#this post refers to both the characters and also just the show itself. they certainly made choices

[hopefulsapphic]

torchwood really just did whatever the fuck they wanted didn't they

[visualtaehyun]

Lots of brilliant, thoughtful, funny posts out there about today's BMF episode so I just wanna jump in with some Thai!

Disclaimer: I'm still learning but want to share my love for Thai more! So feel free to correct me or expand on anything 🙏

What Pisaeng says here is that he wants them to stop using the pronouns กู (guu) / มึง (mueng) that they have both been using with each other so far. From my experience watching Thai series, they're most common in male friendships but Not and Kwan use them with each other as well in this show! In most school and university settings, you'll hear it between guys all the time but they're actually quite rude. You might see parents in Thai shows scold their kids for using them. Here's Punn from Be Mine Superstar using กู (guu) / มึง (mueng) while he's fighting with his little brother in front of their mom and immediately-

You might see someone intentionally switch to these pronouns in anger, like Payu in Love in the Air when Stop spits on his bike. He repeats his sentence, just switches out the polite 2nd person pronoun คุณ (khun) for มึง (mueng).

Between friends they express closeness and there's a long list of Thai BL couples who start as friends or school mates and thus continue to use them after they start dating. But there's also lots who decide to change how they speak to each other. A compromise I see a lot is foregoing pronouns and using names (yes, you can refer to yourself and others by name in Thai, it gives a bit of an intimate or cute feeling though). Like super sweet Khabkluen and Daonuea from Star in My Mind (here Our Skyy 2) who call themselves and each other by Kluen and Dao and also use the polite ending particle ครับ (khab).

Now where the hell am I going with all of this?

After Pisaeng brings up the pronoun thing and Kawi goes "Like what?", I was expecting the option Names. But then Pisaeng pulls a sly happy face and I adjust to expecting เธอ (ter) maybe?? considering its frequent use in (love) songs and in some recent memes such as โอ้เธอหวานเจี๊ยบ (Oh ter! Waan jiab! = Oh you! SO sweet!) - if you at all follow GeminiFourth, you have certainly heard or read it before lol

What Pisaeng actually says though is the epitome of lover-cutespeak:

เตง (dtaeng), a version/shortening of ตัวเอง (dtua-eeng) which originally means 'oneself', and is mostly used along with the 1st person pronoun เค้า (kao), which itself is a version of a 3rd person pronoun. Confused? The idea here seems to be a Call me by your name/I am You, You are Me type of deal. The only couple I can remember off the top of my head who actually uses them is Liu and See-ew in The Warp Effect.

Moving on though! Kawi expectedly and hilariously shoots that down and:

...his 'you' here is มึง (mueng) again, to Pisaeng's disappointment lol

So Kawi repeats his question, using the polite 2nd person pronoun คุณ (khun) and the polite ending particle ครับ (khab), that he intentionally pronounces sweetly by elongating the vowel. Pisaeng responds by using the polite male 1st person pronoun ผม (pom) that works in lots of situations.

Maybe it's that I've been conditioned by too many university settings in Thai BL but I somehow didn't expect these friends-to-lovers university students to go with this choice (P'Waa managing to surprise me again). It reads as mature in a way? Like intentionally being not just polite but formal. It's a thing you might hear from parent characters/spouses but also just normal working adults, like Tan and Bun in Manner of Death. They continuously work towards building a long-lasting relationship while the show keeps subverting expected BL tropes left and right!

Throughout the rest of this episode, they omit pronouns where possible but Pisaeng starts using them repeatedly during dinner at the restaurant and in the preview they both use ผม (pom) / คุณ (khun) comfortably.

After many lines of omitted pronouns during the amusement park date, Pisaeng makes it a point to use ผม (pom) / คุณ (khun) right here, by the way:

[doberbutts]

I also think- having recently seen a post that said Blue Eye Samurai isn't a queer story, it just has queer elements- that sometimes it feels like fans cannot make up their minds.

Do we or do we not want stories that treat being gay as a perfectly normal, perfectly common experience the same way straight people are depicted in every story to ever exist?

In BES, no one is outright stated to be queer. That's partially because in Japan, until Japan felt the need to sanitize itself to appeal to foreigners, it wasn't unheard of at all for men to be gay. Multiple famous samurai and swordsmen and nobles were either outspokenly gay or are commonly theorized to have been gay in modern historical readings. Abijah making multiple references to swinging both ways, Kaji's offer of a male prostitute, the various scenes we have of men being together in sexual positions, they're not met with surprise because homosexuality was an acknowledged thing that happened.

Taigen's erection while he's wrestling Mizu, even though he doesn't yet know her secret, is treated awkwardly because they're supposed to dislike each other and also he's supposed to be in love with Akemi, not because "whoa bro no homo".

(This is also why I keep saying that it's difficult for me to put into English words what I think Mizu's gender is, because gender and sexuality quite frankly did not work the way my 2020s American brain wants to contextualize it, and I think it's important to consider the cultural aspects here esp in a show so heavily leaning on a racial story)

However, compared to many other shows out there even regarding the same area and country, BES is significantly more queer than the majority of them produced in the last 30 years. Is Mizu herself queer? Well... maybe, depending how you define it. Back in the day, otherwise cisgender crossdressers and male-impersonators were still grouped in with those we'd call transgender nowadays. She seems to be exclusively interested in men, but also seems to be equally receptive to considering herself sexually as both a man and a woman pairing with men, than as a man or woman pairing with women which she has adamantly refused with zero interest on multiple occasions.

Is Taigen bi? I mean, maybe! He seemed more mortified that he had an unwanted erection in front of someone he wanted to impress and play with, than that he had it over someone he considers a man, using the excuse that he misses his would-be fiance.

Abijah certainly seems to be bisexual, considering we see him having sex with both women and men, and his various sexual references talk about both men and women as well. This is ignoring whatever weird sexual tension thing he's got going with Heiji, who seems both receptive and repulsed by it.

And, not to be remiss, but there is a reason I specified that homosexuality among men was pretty known. Due to the more rigid policing of women's sexuality in this era, homosexuality among women was less commonly reported (though I have heard stories of noble women and their handmaids, or the working poor women, or among prostitutes living together in the brothels, so also not unheard of but perhaps less accepted as women were largely bought and sold in marriage and sex trafficking) - but even with all of that, Kaji and Kinuyo have something together. Whether that is a mother-daughter thing, or if they were lovers, is up to interpretation. The implication that out of everyone at the brothel that Kaji genuinely cares for, Kinuyo was special, and that wasn't a particularly uncommon arrangement historically if I'm hearing about it 400 years later in a completely different country.

So this "well it's not a queer show" and "if I was told this was a queer story I'd be disappointed" is honestly just ridiculous hooey to me. Do you want characters who are able to explore their sexualities without looking over their shoulder out of fear of homophobia, or not?

[quibbs126]

I can finally post this, after weeks!

But yeah, this here is something I made to celebrate the 9th anniversary of Evoland 2

Some people may remember this work in progress from weeks ago, but now I can finally show the finished product. Which I finished 2 weeks ago

It’s based on the 3D picture you get when you finish the game, specially the 100% completion, and more specifically, my screenshot that I took when I first completed the game and got 100%

Though I should probably also note that this was the only picture I had of the beach scene until I was mostly done with the picture, so there are some inaccuracies between it and the original. Except for Reno in place of the Prophet, that was completely intentional

This game was I think the first (and will probably be the only) game I’ve ever 100% completed, and when I did it the first time, it was just because I knew that games would have extra things for those who 100% it, and I wanted to see what the game would give me. It’s the only time I was so invested in a game that I had to know what I’d get if I got everything. It’s also the only game where losing nearly 10 hours of progress due to a (maybe) glitch does not make me give up the game in frustration, but instead complete the entire thing within a single school week

I may gripe about my issues with the game, but I absolutely love it, and I have a lot of fun playing it. Well, aside from the parts I’m bad at, but that’s just because I’m bad at them. I feel like I have next to nothing to complain about from a gameplay perspective (which is in part because I don’t know how to critique gameplay, but also because I think any issues I have are my own fault), it’s just narrative stuff. And even then, I wouldn’t nitpick it so much if I wasn’t so invested in the world, story and characters

Maybe today I’ll start replaying it again, seeing how I’m pretty sure I’m free today from any schoolwork

I’m still holding on to some admittedly delusional hope that a 3rd game could release one day, even if I know it’ll almost certainly have nothing to do with this one, but even if it never does, I’ll still have this game to play over and over again, so I can accept it

I was disappointed that I missed the last two, since I first played the game in 2022, but not this year, I remembered!

Now to just talk about the art itself, the reason there’s two versions is because I originally made the background lineless, but after finishing the characters I thought it maybe clashed a bit too much, so I made a duplicate of the picture to do a lined version. But I also spent so long on the lineless version that I didn’t want to just leave it in the void, so I’m showing it too

Admittedly now I think I can say the lined version probably is the better one, but I can still show off both

I used the card colors for the characters, since all of them have cards for reference, but now I’m looking at the colors and thinking they look somewhat wrong. At least on Menos

Also as mentioned prior, I switched out the Prophet for Reno. I know I’m biased but I really think he’d fit in this picture of all the main characters far more than the Prophet, considering he’s kind of the reason the plot started, the second half happened, and he’s the main motivation for one of our party members. I mean, I see why the Prophet’s there in the original. He’s really the only other semi-important character with a 3D model, and Reno never had one, so they’d have to make an entirely new one just for this extra thing. Also it doesn’t make sense for him to have a 3D model in the first place, especially not of his Present era self. But not only is this now a drawing where I have the power to do what I want, this scene isn’t canon in the first place, so put Reno in the background there!

Overall though, I’m honestly surprised the piece turned out as good as it did. Those who follow me know that I was really struggling with drawing during the summer, more specifically drawing people and the Evoland 2 cast. But despite all that, I think the characters turned out pretty well. Certainly not the best, but better than I was expecting. And not only that, but the background turned out so much better than I thought it would, especially since I don’t usually do backgrounds. Though I suppose it does help to have a reference for all this though. But yeah, there was a reason I was so proud of how the sketch turned out, and while the final product may not have entirely been what I was hoping for after the sketch, it still turned out pretty good

As long as I can remember it next year (which I really hope I can, considering that’s the 10th anniversary), I’ll try to make something there too, hopefully with much improved drawing skills, since I’m still trying to figure all that out again still

Not sure what I’ll draw then. Maybe I could redraw the beach scene, or make an entirely new beach scene concocted by my brain. But it’s also the 10th anniversary next year, so maybe it should be something more special

Ah well, that’s next year’s problem. For now, have this to celebrate the game’s anniversary. For the minuscule amount of people who actually play this game, I guess

[spntoxicfemslashevent]

(anon from earlier abt racism issue) ok thanks for answering. it could be helpful to know what characters or ships are banned or smth and how you came to blanket banning only kaia and portia, two woc, without poc’s input. if characters are being censored, saying who and why is better. ignoring racism to combat racism never worked.

I understand what you’re talking about, I want to lay out the whole situation here.  We initially wanted to work out the situation in private with the person you’re talking about, but it does seem like we need to explain everything here.

In brief: We received an ask about Portia that we of the mod team didn’t want to post.  When the person reached out about their ask we sent a brief response explaining that we didn’t want to post it.  We also, mistakenly, thought that person had sent a previous anon about Kaia that we were similarly uncomfortable with.  The person later questioned our lack of clarity regarding this, and other bloggers chimed in that they felt we were performing an act of erasure by not wanting Kaia on the blog.  This situation is somewhat multi pronged, so I’ll cover it in two sections.

Portia:  

Portia as a character is, in our opinion, written in an extremely poor and racist manner in the episode itself. She calls a white man “master” and turns into a dog, and a huge amount of the episode is taken up with jokes about her being a dog. This plays into a long cultural history of Black women being dehumanized and sexualized by being compared to animals.

We felt that the ask we got furthered that treatment - in our opinion, it thoughtlessly replicated the racism of the original episode, only replacing the white male “master” with a white female “master,” and continuing to compare Portia to a dog.  While the ask approached this from first a kink, and then a comedic perspective, given the extremely loaded histories present with both, we felt uncomfortable with the ask as a whole.

When presented with an ask about her (something we hadn’t anticipated because she’s a fairly minor character in the show as a whole), we thought the better move would just be to not publish the ask.

The person who sent the Portia ask reached out and asked why their piece was not being published, and we overreacted by telling the original ask-sender that we were banning the character. This was mostly because, again, we didn’t have a policy worked out in advance, since Portia is a one-episode character and Supernatural is long. We were shocked that she came up, and shocked at the content of the ask.

We have decided that banning Portia was a mistake. But please don’t send us another ask where she’s calling a white woman “master.”

Kaia:

Kaia is again a situation where we should have had more clarity from the beginning, we apologize for that.

We of the mod team discussed Kaia when we were forming this blog.  We’ve seen indigenous bloggers arguing for her inclusion in fanworks, and indigenous bloggers arguing against her inclusion in fanworks, and we certainly see both sides of the argument.  Kaia, as presented in the show, isn’t always written very well, but fandom is also a space to flesh out and explore characters.

