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ultraericthered · 5 months

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Was earlier browsing the TV Tropes Ass Pull / Dragon Ball page for the most notable examples of total Ass Pull swerves seen across the Dragon Ball franchise, and I was curious in what was considered examples of such from out of the late Akira Toriyama's writing for the original Dragon Ball manga, back when he was young and in his prime. Among the handful of moments detailed on the page, there are some I agree to be unjustified, clumsily written and poorly implemented Ass Pulls (most notably all examples from the Majin Buu Saga) but a few where I honestly disagree and believe the ideas and the writing for them was sharper, more solid and sufficiently justified within the work than the TV Tropers gave them credit for.

To cover them all and relieve the best and worst of Toriyama:

King Piccolo hits Goku hard enough to stop his heartbeat. but it starts beating again after Piccolo's gone - NO. I think what people really take offense to here is the timing of it, that Piccolo leaves Goku for dead and then his heart just so happens to resume beating after he's departed from the scene. That is silly and contrived as heck. But the event itself is sensible considering that Piccolo assumed this moment of caridac arrest to have killed Goku because no human, no matter how strong and good at martial arts, could live through that. But Goku isn't human. Even this very saga stresses something is very superhuman and otherworldly about Goku, including why he had a tail and could transform into a giant ape. Piccolo had no knowledge of the Saiyans and how they're strong enough to recover from near death experiences and come back stronger than ever, so he had no way of knowing that "killing" Goku like that might not stick for long.

The Ultra Divine Water - YES. That was weird. It is indeed a direct contradiction to the previous arc at Korin's Tower and if such a thing had always existed, it would've been nice for Korin to have hinted at it back when we last saw him even if he didn't want Goku to have it.

Nail merges his life energy with Piccolo - NO. There'd been nothing saying that warrior class Namekians of the same type as Piccolo could do this before, but there'd also been nothing saying that they couldn't. What's important to remember is that this isn't a case like Kami and Piccolo re-merging, where two halves become one whole Namekian again: Nail was beaten to within an inch of his life and could've died out there with all the power still within him going to waste, but since Piccolo came along and needed the extra strength to go toe to toe with Freeza, Nail decided to let Piccolo essentially mercy kill him by absorbing his life energy and ki into himself.

Vegeta can suddenly detect power without a scouter after his fight on Earth - NO. The only thing that makes this seen nonsensical is a line in the Japanese version about him being able to awaken and attain this ability because "he's a Saiyan", even though it's an ability that has been used by non-Saiyans all the way back to Mr. Popo. In context, it still makes sense that Vegeta unlocked the potential to do this when in battle against opponents who could do so, similar to how he learned to conceal his full power level from scouters at the same time. In fact, it actually first kicked in for Vegeta during that battle on Earth, as towards the end he could sense that his enemies were all "barely clinging to life" without even having to go near them.

The Zenaki Boost - NO. I think it's misrepresented in that entry. It claims that Vegeta's minor boost in power after a genuinely near fatal beatdown from Zarbon doesn't mesh with him later not being nearly as beaten down by Recoome yet recieving another boost that puts him on par with First Form Freeza from it...but why, seeing as it only made him stronger than Jeice and Ginyu? Being now able to match Freeza in his first form isn't the same as "surpassing Freeza in his first form", so it's not too extreme a boost. It then says Goku was only "somewhat stronger than Ginyu" after the Vegeta battle, recovery, and constant training on the spaceship, but after being healed from his body getting roughed up thanks to Ginyu, he's able to match Freeza at 50% of his total power, strong enough to not risk his life via Kaio-Ken x10 and even able to pull off a Kaio-Ken x20, and that is somehow makes no sense...but that boost he got that allowed him to be somewhat stronger than Ginyu was talked up in-story as being the breakthrough that put Goku towards becoming a Super Saiyan, so why is any of this in any way a surprising, unforseen and unwarranted development? It also falsely states that "keep in mind, Freeza's second form outmatched Piccolo, who was ten times stronger than Ginyu had been", but it was Freeza's third form that outmatched Piccolo: in his second form, Freeza thought he could outmatch Piccolo but Piccolo was wearing his weighted clothing throughout the fight and showed that without it, he was an exact match in strength, speed, stamina, and full Ki power for Freeza in that form. It goes on to say that the idea almost entirely disappears after the Namek Saga since Vegeta doesn't simply try to fight Android 18 after his beatdown at her hands nor does Goku try to enter the fight rather than do more training after he recovers from his virus, but this plainly neglects details of how that story actually went down - Vegeta didn't commit to training to ascend beyond a Super Saiyan until after he learned both that Cell existed and that Piccolo now surpassed him, and Goku knew there was a greater threat when he recovered so he felt the boost on its own wouldn't be enough for it.

Additionally, I know one could nitpick that the Zenkai Boost existing renders previous training and comebacks by Goku pointless. Like what was the purpose of Goku scaling Korin's Tower and fighting to take the water from Korin when he could've just fought Tao again with the boost he got? What was the purpose of Goku having to attain the Ultra Divine Water if he could've just fought Piccolo again with the boost he got? Why train with Mr. Popo when he could've just looked for a way to nearly kill himself in order to get strong enough to fight Piccolo Jr.? Why did he need to run down Snake Way and get to King Kai's world to train under King Kai? OK, for those first three, Goku nor any of the other characters knew what a Saiyan was, that Goku was one, and that the Zenkai Boost was a thing for Saiyans. And simply getting the Zenkai Boost is in of itself not enough to truly improve a Saiyan's full inner strength and mastery over their new boosted power. Vegeta is the only one who's ever assumed that it is because he's an high class elite warrior to whom strides in the buildup and enhancement of his own power comes naturally to him and he arrogantly assumes that this is enough to ultimately ascend him to the level of Super Saiyan. Goku has never believed that - he's always put in the work to bring out and gain full skillful control over the new power he surpasses previous limits in order to attain. The training doesn't substitute for the boost, it works in concurrence with it and enhances it. Vegeta and even Freeza learn from example.

