#the poll was kinda unfair in general

[probablyaseamonster]

Things I just realized:

1) Cleo and Bdubs are currently divorcing again

      PS: I will be pissed if Bdubs wins not just because Cleo deserves the W but        also because Bdubs beat out so many people when he’s really a skrunkly)

2) If Cleo and Joe win the battle will be legendary, especially immediately after Crastleduo

      PS: I don’t watch Cleo or Joe’s videos but I KNOW they have something

3) Quackity and Joe Hills are two tropes of sexyman: corrupt capitalist with tragedy vs weird enigma eldritch energy, and both are valid

4) Quackity is the last non-Hermit standing

      (not saying Take Out The Big Guys for the sake of Dominion and Lifesteal            but I’m also not NOT saying it)

5) If Scar and Mumbo win it’ll be the mayoral campaign all over again 

      (Desertduo may not have happened but they had Double Life so I think now        the duos are even)

6) Doc is probably not going to win against the sheer force of people wanting #5 to happen

      PS: In my opinion Doc is more of a tumblr sexyman than Scar. Scar gives            me the same vibes as Reigen: Twitter sexyman, too traditionally sexy.                  Doesn’t quite have that punch.

7) If Scar somehow loses and the Ethogirls win out, NHO.

      PS: I know next to nothing about the NHO, and I’m not even considering the        potential of Bdubs losing against Cleo. There will be uproar, and deserved.

            PPS: Although... the potential of Bdubs vs Etho...

IN CONCLUSION:

1) My solid votes are for Cleo and Doc

      (I will be voting for my man regardless of the hopelessness of fighting                  against Mr. Good Times)

2) I can be persuaded to vote for Etho or Mumbo

      (I am not an Ethogirl and Mumbo is kinda bland to me ngl)

AND 3) I am conflicted on Joe vs Quackity

      HIT ME WITH ALL THE PROPAGANDA YOU HAVE!

[kyluxtrashpit]

Sooo, I’m not sure if this will make you feel any better about the whole poll drama disappointment, but I thought I’d let you know where I think some of this may have originated from and why I think the bots rumor started rather than there actually being bots (though I will get to that too).

(as a disclaimer: I’m speaking only from what I’ve seen from my neck of the (kylux) fandom woods; there could absolutely be other people involved that I’ve simply seen nothing from)

A person, who happens to ship kylux but has promoted to all fandoms with that character, has been having fun with the ‘hottest SW man poll’. They’ve been reblogging links to it along with entertaining little edits to promote their favorite character with the hope of getting people to take part in the vote. Now obviously they’re voting for that character themself, but anyone who happens to see the post are no more obligated than anyone else who reblogs/sees the poll to vote for that person’s preference. (I’m a kyluxer too, and I love both of them, but despite the promotions I still didn’t vote for him because that’s not my opinion for ‘hottest SW man’) And I don’t know about you, but I’m sure there have been many people, myself included, who have voted in a poll someone they follow reblogged for something that person liked and, despite not having a stake in it personally, cast said vote in deference to them. I’m sure that happened in some cases with this situation, however I’m also sure part of what happened is that fans who’d have otherwise never seen the poll were able to cast their vote (I’m in this category as I don’t follow these sorts of blogs at all), as well as – because it was put out in a fun, silly way – led them to vote when they might not have cared to bother otherwise.

Now, I do agree it’s kinda stretching the general spirit of these polls, however what they’ve been doing is only really different in that they’ve been adding character edits along with multiple reblogs in an attempt to make it a silly little attention-grabbing promotion thing rather than merely a reblog or two of the poll. Again, I do think it’s been a bit much, but I will say I can appreciate the enthusiasm of someone who thought they were having fun in their fandom with a simple ‘for fun’ fandom related poll. Another consideration to make is that this person might be new to these things (and/or tumblr in general), which could be a reason for it as well. Plus, different people are going to react to and participate in things in different ways, and sometimes those ways differ from the norm enough to cause a stir despite no ill will or actual ‘rule breaking’ meant.

Nevertheless, that isn’t botting. I can see why people might feel it’s a little unfair even if it’s only exaggerating behavior people already naturally have with polls. I can also certainly understand why it could lead to some people getting rubbed the wrong way and then feeling upset, thus further leading to a sense of drama and subsequent botting rumors (and the origin person being a kylux shipper leading to the kylux fandom as a whole being scapegoated). But still, that’s not the same as botting. In the end, neither you nor anyone else are obligated to no longer be upset simply because of this explanation. That’s your right and you don’t have to like this any more than genuine botting, I just wanted to clarify a potential source.

However, if there IS real botting, that’s indeed an absurd thing for someone to be doing for a simple poll. Perhaps someone got out of hand because of the above person’s promoting; perhaps it’s just a rumor started because some people simply weren’t expecting the character to receive enough votes to persist in the poll – and hey, everyone’s got their own preferences and opinions on ‘hotness’, but the fact a character some don’t think should be lingering over others has endured so long doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy. Of course, I’m sure there are people who also have their own opinions on what might constitute ‘botting’ and have considered what I described to be in that category. Which is totally fine too. I personally disagree, but that’s merely my opinion and no one else has to accept it. For the most part, I merely believe this was a situation that got a little out of hand and led to a bit of drama that’s now negatively painting people who meant no harm – because it IS just a fun little fandom poll.

As for the numbers bumping in seemingly large chunks upon refreshing (I don’t even know how you could see individual numbers for an individual character???), I can only guess at how these polls bring in the numbers in order to calculate percentages, both continuous and final. Is it in delayed chunks? Is it really one by one by one exactness??? Perhaps a combination of both, somehow??? While on your end it might appear to be an immediate change after your vote (so a one by one idea), upon a refresh it might ACTUALLY be registering assorted votes in collected chunks, altering the newly refreshed percentage in a way that might seem huge based on what it was before/after your vote, but actually isn’t due to a collected recalculation of ALL new votes. And by individual character numbers, I’m not talking about that character's percentage, which is a percentage of a whole being recalculated upon that refresh. A whole which shifts percentages up and down throughout as the vote total increases regardless of minutes or hours. For a long-term example: he could be at a 13% high at one point because a number of that character’s voters voted around that time, heightening his numbers amongst the pool of votes, then a few hours later is at a 5% low because even more overall votes have come in since and his were few to none, and then later up to 9% as another batch of his voter’s participated. These ‘batches’ ostensibly have more to do with time zones/people online seeing the poll post and not botting. And in the short term you can apply this concept but with the ‘batches’ being overall votes that happen to have some chunks for that character mixed in.

Honestly, I don’t know if any of that is fully true or not; I’m just going off general observation of the polls and vaguely educated(?) guesswork. I could be totally wrong and that stupidly long paragraph is nonsense. Really this whole seemingly suspicious numbers thing is something I’d not seen or heard about at all until your post, so...I’ve no idea there. If botting is happening, and someone did get out of hand with this, I think it’s likely piggybacking off this above person’s attempt at fun engagement, thus tainting and casting blame on said person and, in particular, their ship fandom (which is quite unfair as not all his fans come from kylux, or even from pairings to begin with). And if there isn’t botting and it’s all a misunderstanding, then it’s still doing that to this person and the kylux fandom because of people’s upset and blame shifting onto the biggest pairing he’s in. Either way, it’s just a really unfortunate turn of events. (of course, I’m still merely speaking from my neck of the woods, there could be other stuff going on outside it that I don’t know anything about.)

In short, I suppose I just wanted to say: hey, it’s sad to see you (and others) feeling upset or disheartened by potential botting in a simple SW fandom poll with the potential origin being a kyluxer, and maybe this could help at least give you a different viewpoint and understanding of what might be going on behind the scenes. Still, yet again, neither you nor anyone else has to care about or agree with anything I’ve said, I simply felt a desire to do so as a follower of you, awareness of this poll, and a kyluxer myself.

So first off, I do appreciate your thoughtful response! And I'll clarify a bit on what I was talking about and why I made the statement. Now I will admit that I do not have 100% concrete proof of anything, what I have is my own observations, those observations confirmed by others, plus some information that is admittedly rumour, but is from people I trust who aren't the type to start shit and wouldn't say anything unless it was something they'd personally seen or had no reason to doubt

And I don't think recruiting friends outside the fandom to vote is botting or any other kind of cheating - it's not, everyone does that, I don't think that's an issue at all and is within fairness. What I'm talking about is actual botting, using fake accounts to vote. Which, if you have either the programming know how or a bit of money to pay for a bot that's pre-made, is a lot easier than people think it is. I know how one could do it manually, but I do not know enough about programming to automate it (and I won't explain how, because then it might give more people ideas lmao). I don't think this is widespread either, like one single person with the know how can 100% make hundreds accounts and have them vote within a few minutes. And, if they've ever botted a poll before, it's even faster because the accounts may have already been made

So it started with me watching the poll near the end (I voted within the first couple hours of it being posted, but I was curious how it would turn out). I refreshed with 45-60 minutes left and saw 'oh Hux is gonna lose, okay, too bad but it is what it is' because he was at ~8% and the next lowest was Anakin, who was just under 12%. As the time ticked down, I refreshed again and saw a sudden shift, which surprised me. At that point, I started refreshing every minute or so because it kept going, every refresh was a big jump even at that frequency. Within less than 10 minutes (I don't recall the exact timeframe, but it was very fast, too fast), the total vote count had increased by about 300 or so and I watched it surge with every refresh. The vast majority of these votes, if not all of them, were for Hux as his percentage was the only one that increased significantly (the rest increased by less than a full percentage point, if they didn't decrease)

So while you can't see how many votes went for each person, polls do have the total vote count at the bottom and you can see the percentages, so you can tell if there's a sudden increase in overall votes and if those affect on particular vote choice more than any other. Which is why I found this suspicious because that many votes, that quickly, overwhelmingly for one option, it's highly unlikely it was done by real humans. Plus, we've all seen what happens with big polls both here and on twitter - people have literally paid like $200 to bot polls before and it seems sadly to just be becoming something people do

After I saw that jump, I went and talked to some friends in a private discord we use for chatting and some of them, too, had been watching the poll and having similar suspicions to myself. A more tech-savvy one said this is the kind of increases that are consistent with the use of bots. A couple of people also mentioned they had heard people talking about botting, but weren't sure if that was a joke or not (and it may have been, even if there was botting, it may not have been these people). I can't reveal much more without compromising the identities of my friends, who didn't want to speak out about their suspicions because they don't want to get targeted or anything. I am far beyond caring about that lmao, so I chose to say something about it because idk this kind of thing just really irritates me and as a kyluxer for a very long time, I feel like it's the duty of people in a fandom to call out bad behaviour of our fellows in a rational, non-harassing way

Now, again, I admit none of this is concrete proof. And if I'm wrong and everything was above board and someone did manage to conjure a few hundred people all at the same time at the last minute, well, that's genuinely miraculous like unbelievably so lmao, so good for them. If so, I'll rescind the post, apologize, and go back to having fun. But from the pov of statistics, what I saw myself, what my friends saw, and the added rumours, like. I have to say that actual botting seems far more likely to me. You're welcome to disagree, or think this isn't enough evidence to say it for sure happened, but I wanted to say something regardless because if someone is botting, or even just thinking about it, maybe pointing it out will shame them into stopping so we can go back to having fun

I hope you're right and it wasn't happening, and hell, it may not have even been a kyluxer if it was (there are non-kylux Hux fans out there), but I just find it hard to believe it wasn't happening at this point between what I saw, what others saw, and what I heard. And I think it's better to point out fandom bad behaviour than let it continue unchecked. I refuse to let that kinda shit happen if I can do something about it

[mad-scientist-showdown]

Information masterpost

The Mad Scientist Showdown is an interfandom tournament gathering the most iconic (and underrated) fictional mad scientists! ⚡️

32 competitors; polls last 24 hours.

