#which I have said 25 times in my rants/meta since The News

[mirai-desu]

Eliza and William Moments » Series 4, Episode 6

“Things haven’t quite turned out hope I’d have hoped. Sometimes I do wonder...” “... if it’s all worth it. You are a good detective, Eliza, very good. And whatever happens from here, you’ll find a way to make it work. You always do.”

[orionsangel86]

I have been doing this meta analysis thing for a long time now and one thing that I have always tried to make clear in meta analysis is that for it to be taken seriously you must keep your personal biases out of it. You must come at it as objective as possible.

Rant under the cut

Its not always easy to do when you are dealing with difficult topics, or shining unfavourable lights on characters you love, or coming to conclusions that you werent expecting (recent meta discussions about Morpheus in the Sandman comics would fall into these categories).

What meta analysis should never be used for is to back up ship wars or specifically to shame fandoms for liking certain characters. If the meta isnt providing valid evidence to support the interpretations, and instead has fallen into name calling and mockery of fandom, its no longer valid meta.

I got this ALL the time in SPN fandom. Destiel was a huge fandom but as meta writers we stuck with what we were given by the source material and interpreted it with valid evidence. We understood that multiple interpretations were possible but we made sure that whatever we were analysing made sense and had some source backing. This wasnt always the case because meta writers are not a monolith, but the bigger blogs who wrote meta frequently at least understood this and would not be stretching to support their own claims if canon didnt back it up. Now no one is perfect of course, but the point is, proper meta writers understand that where they make a claim or interpretation of the source material, they have to site examples and evidence to back up their claims and also take into consideration any evidence to the contrary.

The people who hated destiel and made that their entire personalities didnt do that so much. I read a lot of their meta out of curiosity and every time I was baffled by where they were getting their claims. 'Destiel is necrophilia" was a big one which canon disproved almost straight away in season 5. "Destiel is rape" was another because Cas was using Jimmy as a vessel and yet canon confirmed Jimmy died at the end of season 4. Cas' body was remade by God in season 5 and has remained his own ever since. These are just two of the ridiculous examples supposed "meta writers" among the destiel hater communities would come up with and still use today.

I find it extremely infuriating when I see character/ship hate loosely disguised as meta analysis. I can give people the benefit of the doubt a lot of the time, as fandoms are usually highly emotional spaces, but when there is zero canon evidence to support the claims, when connections are being made on the absolute thinnest of threads, and when far more obvious interpretations are being clearly ignored to support certain viewpoints in such a stunningly obvious case of confirmation bias I have to throw in the towel and stop taking said meta seriously.

One thing I have loved about Sandman fandom so far is the meta. It's such a rich text to analyse, and the show adds an entirely new level to it which makes it all the more enjoyable. I've made no secret of my support for Dreamling and I wrote a very long meta series on Dreamling and how the show in particular uses certain tropes, symbolism, visual storytelling cues, and music, to name a few, to overload a 25 minute sequence with queer coding. It is completely understandable to me why anyone going into the show even without thinking about shipping, would feel like Dreamling hit them like a brick to the face. The creators weren't subtle with it.

Its also totally valid to find romantic interpretations of other pairings within the Sandman. I personally think Morpheus x Johanna was laid on pretty thickly. Morpheus x Lucienne is equally an interesting ship to analyse. But heres the thing, if you ship these other ships and are frustrated that Dreamling has "taken over" thats valid. I get it. I would like more focus on the other characters too. I would particularly like to talk about Lucienne x Gault and have a meta piece in progress about them.

Whats not okay however is for other shippers and people frustrated with Dreamling to go the way of the Destiel antis. Dont make shit up that has no basis in canon just because you need some moral high ground to shit all over the ship you hate. Don't call fans that see Dreamling "deluded" for seeing it. They aren't deluded. It's right there in the subtext. Dont resort to name calling and "gotchas" and use inflammatory language to bait people. And please, I'm begging you, stop claiming that people who ship Dreamling are somehow all overly fragile white racists. You're wrong.