Freeza says five minutes until Namek explodes, yet the fight goes on for much longer - YES. Freeza was foolish and cannot tell time.

The Hyperbolic Time Chamber - YES. The existence of the Time Chamber isn't an Ass Pull itself, but the idea that young Goku was able to train in it and withstand its gravity yet later had trouble with the gravity on King Kai's world, and the fact that none of the fighters who were training right there at Kami's Lookout were told to or ever thought to use it for the coming fight against Nappa and Vegeta, are definite plot holes that Toriyama had no good excuse for.

The Cell Juniors - KIND OF? I think the idea is that since Cell has Namekian cells in him from Piccolo and Saiyan cells in him including those of Vegeta and Nappa, he had both the egg-making ability of King Piccolo and the memory of how to plant and grow Saibamen, but given his unique bio-organic body structure, he's able to make the seeds/eggs for such creatures inside of him and they grow once he spits them out onto planetary soil. And they come out in his own image since they inherited energy from the cells that make them. However, since he never explicity states this, it is sort of bizarre.

Cell's return as Super Perfect Cell after self-destructing- KIND OF? Two parts of it were feasible, at least: Cell returning to his Perfect Form even without 18 inside of him was due to him rettaining the memory of that form in tandem with the huge boost in power he got from the power of Super Saiyan 2 Gohan he'd been put on the recieving end of but now awakened within his cells. It's said that "he'd been beaten up several times and never once got a boost from it" until this near-death experience... didn't he, though? None of his previous beatdowns were near severe enough for him to get such a boost, and in the two where he did get outmatched in raw strength and/or Ki control power (against Future Trunks and against Goku), he did quickly rebound with a boost in strength, speed, and technique. And as for him learning the Instant Transmission, while Cell had seen Goku use it multiple times without learning it, it was made a point of that Cell was increasing his speed via watching Goku's, including the Instant Transmission, and as the page states "the only noteworthy difference is that Cell was taken along for the ride that time". Yes, Goku literally had his other hand on Cell the entire time as he blew up while he used Instant Transmission. Cell can emulate the strength of those whose cells he shares, almost as though absorbing some of their Ki power into himself. What else was going to happen there should Cell happen to live through his self destruction?

The one part that's an Ass Pull and plot hole of epic proportions is that Cell was able to regenerate from near-total annihilation into next to nothing to back whole, in his Perfect form, at the peak of his Ki power even after all that he'd expended in the earlier fight because, as he explains, "he can survive anything so long as the nucleus located in his head stays in-tact." Which directly contradicts the earlier part in his fight with Goku where Goku disintegrated his head with a point-blank Kamehameha, and Cell regenerated his upper torso and head like it was nothing. The original English dub for the anime actually gave a better excuse, that so long as so much as a single cell within his core nucleus survives, he's unkillable and can come back from anything. So even if Goku had blown up the nucleus along with Cell's head, if a single cell leaked through Cell's body in-tact, he could come back from it. And even if his entire body blew up, if the remaining nucleus still contained a single cell, he'd respawn. It's only through Gohan's final blast that Cell's nucleus and every single cell derived from it gets completely obliterated, which kills Cell.

Gotenks and Trunks become Child Super Saiyans - YES. I've harped on this one before as being one of the earliest downfalls in the Buu Saga. Nothing against Goten and Trunks or Gotenks for that matter, but how Super Saiyan power-ups got handled in regards to their characters was cheap, diminishing, and inexcusable of Toriyama.

Piccolo regenerates his whole body after it got broken because his head still remained. - YES. Didn't Piccolo get killed by Nappa with his entire body in-tact? Weren't there earlier risks of Piccolo dying by Freeza and Cell shooting him through the heart? Well, the heart is located in the part of Piccolo's body that got accidentally shattered by Goten and Trunks when he was turned to stone, yet he can now just live through that because the head is where regeneration starts for him? Where did this come from? Why was this gag even needed?

Super Saiyan 3 - YES. The concept of the form less so than the way it got implemented in a nebulous and downright contradictory way. Earlier in the saga when Goku is asked to kill Buu, he says point-blank that at his current power level he could only equal Vegeta but there's no way he could take on and kill the likes of Buu...only for him to then reveal he attained Super Saiyan 3 in the afterlife, meaning he was actually far stronger than Vegeta and was holding back on him during the Majin Vegeta fight, and that he absolutely could take on and possibly even kill Buu. And then there's no given reason for why he doesn't kill Buu in this form, much less use it ever again against the stronger, more evil Buus later on in the saga. And to top this off, Gotenks is able to skip Super Saiyan 2 and reach this form even when in the manga he had know way of even knowing about it let alone how to attain it, which is when the saga, and with it the entire original DB series, jumped the shark even before the death knell of Gohan getting outfought by Buu and absorbed by him.

That along with....

Buu's scream breaks open the sealed off Hyperbolic Time Chamber - YES. And what's annoying about this one is that it could've worked easily and raised no eyebrows - there's a full panel of Buu all tensed up and roaring in fury over it, so the idea that Buu released all of his pent up power into the roar and it creates a small crack in the fabric of the chamber dimension that's small enough for only Buu to access by turning into his liquid form and seeping through it, would work perfectly. But instead, after the initial roar, Buu screams about how "IT'S NOT FAIR!" and THAT is what unleashes the power that blows through the chamber and creates a hole for him to escape through, and the anime makes this longer and even more dumbfounding. This was Toriyama writing himself into a corner for the sake of some dumb humor and not knowing how to immediately write himself out of it in a way that could bring Buu back out as a threat but still inhibit the good guys so that there's any semblence of remaining tension.

Vegito defuses back into Goku and Vegeta inside of Buu despite the fusion having been said to be permanent - YES. It's not explained why it happens just because Vegito's been eaten by Buu, it doesn't make sense, but then again nothing about the Potara earrings and the fusion they bring about ever made sense, and its setup only gets more contradicted the more the earrings get used as a device in later franchise entries. I don't care that a movie beat Toriyama to showing Goku and Vegeta fuse via the fusion dance, he didn't let the fourth movie's "False Super Saiyan" stop him from debuting the real Super Saiyan form he'd envisoned, so why let Movie Gogeta stop him from debuting Real Gogeta. Given that he would years later do exactly that in Dragon Ball Super: Broly, I think even he regrets not doing so. When you introduce the concept of fusion into a saga along with an exact method for achieving it, stick to that method and those rules!

