#this redditor really called them out

[leclercskiesahead]

This guy said it better than me

Carlos Sainz has conviction. He believes in his own judgment and is willing to act out and speak out on it, often contrary to what the Ferrari pit wall offers. At the same time, he isn't cocky and will respect Ferrari's team orders should the need ultimately arise. It's been twice in [the 2022] season that Carlos' blatant ignoring/disobeying of Ferrari's calls rewarded him and the team handsomely, while in contrast Leclerc, whose unwavering reliance on the team's judgment often earns him the short end of the stick. Listening to Carlos' radio, you will constantly hear him asking questions and challenging decisions. It's a hallmark of all great drivers - especially (since radio communication has been made more accessible to the audience) Lewis Hamilton, who has, on many occasions, disobeyed his team's orders to pit, ran long in the race with great pace, then put on a monster stint at the end to win. Of course his own strategy decisions backfired on him a few times (recently and notably Turkey 2021), but most of the time, between Lewis and the team, they make the right strategical decisions. Lewis acted like another voice that contributes to the strategy team, and for a group whose sole goal is to make the best strategical decision, more viewpoints is always better as it creates a clearer picture for all involved. Ferrari's strategy and race engineering teams seem to break down with every single event that necessitates some sort of quick ruthless reaction. It seems like a lost department that has zero confidence in its own decision-making skills, predictions, and data. The lack of confidence from the pit wall, though, allows Carlos to make his own decisions without strong pushback, and it has rewarded him on at least two occasions this year [2022] already. Listening to Carlos schooling his engineer with words like "Trust me", "Don't do that" etc., it seems that he has that extra dimension as a racing driver, one who can deliberate strategy and tactics while driving fast, much like Sebastian Vettel in his Ferrari days. Carlos has an inbuilt bullshit-o-meter that firmly overrides some shitty decisions Ferrari torture themselves with.

[linkspooky]

CHIHIRO IS NOT A HERO

So once again it's time to make a post where it seems like I'm hating on everyone's favorite character. Chihiro is a pretty unique main character, and unlike the main characters of most revenge centered storylines a lot of time goes to developing Chihiro's soft side. He spends the first arc trying to protect a child, in the auction arc he gives up the tool of his revenge to protect Hakuri and even goes out of his way to lecture Hakuri's father for abusing his son. There is a lot of humanity and depth to Chihiro's character and a lot of people use that to ignore the darker parts of his character.

At the same time Chihiro is a mass murderer with a body count in the hundreds at this point. One redditor has the count at about 203 people and it's probably only grown since then.

Chihiro slaughters people en masse without the slightest hint of hesitation or remorse. They're all crimminals yes, low level mooks for the Samura organization or servants of the Sazanami family or whoever Chihiro is fighting this week but that's still 200 human lives. And I'm pretty sure not every single one of the people Chihiro killed kicked puppies every single morning, drank, then went home to beat their wives and children.

Over two hundred people who could have turned a new leaf and done some good for the world if they had lived, who probably had family members or loved ones are all dead and the only reason that we don't really feel this number is the story never really stops to dwell on them. Imagine if Chihiro beheaded one of these guys and then it launched into a five chapter flashback about how this man was just hard on money because he went through so much misfortune in life and he needed money to pay for his wife's cancer treatments, and then in the last chapter of the flashback as the man dies it cuts to the doctor pulling the plug and letting the man's wife die because he wasn't there to make the payment.

If we got to see the story from any of the hundreds of faceless people that Chihiro killed, then Chihiro would kind of come off looking like an asshole but we don't really see that because the story is mostly centered on Chihiro. This is what I mean when I use the term "Protagonist-centered Morality", it's always good to try to pay attention to the way that the story uses framing to support or question the protagonist's actions.

One of the first secnes in Kill Bill is the Bride killing a little girl's mother in front of her, as revenge for what the mother Copperhead did to her years ago. If the story were told from the point of view of the little girl rather than the Bride, the daughter wouldn't care about the Bride's motivation she'd only be focused on avenging the death of her mother. The same way that the Bride can't see that she is actively creating a new victim by depriving a child of a mother, to pursue her own path of revenge.

"Protagonist-Centered Morality" is a term I use when a story wants us not to question the morals of a protagonist, so they tend to cheat using perspective or framing to make it so the protagonist is always in the right. In the example above, you don't really question the Bride's action of killing Coppheread because her daughter never shows up again.

However, I think Kagurabachi is aware of protagonist centered morality and has been trying to subvert it from the get go. The narrative is just attempting to use subtler methods to call out the fact that Chihiro's revenge is not moral or just, and also is incredibly short sighted.

This begins even in the first arc of the story, where Chihiro is forced to acknowledge that while he believed his father created the enchanted blades as tools used to protect others, someone else could interpret those swords as just tools for death and destruction.

The fight ends with Chihiro being forced to agree with the remorseless killer that yes, these swords which Chihiro had always told himself his father created to protect others and defeat evil are ultimately just killing tools.

Chihiro has to accept a point of view that is contrary to his own, and has to conclude that their point of view is equally as valid because despite the fact that Chihiro personally knew his father and knew his father's intentions in creating the swords what he created were nonetheless weapons of mass destruction and it's easy to see how a complete outsider can only see these weapons as what they were created to be... you know... weapons.

Chihiro until this point didn't want to deal with the morality that if you are going to make a weapon, you usually intend for that weapon to be used to kill someone else. Which is something his father even tried to stress upon him up until he died.

The story doesn't have a problem with protagonist centered morality, in fact as I'm highlighting above the very first arc the story is asking the question "How are you any different from this remorseless mass murderer, huh Chihiro?" However, Chihiro himself suffers from a case of protagonist centered morality. Or you could call it egocentrism. Or just plain old fashioned self-righteousness.

Regardless, Chihiro despite being a character who exists in a morally gray place, killing hundreds of people to get his hands on the magical swords so they won't be used to hurt even more people - Chihiro himself has a very black and white sense of morality. In spite of the fact Chihiro is using these powerful swords to rip hundreds of people limb from limb in the most brutal fashion possible, he answers with a simple "These swords exist to defeat evil and protect the weak."

I will give credit never does Chihiro see himself as aligned on the side of good. From the first chapter onward he aligns himself on the side of the monsters, he is an insane person, he is an evil fighting a greater evil.

At no point does Chihiro ever claim that his actions are good, but he does think they are justified. Which are two different things. Chihiro is never on the side of angels, he says multiple times he believes he will be going to hell after all of this is done, however despite knowing what he is doing is wrong he can willfully justify all the people he has killed to himself. He believes deep down that his actions still fall in line with defeating evil, and protecting the weak.

The moments that Chihiro hesitates are when he is not able to see his enemies as an absolute evil to be slaughtered. Chihiro chides himself for feeling empathy for the other members of the Sazanami family and hesitating because he could understand how much they desired to live up to the expectations of their father.

This is a good thing, it's Chihiro's empathy that leads him to occasionally put his revenge aside to help people like the little girl in the first arc and Hakuri. It's this humanity that the story stresses over and over again that makes him a likable character, but for Chihiro seeing any humanity in his enemies is a problem because he needs to be able to do whatever is necessary in order to destroy evil.

Which means Chihiro can't fight unless he sees his enemy as an absolute evil that needs to be exterminated.

This is of course something which the story the story challenges Chihiro on in every successive arc, but it is also his central and most damning flaw. Chihiro narratives his pain in order to cope. He grew up on hearing the story of his father and the men who fought the war wielding the enchanted blades as heroes. He immortalizes his dead father in those stories.

This has led Chihiro to construct a story where he is the protagonist, fighting evil. He may not be the good guy, but the guys he is fighting are still an unquestionable evil that needs to be exterminated for the good of everyone. In spite of the fact that Chihiro is one mass murderer, hunting down other mass murderers Chihiro still tries to divide the world into good and evil, the innocent and the guilty. If he can justify what he's doing as fighting evil then he doesn't have to stop and question his own actions and keep following his revenge story right to the end.

There's a scene in the new Daredevil show where the Punisher, famed revenge based Marvel anti-hero is surprised that the cops are a huge fan of him and have started shooting performing executions of criminals in his name. Despite the fact that the Punisher's entire character and motive revolves around him dubbing himself judge, jury and executioner of whatever criminal he has decided to kill he is surprised that the cops would take after his example. That's basically Chihiro's entire character in a nut shell.

Chihiro does step by step accept other people's points of view even when they contradict with his own all the way from the first arc, but it also always ends with: "Yeah, but I'm gonna kill you anyway."

Even when Chihiro acknowledges the humanity of the people he's fighting against, the only way he knows how to deal with the situation is to cut them down with thicker bloodlust. There's no peaceful resolution or de-escalation in Chihiro's world, he is trying to break the cycle of violence with even more violence.

It reminds me of one of my quotes from Critical Role.

My friends, I have just taken an audience with the Raven Queen who has snuffed any hope of my redemption, for which I am truly grateful. With new clarity, I can finally see my life as a series of compounding, poor choices. There was nothing I could've done to save my family, yet I still sold my soul in search of vengeance. Later I allowed Ripley to leave, knowing full well she was a greater threat to the world than the Briarwoods would ever be. I traded the world's safety for the belief that I could murder my way to peace; that if I could be a greater horror, it would bring my family back. Once this lie was shattered I scrambled to find a solution, to make a deal, to undo my mistakes and balance the scales. I now understand that there are no scales, there is no redemption, and no ledger that judges me good or evil. I am free to simply be myself and live with the terrible mistakes I've made.

Chihiro believes the lie that he can murder his way to peace and mind, that if he can be a greater horror than the horror he's experienced then he can somehow right the wrong of his father's death.

Chihiro does entertain the idea that he is not much different than the enemies he's fighting over and over again, but he always falls back on a similiar justification.

Hiruhiko is the opposite of Chihiro in a way. Chihiro was raised by a loving father with stories of his father's heroism in order to give him ideals to aspire to. Hiruhiko is a child assassin, who committed his first murder at a young age raised with absolutely nothing else, just a tool who sees no meaning in life or death.

Yet, at the same time they are both children who's childhoods were taken away from them. They are children who were once innocent but have been now groomed into murderers. They are children who experienced a horrific violence at a young age that make it impossible for them to go back to a normal life. They are children who don't even know what it means to go to school, or to hang out with friends.

Hiruhiko can see this similarity between them while Chihiro doesn't, because again of the way they are inversions of one another. Hiruhiko has nothing, no ideals, no close friends, so he seeks them out. He wants friendship because he's never experienced that before in his life. He seeks out something other than death and destruction, connection with a human being even if he can only understand it through the lens of death because that's all he knows.

On the other hand Chihiro is someone how has friendship, and connections to other people, he has love in his life that he deliberately chooses to ignore in his pursuit of revenge. Chihiro has that love and throws it away because it makes him a better killer, and that is why they are opposites. We all make fun of the "every day I wake up with fresh hatred" quote, but that is literally what he is doing. Chihiro is deliberately stamping out any empathy he might feel for his enemies at every opportunity so he can continue cutting them up into hundreds of pieces.

It's all the more alarming because Chihiro is willing to amend his viewpoints. He is starting to question on some level that maybe the people he thought were heroes weren't heroes after all, and he is listening to Samura who says that no matter what his actions are he's going to hell because killing is an absolute wrong. In fact what he respects about Samura is that he was willing to go to hell in order to do the right thing and protect other people.

However, the point remains that Chihiro doesn't really know any way to peace other than slaughtering his enemies. The thought of de-escalation, or healing never even occurs to him. Even Chihiro's respect for Samura's resolve to go to hell for his sins ignores the fact that maybe Samura can be forgiven. Maybe he can turn over another leaf and work to right his wrongs rather than just going to hell forever and being tortured for his sins. Chihiro is so wrapped up in this narrative of justice and punishment for both himself and others he's completely forgotten that forgiveness and healing exists.

Even Chihiro's current stance that he knows that he is a bad guy and will be going to hell for his murders but he intends to take the rest of the bad guy's with him is incredibly toxic and paralleled by Samura himself.

Chihiro's morality is probably the closest to Samura's right now, the man willing to sacrifice both himself and the other sword wielders for the greater good of preventing another nuke from dropping. However, as righteous as Samura is he is also literally blind.

Samura's belief that if he kills all of the sword wielders and then dies himself, going to hell with the Hishaku will be the utlimate good he can achieve with his life ignores the feelings of his daughter. Samura walked all over his daughter's desire to stay with him, deliberately abandoning her and then erasing all memory that he ever existed from her.

It underlines what I'm trying to get at, there may be a certain amount of selflessness in Chihiro and Samura choosing to walk to hell in order to punish the evil of the world but there's no love or empathy on that path. If you choose the path of revenge, then there's no redemption for you or your enemy.

While Chihiro's line of thinking has progressed to Samura's thinking, that he is not a hero, that murder is evil and what he's ultimately doing is evil to serve a perceived greater good he still does not see any alternative pathway he could take besides walking the road to hell.

However, even if Chihiro and Samura were able to accomplish their goals and the only people they sacrificed in the end were themselves that still wouldn't be a good thing because you can't end the cycle of revenge with more revenge. That cycle is just going to keep cycling. You can't murder your way to peace.

This is shown to us in the horrible secret of the war that Samura was made aware of but Chihiro has not yet.