This goes without saying, but although I understand and encourage getting invested for fun, please do not seriously get mad over this. Rather, get 'mad' in a silly way! Like our scientists.

Reminder! Before sending me an ask around the type “was x character submitted”, check if I haven’t answered your question already by searching the name of the media they come from on my blog! (if it’s a long title, try with the abbreviation too. ex. hlvrai)

Propaganda: Propaganda, fanart etc. is happily accepted. Either send it to me in an ask, or (preferably) make a post and tag me in it so I can see and reblog it :)

Useful tags (most are featured tags):

#mad scientist showdown -> every post regarding the competition in general (kinda gave up this. didn't expect to have so many posts)

#showdown info -> posts i made that give current info about the competition

#not scientist showdown -> posts that aren’t either info or the polls directly (=> mostly asks) (for filtering)

#mad scientist polls -> all polls; except the ones for round 1 because I hadn’t made that tag yet. you can therefore find them using the #round 1 tag

#[round x] -> polls that are part of a certain round x (ex. #round 2, #semi finals)

#showdown art -> art people made for the showdown (thank you <3)

#batshit scientist squad -> every post about the donatello/doofenshmirtz/megamind/bubblegum mad scientist found family

#mad scientist propaganda -> posts (reblogs or asks) that are propaganda for a certain character, by fans of that character

#mad scientist shoutout -> posts that are about — usually relatively niche or underrated — characters (and their media) who were not nominated enough times to get into the tournament

#other competitions -> reblogs of other competitions to promote them

“Why are there 3 PEOPLE against Donnie in the final???"

In this tournament, when there is a tie, both contestants advance to the next round as a duo. Megamind and Princess Bubblegum tied so they went on as a duo, and then they tied again with Doofenshmirtz in the semi-finals. The bracket's image in my pinned post should be a good visualization. This last tie was intentional as a joke about how teaming up would be the only way to defeat Donatello.

“Why are Henry Jekyll and Victor Frankenstein, the ogs, not here?”

After much thought, I decided not to include them, precisely because they are blueprints. It wouldn’t feel right to have them be pitted against characters who are inspired by or even based on them. They just don’t belong in the same category, and that’s not what I had in mind when I started this competition.

“[complaint about the matchups] >:(”

Seeding a bracket is… complicated. Putting the fan favorites against each other will obviously make people unhappy, but putting the fan favorites against obviously less popular characters will make it unfair to the latter. Do you see the problem. I tried to make it fair without thinking about it too much either. Please don’t be mad for real. There are tons of beloved characters, and half of the contestants are going to the shadow realm by the 1st round! I assure you I have nothing against your blorbo in particular.

(every masterpost is available from my pinned post)

[halos-top-alien-model]

Gonna do the Sangheili bracket first, but before I open a submission form, I wanna hear some thoughts on a dilemma I have:

There's no denying that Thel and Rtas are the most popular Sangheili characters, and Thel's probably gonna win not just the Sangheili bracket but the overall too (and Rtas would win if Thel was banned). Knowing that, should I bar them from the poll to give other characters a chance to shine, run two brackets (one with them and one without them later), let them run and do a "first place, second place, third place" result rather than a single winner so a character other than them gets a spotlight, or do some other idea I haven't thought of?

Kinda conflicted 'cause on the one hand it feels unfair and against the spirit of things to bar someone from a popularity contest 'cause they're "too popular", but on the other hand idk how entertaining it'll be for people if the final result is kinda already decided from the start. A lot of why I wanted to do this is to highlight & discuss characters from across the Halo universe - especially those who hardly get mentioned or get forgotten, while we're always talking about the same couple of characters.

I may probably do an encore bracket without them or even an "underrated characters" / "minor characters" bracket(s) anyway, and the "spreading the spotlight around" goal can still be met through the sub-category brackets (book characters, characters by game, etc), but wanted to hear what other people think first.

(Note: This dilemma is really only for Thel & Rtas, since they're not just the most popular Sangheili characters but the most popular Halo alien characters in general; although reflecting a bit more Atriox and the main Prophet trio also have more recognition against their peers so the dilemma probably also applies to them.)

[000marie198]

For the autismswag poll thing, I find it funny that you are actually voting for him (I did too. I love Mob and Mob Psycho 100, but I am sorry, I just love TMNT and Donnie more) for him in this poll, and this is the one he is losing, lol.

I also voted for him in the Rise Donnie vs 2007 Donnie fist fight thing poll that tmnt-obsessed-ace did, because while I love 2007 and 2007 Donnie, and honestly, I think everyone has a chance to beat the other(s), it just depends on stuff, including 2007 vs Rise; I do think Rise Donnie has probably a higher chance of winning, I can still admit that, despite some of my general poll saltiness/pettiness (honestly; I am pretty over polls in a lot of ways honestly. I do try to not take them too seriously, and just have fun with them, but yeah, still over a lot of types of polls at this point); not just for Rise Donnie and/or Donnie in a couple versions being overvoted sometimes. Though, I feel this way about others too; like Mikey. Leo and Raph; etc. deserve and I know get as much love as the others, because I have seen it, but polls don't always reflect reality imo. Still love Donnie and Mikey though; mind you ofc). Though 2007 Donnie could win too; everything just depends imo.

Anyways, you/we/people just can't seem to win. You think Donnie is winning to many polls, but when you do actually vote for him, he is currently not winning.

Reminds me of another blog that posts a lot of TMNT, that voted for Rise Donnie in a poll thinking he would lose basically, but then realized they misread it, and it actually meant they voted for him to win.

Idk; I just find it all kinda of funny.

The irony of it all XD

I love turtles more, simple as that. And yes, I had been pretty done with Rise Donnie winning in every TMNT poll by a massive margin, felt unfair for everyone else, but this is the one poll I'm rooting for him and he's losing. It's hilariously ironic. (And yeah, I also voted Rise Dee in that fist fight poll you mentioned.)

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

6, 12, 21, 24 for salty asks

Omg thank you for sending me an ask I Love talking abt my opinions (+ I’m procrastinating rn lmao)!!

6. Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

I don’t know about hated, since most of the bnha ships I hate I hate for very specific reasons & they make me uncomfortable to the point where I have the tags filtered, but the fandom has sold me on a surprising number of bakugou ships (bakukami, bakusero, shinbaku, etc), which is kinda surprising since I still…don’t really like bakugou lol.

12. Is there an unpopular character you like that the fandom doesn’t? Why?

I mean he was in the top 40 in the most recent popularity poll, but I absolutely haven’t forgotten how a large portion of the fandom used to hate Monoma, to the point where he was frequently headcanoned as an awful person and made a bigot and a bully in fics even though there is absolutely no evidence to support that (HATE that btw) :/ Like yeah he’s antagonistic towards class a, but 1) he just wants his class’s skill to be recognized since class a and b weren’t divided by skill and yet 1a gets all the attention (and yes I know that this is bc traumatic stuff is always happening to them so he shouldn’t blame them for it, but it’s still unfair to class 1b, especially because whether they like or hate class 1a most people seem to play into it, including present mic at the sports festival, which is supposed to be their hero debut but hardly anyone’s paying attention to them), 2) bkg was an asshole to not only class 1b but also the whole school and acted like he was better than them all, so a little bit of his hatred is justified, 3) he was bullied growing up bc people didn’t like his quirk and told he wasn’t useful by himself, and most people don’t (or at least didn’t) acknowledge that, and 4) he’s actually a really sweet person when not interacting with class 1a, but even within the manga people assume he’s just straight up a horrible person (I love mirio but why would he tell eri that monoma was “the dark side of ua”?!?!? Especially since he immediately proved him wrong by toning down his theatrics a bit and being so sweet and gentle with eri). In conclusion, I love monoma & he deserves better treatment >:/

I also really like Hagakure people hate her bc she doesn’t do much but she has a lot of potential as a character it’s just that horikoshi doesn’t care about writing women so people don’t care about her cause she’s not that deep in canon but I care & I’m making her that deep <3

21. What are your thoughts on crack ships?

Honestly for the most part I love them I think they’re fun <3 I don’t always ship them but sometimes I do (saw Iida/Monoma once in a fic and now I think abt that regularly. I also rlly like Hatsume/Melissa, bc imagine how powerful they would be together) and in general since I think shipping is just for fun and doesn’t have to be that deep, I totally support crack ships (except if they’re nasty ofc but that goes for all kinds of ships)

24. Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

I have recommended bnha to friends before and absolutely would again not because I think it’s the best piece of media ever (or even that it’s good a lot of the time) but because I hate it and I love it and I have brain worms about it and my policy is “if I’m suffering my friends have to too”. Of course I wouldn’t recommend it to every single friend, and I’d tell them the problems with it beforehand (when I introduced Elliot to bnha I made a 39 slide PowerPoint abt it that was like 75% me ranting about my favs & 25% me ranting abt the stuff I hated about it lmao), but I absolutely would recommend it to people who I thought would actually watch it. I would tell them I hate and love it so they can make their own decisions, but I like talking abt it too much to not recommend it to people <3

[snkpolls]

SnK Episode 61 Poll Results (for Manga Readers)

The poll closed with 359 responses. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Please note that these are the results for the Manga Readers’ poll. If you wish to see the results for the Anime Only Watchers’ poll, click here. 

