#such a dumb fucking meta joke

[fangsup-cobrastyle]

.

me in a cheesy TikTokker voice: My name is Kai, and I'm passing the mic to someone who has a crush on their history teacher, their music teacher, and Anthony Green.

me, 16: ........ Who the fuck is Kai, and why does he look vaguely like me?

[teatitty]

Re-read Oboro's backstory in Vigilantes tonight [Lyre will see it when they wake up later] and I am once again so pissed off at how fucking stupid the fanon is about Aizawa. Genuinely have no idea how so many of you could read through that and come to the assumption that he's a terrible horrible friend to Hizashi when there's a whole year of time that we never get to see between the death and their graduation

If Aizawa had really pushed Hizashi away, then Hizashi wouldn't have been with him when he was training. If he'd actually pushed his friends away, he wouldn't have been playfully smirking at their graduation when he erased Hizashi's quirk because guess what? He wasn't being a dick there, he was just doing what friends do. If he didn't want to be seen at all, he would've left before Hizashi started calling out for him, but it's very obvious he was standing there waiting for him. He erases Hizashi's voice because he doesn't like large groups and photos but he still smirks and holds up his graduation scroll to have a private, personal moment with his best mate

It's nothing more than a "Hey. Look at us. We did it" gesture. Some of you really do read way too far into things. And as for Hizashi's reaction to his voice going, this is just a general "wait what happened to my voice? Shit did I overstrain it - oh it's just Aizawa nvm" moment

[morninkim]

Rise of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - "Mask of the Masked Rider"

Prince Dex of Edenoi was given the powers of the Masked Rider by his dying grandfather, King Lexian, following a devastating final assault on Edenoi's capital by the evil Count Dregon. With Edenoi's defenses crippled, Dregon set his sights on Earth. Dex soon followed, teaming up with the Power Rangers and forming a strong alliance with them, counting them as some of his first and closest friends.

Dex's past is riddled in tragedy, Edenoi having been under constant siege since before he was born. His planet made for an easy target, as most of the population were pacifists, save for the Masked Rider Warriors that stood guard against incursions. Sadly, they were all wiped out in Dregon's final attack, leaving only Dex and his Ectophase Activator as the last remnants of the Rider Warriors.

Around the Rangers, Dex says everything extremely deadpan, making it hard to tell whether or not he's joking, but he will soon clarify with an equally deadpan "That was a joke." or "Was that not funny?"

He comes into inadvertant conflict with Tommy as she starts to worry about him replacing her on the team, threatened by the "newer and cooler green guy". The two soon reconcile as Tommy apologises for projecting onto him, with Dex saying that, as someone who also had never had friends before now, it's understandable that she would be worried about losing them again.

[leatherbookmark]

an interesting thing abt jgy antis is like. where is the source of their, shall we say, negative opinion of jgy? like, 1. jgy is a villain, he does horrible things with no remorse, he’s willing to do everything to achieve his selfish, egotistical goals. --> 2. the source of this claim: this, this and this scene. --> 3. alright, but to me -- says someone who’s not an anti -- this reads differently. that he did all those things, and did them on purpose and without remorse, is not that obvious to me. why do you think that? --> 4. well, obviously because he’s a villain and does horrible things with no remorse.

like... he’s evil because he does bad things, and he does bad things because he’s evil. i’m interested in how antis came by those opinions, but a, unfortunately i have them all blocked, and b, even if i or someone else made a poll, it wouldn’t be authentic because no sane anti is going to say “well, people hated him and wrote all those things about him on twt, so i started hating him as well”, or “i only care about wgxn, you could sell me anything about other characters if your arguments were convincing enough because i zoned out during the parts when wgxn weren’t on screen/pages of the book”. it’s all “written in the book/shown in the show” and “logical arguments you’d agree with if only you could read”.

[tritoch]

I wish people were willing to have a slightly broader or more expansive understanding of FFXIV's women because I think there's so much there in terms of easily-unearthed subtext that no one really thinks about! And I don't mean this in a "people need to re-evaluate their response to the women of Stormblood" way (though I do think that's largely true), I mean I think fandom's understanding even of the women it mostly likes is pretty weak. And you can say that's because the women are underwritten, and I won't argue that they couldn't use more attention from the writing, but that doesn't prevent you from analyzing them the way you can any character in fiction.

Like everyone's always like, oh, Y'shtola and Krile are like your snarky wine aunts, haha. But...Sharlayan is a pretty ossified and patriarchal society from what we see of it in Endwalker and places like the AST quests. Can we open ourselves to the possibility that it means something that almost every young Sharlayan woman we meet, almost all young women in academia, tends to be a little sharp and quick on the retort? The arch and snarky ways in which those two carry themselves reflect in some sense the facts that Krile is almost literally a nepo baby woman in STEM who is barely older than her students, while Y'shtola learned her behaviors from her much older female mentor, a woman who hated Sharlayan academic culture so much she literally abandoned it to go live in a cave.

