#straight up tearS

[anonyrainy]

JSJEHFJFJDKFN

after watching several povs, there's something so striking about the way mumbo died.

he dies at home, first of all, which is notable in its own right because so much of his time was spent running about, usually in pursuit of kills. he dies with grian, too— to a thing grian created, no less, but it isn't actually grian's fault for once.

mumbo dies in that tall tower and when lightning strikes, from all across the server, everyone looks. their eyes land on that tower, and everyone is watching. even in grian's perspective, you can see everyone at renwood mound, lined up and staring. those at the bamlands looked on too.

they didn't see mumbo die, but they saw grian's grief. grian, who, throughout this season, has seemed cruel and untouchable to those outside of his circle due to his involvement with and knowledge of the wild cards. they watch grian immediately crumble under the weight of mumbo's death; several of them even explicitly comment, "look at grian, he's grieving, he's in mourning."

i like to think that, until that moment, grian was almost god-like in their minds; now, though, he's the quintessential concept of humanity. grief can be religious if you do it right, after all. even beyond the grian aspect though, isn't this just the most despairing omen of what's to come?

i mean, there's something about this image of a man fallen from grace, crying out as he holds the mangled corpse of his friend in the home they made together, high in the sky, on display for all the world to bear witness to. and the world did bear witness, be it with pity, horror, joy... it doesn't matter, because they saw.

the canary curse has been broken, but this was a fittingly foreboding, tone-setting image that did a stunning job filling its shoes

[inkskinned]

okay is she being actually immature or is it just a woman over 30 expressing a human experience you find to be immature.

like yeah. at certain ages... let shit go. im not defending the real immature shit. im not defending the karen you're picturing. i worked in retail i hate those people too. (once somebody got mad at me because she didn't like how our winter window decor was a snowman smoking a pipe. i wish i was joking).

but men at 57 will write books about how 17 year old girls are soooo sexy. they will invent worlds where women have to be naked for "armor reasons." they will write songs that treat women as objects. people rush to defend them. meanwhile a woman at 35 will be like "heartbreak is hard, actually" or "i feel betrayed by a friend" or "i am struggling with something emotionally." immediately people will say stuff like this woman is 35 by the way. by the way this woman is SO OLD to be experiencing this. BY THE WAY.

im 31, almost 32. the other day a poet was blasted online because at her "big age", she had written a poem about feeling unloved. top comment was "this woman is 29 by the way." this woman is too old to still be useful, by the way. she has to behave better . maybe if she was a good wife and mother she could stop existing loudly, and the story could continue on without her. this woman has served her purpose, by the way. she's so cringe, by the way. at 29 - so old! - she still hasn't figured out that her existence should be one of shame.

[menelaiad]

the infamous 'last sighting of a barbary lion in the wild' photo taken by marcelin flandrin (1925) haunts me to my core. there's something so achingly poetic about it.

[turtleblogatlast]

So I’ve been thinking about the boys combining their powers recently and I ended up really wondering about what would happen if a supercharged Mikey (time/dimensional powers) mixed his abilities with a supercharged Leo’s (space powers) and all I could think of was:

[orfisheus]

The Problem With the Eddsworld Fandom's Depictions of Red Leader/Future Tord, A Disabled Perspective

Disability is a contentious concept for most of society, with most either treating us with disgust, confusion, refusing to treat us as human, or to see our struggles as what they are. Ableism affects all people in many different ways, but as someone who focuses a lot of my energy in fandom spaces, the pervasiveness of ableism with how media and their fans interpet and react to disabled characters is a very personal situation for me. While many may argue that an ignorance to these topics in fiction has little bearing on real life, the prevalance of these tropes have echoed and led to feelings of othering for many disabled people, and oftentimes support the same notions that lead to the day-to-day ableism in our own personal lives.

In recent years, I have experienced this most often with the prevalance of negative disability tropes perpetrated by fanfiction surrounding the character of Tord, also known under the alias of Red Leader in some fanworks. It is a problem not just common in the Eddsworld fandom. A more recent, and much larger fandom in Mouthwashing also shares a common trend of repeated ableism in fan depictions and interpretarions of disabled characters. Most fan creators are unaware of these tropes and the harm that they cause, but as a disabled person, I am unable to ignore it.