---

RATE THE EPISODE 347 Responses

While this episode wasn’t as big of a hit as episode 60, overall most viewers still enjoyed the content and are looking forward to more next week!

amazing amazing! I'm so delighted with this season so far!

Im so beyond pumped i love everything

Dissapointing but acceptable.

I’m like angry I loved it so much.

I just wish we didn't have to wait a week

It was amazing. We all gotta apologize to MAPPA for ever doubting them.

It's a huge stepdown from episode 1. At times the animation was straight up painful to watch. My expectations were low and yet I'm still disappointed :/

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING WAS YOUR FAVORITE SCENE/MOMENT? 349 Responses

Reiner-centric scenes were the highest on people’s radar, with 24.9% of respondents enjoying his reunion with the warrior cadets, and not far behind, 22.9% enjoyed Reiner bringing up the 104th at the dinner table. In third, with only 13.5%, was Pieck and Porco’s formal introduction to the audience. 

Hearing Zeke greet his grandparents with such happiness warmed my heart. I do believe that he loves them. 

They just had to add one last image of Ymir's broken face before she died, huh? :(

WE FORGOT TO ASK LAST WEEK D: WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING SCENES/MOMENTS FROM EPISODE 60 WAS YOUR FAVORITE? 348 Responses

Last week we forgot to include what your favorite scenes were. The scene from episode 60 that got the most favor was Reiner’s, “I’m sick and tired… of walls” with 33.6% of the vote. 16.7% most enjoyed Zeke’s titan transforming scream. 14.9% were hyped about Reiner and Porco wrecking Fort Slava.

MAPPA WENT ALL OUT WITH THE CINEMATOGRAPHY IN THIS EPISODE. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE CINEMATIC PANS AND ROTOSCOPE ANIMATION? 349 Responses

Overall, a total of 74.5% respondents have positive feelings about MAPPA’s use of rotoscope animation and camera panning. Some felt like it was akin to watching a movie, while others are just happy to have the dynamic movement. A smaller amount of respondents didn’t have feelings one way or another, and a minority (about 10.3%) really are not a fan of this type of animation style for the series.

It felt odd sometimes as they used it for long scenes (like Udo talking or Gabi telling the story to her family) but overall it was pretty great and I prefer it to WIT's stale animation during season 3

I liked the more dynamic movement during dialogue, but my roommate found it super awkward and off-model. So a fifty-fifty split in a sample size of two lol

It could have been animated better, but I like the extra dimension it gives to scenes

Enjoyed it a lot! However, there were a few scenes that felt a bit off, like some frames were missing. Specifically, when Udo was doing all those gestures while talking with the rest of the Warrior Candidates.

It felt dynamic to the point of looking unnatural - some gestures and expressions just moved wrong

i'm split, in some scenes it was great (like reiner waking up), but in the dialogue scenes the constant movement seemed kinda unnatural and distracting

It was amazing but at the same time I'd didn't look fluid enough, especially at Udo's mouvements which made the character look kind of...video game-ish in constant moving. 

I thought it looked great the rotoscoping,the movements all looked amazing

The animation during Urdu’s scene is so cool!  I was caught of guard at first though lol. It’s so realistic!

NOW THAT WE’VE GOTTEN TO HEAR A LITTLE MORE OF THE NEW OST TRACKS, HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE SOUNDTRACK SO FAR THIS SEASON? 344 Responses

So far, reception to the newer music is overall positive. 31.1% are really enjoying the music and think the songs are being used immaculately, and 40.4% really feel that the song choice compliments the scenes they’ve been used in. 13.1% think the songs are good, but miss having that sole Sawano feel to them. 10.8% just feel the music is “ok” and 2.6% aren’t a fan of the new OST tracks so far. 

I mean it sounds good, but we haven't gotten to important moments that require a memorable track, so we'll see!

First episode slapped because it really complemented the scene but it's more... generic. I didn't like how it was used in this episode, there wasn't enough of it and again, generic. I miss Sawano's unreal scores.

the animation absolutely blew me away, and i love the intense music that played during Reiners monologue 

The music is fine.

I've heard both new and old songs from the previous seasons. Still too soon to make an opinion as we need to hear more.

I am deaf, I can't hear no damn soundtracks 

That music guys when they came back to Liberio and reuniting with they parents, made me tear up but also because the scouts never had the chance to go back home with victory in the arms of their family, I wish I could have seen EMA like this.. It kinda felt unfair X) but I was happy for them nevertheless.

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE CLOSEUP OF ZEKE’S MOUTH? 346 Responses

Our first of probably too many crack questions in this poll, 32.7% thought the closeup of Zeke lighting his cigarette was cool looking. 21.4% are concerned about Zeke’s lung health. 19.1% are probably annoyed with us and simply don’t care (lol). 13.3% wouldn’t mind smooching Zeke, and 11% were just plain grossed out.

Does smoke even affect a titan shifter? Surely his lungs just heal themselves

ASMR for the eyes, right there. Aww yiss

It was awesome! Zeke is shown as relaxed person with a big drop of mystery. 

Smoking Bad but he is gonna die in a year anyway

Suuuuuuucc

It might've just been an artistic choice to include it in there, but i gotta say I'm oddly fascinated and idk why

I don’t remember it lol

I didn't even notice.

Zeke looks hotter than he has ever looked

WHAT’S YOUR OPINION ABOUT ELDIAN ASSES? 341 Responses

Most of the responses seemed to feel rather positively about Eldian asses, with almost 40% seeking out Zeke’s ass wiping technique. About 17% simply stated their appreciation for them, while almost 13% are just thirsty. In contrast, a little over 17% seemed confused to the question’s inclusion and about 10% were confused outright. 

MAPPA WHERE IS PIECK'S ASS

More into Eldian thighs, really

I bet Levi’s is nice

If only Eren had one

zeke has the energy of a straight man who doesn't wash his ass

Only Shadis' ass

GIVE IT TO ME 😏😏

They are like normal, human asses. Do not turn them into some magical, special snowflakes, just because they belong to Eldians. 

Seek help

Enough

DO YOU WANT REINER TO GIVE YOU A HEAD PAT? 343 Responses

A definitive majority, almost 59 percent, openly expressed enthusiasm for the prospect of a head pat from Reiner. However, a near 30% fraction of responders didn’t seem too happy about this recent chain of less than serious questions. We’re sorry about that. 😅. The rest either didn’t seem interested in said prospect or noted they wouldn’t care either way.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE DECISION FROM MAPPA TO CONDENSE REINER’S FLASHBACK INTO (PRESUMABLY) A SINGLE EPISODE? 346 Responses

It would appear that the majority of those who took our poll express cautious optimism at the prospect of seeing all (or the vast majority) of Reiner’s backstory being adapted into a single episode, with a near 47% supporting the move, thinking it could make the narrative “more coherent”. Almost 20% argue it would work better pacing wise. On the flipside, just over 17% state that they would rather have a more accurate adaptation to the manga. 11.6% simply say they have no opinion. There were also more than a few write-ins.

I do wish everything could be animated to full detail, but pacing and structure will benefit here

They've done a good job so far, so I'll reserve judgement until I actually watch it.

It will be difficult as they're chapters with loads of dialogue, but they can pull it off if unnecessary stuff gets cut out or changed in some type of way (like watching Marcel's death for the sixth time, them breaking through the wall or even Jean and Eren fighting) 

If they get the pacing right, then the rearrangement will be for the better.

Reiner flashbacks + Reiner suicide attempt + Falco meeting "Kruger" (more than 2,5 chapters) in a single episode? HELL NO! WTF MAPPA!  

Worried and cautiously optimistic.

At least it looks like they're going to stick to just one episode for the RBA flashback. It was mostly just filler anyway, so there was never any need to stretch it out and waste precious time getting back to the Paradis side of the story

I doubt that that's exactly how it is, but if so, then I don't think that that's a wise idea

It’s gonna be rushed as hell

Reiner flashback is very long and there is tons of dialogue, so I dont know how its going fit in only one episode, but if they can make it work then its fine for me

WHICH CHARACTER DESIGN DID YOU LIKE BEST IN COMPARISON TO THE MANGA? 346 Responses

This question gave us a somewhat evenly split pie chart, but Porco nonetheless managed to gain the bigger piece with just over 55%. Surely due to that bomber jacket and haircut. Nearly 45% picked Pieck (gottem) instead. Must have been the somewhat inconsistent nose. 

WHO’S SEIYUU DID YOU LIKE BEST? 335 Responses

On the flip side, 68.4% seemed to prefer Pieck’s soft voice. Porco with his (how the hell does Porco sound like… how can you describe his voice) managed to win the hearts of 31.6% of responses.

Pieck voice wtf? I imagined Pieck with a more Hanji-ish voice, not this sweet and high pitched.

DID MAPPA DO PIECK’S NOSE JUSTICE? 345 Responses

The debacle over Pieck’s POWERFUL nose gave us quite a colorful pie chart. Almost 39% of responses noted that Mappa was on point with Pieck’s nose for most of the episode. Afterwards, 26.7% stated that they thought that Mappa got it right only in some points of the episode. On the flip side, another 26.7% thought that Mappa was generally quite on point throughout the entire episode. A small minority (7.8%) thought that Mappa simply did a poor job. 

The animation is good, and while I don't want to complain, I have a small problem with the drawings themselves. I feel like they lack precision (like Pieck's nose, idk if that's clear).

I'm grateful for Pieck's nose. I always respected Isayama for drawing imperfect characters, because this way he has made them to look more realistic. Even though Pieck has so-called imperfect nose, she is still absolutely gorgeous. Her imperfections are part of what makes her beautiful and unique.

PORCO’S HAIR - WERE YOU TEAM RED HAIR OR BLOND HAIR? AND ARE YOU HAPPY WITH HIS ANIME COLOR SCHEME? 345 Responses

A far less controversial debacle concerned Porco’s hair scheme. The folks supporting a Blond color scheme were universally content with his hair color (all 57.4% of team Blond). On the flip side, an almost universal approval was also present from team Redhead (13.6% of those supported his blond hair color). 27.5% of the responses seemed to care not about this issue at all, however.