Or like, Alisaie! Fan jokes and meta frequently buy into her tendency to characterize the dynamic between her and Alphinaud as a jock/nerd, street savvy extrovert vs book smart introvert thing. Except, tragically, Alphinaud's highest stat is 100% Charisma and he absolutely pulled in his student days. All his greatest achievements are diplomatic, and he very easily develops strong friendships with people in every culture you learn about. Alisaie is the determined, sensitive genius who revolutionizes Eorzea by proving the tempered can be healed. She's just permanently carrying a chip on her shoulder that while she and her brother are remembered as the youngest students in Studium history, actually he got in six months before her, a fact pretty much no one else ever brings up once. She's constantly fuming over the fact that he was marginally better than her in certain specific ways in high school, and looking to differentiate them in ways that actually fail to credit her own obvious strengths and accomplishments. I think that's so fun! It's so juicy, and it's equally good for comedy or serious character studies.

Venat is a genuinely benevolent hero who has no compunction sacrificing lives for the greater good. Minfilia is kind and compassionate and clearly on some level actually buys into the narrative of her own unique moral authority. Ysayle is a revolutionary firebrand with almost no concern for the common man, whose death reflects her Javert-like inability to reconcile her own romantic belief in justice with the tragic ways her blinkered worldview (born largely of trauma) let her be easily co-opted by a violent system. But even people who like these characters rarely move past surface-level reads (people who think Venat is just an all-loving mommy figure make me want to fucking die). The fandom is allergic to drawing connections the game doesn't draw, and fails to recognize that FFXIV is a game where characters voice understandings of themselves and others that are wrong about as often as they're right.

You can already see the ways that women like Wuk Lamat and Cahciua and Sphene are getting flattened or losing their shading in fan reception and it's boring. Like I'm not even saying this because you should take female characters more seriously or something (though you should), I'm literally just bored to tears sometimes and if you guys turn Wuk Lamat into another Hot Dumb Jock Lady, I will combust.

[firethekitty]

Ranking Every Wolfwood!!

happy wolfwood wednesday! i've ranked every wolfwood and it very quickly got out of hand and turned into more of a character analysis/meta. it was really fun and helped me better understand why i love this guy so much!

yes, really!

i hope you guys enjoy and that my autistic rambling makes sense!

1. trimax wolfwood. yeah he’s perfect. nothing else to say. god bless

while i can’t fit everything i love about him into one post, just know that i’ve written almost 30,000 words in wolfwood (and vash) character studies. so when i say “i like trimax wolfwood” that really means “i am fucking obsessed with trimax wolfwood”.

he’s the perfect mix of silly and heartbreaking, funny and serious, annoying like an older brother, deeply kind, so so painfully human; and a PERFECT foil to vash. simply phenomenal writing.

my only complaint would be that his tits are not on display like they are in the 1998 anime. but i can appreciate the subtly, so this doesn’t detract from his otherwise flawless score.

2. 98 wolfwood. omg hiiiii hehe twirling my hair ohh he’s so handsome what an absolutely beautiful design for him. his nose, his spider-esque shape, his TITS…… they even kept his little whiskers!

on top of an amazing design, he’s a very good balance of silly, irritable, playfully annoying, and serious! he fits pre-trimax wolfwood to a T!

but, as trimax progressed…

he’s cool. too cool. he has too much pull. wolfwood should NOT have swag. genuinely it is imperative to his character that he is, and i say this as lovingly as possible, a fucking loser with no friends.

wolfwood is a deeply traumatized man. he isn’t nearly as charming as we, the audience, thinks he is. no one laughs at his jokes, his insults are crude and immature, he embarrasses himself in front of literal children…

god, he is so painfully awkward. and who wouldn’t be in his situation? to have your childhood stolen and forced to grow up as a weapon? not allowed to interact casually with anyone else during the most important developmental stage of your life?

he's just not suave like tri98 wolfwood is. so, while 98 wolfwood is an excellent character, he doesn’t entirely read “wolfwood” to me. similar to how 98 vash is good on his own, but he’s just not “vash”. this is, of course, the result of making an anime out of a manga that wasn’t even 30% finished at the time. while i don’t understand the reasoning behind this, i know that nightow desperately needed the funds the anime brought in, as well as the motivation to keep making trimax, so i have to simply make peace with the dated characterizations tri98 has.

but don’t get me started on the milly situation. really a godawful writing decision, idk who approved that mess.