Ultimately, the reason we decided to not discuss Kaia in the event was twofold; firstly, the only ask we received about Kaia involved Claire kidnapping AU! Kaia, subject matter we feared unintentionally veered too close to actual racist dynamics in the real world.  Secondly, and more broadly, most Kaia content is in the form of the Dreamhunter ship, which is often not concerned with Kaia as a person: she’s just a body for Claire to be interested in.  Given that this is a toxic femslash event, our concern was that fanworks with this ship would (again unintentionally) replicate real world racism.

Since seeing the post you’re referring to, we of the mod team have talked it over, and have ultimately decided that we are okay with Kaia and Dreamhunter being submitted to this blog.  Our concerns are more of a case by case thing, and we do not want to silence anyone who is interested in Kaia as a character and wants to explore her further.

Final Points:

In regards to the last point, of having to decide things on a case by case basis, this is where I think a lot of the lack of clarity you point out comes from. Ultimately, when it comes to issues like this in fanworks, it’s hard to create any sort of blanket ban that’s effective.  For instance, banning works where characters of color are kidnapped would be incredibly unhelpful; it would stifle works that are perfectly fine and would fail to meaningfully prevent racist works from being submitted.

Additionally, it’s not like Kaia is the only character who ends up being handled in a racist way by fandom - if we banned every character who was frequently handled in a racist way by fans, it would be an all-white event.

If you look at the asks we receive, white characters are disproportionately in the “main character” role and characters of color are disproportionately in the “love interest”/”object” role. We don’t really have a good solution for this, and it’s not like every ask that fits this pattern is some horrible act of racism, it’s just statistics, along with the show being a racist text that fleshes out white female characters more than female characters of color. The answer probably isn’t to ban prompts where white women are the main characters and women of color are the love interests. But it’s not really a problem we have a good solution for. 

In the end, because of this, we’ve decided to allow Kaia and Dreamhunter.

Ultimately, we’re trying our best to create an event that encourages people to think more deeply and do more interesting things with all women in Supernatural, including women of color, and I want to apologize if we haven’t managed to do that. 

While we’ve always reserved the right to not boost certain works, we now see that more clarity will be helpful, and hope this communication provided it.  If a similar situation comes up again, we will discuss it more openly on the blog itself in order to maintain transparency.

I appreciate you reaching out in regards to this; I hope after laying out our reasoning that this makes a little more sense.  I want to apologize if you still feel uncomfortable participating in this event, but I wish you the best either way.

In general, if you or anyone else thinks we’ve made a mistake, either through something we did publish or something we didn’t, we would really appreciate you reaching out and letting us know.  While this event deals with heavy themes, it was never our intention to make it an unsafe or exclusionary space, and we want to work to correct that.

Also, while this is probably not relevant, a brief disclaimer.  Please do not harass anyone we’ve discussed here.  We haven’t been linking to blogs because we do not want anyone to be dogpiled or harassed, but the post the anon is talking about isn’t impossible to find or anything.

[bit-club]

my notes on week two! <3

this one’s going to be a little quick because i accidentally deleted my draft for this post and i am not typing all that again. i’m sorry :(

first interlude!! they’re my favorite parts of the book! i love mike’s perspective and his historical studies, i think they’re a really great example of how every town has it’s own strange history mostly remembered by families and witnesses rather than recorded in textbooks.

i like how mike is dismissed by the police for questioning derry’s mysterious history of missing and killed children is a callback to how don hagarty was dismissed (also note that both mike and don are minorities in a largely white, homophobic town). shows how attempting to make something out of derry’s strangeness is seen as unreasonable, nearly taboo.

what i also like about this section is mike referring to both it and the boys who killed adrian mellon as “animals”:

this is mike telling you: it’s not just the monster lurking in the sewers. derry’s citizens are not all innocents, they’re a part of the horror both in their actions and their inaction. derry is the ouroboros, eternally feeding itself.

ben hanscom certainly takes a fall in this one! i love his childhood chapters, i think his pov is very nice to read. i love that he’s got more adult friends than actual friends (because adults like him for his politeness and quiet humor, the same things that make kids think he’s a “puke” lol) and his sense of loyalty to his hardworking mother. i also think it’s interesting how the narrator makes a couple comments on how ben is starting to think less like a child and more like an adult, with a cold calculation enforced by having to watch out for bullies and sense of anxiety over worrying his mother.

this is our first perspective from childhood and i think it really sets up something that will eventually become a major issue for most of the main characters, which is their relationship with their parents, who are either unable or unwilling to understand, help, or guide their children through what would already be a difficult time in their lives.

also let me indulge; i love this paragraph:

ben is a pretty chill guy, but he’s definitely got a strong sense of justice. just look!

in this first instance of bill debrough beating the devil we can start to see why he would become the kid the other losers flock to and look to as a leader, as well as his guilt and the way his family dynamic has changed in a way that is truly harmful to him.

this also touches on bill’s anxieties and trauma, he fears the thing that took his brother and he feels a responsibility for his death.

eddie and bill are best friends, although they’re familiar with the other kids from school. there is a direct parallel between eddie and george in this chapter, where bill and eddie have a brother like bond and eddie especially idolizes bill (enough to get embarrassed when ben calls them cool; he insists that bill is).

i think this is my favorite part from that chapter:

like ben, bill’s pattern of thinking is mature and depressing to see as it is a direct result of his parents inability to be there for him after this tragedy. bill thinks it’s his responsibility to comfort his parents (trying to tell jokes, wanting to help his dad and being told to leave), and he’s realized very quickly that they are not doing the same for him.

some other miscellaneous things i liked were ben, bill, and eddie’s easy friendship; ben relating to eddie and helping him explain away the blood on his clothes; eddie and bill being each others best friends pre lucky seven; ben explaining the dam in a way we’ll see other characters do later, an intrinsic understanding of larger concepts; the family dynamic of all these kids; the innate differences between adults and kids, parents and their children. lots of interesting concepts!!

sorry this isn’t longer; if there’s something you noted about the chapters i missed let me know!

[anonymousad]

Shelterwood: a follow-up and apology

someone reached out to me after publishing my Shelterwood crowdfunding post with some very valid stuff that I want to address. they mistakenly sent it non-anonymously (something I confirmed with them before just responding to the Ask), so in the spirit of keeping things unidentifiable around here I am going to screenshot the entire message (so you can know I'm not selectively cutting anything out) and then I'll respond to it in chunks:

A Genuine Apology

so let's start with the first chunk of text:

I'm going to be straight with you: while there were absolutely some points you made about the Shelterwood crowdfund that I agreed with, like how unreasonable the goal seemed for a show produced by a novice showrunner, something's really sticking out here. That thing is that Stephen Indrisano and Nigel McKeon are both young, white, non-binary novice showrunners who secured some high-billing talent and picked unreasonably high crowdfunding goals, but you treated one of them with a lot of grace and understanding... and then turned around and not only accused the other of essentially being the problem with the current state of podcasting, but also called them cis in the process despite having acknowledged their pronouns earlier in your write-up. That was... certainly something. It's almost like you had a specific point you wanted to make, so you just sort of conveniently forget that Stephen is non-binary to make it. That or you don't actually think Stephen is non-binary and were engaging in some passive-aggressive gatekeeping, which also sucks, just in a different way.

this is 100% something I fucked up on, I will readily admit that. my accidental erasure of Stephen's identity as a non-binary person is not okay, intentional or not.

I wrote the initial post gradually over the course of just over a week, top to bottom, and then did a quick skim of it at the end to make sure things were still up-to-date in accordance with any updates to the campaign itself. a result of this is that between when I started the post (where I included Stephen's pronouns of "he/they)" and when I was writing some of the later parts I had forgotten this. I think part of the reason is that the campaign is not really about Stephen, so it isn't like there are consistent references to him as an individual. in the few places there are, such as the intro section of the main text and the FAQ, "he" is used exclusively, which I think mistakenly put that in my mind as Stephen having a male gender identity because I hadn't seen a self-identification as being non-binary on their website or Twitter. but someone deciding to use a specific set of pronouns in the text of something like this (to avoid confusion or for any other reason) does NOT invalidate their use of other pronouns elsewhere. similarly you don't have to outwardly proclaim your gender identity for it to be respected and not assumed as cis.

I am genuinely very sorry about this, it was a mistake and I am in the process of editing the original post to reflect Stephen's proper gender identity.

now then.

let's talk about the difference between Nigel (Among the Stacks) and Stephen and the way I approached them, because you're right that there was a difference.

I think a key way that these two projects differ is that one of them was very clearly made by someone who didn't know what they were doing and was in over their head. Among the Stacks was a clear trainwreck from the moment they started revealing how bloated the cast and crew were. I had many conversations with other creators during that early time where we were all wondering how this thing could function with so many cooks in the kitchen, and how you could have a coherent story with that many characters. it was clearly a product of someone new and over-excited who didn't have a real idea of how to do what they were dreaming of.

in contrast, Shelterwood seems to be genuinely well-thought out and approached like it was created by someone who has done their research and been part of the community for a while. it has a full concept with a clearly outlined size and goals and is a very realistic sounding first project. if it weren't for the goal and the rewards we wouldn't be talking about it at all. as a pitch it is perfectly reasonable.

I went a bit easier on Nigel because just from looking a lot of us could tell that Among the Stacks was going to end in disaster. we didn't know when or how, just that there was no way a project like that could actually succeed. I also knew from interactions between Nigel and other people that she was not very good at taking critique or hearing other people out on stuff that they didn't agree with. I went into that post with the intention of being harsh but fair, because I wanted Nigel to hear what I had to say and LISTEN. not just brush it off as "someone is jealous of my amazing idea and so they are being mean". I was still a bit mean in that post at some parts, I will admit that. my tone can swing a bit far on the sarcastic side, especially the longer I spend on a given post digging into things.

Shelterwood is full of people who should know better, something that it makes a point to brag about. it isn't just one person's dream project that they don't know how to wrangle, Stephen is clearly a proficient showrunner to have pulled all of this together (and I do genuinely find the show's concept to be interesting, even if I didn't really communicate that in the post as much as I could have). Stephen has ALSO been around the block a few times in regards to working on audio dramas, whether or not they have helmed their own. this means that from the start my expectations for them were higher.

my goal was not to accuse Stephen of being "the problem", but I think that this campaign is INDICATIVE of a lot of the "the problems" going on right now with audio drama crowdfunding.

I did seriously think about pulling the last section into a completely separate post, but what I wrote applies to the context of this campaign and so I felt it was important to have that connection. if I had been able to fully communicate my thoughts on it before now, say for the Arden campaign, it would have been part of that post. but it took me a lot of time to get those words down in a way that actually communicated what I think the problem is.

I know having it as part of the Shelterwood post has an implication, and the implication is correct that this campaign is PART of the problem, but it isn't the whole problem.

It's also very weird that you lumped Shelterwood, Arden, Among the Stacks and Afflicted in with The Magnus Protocol, which was on an entirely different level. They're not comparable. Not a single one of those first four shows actually made their crowdfund goals. In Afflicted's case, the all or nothing state of the crowdfund means 100% of that money was returned to backers. The Among the Stacks crowdfund was cancelled. Which means that for 50% of your given examples, literally none of that money ended up tied up in those shows rather than being contributed to other, smaller shows. This is not comparable with The Magnus Protocol crowdfund situation, and I think you know that.

it's 100% true that The Magnus Protocol is on a whole other level than these other campaigns, I said as much in my write-up. it is not comparable and I wasn't attempting to compare nearly $1 million USD to $26,000.

what I was attempting (and may have failed) to do was to point out that what Rusty Quill did was change the playing field for the worse. when looking at those two numbers you can much more easily make attempts to justify the high goals being asked for here, because in comparison that's downright reasonable to what they raised.

as a note: TMP had a funding goal of £15,000 (approx. $19,500 USD). so they weren't actually asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to make 3 seasons of a show. in fact, what they asked for is less than the campaigns I'm trying to call out here. that Kickstarter has a lot of things that were suspect about it and felt slimey and exploitative, but the asking price was not really one of them.

however.

just because they didn't ASK for that much money doesn't mean they didn't know it would happen (maybe not to that extent, but still). this still had the same impact, which from what I can tell is making some people think that audio drama crowdfunding is for making a profit.

as for the next point about none of the shows except for TMA 2 hitting their goals:

the amount they are walking away with isn't really the point.

at the end of the day, it's about the fact that the more stuff like this happens, the more it is NORMALIZED. and these kinds of goals getting normalized is harmful.

as an example, in the world of video games there is something called "microtransactions". for anyone who doesn't know, these are additional, small purchases you make in a game that you often have already paid upwards of $60-70 USD for. in the beginning, they were marketed as "just cosmetic" and not going to impact gameplay. and so people didn't fight back too hard when EVERY game started implementing them. but of course, what that did was move the bar. it normalized people paying extra money on top of their purchase for something that used to be included for free with a game. and so the companies started pushing the needle further. and further.

now, this isn't a direct parallel for a lot of reasons, but when greed is being put forward as normal again and again (even when it continues to result in failure) it starts to cement it as something "normal". something to be expected.