For context on myself, you can call me Fish. Get it? Or"fish"eus? I like to think I'm funny. I am a mentally ill, disabled, and neurodivergent creative who has niche interests in representation in media and the intersection of intersectionality and fandom spaces. I experience chronic pain due to a multitude of conditions, all of which are invisible disabilities. I am NOT an amputee or have a facial difference, like the character I am analyzing. I can only speak based on my own research in my attempts to portray him positively, but I want to mainly focus on the ableist tropes I see and the real life effects they have. That is something I CAN focus on, because I've been dealing with it for years from conditions that came onset later in my life. I will be speaking from that perspective, but will be doing my best to try to educate on what I do know from my research to help authors, artists, and creatives create a better portrayal of him in fanworks.

The most common tropes I see with him are what I will call "The Disabled Villain", "The Innacurate Disability", and "The Ignored Disability". There are a few tropes in each, but for ease of organization (and the sake of your (and my) time), I will be talking about them together in these sections. There are also overlaps in many, but I will define the main issues with them.

The Disabled Villain

James Bond, Wonder Woman, The Witches. You name it. You have most likely seen this trope at work in cinema. A malicious evil-doer is revealed to have a "horrid" face symbolic of the true evil within their soul, while the beautiful, able-bodied hero is meant to stop them. It's a trope as old as time, one that goes back to even Plato. Tropes are tropes, people subvert them, so a few cases down the line may be excusable. But that has not been the case For many years, the most prevalent form of representation for disabled people was in these villains. Imagine if the only representation you had for yourself was narratives surrounding how the way you look or what your disability is and have it only be equated to evil people. It leads to a villainization of disabled people. People react to facial differences with disgust, because they are "shown" that it is "evil", or "ugly", or equal to being a horrible person. As stated by The Nora Project, "According to the book Disabilities: Insights from Across Fields and Around the World, disabled students are two to three times more likely to be bullied in comparison to their nondisabled classmates. The disabled villain trope contributes to this phenomenon in overt and subtle ways. For example, the trope implicitly encourages fear of disability and difference, while validating, and even elevating, those who fight against the evil, Disabled Villain. Bullying based on fear and disdain is almost a natural consequence of the trope when viewed in this light". Another big issue is that disabled characters have not been given space to exist outside of villainy. There are not many complex narratives surrounding them. This leads to our disabilities being downplayed, us being dehumanised, and we are seen more like props in real life, or simply tools to achieve a message in a narrative.

Tord's disability is never explicitly shown in the show. It is something more prevalent in Fanon, specifically in fanworks that focus on the "Future" era of the show's timeline, where the narrative and outside discussions on the show implies a high tech society, potentially dystopian, potentially a consequence of his actions. These ideas have taken a life of their own in the fandom, with many creators fully expressing these ideas. The problem arises when Red Leader falls in line with this trope. In many works, he is the sole disabled character, a figure of pure evil, or given little nuance in the narrative. Artists illustrate his scars as bright red, crimson, or, in TBATF, green. For some reason. In this way, they attempt to highlight the villainy by equating him with common symbols of evil: facial differences and disabilities. Unfortunately, these are not just symbols. These are conditions and scars that real people have, which the fandom tends to ignore in favor of dramatization.

This was a trope I most commonly saw explored in fanfiction when I first joined in 2016/17. The show, unfortunately, subtly and accidentally perpetrated it by having the only character visibly and irreparably "damaged" by the giant robot fight be Tord, despite the fact that Tom, who had a whole missile directed at him and got buried under a house, was fine with at most a leg injury and a cut on his arm. Luckily, we have grown past the need for ableist tropes, and the faults of the show can be left in the past!

... Not.

Disability tropes have simply evolved in how the fandom treats Tord. Even if it is now done with more consciousness and sympathy towards his character, ignorance still prevails. Let's talk about common pitfalls people fall into when writing him.

The Inaccurate Disability

In fanon perception, Red Leader is an amputee with a high tech prosthesis and a facial difference resulting from burn scars. Like many disabled characters, he suffers from a collective fandom lack of research. But never fret! That is what I have subjected myself to for the past four years, so your friendly neighborhood disabled Fish can tell you how to right your fandom wrongs! Just kidding! Take this as a pointer, and do your own research.

