#the story is like entirely built on the idea of people with different backgrounds cultures & hangups

[ambrosiagourmet]

I’m gonna be honest I don’t understand why Shuro/Toshiro gets as much hate as he does. I can understand why people don’t like him or are put off by a few specific things in particular (not being honest w Laios, his double standard w Falin, and the Izutsumi stuff), but some stuff definitely goes beyond general disinterest or dislike.

I dunno I just don’t think any of his misunderstandings, miscommunications, or assumptions are THAT much worse than the misunderstandings, miscommunications, or misunderstandings of the rest of the cast…

[open-hearth-rpg]

#RPGaDay2024

Classic campaign

Until I began running online seriously, most of the games I’d run had been long, multi-year campaigns. I’d had the extreme luxury of having a large group of f2f gamers in my area pretty much from Middle School onwards. I went to college locally and even though I lived on campus, I still ran. When I was assistant manager for a local game store & game room, I ran upwards of five campaigns at the same time. 

Mind you we f*cked around and wasted time– but we also played super late. I do think we probably got as much done in an extended session as I do now in a tight, three-hour online session even with breaks. Some of that savings comes from not running multi-hour combats. Even online I still like long-form from time to time. I’ll take credit for establishing quarterlies as a thing here in the community. But they’re also exhausting. 

So I have a lot of longer campaigns to draw from– including recent multi-arcs of Trail of Cthulhu, Hearts of Wulin, and The Veil. The campaign I want to talk about is one of those earlier f2f games– one which landed 95% of the time and taught me an important lesson. 

We called it Last Fleet, and we started it back in 2011. The basic premise was “Fantasy Battlestar Galactica”-- I had a strong idea for a starting incident and built from there. It was an entirely self-built game: set up, adventures, system. We started with a session of Microscope to establish the world we’d be destroying. The end point of the history would be that destruction and departure. You can see that timeline here. From that timeline we set several of the setting premises (you can see that here). 

I encouraged folks to build in the peoples and cultures they had interest in playing. After that I gave them homework: doing a “What My Senior Told Me” sheet for their character’s background. Here’s an example of that. I had each of them give me their character concept and then I translated that into the system. We were playing Action Cards, so each character had a unique deck of cards for resolution. I built their decks based on those choices and then they tweaked them. I wrote up a unique set of abilities for each PC they could pick from– broken into paths like a skill tree. Every couple of sessions I asked them where they wanted their character to go. I would then write up two new abilities, built onto their existing paths– some with prerequisites. 

This was a ton of work, but the payoff felt great over time. They had hard choices and could always develop their character in ways they wanted. That included in new directions, for example the Orc player originally saw themselves as a classic fighter. But over time they took more of a leadership role and wanted abilities and gear which supported that.

The game started off with a bang: we played out the final flying ships of this world trying to escape out through barriers to avoid the big bad pursuing them. In addition to the PC vessels I had a bunch of NPC peoples– made up whole cloth or drawn from the Microscope timeline. And then I started killing everyone– ships fell, PCs lost portions of their people, hard choices had to be made. This ended up being one of the most intense sessions I’d ever run and everyone dug how it set things up. 

The campaign which followed split into two halves. In the first they travelled through a toxic void trying to find a safe haven. They came across lost things: enemies, people, relics. It paralleled the original BSG and its searching journey story. Then at the mid-point, the story shifted. The PCs manage to break through a barrier into another land of floating islands and people. However the folks there were caught up in their own factional struggles and possessing different magics. The game became about trying to find a way to settle with the established peoples and create harmony with destroying them or being destroyed.

The final arc turned on the arrival of the BBEG pursuing the PCs in the first place. It led to a battle which required them to choose how to rebuild the world: including destroying it so that it could reform as it was before the sundering. 

It ended up a great campaign with superb arcs for every PC, fun mechanics, and tough choices for the resolution. One of the absolute best. It’s the kind of lightning in a bottle experience I don’t think I can replicate. 

But I said earlier that it landed 95% of the time. We obviously had a few clucker or slower session, but the big problem was of my own making. Let’s call in an unforced error. We got to the final session, had the huge climax, and had our characters in this new, reconstructed world. 

And that’s where I stopped. I had managed to exhaust myself and I ended everything on that scene. I told myself and everyone we were done– in my hubris I thought my narrated closing was dynamite and closed everything out. I didn’t want to go on any further– for fear of breaking the high we’d ended on. 

So our PCs got no epilogue, no statement of the future, no real closure. By the time I realized how stupid and empty that was, enough time had passed that I couldn’t really offer a chance for final stories. It absolutely detracted from the game as a whole– and purely because I’d had a GM vision of my story and how it should end. 

So there’s my cautionary tale.

For a collection of posts and details from that campaign, see here.

[alexseanchai]

In what manner(s) and to what extents are this culture's people's vision typically restricted? And the people whose jobs it is to maintain, upgrade, and replace infrastructure—or rather, the people in charge of what projects get money and labor hours budgeted for same—under what pressures and to what extents do they care?

Because like, mostly the only people who don't find airplane seats unpleasantly confining either are children (and these are not supposed to be child-sized seats) or have paid enough extra for bigger and more widely spaced seats that it's worth it to the airline to have fewer seats per square meter in that section of the plane. Please observe that dimensions like leg length and hip width where x y z for those dimensions are such that x < 95% of people over 18 (and many younger) < y and also 99.9% of everybody ≤ z, the global trends over centuries haven't exactly been for the values of x y z to shrink. Nor has knowing general nutritional needs and how those relate to the said changes in x y z over time resulted in making sure those needs are met, or even meetable, given how much more time effort and money it costs Americans to eat enough of all important micronutrients or to avoid eating high-fructose corn syrup. (Sucks to have a corn allergy. Sucks a lot more on minimum wage. The goodwill the Black Panthers were getting by feeding children free breakfast before school sure did result in the US federal government deciding diverting that goodwill to the federal government was worth the financial cost of free or reduced-price school breakfast and lunch to children from sufficiently low-income households, though.) Please also observe that we've known the intended service life of our highways and bridges mostly since putting each bit of it into service in the first place, we've been complaining about insufficient maintenance the entire time, and it still regularly surprises us when bridges collapse and then it turns out to be more expensive to replace it than it would have been to maintain it.

So everything in the OP sounds like a utopia.

Important to think about for "must envision a better future in order to draw blueprints for building it" reasons, of course. And it's not like novelists and animation studios need to know the floor plans of buildings that are only ever mentioned in passing or drawn in the background, or to care about what those buildings are made of or used for past how such details about setting impact character and plot. I would love to have many stories in all genres and mediums where the setting is much closer to as described in the OP, to point to as a blueprint for the future. Indeed—with the exceptions of the lack of visually-focused art; the likely rarity of anything recording information in a format (such as paper books) that is all three of permanent unless damaged, intended to be legible to anyone who knows the language without needing specialized equipment such as a phonograph or a changeable display, and compact; and the idea of getting rid of ways to do expensive-to-trace or intermediary-free financial transactions, on the grounds that making cash disability-accessible is more effort for less return than using credit, debit, or digital balance for all transactions—I would love to live in the setting OP describes, full stop.

But drawing the blueprints doesn't always get the architecture built, and there's a key pragmatic logistics difference between "building a castle on a mountain" and "building a castle in the air".

.

Also! Are we talking a culture or subculture with super high congenital incidence of vision disabilities, but every generation has some migrants from, and some fully visually abled people of whom at least some get partly or fully absorbed by, the surrounding predominantly-abled culture(s), in the manner of Martha's Vineyard?

Or has some disaster struck to disable the entire (relevant) population, and enough time has passed that the idea of most everyone—or indeed anyone? or possibly anyone born within the affected area, or belonging to the-slash-an... "ethnicity" is possibly the wrong word? "indigenous to the area" is definitely the wrong phrase, since if such a disaster struck pretty much anywhere between the Rio Grande and the Canadian subarctic that's densely enough populated that the survivors' descendants can form a (sub)culture, then the vast majority of affected people would not be indigenous to the area—being [our understanding of] fully visually abled is as ludicrously absurd and difficult to imagine an idea to them as the idea of most everyone in medieval Europe being Catholic or trusting the sciences of alchemy and astrology is to us?

Or is this a nonhuman species whose sensory organs most closely analogous to human eyes pick up a different section of the electromagnetic spectrum, such that their experience of what our eyes pick up requires external aids analogous to our infrared goggles or false-color images from ultraviolet cameras or X-ray telescopes? Or who have a concept of sensing at a distance via unspecified mechanism, but little to no proof it works that stands up to the scientific method, and/or very few people who are both taking the idea seriously being taken seriously? Especially if there's a much more widespread pop-culture misunderstanding of the idea that the said very few people are sick of explaining the differences. (Note that the idea that light waves can carry information in the manner of sound waves—or can do so without needing some transmission medium like sound waves need air or metal, however necessary it might be to have such a medium in order to transmit complex messages accurately, and/or without needing equipment in order to collect the information light waves carry, never mind to preserve that information or to encode and decode even very simple messages—might itself be taken as part of the pop-culture understanding of the concept of vision.) Which isn't so much analogous to our concepts and understanding of extrasensory perception and the paranormal as it is straight up fitting our definitions of those terms, with vision here analogous to telepathy or precognition or any other extra sense that at least one of (1) someone trying to make New Age sound cutting-edge science has described as working via quantum and/or gravitational vibrations (2) someone trying to make cutting-edge astro- and/or quantum physics understandable to pop-science readers has compare/contrasted the idea (or its pop-culture misunderstanding) to the concept they're trying to explain.

How do you think infrastructure would be different in a culture where everyone is blind?

Hi anon! I like this question. I think it would obviously depend on the culture and time period, but I have a few ideas. I’ll just try to write ideas for a general Western culture, because I am aware of more of that, but obviously the culture itself would influence what changes occurred or did not occur.

Education.

Look to blind schools! I’m thinking about training for Braille as very small children, which mostly includes strengthening finger sensitivity. Braille would also be taught the way reading regular print is, either in schools or at home. Regular print would probably also be available and large print would be normalized, especially to minimize eye strain. Computer literacy would include screen-readers and Braille displays. Websites would be designed for accessibility for everyone and this would include large for those who like to read some print.

In classes, people would use a slate and stylus, Braille notetakers, etc, depending on time and what was easier to carry. Braillers would also be more high tech in general, even if it might be considered old school, or the high tech stuff would have come sooner for each device.

Braille, O&M, and life skills classes would be normal for everyone. O&M would probably be done mostly by people with some sight, although this might change if everyone is blind anyway.

Lifestyle.

Things like telescopes (monoculars, minifiers) would be normal for low vision people, maybe even something cool like ‘oh I got the latest telescope model for my birthday!” It would be something shared with friends for fun. Something like SunuBand would be like, I don’t know, a car of something. People would show status through how cool their cane was, if they had a Sonar cane, like WeWalk, etc.

In schools, and in life, I think people with some sight, like me, would not face any pressure to use it. In real life, people with residual sight are expected to use what sight they can, even if it is inconvenient or painful.

More emphasis would be places on other sense, such as touch, smell, and soatial awareness.

Safety.

The world would probably be safer, structurally. There would be high contrast stairs everywhere, if there are stairs at all. There would be more in place that makes it safer to walk around outside, such as, idk, less of a risk of hurt yourself by stepping off a curb? I’m not even sure if roads would be designed the way they are now. Would people drive if they have some vision? Would everyone have cars that don’t need vision? Anyway, more safety with blind people in mind.

Transportation.

Transportation would be better. Maybe public transportation would be more accessible, easier to navigate, and more readily available in rural areas. Maybe trains would be more popular in every country, because they run on a schedule and you can carry more people for longer periods of time. Trains can also allow people to travel long distances, which can be harder for blind people (who almost always can’t drive, as far as I know) who can’t drive cars and may not have money for flights, or want to avoid them for environmental reasons.

Accessibility.

Braille would be everywhere. Buttons would be tactile, especially on kitchen appliances. I imagine a lot of the tools blind people use in the kitchen, such as bump dots for microwave buttons, would already be standard. Talking or otherwise accessible things would be cheaper, more common, and considered staples for everyone. Because they would be made for the wider population of blind people, accessibility would not be a niche or extra thing. It would not be associated with kindness, but a standard fare.

Clothing would be different. Designs would be tactile and/or high contrast, where they are often flat. I think colors would still be important, for everyone, but the tags would probably have labels. Some brand designed for blind people have actual Braille fabric on the clothes, which is cool. While color scanners do exist and would probably be used, I think other methods would be utilized if clothing is designed with blind people in mind from the start. Wearing glasses would be cool, you guys.

In terms of entertainment, I think most of it would audio-based or interactive. The radio and live theatre would be more popular than they are now. If visual mediums still existed, they would all come with audio descriptions and they would be better than they sometimes are now. TV would be written with audio descriptions in mind, if they didn’t talk about more of what they were doing.

Art would be tactile, period. Maybe we would have something by now that allows you to feel digital art. There are already amazing forms of tactil art out there, so think more of that from all cultures. Rather than adapted or described with the blind in mind, art would be naturally tactile even if the artist could see what they were creating well enough.

Online.

Obviously image descriptions would be everywhere, although I feel people would naturally include less screen-shots and less pictures. Again, accessibility would be a more mainstream thing than it is now. I’m thinking there would be more self-care posts, such as about dealing with eye strain headaches. Although I think some of the issues we have would be lessened when the entirety of humanity was on the blind spectrum. I’m also thinking about fun quizzes like, Describe Your Dream Home and I’ll Guess What Type Blindness You Have. Debates about disability in general would happen in regular spaces. YouTube would have contained audio descriptions from the start, and perhaps highly visual content would be less common or naturally described in the video, such as person describing what they are holding before talking about it.

Work/Career.

Productivity would be measure differently. Accessibility would just be a thing. Like, at a meeting, “What tools do you like to use the most?” Working from home would be an option. Work would be open to and even designed for blind people. Blind people wouldn’t have the low employments rates they do now, or else no one would work. A lot of tools we use to make things accessible wouldn’t be necessary if things were designed for blind people in the first place. Subminimum wage would not be a thing.

There would probably be jobs and career opportunities that don’t exist now.

Blind people wouldn’t be more likely or even expected to live in poverty.

Money.

Money would be tactile, labeled, large print, and high contrast. If we still used cash at all.

Inovation.

I think we would have a lot of cool stuff. Countries might even compete to be the first to create things for the blind population which, again, would be everyone in this scenario.

Food/menus.

Restaurants would be easy for blind people to navigate. Menus would be offered in Braille and large print. Maybe plates would be made sectioned so people could know where their food was. I’m thinking about blind accessibility videos and restaurants run by totally blind people. Hmm. Glasses would not be as common at all, because they can be hard for people to see. I have broken too many glasses myself.