the larger problem here is that these are unsustainable amounts of money to be trying to get out of the community.

which connects to this next section:

Speaking of The Magnus Protocol, there's also an assumption being made here that someone deprived of the option of helping one of these shows reach their crowdfund goal is automatically going to donate to another show... and I need you to remember that The Magnus Protocol's final tally was something stupid like 4000% of their original goal. Lower crowdfunding goals don't stop people from contributing once that goal has been reached. People just keep donating to that project. None of those people were donating to make sure the thing got made- they were donating because they liked The Magnus Archives, and the hard to swallow pill here is that that doesn't mean they would've contributed to other crowdfunds otherwise. I have my own issues with The Magnus Protocol thing. But the statement that that crowdfund snatched money out of the pockets of smaller shows by having an unreasonably high goal just straight-up does not hold water. That's nothing. It's 4000% less than nothing. You're allowed to be mad that that campaign got such a ridiculous amount of funding when so many smaller shows are struggling. You don't need to couch it in pseudo-logic to justify feeling that way. We're all mad about it. It's okay.

this is definitely a good call-out, this person is right that someone not donating to one campaign does not mean that money will go to another. in a lot of cases, the only reason someone sees a campaign is because it is being promoted by the things they already like (in The Magnus Protocol's case that obviously being The Magnus Archives), and that means they probably aren't going to be choosing between every campaign that is out there and deciding where their $5 is going to go. they might just as easily pocket it and buy a nice coffee the next day.

and that absolutely sucks, because it would be nice for the love that some people have towards specific shows to be something that extends to the whole medium.

but I do think there's something to be said for feeling like even a small donation is making an impact. I would feel kind of bad to only be able to give $20 towards a $10k+ goal, it isn't even a drop in the bucket towards what is needed and if I care enough to donate to something I do want it to succeed. but that same $20 to a campaign only asking for $3000? that's a lot more tangible of an impact. enough so that I could feel good about splitting that $20 between two projects maybe.

that isn't 100% the point of what you were saying, I know that. the reality is that not everyone in this community has a general investment in the success of others.

I think where that becomes the biggest problem is when some people only seem to have an investment in themselves, and no one else. that's where these things become problems, when the larger needs of the community are ignored for the sake of a few who repeatedly succeed.

I'm kind of bleeding a bit into my response to the next part, so here that chunk is:

And do I agree that we as a community need to start talking about what is and is not realistic when it comes to crowdfunding? Yeah, absolutely. You have a point there. That's a valuable and timely observation and I'm glad somebody said it. Unfortunately, the value of that point was absolutely buried by the extremely obvious fact that this time, in this case, something about this project is personal for you. I don't know what it is specifically, but I do feel the need to ask: You are aware that Tal Minear is involved in the show as a graphic designer and minor actor, right? They have nothing to do with the crowdfund or the rest of production. Their name being attached doesn't mean they're secretly running the show. This is not Tal's show. They'd be credited as a producer if they were that involved. So why do you feel the need to keep bringing them up? Anyway, it's extremely difficult to take your analysis in good faith when it's so transparently motivated by some sort of personal distaste for somebody/the people in the project, and that's a shame, because some of the things you're saying have value.

I certainly didn't shy away from pointing a bit of a finger at Tal Minear for promoting this ideology, among others. their clear involvement in this project makes me immediately more suspicious, because Re: Dracula was a self-admitted cash grab. and that stain on their character is not going to go away for me.

it's less that it's "personal" for me, and more that this is a figure in the community that I have repeatedly seen presented as an expert that MUST be listened to. including by themself. ESPECIALLY when it comes to the matter of crowdfunding.

now, if I were friends with someone like that AND they were involved with my project that was about to have a campaign, would I not lean on that resource? even just for advice on how to put it together and what needs to be included. Tal just wrote a small little article for Descript that has some very generic crowdfunding tips, so they are arguably the most knowledgeable person involved in the campaign to go to for advice and feedback.

I know for a fact that Tal has given crowdfunding advice unsolicited to people running campaigns, usually in the form of asking why crew is not being paid appropriately (a valid question in most cases where actors tend to get a huge portion of the budget). so I can't imagine a world where they didn't give at least a little input to a friend for a show that they are actively involved in.

I don't think they are running anything behind the scenes, no, Tal is not part of some audio drama Illuminati. but I do recognize the high esteem to which they are held by MANY community members.

my goal was to call out the culture that has grown around audio drama crowdfunding, and the ways that I've seen it hurting most people who attempt to do it. I have noticed that Tal is a big part of what has normalized that.

as for the ways in which I brought them up, yeah I like to be a bit snide and I probably laid it on a bit thick. it's easy to get carried away in these things, especially towards someone that I am admittedly not a huge fan of.

that is the extent to which it could be considered "personal" for me, but I understand if you don't believe that or if that still had too much of an impact on taking the rest of what I said seriously. that is your choice and I respect it, it's just very difficult for me to separate out their involvement given what I know outside of this.

You're just completely undercutting that value by surrounding it with so much pointless nitpicking and snideness. What happened to "#but actually my intention is to be thoughtful and not mean"? You claim to be acting in the interest and defense of the community, but as the creator of a small podcast that nets me absolutely zero profit, I'm not feeling it. This feels like it's about you, not the rest of us.

this is absolutely fair.

I am just one person at the end of the day. I've talked to others, discussed the situation surrounding this campaign and others like it with them, but I am the one typing it down and inserting my voice and my take on it.

as such, I am not going to be a perfect mouthpiece for everyone's thoughts about this stuff.

I WANT to be one that is largely beneficial, however.

sometimes I lean a bit heavy into the snideness for the sake of keeping things interesting; these write-ups are LONG and as a writer I recognize you have to do something to keep people engaged so they actually absorb what you are saying.

is that the right approach? probably not for everyone, but it is part of a reflection of my own voice that it comes out like this.

"#but actually my intention is to be thoughtful and not mean" is something I wrote, something that I still want to keep in mind but sometimes I fail at that. in this case, I found it hard to stick to.

repeatedly seeing campaigns like this is disheartening to me, it wears me out. there is an amount of what a lot of people might see as "bitterness", but it's not really about any specific project or person.

I think my massive fucking rant at the end of that post about capitalism ruining audio dramas with the need to make money unsustainably says a lot about how I feel about the current financial state of the world. a lot of that "bitterness" is from this deep rage towards to the system, directed outwards where it can be. maybe the flow of it was a bit strong on this one, but it is still an accurate reflection of the way that I see things.

note, an accurate reflection to ME. it's okay if it isn't accurate to you, that's part of why the conversations need to happen.

part of why I do the math breakdowns for the budget is to help myself try and get a grasp on what those numbers mean. the human brain is not really formatted to understand large quantities of things, especially something that is usually intangible in those high amounts like money. I also do it because I want to give someone the opportunity to say "actually, you're wrong because this does add up. you are just missing part of the picture."

I know the way I approached this might come off as defensive, that's not my intention. I decided to break it down like this so that no one would think I'm trying to skip over feedback or ignore certain points that make me look bad.

everything that this person said to me is a valid response to what I wrote, including the things I pushed back on.

I am very grateful that they reached out to me, and I want to continue the conversation. ESPECIALLY if they feel that I did not hear them here.

my responses are just that. a response. they are not a claim of being right or these reactions being unjustified. we are all only in our own heads, and the conclusions we come to are usually based in rationality. my mind is open to being changed, I want to see as full a picture as possible.

if you disagree with what I've said, that is fine.

if you agree with what I've said, that is fine.

if you aren't sure, that is also fine.

we're talking about something complex and nuanced and just because I'm the one bringing these things up doesn't mean I have the RIGHT opinion or that I am the person who SHOULD be saying it.

there is a reason that I am anonymous here, and it's mostly because the conversation is more important than who is speaking.

as always, my inbox and Asks are open.

feedback welcome, I mean that.

[shorthaltsjester]

fcg using turn undead is not the problem in and of itself but that he didn’t even apologize for how it harmed laudna after the fact and then told her to “respect the gods” which is a pretty messed up thing to say to someone after you just did something to hurt them and who is clearly struggling with where she stands because of how the gods seem to view her. and if you still can’t understand why laudna has a problem with the gods you’re just dumbass and there’s no helping you at this point.

i’m very cognizant that for some people the issue is fcg’s “respect the gods”, however that explicitly wasn’t what i was addressing in my post. i was very specifically expressing frustration about people who have seemed to forgotten the aspect of cr where it is storytelling through the medium of a game. also, i’m not sure that it is super obvious that laudna is struggling with where she stands because of how the gods seem to view her. struggling with where she stands? yes absolutely, and she certainly brings up uncertainty wrt the morality of the gods, but i don’t know that fcg has any reason at all to believe that laudna is struggling right now because of the gods and not other concerns like her recent death, the impending apocalypse, and the emotional turmoil of the separation - something that fcg more than most has actually addressed. they did it in their clumsy, self-deprecating way, but fcg is one of the few who explicitly engaged with the unfairness between the experiences of team issylra and team wildemount during the split.

it is messed up that fcg tells her to respect the gods, but he didn’t harm laudna, they made her go running…. in the same direction she was already going. fcg also already had reason to believe it wouldn’t hurt laudna due to the last time they used turn undead. further, the episode was one that had very little downtime, it’s possible laudna (or, yknow, fearne, who in the text seemed to have more of a problem with it than laudna did) might bring it up. if she doesn’t, i won’t be shocked, but i’m sure i’ll see a bunch of posts demanding an apology from fcg. laudna is a very physical character based on how marisha plays her, when there are large issues in laudna’s psyche, she explains them while narrating battle actions or she moves a lot less such that we get moments like travis asking what laudna’s hands are doing. this was absent, and again, that might change next week and in that case i’ll continue to base my opinions on my viewing experience, not on the (badly formed) ad hominem arguments in my ask box from people who don’t even have the confidence to do so off anonymous.

in general, i’m really not sure where the argument that the gods seem to hold less favour for laudna than anyone else in bells hells came from, both in the show itself and in the fandom. she was given a resurrection using divine magic, she often echoes the gift pelor bestowed to whitestone with her form of dread. honestly, beyond fcg and orym, laudna probably makes the most reference/appeal to divinity that seems to be in good favour. i can see that laudna has critiques of the gods, and some of them seem to be fair ones if not typically irrelevant to the discussions at hand.

but, kind stranger, thank you so much. because now i can happily claim this crown you have bestowed upon me that i have wandered aimlessly looking for… for now months i’ve wondered how to categorize myself since i’ve questioned what exactly the specific issues that laudna has with the gods and now i know, i am a dumbass. i’m unsure what help i am beyond, as “having the wrong opinion” about the moral analysis a fictional character does of fictional gods doesn’t rank high on my concerns that i might ask for help about, but i appreciate the implied offer even though you ultimately rescinded it.

i really appreciate your charitableness and good faith here, it really orients me towards wanting to hear you out and persuades me to consider things I hadn’t previously (tonetag: sarcastic, if that hasn’t yet become apparent)

in general, anon, i find the choice you made here hilarious and i do have to thank you for making me laugh on a day that has been less than stellar. the absurdity of sending an ask with this tone to… change my opinion? scold me with all the bravery of your anonymous badge into agreeing with you over something as low stakes as… what i find annoying about fandom habits?

[sugar-grigri]

Fujimoto's variety of writing :

I was sitting back and thinking about how I was afraid Fujimoto would go for a weird and ambiguous trope to describe the relationship between Nayuta and Denji

Naturally, I turned back to Fire Punch

I discovered Fujimoto through CSM, I only got interested in Fire Punch afterwards, just like I read most of his One Shot afterwards too

Whether it's by comparing the OS between them, and his works such as CSM and FP: the observation is there, there is not ONE writing of Fujimoto

Of course, he's an author with his own codes, with a drawing style that has certainly evolved a lot but that remains discernible, in short, you can feel the author's touch

But Fire Punch and CSM are both Trojan horses and this would be one of their rare common points

What I liked more and more as I reread CSM is that behind this crazy and colourful universe, this mastered but constant gore, the message was delicate, in the sense that CSM doesn't talk about anything else than love and family. Although it seems to be a work centred on fighting, the relationship is the heart, the hard core of the work

It's the same for Fire Punch, which for me personally was an exhausting work to read

Exhausting is not to be understood in a negative sense, it's rather a deliberately fucked up work, littered with quirks, and unique but which constantly turns the reader around

But Fire Punch is full of moving and touching scenes

All this to say that even if Fujimoto wants to connect his works and establish his codes (notably with the famous scene of characters in the cinema), he knows how to vary his works

The incest at the beginning of Fire Punch is also there to give the direct tone of the work, to invite the reader to put aside his moral codes while reading the work but also to show the loneliness of the characters, their lack of reference points and the MISTAKES of a society closed on itself without access to culture (the cinema)

Representing incest does not necessarily mean being a supporter of it

In short, all this to say that CSM is completely different: it's the universe that's crazy and fucked-up, but behind the horrific carcass of Chainsaw Man is a boy who wants a girlfriend and helps his family

It's this relationship between violence and love in its purest state that can make the work weird

And Fujimoto's works are self-aware: whether it's Fire Punch, which is impregnated with post-apocalyptic works, or Chainsaw Man as a shonen: non-limit and unpredictability are the watchwords for Fire Punch, with a writing that changes with each volume (in a positive way), while we can see that despite the offbeat side of Chainsaw Man, Fujimoto tries to build a coherence: we don't push humanity to its limits to question it, we try to see how it can evolve and find its bearings by being the plaything of demons.