As is common with fictional prosthetics, his arm prosthetic is treated as a perfect fix for his amputation. It acts just like, if not better than an actual arm. The issue with this is that is isn't realistic. Yes, I know, I'm criticising Eddsworld fanfiction for not being realistic. STAY WITH ME HERE. Once again, if it was one instance, or a few, that explored prosthetics being incredibly functional in science-fiction, then it could be a cool concept. But when every sci-fi work has it, then that is no longer a concept. That is a misconception. And I have interacted with people who believed that prosthetics were 100% functional! The thing is, like all disability aids, it does not suddenly make us able-bodied. For example, I have ear defenders that I wear when I experience pain within my ears. But that does not mean my hearing will now become normal, and I will no longer experience pain from the sound I'm hearing. What WILL happen is that I will straight up not hear you. Like, literally. Can you repeat that? I had my ear defenders on. Oh, you're saying that my ear defenders aren't prosthetics and are not a fair comparison? Well, that's fair, but take this as an illustration of a disability aid and how they differ from able-bodied experiences. Also, many prosthetic users do many things without their prostheses, and some even prefer NOT to wear them. Blogs that explicitly cover disabled representation, such as @/cripplecharacters, have posts that cover WHY many amputees are not fans of this trope. The problem comes with that it erases disability, and yet also treats us like we are given a space at the table of representation. It's just another way that authors avoid actually doing research.

Other things that people tend to ignore are how burn scars, or any scars, would not only appear on a character, but also affect them. I have seen, aside from skin tones that looked like they were picked out of a crayon box instead of what would appear on a person, teeth exposed, wounds that look as if they are fresh from the explosion YEARS after they occurred, and what I like to call "paper shredder" scars. Because instead of them looking like burn or shrapnel scars, it appears as if his skin was put through a shredder. Once again, another consequence of the show's at most-30 second scene with questionable decisions that made massive ripples in the fandom. With the injuries Tord received, it is most likely that he would have two kinds of injuries: a burn on 18% of his body (minimum, based on rule of 9s), and/or shrapnel scars from debris. While shrapnel scars would manifest as darker scars, the burn scar would likely be a hypertrophic scar, as "70% of patients develop hypertrophic scars following burns" (Finnerty et. al). The scars, when healed, are warm toned on the boundaries of their areas and cool in between. When on a pale skintone, they are not too dissimilar, and would therefore not have such a drastic color difference as seen on skin. They would also not go down to the bone or skin, as that would be a completely different kind of injury, and are also commonly done to make him look "scarier", which then aids the Disabled Villain trope. It also treats these scars and injuries more like a work of fiction, rather than something that many real people have experienced, adding to continuous misinterpretations of real life disabilities and facial differences.

For writers wanting to include consequences of burns, what would be more likely to be affected are his hearing, vision, and nerves on the right side of his face, as burn scars can go as deep as nerve endings. Also, burn scars, especially third degree burns, require treatments, such as burn-specific skincare. Scars, especially burn scars, can affect you and become disabling. For artists, the main thing I don't see artists do is draw him with damaged hair follicles. Burn scars damage the scalp and eyebrows, preventing hair growth. I am sorry, but he would not still have fluffy, luscious hair. Do not kill me. He just wouldn't. And if you are saying that he had it in the show, I can't hear you because my ear defenders are on, but I hope you heard me, as we've gone over that the show is inaccurate and we should do our own research.

Even well intentioned authors and artists ignore many aspects of the disabilities he would likely have!

Which brings us to the last trope...

The Ignored Disability

Many well meaning people intend to give him nuance by trying to avoid the Disabled Villain trope. Accidentally, however, they end up completely ignoring his disabilities instead.