The the people who invaded japan weren't actually monsters to be eliminated but a nation full of people who surrendered, and who were then mass murdered after signing a peace treaty.

This is the extreme to where Samura and Chihiro's logic of becoming evil to fight evil leads. If there's no surrender no chance for a peaceful reconcilitation or an understanding of both sides, then the conflict is just going to keep escalating until one side completely wipes out the other.

And this is where I'm going to use my famous powers of clairyvoyance for a prediction.

This kid right here who's shown cowering in his mother's arms right before the peace treaties were signed. I am goign to bet that this kid is still alive and that he's actually Yura. The big twist we're going to build up to during the confrontation between Yura and Chihiro is that Yura is the last surviving member of that island nation that was wiped out, and his current plans are revenge for what happened to his people.

At that point whose revenge is right? Or maybe, just maybe... the point is revenge is never right.

[charafansmile]

what do you think of Berdly deltarune?

I like him! I think he's an interesting little guy, and I enjoy the role he fulfils in the story. He's a redditor and he sucks alot but by God is it funny to watch him be a redditor and suck alot.

There's specific parts of him as a character that I think deserve to be discussed (primarily how the character is fundamentally one with sexist beliefs) ..but alot of berdly negative I think goes too far in on the him being sexist angle (he is, but let's be real he's 15 and capable of learning. If we were supposed to think he's sexualizing noelle or susie he'd be written more overtly like burgerpants is). My own stance is that he's a play on the 'white knight' sort of 'nice guy' with the subversion that he's not actually interested in noelle romantically. But does still think he 'deserves' her. Not quite an incel but playing with those tropes.

He is weird and pushy ABOUT romance and I think that angle of the character provides an interesting dynamic with suselle (being that noelle has to learn how to stand up for herself) and the player and kris ourself since we can go directly against what kris wants by saying yes to him. He's basically the annoying team member you can't get rid of that is 'harmless' enough to not really be a threat so much as he is a device for other characters development. (Sidenote, I don't like calling his actions harmless and I'd really rather people not defend him being pushy with romance as him being autistic and not understanding social cues, he's inept sure but that sort of behavior does need to get called out and I hope there's some scene in the festival where he apologises or something.)

Of course me seeing him as more of a plot device atm doesn't mean I don't think he's a character in his own right, I enjoy the inferiority complex he's got going on and his friendship with noelle is very sweet to me. The lightnerds.. they talk vidya games togetehr... As weird as he can be he's just one of those people who you just can't spend alot of time around without wanting to strangle them. Like queen said. Nothing REALLY wrong with him, he's just annoying.

I also think there is a potential for something deeper with his character, and him being avoided because of his behavior does have potential for angst.. but I don't care for reading into it that deeply or blaming his isolation on outside factors that don't recognize the fact that berdly: is a jerk. He's an ass, he's rude, he's self-important and condescending...all of those are the reasons for people avoiding him. It's his own fault. He's that kid in high school who insults your handwriting and keeps talking to you when you're trying to ignore him. You may have a few casual conversations with him and be able to have fun on occasion courtesy of being in a small town without more options, but he still acts like he's better than you for no real reason. It's his biggest character flaw outside of the romance thing and probably my favorite thing about him. Love characters that keep fucking things up for themselves. I think the scene in chapter 4 of the library where he starts spluttering when he realizes susie doesn't want to hang out with him if he's being a jerk will be something that comes up again, if his arc continues. Ideally it'll be something like this

He keeps being pushy with noelle + susie + kris -> they ditch him -> He realizes they dont actually like him that way-> he eventually apologizes -> they hang for a bit -> he reverts to being kind of a jerk again -> they threaten to ditch him -> he realizes his error a second time and then apologizes again -> character arc fulfilled.

Not that he'd be completely fixed, he seems the sort to need multiple lessons, but I think being friends with susie would be good for him? She wouldn't put up with him like noelle does or ignore him like kris does, she'd call him out and stand on it in a way that I think would help develop him...the issue is he needs to get over his crush on her and a few(alot) more beats of self reflection before he's able to be #normal about it. Susie needs more friends too but well.. as good of a friend as she'd be for berdly being a better person I'm not so sure he'd be a very good friend to her without a lot more development. His interactions with her post realizing he can be stupid were funny but I need him to stop flirting yesterday. Idk this parts more an aside. They COULD be gamer buddies...but im unsure of it.

[some-pers0n]

Demoman is one of the characters in the fandom I feel most people straight up ignore or don't know how to write. Blunt, sure, but I do stand by it. Demoman is such a fascinating, intriguing character with the most fleshed-out backstories, yet is oftentimes relegated to being Soldier 2.0, only now with poorly written phonetics.

In other words, hey! I'm a fanfic writer who has a ton of opinions as well as a neurotic need to analyze every character they come into contact with. Pleased to see you're reading this. I've already done a little doohickey essay like this with Medic a while back. The purpose of these long rambles is half of me combing through every instance of the character and pulling them apart to see how their character works...and also me not-so-subtly venting and complaining about mischaracterization. Shocking how a fandom where the main characters are all very clear-cut stereotypes with some slight subversions here and there can't seem to get them.

This essay will go through Demo's beginning and all the way to his latest appearance in the 6th comic. I'll touch on how his character shifts and is expanded upon. I doubt he changes as much as Medic has over the years, but I think it will be interesting to see. I'll just go over bits of characterization, try to rationalize it, and then try my best to sum up all of the traits by the end and try to describe his character in the most canon-compliant way.

With that preamble out of the way, let's begin. This is also 7k words btw just...be aware of that, okay?

Before we actually get into proper character stuff, I wanna lay the groundwork first by exploring the types of characterization I see from Demo. Pick them apart. See what they're really like.

So, of course, there's the popular Redditor opinion of Demo that's mainly shaped by the way people play him in the game. There, people will describe Demo as being generally a bumbling drunkard. It's not too uncommon to see people say that he's an angry drunk. A man who is more concerned with alcohol and drinking himself into a stupor than anything else. I've also seen people say that Demo straight up can't read, which...euhhhhggg. He feels more like an alternative version of Soldier at times, which, again, isn't accurate to his character.

I don't care at all for this characterization. I do think a good chunk is rooted in racism and it's generally very uncomfortable for me to look at for too long. This characterization is pretty shallow and empty, which makes for a boring and offensive caricature. Reddit moment.

The second one is more interesting and the version you'll see more on Tumblr. It's this...odd version of him. I can't exactly put my tongue on what is off about it. It seems more accurate to his character. He's a foil for Soldier a lot of the time (Boots n' Bombs is his most popular ship let's be real) and generally isn't exactly seen on his own. Sure yeah there's the oddball art of him and him only, but let's be real most of his tag is mainly just him being in the background or saying a jokey-joke.

I actually fell back into Ao3 for a bit to skim over some fics to see what kind of characterization there was of Demo there to refresh my memory, and some of the common throughlines was shockingly that he doesn't drink a lot. "He rarely drinks!" I remember reading once. That's not right, no. He's an alcoholic. Like that's a core part of his character. Another fic had him being called "Cyclops" as a pet name. Ew. Anywho, other than that it's Demo being pretty into cryptids, having the Eyelander as a buddy guy, etc and etc. It's fun, but also it's missing...something.

Then, it hit me: Demo rarely is seen as an individual. He reminds me of Heavy in that regard, where most of his appearances have him be the straight-man to another character. Most of the time he's secondary and just a folly for the other characters. It's disappointing in that regard. Like you see a lot more stuff for characters like Scout, Medic, etc and etc with their own unique characterization stuff and getting their own attention.

So...then what is Demoman's character, exactly? Well, that's what we're here to see. It'll be pretty interesting, no?

----

So, funny thing is that Demo didn't change nearly as much as Medic has over the years. Sure yeah, the concept art of Demo was more of the generic stereotypical Scotsman. White, ginger, sideburns, that whole thing. Cartoony and fun design, but eventually they went with the Demo we all know and love today.

Looking at the concept art, it all seems pretty standard for the tone that Invasion was going for at the time. Nothing really to note there other than Demo's face being a stock angry grr grr expression. It is interesting to see how the idea of him wearing an eye was a constant even from the beginning though.

This then brings us to the voicelines. Ahh, good ol' characterization. Demo here is characterized as being jovial and having fun. He's throwing out insults left and right, damning them to hell and laughing at them as they die. Usual typical mercenary stuff. This is just personal headcanon material, but I always rationalize the way the mercs act on the battlefield as being a result from adrenaline and generally being drunk on blood. They aren't as mean when off the clock, but it's worth noting that these are how these characters act when a gun's in their hands and they're exploding people left and right.

TF2 really likes basing the characters off of the class they play as and how they act. Scout is fast moving and his gameplay is oftentimes getting right in someone's face and bolting, which is reflective in his hotshot personality. It's only reasonable that Demo is an explosive, fun, and generally cocky guy when out and battling. He's lobbing grenades and sticky bombs left and right. He isn't afraid to yell to the Medic he just blew up that he's been shagging his wife and calling the Scout he just chopped the head off "twinkle-toes". He teases and such when it comes to the other team.

However, the voicelines also very curiously give us a really fascinating look into his character. He's an alcoholic. He loves his scrumpy, which is not whiskey, shockingly. I thought it was whiskey for the longest time, but no! It's a cider! His stock melee is the bottle he uses to drink, now turning it into a quick weapon. His model in the main menu is him holding up the bottle itself. His default melee taunt is him taking a swig from the scrumpy bottle. It's a core part of his identity, let's be real. It's a part of the whole Scottish stereotype he has going on.

The game of course follows this. There's a lot of lines where he's slurring and babbling in a cartoony drunken way. A good portion of it is just him making vague threats...but a lot of it is also sad. He calls himself a one-eyed bloody monster. He weeps and cries. When jeering, he says he's hit rock bottom here. Interesting new development.

Apologizes for pausing to ramble, but I don't get why people try and sand down the edges to Demoman's character by making him out as though he isn't an addict. He is. That's something that is made abundantly clear. The iconography of alcohol follows him like his own damn shadow. I dunno. It bothers me.

I digress. There's some other bonus stuff I think is quite interesting. Most of his battle charges involve the other team. "Let's gettem lads!" and all. I think it's neat how he views his teammates as just that. Teammates. Those he fights alongside with. Another thing of note is how he occasionally has lines that are...odd in a way. Poetic and dramatic. Something that subverts the typical characterization. When he loses at rock paper scissors, there's a chance he'll say "Oh, 'tis a dark day", which. well then okay buddy.

So to recap: for characterization in-game, Demo is an alcoholic Scotsman who is generally pretty witty and functioning despite the incredible amounts of booze he drinks. He is energetic, bombastic, and generally hearty and having fun. He's not taking things terribly seriously and is generally just going about and blowing stuff up. However, there is a very noticeable streak of sadness to his character. When drinking, he reveals undertones of self-deprecation and hatred. Why? How?

...well, you just need to take a gander at his character card.

Erm excuse me what the fuck.

I honestly do not understand the logic behind this backstory. Like in a practical sense. Like, yeah!! obviously this backstory is sad and such! I really actually like this backstory and honestly I love writing him in the context that this happened to him. It's just that...I can't wrap my head around the idea of this being Demo's backstory given that everyone else has pretty silly little blurbs here. I think the darkest it gets is Soldier going to Germany years after WWII ended to kill people.

This??? Sure yeah TF2 gets a lot sillier and more cartoony comedic as time goes on, but even with the current tone where is the funny? I ain't complaining, I love me my angst, but this is so jarring to see. I suppose that explains why they retcon it later, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Hey, at least it gives us an explanation to why Demo is sad. We can pretty easily gleam a reason for his current behaviour in the game from this: his messed up childhood. To begin, Tavish Finnegan DeGroot was abandoned by his parents and left to live in an orphanage. Eventually, he was adopted and brought up by some foster parents, who he then murdered in an attempt to blow up the Loch Ness monster. This was when he was six years old. Actual child. 

He then went back into the orphanage, where he would tinker with bombs. Why? Insert whatever headcanon here, but for me I think it's a feeling of fascination, yet also heavy guilt. Perhaps revenge. Either way, he loses his eye from these experiments. Eventually however, he's brought back into the family when word spreads of his excellence when it comes to manufacturing bombs. The use of the word "lovingly" feels exceptionally sarcastic, but that could be in part to how his parents are later characterized. Either way, this is a result of the DeGroot tradition, which, and I quote, is wholly unnecessary and cruel. It even cites it as him being reintroduced into his family as the "end of his unhappy childhood".

...so yeah. Pretty safe to say the reason for his alcoholism is to cope with that. He feels the guilt over that and will breakdown into sobs over it even. Yikeesss... It can also mean that he feels as though he's held up to incredibly high expectations, having the entire DeGroot family lineage to live up to. Again, later on he's being nagged at for not being as hard-working as his father, who, in good ol' TF2 fashion, blew up the Queen for a nickel. It does certainly feel that way, no?

So this introduces a new wrinkle to Demoman's current characterization: he's an alcoholic who is happy and has an upbeat and fun personality (at least on the battlefield), but underneath it he's hurting and feels ashamed of who he is. He drinks to cope and manage it, yet it only seems to exasperate problems at times.

