#these examples aren't constructive at all actually

[arttsuka]

I can't believe I'm gonna be the one who writes a post like this but here we go. Comment etiquette

When you want to leave a comment

DON'T say stuff like 'I like the original better', 'this wouldn't happen' etc, except if the creator asked for your input. Otherwise just keep your thoughts to yourself.

DON'T try to promote yourself. This isn't about you, comments like 'wow, nice artwork, check out my stuff too' is a big no-no. Nobody gives a fuck about you, especially if you do that. Post your stuff and leave others. Even if you actually like their work, saying something like that makes you seem insincere.

DON'T say stuff like 'I'm retracting my like' (I've had this one happen before). We don't care. Nobody forced you to like the post in the first place.

DON'T be a smartass. 'Actually in canon bla bla bla', I didn't ask. Let me have my random headcanon in peace.

'This is nice but I ship xyz' or 'this is good but I like X character better' again, we don't care. This post wasn't made for your satisfaction, don't expect to like everything you see online.

Nice comments are always appreciated. It's ok to ask for clarification for something or even state your opinion. But remember, these posts aren't made for specifically you. Sometimes your opinion is completely irrelevant. Always remember you are dealing with real human beings.

Artists are not obliged to share their works with you, we do it because we want to. Don't expect everything to meet your personal standards. For the majority of people, art is just a fun hobby. Respect and understand that.

[alisaint]

are you guys, like. okay. or even aware of just how many artists and other influential people came from suburbia and continue to come from suburbia. or even just the simple fact that suburbs are different everywhere, even ones existing within the same zipcode

[quicksilversnails]

It's so fun how the Princess and the Dragon acknowledges and plays with game mechanics that are assumed to be non-diegetic, and uses them to add insight to the story/characters.

The title card is a really obvious example, being something that TLQ actually sees and can comment on, and something that the Princess hadn't ever seen. What most would assume is just a framing device for the player is a real element of the world/construct.

I think it emphasizes how the story that the Narrator constructed is only "meant" to be told to TLQ. After all, The Narrator only appears in TLQ's mind, providing elaborate descriptions and attempting to contextualize the events of the game as a heroic task to save the world. Meanwhile the Princess is all alone, with no title cards or exposition, no context for why any of this is happening to her. The story revolves around her, but it doesn't care about her beyond her designated role, as something to be slain and hated. Her perspective is irrelevant to the Narrator's plan, so she doesn't get the fancy presentation or necessary context: she doesn't deserve it.

There's also those long stretches of dialogue where the voices talk to each other in TLQ's mind without progressing the story. They're occasionally acknowledged by the Princess elsewhere (Prisoner, Nightmare) but P&tD makes it very explicit and confirms that time is actively passing during these conversations, with TLQ staring in silence for who knows how long.

(Personally I don't think all of the voice dialogue is necessarily in real time, if only because some Princesses wouldn't have had the patience for it. Like if you had really stood still for that long, the Beast would've definitely eaten you... she's not waiting for you to finish thinking lol)

This one I think is more for humour, but it also draws attention to how much of the inner conversation the Princess is missing in normal chapters, when the voices aren't actively speaking to her through TLQ's body. Where we're having vibrant debates or key information revealed by the Narrator, she just sees a silent, staring figure. Speaking of the Narrator, He's completely absent from the Princess' POV, either because He doesn't want to speak to her or is somehow unable to (He does say in Tower that she's not supposed to be able to interact with Him...) Again, the story was not made to be told to her, so she isn't given His context, and because the player is usually so immersed in TLQ's perspective, they probably wouldn't realize just how much she's missing until they see things from her perspective.

One other example: if you choose to [Say nothing] immediately after you excise yourself, the Princess reacts to it:

I just find this so hilarious tbh, and the fact that she repeats back those exact words implies that she literally senses the text written in brackets. If you do it once you're back in the basement, she says this:

I wonder if it's the same for the Narrator/voices... do they also “feel” your actions while you’re choosing them? Do they hear you say (Lie) before you lie? When Skeptic said "Wink" out loud did he actually choose a dialogue option with [Wink] in brackets?? Ok that last one's a joke but there's lots of potential here

I just think it's cool because the average player wouldn't think twice about any of these things, because they seem like simple stylistic/game design choices. In a game where all player input is through dialogue options, the square brackets are an immediately understandable way to convey action, as opposed to plain text. In a game structured around repeating loops, it makes sense to make those loops distinguishable for players by separating each loop with a title card, and the chapter naming convention works as a nod to the fairytale storybook aesthetics the game draws from.

But by placing you into the Princess's head and acknowledging those design choices as diegetic elements that change depending on your perspective, it forces you to reevaluate your experiences: the things you didn't think were really "part of the game" and the experiences you didn't realize weren't universal. It exposes your hidden privileges, the luxuries and structural supports you have compared to the Princess that you don't even notice because you've never experienced the alternative.

It might make you realize how the way you perceive and conceptualize the world might be very different from how others conceptualize it (Tony's recent ask about the multicoloured glass in HEA could also play into this in a fascinating way, with the mismatch in perception between TLQ and the Narrator's script). It's all just very cool for a game that's based on perception.

It also makes me wonder... what other elements of this game are diegetic that we just haven't paid attention to?

Well, I think that the captions are probably also diegetic. TLQ occasionally refers to the voices by their complete titles despite them not ever referring to each other by those titles, instead opting for descriptors like "jumpy one" or "the worst one" or "rage boy" or "chilly little freak" lol. For a direct comparison, Paranoid exclusively calls Smitten "the lovesick one" or some variant in HEA, but TLQ refers to him by his full name using quotation marks, as if he's quoting something he's read:

The voices don't seem aware that these titles exist, while TLQ does, despite them sharing a mind. Also, when the Princess shares a body/mind with you, she never uses their titles either. In the Spectre/Princess and the Dragon, she calls Hero "the nice one", Cold "the quiet one" or "cold little freak", and the Narrator "the bossy one" or "that murder-happy know-it-all". Spectre describes the voices as shards of broken glass on the floor, so she likely perceives them completely differently to how we/TLQ see them.

Even The Narrator isn't aware of His title. If you call Him that in the mirror conversation, He says "'The Narrator'. I suppose that's my job, isn't it?", reacting to the title as if it's His first time hearing about it. There's also this question from the fourth Shifty encounter:

It seems like the titles are presented specifically for The Long Quiet/decider, and that they somehow reflect how TLQ perceives the voices/Narrator, since TLQ takes credit for "calling him" that. If the captions were specifically shown to TLQ in the same way that the title cards are, it'd explain how he has this information without it ever being verbally told to him, and why the Princess doesn't know their titles even when she's sharing your body.

But besides the captions, I think it could be fun to interpret the game as if most, if not all of its game mechanics exist in-universe. The choice menu, the music, the cursors, the save/load icons, saving/loading in general, the title screen, the Clown Princess living in the walls (game files), you name it. Let’s peel away these game mechanics cell by cell! Let's see what meaning we can find together, let's see what we're made of!