If there is no narrative purpose behind it, Fujimoto has no interest in sweeping away the coherence of part 1 and the platonic love, just to make a weird incestuous trope.

Denji and Nayuta's relationship will certainly not be "normal", but it won't be uncomfortable by its ambiguity in my opinion!

[fatalism-and-villainy]

@menciemeer:

I do actually think that something feels gendered about specifically GJH’s motives wrt Abigail. Although it’s difficult to tell if it’s there or if I’m bringing it and it’s certainly vague enough that there are different valid interpretations. But Elise Nichols’s white dress connotes, like, purity balls to me & that slots into GJH’s anxieties feeling like they’re about specifically (symbolic) end-of-girlhood I do agree that Abigail herself (her reactions to GJH, her involvement in his crimes, her feelings about that, and certainly her relationship to Will and Hannibal) doesn’t feel gendered in the same way. Because this is the way I am now it occurs to me that the gendered/not-gendered divide falls almost exactly along the lines of what was adapted from Red Dragon vs what new material was added in the show

Yeah - as I said, there are definitely "ins" for a reading of what's going on with her that takes gender into account. And I will walk back a bit on what I said in my OP about none of the girls' deaths feeling gendered, because I'd agree that Elise Nichols' white dress (complete with the bloodstains!), along with the mentions of her being a virgin, and the enactment of her being murdered in her bed, do suggest a very gendered fixation on virginity and sexual purity. And that does shed some light on how GJH might be seeing Abigail (because, as we've discussed, despite it being explicitly stated that he doesn't rape the girls, there is a definite vibe that there's an incestuous undertone to his fixation on Abigail).

But none of that iconography actually extends to Abigail herself - the imagery around her near and then eventual death is always just her throat being cut, without any sexualization or Ophelia-style emphasis on her beauty in death (the kind of thing I'd associate with a "dead girl character"). Which is why I'd say it feels overstated as a reading to me, at least unless the person making it is outlining the actual interpretive steps they're taking to reach it (which you did, up there!). I'm partly just nitpicking and wishing people would make a clearer distinction between "this is what the canon is doing" and "this is one potential interpretation of what the canon is doing."

There is a weird dissonance between what the show itself is doing and what the material from the books it's adapting is doing. Because now that you mention it, the instances of sexism on the show - the Red Dragon murders (although the misogyny is toned down a lot), and Margot's arc - do both come from the books. There's also Alana getting sexually harassed a couple of times, but again, that's a reference to stuff that happens to Clarice in the books. The show itself is so deliberately apolitical in its approach that it can feel kind of jarring as a contrast (also why stuff like Hannibal and Will killing homophobes in fanfic can feel out of place, to me).

Several of the responses to my old Louise Hobbs post are also interested in applying the Woman In Refrigerator trope to Louise which…ehhh…the whole point is that her death _doesn’t_ particularly serve anyone’s arc. It feels like there’s a compulsion to put her in a box and call it misogyny when in that case I think the show just needed a minor character & wouldn’t have been particularly well served by trying to flesh her out!

Replying to this last because it's a bit afield of the topic, in the sense that there's a distinction to me between sexist writing and writing that invokes sexism on an in-story level (though ofc they can overlap). (Like, for example, I would be sympathetic to an argument that Abigail going from being her own character to being subsumed fully into a symbolic role re: Hannigram has a sexist element to it, even if there are narratively interesting things to me about that symbolic status, but I think that's a different thing from making a claim about the story actively invoking her gender in how it presents her.)

Re: Louise - I was going to say "well it wouldn't be fridging because she was killed to serve Abigail's arc, not a man's" but as you said, she's actually not. Aside from a few cursory mentions, Abigail never brings her up, and most of her emotions and ongoing concerns are centered on her dad, not her mom.

Honestly, rather than fridging, I'd say what's going on with Louise just feels more like the Cursory Wife/Mother who exists in the background to explain where this kid came from, but we know virtually nothing about. It doesn't feel as objectionable with this specific character in this specific context, but it does ding a pattern for me that I notice in, say, Tolkien or GRRM's works. I do think on a Watsonian level, you could make some interesting extrapolations about how little Abigail mentions her or seems to think about her, and what that says about their relationship or the family dynamic. But she's so ephemeral that I honestly think it might have made more sense to just not have Abigail's mother in the picture at all.

Th'problem I have with a lot of takes on Abigail is that they seem... extremely gendered, or determined to contextualize everything about her character in terms of gender and misogyny. And while that makes sense with characters like Margot, or even arguably Alana, I just don't think gender is a key thematic concern in what's going on with Abigail.

Like, I'm thinking of takes on her as a predestined "dead girl character" archetype, or the Laura Palmer parallels - and while the Twin Peaks interpolation is pretty big in Hannibal, and there are some points of comparison, I just think that what Laura and Abigail have going on is entirely different (given, for example, that Abigail isn't the epitome of teenage femininity and the object of lust, and that her and her doppelgangers' deaths aren't nearly as explicitly wrapped up in the discourses of the eroticization of young women's deaths).

I'll acknowledge it's possible I'm biased here, given that I do more often tend to get drawn to female characters who are "gender unmarked", but... I just genuinely do not think Abigail's arc has much to do with gender! I think one thing mencie's fic is good at demonstrating is that putting a male character in her position doesn't change the themes of her arc at all - and the only things that do change are a result of Will and Abigail's different personal dispositions.

I don't think it's impossible to come up with a reading of her that involves gender, or that such readings are necessarily wrong. But I do think it would be an extrapolation that would require bringing in other stuff in conversation with the source material. It's not a reading, to me, that feels like it has a direct through line to what we see in canon, in the same way that "family trauma and legacy" or "nurture vs. nature vis-a-vis murder" as thematic concerns of her arc do. And it's a reading that I just find a bit personally alienating.

[literary-illuminati]

Books I Read In August

38. When the Tiger Came Down The Mountain by Nghi Vo

I’m an increasingly big fan of Vo’s work. The Empress of Salt and Fortune was good, but honestly didn’t really stick with me nearly as much as this did. 

Part of that is just the increased centrality of the framing device, honestly. I mean first of all I don’t really tend to have much patience for wish-fulfillment characters, but very hard to overstate how much Chih is just living the dream life (and my university indoctrination was thorough enough that the association of the study/preservation/gathering of history and sacredness seems very right and fitting to me. 

Also, I just absolutely adore when the story makes a thing of unreliable narrators. Like, when someone’s telling a story and as the scene’s ending someone else interrupts and goes “You’re telling it all wrong!” and gives a completely different version that’s at least as biased in another direction? Poetry. 

The actual myth with the lesbian romance and the were-tiger warlord and stuff was also a lot of fun don’t get me wrong, but like, would have been a bit forgettable without the framing device stuff around it. 

Anyway, give Chih a tv show. Or at least a half dozen more novellas like this. 

39. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

This is the first actual full book of poetry I’ve read….I mean ever, probably, if we’re taking cover to cover. Certainly since I finished high school. So there’s some Culture achieved. 

I was…not especially impressed, if I’m being entirely honest? Or, properly - “We Lived Happily During The War '' and “In A Time of Peace '' were both really affecting, but also I had already read both (posted here on tumblr, actually). They’re what sold me on the book. Everything between them did, well, not really live up to it?

I mean, I’m sure that there’s all manner of genius in craft and stuff that flew right over my head, but it just seemed so focused on being clever with line breaks that it failed to do much else. Like, most of the books on the list have plenty of lines that are more poetic by my (doubtlessly irredeemably philistine) definition than any of the poems that made up the middle of the book. 

40. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

I honestly forget where I first heard about this book, but it’s been very vaguely sitting on my mental tbr list for the last few years,and the library happened to have it in, so. 

Anyway, the conceit (an alternate history where WW2 went slightly differently, and also Israel lost in 1947, and through a bunch of political compromises there ended up being an autonomous federal district carved out in Alaska as a temporary national home for the Jewish people - ‘temporary’ meaning expiring on the near year as the novel takes place) is just fascinating, and Chabon had a lot of fun with little offhand references to how different the rest of the world has gotten, too. The fact that everyone speaks Yiddish but with occasional catch phrases and curses called out as being said in American was cute, too.

The story itself was just incredibly, almost painfully noir - genius of a police detective with a ruined marriage, crippling alcoholism, and no future is woken up in the middle of the night because a heroin addict who boards in the same hotel as him was found dead by gunshot, discovers that the victim was the firstborn son of a prominent underworld/religious authority, disowned and ostracized for being gay, through this he stumbles into a sinister conspiracy involving the CIA and the death of his sister. He can’t stop the conspiracy but he might just be able to get justice for the murder, etc, etc. The commitment to the genre is fun,but the late night diners and descriptions of hangovers do begin to get old eventually.

It was also kind of dated, in an interesting way? Like, the Federal government spooks being clean cut bible college boys, all polite and well mannered and sincere Christian Zionists trying to get America into a war to help bring about the End Times, really feels like the sort of thing that only gets written during the Bush Administration. (The single tragic too-good-for-the-world dead heroine addict gay guy and the constant jokes about every less-than-perfectly-feminine woman being mistaken for a lesbian, also somewhat dated).

Anyway, think my vocabulary of random Yiddish words about doubled from reading this, and also many themes about Judaism that I am not even slightly qualified to comment on. 

41: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

This books are so fun. And just about perfectly bite-sized, too.

Or tv episode sized, really - each has about the perfect amount of plot for an hour long episode of network tv, I think. Pity they’re basically unadaptable. 

Anyway, not too much to say about this, really, except that Murderbot’s complete inability to understand their own emotions would probably be annoying by now if it wasn’t so funny, and reading it really left a grin on my face. 

Or well, also, I do really enjoy all the little hints that the ‘corporate rim’ is actually kind of a galactic shithole, and Murderbot just treats it like the hegemonic default because its all they know. Certainly nowhere else seems to be nearly as bad about synthetic life (nowhere’s exactly good either, mind, but).

42. Radiance by Catherynne Valente

Oh I adored this book. 

I mean in large part because I’m a big fan of Valente’s prose when she gets all grandiloquent, and also the basic aesthetic of the setting (High Victorian Space Age by way of the Golden Age of Hollywood on the moon) is just utter catnip to me. But the whole epistolary pretension, telling the story through interviews after the fact and remaining scraps of documentary footage and different drafts of a dramatization made a decade latter that are each completely different genres and occasional clips of Severin’s previous films? 

It’s all just showing off to an incredible degree and I’m sure if I didn’t love the book I’d find it unbearably pretentious, but I do, so it’s absolutely great. 

The amateur historian in me was kind of irked by the sort of political stasis - it does the fallout thing where the fin de siecle kind of just continues uninterrupted for another fifty years bit with stranger and more wondrous tech, the apocalypse of the Great War put off by all the virgin lands to colonize and everything just kind of continuing as it was (except for the development of the film industry). But that’s kind of a theme. (Much more minorly, the world only seems to have gotten weird in the late 19th century, except that there are sovereign and internationally significant Seneca and Iroquois nations that get mentioned several times, which kind of require a fundamental change to the nature of the American state significantly before then.) 

The ending also didn’t really land for me - anything about infinite multiverses honestly makes it difficult for me to stay invested, and anything where the fictional setting tries to encompass/include the ‘real world’ almost always loses me instantly (qualified exception for actual portal fantasy, if it’s good. But introducing the real world in the third act has basically only ever worked for me exactly once).

Which is a pity, because aside from those bits the ending could have been designed to appeal to me in a lab. Was so close to perfection. 

43. How to Invent Everything by Ryan North 

I took a three week break in the middle, so this technically took me a full calendar month to read. Library was getting pretty angry. 

Anyway, I think I said it before but I stand by it  - this book would be a significant improvement over the majority of currently existing middle/high school science curriculums. (In the same way that Magic School Bus and Bill Nye taught me more than science class ever did until high school (and even then)). 

Anyway, did pick up a lot of interesting trivia, and the author is apparently the dinosaur comics guy(?), which really shows through in the writing (not ALL the jokes come anywhere close to landing, but the ones that don’t are mostly dad-joke like enough that it’s kind of endearing). 

Also learned the exact limits of my understanding in (in decreasing order of) mechanical engineering, electricity, and computers. (I really do need someone to gently take me by the hand at some point and explain how basic logic gates doing addition and subtraction ends up with, well, tumblr, or triple A video games, or any of it. Like on a mechanical level.) 

Anyway, I should take up sewing. And write the half-essay floating around my head about how horrible mines are and how morally uncomfortable that is.

44. Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

Okay I forget who on here recommended this to me, but thanks! Was a ton of fun, great light morbid summer read.

Roach has a great sort of chatty style, and she does the thing I normally rather dislike working personal anecdotes and descriptions of people she interviewed into everything, but she honestly actually makes it work. 