NOW THAT WE KNOW PORCO BETTER IN THE MANGA, DO YOU THINK HE WOULD HAVE *ACTUALLY* DONE A BETTER JOB THAN REINER IF HE HAD INHERITED THE ARMOR AND WENT TO PARADIS? 348 Responses

Porco inheriting the Armored Titan is a rather interesting what-if scenario. Perhaps of the most interesting as a whole, so it’s no surprise to see a rather divided opinion of those who took our poll. A little over 36% believe that Porco doing a better job than Reiner on Paradis is a definite possibility. Just over 24% believe it’s not likely Porco would have done better than Reiner. On the flip side, 21.6% think that is is likely Porco *would* have a more successful conduct on the island. 9.2% believe that Porco’s success is a given and in opposition to that, 8.9% think that Porco’s success would have been basically impossible.

HOW ABOUT IF PIECK HAD GONE TO PARADIS WITH THE WARRIORS? 346 Responses

Much less division here, however. 70.5% of responders believe that Pieck’s possible trip to Paradis (in the initial attack) would have not have resulted in a given “mission success” for the Warriors, although she would have been a rather useful ally. Nearly a quarter, on the other hand, think that Pieck’s inclusion would have ended the story right then and there. The rather small minority of the other responders think that Pieck would not have been useful had she participated in the mission.

GABI HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CONTROVERSIAL CHARACTER. HAS MAPPA BRINGING HER TO LIFE CHANGED YOUR FEELINGS TOWARD HER? 342 Responses

64.6% of respondents overall have positive feelings toward Gabi as of right now, with 39.5% having already been enjoying her character throughout the manga. 25.1% now view her more positively with her being brought to life. 20.2% don’t really care about Gabi either way, and 11.7% feel very negatively toward Gabi, without the anime swaying their opinions. 

Gabi still sucks

Sakura ayane as gabi is probably the best thing to happen to me all year

WITH SUCH A DIALOGUE-HEAVY ARC, CUTS WERE INEVITABLE. WHICH CUTS WERE YOU DISAPPOINTED IN, AND WHICH CUTS CAN YOU LIVE WITH?

Overwhelmingly, the scenes that were most missed by manga readers were “Pieck walking on all fours/scaring Porco”, “Zeke mentioning the Ackerman Clan”, “Reiner’s smirk when his family talks about ‘Island Devils’”, and “The imagery of Eren and Armin wrecking ships”. Smaller character details, such as Reiner mentioning how he acted like Marcel on Paradis, Gabi wishing to understand Reiner’s feelings, Falco pointing out how Reiner almost had the Armor taken from him, were also very missed by manga readers, although just less so. 

General Calvi talking about Zeke’s loyalty, Gabi getting praise from her parents when they reunite, and Magath trashing the Marleyan navy, were moments that many respondents didn’t feel strongly about one way or another, or felt that these were details that weren’t really needed anyway. 

Cutting the scene where Falcon talks about why Reiner kept the AT was really bad.  Also the table scene could have been better. Some imagery when Reiner was describing the 104th and his smirk.

The cuts the anime has done made the spectators less informed about some story background stuff. This is in order to direct attention to the marley's eldians planning how to overcome the world's disparagement towards the power of the titans. 

I'm sad they cut the gate guards. They humanize the marleyans a bit. Hope they add their scenes next episode and do them justice.

I hope we will get the Gabi/Reiner talk about understanding each other through PATHS when she eats him next episode

Gimme crawling best giiiirl

MAPPA cut Pieck's ass so this episode wouldn't be so ass centered with Zeke's ass wiping technique. This is my theory lol

Great episode but U was so looking forward to the Reiner scene talking about Paradis “devils”. In the mange it was a powerful scene really adding to the duality of Reiner and the pain he has, and the animation did not do it justice. Plus some parts of his speech were probably hard to understand for a non mange reader without the flashback. (Like which one is referring to Jean for example).  I really wish it had been better delivered

IS THERE ANY CHANCE WE’LL SEE SOME OF THESE CUTS ANIMATED IN A LATER EPISODE? 342 Responses

them into different scenes. Overall, the majority answered a big, fat, “maybe.” 15.8% are confident that what’s done has been done, and 12.6% are more optimistic that MAPPA will find a way.

Overall I was a bit disappointed. I feel like the amount of material cut from every conversation included really added up overall and gave it a very rushed feel to me. I really hope they add it all in later.

ON THE FLIP-SIDE, WHICH ADDITIONS/CHANGES DID YOU LIKE/DISLIKE?

The changes and additions that MAPPA made were overall viewed very favorably, with the scene of Porco and Pieck interacting with the warrior cadets being the most liked addition. This is followed closely by the overall character movement during dialogue scenes, the small detail about Pieck’s father being unwell, and Gabi shouting “Watashi!” on the train.

I loved the additional details made it very emotional

IT WAS A GREAT TIME TO BE GALLIPIECK TRASH

Sneakier Eren's a nice addition too

Porco my boiii I'm so happy he's here 💖💖💖💖 if mappa is adding some extra scenes then gimme more of gallirei 👀

WHICH SCENE FROM THE PREVIEW ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? 338 Responses

Unsurprisingly, 42% of respondents are hyped about Kenny’s brief return and Annie’s unlikely encounter with him in the Underground. 22.2% are eager to get that sweet Reiner angst as he is rejected by his Marleyan father. 17.8% are looking forward to Reiner’s training days.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON THE EPISODE?

great! it was inevitable they would cut stuff but it hasn't changed any major plot point or thing i would want to see desperately 

It was just really great to see the scenes animated, it adds another level of depth and understanding to the story I believe. 

Loved anime-onlies missing Eren completely. Some even thought it was him but then noticed the leg and thought against it

I think it was very well done. Just need a little getting used to with MAPPA on the reins now. I think MAPPA added some scenes to show how those Eldians over there are still just human after all and they have their own problems to deal with. 8/10 episode.

I feel like they took a lot of emotion way from reiner. made him seemed stoic and determined to go to the island even though in the make he looked scared about having to return. 

I thought the rotoscoping was really well done! I’m happy with the pacing, the fact that the episode felt like it went by fast is good considering it was dialogue based.

Incredible. The direction, the cinematic quality, we are feasting. MAPPA is elevating the story beyond anything I could have imagined! I'm beyond hyped for the rest!! But where is asshole Marley guards/Hobo!Eren's appearance as a favorite moment?!

Incredible, it adapts the source material very well while adding some touches that make it unique in it's own way. As a manga reader, I'm really glad that they're doing this because it feels like a completly different experience from reading it and makes me excited on what changes or directing choices they're going to make during the course of the season, great job so far MAPPA!

Such an amazing episode. Made 20mins feel like 5. MAPPA is doing fantastic. The characters have never felt more alive and the animation style is something I never knew I wanted until now. 

I can't believe they didn't cast Mads Mikkelsen to voice Mads Mikkelsen

The episode was good but the dinner scene didn't do justice to the manga. It didn't have the same feeling to it. I saw a lot of anime onlys thinking Reiner was just trying to talk shit about the 104th. I feel like the flashbacks during that part in the manga gave it a nostalgic feeling that helped convey what he truly felt about his time on the island. His facial expressions were not quite there either. Specially sad because it was the moment I was expecting the most this episode and because it's a big part of Reiner's character, maybe next episode can kind of fix this.

I haven't seen the anime only poll results, but given personal conversations with them I imagine quite a few could care less about the Warriors and are looking forward to the 104th showing up to stir shit up. Boy are those folks in for a treat :)

I knew I'd feel more attached to all of them once they got animated. I didn't expect getting real thirsty for Lainah.

I was so happy with how much detail MAPPA put into the background scenery. Also, I think that an underrated moment during this episode was the Marlian douchebag triggering the Eldian soldier’s PTSD. You could really feel their terror, and THEY KEPT THE HOBO EREN PART IM SO HAPPY!

Its consistently very pretty and well animated which is great of course, but I worry the team won’t be able to maintain this quality for some of the meatier scenes in the later episodes. The fast pace of the episode (compared to the manga) as well as the many cuts make it a bit harder for scenes to stick, I wish there was a bit more breathing room at times. This also makes the fancy animation and frequent rotoscoping cuts feel less impactful for me—with every scene being cut down to its core ingredients, and every scene having at least one cut with more motion and energy than we’re used to, I can’t help but feel it all kind of mashes together without sticking out as much, leaving less of an impact. (I feel really really weird actually complaining about good camerawork/animation, what the hell lol) Also hobo <3

Plenty of questions about ass but no questions about the full ED? Or how we thought the episode did at hiding Eren in plain sight?

rip Reiner's chocolate abs :'(

The episode wasn't as interesting as the first one. I was yawning from time to time. Yet, I think that Mappa did a great job, because it's hard to animate full of  dialogues chapters. I was disappointed of the fact that flashbacks from Paradis have been cut. I hoped to see Sasha, Connie, Ymir and Marco while Reiner was speaking about them. Without the flashbacks we just got the dry speech and this way hard to say what Reiner is really thinking about people he met on Paradis. We - as manga readers - already are aware of his feelings, but anime onlies may not know and see Reiner as cold hearted person. I'm not complaining over animations or the OST tracks because no studio is perfect and some small mistakes here and there won't destroy my fun. I just sit and enjoy the episode. 

Very good, with the exception of the dinner scene, in which the director missed the mark completely with the tone.

WHERE DO YOU PRIMARILY DISCUSS THE SERIES? 328 Responses

Thank you again for participating! We’ll see you again next week!

[tomhasatransblog]

My thoughts on the detransition wave

This post is going to be so long it needs subheadings

Could this happen to me??

About a decade ago there was a huge upswing of mostly afab people transitioning, and now a lot of them seem to be detransitioning. The detrans communities on here, twitter and reddit are growing quick. And these aren't just people who just transitioned socially before changing their minds, a lot of them were on T or even had surgery. And you'd think that to embark on something as massive as medical transition you'd be certain that it's what you need. So it's just really alarming to read about, because I've always been certain in my transition, but am I just going to wake up one day and start to feel like this was all a big mistake like these people did? When I learnt about this wave of people detransitioning it really scared me.

I was scared to really look at what these people are saying, fearing that I'd poison my own mind or certainty. Ideas are contagious. But I'm very glad I did, because I've seen I don't have much in common with these people. Most of them had doubts about their medical transition, and/or thought that transitioning would make them happy or solve some problem they had in their lives, and neither of these apply to me. Not to mention that the thought of ever going back horrifies me. So I'm relieved with what I found having looked into the detrans rabbit hole on here, twitter and reddit.