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

Sorry if you've already covered this, but I was scrolling socials and saw that the San Antonio zoo got a large donation to expand their savanna habitat. The only thing that jarred me as I read through their expansion plans was apparently they're going to be outfitting some 'safari' vehicles so guests can be taken into the habitat to feed and interact with the animals (from within the vehicle). I was always under the impression that this kind of interaction wasn't necessarily good for either the humans or the animals-- is there a way it can be done ethically?? Anyway, I just thought it was interesting!

Ooo, okay, your question aligned with a thing I've been chewing on for a while, so let's talk ~ethics~ and ~philosophy~ aka this is gonna be a bit long. I do promise I'll answer your question, though!

The first thing I want to note is that you're really asking about two different things, which are almost always conflated these days when it comes to talking about animals: welfare (is the animal happy / healthy / safe) and ethics (is what's happening good / moral / acceptable). It's really important that we distinguish between the two, because welfare is an objective measure of physical and mental wellbeing, and ethics are a human construct that involves subjective interpretation.

A useful but highly oversimplified example of this is the bothering of cats for online videos. Pestering a cat to get a funny reaction once in a while may not impact their overall welfare. Welfare is the cumulative impact of an animal's experiences, which means that single acute moments may not weight heavily on the entire balance. If the cat is healthy, fed well, enriched, and has a good and positive bond with their humans, those momentary irritations for videos might not matter much. That doesn't mean that you or I, as viewers, might not still find bothering an animal for internet clout ethical. We can believe that humans shouldn't ever unnecessarily put their pet through negative experiences, and we can think that doing so just because it brings the human money or fame is distasteful. But! We have to recognize that as used in this example, those ethical stances aren't inherently tied to the animal's welfare state. Many people I know who dislike cat-bothering don't care if the animal has good welfare outside of that situation - they don't like that the situation occurs at all, ever.

So, back to your question. You're wanting to know if it's okay for a zoo to have a drive-through aspect of an exhibit where people get to feed the animals. You're asking if it's safe for the humans and for the animals (which is a welfare question) and if that type of interaction is ethical. I could just tell you that of course it's fine, San Antonio is an AZA zoo and their accreditation only allows them to do "good things" but that's now how it works here (nor is it the reality of accreditation).

The safety aspect is one I'm not worried about. It's actually a pretty common thing for reputable facilities to do some sort of vehicle tour in savanna habitats, whether in the guest's vehicle (safari parks) or on a hay-ride type vehicle (zoos). Many of those allow guests to feed out specific parts of their animals' diets. Offhand, I know Tampa and Fossil Rim both have feeding tours like this in a staff-driven vehicle. It's not specified from the zoo's press release, but I can guarantee you that guests will not be driving those vehicles - which means the interactions will be proctored by staff and what people are feeding out will be carefully regulated. The habitat is going to have rhino, giraffe, zebra, ostrich, and antelope/gazelle, and I'd guess that the drive-through is going to stick to those latter two and maybe additional species. Those are animals where a car is an appropriate safety barrier.

As to if it's ethical to do? It's spiny question, because it depends very directly on the ethical perspectives of the person you're asking. I think it's fine - you may not. Let's break down the different things that come into consideration on the ethical side, and my responses:

"The zoo is commercially exploiting animals by letting people pay to get closer." If the issue is that people paying to get closer to animals is using them for money, well, that's the business model of a zoo (non-profit or not, they still need revenue to operate). So IMHO it's not like it's "less ethical" than anything else the zoo is doing, using that framing.

"Zoo animals should be allowed to be wild and undisturbed by guests driving in their habitats." Zoo animals aren't wild, and their entire lives revolve around humans and the human work schedule. As long as a vehicle entering the habitat doesn't have a negative welfare impact (e.g. they're not scared of it), it's not very different from the rest of the routine of managed care.

"Feeding zoo animals will encourage people to try to feed wild animals." Thanks to obnoxiously viral content creators, people are going to try to feed wild animals no matter what. Doing it in a proctored situation where a staff member can try to do some education at the same time is probably the best possible scenario.

"People just do those tours to get close to cool animals." People are always going to want to touch the animals. If being able to pay for a tour keeps them from jumping the fence to try to pet a rhino, great.

There's one more that I want to talk about separately, because I think it's where a lot of confusion gets generated. It's this idea that "Humans shouldn't be interacting with animals at all, any interaction is unethical and bad for the animals." This is a welfare crossover, but not one actually informed by welfare science in a captive situation. And I think it's because the internet lacks nuance. Yes, it is absolutely correct to say that with wild animals, you should never ever try to feed a deer out of your car (or similar). It is incredibly harmful to those animals on both an acute and chronic timeline. But thanks to the rage-bait algorithms on social media and people endlessly justifying doing stupid, dangerous, bad things (and getting pushback for it), there's been a lot of bleed between the public's understanding of what wild animal welfare is and what captive animal welfare is. Combine that with the reality that captive animal welfare cannot be assessed or diagnosed from a single context-less clip, and that people with strong beliefs and no practical experience with the field/species/individual will pass judgement loudly to their audiences...

The result is almost a reflexive believe in many sectors of the internet that any human-animal interaction that isn't couched as a "rescue" is inherently unethical, for reasons people often can't articulate. Which is why, I think, so often people want to support certain aspects of captive animal management but feel guilty for doing so. I see this a lot in the questions the blogs gets, and I'm glad people feel comfortable asking, because it's important to think through not just the individual instances but the patterns leading us to question them.

So yes, I'd say that a staff-led experience in a vehicle chosen for safety is an ethical way to proctor an interaction between guests and certain savanna species. It will vary by facility - I'm always more wary about guests driving, although many drive-through safaris are fine - and by setup. I think what San Antonio is doing will be fine, though, and will be interested to see / hear about the setup when they start up.

If you've got a question about ethical captive management, I'm always happy to talk about it - but I'd invite you to poke around in your head a little and send me not just your question in the ask, but your thinking about why or why not something might be concerning. It's great practice for understanding why you relate to animal ethics the way you do, and where those beliefs come from.

[moiraimyths]

can you elaborate on what you mean by romance being a social construct? just trying to understand here, because by that logic to be aromantic is to be against the social construct of romance or what most people view as romance

What does "romance" or "romantic" mean? Most people when answering that question will list specific signifiers or feelings that we commonly associate with romance or romantic feelings, but these things don't have to be romantic. They're 'coded' as romantic because we associate them with romance as a byproduct of our culture. Simple example: Kissing on the lips. Pretty safe to say this action is frequently cited as a romantic gesture. But is it objectively a romantic gesture? No. There are plenty of cultures, currently and throughout history, where kissing on the lips is not romantic. Hell, kissing in some cultures isn't a thing at all/considered unsanitary! Therefore, kissing on the lips is not objectively romantic or some universal phenomenon. It's socially constructed.

The same thing can apply to romantic feelings. First: Feelings of sexuality that often (but not always!) go toe to toe with romance are not inherently romantic. You can be attracted to someone, or be intimate with someone, and not feel romantic feelings. So we need to separate sexuality from romance. What does that leave us with? Great care for someone? A feeling of closeness? A desire to never be parted with someone? Are these feelings romantic? Yes, but they aren't always. Stripped of any other pretenses, you could easily apply those feelings to your friends or family members. What makes them romantic is socially contextual, and subjectively determined. Therefore: Romance is a social construct.