It came out in the early 2000s and was endearingly dated at times, and vaguely racist in a ‘the strange and exotic Orient!’ way at others, but like generally mostly holds up, I think? 

It’s not nearly as difficult a read as you’d expect given the subject matter (‘the human corpse, how it decays, and things we do to it’, essentially). Or, well,that might me a be mostly a me thing, but I found it a trove of fun trivia, anyway. 

(The one exception being the section on the history of the pursuit of the human head transplant, and specifically the animal experiments done on the subject. That made me more queasy than anything I can remember reading recently, which is I suppose a useful thing to know about myself.)

[raifenlf]

Was Loki The Series Truly A Success?

One thing I keep noticing in posts both from people who liked the Loki series and didn’t like the Loki series is that the show was a success. And the show was certainly not a gigantic flop. Just as no one thought a project with Tom Hiddleston as Loki would be.

But was the series a success? I mean, sure, first week, definitely. It had the highest ratings for a premier in Disney+ history. So, yeah, after the first week, you could definitely say Loki was a hit.

But this wasn’t a one-time event. It was six episodes. And ultimately, a show is not judged by the premier ratings. That’s why you can see a show get cancelled after one season after a premier that got amazing ratings. Ultimately, just the thrill of tuning in to see Hiddleston play Loki again is going to wear off. People have to at least somewhat like the actual series itself to keep watching. Or the buzz about the show has to be so great that even if original fans don’t continue watching, new fans will replace them. So did the show do that?

Because it’s not unheard of for a show to do great in a premier and then fall off so hard they don’t last much longer. This is a dated reference so some of you younger fans on here may not know this (or you may not remember this), but have you heard of the show My Big Fat Greek Life? If you haven’t, you can google it. Or I can just tell you about it here.

I thought this show would be a great comparison because there are similarities to it and Loki. Which I know sounds weird, but this show was based on a popular movie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) with the same actress in a similar type role as the movie. Just like with Loki being a character from popular movies with the same actor in the same role. So both shows had a lot of people interested in the beginning. And the premier of My Big Fat Greek Life was a huge hit ratings wise. But after the premier of My Big Fat Greek Life, people stopped watching and the show only lasted a season.

So how did Loki do after the premier? Well, let’s look at ratings given by Samba TV. They judge viewership by household. All viewers have to be unique viewers. It’s obviously not a perfect way of tracking viewership (what is?) but it gives a good picture of what the viewership looks like.

So, Loki started with 2.5M viewers. And the last episode had 1.9M. Which obviously is a big drop.

Just how big of a drop? Well, to compare it to its two Marvel show contemporaries, look at its ratings projection versus WandaVision and TFATWS. I made this because I think it really shows the difference between the shows:

Sure, the finales of WandaVision and TFATWS also had less viewers than their premiers. But the way that Loki dropped viewers versus the other two shows is kind of mind-boggling, really. TFATWS had a decrease in ratings of about 5.5%. WandaVision had 12.5%. Loki had a 24% drop (!!!). That is really bad. There are no other ways around it.

But ultimately, this is just one number metric. And I’d like to look at more. Because I love numbers. And I had a marketing professor once tell me in college she would also give out a good grade if people had the numbers to back up their point even if she didn’t agree with it.

I think the best post with the best numbers is this post on Reddit, so I want to give credit where credit is due. After I messed around looking at the numbers provided by Samba TV, they pointed me to find other useful numbers:

This post shows how Loki’s ratings dropped over lots of different metrics. I definitely recommend a read. One thing I found interesting from reading this post is to look at how the show did post the premier.

Now, if a streaming show really catches on with viewers, people should start watching after the series ends, right? Like, I didn’t watch Stranger Things season one right away but after so much buzz, I tried the first episode and then stayed up all night watching the whole first season. That’s how viral shows work. People like to binge watch and series with good buzz people binge watch, right? Additionally, if the show was truly wonderful for all of Loki’s many fans they’d want to keep watching the show over and over, right?

So one thing I find interesting then is the numbers provided by Nielsen. Nielsen tracks minutes people watch rather than unique viewers like Samba TV. That is why I prefer numbers by Samba TV because it gives you a better indication of overall viewership rather than just what show has huge fans who watch the show over and over. But, it is still definitely worth looking at Nielsen’s numbers. They tell you not only numbers of different viewers but also can show you how passionate viewers are of a show. And the numbers by Nielsen paint an interesting picture. Especially when you look after the show ends.

So I made a chart showing the number of minutes watched during the week of the finale and then the two weeks after that for Loki and for TFATWS and WandaVision.

Now, all three shows had worse numbers after the finale. Which of course makes sense. There were no new episodes to watch and most people (outside of dedicated fans) don’t watch a series over again right after they watched it the first time.

But where it gets interesting is two weeks after the finale. That’s where, if the buzz was good, people should be trying this show and watching the whole season. Or it should be when satisfied fans watch their favorite scenes again and again.

But after the initial drop of views after the finale, when you look at the second week after the finale, the numbers for TFATWS and WandaVision kind of leveled off. But Loki’s numbers continue to nosedive. So much so that Loki had the worst numbers for all three shows two weeks after the finale. Even though they had the best numbers for the finale (and the premier)!

Numbers can always be spun positively. That’s how things work. I took enough marketing classes to know this. But it’s hard to spin those numbers positively. It just is. Numbers don’t lie.

And here are some other numbers that don’t look great for the series. I took this quote directly from the above mentioned Reddit post:

Flexpatrol says Loki dropped out of Disney+ top 10 faster than the other two shows (Loki stayed in top 10 for only 60 days vs 95+ and 105+ days for the other two shows in most territories).

Sorry but again...these numbers don’t paint the story of a show that was successful.

One thing that’s interesting, too, when you look at these numbers is that it’s not people deciding they dislike Tom Hiddleston or anything. Not that anyone would (or should) think that, of course, but if you click here, you’ll see that Tom Hiddleston was, per Parrot Analytics, the most in demand actor for the entire United States for July 20th through August 18, 2021 (and 9th for the world!). So people want to see Tom Hiddleston. Just, it appears, not the Loki series.

And I know I said I like numbers and if you’re like me, you may not take the next information as seriously. But I also noticed some non-number metrics.

From my own eye test, the show didn’t feel like a success. And what I mean by that is word of mouth. I’m talking about with the general public. Not with just Marvel fans.

Now, we are living in a world with a pandemic still going on, so there really can’t be “water cooler” moments like there used to be. A lot of us (myself included) are working out of the home still so we can’t really use office buzz as a metric like we used to. And I don’t go out of the house like I did pre the pandemic.

But I can say from my own experience, during the first two weeks of the show, I did hear random people talking about how good the show was as I went out and about during my day, like in the line at Zaxby’s.

But after the first two weeks? I haven’t heard a peep. I have worn my Loki Mickey ears at Disney World after that. I have gotten compliments on it. But when I have talked to people about It and about Loki I’ve mentioned I didn’t like the show, and the other person without fail always says oh I never watched the show (I promptly recommend to them not to watch it!).

And I do participate in other non-MCU fandoms online. One of those is a Los Angeles Lakers Reddit, and when WandaVision was going, people would talk about that show on the Lakers reddit and someone even posted a video of the trailer redone with LA Lakers players. But Loki the series? The only time someone brought it up was to say the show was dumb. That’s it.

Now, I am not surprised so many people think the show was a success. Disney and Marvel have deep, deep pockets and they work very hard to make sure people think all of their projects are a huge hit. And there are good numbers they can tout, like the numbers for the finale. They brag about the numbers when they can and stay quiet when they can’t, and they spin everything to look as good as possible.

But you know Disney and Marvel have to notice these numbers. Now obviously the show is coming back for a season two. But from everything I heard before the series even started, that decision had already been made before the first episode aired. So they might be “stuck” with a season two in a way.

But other things we have learned since the show ended don’t exactly paint the best picture in the world. Kate Herron immediately announced she wasn’t coming back. She said it was her decision. And obviously I don’t know her and of course it could be. Though she said it was to do her own projects and so far nothing has been announced.

But it seems like even if she wanted to do her own thing, she could have worked her own things around the schedule for season two. If the show had been really successful in Disney and Marvel’s eyes, you think they would have worked hard to keep her. At the very least, it would have been days before she announced she was gone as they tried to coax her into a salary she couldn’t refuse. But...none of that.

And then there’s Michael Waldron. He said he might or might not be back next year. Why not just say he’s back? If Disney wanted him gone, unlike with Herron, it would be a bit more complicated. Because he already wrote the Doctor Strange sequel before the show aired and the movie is already done. So Disney and Marvel want everyone to think Waldron’s writing was as successful as possible to help the movie. But if they really loved his writing, wouldn’t they have secured him for season two? And why would be so vague? Wouldn’t Disney and Marvel want fans to be reassured at least Waldron was coming back if they thought fans really liked season one?

And then’s look at what Feige said recently about season two. Here’s a snippet from this Collider article:

As for when Loki Season 2 might start filming, Feige promised he’s “not being evasive” but said he’s “not sure exactly where it falls between next year and the year after.”

Okay, now it sounds like there are a lot of things up in the air about season two. Which doesn’t seem likely if Marvel and Disney were happy with season one. I do understand that in the MCU it’s trickier than with standalone shows and everything has to work together on a schedule. But at the same time, if it was a big hit, you’d think they’d want to get a season two out as soon as possible.

I’ve paid a lot of attention to Disney as a company the last few years because I am a super business nerd and I know a big part of their business plan is wrapped up in Disney Plus. They believe streaming is the future. They have assured their shareholders that this will earn them a lot of money. If they thought Loki really helped Disney Plus, they would be begging Marvel to get a second season out as soon as possible. But, they’re not.

Which of course leads me to believe that Disney does not view Loki as a success. They had already renewed the series. And they know the potential of the show. They saw the early numbers. So that makes me think wonder if there is a break because Disney wants Marvel to retool the show. Because Disney saw the numbers that are out there and can plainly see no matter what they tell us viewers and (more importantly to them) their shareholders, they know the show did not live up to its potential and it needs to be changed if it is to be successful. Because season one, by all metrics I can see, just wasn’t.

TLDR: Marvel & Disney want you to think Loki was a success. And initially it was because of Loki & Tom’s popularity. But if you look at lots of numbers, the ratings declined at rates far worse than WandaVision & TFATWS which really makes you think the show wasn’t as big of a success as Disney & Marvel would have you believe

[sn33z3s]

notes on contemporary south park fandom and its approach to fanon & headcanons

originally i posted this as a thread on twitter about a week after The Big Fix, in response to the various tweets i saw referring to tolkien as stan’s new best friend, how tolkien is now another character to visit tegridy farms before kyle (who hasn’t at all) and what that means for stan and kyle’s relationship, etc… this is just an observational post on fan culture and not so much a speculative piece about canon, so take from it what you will

a thing i tend to find within new (2015 and onward, i’d say) south park fans of the shipping fandom variety is this interesting way that some of them internalize overlapping character dynamics. beyond subjective shipping morality discourse, there’s a recent insistence of relationships “dying” out... and that is what i want to talk about in this post. warning: it got long, reader beware

for the record, since i got into south park and stan/kyle over a decade ago and have lurked around sp fandom on and off, i have seen folks say “style has died” in multiple waves, and each time i've thought to myself: they’re story arcs. character arcs. it all cycles. it’s reflective of weird insecurity to be like “characters A and C have interacted, therefore the dynamic between A and B is over now.” how so? 

ultimately, my concern is mostly about projecting said negativity onto other fans (non-constructively). however, it’s not a Versus thing exclusively; that is, it’s not just some people being win-or-lose about “opposing” ships, it’s also present in how people talk about specific dynamics. like stan and kyle: “stan pines more” “kyle pines more” - is there a correct answer? their relationship shifts the way that sp as a show itself has. simply put, i feel like some fans react in a way that implies moments of canon entirely “cancel” each other out, rather than ~*containing multitudes*~ or such. it’s not that i don’t think there are concrete ways that stan and kyle (for example) “are” - i certainly do - but i feel confused by the one-dimensional approach to their relationship, among other things. i’m applying this to fanon details and ship wars, but i’ll elaborate on the second issue further in this post…