Can I safely say that Demo is the merc with the most fascinating and intriguing backstory and personality thus far? Sure yeah I love Engie a lot as well, but Demo's character actually feels like it is a result of the backstory written for him. Like all of the other mercs sure you can go on and on about stuff with them, like Scout and Spy and their whole deal, Sniper and his parents, everything with Heavy, etc. Demo?? Right off the bat there's something to chew on in terms of actual character writing.

What an interesting character! I sure hope later installations of the story will follow through on this and give him ample screentime!

Anywho, time for the Meet the Demo video. Again, a departure from the Meet the Medic video and how I rambled on and on about that one, but it was mainly due to MtM being something to mark a drastic shift in Medic's character from serious and angry to more silly and mad scientist-esque. Meet the Demo, due to it being one of the Meet the Team videos made so early on, doesn't really get the benefit of a short with a story, but I digress.

This one is stylized more like an interview, which, in canon, means he's telling this all to The Director and all. It opens with the title screen before the horns section seep in, cutting to a clip of Demo running while explosions go off behind him. A freeze frame cut before a voice-over of Demo comes on with the iconic line "What makes me a good Demoman? If I were a bad Demoman, I wouldn't be here discussing it with you, now would I!?"

Okay so just more confirmation and all of Demo's personality in-game. According to his bio, he has a short temper and all, which could explain him getting louder when asked that question. I don't think it's a joke or him exaggerating, since he seems genuinely pretty upset by the suggestion. He would have to be good at his job in order to be telling you this, yeah? Why even bother asking? It's an interesting bit of characterization that somewhat expands on that short temper.

More generic footage of him running about while explosions go off before coming back to the interview of him explaining a bomb in its simplest form. "One crossed wire, a wayward pinch of potassium chlorate, one errant twitch... and kablewie!!" Seems like filler dialogue, but I always like taking note of the fact he uses the chemical compound term as opposed to something more colloquial. It's just headcanons, but I really enjoy thinking that Demo is pretty damn smart and really gifted when it comes to making bombs and general chemistry. It's a clear passion and love of his and I like touching on it when I can.

The next couple seconds are shots between him taking a good swig of his scrumpy and then blowing up a level three sentry. It's just showing off his capabilities as a class. Nothing special (other than being cool and showing he's competent at his job). The real interesting part is his breakdown where he's on the verge of tears, exasperatingly telling the camera that he's...off. He knows it. There's not too many black Scotsmen, especially ones with a busted eye. "They've got more fucking sea monsters in the great Loch Ness than they got the likes of me" he says.

But, he perks up! He talks over a clip of him baiting a group of BLU mercs into a sticky trap. The voiceover is also really fascinating here. The way Demo talks reminds me something out of an Aesop fable. It's a very curious and fascinating way of talking. I wish this bit of characterization stuck around since it's pretty fun. "Come and get me I say! I'll be waiting on ya with a whiff of the ol' brimstone. I'm a grim bloody fable...with an unhappy bloody end!" is really cool.

The video ends with him taunting the mangled corpses followed by a rendition of the main theme with bagpipes. I should probably also mention Drunken Pipe Bomb, his theme song. It's an upbeat and fun piece with a mixture of the typical TF2 sounds (funky jazzy drums and bass guitar) as well as a Celtic flair, what with bagpipes, whistles, etc and etc. There's also a kickass surf rock section. It's quite the battle theme and definitely reflects a lot of Demo's character as being an energetic, explosive type of character who is proud of his Scottish roots.

So that's pretty much it for SFM bits for now. How about we take a step back and look at the first-ever actual TF2 comic: WAR!, where Demo really gets a big break for his characterization. We don't care about the Saxton Hale or Jarate ones. WAR! my beloved...

But first, the actual WAR! update. It was the sixth major content update released back in 2009. Remember when this game got actual content updates? Me neither. The update was based around the rivalry between the RED Demo and the BLU Soldier to excuse why they were adding new items for the both of them, with Soldier in the end winning the little contest and getting the Gunboats.

For canon lore, the update serves to introduce the idea that the RED Demo and BLU Soldier had a comradery at first. Friends! Interesting piece of characterization to have Demo explicitly go against RED and become friends with Soldier. The two of them do bounce off of each other quite well when they're paired up, I will say. They're both heavy-hitters in terms of gameplay and their personalities are quite loud at times.

For added voicelines, there's a bunch of the Administrator denouncing their friendship as well as domination lines for both Solly and Demo whenever they kill each other. Demo pretends he hates Soldier, but asks if he's okay, tells him that he loves him, and generally is like "but we're still friends though, aye? :]" He does care a lot about their friendship, which is pretty sweet and cute. Sure hope that lasts.

In the WAR! comic, we see Demo in a mansion. He's loaded! It's also confirmation that the mercs are given quite a lot of money, but apparently not enough for Demo's mother. She's nagging him about not working and saying that he should be ashamed for being so lazy, to which he rebuttals, saying he has three jobs and has made millions annually. Apparently not enough for his mother, since Demo's father worked twenty-six jobs.

She also brings up an interesting piece of information. "No demoman worth his sulfur ever had an eye in his head past thirty!" which implies that missing an eye is a family tradition to lose your eyes when working this job. Would this also imply that Demo is not thirty by this point, since he still has the one eye? Eh, whatever. 

Demo taking care of his mom in this old, nagging state is pretty neat characterization, as well as him holding down two other jobs besides mercenary work for RED. He's very capable and talented! He's also extremely caring and sweet. Even when his mum is complaining and griping about him not living up to his father, he gets her tea and takes care of her. He does respond with a lot of "I know mum" when it comes to that. He's heard it all before. She keeps saying the same stuff. I like thinking he knows fully well he can't live up to the extreme work ethic his father had or truly impress his parents and is pretty bummed out about it, but that's just headcanons.

Anywho, Pauling's there. She's there because the Administrator wants to break up the friendship between Demo and the BLU Soldier and instead have them be pitted against each other. While Soldier needs to be tricked and insulted by Demo and told that he's a civilian (something that he hates apparently), Demo is more coerced and convinced.

He's still loyal to their friendship, but, aye, there's something different about that sword there. Here's an interesting bit of characterization: Demo being a sword guy. There's a lot of medieval stuff relating to Demo, what with DeGroot's Keep, the Eyelander, his general way of speaking at times, etc and etc. It's fun and I think he takes great interest in medieval-period stuff, but, again, headcanons.

Demo feels conflicted. How could she make him choose between his best friend and this cool ass sword?? He doesn't give an answer, but Miss Pauling further pushes him to choose violence when leaving even more stuff for him as well as telling him that Soldier said that he'll join the fight. It's then assumed that Demo agrees by that point.

It's interesting to compare and contrast Demo and Soldier. Soldier, despite hearing all of these mean things, still wants to be friends with Demo. It's until "Demo" calls him a civilian, something personal and sensitive to him, is when he decides to betray him. Demo meanwhile is more swayed by things that he loves, but the final push is that betrayal. He only acts when he's finally told that their friendship has been severed. Curious how their loyalty is strong in those ways.

...I should probably sometime mention the actual retconning of his backstory however. Hoouhhh boy let's go. So, for the 2011 Halloween update, there was a comic alongside it. This comic had some cute gags, like Heavy giving a little boy he scared seven grand. However, the main attraction is the rewritten backstory for Demo.

I mentioned earlier, but I honestly can't blame them for maybe trying another crack at a Demo backstory that isn't as bleak and miserable. I do really like the original one because I'm a sucker for angst, but this backstory does work a lot better tonally when you're just trying to write some goofy stuff, especially if it involves Merasmus at some point.

The story retcons the whole thing and seemingly makes it so that Demo has always been with his parents and the reason he lost his eye was not because of some brutal accident but rather a currrseeee ooohhhh spookyyy. He's hired by Merasmus to sweep up the place a bit, with him being exceptionally clear to young Tav to not touch any of the accursed tomes. He does, of course. Nothing too much in terms of characterization. It's more just saying "Hey Demo's eye is cursed and that's why he lost it but! hey! it comes back once every Halloween!!"

Again, I can't really knock this version of events. They're simple, but goofy and fun. It's all up to whatever you're trying to accomplish with Demo methinks. If you want silly and whimsical stories, you can have that backstory. If you want gut-wrenching angst, probably should take the initial one.

Aanndd that's virtually it for Demo being important. Demo doesn't get too much plot relevance later on. He's just kinda done with. He shows up in Expiration Date for a quick gag where he returns with a bunch of beer, shouting and cheering while being unaware of how they all just learned they're going to die in three days. He then shows up again during the bucket scene and doesn't do much other than mouthing somethin' (I can't tell you want tbh). A new thing is that he plays piano! That's fun! He then kinda watches Scout try and ask out Pauling and he yells for him to describe what she looks like, which is just what Demo currently sees her as (drunk, blurry, etc). He then fights in the big battle yada yada and shows up at the end with the beer again.

The MVM trailer I suppose is a thing to be noted. Here, he's a BLU Soldier and is playing cards with the Soldier of the same team. Seems like regardless of teams, there's some sort of bond between the two of them. All that happens is that Demo is down to bust up robots with the rest of the RED mercs. Pretty much it.

It is quite unfortunate to see Demo relegated to a role so passive in the story and comics. I've mentioned it before, but I do have an ever so slight grudge against Soldier for taking up the majority of the screentime when it comes to the comics. Yeah, he's really fun to write about, I can't blame the writers for doing so, but also like...c'mon... In the end, we're left with a good chunk of the mercs being underdeveloped in exchange for a ton of Soldier trivia. Props if you like Solly though; your fave got the best treatment.

Ah, but still! Demo has some moments in the comics! Let's go through them! 

Uh. Upon checking most of the comics before the mainline ones, it appears he does not say even a single word. Or even show up in a good portion. Well that's disappointing. I thought he at least said like...one thing. The most he does in terms of characterization is put on a crown in A Fate Worse Than Chess, and even then that's just a silly cosmetic. Damn.

It's fine though! Because now we have the mainline comics! Hot damn finally some actual casual Demoman TF2 writing! Let's get a look and see what his normal usual personality is like! I wonder what fun shenanigans he's been up to.

The first time we see Demo he's babbling about his job being replaced by robots and looking utterly dishevelled and depressed.

Okay. That's...yeah pretty in line for his character thus far. An alcoholic who is struggling with some stuff and oftentimes will have a very vocal breakdown in front of others.

The way that he's characterized here is rather fascinating though, I'll say. He's depressed. From what we can glean, this is what his life has been like since the layoffs. He's gained weight (what with Soldier's very blunt "Hello fat Demoman!"), hasn't shaved, his clothes are dirty, and beer bottles are scattered in the living room. Even the Eyelander is like "dude you need to let it go" when Demo mumbles about robots replacing jobs. He's presumably lost his two other jobs and has just been laying on this couch, drinking booze and watching TV and nothing more, despite his mum's nagging.

This is a side of Demo we don't really see. Sure, yeah, we see the hot and tempered side (ex: Meet the Demoman and the general game) as well as the sad and weepy side, but it's never to this degree. Like full on depressive episode. Yikes. Sure yeah he gets dragged back into the plot and instantly gets back to himself (albeit more orange than actually black)(I keep forgetting how whitewashed Demo was in these first few comics), but it's played for laughs and gags.

What an interesting piece of characterization, no? I've seen a fair amount of major depressive disorder, BPD, PTSD, and or bipolar headcanons slapped onto Demo and tbh I can't blame them. I'd be really interested to see some fic explore that in greater detail. I'm too busy writing Engiemedic yaoi to do anything for now though. Womp womp.

The ending bit of the comic has Demo and Pauling mainly chat with each other. Oh yeah!! Demo and Pauling! They've got a couple pretty neat lines. For the usual contract it's just jokes about his alcoholism, his eye, and a couple about his mom and just general gags. In the Tough Break update, she's out drinking with Demo and nearly spills the beans about her job. Fun. I really like the Miss Pauling characterization where she regularly hangs out with the mercs. It's cute.

In the comics, she talks to Demo more like an actual equal than, say, Pyro or Soldier. She talks to them like they're children roughhousing in the backseat. Demo sits up front and the two go back and forth. Demo is the more mature and reasonable one here. Another thing that's a common bit of characterization in the comics is that Demo isn't...drunk. He's not slurring nor acting in a way that makes it immediately clear he's inebriated. He's pretty lucid. This can be from the fact that he's a very high-functioning alcoholic, but it also makes him out to be actually pretty all-there for most of the time. I've seen far too many fics where Demo is in a perpetual state of shitface drunk so that was a nice refresher.

Demo reappears in the second comic, where we get some pretty neat characterization. He's out on the town in disguise. I keep forgetting about that "What do you see?" "Not a damn thing. Let's switch places" gag that's so funny. Whatever. He is the voice of reason when it comes to Soldier. The straight-man character. He's not really...drunk here. He's not slurring his words nor is he exactly doing anything. He steps in front when Soldier starts yelling at an elderly woman, instead approaching her with a calm and kind demeanour. He holds Soldier back when he goes to strangle Scout for. I guess just being there.

So there's Demo when he's just doing stuff normally, I suppose. He's generally pretty level-headed, albeit because he's up there with Soldier. He's the Normal One when posed next to a guy like Solly. A little disappointing, but there's probably more in comic 4.

Ah the Swordvan comic. Demo and Pauling head over to Sniper's house to retrieve him. An odd bit of characterization is that Demo just takes one look at Snipes' house and goes "Welp, nobody's here. Let's get out". He doesn't seem terribly thrilled to be here, further backed up by him saying that there's just gonna be fingernails and jars of piss and he straight up says "good riddance" like what is his issue with the bushman??