People who identify as aromantic will have different reasons for subscribing to the label. Some may be aromantic because the feelings typically associated with romance just don't happen with them, and sometimes (but not always!!!) asexuality plays a part here as well. But for other aro folk, it's not always that consistent. Maybe they do feel those feelings, but only under some circumstances. Or maybe they feel some of those feelings, but not all of them, or inconsistently, or don't really think of those feelings as romantic at all or in the moment. Romance, like sexuality, is more fluid than we tend to realize, but romance as a specific, socially determined construct can be suffocating for those who don't quite fit in the box. Especially once you start throwing in the other social expectations that romance is typically associated with: Living together, marriage, having kids, permanence, etc. In those instances, some folks may gravitate toward the aromantic label simply because they oppose the rigidness of the construct.

Ultimately, our purpose with our arospec characters (Keagan, Robin, and Daonna) is to explore these variations.

EDIT: Hi! If you're reading this, we just wanted to quickly note that we're actually indie game developers! Right now we're making a fantasy visual novel about Irish mythology, and the game can be played completely platonically. Some of our characters are also arospec! If that sounds like something you may be interested in, check us out on Steam or Itch.

[leikeliscomet]

(Reposting from twitter)

My POV as a Black fan that thinks Dot and Bubble's racism commentary is trash

Rewatched Dot and Bubble and I'm gonna break down from my POV as a Black fan why this episode didn't work for me & why it's an awful racism commentary. Long arse post incoming:

The whole "You should've noticed the cast was all white except for fifteen ha your bias is showing" doesn't work for a show that's been predominantly white for 60+ years. D&B casting has been the default for most of the show so its not abnormal enough to be a racial litmus test. An example is the Matt Smith era The only reoccurring character of colour in s5 (2+ appearances) is Liz 10. Artie n Angie in s7. 0 in s6. RTD's own era isn't fully safe either. For many eps Martha or Mickey are the *only* Black characters. Most POC are side characters or extras.

White fans should be aware of the predominantly white casting of the show but this late in the game feels cheap. Most of the show has gone through 100% white episodes including fan faves and it was never an issue back then bc it was beneficial. This is so hollow. Representing racists as cartoon caricatures SEVERLY underestimates the danger of white supremacy irl. White supremacy is system designed and constructed and rebranded over centuries. It is not accidental. People aren't racist bc they don't know they're racist because they *do* They know the system that oppresses POC, Black people especially, benefits them socially and financially and that is why they participate. Its not stupidity it's intention. That should've been the Finetime core not Lindy goofing around bc the arrows are gone or some shit.

Human Nature showed us racist young people that exercised this power bc they knew this. They may be children but they are still dangerous bc of their views. Martha knew this. The silly tech obsessed gen z angle erases this danger and that of actual gen z white supremacy

Instead of the camp goofy tone we could've gotten a serious focused episode. The slugs and millenial/gen z social media silly distracts from what could've been the main theme of colonisation instead of saving it for 10 mins of exposition at the end & scattering microaggressions. Saving Fifteen's racism scene for a goofy episode was a horrid idea. Spending 30 mins on representing racism as silliness then giving a dramatic dangerous score is the definition of tonal whiplash. Representing his oppressor as a blonde bimbo again does not take this seriously. Fifteen went to 1960s BRITAIN & got through it unscathed. Finetime is a fictional futuristic land but the racism of 1960s Britain was real. If anytime was right it could've been Devil's Chord. Distancing yourself from a panto villain is easy but addressing your history is hard.

The scene itself is incredibly performed so I'll give Ncuti his flowers but what he used this skill for could've been so much more. Having his FIRST SCENE begging to save a racist is disgusting. It isn't Black people's responsibility to show compassion to people that want us dead. Yes the Doctor helps the baddies bc they care. But they're aren't ignorant to prejudice. The liberal anti racism of who is so jarring and why I still think Thin Ice is performative. When white people are angry at injustice it's radical. When it's Black people we're aggressive.

Respectability politics is a tool of white supremacy. That if one pleads and is nice enough they can earn liberation. What would white fans think of Fifteen if he DIDN'T beg Lindy? If your allyship with Black people depends on showing kindness to racists you are NOT an ally.

Next up is Ricky. It was established ALL Finetime citizens have white supremacist views yet Ricky September stans refuse to see him in any negative light. Just like Joan Redfern white dw fans refuse to see racism if a character is likeable. If nice guy Ricky's a racist, then anyone no matter the niceness can be racist too and that's a pill white fans aren't ready to swallow. If racism is systemic and not about individual character, then what's keeping them safe? What happens when YOU are under the microscope.

THIS is why we NEED Black writers in Doctor Who. The nuances, depth and complexity of the Black experience can only be told at it's best by Black creatives and not guessed, assumed or spoken over by white fans and white writers. It's okay to put ego aside and say you don't get it.

"Im white but I loved the Doctor's reaction" "I'm white and i thought the racism commentary was great" "I'm white but i-" Yet again, we have to sit through another round of white and non Black fans of colour dictating Black representation for us. I'm so fucking tired man. AGAIN IM YELLING FROM MY HILLTOP TO WATCH SHOWS BY BLACK WRITERS. Almost EVERY single theme in Dot and Bubble and frankly most of the show has been done WAY better in other media. RTD is not the authority on Black stories. We are. Always have been and always will.

Tl;dr Dot and Bubble is an unserious and tacky racism commentary. It's core message is drowned by more RTD Who camp. Don't tell me this episode was good at representating my own experience. It wasn't. S15 having Black writers isn't a need it's a must. Goodbye.

Reblog this version pls

[destinationtoast]

Toastystats: Halloween fanworks!

So the thing is, I get to Blaze one post per month by virtue of having Tumblr Premium. And (while I have enjoyed Blazing pictures of my cats in the past) I thought perhaps this month people might enjoy some Halloween fandom stats + fic lists? So I threw something together. First, the stats:

Less that 1% of AO3 fanworks use the "Halloween" tag (or a subtag like "Happy Halloween" -- only 0.32%, in fact. But I found some big fandoms (10K+ works) that use a substantially higher-than-average rate of Halloweenery. (I couldn't look through every fandom on AO3, but I did look through all the fandoms with 10K+ fanworks as of January 2024. Note that some fandoms may write about Halloween a bunch without tagging it, and those aren't be captured here.)

Fall Out Boy leads the pack among these big fandoms, with nearly 1% of its fanworks using the "Halloween" tag or a subtag (0.93%). (I'd be curious to hear theories about why!) Some of the other fandoms shown above have a natural element of spookiness or horror (e.g., IT, Stranger Things), but many do not. The longer list is here. (These stats are based on pretty small numbers, btw, so please don't take these rankings too seriously. This is just a bit of fun.)

I also thought people might want to read some Halloween-themed fics from each of the above top 25 fandoms, so I highlighted works from each fandom that were complete and highly kudosed. If you're curious, the list includes this sort of info:

And I thought people might also appreciate Halloween-themed fics for different relationship categories (F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, xReader). Here's a screenshot of some of the fics in the relationship category list, if you're curious:

More information about how I created these lists below the cut.