3. tristamp wolfwood. he is so bullyable. he’s like a sopping wet cat. absolute fucking dweeb.

i debated this for a long time—whether i should rank tristamp wolfwood above tri98 wolfwood. and i asked myself, do i love tri98 wolfwood because he’s a good character and is similar to trimax wolfwood? does he even remind me of trimax wolfwood at all? well, not really, he’s very clearly based on pre-trimax, just like tri98 vash is.

ultimately i decided i do genuinely just prefer tri98 wolfwood, but i felt the need to defend tristamp wolfwood because i see a lot of fair criticisms but also really dumb discourse throughout the fandom about him. so here’s my attempt at trying to address these:

so, there are some things i really enjoy about him and some things i really dislike; and, unlike vash, most of these criticisms are not a result of time/pacing issues. they’re easily fixable.

like, for the love of god he NEEDS to get sillier. they got the loser part down, but he’s a bit too overtly sad in tristamp. i think he will be more like his trimax self in season 2, but wolfwood’s humor is in-part a coping mechanism and important to his character. he’s an older brother! he’s fucking annoying! he thinks he's funny when he isn't! we do get a little bit of this with him and meryl, when he's tormenting her at the campfire, and that’s what i want to see more of. even if he’s playing it up, he should be working on getting their guards down, convincing them he isn't going to betray them.

since tristamp takes place in a weird prequel sort of canon, i get that he would look/act younger than he is in trimax. i think he was modeled after the teenage wolfwood we see in the flashback scenes of him training for the eye of michael, where he’s noticeably less outgoing and more reserved.

however, this doesn’t change the fact that he WAS silly as a kid in trimax, before his “teenage angst phase” (hate to call it that when it’s more like a “realizing he’s going to die by the gun and not being able to do anything about it” phase). but he’s still a lot quieter and reserved in tristamp as a kid, so i think we really need to find a good balance here in the trigun adaptations.

another example of an easily fixable issue—i really hate how they did the “vash sees how kind wolfwood is” scene, in which wolfwood gives money/snacks to children. in tristamp, wolfwood already knows the kid is zazie, which tells us absolutely nothing about his character. this scene is almost entirely worthless, only good for reminding vash that he should eat, which gives tristamp its own not-as-good hospital yuri scene.

and, so, about the elephant in the room… i don’t think he was whitewashed. let me try to explain my thought process.

tristamp, as far as i can tell, doesn’t seem to be taking any inspiration from tri98, whose wolfwood is very explicitly a brown man. trimax wolfwood i feel is a bit more ambiguous in his skin tone, which alternates between dark screentones and completely uncolored pretty much at solid 50/50 odds. just fairly inconsistent overall, even on the official manga covers.

but this doesn’t mean wolfwood is white in tristamp, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his aquiline nose. the notorious scenes of him in the suns, looking white as a fucking sheet, shows us how a 3D environment can diminish a character’s silhouette and distinctive features.

compare this to scenes of wolfwood in a dim environment, or to the 2D scenes of child wolfwood and livio that i can't include bc i'm only allowed 10 pics. he looks MUCH better, much darker than vash, and as they both should appear in such lighting. it just doesn't add up—he should be much darker in strong light if they followed the same color values:

SO, even though i feel like all of this is more of a technical issue rather than malicious whitewashing, that doesn’t mean i think it’s acceptable. it looks fucking awful, and the lighting system needs major improvement to work with darker skin tones.

and, like, at the end of the day, wolfwood isn’t canonically latino, and he doesn't really have a consistent skin tone either. it’s a great headcanon, one i partially share, but it’s not canon. the only ethnicity that could technically be considered somewhat canon is japanese, as wolfwood was based off a japanese singer named tortoise matsumoto. you can see this resemblance best in early trigun!

and i really need to defend his nose!!! a lot of people say he lost his nose but he didn’t!! i promise it’s there!!! another victim of his 3D model, you can only see his nose from the side or in the 2D frame after he gets his shit wrecked. see how clearly he has a very well-defined nose when he’s hand-drawn? this is what i mean when i say a 3D environment can drastically alter a character’s important features, as much as i otherwise adore the animation for this show.

also, if you think nightow would let studio orange get away with not including his nose, you got another thing coming.

in conclusion, while i think tristamp wolfwood is a great start, he’s just not quite there yet. but i have immense faith that the next time we see him, he’ll look and act a lot more like he does in trimax!

i know this is true, because there are already some shots in tristamp where i’m just like. oh yeah. there he is. that’s wolfwood. there's the guy i love so much

...

well, that was long! this was really fun to write and i

oh jesus christ what the hell is that thing

4. badlands rumble wolfwood. ah, now here’s a great example of overt whitewashing. no lighting excuses this time, just blatant colorism.

even if he wasn’t ghostly white, there's just something about his design that makes me viscerally uncomfortable and i can’t pinpoint what it is exactly. he’s just so… angular. he has no scruff, no kitty cat mouth, his eyes are very oddly shaped, almost no eyebrows... i just really hate looking at him!