#Dragon Ball #Dragon Ball Z #manga #anime #Akira Toriyama #opinion #criticism #ass pulls #bad writing #analysis #TV Tropes #TV Tropes NUTJOBS!

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greatwyrmgold · 1 year

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Many works on TV Tropes have a Fanworks page, which indexes fanworks of that work which have either a TV Tropes page or a troper who wants to recommend it without writing a TV Tropes page.

Bocchi the Rock! has a fanworks page, with exactly one fic on it. It's a crossover with Worm. I am not making this up.

Everybody remembers the day the world changed forever, the day parahumans first came to be, and it all started with a... small pink glowing teenage girl floating above the ocean... Upon first contact with the mysterious entity she appeared to be perfectly still, but upon closer inspection was constantly vibrating so fast the human eye could barely keep track of her.

—Bocchi the Scion! (ぼっち・ざ・さいおん), Guitarhero 1.1

Adaptation Personality Change: On a mass scale. All capes who triggered naturally possess Bocchi's extreme social anxiety. This is best exemplified with Taylor Hebert, who attempted to join the Wards, but could barely sign the paperwork before ultimately running away.

—BtS (ぼざさ) TV Tropes page

I've only read one chapter so far, but the prose is good, the characterizations seem good enough, and the premise and tone are absurd enough that the apparent lack of direction isn't necessarily a problem. The worst thing so far is either needing to google random Japanese words (I now know what "riajuu" means) or the nagging concern that this is what you'd be like if you had godlike superpowers.

And just for the sake of finding a cold, damp, and dark area quickly, [Bocchi] quickly blew a hole in the side of a cold and tall mountain and hid there for a bit. Although it was a little loud as the freezing winds continued to rage on, she quickly put a stop to it by canceling all noise around the mountain, making sure it was only around the mountain that noise was canceled. She wouldn't make the same mistake of canceling all the sound in the world twice!

...just me? Oh, okay. Just the googling thing then.

Anyways. If it sounds interesting, I recommend giving it a shot.

#bocchi the rock!#worm #crossover #au #fanfic #hitori gotoh #scion worm #i am not making this up #tw spacebattles #(that's a joke)#(look at the other time I used that tag for an explanation)

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blindrapture · 3 months

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FRIDAY JUNE 10TH, 2011 (Clearly Exaggerated)

2:37 AM Blackpool.

2:51 AM We’ve arrived at the marketplace.

2:52 AM Mistress is sitting atop her makeshift throne. She’s watching me. I don’t see Donnie anywhere. "You're very observant. You can see her after I've seen your journals." ……crap. The Rapture Duck ate my earlier journals. Mistress is coming down from her throne. She's laughing. She snaps her fingers, and puppets arrive holding a rather wet and wrinkly looking book. My journals from Spain. "Is that what you were talking about?" Yes, ma’am. I forgot Mistress can make her puppets do dirty work. And they’re always watching me, watching my every move. Mistress grabbed the journal and is now flicking through it. The light here is rather scarce. There’s a couple barrels nearby with fires in them, but other than that and the moon, there’s not really much light. Mistress looks disturbingly real under this light. Even though she’s just a marionette. She looks like she’s almost human. Almost. "Oh, just look at all this... I'm so pleased! You're such a good pet. 'The White Jester,' I'm impressed, you inspired an epithet! The name suits you." Th.. thank you. "God, all these descriptions of violence are making me horny. You sure know how to win a girl's heart."

3:00 AM She just made out with me. She made sure to do it for longer than last time, and with all the puppets watching. And one more person. She's pointed out Donnie in the crowd. Donnie’s oh my god Donnie’s thin. What the hell have these guys been dYES MA’AM Mistress wants to make sure I know who’s watching for this next bit. …oh god, Mistress, I can’t, no. "You. Me. Right here, right now. I promise I won't give you splinters." I really can't. I just got back, I'm gonna want to unwind... I really appreciate the sentiment, I promise, but I mean I've never even done it bef

6:54 AM Mistress says I’m amazing at that. Mistress says I can get more tomorrow night. Mistress corrected herself. Mistress says I will get more tomorrow night. Mistress wants me to go to bed now. Mistress will let Donnie go with me. Mistress says one last thing. Mistress kissed me on the cheek and said “Welcome home, White Jester.” Mistress is gone now.

8:41 AM It was a slow walk home to what used to be the tropers' house. Donnie looked at me for most of the walk. She looked to be in a lot of pain. And she looked sympathetic. I tried my best to return the look. Donnie’s in the bathroom now. She went straight in upon returning. My body is in a lot of pain. In retrospect, I’m glad I wasn’t allowed to keep writing in my journal for that. It’ll be easier to forget. Donnie’s crying. Donnie’s sobbing. I’m going to go see what I can do. I just.. have to. I owe it to her.

9:11 AM Donnie’s asleep now, next to me. I talked to her. I let her cry on my shoulder. I really feel like I owe her. I have no idea what they’ve done to her while I was gone. She won’t tell me. I respect that; I won’t pry. She just told me that she wished, when she came out of the bathroom, it would all go away. When we got into bed, Donnie started hugging me and still hasn’t stopped. I’ve got my arms free. But I.. god. I need to think of some way out of here. I need to get us both out of here.

5:40 PM Woke up at noon. Can’t remember the nightmare. It had something to do with last night.. and some event with my family. My arms were busy hugging Donnie, so I didn’t write it down. I think that’s for the best. Then I drifted off to sleep again. Donnie’s up now, which is why I am. I didn’t dream a real dream this time. I just heard Mistress’ clearly exaggerated sexual moans over and over again. Does she really enjoy the sex? Can you even call that sex? How would I even know? Can you even call me a good guy anymore? Can you even call me a human anymore?