If people were to buy food, such as local produce, bags would probably come with homemade Braille or large print signs. Canned food and boxes for cooking would have Braille on them initially. Giving food to others, such as bringing food or snacks for the home when you visit, would come with either an explanation about what it was or a label.

I could go on. I don’t want this too be too long. Basically, what I want to get across is that a lot more than accessibility would changes if everyone is blind. I didn’t want to get into too many heavy topics because this is more of a fun question. However. feel free to add whatever you like. I believe history itself would be altered in many, many ways that have influence on life today, so I could have gone on about that. I could write books on the lifestyle and safety and work sections. And all cultures have their own ways of viewing, supporting, and limiting blind people, so this could change a little or a lot depending on what your culture or the culture you are writing about is like.

-BlindBeta

[shoezuki]

piglin techno confusing the fuck out of ranboo hcs

i jus be doin some shit sometimes n then my brain is like ‘hey think a this’ and i been tryin to type this out but my internet is so bad rn i couldnt even Open a new post what the fuck. anywayss. this ran so long. so fucking long

started with ‘i wonder how piglins act’ and now technoblade is doin some shit, ranboo is so confused, and philza is a delighted bystander who is having the time of his life

technoblade is 100% piglin. many people think he’s part human to some degree but hes Completely and Utterly piglin

most assume as much since he doesnt begin to rot in the overworld. but short answer; he’s Built Different

long answer is a blessing of the bloodgod but shhhhhh

techno never corrects anyone or talks about being piglin or Anything. he just doesnt care what other people think and assume. the only one who Knows is phil

phil had first thought it was out of some sort of shame or desire to Hide it but. yeah. no. techno jus doesnt care. build; different

although more Notable piglin traits come to like if he’s close to people

piglins are both social and anti social. kinda. they can be hugely independent, do well without ‘proper’ socialization for a Long while. but they group together for Lifetimes. once piglins find a family or friends and expend Full trust to them. its all or nothing you Cant break them up

how tommy betrayed and turned his back on techno just. its like a physical pain. once he trusted and respected him, the mere Idea of betrayal was nowhere in question. it never occurred to him

philza is now the only person that techno consciously and subconsciously considers him a part of his ‘pack’ (i cant figure out a better term but that one doesnt Fit)

techno never realizes when he acts piglin traits out towards those he trusts. he never does so in company outside of what he considers family. philza notices though.

phil tends to study and research other races and cultures a lot. he’s been around a long while, has met many people of all different backgrounds. he likes knowing and understanding what he can. its just fun too.

it mostly started when he first met techno because he wanted to figure out what the FUCK techno was doing without asking and therefore embarrassing him

but phil knows techno well. and he knows piglins well enough. and he Knows techno doesnt ever seem to be self aware of his more inhuman habits

but Phil knows. and he Notices when techno starts to consider ranboo a part of the pack

First, it’s gifts.

surprisingly, its ranboo giving techno the axe first

he wasnt there to see it. but phil might as well have been present, considering how Horrifically in depth techno ‘ranted’ to him bout it

but techno reciprocates it and Then he really starts to notice more and more

first, it was giving the enchanted apple to ranboo. sure it Technically had been swiped by techno out from under ranboo but it was still Something. techno wasnt one to give up valuables easily

then techno starts ‘complaining’ about ranboos living area. and his eating habits. phil looks away when techno smuggles golden carrots into ranboo’s shack 

eventually technoblade is crafting ranboo a cloak to match their own and he’s freaking out about ranboo’s height and his dimensions and how much cloth he’ll need but he refuses to ask ranboo and phil is holding his head in his hands

(phil forces techno to gift him the cloak in person rather than stash it under his pillow and run like he’d planned. techno bitched about it but after ranboo practically lit up, burying himself in the cloak and thanking techno so hard his throat mustve hurt, techno was so practically purring the rest of the day)

after gifts, its noises. 

techno is seemingly silent. he doesnt speak up much, moves so quietly people tend to jump when he appears. 

in reality, he talks to himself constantly. either when alone or when in phil’s company. philza knows that aspect is the ‘voices’, and also just technoblade’s tendency to fill the silence and wonder his own thoughts aloud

but the snorts, squeels, grumbles, and other sounds he makes without realizing are some phil knows are piglin

its often guttural, a noise he makes in the back of his throat that rumbles and reverberates through his bones. 

itd sound terrifying to anyone, but after years of techno trilling deep when phil enters a room, when he returns from some sort of journey, when he says hello or makes his presence known in anyway, phil realized its more like a greeting. excitement to see him. it became something sweet

long story short ranboo nearly jumped so high his head went through the ceiling when he’d first walked into the home, said hello, and some gruff purr sounded from the techno’s chest

theyd both jumped so hard, stared at each other as if they were trying to figure out what was wrong with the other 

phil was physically pained as he held back his laughter to the point he was crying. that changed the subject to him quickly

it didnt happen again for a while, but phil didnt say anything and just watched. it was too entertaining

techno would make his small squeals between breaths when he remembered something, muttered to himself, snorted and huffed even as ranboo was around

ranboo got used to it. he stopped jumping or even looking confused when techno trilled some sort of deep purr when ranboo would join them for dinner

lastly, techno was tactile

or, as tactile as he could be. techno wasnt touchy even on a great day. he was selective, reserved, would lean into phil or loop an arm over his shoulders but would never say anything about it

phil didnt question it and would just pat techno on the arm without saying a word

but. sometimes. when phil would be gone for a long time, techno would rest the entire weight of his head on phil’s shoulder, practically encapturing him, rumbling and grumbling so harsh it shook phil’s whole body

phil still wasnt certain on this one. he couldnt find much in the way of what it meant. piglin’s tended to stay with their own, and they never reunited after long periods of time because they never would dare to separate for long

 he was kind of guessing here, but the way techno would drop his shoulders and practically melt made phil think he was just missing him and wanted to confirm phil’s presence. 

it wasnt like he complained. it was sweet

ranboo had been gone a while. he was vague on why, or where. phil had a suspicion or two but ranboo kept a lot of secrets

neither techno or phil pried too far, but phil could tell it was disconcerting to techno. he was tense and kept himself almost deathly busy for two weeks

(piglin rarely if ever kept secrets from one another, phil had read once. omitting a few things here and there, maybe. but lying or deception was out of the question)

phil hadn’t been there when ranboo returned. he’d been gathering firewood after techno was insistent they completely top up all of ranboo’s stores

he’d heard the muffled growls techno made as he walked towards ranboos shack, before even seeing him. 

when phil found them techno had ranboo nearly completely obscured in his cape, and definitely he’d have been out of sight if he was any shorter. 

techno’s head was lofted heavy in the crook of ranboo’s neck, forcing ranboo to hunch with arms wrapped tight around ranboo. his arms were pinned. 

ranboo caught his eyes, looking so scattered and tired and confused and maybe even terrified. he might have spoken or maybe he just mouthed ‘help me’ but the gruff purr-like sound techno made was too loud to hear him anyways

philza shoved his fist in his mouth to keep from laughing

later that night ranboo asked phil if techno was going to kill him. phil wanted to scream

even later then, techno had admitted to phil that, yeah, okay, maybe ranboo was growing on him. phil had never felt so violent

[cinemaseeker]

Let's Review: Lightyear

*THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Guys, let's just be honest for a second.

This is essentially Toy Story 5, or maybe Toy Story 4 1/2, disguised as a kid-friendly version of The Martian.

Let me ask you all a question I always end up asking myself every time an unnecessary prequel or origin story comes out, especially a Disney-sanctioned one:

"Did I really want to know how (blank) became (blank)?"

Nine times out of ten, the answer is usually "No".

I feel like filmmakers and storytellers are forgetting that we don't always need to give every popular character an ultimately flimsy or shoe-horned origin story that inevitably ends up only ret-conning or diluting what we loved about that character to begin with. Part of the fun of universally beloved characters is that they are universal, which requires a form of vagueness and negative space that allows them to be left open to interpretation in order to appeal to as many different types of people from as many different backgrounds as possible.

Take the Joker for example.

The best iterations of that character either forgo an origin story altogether or create one that works with what we already know about the character, and then shows a (somewhat) straightforward trajectory of how he become the killer clown we all know and love today, i.e. The Killing Joke.

These types of characters, surrounded by this enigmatic air of mystery, are usually the most memorable and fascinating to us specifically because we don't know their origin story, and it allows us to fill in the blanks for ourselves and make the character feel like our own. By relinquishing this kind of creative control over to the viewer/reader, filmmakers and storytellers can relieve themselves of a tremendous narrative burden while helping their characters last longer in the collective minds of our popular culture.

So in a sense, a good origin story is not unlike a good plot twist.

Both work best when they answer questions and fill in gaps. And both fail when they leave us feeling more confused and poke more holes in the plot, thus ultimately sinking it.

If you want to read more, there is a great article that relates to this debate, especially when it comes to origin stories that try to make iconic female villains likable (ew) and sympathetic (double ew), and I highly recommend giving it a read:

Now don't get me wrong, this doesn't always mean that I don't enjoy origin stories. An origin story, like any other story, can be good when it is done right (just look at The Godfather Part II) especially when the creators approach the project with care and passion.

But oftentimes these origin stories are used by big corporate studios so that they can squeeze every last drop of profitability out of a character and their franchise, especially if it's a flagship figure from which the entire foundation of the studio was built upon. For example, New Line Cinema is known as the House that Freddy Built due to the success of Freddy Krueger in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street movie, which help launched the then-fledgling studio, not to mention countless sequels and spin-offs. But over time Freddy Krueger became more of a mascot than a threat with each entry, not unlike Buzz Lightyear for Pixar.

The character of Buzz Lightyear is kept largely intact here, thanks in large part to an earnest and believable performance by Captain America himself Chris Evans. And before you say anything: no, Tim Allen does not voice Buzz Lightyear here, and I for one think that's for the best. It'd be too distracting and it helps the movie try to stand on its own, except for when we have to slog through all the obligatory Toy Story callback shots, recycled lines, and every they-did-the-thing moment, and Lord knows there are plenty of those here. But here's the problem: leave them in, it's too faithful to the original to the point that it's basically copying and pasting; but if you leave them out, then it doesn't feel like part of the franchise, so why bother having the name on it at all. Either way, we lose.

But anyway, the change of voice could confuse younger kids so keep that in mind. During the screening I went to, a child insisted that this guy was not the real Buzz Lightyear.

But here's my biggest gripe with the movie.

The opening text of Lightyear declares that this movie we're about to see is the same movie Andy saw back in 1995, his favorite movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy from Toy Story.

On the one hand, this disclaimer is a good way to get away with including kid-friendly sci-fi elements such as robot cats (I would live AND die for Sox), time travel, and alien lifeforms in an otherwise realistic-looking space movie.

But, excuse me for a second, I have to call bullshit here.

Do y'all remember what humans looked like in the Toy Story world back in 1995?

Yeah. Pure nightmare fuel with soulless soul-sucking eyes.

Now, in an incredible feat of gaslighting, this movie expects us to believe that THIS:

came out at the same time as THIS:

Lightyear is clearly a 2022 movie, with 2022 visuals and 2022 values, but it's trying to pass itself off as a 1995 movie and in that sense it fails miserably, aside from a few clever 90s-era callbacks (blowing on the navigation assistant IVAN like its a N64 cartridge and the computer boot-up sound). But this "framing device" (it's really more like a disclaimer) is ultimately a flimsy hall pass used to justify this movie's existence.

If they really wanted this setup to work, then they should've either fully committed to the 1995-ness of it all (stylizing the animation to fit the era like what Turning Red did for the early 00s, thereby matching the aesthetic and zeitgeist more earnestly) or make it a proper 2022 movie that could claim to be based off an astronaut who could've served as the basis for the Buzz Lightyear toy in that universe in the same way that Buzz Lightyear is based on (or at least named after) the real-life Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

It feels like Pixar is trying to have their cake and eat it too by trying to give us the nostalgia of 1995 but without losing the advantage of being relevant, whatever that means.

But I would like to point out that Disney has already made a vastly superior Buzz Lightyear spin-off that is truer to the essence of the character and their world in the form of both the direct-to-video movie Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventures Begins (2000) and the criminally underrated Saturday morning cartoon TV show Buzz Lightyear of Star Command (2000-2001). They both match the spirit and tone of the Toy Story universe and serve as a much better spin-off than Lightyear, with funnier jokes and more unforgettable characters. Hopefully Lightyear can help turn people onto this show (please put it on Disney+, you cowards).

Quick side bar: I used to be OBSESSED with this show, like getting-up-at-ungodly-hours-to-watch-this-show-before-the-existence-of-YouTube level obsessed, especially with NOS-4-A2 the energy vampire, voiced by Craig Ferguson. Yes. THAT Craig Ferguson. BLOSC had a whole slew of awesome celebrity voices, including Patrick Warburton as Buzz Lightyear. PLEASE check it out and give it the love it deserves.

P.S. This NOS-4-A2 came out 13 years before the Joe Hill novel NOS4A2 and 19 years before the AMC series adaptation. Just saying. The people need to know.

OK, I need to stop, otherwise I will geek out and never stop.

So with all that said, the question you'll probably be wanting me to answer now is: "Should I see Lightyear?"

My answer, perhaps surprisingly, is "Yes."

Because even though Lightyear may go down in the history books as being lower-tier Pixar, that level is still above most other animation studios at their best. It's quite a feat for a studio that even their less-than-stellar offerings are still oftentimes better than most other animated movies out there (for the most part).

Okay, so what's the good stuff?

The first thing that comes to mind is, naturally, the top-notch animation. It's nice to see Pixar take this approach to character design, steering away from the typical disproportionately big eyes we're used to seeing in Disney movies, trying to make the humans more like real people while still giving them plenty of expression. And in all seriousness, there are some beautiful shots to be found in Lightyear, not just photorealistic but beautifully lit shots of space and sunsets (there's even a cool 2001: A Space Odyssey-style stargate because of course there is). I don't know if an animated movie can even get nominated for Best Cinematography, but I would sure love to see them try. And with computer animation getting more and more realistic every year, I suspect it's only a matter of time before that feat is accomplished.

And, rest assured, there will be plenty of Pixar moments that will make you, if not outright cry, then at the very least get teary-eyed. This is seen most effectively when *MAJOR SPOILER COMING UP* Buzz finds out that every trip he takes to try and get home results in him losing 4 years, during which time his friend and fellow Space Ranger Alisha Hawthorne (Uzo Aduba) continues to age, so every time he sees her she's either getting engaged or getting pregnant or watching her child graduate and essentially living her life without him, up until she dies of old age while he's away, and he doesn't even get to give her a proper goodbye in person. Now THAT's good storytelling. This sequence is expertly handled with tender loving care and really hits you in the feels (okay it's not quite as good as the first 10 minutes of Up, but come on, very few things are).