Now that's kinda interesting. Demo sees Snipes as being kinda just gross and a raving lunatic. He could easily be in-place for the audience and just saying what we're thinking, but I think it's interesting to see that Demo, the guy often portrayed as being the weirdo party guy, being very straight-forward. He think Sniper is some sadistic madman and just wants out. Unfortunately, he's given a neckfull of Sniper's homemade family moonshine, so he can't get out quite yet.

A very common thing in these comics it seems is Demo being the voice of reason, which is pretty interesting. The straight man to everyone. When he wakes up to Pauling spitting on him to wake him up, he goes "eughhh gross, but, hey, it worked!!" before then is knocked out. He then stays quiet for the rest of the scene, unless of course you're counting the deleted pages. There's no dialogue, but Demo breaks free from the ropes binding him, yells at Sniper, then pushes past before then inserting three syringes-worth of the moonshine into himself and passing out. Alcoholism joke as per usual. Shockingly the first one we've gotten so far.

In the submarine ride down, Demo's passed out with his scrumpy in hand. Again just a gag about him drinking a lot. He then kinda stays in the background for the rest of the comic, only appearing really once to hold a vat of liquor, before then coming to in the final shot where he holds Sniper's dead body. Heyyyy Demo I thought you thought Sniper was a weirdo freak.

Nothing too much to say from this comic then. It's just establishing more and more that Demo plays a very...straight-man character role when it comes to the comics at least. He's reasonable, level-headed, and often just says whatever comes to mind. He's kind and will instantly rush to someone's aid when they're hurt as well as just generally being pretty good-hearted. Nice!

Comic 5 mainly just features a gag with Demo's liver being so overworked that he starts turning his other organs into alcohol distilleries. The whimsy. The line that I find most fascinating from this comic is from Spy.

Like oh okay so he straight up doesn't eat anything other than alcohol and aspirin. Water literally poisons him. Probably just a throwaway gag, but geez. It does say that he is kinda in pain all the time, at least to the point where aspirin is one of the few things his body can handle. Someone out there can probably work with that and make it angsty. Other than that, not much else for Demo.

Comic 6! The final one! Home stretch here folks before I can wrap this up and give a thesis on whatever the heck Demo's character is. Demo, again, is mainly just here for gags. It's the one thing I do really wish that the comics did more: explore Demo's backstory. Like you don't even need to keep the original one, but it's still fascinating to bring up the fact he has a family lineage at all. Instead, he's mainly just a straight-man character. But, hey, whatever. I'm just the one analyzing these silly comics and jokey joke characters for gay melodramatic yaoi fanfiction.

There's a gag about Demo's liver coming back to him after leaving. These soap opera drama scene could parallel the type of shows that he was watching when having that depressive episode, but that's maybe a bit of a stretch. He then gets included in that fun group shot, where his pose mimics that from the Meet the Demo, before then gets a one-on-one scene with Medic. 

These two are such a fun duo I wish Jaggerbombs was a more common pairing. Ah well. Medic catches Demo up on everything whilst he's stitching up wounds. The medi-gun is broken so they're doing this the old-fashioned way. Demo has a gag where he's still drinking, only that it's hydrogen peroxide instead. This then leads to a scene where Demo asks why Medic never gave him an eye. Reasonable methinks. Medic responds saying he did.

Demo gets upset. He raises his voice for the first (official) time in the comics. Again, his temperament. I think it's a reasonable thing to be upset about tbh. Like imagine being told after all this time you could've had your eye back. He then learns that, no, the procedure has been done before, but rather that it never sticks because of how his eye socket is cursed. Demo asks how he can't remember this, to which Medic goes "Hooh :] It's because I scooped out a part of your brain" because of course he did. He then forgets the entire conversation + probably Medic entirely.

Aaannnddd that's pretty much it for Demo. That's his last speaking role. Just a quick, simple gag about his eye being cursed, his alcoholism, and generally being the straight-man for others, even if he does have a couple silly gags too. Seems like a culmination of everything he is in the comics.

To conclude: Demo is a character I feel can take on two main roles depending on what kind of tone you're going for. If you want angst, you've got a character who carries the guilt of murdering his foster parents as well as the burden of being a DeGroot, turning to alcohol to cope with his sadness and general inability to deal with it all. If you want silly goofy stuff, you have Demo being a straight-man or a neat party guy if you like the bit from Expiration Date where he brings back beer and such. Of course there's nuance. I find it best to try and find a balance between these two opposing sides. It just takes time and practice to really get a hold of his personality methinks.

I do wish he was more in the comics though as his own person, y'know? He's very reliant on others in order for his character to function, whilst most others have scenes where it's just them doing something. I wish he was used more than being the guy who drags the others back to reality. Damn it sucks to see that the fics where he's mainly just the straight-man are kinda right in that regard.

But for character traits? Hm, let's see. I find it's just trying to make sense of what's given to you and seeing what best fits for the tone of story you're trying to go for. However, for me trying to write him? Well...

His alcoholism is a central character trait. He is definitely 100% an alcoholic, regardless of however people try and sand him down. I personally really like sticking to the idea that he straight up can't eat anything but booze and aspirin because I think it's funny but also sad, but that's me. I think him having a flask of scrumpy on his person at all times is a neat headcanon as well.

Another big trait with Demo is his frequently shifting mood when drunk. He can swing from loud to weeping in a couple moments. I wouldn't say he's particularly angry nor aggressive, no more than any other character at least. He's most volatile on the battlefield, but otherwise at the base I feel it wouldn't be an uncommon sight to see Demo partying until dawn or holed up in the living room and sobbing. Poor guy.

In spite of what many think, Demo is certainly not lazy. He's a workaholic is anything. He holds down three jobs and rakes in a lot of money in order to live up to his name as a DeGroot. It could be because he likes working that much or that his mother just nags him to push himself that far. That also ties into his self-deprecation, another core trait of his, but that's pretty obvious to see.

His heart is another big trait. The guy loves. He cares for his mother even when she nags at him. He sticks by Soldier's side until he feels as though he's been betrayed. He takes care of the Eyelander and treats it like a pal. He generally cares a whole heck of a lot about people and other things. He wears his heart on his sleeve and says what he means. He doesn't feel a need to really hide who he is as a person. He's loud, fun, and just naturally pretty sweet and kind. I don't think he's ever really "mean" outside of the game stuff. There's also the whole "being hired to explode people" part but ehhh that's just the silliness in him :]

Demo also being generally pretty...normalish. He's a guy who's really just going through it when you take the angst option. He oftentimes will try and hold back others from doing something stupid when sober. I feel like when he's drunk he's more willing to get in on dumb shit, but still. However, this doesn't mean he's wholly a normal person. I think you can do a lot of headcanons here where you bring out some traits that are otherwise not talked about too much.

There are a lot of liberties to be taken with Demo's character as per usual. A ton of writing a character to be, well, in-character is just getting down their voice and mannerisms. Understanding their personality and motives is just half the battle. Demo sometimes speaks like an old-timey medieval knight or poet or whatever. He's generally pretty well-spoken and whatever. For the love of god if you want to write him, you don't need to include phonetics constantly. Please. It's so much better that tu'try toh spell everay whurd like tis. Oftentimes people will just know what the character sounds like regardless. Just try and mimic his way of speaking more and you'll do wonders for actually making that character sound like, well, that character.

I've neglected to mention Demo being a black man a lot because, well, it never really pops up a lot in canon. I think the most recognition we get for Demo being black is him just saying that he's black. He's a black Scotsman and that's about it. It's curious since I've seen a number of fics where it's all period-typical racism angst and whatever, with Demo being used as a way for the author to get up and proudly say that they think that racism is bad by having Demo being called a slur and getting upset. How progressive. 

I dunno. I never really personally touch on period-typical bigotry stuff myself due to the fact that this is Team Fortress 2. Rocket jumping was invented before stairs. Besides, this is the late 60s/early 70s. The civil rights movement happened by this point. Not everyone walking the streets is gonna be some abrasive bigot. I don't know why people want to try and make it "historically accurate" to begin with since this series has never been period-accurate to begin with. I don't particularly think TF2 is a great series to go on about tackling period-typical bigotry either. Literally if you want Demo angst you've got the actual mountain load of angst with his backstory right there. Obviously of course people are allowed to write what they want and I do fully believe that sharing stories and portraying bigotry is important, but why with TF2??? Do people just really look at a POC and think their existence is inherently political and they need to make it clear they think Racism Bad, even though the tone of canon really doesn't match that?? Ah well. I'm just rambling.

Regardless, Demo is just a character where you can take a lot of different avenues with. Maybe you can explore his trauma and try and write about how he feels trying to live up to his family name. What about his issues with his now-deceased father? Maybe you can forgo that and have him be a partner in crime to Solly or whomever else, with the occasional glimpse into his more sensitive self. Really, it all just depends on the story you're trying to tell. Ultimately, writing Demo with a healthy mix of comedy and angst is probably what is best done if you just want a pretty in-character version. He can be out on some grand adventure to take down Nessie with a merc or two AND have it be a story about him coming to terms with his past. That's just a me thing though lol.

Demo, like the rest of the cast, is an easily moldable piece of clay. All of the mercs at their very core are just funny character archetypes. They can be whatever you want them to be. It's just best to work with their original characterization and personality in mind, y'know? Fanfic writing is mainly about having fun anyway.

Speaking of which, enough procrastinating for me. I need to get back to writing my yaoi...

[pokemon-ash-aus]

What au is most likely to be a redditor?

Can i just say, that instead of AU, it's just Iris.

No matter what, Iris is a Redditor, usually on like AITA, TIFU, and AITD.

And everytime she gets into an arguement with her friends, goes straight to it.

WAIT NO THIS IS PERFECT FOR THE STREAMER AU

AITA for yelling at my friend for doing something stupid?

Asshole

I(16F) am back, and I swear I do these for a reason.

My friend- let's call him Coal(15M), recently decided to jump off a cliff with 2 deerling.

They were dangling off the edge and couldn't get up, if nature took it's course, i don't think either would survive. Coal decided that he's climb down and help them out, but with the falling cliffside- he was getting in danger as well.

Instead of being reasonable and climbing back up, he decided to JUMP THE CHASIM to a more stable part of the Cliff- ON THE OTHER SIDE.

This valley is like- at least 3 Schoolbuses apart and he just JUMPS, LIKE A MORON! I thought it was at the same level as his first placement, but i think it was lower because he made it no sweat. Found a Cave and then met us at the top on this lighthouse thing just uptop.

Like- i'm not crazy, right!? That was stupid and dangerous and we yelled at eachother. Our other friend, Dent (18M), wasn't really helping out in that situation- he's been WAY too lenient about Coal's stupid stunts. Worst of it, Coal brushes ME off and makes me feel like I'M the crazy one.

So reddit, AITA for yelling at my friend for doing something stupid??

User407869: Context- How did you go about telling him? You gloss over that part entirely and instead focus on how stupid and reckless Coal is. It seems a bit underhanded [1.7 ↑|↓]

2.6 ↑|↓ | Comments (433)

—DragonMaster OP: Sorry, Word limit. I called him a little kid for not thinking it through. That the deerling could be helped yes, but there were better ways about it instead of just jumping in.

He said I was being mean, and that I didn't see what He saw, and he had to help them.

Honestly, he does this so we have a heart attack half the time! [↑| 2.1↓]

—— User407869: It sounds like he made a quick paced decision and moved to make sure everything was alright in the end. Was it reckless? Absolutely, but YTA for the way you talked to him about it. Calling him a little kid? Refusing to understand his side?? MAJOR YTA

[1.6↑|↓]

------- 62 more replies

LurkerNose: based on your responses to others, YTA.

But man do i have to give Coal some Credit! Deerling weigh almost 43lbs a piece. Carrying about 90-ish pounds and leaping across a crevice of-maybe- 126ft TOTAL! Dude is an olympian in disguise. [2.2↑|↓]

—Vaporeon-Fav202: She mentions in later comments that he was also carrying a Pikachu with him. He always does. Odd that a boy has a Pikachu, but Thunderstones are expensive! Pikachu alone weigh about 14lbs, but he could be bigger or smaller. So Coal was running in with an almost 100lb handicap and STILL cleared it. What a fucking Chad [1.1↑|↓]

[telemachus-let-me-hit-it]

There isn’t much point to this story but it’s weird and kinda funny enough that I wanna tell someone.

So I’ve been hyper fixated on Greek mythology almost my entire life, which means I’ve obviously liked it longer than Epic has been a thing. As a result, I was in several subreddits that relate to it (Greek mythos in general, lore Olympus, even à Hellenic polytheistic sub—anything that’ll give me more Greek myth content I’ll at least check it out)

I saw someone post in the Hellenic sub what I’ll summarize as basically “I’m Hellenic and I HATE the way the epic fandom is full of proshippers and they’re constantly “proshipping” Hermes x Odysseus. “ along with more incorrect usage of the word “proship” that made me cringe.