5:49 PM Donnie and I are going out to look for a meal. Together. .w.

5:54 PM We agreed not to go towards the marketplace. We’re just looking nearby.

6:02 PM Restaurant. Raiding the kitchen.

7:40 PM There was food. Lots. We cooked some meals and sat down at a table for two. We talked. About happy things. I told Donnie about some of the fun I had, the new CDs I got, the SLCEMs, Jordan Versus the Minotaur, and how much I missed her. Donnie told me about a new dress the Mistress got her. It’s pretty. And.. blue. I like blue. We mostly spoke about our old lives, really. I talked about what life was like back when I used to live in America, all my old friends, my old schools, the video games I once played. Donnie talked about her life in Surrey, the evenings she’d spend with her mother, the volunteer work she'd do at Halliford, the days she’d spend out wandering through town for the sake of it… At one point, Donnie grabbed my hands and told me how she really didn’t know if I was gonna make it back or not. She didn’t know if I had it in me to.. kill people just out of no choice. She didn’t even know if she could trust me to come save her. As much as we get along, I haven’t even known her for a month. I told her she was completely right; I’m practically a stranger to her. I told her I completely understood why she’d be so afraid and hopeless. These are tough times. But the important thing is that I’m back. I mean, that is the important thing. ..right?

8:01 PM ..I killed those people. I killed a lot of people in that church. I did. I’ve done horrible things. I can’t imagine how much disgust Donnie must feel. I’m terrible.

11:01 PM ..Donnie gave me a hug. Randomly. Maybe she doesn’t hate me. But I’m still terrible, I am.

11:11 PM I wish I could redeem myself.

11:58 PM Knocking on the door. Checking.

(Attached: "The Harlequin once had a pet cat. She named him Cheese Puff, and he was orange and little. Cheese Puff loved cuddles. The Harlequin would take Cheese Puff to see the seaside, and she'd dream of getting a house on a cliff, waking up every morning to Cheese Puff licking her nose. But this was before he came into her life and made her promise her love. After that, she found Cheese Puff's feet in her backyard, curled up like little.. well, cheese puffs. She never found the rest.")

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 1

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wingedcatgirl · 6 months

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A user called @kasunex used to have a TV Tropes account called joeshmo. He noticed another user editing pages with a clear bias and argued with him. The other user accused @kasunex of editing bias, and the mods (who weren't familiar with the work) suspended them both.

After that, @kasunex took a break from TV Tropes, and when his suspension was over, he returned, only to see the other user continue to edit with a bias, so @kasunex created a new account, avoided engaging with the other user, and instead reported him. This got the other user suspended, but a few days later, @kasunex discovered that he'd been suspended too! When he appealed to ask why, the mods accused him of being his old account. That's when @kasunex made a mistake: instead of explaining that he'd made his new account after his suspension was over, he flat-out denied being the same person. He got banned from the site.

Personally, though, I think his ban was unjust. Because he'd made his new account after his suspension on his old one ended, he wasn't ban-evading. Could you bring that detail up with the mods on Ask the Tropers and convince them to overturn the ban of @kasunex?

(For the record, no, I am not @kasunex; I was merely bringing up a ban that I think was undeserved.)

What is it with people who got banned multiple years ago and begging randos on tumblr to get it overturned? This is never going to work, no matter how many people you ask. Stop forever.

#cat chatter #words from me a kity #Anonymous

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dalishious · 1 year

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Re: The TV Tropes ask: I looked the entry up because I was curious and want to point out that that troper's point is actually that while the Tranquil are supposed to have no emotions, they seem to express e.g. distress and eagerness to work, which they supposedly would have no motivation for without emotions. Troper /then/ draws a comparison to autism (quote: "They don't emote like neurotypical people and appear to have difficulty socializing or empathizing with others, but they do have preferences, wants, and desires (...)").

Just to point out that troper did not say "the Tranquil are emotionless so Autistic". I can't really comment on if that makes it less ableist.

It does not make it less ableist.

#ask

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bandcampsnoop · 9 months

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12/30/23.

Bory is Brendan Ramirez (Portland, Oregon) who studied jazz guitar at Willamette University (Salem, Oregon). And according to the Pitchfork review, Ramirez's degree has an emphasis in improvisation. I'm not sure how or when Bory started, but this is indie pop reminiscent of Mo Troper (without the high pitched vocals). I mean, Mo Troper does record and produce this, so it's not surprising that it bears a "sounds-like" stamp.

Troper's influence over the Portland scene was already well established with his own work and recent work with other bands like Diners.

"Who's A Good Boy" is released by Earth Libraries (Birmingham, Alabama).

#Bory #Brendan Ramirez #Portland #Oregon #Willamette University #Mo Troper #Diners #Earth Libraries #Bandcamp

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nokingsonlyfooles · 1 year

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The Dark Secret of Zootopia? (Part 2, "Work twice as hard for half as much!")

Welcome back! We're still talking about how Zootopia swung for the fences with its racism metaphor and probably didn't manage much more than hitting itself in the face! We've already talked about how hard it is to get people to unpack their own biases. Today's subject is the bunny who thought "standing up for the little guy" meant becoming a cop.

(Oh, Judy, hon, no. I know you're a bit sheltered and conservative, and your family seems to be doing some kinda culty Quiverfull thing, but no.)

To understand how this movie - which started out as a dark dystopia where every predator wore systemic oppression around their neck - missed the target so badly with Judy's story, we gotta look at something else that was still going strong in 2016, when Zootopia came out.

If you need to see more on how the myth of Black excellence applies to President Drone Strikes O'Flint Water specifically, F. D. Signifier has an informative series of videos on the subject. Among other things, the idea of "Black excellence" suggests that systemic oppression can (and should) be fought on an individual basis. To do so, one must expect to "work twice as hard to get half as much." This isn't parsed as something unfair that needs to be changed, but just a fact of life that you'll have to deal with to get anywhere.

