck reason happened OFF-SCREEN), then we wouldn’t be talking about her. Same with… all the characters.

We don’t talk about perfect characters because they’re boring. And I can’t believe I have to actually defend the writing choices here.

I’m trying to see this from an introspective point of view. Not one where the characters should make all the right decisions. Mistakes are how people and characters grow.

Now if the characters grow, is another question altogether. But given that the show is improving (even if only marginally), then there is some level of hope.

People can link this to Sokumotanaka or @ him. I don’t care. I’m tired, and I wrote this at like… 3 in the morning. This was all just to vent about some stuff that I’m tired of seeing.

So, maybe it’s because HBomb’s video raised my hopes and made me actively start looking for the good in this volume, or maybe it’s because I’ve burned out my resentment, or maybe it’s because I’m taking the table scraps of improvement that this show is giving me, but I’m finding myself liking this volume. It still has its flaws, even when it’s so early into the volume, but it’s actually looking good.

Now if only they could have improved earlier… Maybe then, this blog wouldn’t be as active as it is right now…

But anyways, vent over. I’m tired. And I want to sleep. Fucking hell… It’s 3:40 am…

#does this count as rwde?#does this count as rwby?

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