“stan cannot be a jock, because he is depressed, and likes board games and music.” “kyle cannot have androgynous features, because that’s the same thing as an antisemitic trope.” regarding both of these, i’ve yet to see a good argument as to how. i’m still not sure about the insistence on jumping to the extremes for both. i have a lot of feelings about the complexities of stan and kyle, but i see it flattened for silly reasons. this discourse is also decades old, but still. i like jock stan precisely because of stan’s docile personality. i like that kyle is hot-headed, yet very fussy, all the while. kyle via the post-covid specials is shown to be comparatively well-groomed, decorative, etc, to the other three. i’m not sure how that conflicts with his personality, though, as per claims by parts of this fandom. does it need to be any more profound than that? (i don’t like getting into the "why i think it's concerning that some fans strongly dislike masc-fem gay fictional couples" thing because it’s fundamental to me at this point, so i digress because i’m getting off-topic!) (also, plenty of masculine depictions of fandom kyle are antisemitic, but whatever)

anyway, it’s not that matt and trey aren't inconsistent; they are consistently inconsistent. still, i’d say they know their characters. they’re theirs. not to sound like an apologist (buzz word, i guess) or like south park has never made me complain, but this constant scramble to claim “i know what trey parker thought here, what he meant, and you don’t…” is not a healthy way to consume your media, and at that point, taking a step back to focus on other hobbies may be necessary. the truth is that none of us know: we are all just re-interpreting the art. i worry about the fans who reach the level of tin-hatting (a thing which we all do, by the way) that it encroaches into “i am demanding that the creators of this show give me what i think should be canon, and anything else is pure shit” territory

many older south park fans have already prodded this question (phenomenon?). still, my own reasoning for this personal catharsis is that now i’m active in the fandom and i’m seeing this and above all, i feel that after Return of COVID, it’s happening so much more often again, and i don’t understand why

indeed, what i’ve been wondering since becoming an active instead of passive participant in the south park fandom: why spend any time thinking or talking about what you dislike, anyway? if it is coming from a place of such negativity. why be competitive? why not just relax and enjoy? there are nearly 25 years' worth of multiple character interactions, all in fluctuation, with recurring themes. i think the COVID specials were some withstanding point of that. for the record, every individual in fandom reserves the right to critique the art as they feel is best for them, but i don’t mean stating “this is my critical opinion on…” i mean stating “i am asserting my opinion as fact, and i am getting angry and passive-aggressive on public social media when i see others expressing a conflicting take.” reacting to an outright attack is normal and justified, but taking any disagreement as a personal sleight indicates an unhealthy connection to the source material.

when i recently got called a “child abuse apologist” on tumblr for saying [in what was very obviously a self-aware and comedic tone] that i like stephen stotch, it supplemented my curiosity about some parts of the fandom’s ability to recognize satire and subtle dialogue or writing choices. twisting and/or ignoring elements of south park’s canon to postulate your favorite pairing as better is unnecessary because shipping can happen regardless of what canon provides. we have the ability to create the fan content we may feel is lacking. all dynamics in south park have a baseline. whether or not you read into these character dynamics romantically is up to you, but to vaguely refer to others’ ship- or character-related headcanons on public forums in a punitive(?) way is immature at best and downright worrisome at worst

i also saw recent talks about kyle’s choice to tell yentl that cartman gave him AIDS in that scene from Post-COVID instead of mentioning, like, cartman’s constant desires to imitate hitler and-or reinstate the holocaust… well, kyle said that because south park is a comedy, you guys. the plot of a thing can change drastically based on a single line, a single character interaction, and matt and trey only have so much they can fit within a time frame. also, it was just a funny thing for him to say. that’s kind of it

how upset one person “should” get about south park fanfiction or fanart is subjective, but taking to the streets over trey parker’s writing is a bit much, and to be specific, it’s a bit much when you say that “xyz interpretation is wrong, unless adjusted to apply to what i prefer, in which case it is right, and it is not fair game for people to say anything about the characters that i favor, though i will disparage other people’s favorites.” like, okay, let’s all go outside for a walk and some fresh air. being nice goes a long way

there needs to be a two-way relationship in fandom which allows discussion, disagreement, and civil debate on both sides. (well, i don’t know how i feel using the word “debate” like the south park slash fandom is “the marketplace of ideas” or what have you, but…) moreover, it’s basic empathy to understand that this is south park and, with the exception of actual online harassment directed toward other fans, people are allowed to express their discomfort over things that the canon itself presents as uncomfortable. i understand that we all make exceptions, but sticking to your guns and following the consistencies you apply to your fandom consumption is, like, the best way to not look hypocritical or spiteful

[ofekma]

Okay okay hold on. First of all I took a long time to read this post because of how long it is.

Second of all let me sort things out.

First of all, Into-September, I want to kiss you (platonically) for what you said about Sabrina.

Second of all, chatonnoir, get lost for saying that you don't give a shit about Sabrina because she's a bully too.

Oh so I guess that being trapped in an abusive friendship since the first grade now doesn't mean anything because the victim is an abuser too? It's not a binary you know, you are allowed to hate someone's actions but still feel bad for them for the situation they're actively in right now and have been for years.

Now that this is out of the way, let me talk about Chloe.

Chatonnoir, you said that you weren't referring to Into-September when talking about Chloe stans and what they did, but you did reblog their comment and said all of that in response to their comment so I get why they would get confused.

Also, I think you didn't get what they mean.

Chloe's behaviors are NOT "merely a source of annoyance" and "not that bad", the SHOW treats them like that, using tone and framing. And the lack of lasting consequences. Yes I know we're not going to see things like self harm in a damn kids show but when the show does things like:

* have Adrien sigh about Chloe being Chloe at the end of despair bear after reverting back into a horrible person, as if it doesn't matter, and have him not do anything further about it.

*have Marinette say in the end of antibug after seeing Chloe giving Sabrina a brooch that "Did you see that? Chloé smiled nicely! Kinda. I think she's actually happy to have Sabrina back. I think they'll always be BFFs. In their own way."

*have no one, no teacher or classmate or hero or anyone ever even react to Chloe hitting Sabrina or making her burst in tears in public, and even have Chat looking at it happen in the episode 'Lies' with happiness and hope

*have things like what Chloe and Marinette planned to do with Kagami have no lasting consequences just because it never reached its target (that is to say, I'm well aware that this is an incredibly out of character thing for Marinette to do, as jealous as she might be sometimes and I don't like that episode at all)

*have Marinette's teacher not even be mad at Chloe and instead take her vandalizing Marinette's gift for her as "a present for both of them". You can claim that it's because she is aware of Chloe's power and that she's practically immune to punishment, but her speech to Marinette didn't even acknowledge she has a right to feel upset and that this isn't fair and instead told her to "be a good example to Chloe and not succumb to feelings of anger." which may be good against akumas but not good for a bully victim who wishes her experiences to be taken seriously.

*not have Sabrina or anyone else even acknowledged that Chloe got Sabrina's father fired in front of the entire class. In fact, Sabrina didn't even REACT to see him leaving! You see, because it got solved by the end of the episode it had no lasting consequences on their friendship.

*have Adrien berate ladybug for being 'harsh' on Chloe and berate Marinette for being happy she's leaving. And he's presented as in the right. And the moral compass of those episodes. That you should actually show more compassion to Chloe because she's a poor neglected child who just wants to be loved.

And more stuff that I don't have at the top of my head now.

And I don't think you can blame those things on this being a comedy show for kids. You can blame it on oversight from the writers.

And the fact that Chloé's bullying is getting treated like this, the fact that Marinette got preached multiple times by the show itself for the way she treats Chloe, the fact that Queen Bee got hyped to hell and back for literal years, revealed in cons very early, got put on the cover picture of Zag's page, got dolls and merch created for her (certainly more than Nino), have concept art of her from some of the earliest days of the show, and the amount of TIME the show spends focusing on her and her feelings and her backstory and hinting us that she might have good in her deep down, on top of similar characters to her such as Pacifica Northwest and Diamond Tiara getting redeemed, it a created the ILLUSION of a redemption arc approaching to the fans, as the OP said. Despite Chloe's character stayed as static as a rock throughout the entire show and what she did in Miracle Queen not being out of character for her.

Chloe Stans are wrong by saying that she had a redemption arc that got robbed from her, and they're certainly wrong if they resort to victim blaming or minimalizing Chloé's actions (which again, Into-September did not do).

But they're not wrong for feeling cheated themselves.

And I'm not one of them, I never was. I couldn't care less about Chloe as a character. (that is to say I do feel bad for her for her bad parents and that includes her father who never thought it would be a good idea to teach her any morals or boundaries, because as I mentioned earlier you can in fact feel bad for someone and still hate their behavior.)

But I was here for the whole Chloe redemption craze. And I can't say that I agree with the fanon approach to Chloe and how it often gets confused with canon, or some other stuff I saw that they said or did that you yourself, Chatonnoir mentioned.

But I can understand and even sympathize waiting for years for something only for it to not happen. And then the show's creator himself denied that they ever had any intent on redeeming Chloe in the first place which is a balant lie, and treat any dissapointed fans as if they made up a narrative out of thin air that had no base in the show itself.

I get not redeeming Chloe. I also get trying to redeem her and failing because they can't seem to find a believable way to make her want to become better.

But I don't get creating the illusion that a character will get a redemption arc, failing to deliver and actually redeem her, and then deny that there was ever an intent and that anyone who thought that there was one is dumb. (which is how the show's creator acts like).

Another note, I do not approve any harassment from fans to anyone, including the creator, though I think that not any critisim is harassment.

Now that all of that is said, I want to tell you Chatonnoir that you are absolutely right about the terrible effects of bullying and racism and you and anyone else doesn't deserve to go through it and I'm sorry that you did.

Same for you with parent abuse, Into-September. I don't know for sure if Chloé's abuse by her mother is getting taken seriously by the show or not, but I can understand your opinion that it doesn't and I definitely agree that it should be.

I hope that I didn't misinterpret any of you or got misinterpreted myself, and I hope that I didn't hurt you Chatonnoir by telling you to get lost because of the Sabrina comment, because I too have strong feelings about fictional characters sometimes lol so I got a little mad there.

And if you guys want to talk about how portrayal of bullying affects real life children and how the portrayal of child abuse/neglect affects real life children, I'd like to talk about how the portrayal of Sabrina's deeply tragic situation and friendship with Chloe as something stupid and laughable can affect any real life kids who might see herself in her.

I didn't want to fight so I hope nither of you saw it as picking a fight, but I really had to say my opinions and try to sort of the misunderstanding I saw happen here.

There was no Chloé Bourgeois  Redemption Arc

It’s time to for me to write about the so-called “Redemption Arc“ for Chloé Bourgeois, of Miraculous Ladybug infamy. Many people claim that such a thing existed. These people are wrong. While Miraculous Ladybug may provide the illusion of such an arc, that’s all it is - an illusion. And like all illusions, it falls apart once you touch it.

There’s also some questionable takes in regards to exactly how responsible Marinette is meant to be for Chloé’s “redemption”, which need to be tackled since they help feed into the illusion. And also because I find them deeply offensive. To me, personally.

A neccesary preface here is that I’m not saying Chloé is incapable of redemption. What I am saying, however, is that during seasons two and three of Miraculous Ladybug, the redemption arc people claim existed clearly did not.

Redemption 101

In the most basic sense, a redemption arc is a type of character arc where a bad character decides to stop being bad and start being good. Along the way, it’s generally accepted that they need to atone for their bad actions, and perhaps do something to reverse the damage such actions have caused. A critical component required for this to work is that the character both understands that their actions are harmful, and so decides to act in a better way.

Probably the most famous redemption arc in western animation is Zuko’s, from Avatar: The Last Airbender. Zuko begins the show as an antagonist, directly attempting to capture Aang, the Avatar and Last Airbender. Doing so will allow the Fire Nation to win the war, and also complete their genocide of the Air Nomad people. However, Zuko realises that supporting the Fire Nation’s bid for world domination is harmful to others, and himself. By the end of the series, he has rejected the worldview of his father, grandfather and great grandfather, and indeed helps Aang defeat the Firelord. Along the way, Zuko find a way to help not just Aang, but also Katara and Sokka, who are also victims of Fire Nation Imperialism. Zuko earns redemption not through the decision to be good, but by performing good, and in many cases, reparative actions.

Honestly, from this basic definition, I think it’s pretty obvious that Chloé hadn’t even started the first step of a redemption arc by the time she betrays Ladybug in Miracle Queen. She never accepts her actions are wrong, makes no attempt to change them without an ulterior motive, and generally continues to do bad things for bad reasons. But in spite of this, the claims of this mythical redemption arc don’t just exist, they are considered generally accepted. Why? It’s complicated, yet simple.

Chloé Who?

On a basic level, Chloé Bourgeois is fairly generic character - the “mean girl“ school bully, who torments the protagonist, Marinette Dupain-Cheng. In keeping with Miraculous’ superhero genre, Chloé admires Ladybug, Marinette’s superhero alter-ego. How ironic! Generally, Chloé acts as a minor, civilian-level antagonist to Marinette, who gets in the way, while being clearly much less of a deal than Hawk Moth. However, due to the mechanics of akumatization, Chloé’s actions often spiral into larger, supervillain-shaped consequences. Because while she may fit into the bully archetype, there is one thing that makes her somewhat atypical: a reach that extends far beyond the school setting.

André Bourgeois is his daughter’s primary enabler. As a rich person and Mayor of Paris, he has a significant amount of influence. Influence he makes freely available to Chloé for basically any purpose. No grudge is too petty, no problem too small when it comes to indulging her whims, and no bridge is too big burn. Nobody who theoretically has the authority to say no to Chloé actually can, because her father is implicitly approving her every action. It’s hardly a shock that Chloé is consistently terrible when she faces no consequences for her actions.