...And once you've achieved your dreams, you've proven it can be done! If someone wants this badly enough, they can do it. Period. So nobody else has an excuse for not grinding themselves into a paste to tackle the same unfair system you've beaten. (Assuming you wanted it badly enough to beat that system yourself.)

People who are learning a physically and mentally demanding new job don't need to, like, sleep, do they? Sleep is a luxury for those privileged folks we expect to be good cops. Not for a tiny prey species who needs to prove she can make it in the big city and take out animals ten times her size in all terrains, just so they can shunt her into meter maid duty because they never wanted her in the first place.

A troper notes (on the Heartwarming moments page, because people have a real hard time unpacking their biases, especially when they see them as a metaphor with plausible deniability)

Ha-ha, yeah. They knew they were getting a bunny cop and they knew exactly where they wanted to put her. Well, she can't do too much damage as a meter maid!

"All right, we're getting an obvious political 'affirmative action' hire in a few weeks. Will someone requisition me the most ridiculous car on the continent, so we can quietly fire her and get back to doing real work?"

Meanwhile:

"Oh, your coworker slammed your ears in the door of a vehicle that's ten times too big to be safe for you? That sounds like a YOU problem. You're DEAD, Carrot Cake!"

"You're dead, Carrot Cake" is from the actual film. Let's remove the cartoon metaphor and take a look at that. Species = race, broadly. So if Judy were the only Latinx police recruit, how cute and funny would it be to call her, "Pinto Bean"? And there are even worse possible contexts! How does "You're dead, Watermelon" sound to you? Should a Black recruit be required to shake that off and keep training, or should somebody at least complain to HR? (Is that "AR" in this context...?)

"Yes, sir, I did force the bunny recruit to box a rhinoceros and then yell at her for incurring evident head trauma, but, ya see, when she figured out how to scale a wall of solid ice with no accommodations for her size, I smiled approvingly!"

"...So we're good, right?"

This is all played utterly straight. This is a full-on Rocky Balboa training montage, with the polar bear teacher as Burgess Meredith. The transitions are fast, and we don't slow down long enough to consider Judy's feelings until she's starting her new job and she politely asks Clawhauser not to call her "cute."

We don't turn around and examine the fact that her polar bear teacher was hammering the "cute" button pretty hard too, and Judy never spoke up and asked to be respected. One doesn't, as a rule, talk back to an antagonist who can invalidate one out of one's dream job, so that's reasonable behavior from Miss Hopps. But the movie doesn't have time to hammer home that context. No, you see, Judy wasn't very good at policing, and the polar bear was a tough-but-fair mentor who was obviously rooting for her the whole time (that smile!) and motivated her to do better. Now, back to the plot!

The one moment we pause and showcase how broken Judy is by her unfair treatment is in the bathroom...

And it's for a gag. (And foreshadowing a later toilet escape.) Ha-ha, the polar bear teacher is there to remind her that not being able to use a swimming-pool-sized toilet is a YOU problem too. My god, we don't even get one of these white saviour moments!

"Everyone pees the same size!"

Just, "Filthy toilet! You're dead!" If you wanna be a cop, you better learn to piss while crouched on the edge of an above-ground pool, 'cos we're not even gonna offer you a toilet seat in your size. And, no, we will not address how unfair that is!

There are people existing in real-life who get frozen out of certain careers because the equipment doesn't come in their size. (There's a Guardian article in there and they don't always cover gender in good faith, but there are a bunch of in-line citations in it. Just tread carefully.) In most cases, we call them "women." And when their lives are being put at risk and their jobs being made impossible, we also tell them to "girl boss" up and do it anyway. These jobs have certain physical requirements (even if that requirement is something artificial and totally nonsensical like "have hands in glove size medium or larger, 'cos we ain't got any small") and you'll have to meet them somehow!

I gotta tell you folks, police work is mostly clerical work, and when they do get into a physical altercation, they do not fight fair.

Do you need a citation for that? You're living on the same planet I am, and you are on the internet right now. If you don't buy that a police officer in an altercation with a rhino wouldn't be engaging on level ground with Marquis of Queensbury fighting rules, I can't convince you.

In real life, Judy would have a nightstick, a gun, a taser (which she could conveniently get mixed up with the aforementioned gun), a non-comical car, and backup. In fact, her fellow cop yells at her not to continue a pursuit on foot and to wait for backup when she goes after Weaselton and his "moldy onions."

"Also, you're entering what appears to be a sized-based ghetto with its own police force! WTF, Officer Hopps?!"

Nick Angel isn't the standard to which all cops should aspire, he's a bit of an arsehole who needs to learn how to switch off.

(Also, if you see someone shoplifting food... no you fucking well didn't. Bad form, Nick.)

The only point to making Judy jump through all those hoops for the privilege of writing parking tickets is to get her to quit. Assigning her meter maid duty, and then putting her on an investigation when she can't even get license plate information out of the computers (and giving her 48 hours to solve a case that's been ongoing for months!) is also meant to get her to quit. Nick doesn't come from a bunny-majority town...

(Seriously, there is some cult-like activity going on here. There are bunny parents in the city with only one kid, this does not seem normal in-universe.)

...and he's more used to being marginalized, so he sees it right away. He calls out Bogo's bullshit and gets more time for Judy to complete an unreasonable task - and she pulls it off. Even the shitty chief who was trying to get her fired has to sit up and respect her after that!

"Wow, I'm impressed!"

Ultimately, that's the problem. But that's where our collective American brain was when this movie was being made.

We had a solid eight years there where we thought racism was over because we finally had a Black President. We also had a constant, low-grade anxiety about all the indications that this was clearly not the case, but we were able to ignore them. It seemed kinda rude to do anything other than ignore them. Obama worked so hard, and so many people were still trying to hold him to an unfair standard. Couldn't we just let him do a few war crimes like every other American President?

We could and we did, but then we had a racist backlash that made Obama's worst excesses look like a walk in the park. And many (not anywhere near all) of us have been motivated to unpack how broken the system is, and look at the past a little more critically.