his ONLY saving grace is how mentally ill he acts in this movie. and his tits. otherwise i don’t really have much to say about him!

ok, now we’re done! and here’s a handy wolfwood chart i made to summarize everything.

really hope this was fun to read and if people liked this i'd be glad to write a vash version or other characters!! happy woowoo wednesday :)

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

I’ve been replaying the Monster Prom games recently, and I’ve been trying to decipher why I find the meta-humor in those games funny, even charming. Normally meta-humor is one of the biggest turn-offs for a show or game for me. It’s one of the main reasons I stopped watching Rick and Morty after season 3. But, after some thought, I think I’ve finally figured it out.

With the Monster Prom games, the Meta-Humor never seems to come off as the characters hating their genre. Rather, they revel in it. Polly cracks jokes about you having to choose between two equally insane options instead of doing what any rational being would do in that situation. Aaravi gleefully enjoys being an RPG Protagonist in a Dating Sim. You can romance the fucking Narrator. And all of this is enjoyable because, while the characters are aware of the fact that they’re in a video-game, they act in good-humor and enjoy their lives all the same.

Most meta-humor seems to come from the characters resenting the genre they’re in. They joke about how much they hate the dumb story and how contrived it is. It’s always an eye-roll at the camera and it just gets tiresome. Rick and Morty feels like a slog to get through because the characters hate the story itself as well as each other. It just gets fucking tiring.

Deadpool makes jokes about how silly a superhero universe is, but he’s also giddy when he sees Juggernaut and eagerly points out superhero tropes that he enjoys. West of Loathing’s meta-jokes and arguments between player and narrator are charming and part of the fun. Because they all come from a place of genuinely enjoying the genre they’re a part of.

I dunno, just something I wanted to talk about. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go date Vera again.

[mhsdatgo]

The Helaemonds/Helaegons need to calm down.

Don't get me wrong, it's always refreshing to see some people fill in the gaps of a basically untold relationship such as the one between the green kids in general, but this goes beyond basic obsessive shippy discourse. Leave this poor girl alone. Why's there an obsession with having her be romantically paired with her brothers, one worse than the other?

I understand the show has basically shown so little of her to the point where we didn’t even have a coronation for her on screen, so therefore you can self insert through her and have fun with headcanons regarding Aegon and Aemond. Really, I'm not faulting their girlies, you can be head over heels for whatever actor in character you want (unless you put them on pedestals and start acting like they did nothing wrong and pounce on whoever contests them, THEN we have a problem) but I assure you, Helaena would barely want anything to do with either of them.

Aegon is a sex pest turned sex offender, a drunkard and a neglectful father and husband at best. Her infamous toast in ep.8 has us believing that he cannot for the life of him interact with her unless he's horny drunk or that he forces himself on her at worst.* He was ready to leave them all in ep.9 before he was caught. Even the book is subtle about their relationship: all we know of them is that they sleep in shared chambers, that she was someone important and reliable in Aegon's council before B&C, and that he named her and Alicent the true Queens of his reign.

*(⚠️TW: PERSONAL OPINION⚠️ I'm not saying this last one isn't a possibility but it's sill outrageous for the way people speak about Helaena in defence of this "claim". No, she wouldn't joke about her own r*pe in front of the whole table full of people she doesn't know and right beside her abuser, and despite the hour-long metas I've read about how she's basically "too sheltered" to know what r*pe even means, I assure you she's a high-functioning autistic, not 5 years old. She can understand it perfectly.)

Helaemond is a pure show invention, I honestly wasn't expecting this many people to go up this kind of train. They barely interact, and most of the time it's Aemond saying he'd "perform his duty" should Helaena ever be wed to him, or that stare in ep.9 when he enters her chambers toiling after Alicent. It's, as always, the Aemond girlies who think poor Helaena would live her best life with Aemond, or that they are already romantically involved behind the scenes. The amount of "if one possesses a thing, the other will take it away" edits from people that are FULLY CONVINCED "the thing" is Helaena and that "the one" and "the other" are Aemond and Aegon respectively is honestly concerning.

Fics that are all about Aegon doing the worst and unspeakable things to her so "Aemond can come and save her" are y'all okay? Out of all people, HE has to save her?

Babes, I'm sorry to break your bubble, but this isn't Aegon IV/Naerys/Aemon on steroids. Aemond didn't give two shits about Helaena. No, he wasn't jealous when Jace came to ask her to dance, he just wanted to stir some shit. If we talk about the books, he didn't fucking hesitate to leave King's Landing, his sister, his mother and whatever he was doing for the Riverlands the second he heard that Daemon was there. And he brought the only means of defence they had with him. If he knew how important Vhagar was for the city's defence, he's evil, if he didn't realize it, he's dumb as fuck. Which one is it, Aemond girlies?