Now to be clear, I don’t identify as a proshipper and i don’t really like/trust that community for an entire other reason that relates to propara stuff—it’s just the “pedos/zoos/necros are welcome as long as they’re anti-contact!!!1!!” Because that sends flags to me beyond the color of fucking red and rubs me the wrong way BUT NONETHELESS. The definition of proship itself is not bad, and I politely corrected them, something along the lines of “hey just for education’s sake, you’re using the word “proship wrong” pro doesn’t mean problematic, it JUST means in favor of creative freedom and not harassing people for their FICTIONAL interests. “

And then someone replied like “hey you’re wrong that’s not all what it means, it does problematic and I’ve seen them harass normal people more than anything! Dm me so we can talk about it!” Again I’m paraphrasing because what they actually said was honestly more aggressive and I don’t have the notification right in front of me anymore. But I went “Hey I’m not really interested, I think you’re just gonna try to give me more misinformation and you’re coming on way too strong for my tastes. “

So then, they dmed me anyway LOL. And said “don’t misinterpret my texts or put words in my mouth again. “ and I was like??? Ok??? And then they asked to have a debate about proshipping and if fiction does influence reality and I was like? Well maybe? Idk? Like they wanted to get into philosophical and political ideas about pedophilia, shipping culture and shit and it’s like…dude this is uncomfortable, and it’s 3 am for me and you already crossed my boundaries by dming me when I said I’d rather not. Then they said “btw I’m autistic and English isn’t my first language” and finally I was like nah, I’m not doing this. Over text, about emotionally charged topics, we can’t even get on the same page about some basic definitions AND there’s a communication disorder and a language barrier? I’m not doing this. I deleted that entire Reddit account because it was just an anonymous burner anyway, and then I logged in and blocked them from my actual main account because I don’t wanna see them again lol.

Disclaimers:sorry if calling autism a communication disorder is incorrect—I’m not a professional on this topic

Other disclaimer:I do know the correct definition of proshipper but I DO NOT identify as one because the whole anti v pro drama is too stressful for me, (plus the pro para stuff just personally makes me super uncomfortable ) even though I DO agree with the “fiction is just fiction” logic in a GENERAL sense. But I also don’t have an issue with every single proshipper, some of them are alright. It just HEAVILY depends and I kinda treat it as a spectrum.

Disclaimer:Uhh Redditors are weird ig

-mod note

Side note maybe I don’t look in the right places but the epic fandom doesn’t seem to be full of proshippers at all tbh? Like despite Greek mythology being chock full of super dark relationships and horrid actions, the average epic fan seems pretty normie and can’t even handle something as mild as Calyspo or sharpwolf

[zarathebleachfox]

On the Quincy and Why People Should Blame the Sternritters and not them: a very disorganized Ramble that should have followed the previous one but I am Agitated™

Where people on Reddit seem to consider the Quincies as villains, I have various issues with their point of view. They are focusing their blame the wrong way IMO.

I go on the Bleach subreddit a lot because I feel much more at home there reading IchiHime content than I do coming here, since most meta writers here do not look at the ship kindly these days. But not all of the opinions that seem to be heavily shared on Reddit are my jam.

They seem to characterize all IchiRuki shippers to be assholes, to make a very small example. I do not ship IchiRuki at all, I see them as mentor-mentee, friends, brothers. Nevertheless Redditors by and large consider IchiRuki cancer, whereas I do not feel that extreme.

But the actual Reddit opinion I want to speak of is the one they have of Quincies, because I believe they are shifting the blame for what happened to them and at the same time not recognizing WHO the Quincy actually ARE.

Which is not Nazi. Not really. That's the Sternritter and Ywach's Imperial Army of however the Hell I am supposed to call them.

And even then, I'd argue that Nazi imagery was merely a way of giving the Sternritter a strong negative image by picking a reasonably well know group, and what Ywach's army represents is actually closer to an allegory for all/most terrorist organizations, and not Nazis only. Ywach and his followers are meant to be an allegory to a DYNAMIC which brings forth extremism, and not Nazi as a whole. They are meant to replicate the way Nazis managed to get German people to support them: like the Germans were told that the Nazis would Make Germany Great Again™ and help it rise up from the misery brought by the consequences of the excessive sanctions of WWI, the Sternritters promised the Quincy that they would retaliate against the Shinigami and succeed, finally managing to gain some dignity once more; though what the Sternritter end up asking from the Quincy, under orders of Ywach, is much worse and much bigger than standard Quincy values but once Ywach's army has managed to gain enough footing, there is little leeway for the remaining Quincy to rebel if they so wish.

The Sternritter? They speak of extremism born of cults abusing their members through a facade of righteousness, similarly to Aizen, though the extremism spoken of by Aizen is closely related to cults of personality because of Aizen's solitude and mostly limits itself to that; Aizen is not really interested in creating an institution but wants to demolish all of them and wants to be standing on top waiting for someone to challenge him at the end of the whole process, while with Ywach the cult of personality is a feature not a bug, and the result is indeed an institutionalized extremism, the army which follows him, and he DOES have some misguided sense of magnanimity and savior complex whereas Aizen's was only a mask, Ywach also sees no solution other than the unchanging world he desires, he does not wish for someone to challenge him; Soul Society mostly spoke of extremism rooted in tradition and not strictly to the ambience of cultist behavior. I have already spoken of it in my previous Ramble.

Sternritter, not Quincy, are the ones who come closer to being "Nazi". Or Christo-Fascists of whatever else they are inspired by (I read KKK somewhere due to the Invisible Realm part, check out @littleeyesofpallas for more on this I am too Just Woken Up™ to list all the parallels... Also why are we censoring KKK? And Nazi? But I digress).

While the Quincy in and of themselves are just a populace as any other, and a quite wronged one at that. The Quincy are victims and pushed to the corner by the very world they live in. They are the people abused by extremists. They have the Sternritter as only spokespeople because they have been brought to ruin by the Shinigami and the Sternritter seem to be the only ones offering a solution, but they are also dangerous to the Quincy themselves. And even if it is only what emerges from Uryuu and the dynamic in his family, this is STILL important information coming from people at the heart of the Quincy, the Quincy commoners/civilians. They have been swept up by the extremism but it does not represent them as a whole. They symbolize the harsh reality of difficult resistance to oppressive forces. Uryuu in particular, especially through his victory at the end of TYBW, symbolizes the final hard-won concretization of the resistance to hopelessness.

This is not an exhaustive meta, but a Ramble in which I gather my thoughts on why I like the concept the Sternritter bring to the table. No I do not like that they are "Nazi" or extremists, I LIKE being shown what that represents. It is very akin to the way extremists act in real life and I did not expect that from Bleach, a Shounen series.

At first glance, the way the Sternritter are introduced is cartoonishly evil. The fact their goals are so big and that their cruelty is also very big is what gives us this feeling of Muah Ha Ha I Am The Cartoon Villain/Nazi™ when we first see them.

They say they speak for the fate of the Quincy. We see their uniforms. We see the way they behave towards each other.

We realize there is a lot of Nazi references and Christo Fascism in them. There Is A Lot Of Sternritter In This Fascism™ situation basically.

But that is not all there is to it. Yet... Some stopped there when first seeing this, and said and keep saying "See! The Quincy are evil, the story says so!"

When that is not truly what the story AS A WHOLE and on a deeper level tells us. The way the Quincy were introduced at the birth of the Animanga stays true. SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE of the Sternritter.

It is not the Quincy who are evil, it's the ideology that was forced on them. Depending on the Quincy you ask they will give you various opinions on why that is.

-It's the cult they are forced to abide by because of Ywach and his insistence on being their Father. And all that entails.

-It's the cult they are swayed to believe in because they are "doomed either way", might as well bring down those damn Shinigami with them. Some of them genuinely do believe the worlds need to disappear as they are and become one passive amalgam, some of them are simply so anger stricken and cornered that this is the last shore and strategy they see fit. Some of them are tired. Tired of existence itself

-It's a cult that forced them to mostly concentrate their numbers in a frozen, dark, bleak world. Many people would be changed by this experience. Some of them probably developed horrible ways to cope, and so, maybe they lost sight of their original ideals and are aiming towards other, more violent ideals. They want to be superior to the Shinigami, not merely retaliate any longer. They do not focus on wanting safety for the Quincy, they focus on wanting cruel endings for every Shinigami they see.

-It's the cult which is also the only home they have left. It's prodigal sons deciding to fight for Ywach's favor, or it's those that have always been fighting for Ywach's approval since the beginning. These kind of Quincy who become Sternritter/soldats genuinely love Ywach and would not have the world exist in any other way. There is not greater consolation and love than Ywach's, even when it abuses them. It is better than a Soul King which cannot speak to them or would not speak to them. At least he gives them a goal that the universe seems to want to deny them.

The story we are being told in Bleach is mostly about how extremism traps people, especially vulnerable people, and it is very hard to escape. Rebellion isn't easy and some people get swept up by extremism due to thinking it is the only way to satisfy their necessities, or due to manipulation. Changing one's views and perspective? Stopping what we are doing? It's very often a leap of faith owed to a few people who manage to challenge our world views. Both Ichigo and Uryu represent this. And yet sometimes it is not enough.

Bleach is a more realistic tragedy than it seems, sprinkled with optimism about reaching for a better future despite everything else trying to tear our chances down.

I am finally managing to put together thoughts on the Quincy, after a lot of reflection, and I have realized that most of my issues with them came from superficial perspectives given by people who only listen to the Shinigami's side of the story.

When Bleach itself tells us that both Quincy and Shinigami have a point. So yes, yes, of course, Shinigami are right about some things.

But... If we recognize that for Shinigami... why not for the Quincy? It's the Sternritter dynamics we should be upset about, not the Quincy.

Shinigami have their fear of the world being unbalanced and without a flow, Quincy fear the world flowing so fast and out of their control that their loved ones can never be recovered ever again.

So, to sum it all up: the situation is Bad All Around™ and it is not only the Quincy who are at fault. The Shinigami also caused a bunch of issues, Quincy retaliation is justified, the way the Sternritter went about it was wrong just like the way the Shinigami went about their own worries was wrong. Both Sternritter and Shinigami were bad as institutions, but the people stuck in the middle? Like the Quincy? They are not.

I do not have favs among the Quincy aside from the Ex Quincy Extraordinaire Ryuuken and Uryuu, and I am quite repulsed by Ywach's actions, but even I can recognize and understand what brought to the creation of such a character and that he is not meant to represent all the Quincies.

That is partially what Ichigo and Uryuu's own victory celebrates. A new generation breaking the cycle of violence of the previous ones, though not always perfectly and not at all quickly. But Bleach is more realistic than people give it credit for, like I have already said, so this slowness is to be expected. It is much like real life politics in that regard, and it is not only one person who should shoulder the weight of changing things. It is many more. This in Bleach can be symbolized by the fact that our protagonists end up being able to live tranquil lives at the end of the conflict. They do not have to be the only ones putting in the work to undo the horrors of extremism. And the process needs time.

This ended up being a Ramble on more than just the Sternritter and about the difficulties of challenging extremism when many feel it is the only way out of economic, cultural or political crisis. Maybe all this I wrote was influenced by the fact that I have recently watched again "This World Can't Tear Me Down", a Netflix show based on Zerocalcare's comics and experiences with a real life acquaintance of his which ended up falling down the rabbit hole of Neo-Nazism and getting ruined by it. I get a similar feeling of sadness now when looking at the Quincy who joined the Sternritter.

I suggest you guys watch This World Can't Tear Me Down. It shattered me. It ends up being unapologetically realistic, unlike Bleach, which shields its realism behind fantasy settings and battles. So at times the language used will be harsh, but the series itself uses this direct language to reach you immediately. As an Italian, it helped me rationalize why my country is moving the way it does on various issues, and gave me a resolve to try and change that somehow through small actions. It showed me explicitly how a marginalized person can end up being dragged into Neo-Nazism, and I guess that influenced this Ramble greatly.

Hope you can find some sense in what I wrote. I now realized this is also a vent and not just a Ramble. I know that most of this veers on interpretation rather than harsh and immediate, explicit statements on the Manga, but a huge part of reading is interpretation and this is how I interpret what I have seen in the Animanga.

[newx-menfan]

Some folks on X-Men Reddit are calling Julian guilty of sexual assault because he was introduced trying to unbutton Jean's shirt with his TK

And like I get where they are coming from because what he was doing was not cool and would be taken far more seriously if it was written today in a post MeToo culture

But I also feel like it's an extremely uncharitable view of the situation? He tried it once, was unsuccessful, and most importantly he never tried it again. He never did anything even remotely similar to another girl.

I don't want to say it was just "boys being boys" because that's always been bullshit. But I do think it's important to put it into context. He was very young when that happened and he went through a great deal of character development afterwards, and again, it was not a pattern with him.

(BTW who wants to bet that those same folks don't have a problem with Gambit or Daken or Longshot or Starfox or Spider-Woman using sex charm/pheromone powers to lower inhibitions and trick people into having sex with them)

That same redditor also said he was homophobic because of the aborted storyline where Anole would have killed himself. And it's like, okay cool so we're just straight up blaming Julian for stories that never even got published.

It’s just “people reaching for any reason to hate Hellion and this relationship” OTP.

Gambit LITERALLY had a sex tape in one comic and roped a bunch of teenagers to recover it (and it’s hinted it happened WHEN he was in a relationship WITH Rogue.) Gambit projected a nude image of Blob in his head to keep telepaths out (which kind of blurs the line into sexual harassment AND is frankly kind of mean to Fred- I’m sure Blob wouldn’t appreciate it if he knew!). And I have talked AD NASEUM about the “Foxx” storyline.