Just like the high-tech prosthetic, the real disabling aspects of having a disability are at best rarely mentioned. I have seen, in some fanworks, that he goes straight from amputation to having a prosthetic. And that is where his disability ends. Because the prosthetic ends up being a fix-all situation. Authors refuse, or forget, to include aspects of amputation, such as the healing process, stump or phantom pain. Artists will cover up his scars with a helmet or a mask, another trope that undermines his disabilities and attempts to brush it under the rug. I understand that there is a discomfort for able-bodied authors in thoroughly exploring how a character feels about their disability. That is something I think we should. Avoid. If you're not familiar with the experience of being that minority, you do not need to add commentary on it. And if you do, and it just falls into more negative tropes, I will send a salmon cannon at you (/j). However, I do not agree with brushing every disabling aspect of his life under the rug.

People can assume it's not a problem, like it isn't something blatantly apparent. But, if you assume that disability and being disabled is not a "big thing", you end up where your medication is denied because your insurance refuses to see your common procedure as not a necessary medical intervention because you're "too young". And that is not fiction. That is what inspired me to write this essay, because the day that I got that news was the same day I sat down and told myself that I needed to share my perspective on the perception of disabled characters by honing in on one of my favorite characters and how the fandom treated him.

Disabled characters deserve to be included in media, disability and all, with care given to how their life would operate as a result and what they would experience with their specific disability. That's why many people recommend sensitivity readers who can give proper insight upon that disability and can advise people to properly portray it.

But if you cannot afford or access that resource, what can you do?

Fish's Non-Cohesive List of Ways I Tried to Write Tord as a Non-Amputee Without a Facial Difference

Do research!! The more you are to try to understand what you are writing about, the less you are to misinterpret or misrepresent it.

Look into resources that focus on portraying disabled characters, especially with those you wish to write about. Read blogs, research tropes that are common in disabled characters, and hell, read medical journals. They can provide great insight (<< nerd who likes reading medical journals)

Include more disabled characters. Make the other boys be disabled! Want to be canon compliant? Create OCs who have disabilities! I have a bunch! It's 2024! Be cringe and be free! The character's disability would go against the traditional narrative form of "usefulness"? I'm an animator who can't wear headphones and a theatre performer who can't physically handle the volume of a band. And yet, we find ways to persist, to exist. We will always find our way to live in the way we want to, in whatever way we can.

Look into disability activism. Learn the difference between the Medical Model and Social Model of disability. Know what an invisible disability is. Listen to us when we say that we don't want to be treated as special or an inspiration for simply living (inspiration porn). The more you are aware of what we struggle in real life, the more aware you will be to not repeat those mistakes in your fiction.

Write what you can. Highlight little talked about aspects of having a burn scar or being an amputee, such as the recovery, or treatment for the chronic pain, or how different he would be in battle due to decreased depth perception. As a disabled author, I have personally touched on the experience of gaining a disability later in life, and how he copes with it. Now, not all of y'all can do that. But that is a personal experience I do have, and it is something I have highlighted in my own work. So, while I couldn't tell you the ins and outs of having a burn scar or a prosthetic arm, I could describe the shock and frustration that comes with suddenly experiencing difficulties, or even being unable to do what you had done before.

I ask that, if you are willing to do better, or to start on the right foot, you take what I have written, reflect on it, and treat disabled characters, and in turn, disabled people, better from here on out.

Fiction is not reality, but the way we deal with it is reflective of who we are and what we believe. The boundary for our own personal being does not suddenly stop within fiction. When we interact and interpret it and create for it, it is integral that we remain conscious that bigotry runs rampant, albeit often as an unseen force, within fandom spaces, and do our best to counteract that.

I have doubts that the new eddisode will treat this topic with the same respect. I hope you can all go forward with what you have read in this WAY LONGER than I expected essay, and do what those grown British men cannot. Even if they erase it, retconn it, or do not treat it with respect, let's all go forward and do better!

As for always, you can discuss more in the tags or my inbox!

I hope you have a wonderful life,

Fish

[bull-shit-suji]

actually no i need to talk about the green witch arc. ciel and his band of merry fools go to germany and learn that this forest is haunted by WEREWOLVES and in it is a village full of WITCHES with cursed amulets and potions and whatever

and the immediate vibe is "lol what a bunch of bogus" which is really just batshit coming from the kid with a demon butler

and then woah big reveal! it wasn't werewolves or witches it was a covert military operation REPLETE with radar tracking (not a thing until wwii) and electronic displays (most likely crt screens, which again weren't fully developed until the 1930s) and TANKS. for reference the first "tank" was put together by a guy in 1899 who mounted a machine gun to THIS

absolute paragon of engineering. the panzer (the exact model of tank in the arc) was not a thing until wwi.

and. and ciel and ESPECIALLY the Demon Butler in question are like. ohhhh yeah that makes more sense. the amulets were just transmitting our exact locations through technology that won't exist for another three decades. whew glad we sorted that one out. man wouldn't it have been CRAZY if it really was werewolves.