But there’s one last piece in the Chloé puzzle - Audrey Bourgeois. Chloé really wants her mother’s approval, but her mother lives in another country. Audrey is also a terrible person, a character who is literally defined by her vileness. She has Chloé’s attitude, and André’s level of influence, and like her daughter, immediately throws a tantrum when she can’t get her way. The attention Audrey gives towards her daughters is primarily negative, and that’s when she actually pays attention to them. Thus, Audrey provides Chloé with a Tragic Backstory, and some much needed Sympathy Points. This, of course, forms the foundation of the Redemption Illusion.

The thing about Chloé’s relationship (or lack thereof) with her mother is while it explains her behavior, it doesn’t excuse it. The harm she inflicts is no less because of it, and many of her actions cannot be ignored due to it. I think there’s a pretty obviously piece of bad logic here. Many characters who undergo redemption arcs are often sympathetic villains. Chloé is a sympathetic villain. But that doesn’t mean that Despair Bear, the episode that introduces this sympathetic side is the start of, nor the foundation of a redemption arc. If anything, Despair Bear shows the primary reason why Chloé isn’t on the path to redemption - her attempts to be “nice“ are motivated entirely to maintain her friendship with Adrien, and once she has what she wants, she immediately reverts to her normal behaviour. This theme of apparently good acts being done for selfish reasons will be repeated later.

Marinette: Victim, Not Victimizer

An important part of the Redemption Illusion is how it ultimately revolves around not just Chloé, but Marinette. Chloé is nothing but negative towards Marinette, but at the same time admires Ladybug… who is Marinette. This isn’t Alya style “wow look how cool and heroic she is“ style admiration, however. No, Chloé, in a sense, wants to be Ladybug. First by pretending to be her, and later via the Bee Miraculous, which would seem to put her on the same level as Ladybug. But since Ladybug is Marinette, this can only lead to conflict.

While Chloé has perpetrated many on-screen acts that are selfish, obnoxious and downright cruel, something that manages to slip under the radar is her pre-Origins treatment of Marinette. Sabine’s comment about how long Marinette and Chloé have been in the same class indicates that the latter has been bullying the former for at least three years. This has evidently damaged Marinette’s self-confidence, since even after being Ladybug in part one of Origins, she still thinks she can’t do it, and tries to give it up. She also doesn’t dispute Alya’s rather hasty assessment of Chloé as evil, and immediately assumes that Adrian is a bad person because he’s friends with Chloé.

Marinette’s relationship with Chloé is already poisoned at the start of the show. And it’s entirely Chloé’s fault. She didn’t have to bully Marinette. Being cruel to Marinette wouldn’t earn Chloé her mother’s approval. All it achieves is making Chloé feel better, by making Marinette suffer. Three years of bullying isn’t something you can ignore. It’s not something Marinette can simply “get over”, even as Ladybug. She probably hates Chloé, and every drop of enmity is earned. But how can I know this all from the limited picture painted by Origins, and the glimpses into Marinette’s pre-Ladybug life? I don’t. This isn’t something I needed to find from the text or subtext of the show. So then, how do I know?

I know because I lived it. When I was Marinette’s age, I was bullied. A lot. It hurt. But what people don’t want to acknowledge is that being a victim of bullying doesn’t just make you sad. It’s deeper than that. It made me angry. At the perpetrators, and the staff who let it happen, no matter how many times it was brought to their attention. It’s took me years to realise just how much it affected me, how my aggressive behaviour in certain online spaces might be connected to it. In Marinette, I see a part of myself. So when I see people claim that Marinette is somehow to blame for Chloé’s actions, that “Marinette should have given Chloé a chance“, it makes me a little angry. If someone told me I should be responsible for making my bullies better people, I’d tell them to fuck off.

Attempting to shift the responsibility for repairing Chloé’s bad behaviour on to Marinette is simply victim blaming with extra steps. Yes, Marinette is Ladybug, hero of Paris. But Marinette is also Marinette, a long-term victim of Chloé, and someone who Chloé continues to try to abuse, even if the efficacy is no longer there. It’s also not really fair to Chloé, either, when you think about it. Marinette is positioned to think the worst of Chloé, meaning she’s likely to see any regression on Chloé’s part as proof that the whole endevour is pointless. For Chloé to escape her toxic behaviour, she needs help from someone she hasn’t caused significant damage to.

And as with the rest of the Redemption Illusion, you have to ignore a lot of the text to make the idea that Marinette is somehow to blame seem reasonable. Marinette shows more compassion to Chloé than Chloé does to anyone in her entirety. It simply doesn’t help, because Chloé doesn’t want Ladybug to be nice to her, she wants Ladybug to accept her as an equal. And when that isn’t given, Chloé isn’t above trying to take it, with disasterous results.

Bad Bee-haviour

A key point in Zuko’s redemption arc is when he joins Team Avatar. This is when he truly abandons the ideals of Fire Nation Imperialism, and chooses to work directly against them. It’s not the end, but a midpoint. And it’s not a reward - it’s a duty, a commitment to help Aang defeat Ozai. I think it’s worth noting that Zuko actually gets weaker due to this, as he can no longer draw on his negative emotions to firebend. Only by helping Aang discover the pre-imperialism version of Firebending does he regain the ability himself. Rejecting the negative brings Zuko so far, but to be complete he must embrace a positive alternative.

Chloé’s transformation into Queen Bee is her anti-Zuko moment. She doesn’t work to attain it - the Bee Miraculous is literally dropped into her path. It gives her power, yes, which she immediately abuses. Queen Bee doesn’t exist to do good, like the other four heroes at the time. No, Queen Bee exists to exalt Chloé. Becoming a hero doesn’t move her to toward redemption. If anything, it moves her away from it.

It all comes back to Chloé’s first act as Queen Bee. In an attempt to prove that she’s “exceptional“, she transforms and tries to find a problem to solve. But when she can’t find one, she chooses to create one. By paralysing a train conductor, which ends up creating a problem she can’t solve. If it weren’t for Ladybug and Chat Noir’s timely intervention, a lot of people would have been injured, or even killed. All because Chloé wanted to seem like a “hero”. It’s an act so callous that it should have marked the end of her career as Queen Bee. It’s instant, irrevocable proof that she can’t be trusted with a Miraculous, because she nearly murdered a bunch of people with it.

But even if you ignore the train incident, being Queen Bee clearly doesn’t make Chloé better. In both Stormy Weather 2 and Miracular, her cruelty is what triggers an akumatization. In Animaestro, she forms a truce with Marinette entirely for the purpose of harassing Kagami. These are not the actions of someone trying to be a better person. Indeed, they look very much like the actions of a person who doesn’t think they need to change, and is thus continuing as usual.

Yet in spite of the lack of actual progress, Queen Bee is perhaps the keystone of the Redemption Illusion. She wants to be a hero. So it is assumed that if she wants to be a hero, she must be good. I suppose this line of argument sounds convincing, if you only consider it on the surface level. The problem is that it falls apart when you actually examine Chloé’s actual behaviour after becoming Queen Bee. Which is mostly the same as her behaviour before, except sometimes she tries leveraging being Queen Bee for status or bullying. This is because her motivation for being a hero isn’t heroic - it’s selfish.

Malicious Queen

Of course, the Redemption Illusion eventually collided with reality in the form of Miracle Queen. When Hawk Moth offers her the Bee Miraculous, Chloé doesn’t hesitate to take it, and is then willingly akumatized. While I do think this could have had a little more setup, it’s an action that’s entirely in-character for Chloé. She’s selfish, she’s cruel, and she’s unwilling to change. But Ladybug couldn’t be bullied or blackmailed via Chloé’s normal methods. So when Hawk Moth offers her a way around Ladybug’s No, of course she takes it. She accepts akumatization because she believes that the best way to prove her superiority to Ladybug is by harming her. The same way she harmed many other characters up to this point. (Including Marinette, who is Ladybug.)

Some people attempt, in the usual poor manner, to deflect Chloé’s responsibility for her actions onto Ladybug. Gotta keep that victim blame train going, I guess. The logic is that because Ladybug chose Kagami to help fight Heart Hunter for selfish reasons, Chloé is magically absolved of her guilt. I can’t disagree that picking Kagami in order to break up her date with Adrien was a bad thing, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad. The fact of the matter is that Ladybug probably wasn’t going to bring back Queen Bee, no matter the situation. It’s not her job to make Chloé a better person, and it’s not her responsibility to stop Chloé from making bad decisions.

Marinette made a dodgy decision because of a teenage crush and suffered massively disproportionate consequences. Chloé decided to help a terrorist because she felt entitled to the Bee Miraculous, and could still go back to her incredibly privileged life afterwards. It’s Marinette who had to live with the consequences of both their actions, becoming Guardian far earlier than she should have. A consequence that only occured because Chloé decided to help Hawk Moth. Once again, Marinette is not the problem; Chloé is the problem.

Ultimately, Miracle Queen is entirely in-character for Chloé, because Chloé has never been a good person. The Redemption Illusion persists, however, because people seem to have blended her few sympathetic traits with her occational (and temporary) good actions to create a version of Chloé who doesn’t exist within the show. Along with one last act, that really isn’t as heroic as it might seem on the surface.

The One Where She Isn’t Akumatized

In Miracular, Hawk Moth tries to akumatize Chloé and fails. Up to that point, akumatization had been presented as 100% effective, with no attempts to resist being successful. This is occationally used to suggest that Chloé is becoming good, which ignores basically all information the show provides about akumatization.

Throughout Miraculous Ladybug, succumbing to akumatization is never considered to be an immoral act. Indeed, the reasons for akumatization vary, from completely unjustified selfish reasons, to justified selfish reasons and more community-minded reasons. But no matter what a victim’s starting intentions are, Hawk Moth twists them around until he can make them into a supervillain. People are even akumatized over stuff like “kids don’t respect panthers“ and “ice cream was wrong“, which aren’t really things you can appy a moral judgement to.

Since being akumatized is not a moral failure, it follows that resisting is not a moral success. While breaking the akumatization is impressive, with very few people achieving it, that doesn’t mean Chloé gets merit points for it. Indeed, Chloé resists akumatization on the basis that she believes she can still be Queen Bee. She rejects Hawk Moth’s offer not because it’s the right thing to do, but because she thinks she doesn’t need it. Which is why once it becomes clear that Ladybug won’t be giving her the Bee Miraculous, she willing accepts akumatization.

But the real killer problem is that Sabrina is able to be akumatized into Miracular because of Chloé’s actions. When Lila’s fake Ladybug dance fails, Chloé takes it out on Sabrina, in a way that’s just, look, here’s the exact quote:

PLAY? With you!? Who are YOU anyway? You don’t have any powers! You’re a nobody! I’m a superheroine, okay? I’m Queen Bee! You and I have NOTHING in common! Go away!

That’s a horrible thing to say to someone, especially a friend! She explicitly ties Sabrina’s worth (or lack thereof) to having powers. And the real kicker? This is the last thing she does before the failed akumatization. Out of context, Chloé resisting akumatization might seem heroic. With this context? It’s anything but.

The Overdue Conclusion

Ultimately, a Redemption Arc is a narrative process for developing a character. It’s a trope, a storytelling pattern. The key element of such an arc is change. A static character cannot undergo a redemption arc (or indeed any arc), because the arc is the process of transformation, of becoming a better person. Not just on the surface, but in a fundamental way. A post redemption character is, in some ways, a different person to who they were before.

During seasons two and three of Miraculous Ladybug, Chloé does not change in such a way. She’s just as cruel and spiteful after becoming Queen Bee as she is before. She does bad things for bad reasons. Her motivation for being Queen Bee is entirely selfish. Indeed, while there is some feeling of a divide between Marinette and Ladybug, Queen Bee is simply Chloé with superpowers. And while she may be a victim of abuse from Audrey, that doesn’t mean she is excused from abusing others herself.

Chloé’s tragic flaw is her desire to be exceptional, in a way that places her above other people. This is why she fails to change. In the narrative of Miraculous Ladybug, the exceptional that matters is to be exceptionally kind, exceptionally couragous, exceptionally selfless. Character traits which Chloé displays sparingly and insufficently, because she believes she is above them. But without humility, there can be no change. Without change, there can no redemption. And while others might provide a catalyst for such a change, ultimately it must come from within.

The concluding point is that I still don’t think there was a Chloé Bourgeois Redemption Arc, but I can sort of see how you’d fall into thinking one existed. But when you actually examine the character’s behaviour, the illusion quickly crumbles. At this point, the whole thing has clearly taken on a life of its own beyond the source material, and is perhaps unstoppable. Will my long, somewhat rambly Tumblr post make much of a difference? Perhaps not.

But there are harmful ideas attached to it. As long as people try to make Marinette responsible for Chloé’s actions, it adds, however slightly, to the notion that the abused are responsible for the actions of their abusers. In many respects, I don’t care that strongly about these particular fictional characters. Yet other people do, and in doing so I see how they distort the role of victim and victimizer, and I care about that. I understand that it’s not a big serious issue, but it matters to me. So I’ll say my piece, and move on to other thoughts.

[grey-spark]

The Symbolism of Spamton, and what he says about us

I don't usually analyze Undertale/Deltarune characters but I love Spamton. In this post I'm going to go over what Spamton represents, and all of his relevant symbolism. I'll try to keep this one short and straight to the point.