Yet- Gambit is STILL one of my favorite characters. 😐

Nightcrawler was represented as “homophobic” in the Ultimate verse… should we say that applies for 616 verse Kurt too?

It just becomes frankly RIDICULOUS to sight old problematic shit X-characters have done (because they have ALL done something!) or aborted story arcs that never happened or AU.

But fans will inevitably always do it. 🙄

It’s truthfully kind of like the “age-gap discourse” with Magneto and Rogue with Romy fans- A) their fictional characters, not REAL people… AND B) that’s very rarely the real reason people ACTUALLY hate Magneto and Rogue.

There are moments where I get sad OP because fans really JUST want to enjoy this moment without people screaming or people acting ridiculous… and then I remember Romy fans and how ugly that can get lol! (Nothing will EVER be as toxic as the “Rogue-Gambit-Magneto” ship fights… not even “Wolverine-Scott-Emma-Jean” are as vicious lol!)

All the big “X-ships” have people who violently hate it and will give sorta BS reasons why to justify hating it… and that’s usually just a sign that ship has made it to the big leagues lol

I would actually be MORE worried if people DIDN’T talk about it- because that usually means there is zero interest in it or Laura fans didn’t see it as potentially becoming canon and lasting lol!

[popculturebuffet]

MGADD: The Gatekeeper Review: The Masterpiece Shelved by Disney's Cowardice and Transphobia (Comissioned by WeirdKev27

Hello world I have arrived... because Disney has done something so monumentally stupid and offensive, even for them. I genuinely wish I was talking about this episode under circumstances that weren't "Disney showed what it really thinks of queer people... again", but if it weren't for a brave animator mentioning it off hand and the episode leaking soon after, I wouldn't of been able to.

The short vision since i'm sure most of you reading this know what's going on but to recap: thursday night an animator on Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, Derrick Malik Johnson (Thank you The Mary Sue for recording the names), mentioned that an episode of the show was shelved due to "Which party won", while a poster on reddit, superootoro backed up the story. Both posts have since been deleted because the mouse clearly got upset this story got out.

Their also likely not pleased the episode ITSELF got out soon after thanks to disney fan Owlphibia. How they got it I don't know, and someone on the crew definitely supplied it.. and I applaud our anonymous hero. If a company isn't going to make something fully available for audiences to see, there is no shame in leaking it anyway. I felt that way when I thought Scooby Doo and Krypto Too was never getting released and reviewed it last year. and still want someone to escape Warner HQ with copies of Batgirl, Scoob: Holiday Haunt and Coyote Vs Acme.

We'll get into the episode shortly but needless to say it's focus on an openly trans character who outright states she's trans with a bigoted asshole who tries to move goalposts as the villian made it clear WHY Disney shelved the episode indefinitely, with Johnson claming they said it was due to who won the election. That said the presence of the beyonder, who disappears early into season 2 and the redditor saying the episode was meant for early season 2 makes it clear this is just an excuse: They shelved it, waited to see which way the country turned, then formally dumped it the second it was clear they MIGHT get heat from the new president over this rather than stand up for what's right.

Their response... does not help. Disney CLAIMS the episode was shelved not banned and their PROUD OF THE DISCUSSIONS IT BRINGS AND OF THIS SHOW WE JUST CANCELLED. NO FOR REAL. I doubt this will actually make it go away and making the tweets making accusations go away, thank alvis for screenshotting, just makes it more clear that no, they just wanted to shelve an episode that frankly and honestly talked about a trans child's struggles with no metaphors about brooklyn being trans: her transness is why the villain hates her and why the episode happens. It happens because a woman is a bigot, and Disney coudln't handle that. They can handle when the bigots an immortal definitely religious man but we don't say that or a super soldier from another dimension, where the subtext is blatant and what it's calling out is blatant, but Disney still has deniability. But when someone wants to tackle queerness openly and honestly.. they run.

It's a pattern for them. They cancelled owl house because its main romance is between two girls. They are oddly and throughly convinced that Lightyear failed not because it's a tonal mess that tries to squeeze buzz light year's cheesy good world building into a darker hard sci fi story that it doesn't fit in, but because two women kissed, and were so paranoid about that that they tried to make Inside Out 2 straight as possible by making the girl Riley has a blatant crush on older than her.. which.. it just makes it a crush guys. Thank god their so bad at this

And of course the piece de resitance before this: Firing openly queer black man and show runner for X-Men 97 Beau Demayo for both wanting his show to actually tackle prejudice instead of just rubber stamping it and being openly sexy on his socials when.. tha'ts his right, thent rying to frame him as an abuser, allegations that ONLY sprung up long after the show had already aired and only when they tried to bar him from showing up at an awards ceremony for an episode he fucking wrote.

Disney is not a good company on most days. They fuck up at least once a year from their implicit support of the don't say gay bill, to the owl house debacle to writing off a ton of shows for tax purposes. I love the CONTENT they fund, I love the card game ravensburger made with their properties, I love the creative stories many an animator has made. But I don't love them. Not anymore and probably not in the foreseable future. I love the stuff peopl ehave created under them but it's become clear Disney has become desperate, greedy and souless. While all companies struggle to be represnetive it's disney who shows their ass the most. Wether it's saying "first gay character evah come see" for characters who were there for a minute so it could be cut from china, banning pride flags, or not letting an alien we can all tell is gay just.. say she is when everything around Penny implied it. Let her fuck a duck disney christ.

I'm so.. tired of this. I've been at this for almost 6 years. I've been covering disney this whole time, starting with ducktales reviews and while I haven't been covering shows as they come out for a variety of reasons, I have kept a firm eye on them. And they just, keep fucking up. They dont' care about queer people. They haven't evolved AT ALL since this half assed tweet Alex Hirsch mocked back when twitter was relevant

And this should be spammed to them because my god. This is a fuckup of monumental proprtions. And it hits personally as I fear for my trans nephew in this colder, worse world we're entering. He may be 14 but he would've appricaited this and so would the many trans kids who just need someone to say: your okay you matter. That's what this episode was trying to do.. and it got shuttered.

The only good news is the pressure MIGHT get disney to actually release it. MIght being a strong word. Last i checked you could find the episode on internet archive, but I'd find it where youc an while you can as Disney is likely going to be doing everything to cover their ass

And that dear friends is one of the main reasons for covering this episode: Disney might try to bury it as deep as they can, so I want a full record of it. To show the content and context of it. The other is to judge the episode on it's own merits. I'll say right now: this is an excellent episode and it deserves to be released. But it's important to get into why: why this episode is good, why it deserved better and why this SHOW deserves better. Moon Girl was canceld recently and if anything this story draws more attention to somethign Disney likely thought they could do quietly and to the show from people who haven't watched it or may of given up after season 1. It's important to me as a critic and person to look at this work for what it is and not just what disney has done to it: a well done story that takes a side character and makes her a star, while also being bonkers in the conkers in a way that absolutely works. Join me under the cut won't you as I break down this tremendous episode.

The episode begins with the volleyball team at lunella's school gearing up for a regionals match. I'd honestly forgotten about these guys as their main spotlight episode for season 1, Goodnight Moon Girl was one I kinda half payed attention to as I wasn't a huge fan of the gimmick.

Looking back on the ep though it's easy to see why they gave the team's captain, Brooklyn, her own episode: she's funny, has an entirely relatable rivalrly with her sibling, and was open and welcoming to lunella. IT's easy to see why Lunella is now the team's eager hydration technician and casey is preparing the half time show. It also shows off the series tight continuity: They tend to bring back characters you wouldn't THINK come back, or if needing a side character using one of the casts established friends, with the volleyball team also playing a supporting role in the dance episode that chronologically comes after this. Brooklyn and co are pumped and ready for the other team whose team name I forgot but is mostly a threat thanks to their leader and her mom/coach greer.

Greer is played by Amy Sedaris and look the show had me at Amy Sedaris plays the main villian. I forgot just how good she is at being evil and her comedic energy nicely offsets just how.. nasty this person is.

While i'm not hiding that Greer turns out to be awful a touch I like is that the episode does for a second: Greer seems like a hypercompetivie hellicopter mom, but offers orange slices and is nice and cordial to everyone. It seems like it was just a bait and switch and given how the show goes, had this episode not been banned, you'd be expecting it to simply segue into some problem for Lunella that leads to her doing a science.

Instead the problem is entirely Greer and it starts simply because Brooklyn and her best friend Tai, who was previously established as non binary, something the episode makes sure to point out again later. They just joke and laugh reminscing about playing soccer together back before Brooklyn transitioned, with Brooklyn being happy she's not on the "boys team".

Unfortunately for her, Greer hears this. And just like that a switch flips: the animation is exagerated and it's clear this bitch is immediately nettled. It telegraphs a problem trans people in general face: that just saying your trans immediately makes some people target you. That just an offhand mention can lead to someone trying to make you miserable simply for being YOU. It's one of MANY reasons the targeting of trans kids disgusts me and i'ts something the show portrays chillingly well this sudden.. entitlement to decide who a person is based on their body. That because you can't get past it, this kid has to suffer. I"ve seen it, I hate it, and the show does it well and Sedaris does it very well, using her usual comedic energy to make a character whose utterly loathsome, yet in such a skincrawlingly real way. Greer is far from a subtle character.. but transphobes tend not to be. While her tactics are for the most part not over the top, her bigotry is portrayed as loud and hateful as we've seen from the right. (Not to give the democrats a pass given the sheer number who want to throw trans people under the buss for the party's systemic issues that caused the election loss, but the right are far more vitrolic and operatic about their transphobia, like Elon Musk deadnaming their daughter and making up a story about them being intrested in women's clothing.. only to get utterly wrecked by his daughter pointing out he was never around for her as a child. Given how fragile elon's ego is and how terminally online he is, zinging him on his own platform does way more damage than anything else could possibly do.

So Greer goes to tell coach Hrbek, Luna's reluctant science teacher and loveable jock, that Brooklyn was biologically a male. Not her terms but fuck her for that. I like how greer just tries to imply it.. she won't come out and SAY Brooklyn's trans: just because transphobes aren't subtle dosen't mean they don't try to do this doubletalk bullshit. Hrbek nosells it just blinking condescndingly and when she dosen't get it telling her bluntly yeah he knows and tells her in no uncertain terms Brooklyn is a girl and she's playing.

He then slips on an orange because life is not kind to this man: like he dosen't get injured a lot but he is stuck teaching a concept that while giving it his best, he's not good at and dosen't like teaching. And now after doing something genuinely heroic, standing up for a kids right to be who they are and telling off a bigot, and only likely not saying fuck off because a crowd's present, he gets hurt. Poor guy. True hero

With the only adult out of the room Greer tries every bullshit tactic in the book to get Brooklyn disqulaified and I love her reactions: no coach, player coach. Her pride flag pads are ones she got from the store. Her bottle.. has water. Greer tries every bullshit thing but you get the sense this isn't the first, and sadly probably isn't the last time, some asshole has tried to disqualify brooklyn based on her gender.

In the locker room getting ready the rest of the Squirrels have picked up on what's going on. Lunella is upset and want sto do something but can't, but it's telling both Brooklyn and Tai try and brush it off. Tai outright tells them not to mentoin their non binary or Greer might explode and Brooklyn shakes it off just.. used to it. And it's fucking sad that a child whose 14 at most, the same age as my nephew, just has to be.. used to it. That people will hate you and try to unperson you just for being what you are. It's part of why this episode being delissted is so frustrating: the message is told well and it's one trans kids need to hear. It's why representation matters: that little voice that says "you are not alone". As a bisexual seeing bi characters makes me happy as their not common even now. While we don't share a gender, Luz being bi on loud house and the show making sure that was clear felt nice. It felt good being seen. That kids after me won't have to struggle with these feelings and just see someone and go "That's me.. that's what I am" and it's so fucking terrible Disney coudlnt' see past their already overflowing wallets to understand that, that the only chance the episode has of release is because they fucked up.

Since greer can't rules lawyer or bully a child out of competttion she goes with plan b: a magical key. Yeah another good reason to cover this one and something that understandably won't get as much coverage? This episode is fucking bonkers. While greer is a well written villian.. she's also a TERF who bought a magical key at a yard sale. No really the beyonder recaps how she got the key. It's not the first villian whose done that on the show, and I do want to someday meet the villian who hosted that yard sale, so it still works in the shows mythology. It also hope the show has had some rediculous villians: Living hair , a symboite tha'ts an online troll, lady stitlman at home. The show is serious when it needs to be this episode included, even the living hair episode had a serious aseop on the racisim black women get about their hair and the internalized racisim that creates. But the show isn't afraid to get weird so while a karen with a magical key she what bought at a yard sale is defintely the weridest foe lunella's faced, it's still within the realm of posisblity for this show. And definitely the marvel universe as a whole. I mean spider-man's rogues include a nazi made of bees and a stegasaurs man, both of whom I hope lunella fights if we get a season 3.

So Greer locks them in the locker room which turns into an escape room/death trap where they have to find keys. Thankfully Brooklyn's awful little brother loves them, so they have an edge and she shoots down lunella just.. mcguivering their way out. It's also intresting to have a super villian fight.. where lunella ISN'T in costume. She's just her normal self, and still just as competent and the only reason she dosen't break things right away is that everyone involved , particularly their leader, assumes they have to play this game fair. And given how in most death games breaking the rules usually kills you it's an easy assumption.