People beat each other to the curb about Jaehaerys, Jaehaera and Maelor's paternity like it's the Wars of The Roses. They put Helaena and Alys against the other like they have personal beef with one of them.

Stop mentioning this sweetheart only when it's about praising or hating one of her brothers. No, it's not the only option you have because she's underdeveloped as a character. There's actually another one.

LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE.

[eisforeidolon]

So generally my transcribing the panels is a combination of video availability + my free time and mood + specific Q&As that I personally find particularly funny/new/interesting or likely to cause wank.

If there's any questions anybody specifically wants from SF this past weekend, I'll do them. On my own initiative, however, the only other question I considered doing was the one from the main panel which hellers seem to be translating into fantasies about cockless and how Jensen is totally ready to make out with Misha in a revival to make D/C canon.

Except the question was one of those very blatant "compliment each other now!" ones. They're kinda transparent and awkward even with J2, because they're professionals performing on stage, part of which is selling the whole 'one big happy family' thing fans want to believe of the cast. So when you ask them to compliment each other ... *gasp* ... they compliment each other! Even if they are besties, the sincerity there is automatically less believable given the nature of the ask. It can be salvaged if the answers seem personal and genuine, but then we have their answers here:

As to a professional compliment? Misha just repeated generic heller/stan chatter about Jensen totes being an A lister some day - when J2 have both talked about not even wanting that level of fame and knowing that kind of prominence is as much dumb luck as talent. He then implied he was giving insider information by repeating what we've heard about the positive atmosphere on set for the billionth time, except attributing it to Jensen without mentioning Jared (when everyone but crazy stans credits both of them for it). As for the personal compliment? Nothing but a sleezy joke about Jensen's supposed proficiency at hot oil massages.

In terms of the professional, Jensen starts off by basically repeating the general shit he always says about reciprocity and spontaneity being needed to really make a scene work beyond what's written on the page with another actor, just rephrasing it to include Misha. Hellers are crowing about him saying "the reason the story of Dean and Cass skewed to where it was" was from them having that kind of on set rapport. Which, as per usual? You'd only think that meant he was talking about D/C as a romance if you've rotted your brain away with bad meta to the point of believing "where [the story] was" was somewhere dictated by colors/ bacon/ pastry/ plaid/ whateverthefuck rather than what actually happened between the characters on screen. You know, where Cass was repeatedly stated to be and framed as an ally/ brother/ family/ friend when he hadn't fucked off somewhere being irrelevant to the brothers' story. Jensen then compliments Misha's performance in "the scene where he tells Dean goodbye" again. I do totally have to agree it was "an unbelievable performance" ... but not in the way he keeps trying to sell. Which if he's not doing that to try to avoid being called a homophobe again? Just increasingly makes me question that he knows what good acting looks like from the outside. (I do think it's interesting he describes his internal monologue as "don't ruin this for him" rather than something about actively participating to try and make the scene actually work for the characters and the story given how his answer started.) As for the personal compliment? After joking that personally Misha disgusts him, he talks about Misha having all kinds of weird outdoorsy/crafty hobbies with his kids, then makes the comment about Misha being one of the few people he'd call with a problem. My first uncharitable thought is, yeah, sure, in those cases where he caused the problem. But realistically, I've always been baffled how Jensen and Jared can possibly be friends with Misha and assumed he must have some kind of redeeming in-person positive attributes that outweigh ... basically his entire public persona. So again, they're friends who worked together on and off for a lot of years. Not even a hint of some super special exclusive BFF/true lurve relationship IRL, no non-hallucinated implications of D/C. In short, no new news.

Since hellers aren't misrepresenting specific words so much as ~*interpreting*~ and exaggerating significance, it's really not worth it to me to have to repeat listen to this blather as many times as a transcript takes without further incentive.

[gothicchorror]

whenever i read meta about how dean is emotionally constipated and deeply repressed and doesn’t know how to express love and physical affection and keeps people at a distance because of his fucked up issues about performative masculinity that rattle around in his brain it’s like. you know that joke about adding “in bed” to fortune cookies. well it’s like this but “except with sam”.

because dean winchester is actually emotionally intelligent and articulate, expresses his love and is often physical and physically affectionate, and shows his dorkiest least masculine side. to sam. not all the time, sure, but ignoring it altogether despite his interactions with sam taking up the vast majority of his entire screentime over fifteen seasons it’s just funny and a pure fantasy rewrite of the foundational aspects of dean’s personality. it’s pure projection.

like the pervasive dumb ass fanon is that john beat all of that out of dean and it’s just…not true. dean saves that stuff for the people who really matter: sam.