Before we can talk about Spamton we need to explore the context of Chapter 2. It should be clear to most people that Queen, her plan, and level are a metaphor for social media. Specifically Twitter. More specifically Twitter Drama.

Even her name is a play on the word “drama queen”

The whole level is centered around a blue bird character, Berdly. A possible reference to Twitters blue bird logo. I mean, just look at her boss battle. If taken out of context, what do you see?

You see a person sitting in a chair controlling a blue bird to attack people. 

Is that not Twitter? 

Although its important to note that Berly himself doesn't seem to connect to this social media metaphor in a narrative sense, you could still argue that Berly's front of intelligence could represent how people act online, trying to appear as someone cooler and smarter than they really are.

Point being that like the first game, Deltarune was created to be a commentary on fiction and role play. The first chapter is literally about games, and this one is about our digital presence online.  

Another more obvious reference to Twitter in the chapter is the sidequest about collecting “blue check marks:

You have to bring the Hacker “checks” which could be a reference to “Verified Checks” on Twitter, and when you give them to him he creates a fireworks show “in dedication to you.” Symbolizing how for many people on the internet, getting a verified twitter check is the symbol of becoming famous, worthy of celebration. A sign that you've become a “big shot” now.

On that note, let's finally talk about Spamton.

The most obvious connection is that Spamton seems to be like Mettaton. 

Spamton and Mettaton have similarities, beyond their names. Both are “robots” that want to steal your “heart shaped object” to become big and powerful. 

But the key difference between the two is the motive, and this is where the social media angle comes in. In the first game, we meet Mettaton who at first seems cut throat and sinister, but is revealed to have a real passion and dream. He wants to “get big” to make music that everyone enjoys, and even decides to stay behind out of an altruistic devotion to his fans.

Compere this to the cynicism of Spamton. Notice how in the first battle with Spamton you progress the battle by engaging with deals, but he doesn't seem to care about the money itself. You cant pay him off because its not about the money. He just wants to feel like a “big shot” making deals. The thrill and freedom of feeling like someone important.

In this sense we can then divide Mettaton and Spamton into two types of influencers. Whereas, Mettaton has a dream. Spamton just wants clout.

The kind of influencer who wants to use their platform to enrich themselves and fuel their ego, as oppose to someone like Mettaton with a real desire to change the world for the better. In one of the genocide routes, we can even see him take over Queens mansion, representing how these types of influencers are bound to take over the social media structure, sans the right people step in.  

Given the social media and fame metaphor. Its impossible to examine this boss and not read into the context of its creation. Although this is purely speculation, its possible that Spamton was created as open meditation on Tobyfox's baggage regarding his own fame, and also the effects of social media fame and clout chasing in general. Imagine the pressure of being that famous, of everyone expecting you to follow Undertale with something just as good or even better, and Toby probably doesn't even know what made the original game blow up like it did in the first place, and probably never expect it to. 

Consider this line in his first boss theme:

“... Now's your chance! Now's your chance! Now's your chance! Be a big- be big- beeee-”

Over and over. It can almost be read as Toby's internal monologue. An unrelenting pressure to outperform and succeed, to make sure the game is a success that fulfills everyone's expectations.  

Simply put, Toby is a big shot now.

In the matter of a single year, Toby went from being a nobody on the internet to being twitter famous celebrity. Getting “calls” from Nintendo. Again this is all unconfirmed, but its even possible that Nintendo offered Tobyfox a deal. A chance to be a big deal, with a big salary; a corporate puppet.

Toby would (hypothetically) rejected this offer. Like Mettaton, he cares about his fans, but has no interest in the acquisition of clout and power for its own sake. But hey, that's just a theory.

Which brings us to his central message about internet drama. While its not my place to psychoanalyze how someone is feeling from afar, a message is certainly here about internet fame and clout chasing. Its clear that Toby has become twitter famous, and consequently has found himself thrust into the heat of internet drama time and time again. It seems that Toby Fox is horrified by the affects social media is having on the indie gaming community or just more broadly society in general. In the past, toxic fame was a niche problem faced by a handful of Hollywood stars and musicians. But now Social Media has democratized fame, and all its problems to everyone that owns a phone. 

Chapter 2 seems to be Toby's response and warning: that being a big shot is not all its cracked up to be and certainly not worth parting your soul over.

[swordgayist]

cultural appropriation in ATLA (hinduism edition)

i’m sure there’s already a ton of posts about this, but whatever, i’m still making one idc. 

ATLA’s cultural appropriation, everyone knows about it, the white people don’t speak about it, and the asian and indigenous people get ignored. we know the cycle. but i wanted to come here and highlight some of the most prominent examples of ATLA abusing hinduism, as i am kinda sorta hindu (i was raised in a hindu household, i go to chinmaya mission, that kinda shit). i might forget some things so keep that in mind.

this is gonna be divided into 3 main sections, since there are different ways that they disrespect hinduism that i don’t wanna lump together.

and i’d say i know a lot about hinduism but that doesn’t make me an expert, obviously, so if other hindus have anything to add and/or correct then please do !! and if anyone else wants to share how their cultures were appropriated then please do that as well !!

so let’s get started shall we?

appropriating hinduism

1) the avatar

we’ll start with the most obvious example: the avatar itself

i know that there are parts of the avatar mythos that are taken from other cultures as well but the idea of the avatar itself is primarily from hinduism.

basically in hinduism, the term dashavatara refers to the 10 reincarnations of lord vishnu (the god of preservation), with avatar(a) meaning form or incarnation in sanskrit, and das(a) meaning ten. it was said that whenever the world was out of balance, lord vishnu would come down to earth in a certain form to restore balance. Each reincarnation is considered a different life with a different story. the avatars of lord vishnu are often considered the saviors of the world.

so basically, the central idea of the show and the actual name of the show is largely based on hinduism.

2) chakras

many different indian religions have a concept of chakras (chakra meaning wheel or circle in sanskrit), but hinduism is the one that primarily preaches the system of seven chakras, the version used in ATLA.

chakras connect the physical body to the ‘subtle’ body (referring more to the spirit and the psyche) by connecting parts of the body to aspects of the mind. the idea is that through different forms of steady meditation you can manipulate the different chakras and allow the pure flow of energy through the body.

the whole idea of chakras on ATLA is that aang has to unblock them all to let the cosmic energy flow through him so that he can go into the avatar state at will. so yeah, pretty much that whole idea was taken from hinduism.

3) terminologies

these are just a few terms that were taken from hinduism. i’m pretty sure there are more that i can’t think of right now but yeah.

“agni” kai 

i’ll be honest i don’t know where the ‘kai’ part is from, i don’t think it’s from hinduism but if it is well fuck me i guess.  ‘agni’ in hinduism is the god of fire, so the creators used it in ‘agni kai’, the name for a firebending duel.

“bumi”

this is in reference to the hindu word for ‘earth’, which is bhoomi. this is also in reference to our goddess of earth, bhoomi devi. also this doesn’t really bother me but i wonder if the creators knew that bhoomi is a name typically used for women (as are most hindi names ending in ‘i’/‘ee’).

in general, concepts like having multiple complex gods (the spirits) who are capable of good and evil and the reincarnation cycle are prominent in a lot of asian cultures, including (and arguably primarily) hinduism.

mocking hinduism

now we get into the mockery of hinduism in ATLA, because it is very much there.

1) whoever the fuck that baboon guy in the spirit world was

now what the fuck was this.

i mean i wouldn’t say this is the most egregious example of them making fun of brown people but lord why did this even need to be there? this random guy from the spirit world has an indian accent ? and is fervently chanting ‘om’ for some reason, and it’s clearly meant to be seen as comical. also portraying brown people as monkeys....... really.

2) combustion man/sparky sparky boom man

when rewatching ATLA in 2019 i actually had no idea that this was a thing, because the last time i had watched it was as a kid and i didn’t finish it.

so lord was i in for a surprise when i saw...

now... now what.

if you didn’t know, combustion man’s ‘third eye’ is designed to replicate the hindu god of destruction, lord shiva. right down to the vibhuti on his forehead (referring to the three line markings around the third eye).

in hinduism, lord shiva’s third eye is used to reduce people to ashes, though as far as i can recall, not very frequently. the primary significance of the third eye is that it represents the ability of higher spiritual thought and higher consciousness.

the ATLA writers take the ACTUAL significance of the third eye, throw it out the window, and then take its destructive abilities to make a super duper cool and dangerous new firebending technique.

and if that wasn’t bad enough, the actual person who uses this technique, and is meant to emulate a GOD who is PRAISED, is a scary, burly, half metal man who is a villain and an assassin. not to mention the design of his facial hair replicates that super duper scary “terrorist” depiction of brown people, particularly of muslims, that white people are so thoroughly terrified of for no reason. 

this is a parody of a god, and they portrayed him as this terrifying, maniacal fucking assassin who, along with p’li, the combustion bender from LOK, is constantly referred to as a “third-eyed freak”. i’ve made this analogy before and i’ll do it again, this is like making jesus into a hitman.

now onto my favorite example...

3) guru pathik

ah, this motherfucker.

i don’t really have any problems with him as a character, i mean hell, must’ve taken a fuck ton of patience to handle aang’s “why would choose cosmic energy over katara” bullshit.

but we all know it, we see it plain as day, don’t even try to deny it.

“guru” literally just means teacher or guide, so i don’t really know why pathik needed to be referred to as “guru” so distinctively from aang’s other teachers and guides, but that’s just extremely trivial compared to all the other issues with this character.

first of all what is this character design? what is he even wearing? if they’re trying to replicate the clothes of swamis and priests and stuff this is already wrong, realized people don’t dress like this. and why the fuck does he have an indian accent? and why was this indian accent done by a non indian (brian george)?

once again, the poor but extremely heavy indian accent is clearly meant to be mocking, if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t’ve gone out of their way to get a non indian person to DO an indian accent, and instead they would’ve just gotten an actual indian person to play the role. 

and oh yeah, the onion and banana juice. because hindus just eat weird shit right.

whether it’s actually weird or not, the show certainly portrays it as weird. and as far as i know no hindu actually fucking drinks onion and banana juice.

ironic because brown people can absolutely destroy white people in cooking. but i digress.

i know what you’re all waiting for. because the guru apparently didn’t have enough fun with guru pathik, so they just had to come back to him in book 3:

where do i begin.

so this is obviously john o’bryan’s super funny and hilarious depiction of pathik as a hindu god.

usually when a god has multiple arms it’s to carry an array of things, from flowers to weapons to instruments, and one hand is typically free to bless devotees (ie. goddess durga and lord vishnu respectively):

but of course white people see this as weird and so they make fun of it, hence guru pathik having multiple arms just flailing about aimlessly (save for the two that are being used to carry the aforementioned onion and banana juice).

then there’s the whole light behind pathik’s head which is usually depicted in drawings of hindu gods to show that they are celestial.

also what the fuck is he holding? is that supposed to be a veena? because this is what a veena looks like:

and i assume the reason this was added was to mock the design of goddess saraswathi, who carries a veena:

but that right there in the picture of pathik looks more like a tambura than a veena. 

and it also just kinda looks like a banjo?

but i guess the animators just searched up “long indian instrument” and slapped it on there. actually no, that’s giving them too much credit, they probably didn’t search it up at all. 

and then the actual scene is pathik singing crazily about chakras tasting good or something while playing the non-veena and it’s all supposed to be some funky crazy hallucination that aang is having due to sleep deprivation. just some crazy dream, just as crazy as talking appa and momo sparring with swords or tree-ozai coming to life.

our gurus and swamis and sadhus and generally realized people are very respected in hinduism, they’re people we look up to and honor very much. and our GODS are beings that we literally worship. and the writers just take both and make caricatures out of them for other white people to laugh at.

4) other shit

before we move to the next portion i just wanna mention there are also smaller backhanded jabs that i can’t really remember now, but one example was when zuko was all “we’ll be sure to remember that, guru goody goody”. or when a character would meditate and say “om” only when the meditation is supposed to be portrayed as comical or pointless. or in bitter work when sokka was rambling on about karma. small things like that. but moving on.

south asian representation, or lack thereof

now i finally get to the “losing” hinduism part. by this i mean the lack of actual representation there is of south asians (the region where hinduism is primarily practiced) despite the fact that hinduism plays such a big role in the show’s world design.

i think it’s safe to say that broadly the main cast consists of aang, katara, sokka, zuko, toph, azula, iroh, mai, ty lee, and suki. 

a grand total of none of these characters are south asian. the writers don’t even attempt to add any south asian main characters. 

there are characters with dark skin, like haru and jet, but a) they’re not confirmed to be south asian and don’t have any south asian features or south asian names, b) they’re side characters, so they don’t count as representation, and c) even if they were south asian and main characters, jet wouldn’t even count because he’s portrayed as a terrorist.

the ONLY truly south asian character we get is fucking guru pathik. so yeah. not representation.

i don’t get how the creators of this show rip off of hinduism (among many other south asian cultures they rip off of), mock indians, and then don’t even have the decency to HAVE a main character who is south asian.

i’ve never gotten a chance to compile all this, and this definitely isn’t all the creators have done, but i hope this was somewhat informative.