Our heroes do solve the puzzles well, and we get a great joke with Kai whose excited by the lava... and one of their teamates shouts "no it can kill us stop that".

That's a suprising thing I found with the episode: it is REALLY funny. I forget how funny the show can be, and this ep might be it's funniest as Casey, Luna's bestie and sidekick, is forced to stall like a motherfucker as she gets the sense something is wrong.. I mean opening the locker room to find no one there is a good clue. And yes Casey dosen't figure out this is supervillian stuff till near the end but it's done resonably: she can probably get the hint Greer's done SOMETHING but assumes she just locked them in another room or tricked them or something. You know standard school setting vilian shenanigans. Not "This terf tiger mom happens to have a magic key she found at a yard sale. Casey HAS seem some shit at this point, I mean one of the episodes in this very season not long before this was suppposed to come out is her and lunella having to travel inside the dinosaur whose also one of their best friends. But usually the villians on this show wear a costume. Even the gentrifying assholes from season 1, while wearing suits still had super tech and a very obvious black and white motif Lunella should've seen as a red flag. Greer for all intensive puproses is just a bog standard transphobic karen. You just.. can't plan for "turns out she has a key from a super villian yard sale." It's like "a giant obese monster from another dimension who literally needs raitings to lives kidnaps you to star in his shows or else". It's certainly plausible given how weird the marvel universe, but no ones ever really prepared for Mojo that hasn't met the floating fat man. Who for those who aren't freebasing x-men regularly is entirley real. I made none of that up

He also made chibi clones of the x-men called the x-babies. Look it up.

Point is no matter how fucking weird a characters life is, they can still be surprised. So Casey instead decides to stall. Stall as if her life depended on it which.. it dosen't but a lot of other kids do. So she makes up a tradition where they have to do THE WAVE before a game. And I love both her hammy calls to do the wave and the mascots gradual exhaustion. Best gag of the episode.

Let him Rest. Eventuallyt he poor guy collapses, but luckily Devil comes in as Casey called him over and tells him to vamp. Vamp like he's never vamped before. Vamp as if, in her words "Your mariah carey opening for beyonce". And he does... and while he sounds about how you'd expect him singing to, like he's gargling the marbles he ate this morning, everyone loves it. Because it's a singing dinosaur.

This comedy is just... fantastic. The shows humor dosen't always land, but this is it at it's best: silly, over the top, yet grounded in the characters; Casey using her natural ambtion and improv skills and Devil using the voice Satan gave him to sing to a souled out crowd. It's good stuff and nicely helps with the tension of the a plot, with the two cutting back and forth, i'm just not doing that because I don't gotta.

Speaking of which we get a nice musical montage of our heroes bravely solving the puzzles. And they do, passing all sorts of shit to do, opening the final door.. only to find the game's reset.

And here it is: the episodes signature scene. Out of all the cut stuff from the episode, this is the bit i've seen the most on social media, the bit I saw before I even saw the full episode. The speech that helps make what Disney did SO much worse and helps tie this all together.

Brooklyn realizes the hard truth: because Greer dosen't consider her a girl, she has to quit the team as in Greer's warped eyes, her playing at all is against the rules. It's a metaphor that's blantat as it is heartbreakingly accurate: Society always keeps moving the goal posts for queer people. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try to fit in or just be accepted, there were always be people who will just not care and will keep trying to shove you back int he closet because what you are is inconveint to them. if it dosen't exist to THEM it dosen't and they will keep making your life harder to try to break you down, to try and get you to quit.

I'm Bisexual. Mentioned it before in this article, and have never been shy about it. But it's also a side I struggle to explore sometimes. Growing up in a society that didn't even seem to have a word for what I was and already horribly awkward with women, I FEARED my bisexuality, convinced myself I wasn't. In hindsight.. I didn't want another thing on top of my autisim and anxiety for people to judge me for. Even now I don't try to date.. I mean part of it is i'm broke and have issues, but I realized as I wrote this article.. part of it is fear. Fear of rejection, fear of someone trying to change who I am, fear of getting beat up for being who I am.

And the fears I have I need to deal with, the reality I deal with.. is multipled twentyfold for any trans person. I have trans relatives. I won't get deep into details on the ground i'ts not my story to tell, but what they've faced is heartbreaking. What my nephew has had to put up with just for existing is fucking devistating. It's a bleak world that just wont' let them be who they are without a fight because the idiots who can't accept it have the power and some of those who have the power to stop it.. turn a blind eye. Again a good chunk of democrats were all too quick to try and throw trans people under the bus when Kamala didn't say hardly ANYTHING about trans rights. The knives come out easily and quickly and someone's personhood simply dosen't matter the second it makes your life harder. It's why these guys hate prounouns and trans people: They see just wanting to be who you are as entitlement, as a lot to ask.. when .. it's not. It's not hard at all to ask. It's not hard to treat someone with dignity.

In my case.. it was thanks to, ironically enough tv. It was the summer after high school, I was bored and had a lot of spare time so I watched a lot of the canadian teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation. And while degrassi is far from the most subtle show or free of mistakes, when it came to queer rep it had a solid track record, slowly evolving with the times. As such this is the first show I saw with actual trans representation: a character whose out as a trans man, adam torres, and has to deal with the metric ton of bullshit kids STILL face, while also having plenty of story outside it, from his friendship with best bud eli to his marveling at his brother Drew's poor life choices. Adam wasn't a token, wasn't just a prop for trans stories (Though this being an early 2010's teen drama he both had a TON of stories about being trans and perscuted against and was played by a cis actress. Again not exactly free of mistakes), he was a fleshed out human who just wanted to be who they were. It helped me see Trans people exist, and accept it easily.

And that's why this episode being pulled.. fucking bothers me. Because realizing she can't win, Brooklyn breaks down, blaming herself for what's simply truly isn't her fault. It's Tai who naturally steps forward, pointing out she CAN open up to them and that when Tai came out as nonbinary.. Brooklyn supported them. It's not selfish or being a burdern to let others help you.. and it's easy to support others. to lift them up and accept who they are and defned them against dickheads who say otherwise. The most heartbreaking part is the simplist as brooklyn laments

"How many doors do I have to break down before they stop locking them"? And given disney put one up themselvfes.. it's galling. Btu the message.. persisits: support is easy, and support matters and you are not alone. It's okay to let others carry you sometimes, and it's not a burdern or drama to vent about shit this frustrating.

The other message is an important one as the republicans no doubt prepare to lock more doors... sometimes... playing by the rules dosen't work. Bigots simply will make more to try and keep you from playing. Sometimes you just gotta say fuck it and say fuck them. Fight. Don't play civlity politics, don't play nice, tell them to fuck off.

So our heroes do smashing reality and reealizing things are fragile in this reality: it's held together only so much.. and thus they start breaking it.

Back outside Greer's key starts to glitch and Casey finally gets it.. as does Greer's daughter whose HORRIFIED at what her mom did. That she wanted a fair match. And so did greer.. but only by her rules. GIRL POWER.. no really she says that. I love they just make her a TERF outright and the way amy sedaris says it just shows how hollow that statment is when you won't accept ALL WOMEN.

Her daughter also isn't having this shit and steals the refs whistle, not letting this start till EVERYONE is here. Luckily it's time for the shows ocne an episode beautfully animated musical sequence. This time using all sorts of pride colors and some really nice looking sprites. I lespecailly love them taking the menus of an rpg battle system and breaking out of the frame with it. Really fun stuff and of course we get the shot almost everyone has used and I'm no exception. Brooklyn in front of a pride flag, using a trans flag volleyball to smash her way out.

So our heroes are free, and with the key obviously glitching the Ref, whose mostly just been.. done this whole episode, gets the picture and Brooklyn, not being stupid, uses those soccer skills she mentioned to smash the key while Greer's escorted the fuck out. I mean granted the ref should also.. call the police or shield or somebody as several woman were kidnapped, but given it was in front of a large crowd AND this is the cellphone age i'm sure someone did. But it's just as statsifying Greer is left making hollow threats to get the ref decertified as the door slams in her face. Now she's locked out and that door should neve ropen again.

So Brooklyn and head.. rival team girl... whatever her name was, shake hands. Also kev sugggested they end up going out and I like that. Mostly because i'm pretty sure greer would fucking melt and then all the children everywhere would sing.

So we end on Brooklyn spiking. We don't know who won or lost.. and it jus tdosen't matter. What matters is Brooklyn got to play the game.

The Gatekeeper is excellent. Strong contender for my best of the year list which fast approaches as my backlog

Piles up as usual.. i'll manage most of this. But this episode is fantatic and wether you've seen the show before or not, watch it. It's excellent, and I hope to god the pressure from it makes disney actually release it on disney + next batch. I'm still not 100% they will hence doing this.. but as long as we keep the pressure up it could happen. And who knows, we could even get a season 3. Why not shoot for the moon? Thanks for reading and just remember "I'm pulling for you we're all in this together"

[lochlogie]

I think not a lot of people truly understand that scene. The confrontation between the blowjob brothers. The worshipper vs pleaser scene. Well, saying they don't understand it feels condescending. I'm actually okay with that maybe Redditors and Tiktokers don't deserve consideration or rights.

The thing about screenwriting or just writing in general, is that an argument fulfills the same role as a duel or a battle. So Saxon fires his shot, and then Lochlan fires his. Saxon ends the conversation prematurely, nervous, stuttering, unable to form a coherent counterargument. Lochlan won the battle, even though he acquiesces to Saxon's request to never speak of it again. It's an interesting combination. Lochlan "won" but he concedes defeat anyway, that's the kind of hold Saxon has over him.

Anyway, Saxon is accusing Lochlan of worshipping him. It places the burden on Lochlan, while also infantilizing him. Lochlan is just a stupid kid engaging in (hero) worship, and he took it too far. He did it in a way that Saxon didn't approve of. But Saxon magnanimously will allow Lochlan to continue worshipping him in the HR approved way... but he won't lay those details out. Saxon demands his boundaries be respected, but he won't say what they are. Lochlan should know, but he thinks Lochlan is too stupid or childish to know. But it's essentially, don't make it gay. And by the way, Lochlan's boundaries? What are those?

Lochlan fires back. He turns it around. He says that what went down between them was not an example of Lochlan's worshipping Saxon, but of his helping Saxon. Because all Saxon cares about is getting off. Then he plunges the knife in deeper. He counters Saxon's interpretation of who Lochlan is with his own (and doesn't he know himself better than Saxon? I don't think Saxon would accept that willingly lol). He's not awestruck by Saxon, wanting to show deference and reverence. He's just a pleaser. He's just responding to outside stimuli. Take away Saxon and his influence, Lochlan wouldn't do any of this.

The conceit goes from Lochlan harboring some kind of desire for Saxon and acting on it (which isn't gay okay Lochy's just confused) to Lochlan reflecting Saxon's own perverted desire back at him and generously indulging in it. Who's the weirdo now Saxon? He doesn't even want you like that he's just such a nice person he accepts your incestuous urges and tell you what, he'll lend a helping hand.

Hey he doesn't judge!

It's a power move! It's a refutation! It's especially effective because it throws not just the brotherfucking back in Saxon's face, but also the infantilizing. Saxon doesn't think Lochlan has agency (he doesn't even really think Lochlan is a person), he's not even willing to blame Lochlan for what he did, not really. He's not willing to call it assault or say that Lochlan did something wrong or hurt him. And yet Saxon grants him just enough agency to ice him out when he knows he has a lot of blame to shoulder himself. Lochlan has to make himself a man.

Ironically Lochlan's thesis statement removes even more agency from himself. He saw Saxon lying there looking left out 🥺 Lochlan's just a hapless victim trapped in an endless cycle of pleasing narcissists you guys. How's that for infantilizing Saxon? He's not just a dumb kid who didn't understand what he was doing, he didn't even want to do it deep down! But Saxon is such a bad egg and bad influence that he felt compelled to, and don't you feel bad for him, Saxon? Don't you feel like a bad brother? Don’t you think you victimized him? I don't know how much Lochlan really means the narcissist comment in the moment but it's obvious he's frustrated. Because no one takes him seriously or cares what he thinks.

That's evinced by the fact that Saxon cuts him off and won't even consider his side of the story. But I know a little of it wormed its way down in your walnut sized brain Saxon. I know. We all know.

I do think Lochlan’s explanation is at least partly true, as he had spent the last 24 hours meditating and listening to Buddhist philosophy (but isn't he engaging in a kind of people pleasing in that regard too, hmm?) and like what gay boy wouldn't pontificate like this? But you can also see it as standing up to Saxon, and for once, Saxon's attempt to dismiss Lochlan doesn't look confident, it looks pathetic. It doesn’t come from a place of haughtiness, but of fear.

They are trying to blame each other for what happened. Saxon takes his usual "listen Loch I know how the world works you don't but that's okay" approach, and Lochlan actually gets under Saxon's skin, stuns him into silence, which from a writing perspective means that Lochlan is revealing more truth about Saxon than the other way around. But you can (and most of you do) decide that they're both lying to each other and themselves, and that this is mutual sexual attraction.

I don't think it's 100% one thing or another, but it's crystal clear that the show wants you to think Saxon's interpretation of Incestgate is utter nonsense. Lochlan may not be completely truthful (to Saxon or himself), but he's at least not utterly full of shit like Saxon. And I cheered at the screen personally.