[radfemsiren]

This makes me sound like such a hater lol but I lowkey hated the Deadpool Wolverine movie because the whole time I watched it, I was like, “This is gonna be a whole fucking annoying ass mega franchise that’s gonna be everywhere now, like the baby Yoda shit…🙄”

Lo and behold it trended on tumblr forever, made a gazillion dollars, box lunch still has big ass displays of ugly ass merch…

Like it was funny and I had fun watching it with my little sister… but I couldn’t get over how it stunk of marketing teams drooling at their profitable creation, like it’s a very artificial “underdogs” story… coming from a corporation and actors (esp Ryan Reynolds) are that very much not underdogs at all and always get their way

I kept rolling my eyes at the meta jokes and my sister called me a hater and told me to just shut up and enjoy a dumb movie for once tho lmao, so she’s probably right 😅

[s10127470]

As I'm sure many of know, it was announced this week that the Max original animated series, Velma, has been officially cancelled after two seasons and a Halloween special.

And the entire Internet collectively went.....

And rightfully so.

Velma was truly a one of kind show.

It was the thing that brought just about everyone....

From all walks of life....

From all cultural backgrounds....

Together. To all collectively say...

"This is legitimately one of the worst things to ever be created by a human being."

Just about everyone has gone over everything wrong with this show, as it's flaws are blatantly obvious to anyone over the age of 10.

The mystery and story is bare bones and a total joke, with hardly any effort put into it.

The humor is an unholy amalgamation of all the worst styles that have been plaguing tons of media for the last decade.

From ha-ha funny man quips, to pop culture references, to everyone's favorite.....META HUMOR!

In the words of my GOAT Cartoonshi.....

"The Marvel Cinematic Universe and Rick and Morty and their consequences have been quite disastrous for the human race."

The show prioritizes an agenda over the actual story.

And even then, it's done so half-assed and with little to no sincerity.

It's social commentary is borderline offensive and is often years to DECADES behind the curve.

Its characters are either bland, terrible, annoying, or in the case of Velma herself, The Anti-Christ.

And most importantly of all, it's a DISGUSTINGLY spiteful show.

Like, I've seen shows and movies made out of pure incompetence.

I've seen MANY made out of pure greed.

But I've never seen a show or a movie made purely out of spite.

Like, this series is just dripping with disdain towards the Scooby-Doo IP and the even medium of the animation as a whole.

And with all that considered, you can't help but wonder....

Why was this show made?

It's pretty clear that the people behind this show hate Scooby-Doo, so why are they even trying to make a series based on the IP then?

Well....

If The Witcher, Rings of Power, and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law has taught me anything, people in Hollywood have these vendettas against popular IPs for some reason and wanna spite people for liking them.

So they create pretty half-assed and unfaithful adaptations of the work because they love seeing the fans of those IPs getting angry at them.

I know that sounds dumb, but this is Hollywood we're talking about.

But anyway, pretty much everyone on the face of the Earth was happy to know this piece of shit was finally dead.

Made even better with the fact that the series ended with Velma literally DYING and getting her soul sent to Hell.

If there's one thing you give the show, it at least had a happy ending.

But back on topic, people were celebrating about Velma being over.

Except for a few individuals.

Yes. There are a few individuals who have a problem with people celebrating the cancellation.

And guess where this is all happening.

You guessed it, it's Twitter.

Because of course it is.......

Where else can you find people having a problem with something actually good and positive?

As for why those individuals have an issue with people celebrating the cancellation of Velma, it's because of the fact that the artists and animators on that show are now out of a job and basically we're celebrating these people losing their jobs.

Okay, I have some things in response to this.

If there's one good thing about Velma, it was that it had really good art direction.

The character designs and art-style were really strong and dynamic, the animation was solid throughout the series, and the backgrounds were really pleasant to look at.

It's pretty clear that the artists and animators on this show were very talented.

Wished their talents were used for a much better show....

Also, I can kinda see why this would look bad.

The animation industry has been in a very turbulent place lately.

And one of the many reasons for it has been the mistreatment, overworking, and underpayment of animators and artists.

So celebrating the cancellation of a show does seem like a dick move.

Even if the show is terrible, at least the artists and animators are getting work.

However, in typical Twitter fashion, I feel like they've blown this whole situation out of proportion.

And the reason I say this.....well, allow me to introduce you to Lauren Mattson.

She's an artist based in Burbank, California, who currently works at Warner Bros. Animation.

Just this Wednesday, YouTuber Saberspark had posted a video on the recent announcement of Velma's cancellation.

And among the comments, one of them was from her.

Essentially, she revealed that was part of the crew that worked on Velma for entirety of the series.

And she did confirm that Velma was in fact over and done with, as the execs at WB have their minds on other things right now.