Before we get there, could I interest you in taking a quick poll, since I am Blazing this post and curious about the audience Blaze reaches? Thanks -- and happy Halloween season! :)

The construction of these lists was definitely not an exact science. For each fandom or relationship category, I filtered to only show works with the "Halloween" tag. I then looked for complete fics in each fandom that appeared to actually be about Halloween or a spooky topic (based on their summary and/or a quick text search), and had a lot of kudos. (I didn't actually read these fanworks myself, though.) I also tried to diversify and make sure that each category included a variety of ships/fandoms. I ruled out collections of one-shots and things that appeared to be part of a long series such that they couldn't be read as a standalone. I also ruled out things that looked like incredible bummers, and honestly a few things that had major grammatical errors in the summaries.

But I linked to more in each case, so you don't have to visit the example fics I highlighted -- you can explore more on your own!

Also -- I did a lot of copy/pasting, and there may be errors in here. Feel free to let me know if you find any. Thanks, and enjoy!

[ginnvngagap]

no, Jayce Talis didn't mean "Viktor, your terminal illness and physical disability that causes you constant pain are fxcking awesome actually, you should totally enjoy them" he meant "Viktor, your terminal illness and psysical disability don't make you any less loveable and I never saw you as weak or pitiful because of them. in my eyes, you were always perfect."

I have a feeling this take stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what internalized ableism (or bigotry in general) actually is.

as a personal example, I don't exactly agree with the autism as a superpower narrative, and I refuse to be ashamed of not being proud of every single aspect of my neurodivergence and mental illnesses. no, I don't want a cure, because it still defines me as a person, but if someone announced tomorrow that they can fix my autistic inertia, executive dysfunction or sensory problems with just a flip of a switch, I'd accept that in a heartbeat. not wanting to suffer is not the same as thinking I am worthless or lazy because of my neurodivergence.

as another example of internalized bigotry: I've seen a user on the bird app having to defend herself against people who insisted that thinking periods are gross and unpleasant to have is her hating her womanhood. but listen, I fxcking hate having a uterus. I hate that I can get pregnant (I have tokophobia), and I hate periods with a fiery passion (and mine aren't even that painful, I rarely have cramps and they always last around 5 days). I don't like how they feel, I don't like the pain, the mood swings, and yes, I find blood coming out of my vagina gross, especially when it includes those little chunks. it's just a very uncomfortable experience overall. this however doesn't mean that I think I should be treated as impure, or inferior. I don't think it's okay to treat me as if I'm an inherently irrational creature (although I'd argue that all humans are, but I digress) incapable of a single logical thought because of my cycle, and I don't feel ashamed of asking for a pad or a tampon, because it's a natural bodily function and no one should ever be shunned for it.

bigotry is a social construct, it's shame, discrimination, ostracization. it's the belief that certain ways of being are inherently shameful and should be purged from "civilized" society, because to the "correct" people, they aren't even human.

Viktor not wanting to die or be in pain isn't the problem, and Jayce has already demonstrated that the only thing he hates about those conditions is that he doesn't want to lose his partner and he doesn't want him to suffer. the problem is that Viktor believed his illness and disability made him inferior and unloveable. he wanted to fix himself not just because he didn't want to die or suffer, but because he was convinced he needed to achieve perfection in order to be loved and accepted, to be a worthy partner of Jayce.

but this kind of thinking is what leads to erasing everything that makes us human, that makes us unique. that was Viktor's greatest error, wanting so badly to transcend the human condition, he risked erasing human lives all together.

[antimony-medusa]

Writing Stronger Female Characters

Whenever you start diverging from canon, you have to make some decisions about how to characterize people. You can no longer pull directly from canon, you have to fill in the gaps yourself in whatever way supports the characters and relationships you want to highlight. And the further you get out into AU territory, the more you have to fill in the scaffolding for the story yourself, from creating interactions between characters who haven't interacted very much, to placing characters within a pantheon, to creating new dialogue or interactions to support the new beats for the story you're telling.

And a thing I see fairly often when people are writing female characters is that people want these characters to be celebrated, right? They don't want to throw their female characters under the bus, they don't want them to be forgotten— and especially here when we're drawing from canons where so often there are few female characters, so they want them to stand out. So as part of this au-construction, these writers give their female characters all the positive attributes. They're super strong, or super beloved, or super badass— but that's kind of all they are.

And while as with all writing things there is a way to do this successfully— there isn't a writing rule that can't be broken if you come at it in the right angle— this can unfortunately backfire and end up making shallow or unsatisfying female characters in a way I think people aren't intending— so I thought I'd point it out!

To use an example I see fairly often, people will be writing Kristin with SBI, and they'll go "oh and all the kids love kristin way more than phil, they think he sucks but they just love her!" or they'll be writing phistin and they go "and kristin is just so powerful and awesome and phil is just her lame husband, haha, don't know why she likes him" and then, importantly, that's as far as the characterization goes. They make Kristin awesome and or beloved, but that's where they stop, and so they never get any characterization beyond "popular and powerful".

Writing a woman as a beloved mother or a powerful force/badass wife is not inherently a bad characterization, but if you just leave it there, that's just basically all that sitcom characterization does, and I'd like to think we can do better than a tv show with a laugh track. If you think about real people in your life, even if you go "oh man everyone loves [name]", you wouldn't describe them in just that way. You'd go on and talk about their sense of humour, or they're really into pokemon, or they also have two cats that are badly behaved, or they work in an office and can do a really scary customer service voice— you'd have other things to say about them! Or if you think about how someone is a badass in your real life, you'd say about how they're a black belt in two martial arts and a scary lawyer, but you'd also talk about how they bake really well, and they do tutoring for kids, and they can drink like a fish if you get them out to the bar, and they have no spice tolerance, and just more aspects of their life, you wouldn't stop there. Putting a character on a pedestal as better than the other characters actually cuts them off from the characters you're letting have flaws and woes and enemies. It makes them less vivid and less real as characters. If we were talking about real people that we were treating like that we'd say it was dehumanizing— you're not seeing them as a real person— but when you're talking about characters, it's just shallow characterization, and it plays into some tropes that we've probably seen too often from weak writing like sitcoms or comedy that doesn't really care about its side characters. So it's a pitfall to avoid that I think that some people aren't aware they're falling into. This doesn't mean that you have to make everybody dislike your female character, or you can't make them awesome, but beloved or powerful is where you start characterization, not where you stop. You also need to throw in an ability to let them say their piece, or quirks or flaws, or someone who *doesn't* like them, or something more that lets them come alive more. You gotta take them off the pedestal and consider them as a real character, you gotta rotate the blorbo just a little bit more— flip the scene a bit in your brain and think about the scene from their POV, consider it a bit longer.