I kinda saw it coming

Back in the day I thought that the whole Tumblr gender ideology was questionable to say the least because I suspected a lot of these people "trying on genders" would ultimately grow out of it, which guess means detransitioning. And I objected to it because I thought it made us "proper trans" people look like a joke, like it's just a phase and not something to be taken seriously etc. I was a selfish 16 year old back then, and I don't feel that way any more. People can call themselves whatever they want, I'll call them whatever they want; I don't care.

But it turns out that it was actually harmful, in that it seems to have sucked in a lot of unhappy gender non-conforming teenagers who latched onto the happiness they saw people experiencing from transitioning, and thought it would make them happy, too. When actually it wasn't right for them, and now they're picking up the pieces while trying to reverse mostly permanent medical interventions.

These people used to piss me off, but I can't even imagine the shame and embarrassment of having to admit that your whole transition was a mistake.. and the pain of trying to reverse it. I just feel terrible for these people now.

I disagree with the court's ruling

Here's a link to a BBC article

TL;DR: no one is going to be prescribed puberty blockers any more. If you're 16+ you technically can with permission from the court, except that in practice it'll take more than 2 years before you get a verdict, at which point you'll be old enough for actual HRT at an adult clinic anyway. So no blockers for anyone any more.

Imo this is unlikely to make a difference to the number of people who detransition. If you're fixated on transition fixing your problems and making you happy, you're not going to realise that it's not for you until after you've started. Because how could you know until you've tried? That's the trend I've noticed from most detransition stories I've read anyway.

Also, having just watched the claimant's news night interview, she seems to think that the court will now be responsible for the "are you really trans" due diligence that should have been done by the clinic, in the case of those who are 16+ and requesting blockers. Which seems to be placing that responsibility in completely the wrong place to me. Why would a judge know more about that than specialist medical clinicians? What's the point in shifting that responsibility?

Conversely, if transition is what you need, and you're lucky enough to find yourself being treated by a GIC while you're still a teenager and not all of puberty's irreversible damage has happened to you yet… blockers could just save you so much anguish. I often fantasise about having transitioned early in puberty. No need for top surgery, no awful wide hips I can never ever change. It breaks my heart that this option isn't available at all any more and it just seems monstrously unfair, I'm actually quite angry about it, it seems so unjust.

But I don't entirely disagree with the claimant

She (Kiera Bell, the claimant) put out a press release which I saw in the form of a screenshot on twitter that I now can't find, and she's got a page with a lot of info here. Across these two sources she said that society's misogyny, general disapproval of gender non-conformity, along with a lot of teenage girls having a bad time with puberty/adolescence contributes to so many of them wanting to transition, and I completely agree with her there. The massive upswing in afab young people attending the tavistock must have been caused by something, and those factors look very likely to me. It also coincided with the advent of proper smart phones & social media, and I'm sure that's another big contributing factor. I think female puberty being awful (I am biased in this opinion tbf) combined with misogyny in society explains why this uptick has been mostly afab people specifically.

Although I do a bit

On a crowd justice page linked above she also criticised the tavistock's "affirmative" approach. Meaning that if you get there and explain that you're trans, you're believed, and the clinicians take steps to help you transition. That was very much my experience there, but it's not as if I and my parents weren't interrogated about my history. (Tbh I think my experience was an edge case given how old I was when I got there (17.5, old enough to be referred to an adult clinic), the fact that I had no "associated difficulties", and that I'd been socially transitioned for 10 months).

I don't know what else they would have done? Saying to my face "we don't believe you're trans and shouldn't medically transition" would have seemed absurd and unreasonable, given that I'd been living as male for 10 months, including changing my name by deed poll. There wasn't a lot more they could expect me to do to "prove" it.

But many cases are much more complex than mine, a lot of trans youth have mental health issues, or trauma in their pasts. In those cases you'd hope the clinicians would go a lot deeper, and spend more time analysing all the other problems you have in your life, to sufficiently ensure that they're not the root cause of the desire to transition. One person who features in this podcast I listened to a while ago was transitioning to try and escape the trauma of being sexually abused as a child, for example. If you've got a complex case you wouldn't diagnose them in a single appointment, surely? I'm not a doctor obviously, but that seems pretty obvious to me. You'd need to provide therapy more broad than just issues relating to gender. I just don't know, but the fact that people are detransitioning must mean that that's the case, that in some cases insufficient due diligence is done into people's histories. So I don't agree with Kiera that the affirmative approach should be abandoned, but it seems like it should be used with more caution than it has been up until now.

So in conclusion:

The existence of a lot of people detransitioning freaked me out, but I've concluded I'm not one of them

I low key saw this coming

I feel bad for people who are detransitioning

I think the high court's ruling to ban puberty blockers is hugely unfair

I agree with Kiera Bell that society's misogyny and bullying of people who are gender non-conforming causes young women to transition when they shouldn't

I disagree with her that the GIC's "affirmative" approach should be abandoned, but I do think it should be used more cautiously

If you made it to the end of this post, thanks very much for reading it. I just had a lot of thoughts about this and wanted to get it all off my chest.

[chatxkilluaxnoir]

Wow, Rise Raph won, and by a pretty big margin too.

What a surprise.

(I am trying really, really hard to not be annoyed and petty about this, but at the same time. This IS 2012 Leo, so yeah, that is going to be hard. And also, Rise winning, once again, ofc. I am going to be a bit miffed by. I love Rise and I love Rise Raph. But come on! 2012 Leo really should have won this, or at least not lost by this margin! I would prefer the former, I admit, but I would taken the latter if I had to).

Yeah, I think I am now pretty turned off by this showdown now. If this poll is any indicator that is.

I know polls are just for fun, and I try not take them seriously, and everyone is a equal, winner, and awesome by this books.

But still; not being at least somewhat annoyed, can be a bit hard.

The Rise fandom is so overpowered, it is ridiculous.

More under the "read more" cut, because it gets pretty long. And I go off on some tangents and rants kind of.

Also, this is all very ironic, because I do think both Leo and Raph get/can get hella under-voted when it comes to polls, and Donnie and Mikey (esp. Donnie right now, but it is/was Mikey for the longest time, and it still kind of is, but Donnie even more so. Well, not 2012 Donnie though for the most part, but that is not a surprise considering how poorly some people are treating 2012 right now. Still kinda upset at that one poll that I came across had 2012 Donnie win people's "least favorite" Donnie. For once, winning was bad, and he didn't deserve to win that at all.) can be/can get pretty overvoted at times (I still love them both though. I just wished Leo and Raph got more love too; at least in the polls area).

Anyways, I say it/this poll is pretty ironic, considering this is a Raph vs a Leo poll (and also because they can both be such parents. Though, the funny thing. So can Rise Leo too; both younger and older, future Leo. He is still a Leo after all). Because I think Leos and Raphs deserve a lot more love in (the) poll areas (at least). (They are just as well-loved and beloved and popular as the other two. with just as many fans as the other two. But both sometimes just has bad luck on polls and stuff imo). I I love both 20212 Leo and Rise Raph. (2012 Leo more, I admit, but I do love both).

(Pretty off-tangent, but somewhat related. looking at this poll and so many others when Rise is involved. This is part of the many reasons why I hope Aoi/Two Souls Aoi wins in the peepaw poll going on right now. Because Aoi is a 2012 Leo going up against a Rise Future Leo (who I love. I love Future Rise Leo and Rise Leo in general dearly too). Like, Aoi is in a mainly Rise fic, but at the same time, Two Souls is still a 2012 crossover, and Aoi is 2012 Leo too.

Ofc, that is not my only reason why I voted Aoi or I want him to win, if I did, that would be too unfair and petty of me. I want Aoi to win for many other reasons (which I already gave some in those post(s). I am sorry WMAS and WMAS Future Leo though; I still love you. If I could I would have voted for both of you and/or if you weren't up against Aoi and some others maybe, you would have had my vote for sure. And if you win, well, that is awesome too. And both you and Two Souls Aoi would have won (to me). My main point of all this. It is that it would be cool to have a series that has a lot of 2012 elements win against a series that is just Rise).

Anyway, sorry for how rant-y and off-tangent-y this got. But polls have me feeling some ways (esp. when it comes to TMNT, but some other stuff too, besides TMNT). Though I still try to just have fun with them, and be positive/think positively and stuff.

I don't always succeed at that, but God, do I try.

[fairykery]

Safest internet places for SasuSaku fans

Tumblr:

(Although less active by second, it only falls to the naruto fandom not being as active as it used to be due to the boredom of the anime(unless sasuke/or sasusaku appears then the internet goes nutz lol like rn). Despite this they(sasusaku) are still always on top of every Naruto pairing each year by maintaining their names on the list every year since their canonization. I honestly feel like this is the safest and funnest place to be; but it’s not as active as it used to. I theorize reposters are encouraging artists to die here and thus pushing them to post and be on twitter.)

comicbook.com:

https://comicbook.com/anime/2018/06/01/naruto-boruto-anime-sasuke-sakura-sexy-joke-reaction/

https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/07/14/naruto-sakura-sasuke-retsuden-cover-art-masashi-kishimoto/

https://comicbook.com/anime/2019/12/03/boruto-naruto-important-sasuke-sakura-moment/

(never posted i negative article about them up till this day, at least to my knowledge)

Watchmojo:

(warning note: although they love sasuke/sakura/sasusaku they still slip and are are still huge anti pleasers and made a follow up anti sakura video after their pro sakura video backlashed.  What i found kinda funny though was that they quoted something i ranted in their comment section(on an anti sasusaku/sakura video they did after the backlash to the pro) and i keep wondering if it was coincidence or not...because like “my exact same words?” really? like how lol? This was after i made the rant on their comment section. They used it to be positive about Sakura again; but we’ll see just how much redemption they’ll acquire and forgiveness they deserve)

YOUTUBE Anime Balls Deep:

(the anti pleasing isn’t as brutal as watchmojo’s if i am being completely honest. He only posted an anti sakura meme ONCE on twitter and later immediately mentioned how he was only joking around *rolls eyes* i guess this whole anti sakura thing is fun even for her supposed defenders). He is verified and recently posted on his twitter that he will have an upcoming interview with kodachi(the creater of boruto); but the date has yet to be mentioned.

YOUTUBE: Naruto Explained

(He is very meh about it(likes alot of anti comments though and claims that he only does it because he finds them funny); but he has said that he feels that the overwhelming hate towards them is a bit unfair. I think he was also the guy that understands their popularity despite the loudness of haters. Uses databooks.)