But the thing that really caught my eye was that Lauren said that she's glad the show is gone.

She pointed out how in spite of the friendly production crew and the surprisingly good work schedule, working on this show was a total chore.

Though she didn't really go into detail on why besides having to sit through the animatic reviews.

And I honestly think she doesn't really need to.

Why?

IT'S FUCKING VELMA.

It's flaws are just that apparent.

Like, I already had the suspicion that nobody besides Mindy and her circlejerk of writers actually enjoyed working on this show.

But this essentially confirmed it for me.

And if you want to bring up the problem of the artists and animators being out of a job, well.....

According to Lauren, she and rest of the crew have already moved on to other projects.

So yeah.....this cancellation is not really as bad or disgusting as Twitter keeps trying to make it out to be.

Like, the artists and animators have already moved on other projects, so I don't see the problem here.

And even then, out of all the shows that got cancelled in recent years, why are people pulling the whole "artists and animators losing their jobs" card for VELMA of all things?!

I don't even recall seeing this for shows like Inside Jobs or The Owl House.

You know, shows that were actually good and liked by the majority of the Internet.

And even among the seas of bad shows, I've never anyone pull this card for shows like The Prince or Santa, Inc.

Which may I remind you, both of which were cancelled after just one season.

Hell, the latter of the two was essentially canned the moment it premiered.

But anyway, that's all I have for now.

I know this wasn't exactly the most structured, but remember, I was trying to make sense out of something from Twitter.

That already speaks for itself.

[breadandblankets]

While the Thomas's are still in their at home recovery phase, Elaine takes to keeping the news on so she can keep an eye on Duke while he is on Signal duty.

She doesn't like it of course, she winces at bad hits, remembering her own training as a young woman. But she fears not knowing what happens to her son more than she fears a little worry. He's strong, she knows that, and she trusts him.

She's glad for this one day.

For Duke it had been a long week, a long life if he was being honest. The "what ifs" had kept him up most nights and made whatever sleep he had gotten functionally useless. Not to mention how he helped out Tim with something around 11 and that nearly every fucking meta in Gotham had it out for him today.

A dozen fights in and someone finally knocks him in a way that Duke is wondering how he's going to get up from this one.

His powers are screaming, his body is screaming, hell, he might be screaming. Around the ringing in his ears it doesn't really make much of a difference.

Someone (or something) is coming at him and Fast, Izzy in his ear is telling him Hood's position, she already called for aid ten minutes ago (he loves her so much, has he mentioned that recently?).

A shadowy figure steps in front of him.

At first he thinks it might be Bruce, but then Izzy would have warned him, and Bruce had never looked so oily and smoky before. Duke concludes that maybe this is someone else coming to finish him off.

Great, wonderful, he thinks as his muscles tense to shadow step.

Duke is soon proven delightfully wrong.

The big guy who was, not a second ago, rushing him to squish his tender flesh, is struggling, making nearly animalistic sounds as the oil slick clouds from the shadow guy in front of him shoot out to grab the big guy.

There's a poof, not unlike his own shadow stepping, and then the big guy is fucking gone.

Shadow guy turns to look at him, big glowing purple eyes shine at him through the darkness. Duke is struck dumb for a moment.

"Mom?" he whispers.

The Red Hood steps onto the scene just in time. He wasn't far, less than half a mile away, putting the finishing touches on his taxes for the year. (He may be running a criminal enterprise but let it be know that he does pay his fucking taxes, Tim.)

He rushes over, training a .44 on the remaining non-bat on the field. The smog creature turns to look at him, and pointedly at the gun. Somehow he feels more chastised in a way that nothing B could do or say could ever achieve.

And then it's gone.

Jason jogs over, offering a hand to his (co-worker? co-sufferer of B's shit? 'lil bat bro' [Jason rolls his eyes at internal Dick]) Duke.

Duke grabs it, weakly (ohhhh someone's gonna get Bennchhedddd).

"What the fuck man," Jason can't help but say. "Does the hat-man owe you money?"

Duke laughs, and he looks more alive than he did a second before. (Jason is going to get a good grade in mentor, something both normal to want and possible to achieve.)

They both hear Izzy's audible relief on the line.

"Yeah he fucking does," Duke jokes back.

[hidingoutbackstage]

One of my friends on Discord ended up watching Restoration and her liveblogging it to me via DMs honestly, truly set in for me how *badly* Tucker was fucked over in it.

Like he's just a walking plot device, he's barely in it, and when he *is* in it, it's some of the worst character writing in the show.

And I think what's truly the worst part of his writing in Restoration is at the end, after they defeated the AIs because they could've used that portion of the story to explore his trauma over being possessed by the Meta suit (especially considering, going off of that one torture scene, from his POV he could've been gone for hundreds or even thousands of years), being forced to kill a whole bunch of people + Sarge + to try and kill his other friends, any of that, but nope. They just send him off with a dumb sex joke.