Or to take another example, I read a bunch of Syndicate fic, and I read one the other day where Niki was the Blood God (awesome) and specifically was written as better at fighting than Techno, he normally couldn't beat her in a fight. Now while in isolation that's awesome, because your reader is probably also familiar with canon, they start to compare this characterization to canon. In canon Niki was not better at PVP than Techno, so this change stands out. And the reader starts to go "wait, what victory condition is being messaged here", and the message that is being sent is that being good at PVP is good, that's the victory condition, that's what makes you awesome, and the canon characterization was kind of weak, you had to fix it.

Now if you meant to message that, that's one thing, but the impression I get from these fics is that they want to celebrate the character that they like from canon, they don't want to tear the character down. But by trying to pile awesome things on this character, they ended up undermining the character accidentally, and you run into the same issue as what was happening with Kristin, where the characterization is "badass", putting the character on a pedestal, and nothing else. I'm sure we've all seen action movies where there's a whole bunch of guys and one girl and they make the girl really awesome (cause you don't want to be sexist) and her characterization is "badass girl", full stop. And well, that's awesome, I love a badass girl, but if that's all you've got, you didn't write a very well rounded character, you wrote exactly the same character as five hundred Hollywood writers who went "oh shit I forgot to add any women" and threw someone in at the last minute.

So what, does that mean that you have to write niki as bad at PVP, or being beaten in PVP, to respect character? Not at all! The trick here is to focus on other things, spend more time with the character. Okay, so PVP wasn't one of the canon character's strengths— what were her other strengths? Cause there are *always* other strengths— with c!niki maybe you go to her force of conviction despite opposition, or her survival stubbornness when she was abandoned in a hostile world, or her desire to build and create, or her will not take nonsense attitude— even doing PVP despite not being strong in it, getting up and trying again. There's lots of things, I'm not gonna call myself a c!niki expert, but you can do it if you spend a little more time with the character. AND that doesn't mean that you can't write badass women— Hannahxxrose absolutely should give any guy on the server a run for their money when it comes to PVP, on any server she's on. That's just fucking canon. Just also you need to take it a little bit further, beyond being a badass— what makes them tick? What are their struggles? What are their quirks? What do they worry about, or laugh about, or do for fun? Maybe you just have a scene to characterize them, maybe it's a short fic— how do you make them have a life outside of this scene, how do you make them come alive? If you were writing this scene from their POV, if they had a life beyond this scene or this story, what would they say, and can you include that even when someone else is the POV character? Or heck, flip it and DO a scene from their POV, let them have the spotlight in a story and see how the character acquires depth and quirks.

There's a joke in writing where a worried male writer goes to an experienced writer who's known for writing women and goes "but how do I write women" and the experienced writer goes "pretend they're people" and goes back to writing. And that is kind of a bitter joke about how society is bad for treating women (or any other group— disabled people, autistic people, people of colour, disabled people, non-christian people— the list goes on) like they're incomprehensible and alien. But it is also just that simple, when you are writing someone who isn't from the dominant paradigm. You do your research, if it's someone from an experience you don't share, but mostly the important thing is to remember that you're writing people. They have just as many hopes and dreams and quirks and flaws as you do, and any time you boil them down to only one attribute— even if it's a positive attribute— you end up with a weaker character and writing than you might mean to.

So that's how, obliquely, to get a stronger character, you need to make sure that your character is more than just strong (or beloved, or powerful, etc), they also need to have more character traits— they actually need weaknesses and quirks— and that's gonna take you one step closer to your female characters feeling like real (awesome) people.

[internetskiff]

I've sometimes seen this sentiment, especially among reviewers, that SOMA's WAU ""monster plot"" contributes nothing to the main game's story, and that the storyline would infact benefit from the WAU's removal. If you ask me, that couldn't be further from the truth. The WAU is at the root of everything. Frankly, it's the main reason the game's moral dilemmas are.. well, dilemmas at all. If the WAU wasn't making monsters, wasn't there to warp the life around Pathos-II as it saw fit, the game wouldn't have even started. Pathos-II would've just remained dormant forever. Simon wouldn't be there, and neither would any of the obstacles he faces on his journey to preserve humanity. The main reason the WAU isn't directly beneficial to Earth is exactly because its understanding of "life" is so skewed. Its not just bringing things back - its bringing them back incorrectly. Every single "monster" we meet builds a case both against and for the WAU's continued existence.

The Construct shows the WAU's failure to understand humanity in the physical sense, shoving a Human brain scan into a misshapen robot body and calling it a day, leaving it to babble to itself as it aimlessly wanders the halls of Upsilon.

The same could be said for Carl Semken and the other Mockingbirds, though to a lesser degree - though capable of speech, they're still very delusional and oftentimes end up going insane. Still, in some ways you see the WAU's understanding of human psychology progress with each new mockingbird - they become increasingly coherent and increasingly sane, Catherine and Robin Bass being great examples. While the Construct has lost so much of itself you can no longer tell who it used to be, the other Mockingbirds have their sense of self intact. With the WAU's unreliable nature cemented, we move on to its attempts at preserving humans physically, with Amy Azarro being the first proper example Simon gets to witness.

She's kept alive in what seems to be a perpetual state of discomfort, and judging by the structure gel slowly overtaking her I believe the WAU may be slowly converting her into one of the Fleshers. Its keeping her alive, yes, but its doing so at any cost necessary - it doesn't matter if she's in constant pain as long as she doesn't flatline. Its treatment of actual organisms is practically an inversion of its treatment of the Mockingbirds - instead of prioritizing the mental wellbeing of the subject, the WAU prioritizes their physical wellbeing with little to no care for the mental state its "patient" is in the entire time.

Fleshers live and breathe, but they seemingly aren't "all there" at all. The lights are on, but no one's home anymore. All they do is wander the ruins of the CURIE and lash out at anyone who enters their territory - the WAU has basically reduced them to animals.

Terry's been driven insane from all the structure gel infesting his insides, and though his goal was "technically" benevolent (putting everyone into a permanent dream state where the WAU could make them live the best possible versions of their lives), he achieved it through incredibly violent means, conducting what was basically an attack on Theta and causing its downfall. So far, its attempts at preserving humans physically have simply resulted in increasingly grotesque and violent monstrosities - but I would argue you see that begin to change when Simon reaches Omicron.

When you reach it, you see the aftermath of a particularly gruesome procedure WAU had carried out - everyone's blackboxes have exploded, turning their heads to mush. We find out that one of the employees, with the help of someone particularly close to the WAU, had figured out how to poison it. They have been receiving "visions" and "messages" from a comatose Johan Ross - the WAU's "AI psychologist", someone it desperately tried to restore from a comatose state by manipulating structure gel with electromagnetic fields. Either the WAU deliberately retaliated when it figured out the poisoning plot, or it had simply overdone it when restoring Johan Ross - sacrificing an entire station's worth of lives to bring someone back. Either way this shows a tremendous amount of intelligence on the WAU's part - and also paints it as either exceptionally cruel or exceptionally empathetic depending on the perspective you view it from. Either it considered Johan so important to it that it was willing to sacrifice most Omicron staff, or it was willing to violently retaliate in order to preserve itself. Either way, Omicron houses what I believe to be a sign of the WAU's steadily improving understanding of humanity - Dr. Johan Ross.