The racism discussions about Hob's past have their place, but these things ARE being discussed, if anything I feel this fandom has done a far better job of handling the issues of slavery than another popular fandom has (looking at you OFMD). No one is forgiving Hob for his slaver past. But you have to acknowledge that the entire point of the story in The Sandman is about change, and growth, and how we can become better people. As another excellent short meta post stated recently "we are more than the sum of our transgressions". The Sandman is all about the shades of grey. No one is morally righteous, but most characters are not completely morally bankrupt either.

Hob Gadling is a controversial character who is often misunderstood by fandom but anyone with proper critical thinking skills and a decent understanding of what meta analysis is, should understand that Hob is a metaphor for humanity first and foremost. He is the average everyman from the perspective of an Englishman and therefore above all else to understand Hob you have to look to England, to Englands history, and to its current status in the world. A lot of blood on its hands yes, but also at least a century of trying to make up for it, a leader in the world in human rights and trying to do better. I have to believe that about this country, so I believe it about Hob too. Whilst I'm not interesting in getting into huge geopolitical debates about England, I hope that we can all agree that the average Englishman today is not a blood thirsty evil slaver/rapist/murderer or whatever else ive seen people accuse Hob of being even in his modern era.

We can argue the faults of the show downplaying slavery for sure. Its a valid criticsm. We can argue that not enough time was given in the show to show that Hob had changed and regretted his former actions. We can critique these things based on what the show has and has not told us, and also pepper in information provided in the comics and what we know about future Hob panels as well.

But when it comes to the blank spaces in between frames, in between cut screens, we can do whatever we like. Because that is where meta analysis ends and fanfiction begins. You wanna write about Hob joining the abolitionist movement and fighting hard to end slavery? You can. You wanna write about him ignoring Dreams advice and continuing to be a brutal slaver right up until slavery was ended in England sure, you go for it. But don't call either of these "headcanons" meta analysis.

Dont use meta analysis as a cover to shit on fandom. The minute you resort to name calling and mockery its no longer meta. No matter how frustrated or upset you are with the current fandom situation. There is always space to criticise fandom. But ask yourself what your end goal is here? What are you trying to achieve? Is it truly because you are on a righteous path to end fandom racism? Or do you just really hate a popular ship and want people to stop shipping it? If it's the former, then focus on that, ask what solutions we can put in place? Where we can truly tackle it on a larger scale, raising awareness of things that people may not realise are racist but are common tropes in fandom (like how making female characters all mothers or sassy gay best friends is misogynistic or how certain stereotypes in fantasy creatures are anti semitic) but if its the latter, then its disingenuous to use racism in fandom as a shield to hide your ship hate. It reduces an important topic to something shallow and irrelevant.

In ending this rant I will just say this. I'm not interested in engaging further on this topic. I'm legit gonna start blocking if anyone attempts to twist my words here. The civil discussions on this matter ended when people started name calling and flinging around accusations without basis. I am more than happy to engage separately in ways to improve fandom spaces for poc, because thats important, but ship hating has no place in that discussion. Drop that aspect, and there'll be less resistance in these topics.

[enderexplorer1212]

Talkin' Finals Season Blues

Just last night a crazy thought came to me I dreamt I was walkin' outside my own body I went to the doctor the very next day To see what kinda words they could say Said it as just a bad dream I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though Just take your meds and go to class, you'll be good

I said, "Hold on, Doc, I can't quite tell who I am" They said "Nurse, get a bed this boy's not sane" He asked my name, I said "End" As I sat down at the psychiatric desk He said "Tell me about it"

Well the whole thing started after 3 o'clock And it's still going on right now no mock I was layin' in my bed with some insomnia When I left to get to my Monday trouble Knowing that I stayed up all night

Well, I got up and walked around But can't figure out what about I stood a-wondering which day is through I went back to my room and wrote this lyric and I wrote this brand new song too It was a weird day

Well, I then went to my Classics class And it was online so I had a blast Talkin' about something that I should've known I left that class and got depression I guess that makes sense though, haven't slept for 'while