But in early 2016? No way! We had a Black guy in the White House, and we were gonna get a WOMAN in the White House (for sure!) and everything was gonna be fine. Oh, thank goodness those rugged individuals were able to smash through the glass ceiling, so it would stay broken forever. That's what glass does! It was a good, simple optimistic story - like Hamilton!

...and something obvious and easy to fall back on when the Nick-centred, darker story didn't seem to be working out. Racism is real (and that's hard enough for the audience to grasp, so let's back off a little), but a few determined individuals can fix it for everyone. All you have to do is keep Trying! You can Try Everything! You might fall down (or be pushed, or have your body parts slammed in a car door) but you can get back up and win!

Even in the dark version, in the end, Nick and Judy get rid of the "tame" collars. I posit that the only reason Disney felt safe making a movie about racism in the first place was that at the time, we honestly thought racism could be solved - and we're solving it right now! Quick! Animate that message with funny animals so we can tell the kids!

We don't need to see Nick training to be a cop! I'm sure it's fine. Judy took out the bias ahead of him. Hilary won't have any trouble getting into the White House. It's fine now. It's FINE.

Months later, we got a big, orange clue-by-four that was impossible to ignore, but Zootopia was already on its way to a video release in time for Christmas. Its hope and optimism stands cluelessly to this day. And if you're not ready to think about racism as a complex, systemic issue (or at ALL) it won't make you.

So! Do you want more on this? "Like" and reblog if you want more, 'cos I can give you way more. Next time, if you want, we can talk about this stuff:

(WTFox?!)

...and the good and bad of how the narrative dealt with it.

#zootopia #racisim #judy hopps #systemic discrimination #deep dive #acab #thanks obama

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ao3feed-izuku-midoriya · 2 years

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The Number One and the Little Koala

The Number One and the Little Koala by Troper Nyaru

Toshinori loves his little nephew with all his heart, but helping to raise a baby comes with certain... challenges.

Words: 606, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 34 of Sidesteps along the Path

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia

Rating: General Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Sensei | All For One, Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku's Family

Relationships: Midoriya Izuku & Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Midoriya Hisashi & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Sensei | All For One

Additional Tags: Baby Izuku, cuteness, baby cuteness, Cuteness overload, Sensei | All For One is Midoriya Hisashi, Sensei | All For One is Midoriya Izuku's Parent

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44407672

#AO3 Feed #FanFiction #AO3 Izuku #♦#Izuku Midoriya #Yagi Toshinori #AFO #Hisashi Midoriya #R:G #A:Troper #Dad for One

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onlinecompanynews · 1 month

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Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Dies at 56 - Journal Global Web https://www.merchant-business.com/former-youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-dies-at-56/?feed_id=162305&_unique_id=66b899c092b02 The unassuming house on Santa Marga... BLOGGER - #GLOBAL The unassuming house on Santa Margarita Avenue in Menlo Park, California, had been empty for only a couple of years when I visited in 2008, but the ghosts were still there. This was where Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google a decade previous. Here was the garage once packed with newly delivered servers and routers; there were the carpeted rooms at the back of the house where Page, Brin, and their first employee, Craig Silverstein, churned out code; out the window was the backyard with the hot tub.In Google’s infancy the house belonged to a young couple, Dennis Troper and Susan Wojcicki, who had recently purchased it for $615,000. To help with the mortgage, the Google duo paid them $1,700 a month to rent unused space. “They entered through the garage,” Wojcicki later told me. “They weren’t allowed to enter the front door.”Wojcicki found herself hanging out with the young founders and became fascinated by the rise of the search startup. She soon joined it herself, about the time the 15-person company moved out of her house and into an actual office, over a bicycle shop in Palo Alto. In 2002, she took over the Google advertising arm, eventually heading a multibillion-dollar business that transformed the entire industry. In 2014, she became CEO of the company’s video product YouTube, running one of the world’s biggest media properties and navigating it through competitions with other social networks and crises of content moderation. Though she was one of the most powerful women in all of business, she played it low-key, even to her departure in February 2023, “to start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I’m passionate about,” as she wrote in the company blog.That same low-key ethic persisted in her difficult final years, where she privately battled non-small cell lung cancer. On Friday, Troper said that Susan Wojcicki died at 56.In a company known for head-scratching quirks, absurd ambitions, and splashy profiles, Wojcicki somehow ducked the biggest spotlights while taking on gargantuan responsibilities. Even before Eric Schmidt became Google’s CEO and became known as the adult in the room, Wojcicki was a calm, analytical presence whose wise counsel and steady work ethic qualified her for the company’s most critical roles, even as Google, later named Alphabet, grew to one of the world’s most powerful companies. In the earliest days, her educational pedigree—including a degree at Harvard and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA—as well as her Intel experience made her a relative veteran compared to the peach-fuzzers in charge. She was also literally a member of the family, after cofounder Brin married her sister Ann (they divorced in 2015).Well before Schmidt’s arrival, Wojcicki was active in steering Google toward profitability. “There was a transition where we realized that we could make a lot more money from the advertising, as opposed to syndicating search on the web,” she told me in 2008, in an interview for my history of the company.She was deeply involved in the pivot that Google made in the ad business, moving from a pay-per-impression model to one where advertisers paid only when consumers chose to click on their ads. This ad model was revolutionary, switching the whole industry to something based on measurement rather than fuzzy attempts to divine how effective ads were. She could talk endlessly on the “physics of clicks.” Wojcicki was also instrumental in starting AdSense, another groundbreaking product that allowed Google to place ads on third-party websites all over the internet. Other products she shepherded included Google Analytics, Google Books, and even the doodles that festoon the search page.When another early Googler,