He has been restored with both his physical health and mental faculties (relatively) intact. He isn't violent, and he perfectly understands what condition he is currently in - but despite that he doesn't seem to be physically suffering. He is still driven to eliminate the WAU, but it seems to be less out of personal suffering and more out of fear in regards to the suffering its other creations may go through. I believe he's an example of a semi-perfectly restored human - both him and Simon himself. They're both cases of, as Catherine puts it, "a sound mind in a sound body". But although the signs are there, there is no outright definitive proof that the WAU's creations will only continue to get better.

And that's what makes the game's final moral dilemma so compelling to me. The whole game has been providing us with both evidence and counterevidence towards the WAU's idea of restoring humanity. Now, it's up to you to act as its jury and executioner. By killing it you either stop it from torturing the memory of humanity, or you doom humanity to extinction in all senses of the word. By keeping it alive, you either doom the remnants of humanity to an eternal torturous existence, or you give the WAU a chance at creating something new. There is no way of knowing what choice is correct - because you don't know what the WAU is thinking. You never get to. You don't know its plans, you don't know if it even has the capacity to actually learn from its mistakes, hell, you don't even know if its capable of thought - but here it is. Making things. Terrible things, but there's a chance that it'll only get better with time. Simon himself is evidence of that chance. It has already managed to make what could be classified as a "complete" person. And if you kill it, Simon's going to be the last "complete" person it managed to bring back.

[dont-starve-scrapbook]

Let's talk about Wilson's perceived competence. Can we talk about Wilson's perceived competence, please? I've been dying to talk about Wilson's perceived competence with you all day, okay?

(Prefacing with the fact that I am aware that people just like to make jokes and be silly sometimes, nothing wrong with that, plus that that doesn't mean they believe that's his entire canon personality but I just wanted to make a post)

There seems to be this increasing general opinion/characterization that Wilson is like. an incompetent, know-nothing-know-it-all?

Yes, he does have a bit of an ego. ("Just when I thought I couldn't get any better", for the Construction Amulet.) He can be insecure about not knowing something, which isn't particularly odd, it ties into the ego thing. (The quotes for Wagstaff's tools show this though personally I feel like Klei leaned a little into some flanderization there perhaps?)

But incompetent know-nothing?? :(

(once again no-one's said that word for word, it's just the vibe)

This is the same guy who, canonically, forged his way through the entirety of adventure mode and reached the Nightmare Throne before anyone else. And then after Charlie threw him back into the Constant he (probably very likely) made those blueprints for the Jury-Rigged Portal.

He's also invented things like the Telltale Heart, three of the boating implements, (perhaps the Think Tank itself?) and the Gardeneer Hat, which can be upgraded at the Ancient Pseudoscience Station!!

To my knowledge there's only 2 other items you need pre-existing crafts to make, but this is the only one that's personally invented by one of the survivors! I think that's pretty notable!

I like how Wickerbottom puts it here, eccentric but sound.

Another thing is something from the old ARG stuff that Klei set up. One of them was a map with a bunch of formulas and equations, which he wrote! I don't think he was pretending to know what he was writing here.

Anyways bleh, it seems like Klei is getting in on it too with certain quotes and especially the overabundance of puns that just. aren't good. (Anything involving marotters, for example...) I really hope that they stop leaning into that sort of thing for his characterization in the future. He's capable and actually pretty smart even if he's not the best scientist in the world. (Most of the screenshots and images are sourced from the non-fandom.wikia don't starve wiki)

[maniculum]

Perlesvaus (Evans translation)

So I'm taking another stab at reading the Sebastian Evans translation of Perlesvaus, for... reasons. Or the High History of the Holy Graal, as he titles it -- funnily enough, the people who put out this reprint apparently looked at the title, said "we're not doing that", and spelt it Grail on the cover.

Despite the bizarre choices in diction, it's still pretty fun, and I want to share some particularly entertaining bits of this text with y'all. (For those of you who aren't up on the two different translations of Perlesvaus and don't know what I mean by "bizarre choices", the Evans translation is from 1898 but pretending to be from, like, 1498.)

N.B.: Marginal notes in red are from the last time I tried this -- they stop showing up roughly a quarter of the way through the book, because that's when I decided to buy the Bryant translation instead.

I just find this funny because "who cares?" strikes me as such a modern thing to say. To me it is a phrase that seems most natural coming from a teenage character in late-20th-century media. But nope. "Who careth?"

This is here just for the bizarre scene. We have three women coming into the throne room (riding mules directly into the building, by the way). One is carrying a severed head decorated with silver and gold. Another has "a pack trussed behind her with a brachet thereupon" -- you can see from the notes that I had to look up "brachet", found out it was an old word meaning roughly "female scent-hound", and then had the mental image of this woman carrying around a beagle in a baby-bjorn.

Again something I find funny. Gawain just leaping through the air to interpose himself between the horses and this hermit, like he's trying to take a bullet for them. This is entirely because he is 100% certain the hermit will handle the saddles incorrectly, and when the hermit assures him he actually does know how this stuff works, Gawain calms down & lets him do it.

This is, for my money, one of the funniest things in all of Perlesvaus, which is saying something because it is a bonkers text. This lady rolls up and provides that description, and the hermit recognizes who she's talking about. Like, "oh yes I did see a knight with a heart of steel and the navel of a virgin". I want to give this description to a sketch artist. (I kind of want to throw it at an AI just to see what it comes up with, but you know. I don't want to encourage the machines.)

This time I'm nit-picking the translation, because that strikes me as a misplaced modifier. Obviously it's meant that Gawain is unaware of events, but the sentence is constructed to make it sound like it's referring to the building itself, which is of course unaware because it's a building and isn't aware of anything. (Also, side note, I like the phrase "as methinketh!")

One more, and I'm leaving this for now...

Here is a case where I was going to complain, but on further examination, I must hand it to Evans. I assumed that he was just randomly archaizing, but I looked it up after uploading this photo, and according to the OED, this was a valid alternate spelling of sovereign from the 17th to the 19th century. (Interestingly, the latest attested example on the OED is from 11 years before this translation was published, meaning this is evidence it was in use slightly longer than the OED entry would suggest -- does anyone know if there's still a way to submit instances of a word to the OED?)

[asterlark]

me and den @unloneliest were just talking about murderbot and ART's relationship and i want to discuss how they quite literally complete each other's sensory and emotional experience of the world!!

there's a few great posts on here such as this one about how murderbot uses drones to fully and properly experience the world around it (it also accesses security cameras/other systems for this same purpose). but i haven't seen anyone so far talk about how once MB stops working for the company and consequently doesn't have a hubsystem/secsystem to connect to anymore (which for its entire existence up to that point had been how it was used to interacting with its environment/doing its job), after it meets ART, ART starts to fill that gap.