But most importantly, we get to see this unfold with a canonically queer woman of color in STEM.

In that sense, Lightyear takes one small step forward in term of mainstream queer representation, a step that's still not big enough to get very far but one that is definitely bigger than previous steps taken before it (I'm looking at you, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). We get to see a major supporting character, Alisha Hawthorne, marry an Asian woman named Kiko, have a family with her, live a long and happy life, and even share an onscreen kiss with her wife that we actually get to see. It's sad that we still have to get excited over crumbs like this, but hey, suck it homophobes, love wins.

You could argue that Alisha becomes a fridged character whose only purpose was to serve a white man's story, a white man who gets to lead an otherwise pretty diverse cast, as if to say "don't worry, white guys, you still get to be the hero." But I would argue that Alisha is given enough of a likable personality and life outside of Buzz, albeit still viewed through Buzz's perspective, to avoid making her a background token black sidekick. If you were to take Alisha out of the story, the movie would be radically different.

The rest of the supporting cast is not exactly ground-breaking but they do get enough character development to help them avoid being totally forgettable, at least for a little while. I especially love the detail of Izzy, Alisha's granddaughter (voiced by my girl, rising star Keke Palmer), being a Space Ranger who's afraid of the vast vacuum of space (girl, I feel you). She also does a great job of underscoring the main theme of learning to embrace mistakes, especially our own mistakes (man, that message really hit me where I live). Finally, as far as villains go, this Zurg gets the job done, but the reveal of who's really behind Zurg is just too good to spoil here. Or, at least, I didn't see it coming.

But I think it's very telling that the best character in the movie is a robotic cat.

I'm just saying.

This is why we can't decide whether or not animated movies are for children or adults. You put a realistic-looking guy into space and give him a life-or-death mission in a story that most younger kids won't be able to follow, but we still need some sort of adorable (preferably animal) sidekick that we can turn into plushies and Happy Meal toys.

But, again, I would live and die for Sox.

The worst thing you can say about Lightyear is that it's a standard animated movie, one that I'm not even sure will properly entertain really young kids, unless they REALLY love Buzz Lightyear, but I think even that would be pushing it. But if you have an older kid or preteen who likes Buzz Lightyear and science, preferably a young girl of color looking for role models in STEM, then this could fit the bill. I bet that this would be a great movie to screen for science camps or middle school science classes.

Lightyear shows how, even if computer animation has come so far, dare I say, lightyears ahead of what came before, good Pixar-quality storytelling can get lost in space if it's not tethered to a strong enough base.

Now all we need is a gritty western spin-off starring Woody and then I'll be happy.

This is Cinema Seeker, signing off.

Thanks for reading!

My Rating: 2.5/5 meat-bread-meat sandwiches

P.S. There is a mid- and post-credits scene, so be sure to stick around for that if you're interested.

And for all you name nerds and prospective parents looking for cool baby names, here's a complete list of the Production Babies, listed in the credits as Future Space Rangers:

Ame, Anaïs, Anthony, Clara, Cora, Dean, Devon, Elan, Emmeline, Evren, Henry, Izumi, Jade, Luca, Mabel, Maggie, Mari, Matias, Mia, Mikayla, Otto, Rami, Sean, Simon, William, Zi-Ran

[doitforthecharacterarc]

Writeblr Intro

Hello! I'm new to Tumblr so I don't quite know what I'm doing but I love the writing community here and I wanna join in!

My name's Toth, I'm agender and use they/them and xae/xaer pronouns. I tend to write low fantasy / cross-world fantasy, as well as short stories to go alongside the longer work(s) I'm writing and short poems sometimes having to do with the stories as well.

I adore worldbuilding and characterbuilding. I do too much of it myself and would love to help people do it for their own stories, so please feel free to message me if ur stuck on a bit of worldbuilding and want help figuring it out!

Current Wips:

The Sun, the Moon and the Blinding Night

Follows the story of a young hero, Arryn Dames, in an urban low-fantasy world, sent on assignment to spy on the two most powerful supervillains of the modern world. Not everything is all that it seems with the villains, though, and as Arryn races the clock to figure out what's true and what's an elaborate lie, they discover something that flips their entire worldview upside-down.

This one's super undeveloped atm, I have the plot points and outline but I haven't focused on writing the story itself enough.

The Solstice Collection

A collection of disconnected stories following the villains from Blinding Night; their stories, backgrounds, interactions, relationships, etc. It is formatted in a chronological order but is separated into short stories following specific events.

Examples:

The Days-Makza Case: The reports of a policeman on two teens (Zenith and Nadir) who are running away from their abusive family.

Manhattan's Day: Foolish and overconfident heroes intercept a heist. They capture two of the villains, and in an attempt to subdue them, accidentally trigger an atomic-level explosion. This story also deals with some heavy emotional fallout from this accident, as the two were in a relationship with each other and a third person (Nadir) who now has to cope with xaer partners being dead.

The Incident: Details an accident involving Zenith and way too much snow which left permanent scars on everyone involved, in the physical, invisible, and mental senses. Heavy TW's for a smidge of insanity, death (not permanent), triggers triggered and massive ammounts of PTSD. :)

The Eukaeda Chronicles:

In a different universe but with some of the same characters as Blinding Night, Zenith acts as a lonely guide to lost and troubled souls, helping them find a bit of peace before they return to their world.

This was my first WIP, and while I don't like to say it, it's practically abandoned at this point. If it ever gets picked back up, it'll be roleplayed D&D style.

Worlds Built:

Blinding Night-Verse

An urban low-fantasy world. About 1/10 of the population has some sort of superpower (I made a list of approx. 175, suggestions welcome). There are three sentient species: Humans, Dragon(born)s, and Merfolk. I am in the process of creating two languages, for the Dragons and Mer. Each has their own culture, instincts, and histories, which I have mapped out for the Dragons and am working on for the Mer.

Eukaeda

While both Blinding Night and the Eukaeda Chronicles have a "Eukaeda," this specificly is referring to the universe Eukaeda in the Eukaeda Chronicles. Eukaeda, meaning "Elsewhere," is a place, inhabited solely by one dragonborn, where the souls of lost, hopeless, and troubled people are temporarily transported, in order to give themselves a rest while they figure out what they need to do when they go home. This is based off the Minecraft world, with some changes such as the Dragonborn Guides and their culture, and the Creator Gods of the universe.

TL;DR I have too may ideas and I don't write them down enough :)

[spidori]

I'm relatively new to the Phandom, but I also have enough of a background in DC to know stories headed by each of the characters you just named. And I think that's the first part of the answer to your question; not everyone knows Constantine exists, a lot of people don't even know the names of anyone outside the characters of the recent JLA live action movies. Even if they do know *of* certain other DC characters, often times an author won't really know anything of substance about the character and will shy away from using them due to concerns about mischaracterization and accompanying criticism.

But that's part one, and in most cases doesn't apply to at least the big three of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman; so why aren't the big three used more? Simply put, it seems to be a combination of available tools and fandom inertia. Batman has the entire bat clan to bounce off of, as well as the gothic setting of Gotham, and the canonically established penchant for adoption children who physically look like Danny, thus making writing a story involving his groupings easier. That's not to say other heroes don't have hooks and tools which can work, just that Batman probably has the most, and that the ones he has lend themselves quite easily to a wide variety of situations through the mixing and matching which fanfiction is predicated on accepting.

And just to hammer in the trend, once it got popular there was an additional cultural inertia it engendered, which was only further amplified by the Phandom's truly Phamtastic tendency to yes-and each other in the best way. That's how you end up with such a vibrant bunch of wildly divergent stories and ideas still mostly grouped around a few central sets of characters.

That all being said. One thing I'll praise the community on is that the centering around the bat clan appears to be almost completely if not entirely passive. I do see stories centered on Superman, Constantine, Wonder Woman, Zatana, Green Lantern, etc. Hell, one of the more popular stories is about Lex Luthor being dad shaped in the best way. So the community doesn't reject those stories, just hasn't got/gotten a real taste for them yet; if you want to build something that's fertile ground, I would know, I accidentally built an entire setting where each of the lantern corps has a bearer in Amity because of how easily it kinda built itself and wouldn't let go until I wrote it down, and people were more than happy to interact with it.

I'll try to sum it up in a metaphor. Chicken is easy to build vastly different dishes around, so many that you can make a large enough variety for most people to not get tired of chicken as a protein. Batman is like that, flexible enough with enough interactions to make a wide enough variety of stories for most people to not get tired of, while also being easily available. But most people will still happily also eat a pork or beef or seafood dish if you cook it for them.

Short DPXDC Prompts #945

Roy hired a new babysitter for Lian. He did a thorough background check on her and double checked that all her certifications were accurate. Jazz Fenton had been incredibly sweet when he met up with her over coffee so they both could ask each other questions and get clarifications before she started babysitting when he left for missions (he told her he was going on work trips. Technically true.) He expected Jazz to do a decent deal picking up after Lian and taking care of her… He didn’t expect to come back to a dozen knocked out assassins in his front lawn and Jazz carefully tending to her bleeding knuckles with the kitchen first aid kit.

[lightdancer1]

Three big rules I use in my Azula-as-hero stories:

1) The canon deliberately anchors Zuko's view as always right and makes everything revolve around him. I refuse to invert its mistakes with Azula in Zuko's place as that perpetuates the faults rather than offering an alternative. Azula is the hero, though Zuko can very much end up a hero just as much as she does depending on the AU. That isn't a zero-sum game. She can be the hero, have major biases and cognitive dissonance and blinders and still be heroic.

Neither Azula or Zuko are entirely right about what they remember as kids. This is part real world 'memory is very hilariously unreliable' (don't look this up unless you want an entirely valid spasm of paranoia for a while), part 'kids are kids and have their perceptions of the world which is a murkier and more complex place where nobody really knows what they're doing, people just act like they do.'

2) The villain in the story is the Fire Lords, whoever slots into that role in the story. The Fire Lord is the architect of a genocidal world war of conquest. You can be the Fire Lord, or you can be the hero. You cannot be both by definition of what the Fire Lord does with the Fire Nation as villains. Save in the Fire Lord Ursa AU, Ursa therefore is antagonist, not villain. Outside the Fire Lord Iroh AUs Iroh is an antagonist or a hero who actually is a good uncle to Azula, not the villain. There is no need to demonize Ursa and Iroh when Ozai and Azulon are already there and canonically sonsobitches.

Demonizing Ursa and Iroh would be very easy from their canon arcs, but it's a mistaken choice that selects the wrong people for no real gain to the story and furthering no. 1, with Zuko's 'I am always right and it's all about me' mentality switched around.

3) Azula's canon arc is about the risk of conflating superpowers as personality, and the 'do not do this cool thing' taken to its logical conclusion. As a hero, her arcs still revolve around having power that's all but unbeatable save by an Avatar, the ethics in how she gets that way....and her challenges in being heroic when she's entirely capable of solving entire arcs by taking the easier villainous path but is actively working against that.

She tilts away from her canon path but still has elements of being an indoctrinated child soldier, and in a sense like her canon counterpart embodies a restraint in use of power rather than simply yielding to it. She doesn't get the Zuko arc of the rightful king returns because she has no desire for the throne, like her canon counterpart had no such desire until Ozai dumped it on her. Her goals differ in each AU where she acts as the hero, but they all center on the ideas of playing off vast power against the Avatar, who is a greater power than her own.

And in each AU she is set up as a direct foil to Katara as well. Both share a dark and ruthless side that they struggle against, struggle against ideas of vengeance and what it is to be a child stuck in a very big war and with cultural predispositions to face vengeance. Both struggle against in-built preconceptions of who they could and should be, and one unlearns the hatred of the aspiring conqueror to the conquered, the other that it's easy to live in a world of black and white hatreds but sometimes things are never so clear-cut as all that.

And in each and every AU as harsh as Azula's childhood is, she never has to fight for her right to be the most powerful Bender she can be. If anything she has to struggle with the implications of indoctrination and having vast power attached to a human being who knows how flawed and messed up she is. Katara, OTOH, has to fight for every scrap of power she gets, and grows from a far less advantageous background to be Azula's equal as a Waterbender. So there is always an element of relative privilege coded in, without hitting the audience over the head with a club on 'privilege is not 'had no problems in life', it's having advantages someone else didn't have and taking them for granted'.

5) This is not Batman or Gotham City. Insanity is not a superpower, and the only mentally ill person in these stories is Ozai, with this making him a tragic monster with human elements without making him any less an irredeemable bastard. The line of making Ozai an utter jackass and not perpetuating a different kind of ableism is its own challenge but I don't like telling easy stories. Azulon, unlike Ozai, is entirely sane, entirely aware of what he's doing, and much worse than his son is. *His* humanizing factor is knowing the Fire Nation is fucked and opting for 'they make a desert and call it peace' and not exactly being WRONG in his conclusions.

Where Azula has hallucinations they're the result of too much stress building up without outlets, when the cause of that stress is removed, the hallucinations stop.

[writingwithcolor]

Mixing North America with Old World Cultures in Fantasy: What Are The Issues?

So I sent in an ask several years ago that, due in no small part to your response, I have grown from and eventually led to a complete restructuring of my story. I included a measure of context in this, so if you need to skip it, my main three questions are at the bottom. I think this mostly applies to Mod Lesya.

The new setting is both inspired by and based on North America in the late 1400s where the indigenous cultures thrive and are major powers on the continent. Since there is no “Europe” in this setting the colonization and plague events never happened. Within the continent itself (since it is a fantasy setting) there are also analogous cultures that resemble Norse, Central European, Persian, Arabic, Indian, and Bengali. Although not native to the fantasy continent, there is also a high population of ‘African’ and ‘Oceanic’ peoples of many cultures, the latter usually limited to coastal cities as traders and sailors. Elves are entirely not-human, or at least evolved parallel to humans ala Neanderthals/Denisovans; they have green blood, black sclera, and skin tones that run from pale to dark. 

The main national setting of the story takes great inspiration from a Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian background, and the neighboring nations are based on the Haudenosee (Iriquois Confederacy), Numunuu (Comancheria), and the Hopi and Zuni (as the descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans) (I also know that 2 of these 3 occur much later than the 1400s, but I love the government systems and they provide excellent narrative foils for the more ‘traditional’ fantasy government that takes place in the story). The Maya inhabit the role analogous to Ancient Greece in that most writing systems on the continent descend from Maya script and all the Great Philosophers were Maya (and nobility from across the continent spend lots of money to send their children to schools in the Maya City-States or in the Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire)). There is magic with varying traditions, practices, and methods spread across the continent, some of which are kept secret from outsiders, so I would hope that this avoids the “Magical Native” trope. 

Beyond the setting, I have three main questions:

When it comes to foodstuffs, I was originally planning to limit myself to Pre-Columbian cuisine from the Americas (eg the Three Sisters and potatoes) but in doing my research, Navajo fry-bread seems to be a fairly integral part of the food culture and that does require flour, which originated in the Old World. Would it be better to incorporate some of the Old World stuff that has since become traditional to indigenous groups?