Salar Kamangar, left the top role of YouTube in 2014, it already had a billion users and was one of the world’s major media properties; the predictable move would have been for CEO Larry Page to tap an experienced industry hand to take it to the next level. Instead, he was confident that Wojcicki could do the job.“When I got to YouTube, it felt like going back in time, it felt like this is Google 2002,” she told Peter Rubin at the WIRED25 conference in 2018. “This is my opportunity to really take all these lessons that I learned at Google and … apply them to YouTube.” During her time there she added a cool billion users, built revenues to more than $32 billion a year, and established leadership in short-form video despite the emergence of rivals like TikTok. When she retired in 2023, she was still struggling with the difficulties of policing content on a massive social media platform.Wojcicki also was well known for mentoring and coaching. Among the countless people she helped was Sheryl Sandberg, whose Google experience had been a launchpad for the COO role at Meta. “She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organization at the beginning of my career in tech,” Sandberg posted. Wojcicki was four months pregnant when she joined Google, and understood that she was lucky her employers granted her leave after she had her baby. A mother of five, she became a champion for family leave, not just in her own company but for all women.What I remember about her is her groundedness. Though fabulously wealthy, she remained consistently unpretentious. (Though I do recall witnessing a conversation in which she and Wendi Murdoch considered the right number of nannies to take along on a Mediterranean vacation.) She fit right in on the Met Gala red carpet, but never came off as a glamour chaser. Family was her clear priority. Whenever I interviewed her, she was straightforward but also cannily circumspect, a true company loyalist who bled primary colors.Wojcicki is survived by her husband, who works at Google, and four children. Her son Marco died of an overdose this past February. Also surviving are sisters Ann, cofounder of 23andMe; Janet, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco; and her mother Esther, a well-known educator who wrote a book about raising remarkable daughters. Her father Stanley, a particle physicist who taught at Stanford, died last year.Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who himself was mentored by Wojcicki, wrote, “Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the thousands of Googlers she led over the years, and for millions of people all over the world who looked up to her, benefited from her advocacy and leadership, and felt the impact of the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond.”Though Wojcicki’s career at Google/Alphabet qualifies her as one of the era’s unsung great executives, the circumstances of her original role of landlord has become the stuff of legend. Wojcicki once speculated that Google’s roots in a residential area led to the company’s famous practice of coddling employees, where the workplace offered the comforts of home. “For example, having a shower is really important,” she once told me. “When you’re attracting a really young group that’s mostly come out of college, having these services is pretty important, like having food around, or a washer and dryer.” Google’s notorious food culture, she said, started one day when she and her husband ordered the refrigerator for their kitchen. When the deliveryman came, Wojcicki had been in the shower. “Sergey and Larry answered the door and said, ‘Oh, a new refrigerator—install it here, in the garage!” she recalled. That appliance essentially became the nexus of the first Google micro-kitchen.In 2011, I interviewed Wojcicki at the WIRED Business Conference and asked her why, despite making a fortune from her early stake in the company, she kept working there. She flipped the question back to me, asking why I wrote the Google book I’d just published.

Then she spoke from the heart. “Google is fascinating,” she said, “and the book isn’t finished. I’m creating, living, building, and writing those chapters.” Her company, her family, and all of the business world will miss the chapters not written.“Susan Wojcicki is one of this era’s great unsung executives—and was crucial to Google’s trajectory from its very beginnings in her garage…”Source Link: https://www.wired.com/story/susan-wojcicki-former-youtube-ceo-dies-at-56/ http://109.70.148.72/~merchant29/6network/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/1723371608_575_53196731437_d8ddd76cbd_o.jpg #GLOBAL - BLOGGER The unassuming house on Santa Margarita Avenue in Menlo Park, California, had been empty for only a couple of years when I visited in 2008, but the ghosts were still there. This was where Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google a decade previous. Here was the garage once packed with newly delivered servers and … Read More

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blindrapture · 4 months

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SATURDAY MAY 28TH, 2011 (Cipher For A Million Years)

7:10 AM MISTRESS, HOW ARE YOUUUUU? Um.. yeah, kinda.. bad time! don’twakeupdonniedon’twakeupdonniedon’twakeupdonnie "You made it to Blackpool, and in such record time! This is a nice town, isn't it? Have you been on the front yet? There's still loads of souvenirs, and no one to charge you money for them. There's even a working candy floss machine. Maybe I'll have you make me some sometime. Maybe later." It.. it is a nice town, yes! "I'm here to give you important information. There's a marketplace I want you to go to, you'll find it on your own, you'll know the place. I want you there on Tuesday, at 8 PM. I have a job for you." Oh.. okay. "See you, cutie." And she's gone. o_o That was.. particularly awkward for me, as Donnie's hugging me in her sleep. Goddamn, Jordan. You're either very lucky, or very unlucky. I have no idea anymore.

10:07 AM Had breakfast. Going for another walk. I asked the tropers about any nearby marketplaces, and there's a very prominent one nearby. Gonna check it out, see if there’s anything today.

10:45 AM The marketplace is quiet, no zombies anywhere or anything. There are countless stalls littered around, and very few are empty. …free stuff. :D

10:51 AM Ohhhh my god, CDs.

10:54 AM There was actually some good stuff there. Got Bonnjo Vjönsped’s Cipher for a Million Years (part one: Beacon and Forty Knights of Some Sort of Fluffy Texture) and some David Bowie.

10:59 AM ..huh. A poster. “MAY 31 @ 20:00 TVTROPES MEET-UP HERE” A troper meet-up. May 31st is.. I’m pretty sure that’s Tuesday. 20:00’s 8 o’ clock. Mistress was right. Shit. This is interesting.

1:12 PM Back at the house. Brought up the troper meet-up. Tropers 1 and 2 didn’t know about it. o_o

2:38 PM We're all sitting in the living room, drinking tea, eating crumpets, reading newspapers and books. Like nothing ever happened to the world. This.. pretty much is exactly why I wanted to come up here. It's about survival, but it's also about safety. Donnie's thankful to have somewhere safe, she gets it! And she's thankful she joined me on such a long journey. uwu If I can just.. deal with Mistress... then maybe this can be the new life for us? And if I can deal with her, then surely the governments and stuff can deal with the rest of it? ...Donnie's crossed her leg over mine. God, I've always wanted that.