And don't get me wrong, there's other character writing aspects that also annoy me now (Red Team, but Sarge especially, going back to hating the Blue Team after acknowledging that the simulated fights they had back in Blood Gulch Chronicles didn't mean anything and they were all one big friend group, Red Team leaving Caboose to fucking DIE, Emily being OOC, Wash's ultimate nothing and him + Carolina not reacting to Meta Tucker at all, Grif and Simmons splitting apart permanently, etc etc) but like...

TL;DR: Tucker Deserved Better

YUP!!!! I don’t rlly have anything else to add to that tbh you hit the nail on the head. On first watch through I was like “Man Tucker is getting NO screen time” and then when looking at what the screen time he DID get actually was it was like “Oh. they royally fucked him over and did not give a shit about his character huh? The character who felt like the main character at the end of the last season? Yeah they don’t care about him anymore. He’s just a plot device.”

Anyway in terms of how Restoration did not care about or explore his trauma At All, I did read this really good fic yesterday by @kermit-coded that actually meaningfully explores Tucker’s trauma in a way that feels justified, and I’m already working on my own rewrite because FUCK Restoration pissed me off so fucking much

[distort-opia]

Hi!

I love your meta posts and I was curious about your opinions on the killing joke’s adaptions, I’m talking mainly about the movie and the novel.

Something that really bugs me is the way the story is considered, rightfully, misogynistic in its treatment of Barbara but every sigle time someone tries to “fix” it they are only capable of making it even worse.

I read the novel version recently and it was so bad 😭 not only they added an incel type character that Joker recruits (he straight up says “nice guys like us”, which is just cringe but at least he was being manipulative here) and made him witness Barbara’s torture (btw she forgives him at the end of the story…), they also strongly implied that she was raped and generally made the whole thing even more humiliating by setting up a camera that live shared a video of her, while naked and bleeding to death, all over Gotham ( coupled with disgusting comments on how the footage looks at first like a porn). These exemples are just the tip of the iceberg! The book is filled with sexualised female characters, sexist remarks and the decision to add Harley just to paint her as a dumb horny woman surrounded by incompetent people that ignore the fact that she is clearly having sex with her patient.

At the end, the authors have the nerve to dedicate the novel to women…

I feel like this is the same thing that happened with modern versions of Jarley, they just write Joker more and more abusive and Harley without any kind of agency (ex. the new origin story with the bleached skin…ugh) to make her story more feminist. At this point It’s not even funny to read a comic that feature both of them :(

Sorry for sending you such a negative ask ��

To conclude on a more positive note, I love your fics and I can’t wait to read more! 💞

To be honest I don't have much to add, I entirely agree! You've written great commentary. I also did not even read the novel adaptation of TKJ precisely for the reasons you outlined; I was told how shitty it was. But fucking hell, I did not know the full extent of it. As you said, they keep trying to "fix" Barbara's treatment in TKJ but they just keep making it so much worse... And a similar thing is happening with Harley, because DC wants her to be a hero now-- so her previously darker traits must be either erased or completely attributed to Joker's Evil, Abusive influence. It's indeed pretty infuriating, both for Harley fans and Joker fans.

(And thank you, glad you like my writing!)

[natureismynature]

Idk where else to dump this so i hope u dont mind- Ive been thinking abt qfoolish realizing a lot of people dont care about his wellbeing BECAUSE he's also that kind of person, like throwback to all the times he made jokes in the most dire situations, though that can be excused as his way of coping/handling tough times or immortal qfoolish not understanding the norm but somehow i feel he should've known that someone can and would treat him like that too. Throwback again to tazercraft in prison and foolish saying "that should be fun for them!" hes reaping what he sowed in the end? and he fully knows that bit my god does it hurt

And it DOES feel unfair since qfoolish is only one person making light out of people's misery out of kindness/cheering them up and having different sense of humor but versus almost EVERYONE else going against him in a similar manner when he's down (back in the nether) and it just feels like full on bullying bc most of their jabs aren't coming from a good place, just plain teasing and kicking him when he's at his worst

/RP OK /RP all this is rly fucking funny in general rp and meta-wise anw tl;dr foolish villain arc when - 🍓

I don't mind at all when people dumb their thoughts on me! Please, keep doing it :D

And I agree, the way the others treat him is just a mirror of how he treats them. But the difference is that he gets ganged up on 90% of the time and sometimes you can just see when it gets too much. I remember seeing someone say that if ccFoolish didn't keep his lore lighthearted and took all the mistreatment and reacted like how a "normal person" would react, it would just be the most depressing pov.

Yes, we're all just waiting for a Foolish villain arc now XD