Down I went to about 1 o'clock then Recitation I tried to last those sixty minutes or less But I know that I tried my plain best 'Fore I hallucinate

Well I spent my time how you'd expect from me I don't believe you need the deets I spent it all being awfully unproductive When I stopped I thought I should be doing things But I guess that's not what happened last time

Well I went to my Math class, or tried to But there was nothing to pursue I tried the damn livestream he had But I don't think I actually did bad Because I know damn well what I do in this whole part

Well after that I didn't do much So I just tuned out my work such But around 8 I checked spanish work And figured out what I should fork I went to bed or at least tried It was hard since I had taken a 25 mg med But I eventually got it to end

I can't tell what I'll do when it's tuesday But maybe I will live to say That I should have listened to all my proffesors When they say don't blow off your work Hopefully Khan Academy'll save my skin Or else this will be my end And I would die

Well the doctor who was still listening to me Sayin' "Hey, none of this is real you see" The doctor is just you writing this down on notes And I thought that would just be a great metaphorical quote "That's pretty meta" I said

Well, now time passed and now it seems That what I'm writing is therapy Everybody is themselves But I can't be anyone else Half of the time I can feel just fine all of the time Some of the time I can't be feeling good or feel fine But sometimes I think I should feel myself and feel left out I think this song was kind of dragged out These aren't good song lyrics, these are rants and rambles From my mind

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Would you rather see GB buff Zane's other trees, buff everybody else to be on par with Seein dead Zane, or nerf Seein dead?

Why only stick with one? Let's go for D, A mix of everything, plus other class mod buffs (for all!). I can't imagine Seein Dead Zane is the strongest VH atm (as far as I know, I haven't been keeping up with meta because this game beyond my own little bubble is kinda making me sad-o lately. I thought that award went to IB Moze nowadays), but regardless of my knowledge yes I'd genuinely love to see everyone at the same power level. Buffs ahoy! Or nerfs. Whichever works, so long as the game is actually fun and satisfying to play.

I'd personally like them to swap the Seein Red capstone with Seein Dead, but without the +25% kill skill buff. (aka: Seein Dead (mod): activate kill skills on action skill start. Get +25% kill skill efficiency. Seein Red (capstone): Zane has a chance to activate Kill Skills when shooting/damaging an enemy). Seein Dead would still be his top mod probably, but at least it would open him up for other playstyles (somewhat- we still actually need damage in his other trees). He's almost unplayable end game without that mod, because of his reliance on the skills it buffs, and I'd love to try a late-game build on him that isn't centered around kill skills for once. I tried to make a Conductor build and gave up after it took 4x as long to do anything. His new mod (won't go into more specifics bc spoilers) is looking a tiny bit promising for an Under Cover build, but we'll have to see how well that actually plays out when I get down into it. I get the feeling the damage output is going to be 'not good'. But I will be very happy if I'm wrong!!

That said, I really want to be able to use any other class mod at M10. Op8/10, my main VH Zer0 had the sniper OR melee build and even for the melee build (I am a dirty melee zer0 main) I could swap between two legendary mods. In Bl3 that difference is felt even harder because class mods are supposed to give us unique skills. But it's a pretty goddamn easy choice between "get a random dot when freezing an enemy" or "activate all your kill skills and also they get a 25% damage buff". They could've buffed Death Follows Close and Seein' Red, you know to match pre-release values (and maybe also swapped their positions back to how they were iunno just a thought), but instead dropped that class mod on us (BEHIND A PAY WALL NO LESS) and said 'whelp. We did it, boys. Zane complainers are no more'. If anybody wants to play Zane late game, they've gotta drop money on the Handsome Jackpot dlc to get their hands on the mod. That's so... Messed up? Like it feels like they locked his fix behind a pay wall and a gear slot. Like, Zane mains don't get to experiment with the new class mods that drop because we know it's never gonna top Seein Dead. Even if it's kind of 'okay' in comparison. So maybe buff his other mods? Fix Zane's skill trees? Both?? Like why. Okay. Hear me out. Seein Red: activate kill skills on AS start. Wonderful! CCnC: (potentially) infinite AS uptime. Cool! But trying to mix those two together? There's no synergy. Why does Good Misfortune buff Zane's AS uptime when the literal next skill in the tree rewards short uptime and fast cooldown? Same with Borrowed Time. There's so much... Non-synergy in his trees it's almost comical. Fixing Seein' Red would open up a ton of possibilities. Running a CCnC/Seein' Red build could actually be possible if they made it so Seein Red activated Kill Skills on damage. Or! Fix CCnC so each proc of it counts as both action skill end AND action skill start. Do *something* to make his skills synergize instead of being polar opposites.