For place names used in the setting and writing systems would it be better to use existing languages or writing systems or ones inspired by them? EG should I make a language that is very similar to Cherokee, complete with its own syllabary, or should I use IRL Cherokee and its extant syllabary? I ask because I feel like using the real language might step on some toes, but using the conlang might seem like erasure.

One of the main themes of this story is the harm that even a ‘benevolent’ Empire can wreak on people. The Byzantine/Turkish/Mississippian culture is the main Empire on the continent, taking cues from both western and American monarchical systems (eg the Triple Alliance (Aztec) and The Four Regions (the Inca Empire)), but when I think about it having any kind of even vaguely western ‘Empire’ spring up from the soil of a North American inspired setting might be troubling.

Thank you for your time and consideration! Do you guys have a kofi or something so I can compensate you for time spent?

I actually do remember you, and I am going to 99% disregard your questions here because you went from glaringly obvious racism to covert racism, and none of your questions ask if your basic strings of logic for assumptions you built into the setting are okay. 

Since there is some extremely flawed basic logic in here, I’m going to tackle that first.

Question 1: Why did you originally title this “Pre Colombian North American Fantasy World” when you have more old world cultures than new world cultures?

A very simple, straightforward question. The actual content of the setting is what made me retitle it.

If you want to write a North American fantasy setting… why are there so many old world cultures represented here? 

Old world: - Greece (as a societal myth; see next point) - Byzantine - Turkey - Norse - Central European - Persian - Arabic - Indian - Bengali - African (which, let’s be honest, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples) - Oceana (which, again, should be heavily broken up into multiple peoples)

New world: - Mississippian - Iroquois  - Numunuu - Hopi - Zuni - Maya - Aztec - Inca (maybe? not mentioned as having their own place on the continent, but one of your questions mentions them) - Navajo (maybe? See above)

To account for respecting Africa and Oceana, I’m going to make African cultures count as 3 and Oceanic cultures count as 5, and this is a purposeful lowball.

Old World: 17 New World: 9

It’s a giant discrepancy, especially if your attempt is writing an exclusively New World fantasy. And this is bare minimum old world, considering the fact I tried to limit myself to peoples who would be more likely to interact with the heavy Mediterranean/Alexander the Great’s Empire centricity. 

Question 2: Why does there have to be a Greece analogue?

I haven’t spoken about this topic at length on this blog, but Greek worship in the Western world is a very carefully crafted white supremacy based mythos that was created to prop up European “Excellence” and actually erases the reality of Greece as a peoples.

Cultural evolutionism is a theory that states the (assumed-white-European) Greeks were superior because of their philosophy, their abstract art, and their mathematics. When many of these concepts were refined in Egypt (African, aka Black), or the Arab world (aka brown), but white Europeans did not want to admit any of this so they instead painted everything as coming out of their ideas of Greece lock stock and barrel. 

The theory also ignored Iroquois science, Plains and Southwestern abstract art, and generally everything about North America, because the theory was designed to move the goalposts and paint North America as something it wasn’t, just to make Europeans feel okay taking it over and “bringing it to civilization.”

This theory was still taught in force up until the 1970s, and is still a major school of anthropological thought to this day (and still taught in some universities), so it is still very much influencing the Western world.

While the theory itself is only from the 1800s, it had long-growing roots in white/ noble Europe’s attempt to prop up European “Excellence” during its multiple periods of colonization, from the Crusades, onwards. You can see it in the copious amount of art produced during the Renaissance.

Europeans ignored the sheer amount of settling and travel that happened within Greece and Rome, and you’ll notice how many Renaissance paintings depict Greek philosophers as white, teaching other white people. In reality, we have no idea what their skin tone was, and they could have taught a huge variety of different skin tones. But it was appealing to European nobility to have people like them be the founders of all things great and “advanced”, so they invested huge amounts of time and money in creating this myth.

(Note: I said their nobility, not their population. People of colour existed en masse in Europe, but the nobility has been downplaying that for an exceptionally long time)

Greece took over most of the old world. It borrowed and stole from hundreds of cultures, brought it all back, and was assigned credit for it. White Europeans didn’t want to admit that the concept of 0 came from the Arabs, the pythagorean theorem came from Egypt, etc, and since Greece won, detailed records of how they were perceived and what they stole are long lost. It’s only glaring when they took from other global powers.

Question 3: Why would you pick totally different biomes to mix in here?

Turkey and the Mississippi are very, very different places when it comes to what can grow and what sort of housing is required, which makes them on the difficult side to merge together. They relied on different methods of trade, as well (boats vs roads), and generally just don’t line up.

The fact you pick such a specific European powerhouse—the Byzantine Empire—to mix into your “not European” fantasy world is… coming back to my above point about Greek (and Roman) worship in the West. Why can’t a fantasy world set in North America be enough on its own? Why does it need Europe copycats?

Question 4: Why are you missing a variety of nomads and Plains peoples?

Nomadic plains peoples were a thing across the globe, from the Cree to the Blackfoot to the Mongols. You have hyperfocused on settled peoples (with only one nomadic group named in both new and old world), which… comes across as very odd to me, because it is, again, very European sounding. That continent was about the only one without major populations that were nomadic, and if you look at European history, nomadic peoples were very highly demonized because of the aforementioned Mongols. 

Cultural evolutionism also absolutely hated nomadic peoples, which is where we get the term “savage” (hunter-gatherers, nomads) and “barbarian” (horticulturalists and pastoralists, the latter nomadic); these were “lesser cultures” that needed to settle down and be brought to “civilization” (European agriculture), and nothing good could ever come out of them.

Meanwhile, in North America, nomadic peoples took up a very large portion of landmass, produced a huge amount of culture and cultural diffusion, and mostly ignoring them while trying to create a “fantasy North America” is, well, like I said: odd. 

General Discussion Points

My suggestion for you is to write a fantasy Mediterranean region. Completely serious, here.

With the kinds of dynamics you are attracted to—the empires, the continental powers, the fact you keep trying to make Europe analogues in North America—you will do a much, much more respectful job by going into a really richly researched Mediterranean fantasy world than attempting to mix Europe and North America together in ways that show European traits (settled peoples, agriculture, a single empire dominating the whole culture and being viewed as superior) as the default.

I legitimately cannot see anything in here that feels like it comes from North America, or at the very least, treats non-sensationalized peoples (aka, those outside the Maya and Mississippian region) with respect. 

It falls into Maya worship, which is a very sensationalized topic and is fuelled by racist fascination, assuming no Indigenous peoples could be that smart. 

It falls into settled peoples worship, which is something that has cultural evolutionism roots because under such a model only settled peoples with agriculture are “civilized.”

It falls into placing Western concepts (public schools, large cities, the ilk) as the ideal, better solution, compared to methods better suited to horticulturalists, pastoralists, and hunter-gatherers and letting those teaching methods be respected.

There is no shame in writing inside Europe

The Mediterranean region contains Indigenous peoples, contains a huge diversity of skin tones, contains empires, contains democracy/a variety of governments, and in general contains every aspect of what you’re trying to create without playing god with a continent that did not evolve the way you’re trying to make it. 

A Mediterranean fantasy world would still be a departure from “fantasy world 35″ as I like to call it, because it would be different from the vaguely Germanic/ French/ Norse fantasy worlds that are Tolkien ripoffs. You can dig beyond the whitewashed historical revisions and write something that actually reflects the region, and get all the fun conflicts you want.

You don’t need to go creating a European/North American blend to “be diverse.” You can perfectly respectfully write inside Europe and have as much variety in peoples as you can write in a non-European setting. Europe is not the antithesis to diversity.

North America developed a certain way for a reason. It had the required fauna, space, resources, and climate to produce what it created. The old world developed a certain way for its own reasons, based off its own factors in the same categories.

You’re not really going to get them to blend very easily, and if you did, the fact there is such a strong European way-of-life preference (by picking places that mirror European society on the surface) makes me raise an eyebrow. It’s subtle, but very much there, and the fact you are ignorant to it shows me you still need to do more work before you go writing North American Indigenous Peoples.

Writing in Europe isn’t the problem, here. Writing a whitewashed, mythologized, everyone-not-white-is-a-caricature, ahistorical “Europe” is the problem. And you cannot fix this problem by simply painting European ways of life a different skin tone when the setting isn’t European. In fact, you’re perpetuating harm by doing that, because you are recreating the cultural evolutionism that calls anything you can find in Europe “better.” Indigenous cultures were vastly different from Europe, even if they shared similar trappings. 

Let North America exist without trying to shoehorn its most famous peoples into European analogues.

~ Mod Lesya

[tossawary]

Chapter 24: “Seeing is Believing” of “pride is not the word I’m looking for” random favorite lines and commentary. Not a full list or full commentary, but longer commentary than usual to talk about quest construction. 

-

AN: This was... a weird chapter to write. When I started outlining, I had... the conversation with Shen Qingqiu planned... the conversation with Shen Yuan planned... the fact that SQH, SY, LQG, and LFL was the quest party... and the fact that they get the Eye at the end of it. That was everything. 

The entire rest of this chapter came together FRIDAY LAST WEEK. 

Huan Hua Palace wasn’t going to be there. The Weeper didn’t exist. The Eye or its previous owner wasn’t at all connected to the Garden Master. The Shadow Cave Wolf Spiders didn’t exist. The murder plant didn’t exist. The mysterious monster showing up at the end wasn’t originally planned either. 

I mean, I had a lot of pre-existing plot threads to tie in and weave with, but ohhh boy! Picture someone lying facedown on a floor like, “I forgot to plan the contents of the super important quest...” 

I was originally going to have the Eye quest a lot simpler, but given the weight “Death of the Author” had when I finally reached this part of the story, that wasn’t really going to do! It had to be bigger than that! It needed oomph! This also felt like a good opportunity to really establish the new SQH-SY dynamic. To explore SY fumbling to find a place in this world without strict character role, especially in relation to settled and well-supported SQH. 

- 

“One attempts to remain dignified,” Shen Qingqiu agrees. “As there is little point in kicking and screaming about how such ignobility isn’t fair.”

“Ha! Is there ever?”

“Not in my experience.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely not cute when I do it,” Shang Qinghua jokes.

Shen Qingqiu’s lips actually twitch at that.

Success?!

- 

AN: I wasn’t going into this fic with the intention of writing any Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu almost friendship! But it started developing and it seemed a shame not to explore Shang Qinghua developing a real relationship with Shen Qingqiu (though not a particularly close one) when the man is suppose to be the scum villain (and the readers know that the man might get replaced by Shen Yuan). 

I can see myself writing more Shang Qinghua and Original Shen Qingqiu content in the future. Someone dropped a particularly nice prompt for them in my inbox that I’m looking forward to exploring at some point. 

(I mean, not to say that Shang Qinghua has a type, but Shang Qinghua has a type and it’s handsome, deadly, intimidating, frosty men with a villainous character design and trust/abandonment and communication issues. I could make it work.)

- 

“Ah, well, two ‘ideal’ situations come to mind: severing the personal relationship for good… or, ah, talking about how to do better and trying that. You don’t have to forget or even forgive if you don’t want to! But, ah… there’s got to be a difference between totally swallowing your anger and cutting ties forever, right?” Shang Qinghua says awkwardly. “If there’s… ever going to be anything good afterwards…”

Shen Qingqiu stares at him for a sweat-inducing length of time.

 “Ah, fuck,” Shang Qinghua thinks.

“Sorry,” he says. “Ahhh, I’m just… thinking about something someone told me… in… in regards to some of my own problems. Never mind! Never mind!”

- 

AN: Luo Jiahui really is out here making Moshang and Qijiu get their fucking act together just by setting a better example. 

- 

“Shizun, my apologies for the interruption, but I came to ask Shizun if he would be willing to join our music lesson today? The disciples have missed his playing and are eager to present their improvements.”

“...Very well, unless anyone here would disagree…?” Shen Qingqiu looks directly at the Qian Cao Peak cultivator, as though daring her to object and die.

“It’s an excellent suggestion!” the Qian Cao Peak cultivator says quickly.

The young woman smiles. “And perhaps Shizun could sit in on the calligraphy lesson afterwards? In order to offer his opinion on my progress as a teacher?”

“Fishing for compliments is unbecoming,” Shen Qingqiu says dryly.

“Wait, what?” Shang Qinghua thinks.

- 

AN: So, this has all been happening in the background, but Shen Qingqiu accepted this House of Rejuvenation woman onto his Peak about... 6-ish years ago now? This is kind of meant to parallel Shang Qinghua’s once-secret relationship with Luo Jiahui. 

Shang Qinghua was out here trying to be a better person and Shen Qingqiu noticed; now Shen Qingqiu has his own positive (platonic) relationship with a nameless background character who was meant to die for plot reasons. What a thing, huh? If the story was saved because Shang Qinghua started a domino effect of saving random people who went on to change things? 

- 

After all, as Shang Qinghua said to the kid, besides Peerless Cucumber’s apparent talent for cultivation, he knows that his fellow transmigrator has three very important skills that will serve him well on An Ding Peak! 1) An encyclopedia knowledge for even seemingly pointless bullshit (which is kind of flattering, honestly). 2) The willingness to fight total strangers over seemingly pointless bullshit. And 3) a sharp enough tongue to win.

Peerless Cucumber didn’t find these points as funny as Shang Qinghua did.

- 

AN: Shen Yuan was always going to end up on An Ding Peak. I thought about sending him to Qing Jing or Qian Cao or Qiong Ding... or any other Peak... but that would take him too far away from Shang Qinghua to really explore their relationship and to move him around conveniently in the story. And SY sticking to An Ding seemed to best illustrate the fact that SY is lost and doesn’t know what to do except cling to SQH. 

- 

“It’s not much, sure, but it’s yours,” Shang Qinghua says finally. “You’ll be joining the talisman classes soon, so don’t try anything from a book and then need to request some home repairs.”

Peerless Cucumber nods and puts his stack of manuals down on the table.

“How’s your tutorial mission going?”

“Fine,” the kid says shortly. “Have you found anything for the other one yet?”

“Ah, not yet.”

- 

AN: “Are you winning, son?” meme energy here. 

- 

Ah, now Shang Qinghua recognizes his fellow transmigrator’s expression! That’s the same stunned expression one of his Huan Hua not-disciples, Yu Chaonan, made upon meeting the Bai Zhan Peak War God for the first time. Shang Qinghua assumes that Peerless Cucumber was expecting a man who looked more like a musclebound giant and less like a pop idol (if one with amazingly muscular arms), which is a super common and never-not-funny misconception people have about Liu Qingge.  