[hijinxinprogress]

Billy definitely thinks about random things during fights and decides the internet needs to know immediately

[egophiliac]

I have a question about the jp server pickups, since I really want knight Sebek, but I’m trying to save gems for bloom malleus + the 3rd tsum event that’s gonna show up sooner or later. Iirc, after knight Sebek, the next story update’s pickup had all of the previous story cards (ie cerberus Ortho, general Lilia, and knight Sebek). Is this true, and if it is, did it include a token system like the dorm pickups where you can just do 100 pulls and then buy the specific card you want directly? Because if that is how it works, then I can wait until then and be sure I won’t have to go to 200 for him.

we did indeed get a second chance at those three when 7-7 came out! I'm pretty sure there was not a token system -- though admittedly I don't 100% remember, sorry! 🙇 I took a quick search through some past posts/videos from people who tend to include the gacha and news stuff, but I didn't see any mention of it, so I'm inclined to think there really wasn't one. :( they were all separate pickups with their own pull counts rather than a combined one, if that info helps at all.

speaking as a strict f2p who hoards keys/gems like the lovechild of a dragon and a magpie, given the choice between saving for a story card and a birthday card, I'd go for story -- it does require a lot of patience, but there are way more opportunities to get past birthday cards, both from the anniversary events and the rerun pickups! tsums is a bit harder to say anything on because Eng doesn't follow the same event schedule, but it's a longish event and those pickups let you have a free 10-roll, so I think they're also a bit easier to save up for.

(ALSO speaking of free rolls, starting with the fifth round of birthdays -- the kutsurogi my room ones -- the birthday boy/union jacket/bloom cards have had a separate pickup that you can get two free 10-pulls at by doing missions! I got a bloom Jade from it a couple weeks ago. :D meanwhile general Lilia is the only story card I've ever managed to pull, so...I'm probably kinda biased. whoops.)

[vkr-kayne]

who allowed this.

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Nothing Left To Lose: Part 1/2

(Part 2/2)

After a long journey, Link mulls over his decision on how the story will end.

Left adrift without a true connection to this time, having died in a world long past, who better to understand him than the Sage of Spirit caught in a similar state? Though seasons change and ages pass, it is the land of Hyrule that binds them all together.

This is my interpretation of how Link reacts to the truth of Zelda’s fate! It really hit me with that melancholy, feeling like a remnant of a time long gone, seeing people forget me and friends grow into themselves, my only family now far away. So! I thought I’d touch on that bittersweet feeling. One of a man accepting he will soon set down his burden at long last.

Full page below:

[serpentface]

The fearsome gape of a tyger

Most 'cats' in this setting are not cats at all, but actually hyaenodontoid carnivores that convergently evolved into a similar niche as large ambush predators. Earth type felids DO exist, but are largely extinct, having been almost entirely outcompeted and replaced by these guys in the evolutionary aftermath of a continental merger. I do this to be a jackass.

Tygers are among the biggest and most dangerous to primates, including large primates with swords and spears such as elowey and humans.

[manic-sapphic]

[dynamitekansai]

wwe: There was no way Bianca Belairwwe and Jade Cargill were going to guess BOOGEYMAN! 🪱👹 Check out the full video on WWE’s YouTube channel!

[sneepity-snoop-snorpity-sneep]

I gotta blabber for a sec about how much I appreciate how unique and SO not-simple of an antagonist Olrox is.

like he's introduced as the Vampire Who Kills Richter's Mom, and it was a straight-up murder. Like he fully sought her out, she was in the process of sending her kid overseas most likely because she knew he was coming - even before we fully get Olrox's side of the context, we can tell that shit was personal. Right down to the vivid green eyes, he's giving weirdly chill disney villain vibes. But the entire rest of the show? He's the dude in the bad guy car of the villain train just sitting and judging (OH is he judging) every other person there.