And it's not just Zane, but he's the biggest example in my books since I know him the best. I hear Amara only has 1 (2?) good mods, too. She definitely only seems to have 1 good action skill and it's unfortunately the Phaselock redux. They could buff her other two skills, make phaseslam or phasecast actually hit hard at later levels, but they don't. It's the whole Deathtrap thing again, except now they proved its possible for AS to deal damage in m10 with iron bear and Blane (Zane's clone) so what's the deal? Also, I'd love to see Amara actually deal decent damage with DoTs at higher levels given how many of her skills are dedicated to them. It would make that one class mod that applies your AS element dot to all enemies hit by your AS really cool for mobbing.

So, okay, clearly I'd love to see everyone balanced at one level, but honestly I think they need to get to max level before they do that. I don't think we're going to have a 'Salvador' situation in 3 unless they fork up the new skill trees Big Time, so I'd love to see all the VHs at one power level (whatever they decide is best). The constant tweaking to max levels and adding new skills/gear/Mayhem levels is doing not great things to the balance (or fun-ness, imo). I get the game is still in development, and I get that they wanna buff longetivity with grinding with each level cap, but my biggest wish is that before they add new content, that they'll fix the stuff we have now so there's a base to go off of. VH skills, class mods, guns, grenades, Mayhem levels, all of it. I especially want them to test stuff at M10, given what happened with the Guardian Takedown on launch.

I know the borderlands games aren't... The best... At scaling/balancing issues late-game. But I really hope they will try to fix that this time. It is extremely disheartening to see every patch/hotfix that Zane is still... Basically borked at the base level. He's had a handful of really good fixes (stacking kill skills, the buff to quick breather) but a lot of his trees/skills are still pretty messed up, especially when you think about synergy. Also, you know, just saying, the Under Cover tree is just... So bad after tier 3. I used to vouch for CCnC, but why use CCnC when we have good misfortune which is 3x better with none of the restrictions? And why use his ice-based life steal skill, when you can get life steal at tier 2 on *any* enemy, frozen or not? Someone just needs to scrap the whole tree and remake it from the ground up. That capstone is... Blegh. So bad. I have not seen a single viable, m10 build with that capstone. You can make Seein Red work. You can make Double Barrel work. Fuckin distributed denial? N O P E. I tried. So got-damg hard. But it's a headache when it doesn't work with at LEAST half the shield effects in the game and you don't know which ones it won't work with without testing and also it's mainly for multi-player and none of my friends wanna play because the balance is so forked and...

Aw geez. This just turned into a rant about things I want fixed haha. Sorry about that, it's late and I get cranky and rambly at night.

So uh. To answer the question: yes. Just. YES.

Tl;dr: Someone please fix Zane I want him to be playable late-game without players needing to drop money on DLCs. plz thx.

[cryoflyte]

WE WERE WARNED

I was going to tweet this but it turns out Twitter only lets you thread up to 25 tweets in a draft. That’s insufficient. So fuck it, I’ll do it here. I’ve been ranting about this since season 1 (back when it looked like just a tiny blip on an otherwise great show, rather than our first warning sign that these people might have no fucking clue what they’re doing), it’s actually managed to get worse since then, I’m not over it, I’m not getting over it. 