[theadhddimsenion]

you know ever since mastermind the blitzø antis seems to have had to rehash his previous “sins”.

At first it all was “he doesn’t care about anyone but himself”, “he adopted Loona so he could force her to love him!”, ”he yelled at my waifs/husbando and that makes him evil!!”, “he was mean to poor whittle moxxie boxxie!”, “he made Loona burn owls which she could easily not done!!”, “he stole from my succuwife!”, “he’s literally a rapist!!”, “he makes excuses!” Blah blah blah blah blah!! Yeessh!! But now they are constantly having to bring up his old sins and create straw men to make their nonsense work. Because when he put himself on that chopping block he proved that he cared more for his found family more than any of these people probably care for anyone in their life!!

Now I know that the internet isn’t the best place for a civil discussion this is especially true of Reddit but just yesterday I saw someone get 2000 upvotes for calling people hypocrites for supposedly “ignoring” blitz’s stalking of m&m in favor of emberlynns stalking of him! And contrary to what some people think I don’t believe that m&m need any kind of “karmic justice” on him in the slightest!! He saved their fucking lives this episode I think he’s got a lot more good karma than people give him credit for. Fortunately the Redditor in question was rightfully flames for their bad take which goes to show that no website is a monolith.

We all know that blitz’s greatest flaw is his self hatred but I would argue that self awareness is his greatest virtue. You can’t really blame yourself for everything and make it make sense in your head without knowing who and what you are on a very deep level. Contrary to what some people think he has never once tried to deflect blame from himself even in apology your he said “everyone is shitty” that obviously includes himself and no he’s not trying to deflect blame from himself he’s asking “why me specifically?” To which veroskia doesn’t answer but instead insults him and speaking of veroskia. It should be plainly obvious to everyone with an iota of media literacy that veroskia was not helping anyone with those parties of hers she was just prolonging their supposed suffering by dragging them into her bad coping mechanism and causing them to never move on just like her. If she doesn’t want to forgive than fine but at less than forget!! Blitz is always the first to take responsibility even for things that aren’t his fault this is made crystal clear in mastermind where he volunteered for the chopping block and took advantage of the fact that he big red bitch was never going to hear them out. Blitz’s greatest “crime” is daring to be something more than a worthless little circus imp who’s value is determined by everyone but himself. And to me that makes him a working class and neurodivergent hero.

[ratinacoat]

Cause a couple people on my previous post wanted more details, these are things I see in common with the system/syscourse communities and fakeclaimer communities like fdc and syscringe

Both just reiterate things people say with no knowledge on what they're saying If someone in either communities say something and make it make sense in a long and detailed post, people will see it and reiterate it. They make their own posts, own comments, tell people these things, etc and do no research into it themselves. The lack of research means they're just talking about things they don't understand, they just say what they think they understand until it eventually gets twisted into straight up misinfo like some game of telephone

Dictating the most random shit From stupid things like who can use number names to what adults with littles can and can't do, they both act like there's a rule book. Pls it doesn't matter if someone without "RAMCOA" trauma uses number names. It doesn't matter what adults do when a little is fronting. Who cares if someone calls their alters "alters" "parts" "personalities", it doesn't matter. They both act like these things are a big deal

Misusing/watering down important words "Anti recovery" "ableism" "slurs" "bullying" "pedophilia" and more. Not being in recovery atm isn't anti recovery, skepticism is not ableism, calling out misinfo is not bullying, littles engaging in adult activities is not pedophilia. This also falls under dictating the most random shit

"Your trauma wasn't bad enough to have DID ackchyually" Omgg shut up. Both act like trauma is the event itself and not the result. Like. no. It's how you reacted not what happened !!! The system community mostly acts like "RAMCOA" is the biggest baddest form of trauma there is and acts like they'll always have "more DID" than someone else . Calling "HC-DID" a RAMCOA exclusive term when that makes no sense, treating programming/conditioning like it can only happen to systems or RAMCOA like it can only happen to systems makes no sense . It's all trauma Olympics. They also all think cults are blood sacrifices to the devil when it's more common for them to be something like Mormonism Cringe subs treat it like if your trauma wasn't "that bad" then you wouldn't have DID at all and anyone with DID must have gone through the most gruesome shit so if it's was something like neglect or emotional abuse, you clearly can't have DID

Lying about each other to make one another more hateable Both make up random shit to validate a strong hatred that would normally be irrational. Cutting out things systems say to make the posts more cringe, lying about things a Redditor has said to make them sound like a bigot. Stuff like that

Against bullying/harassment but both do it occasionally I'm sorry but if you think someone posting you to a cringe sub calls for death threats or doxing you need to self reflect. If someone being open about having DID or even just having PluralKit makes you think they need to be bullied tf out of in texts you also need to do some self reflection Also I don't really like the "check user history" flair on fdc or syscringe (can't remember which it's on) cause it's really just given to people who post in DID/system subs? Even if it's not some outlandish thing it's just there and imo it encourages people to leave the moderated setting and go to a different one to be a douche

Toxic ass communities I have never been in a system community that doesn't have at least one creep in it and the subs are both full of transphobia and random discourse that has nothing to do with disorder cringe. Like neo pronouns. Idrk what they are but somehow whenever someone posted there has them you have comments like "Look at this loser with cat pronouns" like. who cares. System communities are also very very toxic, I'm not going to even try listing why, I can make a separate post for that if it's really not clear but I have a list that's got 72 (and growing) things the system community has told me that range from misinfo to pedophilia

"Don't post private info" as they repost the private info (More about fdc and syscringe) They both shit on people for posting private stuff like their Simply Plurals but instead of shooting them a message saying "hey man, this is private and could potentially harm you, you should take it down", they repost it for more people to see .. ??

Treating each other like the spawn of Satan Anyone who fake claims someone is the most evilest person ever and anyone with "system" in their bio should be made fun of until the end of time

Disagreement = evil Pls learn how to disagree with someone respectfully. Rant about how much you hate them in private with friends like a normal person. Someone who likes the label C-DID isn't a horrible faker cause it's a personal label instead of a diagnostic label. Someone who prefers to see things medically is not evil just cause they see alters as different parts and not different people

There's more I could think of but I don't feel like typing anymore lol . I think they're both pretty hypocritical when talking about each other and act so similar even when they're on the opposite sides

[woman-respecter]

i lurk on this liberal pro-dem subreddit that skews mostly male and it's so telling tbh. they'll be like "why should blue states subsidize red states? skill issue. red states simply can't keep up with a changing society and deserve to be left in the dust" but the second they're an article about the groyperization of young men they're all like "can they be blamed? young men have many legitimate grievances. our school system and society encourages the success of girls. feminism calls men evil rapists, etc" without shame or irony. no one would suggest affirmative action to fix men's plummeting college attendance bc aa is not a popular concept on that sub but you just know they're thinking it. that one atlantic article about the couples who are doing ivf specifically to get daughters bc of the view that daughters are better behaved and more reliable and responsible than sons really brought the mras out of the woodwork on there. like actual "i no longer doubt that we live in a gynocentric society" comments. men have held women back and it was treated as evidence of women's inherent inferiority. now women are overtaking men in some small sectors of society and it's treated as a public health crisis. like, sorry you're useless and your parents don't trust you to take care of them when they're old. skill issue.

it sucks that even the men we expect to be our best allies still have manosphere beliefs. men have an evil solidarity with each other that women don’t, which really sucks.

tho tbf reddit may not be the best sample bc that is such a manosphere type website. perhaps non-redditor men are more reasonable?

[homunculovers]

Come to think of it, Rust can't be all that squeamish if he's watched two humans grow from embryos to infants, by choice. One redditor posted a pic of a 4.5 months development and was warned to tag it as NSFW.

I dunno man that movie stinger is such a curio.

Even curioser is D&P's attitude towards Rust. They spend the entire artbook berating him in any way they can, "lame", "doesn't like other people having fun"; and yet "he feels the empty nest from Hank and Dean growing up so he recruited White and Billy to basically fill that void." The way they speak of him, and the way they actually portray him are two different animals.

This is important because in an interview they got to open up about the stinger, Publick commenting "he didn't [conceive and carry the babies] out of the goodness of his heart, there must have been something like an inheritance clause about siring heirs. Nobody wanted to fuck me so I made some offspring myself!" It is such a perfect VB take and I espouse it fully.

From this snippet one can gather the Ventur name and estate meant so much to Rust that he was willing, as a cisgender straight male, to go through the efforts and pains of a pregnancy. Stranger things have happened when huge inheritances are involved.

What doesn't check out is: why work so hard in the opposite way of driving said estate into the ground? Sheer incompetence, self sabotage, I see all that: but if you really want something you don't sit on your ass, you look for the missing resources and do your darndest to keep it. Hell we've seen him do just that when he decided to keep clones of his kids.

Another thing that doesn't check out is: why a transparent womb, once established he's quite squeamish? Stick bugs anyone? Jumping on tables when a bug enters the kitchen? The meta answer is that the show isn't above your occasional incoherent writing, and the movie had to do some retconning to get made at all... but that's no fun.

If the babies were his first true success, why didn't he patent that womb immediately? Talk about shaking the status quo: it would have bombed heteronormative gender roles to smithreens. It would've got the OSI or whatever other government dog to tear him limb from limb-- but he didn't know that yet! So why not use it to get rich and famous? Why would he toss it aside like that?

I don't know. My take is he was alone with Helper during that time, and that he might have wanted to keep that pregnancy a secret. That's why any talk about mothers is taboo in their house: it would, in his eyes, destroy his masculinity; thus undermining his authority. Let's not forget in his world women used to be hindrances, trophies... or a missing mystery, like his mother.

A conversation with a mutual brought up this other interesting fact: Rust never had a mother, is never shown asking himself about her, and yet he becomes a mother by the end of the series. It could be he became the one thing he wanted most, having to suppress any curiosity, any doubt about her, as she was grossly replaced by the ill-suited "muscle mothers" of Team Venture.

I think the inheritance clause is a perfect plot device, because Rust would have not thought of siring heirs by himself. But the way he chose to do that once he was forced into it is incredibly telling.

He chose to use ovums as sperm, symbolically, having Debbie offer them. He chose to create an environment where they could grow, and he chose to carry it. He chose it make it transparent, possibly to observe their growth. He saw them evolve from invisible entities to animalistic shapes and finally into very small humans. Very small humans who kinda looked like him. At the moment of their designated birth, he smiled, called them "the Venture brothers."

I think it's been established Rust can't feel love the way regular folks do. I just imagine a scientist, grown from a cowardly squeamish kid, look out every day for changes in the womb, eagerly waiting for these two nondescript creatures to appear, hoping in his heart of hearts they'd at one time morph into humans. And they did.

What could he have felt then?

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

If, like me, you are a weirdo who likes looking at vintage propaganda, you are probably familiar with this cute couple:

See, back in the day, the Soviet Union put out a bunch of posters celebrating the Chinese-Soviet alliance. These posters usually depict a Russian guy chilling with a Chinese guy, and by "chilling" I mean embracing, holding hands, and generally affectionate body language that looks really really gay to the modern eye. The end result is a series of posters that look like a couple's romantic snapshots of their relationship. When you look through them, you can kinda piece together a timeline. See, here we learn that Russian Guy and Chinese Guy met at their workplace:

Going on vacation...

(it even looks like a postcard!)

Preaching the gospel of Lenin to the masses...

They even adopted a pair of kids!

It's really cute stuff! Best ship in the propaganda fandom, hands down.

However, a recent post on r/propagandaposters (yes there's a subreddit for propaganda posters that I visit shut up shut up shut up) indicates that all might not be well in the Chinese Guy/Russian Guy relationship...

"So Russian Guy and Chinese Guy brought African Guy into their relationship? What's wrong with that?" you may ask. Well you see...THAT'S NOT RUSSIAN GUY! A redditor pointed out that the poster is talking about China, Latin America, and Africa:

Chinese Guy has broken up with Russian Guy! The shock! The scandal! And sharp-eye readers will notice that the last poster is Chinese, not Russian. This puts a whole new spin on the Russian posters. Was Russian Guy trying to cover up relationship troubles by posting all his cute couple pics? Is Chinese Guy calling him out by posting what was REALLY happening behind the scenes??? This is some top-tier soap opera shenanigans, I can't wait for the next episode!

[aloeville]

u know what time it is. weekly comic time!!!!! this one is based on a set of poems by Ray Bradbury (poems and details below).

The assignment was to make a comic about a poem and I remember really liking Ray Bradbury's short stories when I was younger and I knew he had published poems, then I kinda just picked out these.

I don't like his poems as much as his short stories but some of them I thought were pretty cool!!! yea not too fond of this weeks comic, I hope it doesnt give off too much athiest redditor vibes mb yall I just think the theory of evolution is cool or whatever!! Idk it also just made me think about like. Imagine how fucked it would have been to be the first and only person to come to the conclusion that you are just an animal descended from other animals over billions of years like holyyy fuck I would feel so small and insignificant but like u still have to write a whole book about it and stuff

also bonus poems :p this one was my runner up choice bc I thought the title was funny ^

and this one which I thought was really cool I sent to my friend, I like the cadence or rhythm of it (idk what its called it sounds cool when you read it out loud)