“Brother of one of the most beautiful women in this world, bro,” Shang Qinghua reminds his fellow transmigrator, amused. Aha! Now Peerless Cucumber’s vehement disinterest in the harem stuff is making even more sense than before!

Shang Qinghua’s assumption gets 100% confirmed when it comes time for Peerless Cucumber to fly with Liu Qingge for the next leg of the journey. The other transmigrator is so embarrassed and awkward about it that Shang Qinghua’s super direct brother-in-law asks if the young man is alright.

- 

AN: This was so fun to write. Shang Qinghua really can use the Liu siblings to gauge people’s sexual/romantic orientation. 

- 

The map (or rather, the copy Shang Qinghua made of the delicate original map) takes them to a green and grey landscape of leafy trees crawling over a wide network of tall cliffs and deep gorges. Gurgling rivers cut through twisting rock formations. Shang Qinghua can’t see any of these rivers on the map. Or these deathly drop ravines. From the outside, the whole thing looks like a natural maze (holy shit, there could be so many monsters and death-traps in there!), and Shang Qinghua would know those golden robes flying low over the hanging trees anywhere.

“Huan Hua,” Liu Qingge mutters.

“Do you think they’re looking for what we’re looking for?” Luo Fanli asks.

“That’s usually how it goes,” Peerless Cucumber says, before Shang Qinghua can.

- 

AN: I came up with the skeleton idea first. Then I was like... “I should give it three eyes.” And then I was like... “But who IS this dead author? A god? A spirit? What grander implications am I spinning here?” 

And THEN I remembered that I had some ambiguous powerful being force the Garden Master into exile due to a flood. This was because, in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the immortal man Gilgamesh meets in the abyss is the survivor of a great flood. So I was like, “Reduce! Re-use! Recycle! There’s my skeleton!” 

So I wanted to relate the skeleton to water because of the flood angle. Water as a symbol of cleansing/reincarnation is a big thing throughout many cultures. I can’t remember exactly how the crying aspect came up, but I knew there was going to be water in the temple now, so at some point my brain like was, “Bro, this skeleton should totally be crying because mythology vibes.” 

So I built the surrounding land off the idea that there was water flowing from or around this temple. At this point, I had decided that Huan Hua Palace should also be looking for this artifact, so I had to come up with a way to hide the temple, yet have a way for SQH’s party to track it down. 

- 

The damage to the doors is worse: someone once upon a time collapsed a part of the cliff face around the entrance, essentially leaving only the top fourth of the utterly smashed stone doors visible. It’s a wall now and has been for ages. It looks like it would take days to dig through the rubble. Someone has even super helpfully carved, “These doors will never open again,” just above the wreck.

“Guess we’ll have to go in as intruders rather than guests!” Luo Fanli says.

“What would be welcoming us inside a lost temple exactly?” Shang Qinghua asks vaguely, inwardly cursing the fact that explosive mining techniques will definitely attract the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators’ attention and also probably collapse the whole cliff on them.

“We only have to clear a passage for us, not the whole door,” Peerless Cucumber says optimistically. “Is there a special technique for this kind of thing?”

“Aha, not really.”

“Oh.”

“Why don’t we just keep following the water?” Luo Fanli says.

“...How so?” Shang Qinghua asks.

“Some of those waterfalls could be passages inside,” Liu Qingge explains, because he and the little sister-in-law apparently share the same brain. He’s already eyeing the waterfall wearing down the giant statue on the left.

- 

AN: Temples in quests need to have traps and obstacles and monsters! Well, not ALL of the did, but this one did. I based the obstacles they faced as much as I could around the whole “Death of the Author” theme, while using this whole quest to explore Shen Yuan, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, Shang Qinghua and Liu Qingge and Luo Fanli, and so on. 

The idea here with the door is that the “author” is not going to let them inside the temple to take the interpretation of the narrative (the Eye) for themselves. The story is over (the temple is closed for business)! The author is dead! If they want to get inside, they have to break inside or slip inside as intruders. 

This also creates a convenient obstacle to hold up the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators so that our party can be nearly caught later! And shows off Shang Qinghua, Liu Qingge, and Luo Fanli’s twisty lines of thinking. 

- 

Luo Fanli is holding the light and Shang Qinghua passes the other transmigrator to her, while accepting Liu Qingge’s hand for help getting out of the water.

“Ahhh, that was fun,” Shang Qinghua mutters.

Then he notices that Liu Qingge has the Cheng Luan sword out and ready. Shang Qinghua looks through the surrounding darkness, but all he can see are columns and water. For a moment, he thinks he sees something, a prowling shadow at the other end of the cavernous room, but he wipes the water out of his eyes and it’s gone.

- 

AN: The water in Shang Qinghua’s eyes briefly lets him see a flash of the invisible monsters who show up later! It helps up the tension. 

- 

Another low growl rips through the darkness and Peerless Cucumber shuffles a little closer to Shang Qinghua. Because that sounded really fucking close and yet Shang Qinghua still can’t see the thing that’s making that sound.

He doesn’t see Liu Qingge lunge at him either. He only feels his brother-in-law shove him into Peerless Cucumber, knocking them into the water, out of the way of something that howls when Liu Qingge slashes at it with his sword. Shang Qinghua rolls off Peerless Cucumber and looks up just in time to see dark blood splatter across the watery floor. Liu Qingge pursues the attacker with a second slash, but only seems to meet thin air this time.

“It’s invisible!” Luo Fanli cries. “Fuck!”

“Behind you!” Liu Qingge snaps, and spins to slash at the thin air beside him. Dark droplets of blood hit the water again and something hisses at him.

Luo Fanli whirls and slashes, searching for an opponent.

“They’re reflected in the water!” Liu Qingge yells at her, standing guard over Shang Qinghua as he gets to his feet again. “Listen for their footsteps and vocalizations! Feel the demonic energy and air displacement!”

- 

AN: I got this from a list of Dungeons and Dragons puzzles. The idea is that there’s some puzzle that must be solved, but the truth of the room can only be seen in the reflection of the nearby water (or mirror or whatever). 

Which felt fitting for a “Death of the Author” quest! Whatever an author’s intentions, the story is what they actually wrote, so the audience interprets a text without the context of the author’s insight. The truth (of the story) is in the reflection (audience interpretation)! It felt like a fun idea. 

It also allows Shen Yuan to actually contribute to the quest via monster lore and bring up his impaired vision problem. And to confront Shen Yuan with the reality of this world. And to show off Luo Fanli’s fighting skills. And to show off LIU QINGGE’S legendary fighting skills, instincts as a warrior who fights many dangerous beasts, and the fact that he’s clever and observant! 

Liu Qingge is good at what he does! And this is what he does! 

- 

Someone has… angrily… or desperately… carved a lopsided message into the wall.

 “‘If I go blind, so does the world,’” Peerless Cucumber reads.

“...That’s probably not good,” Shang Qinghua says.

“Nooo…” Fanli agrees.

The messages continue as they climb, carved into the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Most of it is illegible. Some of it is just nonsense. Some of it looks like the same kind of historical records carved into the broken tablets. Some of it looks like someone attacked the walls after reading what was written there. There are deep gouges in the walls and cracked marks that would match a giant’s hands.

 “‘The water cleans the lies,’” Peerless Cucumber reads. “‘I am the only one who can see.’ ‘Lies everywhere, lies everywhere, lies everywhere.’ ‘The water cleans the evil.’ ‘I do not have enough tears.’ ‘Everything is nothing now. Everything in vain.’”

“You really don’t need to read them!” Shang Qinghua tells the kid. “It’s fine. It's totally fine.”

- 

AN: This is mostly here to up the tension, but it’s also here to try and give insight into this being and relate them more to the “Death of the Author” and the “Seeing is Believing” themes. 

I also saw the phrase “If I go blind, so does the world” while I was browsing a list of riddles for D&D campaigns and I was like, “THAT’S SICK, I’M USING THAT.” Really brings the “an eye for an eye” and vengeance vibes. (The riddle was longer than that one phrase, but the answer was “the sun”.) 

- 

The top of the temple reveals one massive room that looks like someone was alternatively scratching their insanity into the walls and tearing chunks out of the interior design with their bare hands. Overtop of the rubble is that eerie overgrowth. There’s a fine layer of water over the floor. At the center of it all is an incredibly enormous desk, cracked in half, with a robed skeleton sitting behind it, slumped over the top. It’s a little too large to be an ordinary human.

Plus, its skull is a little too long, probably to accommodate the third eye socket in the forehead. There’s something gleaming softly yellow in the third eye socket.

“Is… there water dripping from its eyes?” Luo Fanli whispers.

“It looks like it…” Peerless Cucumber whispers back. “Like it's crying…?”

“Still…? Is it dead or not?”

 “Holy shit,” Shang Qinghua thinks, slightly nauseated. “System, bro, the worst bro I’ve ever known, tell me that we have not been swimming in a three-eyed skeleton’s magical undead tears or something this whole time.”

The shitty, no-good System stays unsurprisingly silent. 

- 

AN: Okay, so the idea here is that this being was someone who recorded history and shared their knowledge freely. This being had the ability to discern the truth of a person - they were extremely perceptive. (The Weeper is either female or doesn’t have a gender, by the way.) 

The Weeper met the Garden Master at some point. The Garden Master was an asshole, a liar, arrogant, etc.. The Weeper and the Garden Master clashed badly, until the Weeper sent the cleansing flood that nearly destroyed the sect and the Garden Master essentially had to flee to a personal abyss. 

The Garden Master sent the plant as a final “fuck you” to the Weeper. The plant caused the Weeper to slowly go mad. The smashed tablets and destroyed temple are the Weeper’s work. The Weeper (not in a great state of mind) had the temple closed themselves once they realized they and their work had been corrupted. This was a “you destroy my (embellished) reputation, I destroy yours (and your entire life)” plot by the Garden Master. 

The idea behind the tears is the whole “water is cleansing” thing. The Weeper tried to clean away the madness using their magical water-related abilities... and it actually worked for a long time. But eventually the madness began to overpower the effects of the magical water. The Weeper’s tears are from frustration and helplessness at losing control. 

The water inside the temple combats the plant’s physical effects. Also stabbing the root killed the plant and essentially broke its mental/spiritual powers. 

- 

Unfortunately, to get the fuck out of here, they have to go back through the temple. But hey! That’s still a lot better than an extended hike through an underground, haunted desert in darkness! The battle with the now-dead plant caused its growth to writhe around the temple. The vines need to be hacked through sometimes as they travel down through the rooms of broken shelves and shattered tablets.

“So much history lost…” Peerless Cucumber murmurs.

 “He still thinks of himself as a reader - an observer, a visitor, separate from the flow of fate.”

- 

AN: This is... absolutely based on the Heart from the Dishonored franchise. But this sort of item didn’t originate with Dishonored and I need it! It’s a surprise/mystery tool that will help us later! 

The Eye isn’t exactly a mind-reading object. I mean, it kind of is, but it works in a very specific way that I’m looking forward to getting into. 

- 

From there, their path back out of the natural maze is even more careful and stressful than before, now that the Huan Hua Palace Sect cultivators are actively looking for them rather than the temple. It’s slow-going and stressful and silent, except for when the Weeper’s Eye presses too close against his chest.

 “He is afraid that if he starts screaming, he will never stop,” it tells him, when he’s looking at a pale-faced Peerless Cucumber, as they fly over a particularly deathly-looking drop.

 “Oh, me too, bro!” Shang Qinghua thinks. “Seriously! Tell me something I don’t know!”

- 

AN: Having Shang Qinghua be totally unimpressed by an object like this was very funny to me. He’s the author! He’s a transmigrator! He knows these people well! He already has insight into their situations. 

- 

Shang Qinghua groans, but supposes that Peerless Cucumber would have at least been disguising Liu Qingge from the back. “You tell them that you were tracking thieves who stole something from Cang Qiong Mountain Sect,” he says quickly. “Rule of embarrassment! Admitting something that makes us look bad to a rival makes it sound true. Don’t tell them what was stolen and act really offended if they try to poke into Cang Qiong business. I’ll come back as soon as I get these two out!”

Liu Qingge nods and launches forward into the fight.

“We’re just leaving him?” Peerless Cucumber says, as they do exactly that.

“I’ll get changed and come back ‘looking for him for urgent sect business’ as soon as I’ve dropped you two off in the last town,” Shang Qinghua says. “I’m really good at acting stressed and confused, and at desperately needing an unstoppable wandering Liu Qingge back at Cang Qiong Mountain Sect immediately. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Mission isn’t over yet!”

- 

AN: Shang Qinghua is, at heart, a liar. I love him. 

[homestuckexamination]

Bold of you to assume that I wouldn't kick a God's ass if given the occasion.

Also, I hate that you consider carapacian as pngs, because it implies that they have no free will and stories outside of their given roles, and that they exist only to serve the kids, while it have been proven that they are, too, complexe and relevant individuals of their own. Actually, I would argue that the kids are the pngs here : they're the one who obey mythological quest and archetype, and forced to fulfill their roles in order to exist inside of a story bigger than themselves. We shouldn't forget that the whole sburb thing is actually a part of carapacian history and culture, and that they, as a specie, have survived and thrived for way longer than what is narrated in the Canon of HS. Actually, since the classpect constitue their mythologie, one could argue that they are the most likely origin from sburb very existence.

TL;DR : don't dismiss my boys, they might be the ones true demiurges of homestuck

NPCs, not PNGs. X3

And listen, no, Homestuck is literally about breaking free of biological and cultural preconceptions and growing as your own person, like, of course Carapaces can grow beyond just being secondary background things, and PM is the BEST example of this, relentlessly seeking revenge against Bec Noir, donning the queen’s ring, and then helping WV build a new society together on Earth-C. But they are designed to be NPCs, like Consorts- Hell, Carpaces are literally lab-grown in the Veil and, the citizens of the Moon in particular, are all shaped after Pawns.

I am not trying to disrespect them or say they cannot be more, but categorically, they are Pawn NPCs. Homestuck’s entire reality is a mixture of a Story, a Theatre Play and a Game, it shows this ‘fake’ contrivance in many, many layers that affect the Kids. The Kids are the ‘Protagonists’ and ‘Player Characters’, but they are also Humans, Alive, with their own Will, and they suffer for being forced into this path of Predestination, in the same way that Carapaces are both their own people, capable of going beyond what they’re “supposed” to do, but also quite literally Filler NPCs in a game meant to be VERY average beings that keep the Lore of their Heroes and have the capacity of recreating a Society and rebuild the destroyed world their Game demands. And when the Story doesn’t give protagonism to a character, when they’re left in the background, when they’re in the Void rather than the Light, these characters are often implied to even lack Free Will, because in this fake reality they’re designed to be Filler.