ART gives MB access to more cameras, systems, and information archives than it would normally be able to connect with while MB is on its own outside of ART's... body(? lol), but also directly gives MB access to its own cameras, drones, archives, facilities, and processing space. additionally, so much of ART's function is dedicated to analysis, lateral thinking, and logical reasoning, and it not only uses those skills in service of reaching murderbot's goals, it teaches murderbot how to use those same skills. (ART might be a bit of an asshole about how it does this, but that doesn't negate just how much it does for murderbot for no reason other than it's bored/interested in MB as an individual.)

we all love goofing about how artificial condition can basically be boiled down to "two robots in a trench coat trying to get through a job interview" (which is entirely accurate tbh) but that's also such a great example of ART fulfilling the role of both murderbot's "hubsystem" and "secsystem", allowing it to fully experience its environment/ succeed in its goals. ART provides MB with crucial information, context, and constructive criticism, and uses its significant processing power to act as MB's backup and support system while they work together.

from ART's side of things, we get a very explicit explanation of how it needs the context of murderbot's emotional reactions to media in order to fully understand and experience the media as intended. it tried to watch media with its humans, and it didn't completely understand just by studying their reactions. but when it's in a feed connection with murderbot, who isn't human but has human neural tissue, ART is finally able to thoroughly process the emotional aspects of media (side note, once it actually understands the emotional stakes in a way that makes sense for it, it's so frightened by the possibility of the fictional ship/crew in worldhoppers being catastrophically injured or killed that it makes murderbot pause for a significant amount of time before it feels prepared to go on. like!! ART really fucking loves its crew, that is all).

looking at things further from ART's perspective: its relationship with murderbot is ostensibly the very first relationship it's been able to establish with not only someone outside of its crew, but also with any construct at all. while ART loves its crew very much (see previous point re: being so so scared for the fate of the fictional crew of worldhoppers), it never had a choice in forming relationships with them. it was quite literally programmed to build those relationships with its crew and students. ART loves its function, its job, and nearly all of the humans that spend time inside of it, but its relationship with murderbot is the first time it's able to choose to make a new friend. that new friend is also someone who, due to its partial machine intelligence, is able to understand and know ART on a whole other level of intimacy that humans simply aren't capable of. (that part goes for murderbot, too, obviously; ART is its first actual friend outside of the presaux team, and its first bot friend ever.)

and because murderbot is murderbot, and not a "nice/polite to ART most of the time" human, this is also one of the first times that ART gets real feedback from a friend about the ways that its actions impact others. after the whole situation in network effect, when the truth of the kidnapping comes to light and murderbot hides in the bathroom refusing to talk to ART (and admittedly ART doesn't handle this well lol) - ART is forced to confront that despite it making the only call it felt able to make in that horrifying situation, despite it thinking that that was the right call, its actions hurt murderbot, and several other humans were caught in the crossfire. what's most scary to ART in that moment is the idea that murderbot might never forgive it, might never want to talk to it again. it's already so attached to this friendship, so concerned with murderbot's wellbeing, that the thought of that friendship being over because of its own behavior is terrifying. (to me, this almost mirrors murderbot's complete emotional collapse when it thinks that ART has been killed. the other more overt mirror is ART fully intending on bombing the colony to get murderbot back.)

in den's words, they both increase the other's capacity to feel: ART by acting as a part of murderbot's sensory system, and murderbot by acting as a means by which ART can access emotion. they love one another so much they would do pretty much anything to keep each other safe/avenge each other, but what's more, they unequivocally make each other more whole.

[katsurinssims]

Keto's build sets with English translated descriptions

I really love Keto's Japanese style build sets, but while I was redownloading them I realised they have the issue where the Japanese catalogue descriptions appear blank in my English game. So I've gone through and translated the catalogue description files; bear in mind, these are the only edits I've made to the packages, I only translated the descriptions and the folder names (and compressed everything aha). I'd love to make the colums actual colums, move the supports to acitecture category, and repo like, everything, but I'll have to do that at some other point. Also, these aren't professional or even good translations- they're pretty much just informed google translations with my limited Japanese language and knowlege of Japanese architecture skills aha (´∀｀；)

These are only the sets that needed translations, so if you want any of Keto's recolour sets and such, the download links on the original site still work so grab em from there! For example, recolours of the BV shoji door, wallpaper sets 1 and 2, Japanese style lots, and Keto's Touhou sim costumes if that floats yer boat!

A lot of these items are Edo and historical style as well as traditional, so they may work well for medieval style games, too.

Finally, I have recoloured a few of these items here!

Previews are all Keto's originals! I did test everything and didn't notice an issue.

Japanese Fence set 1

Download

Japanese fence set 2

Download

Note- to place the fence round the edge of the engawa like in the picture, place the fence first then the deck second.

Japanese fence set 3

Download

Japanese window set 1

Download

Japanese window set 2

Download

Temple exterior construction kit

Download

Great bell for temples

Download

Bonus: collection file for Keto' buid sets

[certifiedsexed]

hi, I’m asking for some clarification on the idea that Virginity is a social construct. the thing I actually understand and AGREE with the points and explanations on why, but aren’t those just the connotations around being a virgin, not the actual concept of being a virgin. I wholeheartedly agree that being a virgin shouldn’t be seen as more “pure” and “innocent” but like, what’s wrong with “person that has not had sex before”?

Hi! So, you've practically invited me to ramble, Anon, I'm so excited. T_T

To be clear, this is a great question!! Thank you so much for being interested in learning!

Let's start with the fact that "virgin", by definition, has not ever meant "person that has not had sex before".

It's a term that's specifically, repeatedly, worldwide, has been used to refer to women and girls who have not had "sexual intercourse", specifically "PIV" sex. It's still used that way, in many places, all over the world.

It has many, many definitions, I don't deny that. The closest it's got to what you're talking about is "person who hasn't had sexual intercourse", which is not the same as "person that has not had sex".

There are many ways to have sex without having intercourse. Masturbation, for example, is a type of sex and yet, people who have only masturbated still count as virgins. In fact, in many places, you can give and receive blow jobs, anal sex, oral sex, mutual masturbation and still count as a virgin!

As a Sex Ed Scholar, I think it's very important to acknowledge that things like masturbation, oral sex, etc, are all types of sex. Not just because it's misogynistic and cisheteronormative to claim they aren't but because we live under a culture that encourages rape and general sexual abuse.

To not be clear about what is and isn't sex is very dangerous and plays into rape culture.

I also think it's important we ask ourselves why we need the term virgin. Do we? What purpose does it serve? Do we want a word for people who have not had sex, or people who have not had sex with others? Why?

[Maybe to talk about STI/Ds? Except people who haven't had sex at all can still have an STD! So. not that.]

Maybe you want it for some type of research! But why virgin specifically, a term with a million and one bigotries dragging behind it? Why a term more insult than objective? Why a term that many people will not identify with, or even want to be involved with?

Why not create a new term altogether?

To be clear, I don't think anyone is evil for using the term virgin. But I think maybe we should consider if we're past the point where we need to be using that word at all and asking ourselves what use it even has.

Okay, I hope this helps explain a little more, Anon. If not, feel free to ask me to ramble more. I love discussing this shit, you've hit the jackpot, so fr, if you didn't understand or wonder more, knock yourself out. <33

[toaarcan]

What is the Default Toa Form?

So, theory time.

It's a common fandom headcanon that the natural state of all Toa is the Toa Metru build. The reasons for this are varied (but if I'm honest seem mostly rooted in the fandom's love affair with the build that came to an end during the TTV Hagah Contest rather than any actual lore), but I personally disagree with this.