Olrox tracking down and killing Julia Belmont is the most confrontational we ever see him get. Every other scene he's in? He's watching, assessing, sometimes philosophizing, and eventually pulling his own chess moves, but fighting? Rarely! And the additional context of his character makes him even more fascinating!!

Olrox is really one of the only vampires in both Castlevania and C: Nocturne that seems to hold onto a connection to a human's life - even after he's no longer one. He reminisces to Mizrak about being a human during the fall of the Aztec Empire, he chooses to spend his time more like a human than any vamp since Lisa sent Dracula traveling like a human way back when.

Homeboy crossed the Atlantic by fucking ship, at a time when the trip took literal weeks and weeks and he can't even leave his quarters except at nighttime (granted, idk if he *has* a faster way to cross the ocean but it kinda seems like he'd do the ship trip anyways) he chooses to rent a room at an inn instead of staying at the chateau (and boink a cute human in said room, cough cough), and really seems to avoid other vampires - although I'm not sure if that's cuz he just doesn't vibe with 'em in general, or because he really doesn't vibe with the current hot vampire philosophy of the century, which seems to be very heavy-handled colonialism + elitism

I kinda wouldn't be surprised if it's both honestly - given that the only other vampire we meet besides him who spent time in the americas/new world was a literal plantation owning slaver (and unless I misremember, Annette says there were multiple vampires among the rich in St. Domingue), it seems pretty likely to me that whoever turned him was probably a vamp who had a direct hand in the downfall of his nation - coming to the New World specifically for conquest and to seize resources seems like it would be hella appealing for vampires. It would make a LOT of sense for Olrox's standoffish behavior around the other vamps to go back to him having been turned by someone very similar to them, who was probably not just an enemy to him, but part of this massive wave of destructive change in his human life.

like he really gives an impression of actively disliking and withdrawing from every other villain's motivation in this show - and it makes a lot of sense if my speculating is even a little bit close. The vampire's goals in Nocturne would be very nearly the same thing that drove the fall of the Aztec Empire - desire for power and control, justified by some """""natural order"""" hierarchy which really just boils down to 'we want all of this and we're going to indulge in making up a dramatic jerk-off reason why we're entitled to it, since you can't stop us taking it anyways and we've got time'

Dude seems to make little effort to be vampire-like - we rarely see him revel in his power like many other vampires do, as well as seeing him nonchalantly rubbing elbows with humans. He speaks fondly of a man he loved, who he fell for while said guy was still human, TO the other human he is currently crushing on! And I do mean crush, like he doesn't react to or treat Mizrak like a plaything, almost every time we get an Olrox lore-drop it's because he's talking to Mizrak sincerely about things that matter to him. He LIKE-likes this human, to the point of jumping directly into a fight to whisk Le Crush to safety in front of a vampire so powerful he won't directly oppose her! Absolutely fascinating behavior all around.

MAN but I want to see some flashbacks from this guy - as far as we know, vampirism is completely an Old World thing - Europe, Asia, Africa, every other vampire we've seen in both Castlevania shows has been from these continents. Were there even any vamps there at all before europeans landed on the shores of the americas???? I mean, I've heard of one of the old religions in mesoamerica having a suspiciously vampirelike god, but how would that connect to Olrox getting vampirized as a 30ish Aztec man?

MAN OH MAN but I am looking forward to seeing what Olrox gets up to in s2 -I'm burning to know if he's gonna survive the series or not, because despite him being the first villain we meet in Nocturne and doing a deed that usually gets villains the 'karmic death' ending, overall he's not really being written like a bad guy the audience wants to see go down. especially since he's not actually in opposition to our protagonists and has a vested interest in keeping one of Team Good Guys newer members alive. My guess is he's either going to get a similar ending to Isaac, a villain that we root for who actually catches a break and doesn't die, ooorrrrrrrr he's gonna get a Highly Tragic sort of death

[beingkilledwascool]

Holy shit guys can we please blow up this edit ! By @InternetIsQueer on Twitter!!

[vaguely-concerned]

you must understand that I would do absolutely anything for her