Everyone in Homestuck is their own person with the ability to grow beyond what they’re “supposed” to be by their culture or society, but what is required for this, first of all, is to actually be allowed to approach the Spotlight. WV, AR, PM, these are Carapacians we’ve seen more of. The Midnight Crew, too, we’ve seen them a lot. They are the ‘important’ ones, that stand out from the crowd of otherwise Generic NPCs their society is designed to embody. And even beyond Carapaces, think of the Guardians. They’re figures literally missing facial features that are barely even shown to speak, if they speak at all, in a way that, despite being Humans, practically gives them the same level of interaction with their children as most Lusii have with their Trolls. They’re symbolically parental figures, inscrutable by these growing children, almost like the Denizens later become figures of myth in their Lands that shape the entire quest they’re supposed to go on. This trend continues in HS^2- The Influencers in particular, where they’re given the choice to actually confront Jane’s regime, and step into the Spotlight somewhat, influence the story, something that is said to have a feeling in their Reality, something that literally feels Different, that brings awareness and a Change to these otherwise unremarkable people. Their other choice would be to not challenge Jane, and throw Vrissy and Vriska and the others under the bus, something that’d just make them comply, that would remove the chance of interacting with this ‘canon’, that would leave them, once more, in the Void, as secondary characters that barely appeared or influenced anything and just faded away. In the eyes of the story, these characters may as well not exist, and with the NPC idea, these would’ve just been filler characters that fulfil a purpose and otherwise don’t even exist or have any free will.

It’s all layers of fabrication and fakeness and contrivance.

TL;DR: I am not dismissing Carapaces when I say they’re NPCs. They literally are designed to be Blank Filler, and the fact they aren’t when you focus on them, is actually intentional of the way Homestuck’s reality is built. It’s just Meta all the way down. That is why the most powerful entities in Homestuck literally take upon the role of Author. Beyond being a character, or even a person, they direct where the story is going.

[revengerevisited]

So I’ve been kinda dancing around my original story idea for a little while, and I got this idea in my head of ‘what if I release chapter 1 and then get feedback without telling anyone what the story is about first so it’s more of a surprise?’ But honestly? I’m realizing since I already released a preview-of-a-preview for chapter 1, and it might be a little while until I finish chapter 1, plus I honestly kinda feel like I’d rather work on sketches of my character designs than write at the moment, I might as well go ahead and tell you guys. X’3

So! I watched a couple anime recently both centered around the premise of... monster girls! These being Monster Musume and Monster Girl Doctor, but then I noticed there’s also Interviews with Monster Girls, A Centaur’s Life, and the infamous Interspecies Reviewers, and I asked myself... Monster girls are pretty popular right now, yeah? But where’s all the monster boys?! And that’s how I got the idea! I re-watched some of my favorite anime based on Otome Games, Kamigami no Asobi and Uta no Prince Sama for inspiration as well, and a few ones I hadn’t seen before like Dance with Devils and Magic-kyun Renaissance for inspiration as well.

So now I’ve got my premise that I shared earlier: This is the story of Millie, a young woman down on her luck who happens to live in a world where monsters aren’t just real, but commonplace. She started working as a maid in a mansion-turned-art-school whose students are a group of very attractive monster boys. The twist is that these aren’t just any monster boys; they belong to various rare and exotic species with deadly reputations...

Note that character and place names are technically place-holders for now and may change if I come up with better ones. Now, I don’t wanna spoil anything story-wise, but I think I can introduce my setting and some of the characters that you’re gonna meet. The story is set in a modern setting, though it’s vague if it’s actually Earth or just some generic world similar to it, as I try to avoid referencing real-world places or events. This is a world where humans and monsters live together after a Great Interspecies War happened in the past, but tensions have mostly relaxed by the time the story takes place. The war could be thought of as the equivalent of our own World War One, one in which there was a truce decided after many years of stalemate fighting.

The city everything takes place in is tentatively named Dullahan, and was built directly after the war to commemorate peace between human and monster kind. It’s considered an artistic cultural center, and it’s got a lot of interesting entertainment places to go to, arcades, theaters, aquariums, etc, that the characters can have a lot of different shenanigans in. The other main setting is the Beaufort Academy of the Arts, which was actually a mansion that was converted into a small private school. This is where all the characters live, and our main character Millie works as a maid there.

Before I go into the characters, I should start with the various monster species. There are 12 species, divided into 2 groups: common monsters and exotic monsters. The common monsters are centaurs, harpies, lamias (snake people), kobolds (dog people), ogres, and merrows (mermaids). These species are all pretty standard, and will be mostly background characters and npcs. The main characters, and love interests for Millie, will be of the exotic variety: arachnes (spider people), sirens (deep-sea mermaids), mandrakes (plant people), dragons, manticores (with a liontaur body-type), and scyllas (octopus people).

So what differentiates a common monster from an exotic one? Well, while the Interspecies War was between humans and monsters in general, some monsters were already at least partially integrated into human society, and the rest followed soon after the war ended. These monsters were almost as common as humans, and either herbivorous or omnivorous, with the exception of the carnivorous lamias who prefer to eat eggs over anything else. On the other hand, the so-called ‘exotic’ species were not only much more rare, but they had a very different food preference... one which earned them the now derogatory nickname... man-eaters.

Naturally, most ‘man-eaters’ weren’t exactly welcomed into human --nor common monster-- society with open arms, not that most of them wanted to. For the most part, species as powerful and dangerous as them didn’t want to play nice with those they had once --and in some cases still do-- regard as prey, and so hid away into the furthest reaches of the world. Which of course makes them perfect material for all our leading men and Millie’s various love-interests!! Oh yes, while all of these monster boys are perfectly civilized --well, for the most part-- they still belong to species that many both human and monster alike continue to fear to this day. While they aren’t exactly fish out of water (well, except for the siren) there’s still plenty of awkward misunderstandings and interesting scenarios that can be played out.

So! Let’s have a quick run-down of the characters, keep in mind that none of these names are final and could change later on. First there’s Millie, a hardworking young woman who’s had a recent streak of bad luck. Through a misunderstanding she gets hired as a maid in a mansion-turned-art-school. She’s very sweet and tries her best to help others, but she’s not as innocent as she appears; she’ll understand your innuendos just fine, even if she doesn’t really say any herself! Next is Richard and Lara Beaufort, a husband and wife who run the school. Richard is rather laid-back, yet he’s also a master of all kinds of art, painting, sculpture, photography, dancing, singing, you name it! Lara is his arachne wife, a rather boisterous woman who owns a high-class fashion company. The secret to her clothing’s success?? Arachne silk, of course! The school was her idea, a way to help better integrate exotic species into society. Will her mission succeed? Only time can tell.

Richard and Lara have a son named Simon, our first love interest and a human-arachne hybrid who takes almost entirely after his mother in the looks-department (hybrids tend to look like one species or the other, rather than a mix of both). He’s a bit withdrawn due to dealing with bullying as a kid; most people --human and monster alike-- are afraid of his spider-like appearance, so he doesn’t get out much-- to the point his parents worry about him being a shut-in for life! He’s also a gamer boy, and has a secret soft side for gothic poetry, although he doesn’t want to join his parents’ art classes. He actually disapproves of his mother’s exotic species integration plan, as from what he’s experienced he feels it’s a waste of time.

Simon’s best friend and Millie’s second love interest is Louis, a mandrake who lives in the woods behind the manor. Louis is extremely shy and more than a bit lonely, even more so than Simon, and he doesn’t speak very often out of fear that the sound of his voice will hurt others around him. Mandrake screams can induce insanity or even kill those that hear them, hence his fear. Being part plant, Louis has mild shape-shifting abilities and is able to transform between child and young adult forms at will, although he’s actually the oldest of the group. He also isn’t a student at the art school, although he has an interest in floristry.

Now for our actual students! Forrest is a manticore, which in this world means he has a body similar to that of a centaur, but with the lower half of a lion instead of a horse, and a scorpion-like tail tipped with a deadly venomous stinger. Despite his species’s name literally meaning ‘man-eater’, Forrest is extremely friendly and cheerful, and is very sporty too. His passion is photography, and he also loves eating food-- any sort of meat dish is fine by him! He’s also a fan of fantasy tabletop roleplaying games, and will often make references comparing them to everyday life; he always plays the knight who saves the princess!

Anthony is a childhood ‘friend’ of Forrest’s, though he’s loathe to admit it. Highly intelligent and highly snobbish, Anthony fancies himself an intellectual-- and he’s not exactly wrong. Being a dragon, he likes to hoard things-- in his case, knowledge. Anthony loves to read, and is most often found in the library. His skill is in drawing and painting, and all his paintings’ invariably morose subject matter worry Millie. Still, this haughty dragon could definitely learn to loosen up a little, and be a little more kind; perhaps his stay at the academy --and his interactions with Millie-- will open his mind to appreciating the feelings of others. He does, at the very least, greatly respect Master Beaufort as a master of the arts.

The other two students are denizens of the sea, and have been friends for a very long time. Emil is a scylla, and like all scyllas he’s a little eccentric, and just can’t seem to keep his tentacles to himself! While Forrest is obsessed with eating, Emil’s true calling is cooking, and he loves making all kinds of dishes, especially anything seafood and/or foreign. Emil also is highly appreciative of women’s fashion, and absolutely adores everything to come from Madam Beaufort’s clothing brand-- so much so that he actually wears them himself! His pretty-boy looks and penchant for wearing women’s clothing actually has Millie mistake him for a girl at first, though he’s very much unafraid to show her his romantic side, or at least what he interprets as romantic... 

Keeping Emil’s pervy antics in check is our sixth and final monster boy, Oswald! As a siren, Oswald spent most of his life in the sea, and still has a lot to learn about humanity. He’s a pretty cool guy but gets a bit embarrassed about his species’s troublesome past as the cause of many shipwrecks at sea, and would prefer to not discuss it. His passion is rock music, and his main instrument is the guitar. He also loves to sing, but refrains from doing so due to the hypnotic effect it has on other species. His lack of legs, tentacles, or a snake-like tail means that like other merrows and sirens he requires a wheelchair to move around on land, and often feels frustrated that he can’t show off how adept he is at traversing water. He’s also easy to embarrass and obsessed with not allowing anything to ‘ruin’ his manly image, including allowing Millie (a girl!) to help carry him around.

So there you have it, all my monster boys! I left out a few things, as those would be major spoilers, but those are my ideas for the characters for now! I’ll try to draw and post some sketches of their designs later. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten anything, but this won’t be the last time I talk about monster boys. Any questions or comments would be very much appreciated! Nsfw questions are allowed (all the boys wear pants for a reason, after all), though I’m currently not sure if this series will be 16+ or 18+, if you catch my meaning. Lemme know how interested you are in this story, or if you’re not interested please let me know that too! 

[magiaordinaria]

In Defense of Frida Kahlo

◊please see my note on these images at the end of the post, because yes, this is a form of imitation for the sake of expressing desire to belong.

Frida Kahlo has become a difficult subject, some would argue an easy target- which to me is tragic because she was a person with a life and with struggles and today she can no longer defend herself.  I personally think she doesn’t have to. I understand her as a historical figure that shaped Mexican history and the Mexican image. Lately I found myself understanding her on a different, more personal level when in October 2020 I came across an episode of the Nerdy Latinas Podcast, who were responding to a Tweet by an Indigenous Mexican woman accusing Frida of cultural appropriation.  My interest was piqued.  

��Frida was Mexican. How is it appropriation?” I thought.  

In the episode, Chismeando About Frida Kahlo, the hosts explore Frida’s background and a bit of her social context. I listened and I recommend you do too.  I gave a few comments to one of the hosts and was later invited to share my thoughts on the episode.*  Below is bit of background and my response to the episode follows after that.     

Prologue

When I initially listened to the episode my gut reaction was to become defensive, protective of Frida, despite not having had a single artifact of hers (my stance on purchasing her work or her image is a different story).  I began to explore those feelings, and once I talked myself through this gut reaction, I realized this is actually very much worth exploring.  It’s important to take into account the complexity of the social, personal, and historical context that Frida was experiencing and a part of.  

One of the things the Nerdy Latinas brought up was the fact that Mexican schools during Frida’s childhood emphasized that the indigenous cultures of Mexico were the true cultures of Mexico.  Frida, it is well-known, is half german and half Mexican. This conflict in identity was something that I deeply related to as a Mexican woman born in the US.  

They pointed out that there were indigenous women who spoke out about Frida’s use of their clothing at the time, but were ignored. In the same episode, they talk about how indigenous women who make these clothes live off the sale of their indigenous clothing- Which makes me think,  who is allowed to buy or not buy these clothes?  It reassured me that there is more to cultural appropriation than simply wearing or using things “not intended for you”.  Does intent matter? How are we verifying a person’s, in this case Frida Kahlo’s, intent? Short answer is, we can’t really.

 Later in the episode, they ask the question, why aren’t other dark-skinned Mexican women artists spoken about?  There are many indigenous artists that were overshadowed by Frida.  An important example they bring up is Maria Izquierdo (ees-kee-ehr-doh). She was a contemporary of Frida’s and a student of Diego Rivera.  She was doing well in her time and “showing promise” according to Diego himself. But when she spoke out against Frida’s feminist group Izquierdo lost a prestigious art commission to Diego Rivera and his male artist friends.  I consider this claim of overshadowing pretty unfair, because it’s not entirely up to Frida who gets seen or not. And if we’re being perfectly honest, Diego and his friends probably jumped at the opportunity to take it for themselves.

She is still, after the paint dries, a woman in a white man’s world.  

In my response, I come from a personal perspective with a lifetime of identity crises to fuel it.  I focus in on the question of whether Frida can be accused of appropriation as well the concept of appropriation itself.  

Is it fair to say that Frida had all the cards in her hands?

Is it productive to be upset over her perceived appropriation when there is so much today that is so blatantly grossly appropriated and mocked from my culture? 

My Response:

“I definitely think it’s worth exploring Frida’s Use of clothing. I think, understandably, it brought up a lot of personal feelings because it’s something that I personally grapple with; this idea that my appearance could constitute  grounds for appropriation.

...I think when Hispanic*** Americans learn about negative criticisms of Frida Kahlo they take the criticisms personally because that’s what they and myself included..., understood it looked like to be Mexican. 

And if she’s wrong about her use fo clothing, it can’t easily be understood as an homage or as uplifting or as an act of rebellion against the whitewashing of the Mexican culture, which i think is something that is important when you live outside of Mexico.  I think hispanic people--we just want to take care that our culture and our identity doesn’t get erased. so without the clothing that Frida wore the rest of us have only what we are calling the colonizer’s version of how to present ourselves as Mexicans. 