Crunchyroll.com:

(I think they really just support all canon couples; but it’s cute how they always compliment Sakura and like cute SasuSaku pics, therefore i love them. Please support them by watching anime through their website. They deserve it. And also it raises ratings and sends them to japan. They had made a whole video about it.)

Twitter.com:

(As much as i prefer tumblr, the twitter fandom is very passionate. To tell ya that they made the pairing trend worldwide. Only sasusaku has managed to do this(all thanks to twitter). Only SasuSaku. I actually think it’s safer than youtube; but it’s only natural considering how full of assholes youtube is...sasusaku fandoms may stomp on youtube in stats but the fandom in general(the sasusaku fandom i mean) just prefers to stay away from drama and toxic fans and mind their own business, posting their amvs and whatnot, and thus that’s why it appears like youtube had more haters(ss) than lovers; but i can assure you that that was not/or is the case at all. I made a poll back when google plus was linked to youtube and:

there are definitely more lovers than haters.

But that’s besides the point, 

Anyways are there any safe places you would like to add to the list? 

And remember, haters aren’t more popular-- they are just more loud. But that just proves how much more mature the sasusaku fandom is compared to the others. Because even though we are bigger in numbers, our bad apples aren’t as bad as the toxic ones of the others.

[hypmic-info]

HypMic 3rd Western Poll May 2020

Thank you for your participation! These are the final results for the 3rd HypMic unofficial Western fandom poll. After a month of work on this, we’ve got some estimates for general fandom opinions. Do you agree with the general opinions, or disagree? Let us know!

Please click the read more to view our results!

The sample size was limited to 1000 votes, giving a rough indication of the demographic of consumers outside of Japan as well as opinions. The word ‘Western’ has been used, but we have opened this poll to those who were able to read enough English to understand this poll. As such, it is considerably Euro/American-centric.  

This poll received the most activity through Twitter, given that the series is most active on that platform. The poll was also posted on Tumblr, Facebook and the HypMic wiki. Commentary has been given on sections of the poll.

Results will be posted on Twitter and Tumblr.

THE CONSUMPTION OF HYPMIC

This section is to be read as ‘What percentage of HypMic English fans have consumed x media?’ The drama tracks and songs have been split by album. Manga bonuses have not been included in the first two questions as at the time of this poll the 2nd Manga songs/dramas were being released so it would be unfair to add them to the poll.

BAT and DH order is written as such due to later stats in the poll where Doppo and Sasara were next to each other but their official colours were too similar so I used the order in Division All Stars songs rather than release order.

Pre-Season: Referring to the start of a battle season.

Battle Season: Referring to the battle/versus songs or dramatracks

1st Manga Bonus Songs: Songs that were included with the manga

DAS Songs: Division All Stars songs - songs that include the whole cast

Merch: Anything that is official HypMic merchandise or has content of HypMic. Plushies, nendoroids, magazines, stickers etc.

Shibuya Division: Fling Posse Drama Tracks and The Loneliness, Tears, and Hope of a Puppet are the most listened to drama tracks of their respective pre-season. Both belong to Fling Posse.

The debut drama tracks of Dotsuitare Honpo (Back Again, Partner) and Bad Ass Temple (The Heart’s Conviction Can’t Be Broken) were listened to less than the other debut drama tracks.

Yokohama Division: MAD TRIGGER CREW Drama Tracks and Chaser from the Past (Matenrou: Before the 2nd DRB) were the least listened to dramatracks of their respective phases of the pre-seasons.

The Champion album has the least listened to drama tracks (Testimony and Me Against the World).

In all cases, the songs have all been listened to more than the respective drama tracks for their album.

The 1st Manga Bonus songs have not been listened as much as the other songs.

This can be due to the fact that these songs cannot be accessed for free legally.

The most listened to songs are the Division All Stars songs with the full cast.

This can be due to the fact that these are the only songs that are available in their entirety on YouTube.

Fling Posse has the most listened to songs of both pre-seasons.

Buster Bros!!! has the least listened to songs of the 1st pre-season and Matenrou has the least listened to songs of the 2nd pre-season.

The Hypnosis Mic -Division Rap Battle- side D.H & B.A.T manga was released as the poll was being conducted, so was not included in this poll. 

-Before the Battle- The Dirty Dawg is the most read manga. -Division Rap Battle- side B.B & M.T.C is the least read manga.

By the numbers given for listening to the Spotify radio show, Hypnosis Radio, 80.4% of this sample size has listened to the radio - 19.6% have not listened to Hypnosis Radio.

Around half of the fandom has bought merch - this poll has included plushies, magazines etc. and all from official sources.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Due to the limitations of Google sheets, Africa does not show up on the chart for location as the voter percentage is too small.

The age ranges used are of a similar range to those of Japanese polls. [ARB’s recent survey and the age demographics of Comic ZERO-SUM, publisher of the FP/M manga]

93.5% of voters use translations regardless of Japanese comprehension.

The option for ‘I bought multiple CDs’ refers to both different CDs and multiple of the same CD during the battle season.

Of those who were around for the Battle Season, 15.66% of this group did purchase a battle CD. 

CHARACTER VOTING

For comparison, here are the rankings from the previous poll (January 2020), From Japan (October 2018) and the Yumejoshi poll (December 2019)

Names marked in GREEN show an increase in vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLACK show that their popularity rank has not changed. Names in BLUE show the character has been added to the polls through voter suggestion.

The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up▲ or down▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed.

1.2% of votes had a minor character as one of their favourite characters (Ichijiku, Nemu and Yotsutsuji - No other minor characters were suggested).

These polls vary in selection method as our polls looked at the top 3 votes of each character.

From Japan’s method has been stated as a poll but we were unable to find the original. Rio and Jiro’s reason for being unranked is unknown.

The Yumejoshi poll was done by people suggesting their favourite characters for rankings, meaning that it was not entirely based upon HypMic. What is shown here are those who ranked. The ranking in their picking of a 100 is listed against them.

These three polls have varying demographics. From Japan’s spread seems to be more broad, while the Yumejoshi poll is specifically yumejoshi/female. Our polls were taken only for English speakers. In addition to this, there is some bias based on who the poll was spread through followers.

For example, the poll was created by a Gentaro stan and main supporters of this poll are Dotsuitare Honpo stans.

Doppo dominates the polls in both English-speaking and the Japanese fandom. 

Characters who received less than 1% of the votes are listed as other: Jiro (0.8%), Rio (0.9%), Rosho (0.2%), Rei (0.4%), Hitoya (0.5%)

Names marked in GREEN show an increase in their vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLACK show that their popularity rank has not changed.

The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up ▲ or down▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed.

The only significant change in division rankings shows that Buster Bros!!! are now more popular than MAD TRIGGER CREW.

Dotsuitare Honpo is the lowest in both the favourite division rankings and perceived lyrical skill.

SONG VOTING

Songs marked in GREEN show an increase in vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLACK show that their popularity rank has not changed. The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up▲ or down▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed.

Debut Songs: Songs that received less than 2% of the votes: New Star (0.3%), G Anthem Y-CITY (0.7%), Meikyuu Heki (1.6%), FACES (1.3%). These songs collectively had 3.9% of the vote.

Songs that received less than 2% of the votes: Sensenfukoku (1.1%), New Star (0.1%), G Anthem of Y-City (0.8%), Bayside Smoking Blues (1.0%), What’s My Name (0.6%), Scenario Liar (1.3%), 3$EVEN (1.9%), Meikyuu Heki (0.5%), Own Stage (1.2%), FACES (0.6%), One and Two, and Law (1.1%), School of IKB (1.2%), Uncrushable (1.4%), 2Die4 (1.0%), You Are Therefore I am (1.9%)

Songs marked in GREEN show an increase in vote percentage. Names in RED show a decrease in vote percentage. Names in BLUE show that this song has been added for the poll. 

The arrow besides the names show if their rankings went up ▲ or down ▼. No markings are set if the character’s position has not changed

BATTLE SEASON OPINIONS

BATTLE SEASON HOPES

For our final question, we asked “What are your hopes for this battle season? Any plot points, theories etc. that you want to mention.” This question was not required, but we received around 300 answers to this. We condensed the material into basic categories so you don’t have to sort through all 300.

Here are some choice points made about the plot:

What does Samatoki actually think Ichiro did to Nemu?

Could Saburo hack Ramuda?

How will Fling Posse react when they realise what Ramuda’s done to everyone else?

How do the other Ramuda clones interact with each other and everyone else

What if this is all Gentaro’s book?

What if Gentaro’s brother is the original Ramuda clone?

How are Chuo seen by other women?

Would Chuo rig the matches? Especially against Matenrou since their victory

What if they cloned someone else?

What if they reshuffled the divisions? Or added more divisions?

And here are a few funny comments before we go... just cause there were a few silly things added in that made us laugh. Yes, these are all as written.

Yo when is it gonna be confirmed that Ramuda has big top energy? 

A song named "ALTERCATION ALTERCATION ALTERCATION"

I hope Rei gets his shit checked.

I'm a fictional doctor's wh o re so I'm rly in this for MTR at the moment sjfjskfkd I hope we get to hear how much the seiyuus have improved too compared to the first season!! :D

Doppo and Hifumi's wedding. Dice finally got some money. Everyone go on a hunt for emus. The 6 divisions go fishing. Rio making proper and digestible food. No more drama protecc ramuda.

I just kinda want them to kiss ngl

CHUUOKU DOWN! JUSTICE FOR ALL!!

i jokingly headcanon that gentaro cant read but i kinda hope its true. also i want sasara and ramuda to interact i think itd be kinda epic

I want Ramuda reduced to scrap metal

- - - - - - - - - - -

And that is it! After a month of work on this, we’ve got some estimates for general fandom opinions. Do you agree with the general opinions, or disagree? Let us know! 

Here are the links to the aforementioned polls from before:

2nd Western Fandom Poll: https://twitter.com/DevsPallas/status/1213842101605150721

From Japan: https://blog.fromjapan.co.jp/en/anime/hypnosis-mic-division-ranking-result.html

Yumejo: https://note.com/yumejo/n/nca7de3e94d91

Comic ZERO-SUM readership: https://www.comipress.com/article/2008/06/25/3603.html

[evilelitest2]

Did Hillary Clinton Lose because of Russia, Sexism, or because she was too centrist?

...Can I take all three for 700? 