4:40 PM During a lull in conversation about the places the tropers would have liked to have shown us if the town still worked, I asked what the others know about the rabbit holes. “They’re gateways to somewhere. Sometimes people come back from them.” That’s all they knew. I didn’t want to mention what Mistress told me, about how they caused this whole mess, how they’re growing. They’d wonder how I knew this. Donnie would, too. I can’t spill my secrets. In retrospect, I should probably be careful what I write, as well. But no one's trying to read my journals. I think people just.. assume it's The Thing I Do.

7:12 PM Blackpool's never this quiet in the summertime, it's a tourist town. Just goes to show how much a week of monsters changes. The internet’s finally gone down. I suppose that’s why there’s a troper meet-up going on here.

10:00 PM It’s hard to believe this apocalypse has been going on for over a week now. I just realized that.

10:27 PM You know what I’m in the mood for? Awake. Dream Theater. Specifically, “The Mirror.” >w>

10:28 PM DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. DUN DUN DUN. Puppies on Acid, motherfuckers.

10:45 PM Whoa, that was a loud noise.

10:46 PM THE ZOMBIES BROKE THE FRONT DOOR DOWN

10:48 PM EAT GUITAR CONTROLLERRRR

10:54 PM THEY’RE EVERYWHERE FUCK FUCK FUCK

10:55 PM They’re not even doing anything. They only attack when I do. They move when I do.

10:59 PM These zombies look really freaking creepy. Most of them don’t even look dead. Just.. high. They look brain-dead.

11:00 PM Wait, what. They’re leaving.

11:03 PM Each one is gone now; the house is completely deserted besides us living folk.

11:09 PM ..troper 2. Where’s troper 2?

11:11 PM We’ve looked all over, but he’s nowhere. I wish we knew where he was.

11:13 PM Donnie spotted him. He’s outside with the zombies. I’m gonna get him. I need something to do.

11:18 PM The zombies are all staring at me. They’re standing still, only turning to continue watching me as I go past. Troper 2 is stuck. He can’t move.

11:19 PM Fucking ropes or something, cable, something, wrapped around his leg. I’m gonna try to untie his That’s not around his leg. That’s in it. fuckmore of them in his arms torso head ZOMbies WAKING UP

11:30 PM Fuuuck goddammit. I’m in. Troper 2’s not; he vanished shortly after the zombies ‘woke up.’ I need to keep a record of this. The more we have written down, the better, right? Troper 2 was struggling, he said he couldn’t move. I checked it out and he had…. some.. things, like.. cables or something digging into various parts of his skin. Then the zombies woke up. They just all said “How do you do.” And next thing I know, they all raised their hands forward. Like.. like you expect zombies to do. They all reached for me. Fuck, that was very weird.

11:42 PM Donnie wants me in bed. Her exact words were “I want you to come to bed with me.” I don’t know if she’s just too tired to watch her words or what. I guess we’re gonna find out!

(Attached: “The difficulty of parsing a question mark in the spoken-word depends wholly on the speaker’s inflections and on context. For phrases commonly taken rendered as statements, the speaker needs to raise her or his inflection at the end of the phrase in order for a listener to infer an inquisitive nature. All of this is irritating enough without considering ambiguous or even cryptic phrases, a trait ridiculously common to we the lonely wanderers. Not normally common to Salmacis, but I guess at this point it had her hands full already. Join us next month for the episode on complex pronoun systems!”)

[PREV LOG] [TABLE OF CONTENTS] [NEXT LOG]

#ogtrib #oh god the rapture is burning #ogtrib act 1

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sa7abnews · 1 month

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Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, dead at 56

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/11/susan-wojcicki-former-ceo-of-youtube-dead-at-56-2/

Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, dead at 56

Former CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki. Her husband Dennis Troper posted on Facebook that Wojcicki died of cancer.Photo by Mateusz Wlodarczyk/NurPhoto via Getty Images)Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO, died at 56 after living with lung cancer.Wojcicki led YouTube from 2014 to 2023.She is survived by her husband, Dennis Troper, and their children.Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, died "after two years of living with cancer," Alphabet CEO Sunder Pichai wrote on X, adding that he was "unbelievably saddened by the loss." She was 56."She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it's hard to imagine the world without her," Pichai continued. "She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I'm one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan."Wojcicki is survived by her mother, journalist and educator Esther Wojcicki; her sisters, Janet, an anthropologist and epidemiologist, and Anne, the cofounder and CEO of 23andMe; her husband, Dennis Troper, and their four living children.Wojcicki was predeceased by her father, Polish American physicist Stanley Wojcicki, and her son Marco, who died in February of this year. He was 19 years old.Wojcicki married Troper in 1998.On Facebook, Troper wrote on Friday night: "My beloved wife of 26 years and mother to our five children left us today after 2 years of living with non small cell lung cancer.""Susan was not just my best friend and partner in life, but a brilliant mind, a loving mother, and a dear friend to many," Troper wrote.Many prominent tech figures have also paid tribute to the late executive.Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, described Wojcicki in a post on X as "a trailblazer in the industry, an exemplary mother, and a cherished friend.""Her kind heart, wise counsel, and philanthropic spirit touched countless lives," he wrote.Apple CEO Tim Cook said he was "saddened" to hear the news, adding that Wojcicki "was one of Silicon Valley's visionaries.""She will be missed by so many. May she rest in peace," he wrote on X.Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in another post on X: "Rest in peace. Especially tragic to see such an early death."Susan Wojcicki and Dennis Troper.Taylor Hill/Getty ImagesWojcicki began working at Google in 1999 and served as CEO of YouTube from 2014 until 2023.Before joining Google, she provided the garage space where the company was founded in 1998.During her time with the company, Wojcicki played a key role in developing its advertising business, helping create AdSense and working on the deal to acquire DoubleClick.At YouTube, which was acquired by Google in 2006, Wojcicki oversaw the site as it became the web's most popular video service.Wojcicki announced in 2023 that she was stepping down from her role as YouTube's CEO to "start a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I'm passionate about."Representatives for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

#Tech

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