Additionally, I didn’t really find her mixed ethnicity all that significant because since Mexico’s inception as a hispanic country most if not all non indigenous Mexicans are mixed.  

our DNA is a map of people having been invaded, transcontinental travel in Europe, and slavery, 

so i never really understood Frida as a white woman, even though her father was german. I’m 48% indigenous, the rest is North African, European--and on top of that I’m born in the US. That’s all to say that Mexican is a complex ethnicity but it’s Mexican all the same.  I do see Frida as separate from indigenous and I’m also understanding that the way a person lives the culture is important.  Personally, I feel sometimes I can’t consider myself Mexican if I’m not living the cultural practices. I find it hard to justify, for example, celebrating Day of the Dead. In contrast, I feel a responsibility to connect with those aspects of my culture in order to feel like I belong somewhere, or I know who I am, what my point of view is, and what I could do in order to impart a positive view of my culture to the Americans watching me now.  

My thoughts are maybe Frida [thought so] too.  In a way, maybe that was her intention. This episode brings up the idea of a crisis of identity for Frida and I think because she was born in a time when Europeanism** was being criticized heavily her schooling was perhaps in reaction to that.  To give you a very popular example, the poem La Calavera Garbancera° most commonly known as La Calavera Catrina was written by Jose Guadalupe Posada around when Frida was born.  That icon we have today (La Catrina) was actually a symbol of derision for Mexicans adopting European values.  And I think when you’re taught certain ideals in the wider space in which you’re meant to integrate, it’s going to create a conflict between the way you’re raised and how you would like to see yourself in order to fell like you belong.  So a personal example would be me growing up in the US.  Saying the word Mexican was like saying a dirty word. For a very long time I was convinced that I should be ashamed of saying that.  I tried more and more to become what was considered American- which was synonymous with being “correct” and for that I have been called a coconut or whitewashed by the same people who would deride me for being so Hispanic. 

Today I want to undo all of that, 

and i find myself [thinking] if I buy from indigenous craftswomen a handwoven dress to wear and to show to my wider audience that “this is Mexico, this is what indigenous women can do and it’s beautiful,” I fear I’ll face the same criticisms as Frida when I genuinely find [the dresses/clothing] lovely to wear and I only want to support the craftswomen of Mexico.  So I don’t think appropriation happens when you buy indigenous crafts directly from indigenous men and women.  As an artist myself, I would think they’d want to sell as much as they could, sharing their pride in their work.  I think appropriation is buying from American corporations that are making money off of a diluted form of culture from oppressed people, stealing those complex designs expertly executed by thousands of years of knowledge and skill.  To buy these goods from white companies, from huge manufacturers is to really whitewash culture.  And on the flip side, I think it would be way worse for me to say, 

oh no I’m not buying from indigenous people because I’m not indigenous.  

But then turn around and buy something cheap from a huge manufacturer instead.  

I think there’s room in this conversation to believe that Frida felt some kind of genuine desire and made a genuine attempt to connect to the Mexican identity she was taught in school. 

 I think she made a choice to embody what she felt was fundamentally Mexican but to what end, I honestly can’t say.  Was it to bring awareness? was it to feel like she belonged? was it a statement? And that’s the thing we just can’t be sure.  

All of this is not to say she didn’t offend people, and in the process took the light away from indigenous women.  Or that this topic isn’t worth confronting.  I was confronted with the question, though, of how much of that is or was  her fault or her intention and how much of that is the time she lived in and her society’s discrimination.  I’m glad you guys brought up her social milieu because 

it matters a lot who were and are the voices speaking of her and approving her for public consumption. 

 I think Frida’s international travels and being on the cover of Paris’s vogue at the time, and the mystique she built around herself coupled with the fact that her skin color was internationally acceptable made her the icon that she is today around the world.  That much is true, but can it also be true she made an honest attempt to honor Mexican heritage in defiance of those popular racist attitudes? I think there’s room for that. 

 I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say Frida is guilty of appropriation not really today, especially because we have much more blatant and grossly offensive forms of appropriation happening in our time.  I’m sure I don’t need to go into that if you do a simple google search of “Mexican Costume” you can actually find white people dressing up as caricatured versions of Mexicans.  

So I think a more productive conversation regarding appropriation in our world and in our culture today would be how to teach our diaspora across the globe to value handmade crafts. sure it can be more expensive, but you’re not buying a single object, you’re buying hundreds of years of knowledge and tradition.  I would even argue that homemade is preferable to buying cheap, ready made stuff from corporations that have no regard for tradition or quality and who are actually drawing attention away from indigenous communities and diluting our cultures.”

Further Musings/Conclusion

I think that we are learning a valuable lesson in what is done is done, but what do we do now?  My main concern is that there is outrage over the women that Frida Kahlo “overshadowed”,

 but the simplest solution is to stop talking about these indigenous artists within the context–in the shadow– of Frida Kahlo.  

They should be spoken about in their own right.  If the dialogue about these women doesn’t revolve around or rely on Frida and her history, it would do these women justice.  They are out there and they can exist.  The problem is, how to talk about them without drawing comparisons to Frida? Should we avoid placing them in the same context? Questions for which I personally lack the answers right now.  

What I do know is that I think we should avoid turning this into a situation where we tear down one woman- 

who in the grand scheme of things accomplished a lot- in order to raise another.  No, no mijita, as my mom would say.  Eso no se hace, that’s not something we should do.  

This feels too much like a situation in which someone like Frida becomes the target of appropriation because it’s easier than confronting really tough situations like white companies selling “ceremonial grade” chocolate.  

Let’s tackle that sometime.

Personally, as you may have been able to tell,  I understand Frida from the perspective of a person caught in the middle of two worlds.  I don’t exactly feel like I belong in my American homeland nor in my familial, ancestral home of Mexico.  I am part of a community that feels a sense of disconnection from our roots and therefore, lack meaning; we lack a true sense of self.  But the more I interact with others like me, the more I create a community for myself, the more I understand that my place is where I want to be seen.  I think it’s possible that that’s what Frida chose.  

notes

◊This set of pictures is a type of homage centered around a very conscious  imitation.  I created these images back in September 2020 about a month before I learned of the Frida Kahlo tweet or the podcast episode.  They were created in an attempt to portray a desire to belong to the culture I come from.  Everything worn is a symbolic imitation in search of identity.  In contrast to the last set of images where I wear the braid headband again.  Here it is inspired by, rather than imitation; a carrying forward of traditions (like those seen here) into a more understandable form for myself.  The evolution of the outfit is taking me one step closer to figuring out what my place is and what my voice is within the greater scope of my Mexican heritage. 

*I recorded a few thoughts in audio format, sent it off to Short Latina and that was that.  To what extent my comments were included, I’m not sure, I haven’t had the chance to listen to their follow up episode.  Perhaps I was proven completely wrong! 

**Europeanism- I know it’s not a real word, but It felt right :P

***I imagine Frida is important to a lot of Latinx, but for the purposes of this argument, I specifically mean Mexicans and Mexican-Americans because of the specific ties to cultural attire.

°It’s actually called: Remate De Calaveras Alegres y Sandungueras; Las que hoy son empolvadas Garbanceras pararan en deforme calaveras

[antialiasis]

Worldbuilding June (Pokémon edition), Days 8-12

Whoops forgot to post these for a couple of days, too busy with a load of Things as always.

8. Who rules in your world?

TQftL never brings up government, but each region has its own human government, generally just standard representative democracies similar to what we have in the modern world. Ouen has an elected parliament and president. It's a fairly utopian world with little scarcity and politics play kind of a background role - they keep things running, they have some different parties, but there's low polarization and usually they work pretty smoothly together and have little conflict. The situation in other regions is similar - movement is very free and conflict between them is rare and minor in the grand scheme of things.

QftLverse Pokémon, once again, have their own societies and are not subject to human rule except in a limited way while they're with a trainer, as per the Agreement, an all-encompassing contract dictating how the relationship between humans and Pokémon should work. Different Pokémon species govern themselves differently, but their societies are generally based on smaller self-governing groups. The Scyther society has a single leader, who is meant to be the simply strongest in the swarm, and anyone can challenge them to a duel to the death to take their place at any time.

The Morphicverse is once again close to Earth, with different countries having different modes of government. The Poké-USA's politicical climate resembles the actual USA's political climate in ~2007, but if I ever wrote references to the current president I wouldn't make him an outright Bush expy or anything, beyond being from the conservative one of the two highly polarized parties.

9. What religions and myths/legends exist in your world?

The QftLverse's human society is basically post-religious. Legendary Pokémon are revered, but not worshipped - people don't pray to them, ascribe natural phenomena to them, expect them to watch over them personally, perform symbolic rituals associated with them, etc. That said, humans do have myths concerning them - not always accurate ones. The story describes the human myth behind one set of legendaries early on before the reality much later turns out to have been fairly different, for instance.

QftLverse Pokémon have their own myths, legends, religions and beliefs. The Scyther society explored in the spin-offs has a bit of a vague mythology going on explaining the sun, moon, stars and clouds, but it's not very important to them, more of a just-so story. Meanwhile, they live by a system of ethics known as the Code that they consider sacred and all-important, though it doesn't have a godly figure behind it as the source of it, only a philosophy. Other Pokémon might variously have straight-up religion (whether worshipping legendary Pokémon or something else), be entirely areligious, or something in between; most will have myths and legends in some form, though.

The Morphicverse has a form of Christianity, which is functionally a lot like ours; this also means they had a version of Judaism. Other specific religions don't come up, but they'd at the very least be as varied as real-world religions. Like in real life, there are many sects and variants, and as many individual interpretations of faiths as there are people. The villain cult in particular has fringe views that in no way resemble the mainstream. And like in real life, many people nominally believe but don't really practice their religion, and many are agnostic or atheist.

Legendary Pokémon in the Morphicverse are cryptids - there are myths and legends about them, and people think they're neat, write fiction and make movies about them all the time, but in the modern day, actually-for-real believing that they exist out there ranges from mildly eccentric to entirely unthinkable. Worship of legendary Pokémon exists, but in the way that modern neo-Paganism does. It's not remotely mainstream, generally seen as a weird hippie thing, and the notion of Arceus appearing in the flesh one day and declaring he created the universe is about as fantastical to most people as the notion of the Norse pantheon doing the same in our world.

10. What traditions are observed in your world?

QftLverse human traditions are mostly just secular holidays - commemorations of important days in the region's history, etc. It's tradition for most children to go out on a Pokémon journey the spring after they turn ten years old, and participate in a First-Timers' League in the autumn if they manage to stick it out for the whole journey and collect all the badges - there are kids who don't, but it's rare for them to not want to, and other kids may see them as no fun.

Every year in Green Town, there is a Pokémon Festival originally built around the legendary Pokémon Chaletwo's yearly brief visit to the outskirts of the city (which may or may not be ditched in the next revision); it hosts a number of Pokémon-themed events over several days. One of them is a starter Pokémon giveaway, where most kids go to get official starter Pokémon, who have specifically volunteered and been trained to work with beginning trainers - though many kids have had Pokémon as pets/partners since they were young and journey with them instead, or their parents otherwise get them a Pokémon who's up for a beginning trainer. (Many Pokémon kind of like the idea of journeying with a beginning trainer, in the way that many people like the idea of getting a kitten rather than an adult cat - just something special about having been with them from the start. Though getting a starter who's actually been trained to deal with kids is recommended over just finding any random enthusiastic Pokémon.)

Pokémon have all kinds of different traditions. The Scyther society as explored in the spin-offs has a number of traditions and rituals, including a sort of blood baptism of new hatchlings, the leader of the swarm teaching all the adolescent Scyther about the Code, and First Prey, where each of the adolescents is sent out to hunt prey on their own for the first time, with a male and female witness following, so they can prove their ability to kill and to feed themselves. Afterwards, they're expected to publicly offer a symbolic piece of the meat of their first prey to some members of the swarm, and doing so signals respect; you don't technically have to, but in practice everyone always offers it to the leader and not doing so would be taken as outright disrespect.

The Morphicverse is once again culturally similar to the real world and has mostly similar sorts of traditions. Pokémon training is less culturally ingrained there, but still a very common hobby for kids.

11. What are some ways people communicate with pokémon in your world, or pokémon with each other?

In the QftLverse, humans learn to understand Pokémon speech as a mandatory subject at school. Pokémon inherently understand human speech, but they speak anime-style, usually in syllables of their species' name (which is what the species are named after). They share one language, which is not based on exactly what the syllables are but the tone and the way they're combined, hence why it works regardless of the species.

In the current version of the fic, this is pure handwave worldbuilding: it's established that it happens at school at the beginning, and then we just move on to the story, where every human simply understands what Pokémon are saying at all times. In the next revision I'd give a bit more proper worldbuilding attention to it - let the language barrier be a little more present, humans vary in exactly how good they are at it (luckily it's already the main character's best subject at school), and otherwise treat it less like it's just an excuse to act like Pokémon speak English.

In the Morphicverse, Pokémon do communicate but they don't do complex communication - instead, it's closer to the sort of communication most animals do in the real world. They can express how they're feeling, draw attention to something interesting, sound the alarm about something scary, ask another Pokémon to follow, and can do this in a somewhat more efficient and intelligent way than most animals generally do. But one way or another, they don't communicate complicated abstract ideas, neither to humans nor to one another. Pokémon don't automatically understand human speech here, though they're very quick learners when it comes to commands, and they can pick up a fair amount just by being around humans, allowing them to get the gist of basic statements and requests without being explicitly taught them, though anything abstract would still be entirely lost on them. You could tell a Pokémon you've lived with for years "I lost my hat, can you help me find it" and they'll go look for your hat, but they'd be lost if you tried to ask them for anything much more complicated than that.

12. What is the gym circuit or adventuring organization like in your world?

In the QftLverse, gyms are meant to be taken on in a specific order and gym leaders are accordingly expected to keep their Pokémon below a certain level. To be officially sanctioned by the League, a gym needs to have a theme - usually a type, although Rick got away with a legendary theme because he gets away with everything because he is hypnotizing League officials with his Mewtwo super-clone I was twelve years old. Every year there's a First-Timers' League in the autumn in each region, where new trainers who have collected all eight badges of their region face off (except for the bit where I somehow made a guy who'd been training for years be part of it without thinking about it properly). There's also a global Old-Timers' League for more experienced trainers, which crowns a world champion; this doesn't involve badges and is just a tournament. Trainers are advised to stick to official routes, while Pokémon who want a trainer seek out the routes and others avoid them; going off-route has the potential to lead to run-ins with Pokémon who are more hostile to humans. It's not forbidden but it's drilled into kids' heads that you're not supposed to.

The Morphicverse's gym circuit is not too dissimilar to that, but gym leaders are expected to carry a variety of Pokémon teams to take on challengers of different skill levels, who can take on the gyms of their circuit in any order. Kid trainers are strictly meant to travel only along official routes, which are thoroughly monitored to be safe, and often take public trainer transportation; when they're eighteen they can get an adult trainer license with which they can take their Pokémon anywhere they like, at their own risk. Mostly kids do it as a hobby, and many young children dream of being professional trainers, but only a fraction are actually good enough to make money off it, so most either quit it after a few summers on realizing it's not for them (they might release their Pokémon or keep them as pets, depending on how high-maintenance they are), or continue to do it as a side hobby. There exist college-level training schools for those who really want to dedicate their lives to it, but by that point in time most people will have dropped their pro trainer dreams.