Ok so one of the core divides in the Democratic Party right now is ‘who is to blame for 2016″ and the fact is there are multiple reasons.  Basically in terms of how much we can judge hillary clinton, I think there are 6 types of issues, but let me make this clear, Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. Also 2016 was our election to win, and by all rights we should have crushed the Republicans, so something went wrong

1) Structural Advantages the Republicans always have.  This would have affected any democratic candidate regardless of who got the job, but we should have been able to over come this 

Basically Republicans have a few advantages in Presidential elections due to undemocratic measures they constantly support.  This includes

The Damned Electoral College 

Citizens United gives a fundraising advantage to Republicans, especially regarding international donors 

Old people always vote, young people rarely do

wide spread voter suppression, ID Laws, limited polling stations, reduced polling hours, election day not being a holiday etc 

The media being generally useless 

2) Things that were not Hillary Clinton’s fault, totally blameless, utterly unfair.  This includes

Sexism, which was a major factor in 2016

The fact that Obamacare prices went up in the last weeks of the election

The Fact that for 4 year before hand everybody had been prepping for Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton which just made everybody exhausted

The Fact that Trump was given between 2-5 billion dollars of free media attention because he was good for ratings, and to make sure he would come back most of them only asked him softball questions and he got to host Saturday Night live.  

And of course Russian hackers actively trying to help Trump win the election.  

3) Things that weren’t Clinton’s fault, but she responded badly too them.  Basically she was actually blameless, but she wasn’t able to handle the situation well. 

The ultimate example of this was the whole Pneumonia issue.  On September 11th, 2016, less than a month before the election, Clinton goes to a 9/11 reception and seems to collapse part way through and has to be rushed out.  People aren’t told what happened and then initial reporting is that she suffered Heat Stroke.  The story swirls until a few days later it is revealed that she had Pneumonia and got sick.  Now Clinton getting Pneumonia is not a big deal and obviously not her fault, she got sick, that happens.  But the fact that her staff responded to the whole thing with such an unclear manner allowed the whole thing to come off as a bigger deal than it was.  Now obviously the conservatives are going to be like “Clinton is too sick to be president, unlike...donald Trump” no matter what you do, but because of this bad response the story gained more traction with real media outlets when it shouldn’t have.  

There are plenty of other examples of this type of behavior from Clinton 

4) Things that were Clinton’s fault, but she got blamed for it more than other politicians.  You see this doubly when the media focused more time on Clinton than things Trump also did.  

The most obvious example of this is the Email Scandals.  Clinton did fuck up with how she handled the emails, but it was no way near worth the level of attention given to them at the time, I mean that was a bloody nightmare.  

The panama Papers break up hurt her as well.

Voting for the Iraq war is a much more dramatic example of this, because that was one of her worse moves 

5) Things that were 100% her fault and she messed up terribly

One of the most obvious example of this was when Clinton was like ‘OMG Nancy Reagan was so good on the AIDS crisis which...nobody made you do that Hillary Clinton, why would you say something like that?

Or when she ignored the Sanders team in Wisconson and Michigan warning her that those states needed more attention

Or....not giving any damn press conferences which yeah, of course Trump controls the media narrative if you don’t bother to push your own

Or not even really bothering to try to heal the wounds of the 2016 primary (compare this to Obama after the 2008 Primary) 

Or not really having a good answer for the Wall Street speeches

The list goes on, Clinton ran a bad campaign and was a very bad candidate.  

6) Finally, a specific subset of mistakes that Clinton made which were all based on the premise that “There is no way Clinton could ever lose to Donald Trump”  Which lead to her and her campaign making a lot of decisions which in hindsight were really bad idea.  Now if that assumption had been correct, they would have been good ideas, its just that they were based on a lie.  

For example, picking TIm Kaine as VP was a terrible choice.  You don’t pick a VP from your part of the Party, you pick a VP to make up for your own deficiencies.  Even Trump knew this, he picked a mild manner fundamentalist nutjob to get the religious right, who didn’t like him, to come around (and man did they come around, they are his base now). Tim Kaine is a terrible choice if you want to win an election and need to maximize your own turn out....

But he is a great choice if you already ‘know’ you are gonna win 2016, and thus you are trying to pick a VP to support you once you are in office.  Because he is loyal, he has the same interests as you, and understands your perspective.  

Same with the choice not to co opt Sanders folk into the Cabinet.  Why get people you don’t agree with when you are going to win anyways and get people who you actually like

Or making a play for Georgia rather than focus on holding your own base. Obviously clinton is going to win so might as well make our victory even bigger 

This....backfired.

In conclusion, Clinton lost for a variety reasons, some of them her fault, some not her fault, but rememeber she barely lost in 4 states.  If clinton had made all the same mistakes but the email scandal didn’t happen, she likely wins anyways.  If the Email Scandal and Russian hacking happen but she picked a better VP, she likely wins anyways.  If she ran the same campaign but Russian didn’t involve itself, or America was less sexist, she wins anyways.  You needed all of these factors to come together and even then trump barley wins...while losing the popular vote by 3 million.  

Also to be clear, my opinion on Clinton a politician (mostly negative) doesn’t actually effect whether she could have one, lots of people I don’t like win (Trump).  Its just that she was extremely bad at PR which is kinda..important if you are running for president.  

@mel-esprit you might enjoy this 

[diaryofellen]

okay uhm. i cant enforce rules because i can't see like, who is voting for who but uh. Please do the polls properly yknow. This is a for fun thing and its not like, a huge problem yknow this is a dumb poll. but its kinda disappointing

but id like people to. Not do that. Apparently it means using fake alt accounts to vote. Please dont regardless of who you vote for. it just kind of ruins it. i cant stop who i cant see but i really ask you to keep it fair. if this becomes a big problem with any of the brackets (specifically with sara vs sunny as thats where this has been brought up) ill just exclude both characters

id also generally prefer if the creators of these games werent brought up too much. i think these games can be enjoyed but im also critical of alot of their developers. id prefer people not to bring up too much controversy, but also, please dont actively defend the creators of the characters listed if someone says that the creators' problematic history is their reasoning for not voting for a character

And finally, id be happy if people refrained from tagging (as in @) each other to vote one way or another. It just feels a bit unfair. i cant really stop you, but please at least know that its a bit annoying especially when its a big group of people tagged. you can send the posts to people, i have no issue with that, but please dont do it on my posts directly

chill ✌

what does 'botting' mean. And are people actually doing it

[septembersung]

Okay. This worked so well in November, I’m going to do another poll. If everyone is spectacularly uninterested (which, totally fair,) I might just make a chart and throw darts at it or something.

For Camp NaNoWriMo in July, I’m going to try - try - to do... something. Anything. Just please, July, attach jumper cables to my writing life...

I’m happily taking input on what to do!! You will be “rewarded” with excerpts and me never shutting up about how bad I am at writing. What project will get your vote??

The possible projects are:

Prose: Word count goal: 500/day, for a total of 15k July 31.

The Wind Spinner - YA elemental (earth/air/fire/water “magic”) coming of age

Generations - Catholics in Space, trying desperately to be a Grownup Book and break out of my default YA style

Eleyus - “”the new lotr”” (ha, ha), did it in November, major writer’s block now, still owe you updated content after the great meta commentary you all gave on my worldbuilding post

Cordelia - Catholicism + vampires. The Third Order. 

Poetry: Output goal: 1 poem a day (like NaPoWriMo in April, which I completely skipped)

This is unfair to leave in as a voting option because I publish my poems traditionally and don’t put them online so you’ll never see the end product. ALTHOUGH, for long-standing mutuals of good acquaintance who have extreme interest, I could be persuaded into a privately shared google doc.

Epic Poem:

This would be a complete shitshow but it might be an entertaining one. (Might.) Output goal: 20-30 lines a day, which would put me at 620 - 930 lines by the 31st. Subject: ??? your guess is as good as mine. I could tie it in into one of the novels, or come up with something new, or (hint hint) take suggestions.

What gets your vote??? (Because everyone cares an exceptional amount about my unproductive writing life!) 

((To be fair, I’m unproductive because I’ve been a) sick b) pregnant c) busy... well, mostly busy worrying about Real Life... d) kinda sorta drafting nonfiction and e) extremely lazy and, as usual, utterly lacking in self discipline.))

[mikanrulz]

Why lucifer is being bashed now? A character that only appear 5 min in all the series. Just when I thought messing with Jeanne was enough now Lucifer? What's next, Rita? Why this fandom has to drag and insult all the characters to defend charioce O.o

oh my… so it seems it’s still going on huh. I found one such post yesterday and I was like NOPE and ignored it to the best of my ability. Also it was just one post, so I kinda hoped it would fade on its own haha

…clearly I was wrong :’)

I said ‘one such post’ bcs the one I found was mostly comparing nina to lucifer (why) and how fandom was apparently being unfair to nina for expecting her to do something about chari while lucifer did nothing except appearing and everybody already gushed about him.

and I just. no really, why.

are you really comparing a guy who only appears for like 5min in 22eps to a protag who appears in every single ep?

really?

also, in ep15 lucifer himself already states the reason why he stays on his lane and doesn’t engage the humans: he’s trying to avoid even more loss of lives on his part, on the *demons* part.

this is also said after one of his demon general reported that they lost an entire tribe.

he (or more like the demons) has suffered losses, MASSIVE losses and lost an entire capital city.

I think it’s totally understandable for him to want to lick his wound in peace, away from the humans, and avoid losing more lives than he already did.

“wait and see,” he says, bcs honestly that’s the most neutral response he could come up with since considering demons’ lifespans, they’d totally outlast the humans. give it 5 or 10 years and the humans would grow arrogant enough to become weak and forget that they haven’t always been the strongest.

Lucifer only appears for maybe 5-7min in all of 22eps and you want to compare his character to a protag who has the most screentime in all of 22eps?

are you really sure you want to do that?

since, you know, in the two times he appears, while his face is pretty much impassive, he states pretty clearly that he wants to ensure the demons’ survival and avoid taking unnecessary risks.

compare this to nina who keeps putting her own love life over anybody and everything else.

sure, let’s do that.

Also, the reply in the lucifer post that I saw was weirdly condescending? at least it felt that way to me. And for some reason it blamed lucifer for being popular and kinda stated his fans are *otaku* who only prioritized prettiness and popularity over anything else and I just.

why. why did you even go there.

we’re talking fandom reaction to characterization and then suddenly being popular is the worst mistake a character could make??? I just don’t get it.

it’s also apparently in response to how azazel ranked three times in anime magazine popularity polls.