So I'm going to run through the various Toa builds in roughly chronological order (with one exception) and determine whether I think they're likely to be the true default form of a Toa.

1) Helryx

Well, right away, here's one that probably isn't.

Helryx is the oldest build lore-wise, newest IRL. She's also kind of a "Meta Build", aiming to look like a forerunner to the Toa Mata build we'll discuss shortly, not by directly evoking the way the Mata were styled (I would argue that a lot of the Mata's identifying hallmarks aren't present in her), but by being primarily composed of parts from 2001 and earlier.

However... this isn't what Helryx always looked like. Nor is the art that actually represents the canonised design.

The intent of the contest was to create Helryx as she appears in the present, after thousands of years of wear, tear and repair. In the text, she's referred to as disturbingly frail and alien-looking compared to what Takanuva expects a Toa to look like.

Even if she once looked like a default Toa, she doesn't now.

Orde, the only other known prototype Toa, never received a canon design (for what it's worth, I won't be putting a lot of weight on the DuckBricks Fanon Contest designs, since they're, well, fanon. So Bukkey's Orde won't be factored in here, besides me noting that he has a more Mata-esque body than Helryx does).

However, another popular headcanon is that Krakua represents another example of this generation of Toa, as Helryx would've been the basis for Krakua's transformation.

Perhaps this is what Helryx would've lookedd like when she was healthy and built?

Well, as much as I like that headcanon, and will continue to use it in fanon, probably not. Based on the evidence we have of Toa transformations, both in-story through Takanuva and the Toa Metru, the transformation is pretty much 1-to-1 with current forms. The Metru all get Lhikan's build exactly, except for specifically their height. Likewise, Takanuva's build is identical to Gali Nuva's, despite him not being a Toa Nuva. He didn't resemble base Gali, he resembled her current form.

If Krakua was transformed in Helryx's image, he'd likely be just as small, spindly, and hunched-over as she is.

For now, Krakua remains a weird outlier.

2) Mata

While not as common a choice as the Toa Metru build, the Mata build has also been suggested a few times as "Base Toa," largely because it's the original. It's relatively simple, and depicting any given Toa as a Mata build is easy enough and looks good.

(I honestly prefer it over the Metru build. It's easier to put proper hips, knees and elbows on a Mata than it is to un-fuck a Metru's shoulders and neck)

However, the Toa Mata are actually pretty much unique entities within the Matoran Universe, unlike any Toa before or after them. They are the only Toa who aren't transformed from Matoran or built by the Great Beings, instead being created by Artakha.

As a result of that unique method of creation, it's entirely reasonable to suggest that the Toa Mata look different to every other Toa in the world besides Takanuva, who was transformed in their image. They're the only canonical Toa whose bodies directly resemble the Great Spirit Robot itself, use these specific colour schemes, and have its specific design language in their construction.

3) Hagah/Mangai/Metru

By far the most popular contender for this title, but one I don't personally agree with.

We don't know whether the Toa Hagah were built or transformed, but we know they were assembled from across the Matoran universe and given new armour upon recruitment into Teridax's team, and we have no idea what they looked like before they were given this armour, beyond Bomonga presumably already having his huge limbs. Additionally, the Metru were all transformed based on Lhikan, so it's him I'll be focusing on mostly.

Lhikan was transformed and was trained at a Toa Fortress around 6000 years ago. We don't know what the other Mangai looked like (though they're popularly headcanoned as being Metru too, no canon look for them was ever settled).

However, my stance is that this design is not the default (Lhikan would've been transformed in someone's image), but rather a cultural one, a sort of 'uniform' armour style adopted by Toa during the height of their power, when the Toa Fortresses were active and Toa were commonly trained by other Toa. The image of a Toa would've become a consistent thing, and caused almost all transformed Toa to adopt it for a time, making it almost a new default, but not the original, until the Toa genocide and the subspecies becoming largely extinct caused things to diverge again.

This is, to be specific, not a counter-theory I'm proposing to the "Default Metru" theory in and of itself, but rather a part of a wider theory, explaining the commonality of the Metru build when I think that the last spot on our list is the real default.

And that leaves us with only one option.

4) Inika/Mahri/Cordak/Nuva 2.0/Glatorian

So yes, I think this is the default Toa build.

That might strike you as weird, considering that the Inika are only transformed at the beginning of the Ignition Arc, right before the end of the story in terms of the MU's timescale, and the Nuva adopt this design even later.

But let's consider a few points, shall we?

First off, the Toa Inika are the first and only Toa team we see who are transformed into their Toa forms, and do not have their appearance influenced by previous Toa. And while there's some weirdness with their heads and powers, their bodies seem pretty normal, and remain as such after their Inika weirdness is removed by the Ignika.

Secondly, we know the Great Beings made the Matoran based on the Agori, and the Toa based on the Glatorian. The first Matoran, the default form of a Matoran as it were, are the Av-Matoran, who use the same build as the Agori exactly. Should it not stand to reason that a default Toa uses the same build as the Glatorian?

Additionally, like the Glatorian, the Inika build and its derivatives have by far the most variation from individual to individual. True, we've never seen a Toa as weird as Strakk, but that doesn't mean that none existed.

Thirdly, there's one more character we haven't discussed thus far.

And this, then, is my smoking gun.

Lesovikk was a member of the first Toa Team, and one would assume based on that information that he's a purpose-built Toa. Well, he isn't. He's transformed. Given how rushed the Great Beings were at the end of the GSR project, I wager they found it easier to make a small number of Toa and then have them immediately transfer power to Matoran than it was to make thousands of Toa from the off.

Lesovikk may well be the first Toa transformed, and if he was, then his transformation would either be free of influence from anyone, or in the direct image of whomever transformed him, who could only be a default, purpose-built Toa.

"But wait!" I hear some of you typing already. "Lesovikk is a mutant, we have no idea what his true form looks like!"

Or do we?

Let's look at another character who was affected by Pit Mutagen in 2007, shall we?

This is Defilak, a Matoran of Mahri Nui. Like all the residents of Mahri Nui, he once lived on the Southern Continent, and later Voya Nui, after an ill-fated trip to Karzahni.

He used to be a weird little gremlin Matoran like his brethren from 2006, and transformed into the form above after being immersed in Pit Mutagen.

But here's the twist: Rather than simply mutating them directly from their twisted post-rebuild forms, the Mutagen actually reverted the Matoran of Mahri Nui to their original forms first, and only then started to mutate them.

This is Defilak's default form. This is what he always looked like, just with added weapons.

With that in mind, I think it's safe to say that Lesovikk is likely in the same boat: Reverted to his original form before the mutations started.

With the exception of the tube-like gill, I think it's more than probable that Lesovikk is mostly-normal still, and as such, is a very early Toa with a Mahri build.

With that in mind, I conclude that the default design for a Toa is a 2006-2009 build, with Helryx being the product of damage and repair, the Metru/Mangai/Hagah being a cultural design, the Mata being Artakha designs, and Krakua being a weird outlier.