[roundedloaf]

Vina Jie-Min Prasad's writing is SO GOOD, yes! She also has a short story in Uncanny called "Fandom For Robots" if you haven't already seen that one! And now for some mood whiplash, I'm just going to copy and paste in my original 10% of a fic idea that I had started writing in the tags: yes, give Three a hobby! And cooking has recipes to follow so it's even like having protocol. oh, but wait, SecUnits can't eat, so Three can't enjoy the food (1/?)

((2/?)  it makes, and I made myself sad about this concept I have known about for all of 30 seconds :(. but wait, I feel like it's implied at the end of the book that Three goes with the PreservationAux humans, so it could cook for them! and then Murderbot comes back to visit, and it is very definitely not having an emotion about its humans being all endeared to Three and Three's cooking and no, Amena, it definitely is not jealous it doesn't know what you're talking about anyway it's going to go

(3/3) patrol the perimeter now while all the humans are busy with dinner because it doesn't need to be there because it doesn't eat. And okay Murderbot has certainly emotionally matured over the whole series, and over the course of NE specifically, but also, consider: making it have New Baby Syndrome about Three amuses me, so sometimes you gotta gently nudge canon to get it to do what you want. Anyway I hope you enjoyed that long ridiculous ramble!

First off sorry for taking so long to respond! I had a lot of thoughts about this and uni has been a whole mess :(, secondly I have read “Fandom for Robots“, i love it so much and I didn’t realize it was by the same author!  

Thirdly onto Three, I have a lot of feelings about three and i love your idea!

Three is far more the sort of sad robot that Mensah and the rest of the humans were expecting Murderbot to be. Murderbot even from the start of ASR has a very clear sense of identity and individuality. It’s had the time from watching media and thinking and having to directly deal with a whole load of emotional pain. While it doesn’t really know what it wants, it at least knows a lot about what it doesn’t want. It doesn’t want to be looked at, It doesn’t want to be trapped, It doesn’t want other people to decide what’s good for it.

Whereas with Three, the clearest idea we get of who it is and what it wants is through the line “There is a lot about what is going on here that I don’t understand. But I am participating anyway.” Three hasn’t had the chance to build up any real internal identity for itself, all it knows is that it would like to help people (the other two SecUnits included). It is far more likely to accept help when offered, it is more likely to attempt to learn human protocol through trying it out. If given the same offer as Murderbot at the end of ASR it would take it.

I think also it’s still fairly unlikely to want to ask questions or to ask things of people. It was able to ask Murderbot for additional files, but from the sounds of things it took quite some time to work up the nerve to do that.

So after the end of Network Effect, it takes everyone quite a while to get everything sorted out, murderbot takes its time getting close to Peri’s crew, but eventually, possibly after a pit stop at preservation, murderbot goes off with ART and Three is on Preservation.

Amena is the person who insists on Three staying with her family. Ratthi offers, and so do Overse and Arada. Three gets a choice. This is important. Mensah and maybe someone else idek makes sure it knows that it has a choice, and that it’s welcome to make another one later if it doesn’t want to. (Three finds this confusing, but the HelpMe.2.file lets it recognize that this person can be trusted). But Amena seems very excited and tells it the most details about her home, so Three goes with her.

(sidenote: ratthi lives next door to overse and arada, and overse and arada are totally the friends who just show up on the couch, to the point that a number of ratthi’s friends get confused when they realize that theres only one bed because they know that the three of them arent all together (the times murderbot stays over it sleeps on the couch))

If i was going to write a fic, this is where it would start. Three is at the family farm, the very place Murderbot didn’t want to go. Mensah and Thiago are still busy dealing with some stuff, so the only person there who actually knows Three is Amena. Three is very confused, and i think a few of the humans try to treat it like murderbot? or how they think murderbot wanted to be treated.

(The children are of course excited, and ask it if it wants to share media. It doesn’t have much to share but at least one of them tries to share their favorite show with it.)

Anyway things are a bit awkward but Three is trying, and they’re all trying, The actual inciting cooking incident is Amena making something for a potluck, because tying in the social side of cooking/food is important. Amena gives an explanation of what she’s doing and attempts to give more of that social background on it. She also tells it that its welcome to use whatever in the kitchen if it likes? (Amena is aware that secunits dont eat, but either she’s distracted, thinks they dont need to eat but can, or is more trying to give an introduction to the way food works as a part of preservation culture)

Three takes her at her word, and when no one else is around it attempts to cook. Options: either replicating what amena made which gives the fun idea of it making cookies and then everyone thinking it was Amena, or attempting to make something else and making a total mess, having to entirely start over, just for the humor part of it. But when it starts to make halfway decent food (by it’s own confused standards) I think it leaves it out, or in areas that are known to be marked as communal food.

It’s a big family so maybe it takes a couple of days for people to notice that it’s Three cooking this extra food. There’s a bit of confusion, and I think its Farai that ends up talking to it, making sure this is okay, that it knows it doesn’t have to help, that its okay to cook when people are around, etc etc. Point being, at the end of this conversation she offers to cook with Three, if it wants to.

Smash cut, cute scenes of three occasionally cooking (and being taught how to cook) by farai and the kids and maybe even the other adults around. (a couple of times there are too many people in the kitchen and it freezes, they give it space when this happens). Three gets multiple checks from people that cooking is something it wants to do, rather than something it feels obligated to do.

Murderbot is incredibly confused when it gets back and this is happening. Like for a moment its offended because it feels like someone is forcing three into a more bot servant role, and is yet another person checking in with three about this. There is a bit of jealousy there, that Three seems to be interacting with the humans a lot better, but i think it’s more confusion. This is a person that Murderbot could never be, and frankly doesn’t want to be. It still wishes it was better talking to people but that would involve, ugh, talking to people. By the end of Network Effect i think its comfortable enough in it’s friendships to not worry so much about anyone replacing it. Plus i think the sort of relationships Three would build through this would be different to the ones murderbot has built.

(jeesh this got long)

[redantsunderneath]

On Analysis Part 1 - Hermeneutics and Configurative reading (the “what” part)

“Without turning, the pharmacist answered that he liked books like The Metamorphosis, Bartleby, A Simple Heart, A Christmas Carol. And then he said that he was reading Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's. Leaving aside the fact that A Simple Heart and A Christmas Carol were stories, not books, there was something revelatory about the taste of this bookish young pharmacist, who ... clearly and inarguably preferred minor works to major ones. He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecouchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze a path into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.” ― Roberto Bolano, 2666

Much of the background for this post in particular comes from Paul Fry’s Yale lecture course about the theory of literature.  This is a great starting course for interpretation and textual analysis and, yes, film and TV shows are text.

In futzing around with this stuff, what am I doing?  Less charitably, what do I think I’m even trying to do, here? Many feel that applying theory to art and entertainment is as pretentious as the kind of art or entertainment that encourages it. It’s understandable.  Many examples of analysis are garbage and even people capable of good work get going in the wrong direction due to fixations or prejudices they aren’t even aware of and get swept away by the mudslide of enthusiasm into the pit of overreach. That’s part of the process. But this stuff has an actual philosophical grounding, so let’s start by looking at the stories history of trying to figure out “texts.”

Ideas about the purpose of art, what it means to be an author, and how it is best to create go back to the beginning of philosophy but (outside of some notable examples) there is precious little consideration of the reception of art and certainly not a feeling that it was a legitimate field of study until more recently. The Greeks figured the mind would just know how to grok it because what it was getting at was automatically universal and understanding was effortless to the tune mind. But the idea that textual analysis should be taken seriously began with the literal texts of the Torah (Rabbinical scholarship) and then the Bible, but mostly in closed circles.

Hermeneutics as we know it began as a discipline with the Protestant Reformation since the Bible was now available to be read.  Sooooo, have you read it? It’s not the most obvious or coherent text.  Reading it makes several things clear about it: 1. It is messy and self contradictory; 2. A literal reading is not possible for an honest mind and isn’t advisable in any event; 3. It is extremely powerful and mysterious in a way that makes you want to understand, your reach exceeding your grasp. This is like what I wrote about Inland Empire - it captures something in a messy, unresolvable package that probably can’t be contained in something clear and smooth. This interpretive science spread to law and philosophy for reasons similar to it’s roots in text based religion - there was an imperative to understand what was meant by words.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is the first to explicitly bring to bear a theory of how we approach works.  He was a student of Martin Heidegger, who saw the engagement with “the thing itself” as a cyclic process that was constructive of meaning, where we strive to learn from encounters and use that to inform our next encounter.  Gadamer applied this specifically to how we read a text (for him, this means philosophical text) and process it.  Specifically he strove to, by virtue of repeated reading and rumination which is informed by prior readings (on large and small scales, even going back and forth in a sentence), “align the horizons” of the author and the reader.  The goal of this process is to arrive at (external to the text) truth, which was for him the goal of the enterprise of writing and reading to begin with.  This is necessary because the author and reader both carry different preconceptions to the enterprise (really all material and cultural influences on thinking) that must be resolved.

ED Hirsch had a lifelong feud with Gadamer over this, whipping out Emanuel Kant to deny that his method was ethically sound.  He believed that to engage in this activity otherizes and instrumentalizes the author and robs them of them being a person saying something that has their meaning, whether it is true or false.  We need to get what they are laying down so we can judge the ideas as to whether they are correct or not.  It may be this is because he wasn’t that sympathetic a reader - he’s kind of a piece of work - and maybe his thheory was an excuse to act like John McLaughlin.  He goes on to have a hell of a career fucking up the US school system

But it’s Wolfgang Iser that comes in with the one neat trick which removes (or at least makes irrelevant) the knowability problem, circumvents the otherizing problem, and makes everything applicable to any text (e.g. art, literature) by bringing in phenomenology, specifically Edmund Husserl’s “constitution” of the world by consciousness. It makes perfect sense to bring phenomenology into interpretive theory as phenomenology had a head start as a field and is concerned with something homologous - we only have access to our experience of <the world/the text> and need to grapple with how we derive <reality/meaning> from it.  Husserl said we constitute reality from the world using our sensory/cognitive apparatus, influenced by many contingencies (experiential, cultural, sensorial, etc) but that’s what reality is and It doesn’t exist to us unbracketed. Iser said we configure meaning from the text using our sensory/cognitive apparatus, influenced by many contingencies (experiential, cultural, sensorial, etc) but that’s what meaning is and It doesn’t exist to us unbracketed.  Reality and meaning are constructed on these contingencies, and intersubjective agreement is not assured.

To Iser, we create a virtual space (his phrase) where we operate processes on the text to generate a model what the text is saying, and this process has many inputs based on our dataset external to the text (not all of which is good data) as well as built in filters and mapping legends based on our deeper preconceptions (which may be misconceptions or “good enough” approximations).  Most if this goes on without any effort whatsoever, like the identification of a dog on the street.  But some of it is a learned process - watch an adult who has never read comics try to read one.  These inputs, filters, and routers can animate an idea of the author in the construct, informing our understanding based on all sorts of data we happen to know and assumptions about how certain things work.

This is reader response theory, that meaning is generated in the mind by interaction with the text and not by the text, though Stanley Fish didn’t accent the “in the mind part” and name the phenomenon until years later. Note that Gadamer is largely prescriptive and Hirsch is entirely prescriptive while Iser is predominantly descriptive.  He’s saying “this is how you were doing it all along,” but by being aware of the process, we can gain function.

For those keeping score:   1. Gadamer, after Heidegger’s cyclic process at constructing an understanding of the thing itself, centers on a point between the author and reader and prioritizes universal truth. 2. Hirsch, after Kant’s ethical stand on non instrumentalization, centers on hearing what the author is saying and prioritizes the judging the ideas. 3. Iser, after Husserl’s constituted reality, centers on configuring a multi-input sense of the text within a virtual (mental) space and prioritizes meaning.

Everything after basically comes out of Iser and is mostly restatement with focusing/excluding of elements.  The 20th century mindset, from the logical positivists to Bohr’s view that looking for reality underlying the wave form was pointless, had a serious case of God (real meaning, ground reality) is dead.  W.K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley’s intentional fallacy, an attempt to caution interpreters to steer clear of considering what the god-author meant, begat death of the author which attempted to take the author entirely out of the equation - it was less likely you’d ever understand the if you focused on that!  To me, this is corrective to trends at the time and not good praxis -  it excludes natural patterns of reading in which the author is configured, rejects potentially pertinent data, and limits some things one can get out of the text.

Meanwhile formalism/new criticism (these will be discussed later in a how section) focused on just what was going on in the text with as few inputs as possible, psychoanalytics and historicism looked to interrogate the inputs/filters to the sense making process, postmodernism/deconstruction attacked those inputs/filters making process questioning whether meaning was not just contingent but a complete illusion, and critical studies became obsessed with specific strands of oppression and hegemony as foundational filters that screw up the inputs.   But the general Iser model seems to be the grandfather of everything after.  

Reader intersubjectivity is an area of concern.  In the best world, the creation of art is in part an attempt to find the universal within the specific, something that resonates and speaks to people.  A very formative series of David Milch lectures (to me at least) proffer that if you find a scene, idea, whatever, that is very compelling to you, your job is to figure out what in it is “fanciful” (an association specific to you) and how to find and bring out the universal elements. But people’s experiences are different and there be many ideas of what a piece of art means without there being a dominant one. So the building of models within each mind leaves a lot to consider as the final filtered input is never quite the same. There is a lot of hair on this dog (genres engender text expectations that an author can subvert by confusing the filter, conflicting input can serve a purpose, the form of a guided experience can be a kind of meaning, on and on ad nauseum)

The ultimate question, you might ask, is why we need to do this at all.  I mean, I understood Snow White perfectly fine as a kid.  There’s no “gap” that needs to be leaped.  The meaning of the movie is evident enough on some level without vivisecting it.  The Long answer to what we gain from looking under Snow’s skirt is the next episode.  The short is: 1. You are doing it anyway.  That Snow White thing, you were doing thhat to Snow White you just weren’t conscious of the process.

2. It’s fun. The process only puts a tool of enjoyment in your arsenal.  You don’t have to use it all the time.

3. You’ll see stuff you like in new ways.  The way Star Wars works is really interesting!

4. It may give dimensions to movies that are flawed or bad, and you might wind up liking them.  Again, more to love.

5. It is sometimes necessary to get to a full (or any) appreciation of some complicated works as the most frustrating and resistant stuff to engage with is sometimes the most incredible. 

6. It reinforces your involvement in something you like.  It makes you more connected and more hungry, like any good exercise.

7. You can become more aware of what those preconceptions and biases are, which might give you insights in other areas of your life.