Let me make it clear here:

both azazel and lucifer are characters from shingeki no bahamut game, a game which has just celebrated its 6th year anniversary this month and actually massively popular.

While azazel has rather a niche following in SnB, ever since shadowverse (which has just celebrated its 1st anniversary) he has enjoyed quite a raise in popularity, even if it’s still nothing compared to Lucifer’s.

Lucifer is a BIG thing in SnB. If he already has massive fans back in 2003 when the game is still new and the players’ number is nothing compared to now, you can be sure his fans and popularity only increased over time.

while I can’t say anything about his popularity in shadowverse since the fandom itself is very… technical and pretty much chill all over, he’s actually also pretty big in GBF.

Not only he’s a pretty much a sought after character if you have any semblance of light grid, the addition of his own event (What Makes the Sky Blue) boosts his popularity even more.

also, his voice actor is Sakurai Takahiro, who is super popular on his own.

Even MAPPA studio itself is very aware of Lucifer’s popularity and tries to milk it on, which is why they keep including him in pics preview or tweets - even when director sato tried to make Lucifer’s appearance in the ep a surprise.

so no, Lucifer’s not suddenly popular just bcs he’s pretty despite having so little screentime and no personality to speak of;

he’s popular bcs the game from which shingeki no bahamut anime is based on is already popular and Lucifer is pretty much a beloved character for the fans of the game.

some GBF and SnB folks actually do watch the anime just for his scenes

honestly I could accept it if the reason for ppl’s discontent about azazel’s being ranked in poll is bcs ’ofc he’s popular, he has fans from the game so anime original chara can’t compare’.

But so far the complain I’ve seen is more along the line of ‘azazel is a bad character with bad personality and ppl who like him have bad taste’ which is just. um.

…are you sure you want to argue that point when we’re talking about SnB:Virgin Soul?

no, really?

If we’re talking about genesis only, then I can agree that he has bad personality, though I’d still argue he’s still well written *bad* character.

I apologize if my reply seems a little heated. It’s just. I’m feeling rather annoyed myself, even tho I know this doesn’t affect anything in the long run.

and it’s clear those ppl who complain have no intention of hearing arguments against their opinions, but I need to write this for my own peace of mind if nothing else.

I still haven’t seen any post comparing lucifer and chari and I’m just too afraid to find out. Also, it seems it’d be better if I never saw it after all :’)

[foundfamilyhq]

Hello! I usually don't reply to tags on here, since I don't want people who are just here for the polls to get bogged down by too much talking, but I thought I'd reply to this one, since a lot of care has gone into it and it is such a shame that you folks missed the poll The truth of the matter is that I don't check if any of the posts appear in tags. None of them could be appearing in any tags and I'd never know unless someone tells me. My honest assumption is that the vast majority of engagement on poll blogs come from reblogs. Polls that don't leave the blog itself tend to get between 100-150 votes, while ones that do get passed around can get a lot more. Which is obviously where tags come in, so it would be helpful if the posts do appear in the tags in a perfect world, but sometimes that's not the case I find it interesting that you'd said here that if a popular ship had been tagged, then the poll probably would've reached more of the characters' fans. We had two characters who were ditched last time (Dean Winchester and Katsuki Bakugou) who were both asked to be tagged with well-known ships for the Redemption Event. Both characters did get adopted this time around, but I know some people weren't happy with me tagging the ships (in the same way I personally feel kinda uncomfortable tagging real actors - so I get it, even if it doesn't bother me personally). My general rule of thumb is that I don't want to make a habit of tagging ships unless they're submitted as tags, because people browsing those tags might find it annoying to see something not technically related to the ship in the tags. But both of the times we did it here, it did help the polls reach the characters' fans. So yeah, that does align with what you're saying here that some people don't follow the character tag, because there's a lot of negativity on it, but they do follow the ship tag Anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent that I don't have an answer to. Admittedly, when that poll didn't get engagement, I'd assumed that the people who'd wanted to see him get adopted maybe weren't following the blog anymore and didn't think further about it. But the fact that you folks did want to see him get adopted and missed out really sucks :( It'd be unfair on everyone who had their blorbos ditched to run a poll for the same character again so soon. But it is frustrating that you've been waiting since September only to miss out All I can say is, there's a loophole here that you possibly already know - because the character was only submitted as "ravovid" (not specific) the first time, you could feasibly submit specifically the Netflix Radovid next time and I wouldn't object to that. However, submission openings are few and far between. The reason for this is because every time I've opened submissions I've received over 200 submissions in less than an hour. I want to make an effort to open them more often at different times of day, so more people in other timezones get a chance, but we still always get a lot. There's still about 140 submissions from 2023 that I need to get back to after the Redemption Event, because those people have been waiting a long time as well. It sucks, but that's how it is However, if you do miss the next time submissions open (whenever that is), I'll keep Netflix Radovid in mind. I'm not sure what I can do about the post not appearing in tags, but at least it'll mean he'll get another shot without having to wait until next year's Redemption Event

Definitely missed that poll too!

Yeah, I'm kind of really sad about it, because I'm the one that had asked for a version of the poll specifying if it was for the TV show or the videogame character, back in September.

Since then, I had periodically been checking on the @foundfamilyadoptionagency blog to see when submissions would reopen, so I could submit Radovid with a picture and description of the character, specifically from the TV show this time, and was planning to rally other fans (especially those that I know have a large number of Radovid/Radskier fans followers) of the character to reblog the poll so fans of the TV show and the character would hopefully see it.

I'm thinking of one person, in particular, that tends to make the notes on my own Radovid posts soar whenever she reblogs them.

But Destiny apparently had other plans, I completely missed it (therefore didn't vote, nor did I get the chance to increase its visibility among fans of the TV show and the TV show character) and, at some point, it would be ridiculous to just keep insisting for it to be reposted again and again, expecting a different result.

That being said, I was extremely surprised and very touched that they'd remembered it, though!

I was not expecting they'd be doing a second version without a reminder, or someone giving a proper submission, so a part of me went "OMFG! They're so sweet!", while at the same time face-palming that most fans I know seemed to have missed it.

I have a feeling that a lot of Radovid (show version) fans tend to check out the Radskier (Jaskier/Radovid ship) tag more often, too, since that allows us to avoid posts about the videogame character (and most Radovid posts are also connected to Jaskier and their relationship anyway).

Or they simply follow the few main blogs that keep creating and reblogging content about Radovid and Radskier directly to get their fix.

But yeah, given said main blogs did not appear to notice or repost the poll, I'm actually not at all surprised by the results.

Because "The Witcher" 's fandom is a bit of an eclectic mess of clashing ideologies, values, and extremes.

Including hardcore videogame fans that were expecting the TV show to religiously follow the narrative of the games, rather than create their own adaptation of the books.

So, while you will get people disliking Radovid for the usual (and perfectly valid, BTW) fandom reasons, such as:

They simply fail to emotionally connect or relate to him,

They feel like the show had been building a romance between Geralt and Jaskier for the first 2 seasons, only to instead pair him up with another newly introduced character in season 3.

You also have some videogame fans that are having a hard time treating these two characters as two completely different persons, and will even readily admit that they have an irrational dislike of Radovid based on his videogame counterpart.

Again, a fairly reasonable thing to happen that does affect the character's overall popularity, but usually those fans are pretty laid back about it and don't mind that people that only read the books and never played the games, or have only been watching the TV show, fell in love with the show's version of the character.

Videogame Radovid and TV show Radovid, are essentially two very different original characters that were created to serve very different purposes, that were vaguely inspired by a few lines from the books.

One is a villain people love to hate.

The other basically Netflix's version of a Disney Prince.

But then, you also have a very passionate and extremely vocal group of gamers (type "The Witcher" on YouTube, and get ready to enter incel territory!), that will be losing their shit over the fact that they made Radovid a super gentle and sensitive gay prince that admits to being scared, huddles and weeps in a corner when he finds out his guards have all been slaughtered, has a romance with Jaskier on the show, and is ready to leave his life at court behind to go chase after love; instead of the cruel, paranoid badass hypermasculine dictator king that was written for the 3rd videogame.

And then, there's also the argument that: "Jaskier is straight in the books and videogames! How dare they make Jaskier queer by having Radovid be written as Vizimir's adult younger brother instead of being his 12 y.o. son? They aged up a character just to make the show more woke and gay! It's so wrong! " we keep getting from queerphobic audiences.

Basically, TV show Radovid has been getting a large amount of hate from toxic subgroups of the gaming community ever since Jaskier was announced as being in a M/M relationship with him.

It's not even an issue they have with Radovid specifically, but the show in general.

There are entire YouTube channels devoted to hating on the show, it's creators, and everything they deem to be wrong with it, such as the way it focuses too much on Yennefer and Ciri when it's supposed to be called "The Witcher" (not "The Sorceress" or "The Child of Surprise"), having chosen to cast women with healthy and diverse body types (and ethnicities) to portray sorceresses that are described as the most beautiful women on the Continent in the books (when the videogames gave them more "conventionally attractive looking", and often white, in animated form), etc.

And that sort of general resentment towards the show for wishing to explore its own themes, being more inclusive, and taking their adaptation in a different direction than the games (and the books, at times, like most TV show and movie adaptations will do), means they'll take any opportunity they have to express their discontent.

I remember a poll, at some point where the "Radovid's character was screwed over on the Netflix show" option was winning, until the fan I'm talking about earlier reblogged it, and then the "He was treated just fine!" option won (I think the "he was screwed over" ended up with only 15% votes after it was reblogged by fans of the TV show).

So, you have gamers that hate everything about the show and the way it's different from the games... that are sharing the same space/tags as people that love the show, and either have no interest in the games, or are able to appreciate each as two very different takes on the same shared source material.

Of course they positively hate the way the TV show ignored the King Radovid from the 3rd game and created their own character. So they'll wish to "ditch" that version.

And, of course they hate videogame King Radovid, given he's meant to be hated on! He's an awful human being!

Radovid might stand a chance in a context where the fans of the TV show and of the new romance with Jaskier are given a chance to mobilize on their voting.

Otherwise, the fact that he got close to half the votes without help from any Radovid/Radskier centric blogs is actually... rather impressive!

He's actually more popular and beloved than I thought! 😆

So, don't worry too much about it. It's already extremely nice and considerate that you (the poll creator) were willing to give his TV show version a chance, so that it was clearer which one of the two characters we were voting on.

But yeah, "The Witcher" 's fandom itself is a very strange and sometimes scary place to navigate.