Gather round, dear Voltron Twitterati (or tumblrati or whatever y’all are called around here). Let Cryo the Salt Phoenix regale you with ALL the reasons why Pidge's gender flip being a plot twist was, and remains, completely fucking stupid.

First, a couple of external biases to acknowledge:

1) I feel Pidge was the worst possible character to gender flip, precisely because it was so obvious. He's spent 30+ years getting "lol DotU Pidge wore a headband and had a squeaky voice, maybe he was a girl!" jokes. Buying into them is a disservice to both the character, and the stated idea that VLD Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't fit a norm. Okay sure, you took the character who got mocked for not sufficiently conforming to his gender, flipped him, then went "look how our Pidge represents not fitting in with the norms!" Nah, guys. Not how it works.

2) ...of course that's if you believe them suddenly saying Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't conform to begin with. All we heard in the beginning was "We wanted to make him a girl! Look, he's a girl! Girl, girl, girl! No, not trans, not nonbinary, GIRL! Look how smart we are for making him a girl!" That and how Lauren didn't like DotU Pidge, so she decided she needed to make him more appealing. To her. Which...

3) Pidge has, in all prior canons (possibly excluding DDP? Was it ever fully explained there?), been an alien. In VF (which supposedly Lauren did watch but didn't like him any better in) he was explicitly an alien ninja. So, you know, forgive me for being a little bitter that we got "the only way to make Pidge appealing is make him a girl. Now here, have five seasons of Keith the alien ninja!"

4) My complaint is not really against the concept of gender flipping Pidge. Had they done it upfront as they did the changes to Sven and Allura, I'd have been somewhat irked for the aforementioned reasons, but hey, new reboot, new rules. My complaint is about them lying to our faces for three months (up to and including Bex bluntly saying "Pidge is a boy" in an interview) in service of perhaps the most pointless plot twist in franchise history.

And that brings me to our feature presentation. Get the popcorn, y'all, I've got the salt.

Someone name for me a single solitary moment, watching the first three episodes, where there was even a hint that Pidge was wrestling with his (gonna use male pronouns until the reveal) identity. No, not "oh hey if you go back with knowledge of the twist this was foreshadowing it!" A point where prior to knowing about the twist you went "huh, what is Pidge not telling the rest of the team?" and it was NOT answered by him revealing that Commander Holt was his father. Seriously—please point one out to me. Pidge's premise is very consistent in the first three (and a bit beyond, but I'll get to that) episodes: he has his own reasons and priorities for being there, he'll do the bare minimum of teamwork necessary to achieve his own mission, and he's not there to make friends. Everything he does is consistent with this read. Nothing is pointing to further complexity, him hiding something totally unrelated. There's the picture, but it's at best confusing: I just figured it was his brother with HIS girlfriend, to be honest. Were we really intended to interpret a sad look at an ambiguous photograph as "Pidge is hiding another completely different big secret related to that picture!" rather than "Pidge is sad about his family, like he keeps saying"?

It would have been simplicity itself to add actual hints. Instead of Hunk just presenting "look, it's his girlfriend!" as fact when he finds the picture, "who's the girl? She's cute!" and have Pidge get defensive over that. When they're putting on their armor, maybe skip Hunk making the first of 500 throwaway fat jokes in favor of Pidge looking uncomfortable at the thought of, you know... changing in front of the others? Have him duck behind the armor case? Do something. Do ANYTHING. 

Even after the internal reveal in episode 3, we get nothing. Allura specifically drills her about "hey, do you have a big personal secret?" and she doesn't look the slightest bit worried or defensive, she just looks confused. Pidge is not that good an actress, we know that from Lance having to save her butt back at the Garrison. Also from seven seasons of watching her complete inability to keep her emotions in check, ever.

Pidge's internal struggle is never once presented as being about her gender, or about how the team thinks of her. It's about whether she's going to put aside her own personal priorities for the sake of the team. This is the struggle that's been built up. This is the struggle that she's invoked and settled in the climactic moment with Haxus: "I'm not a child. I'm a paladin of Voltron!" Haxus could just as easily have called her a "little girl" if we were supposed to be reading any sort of gender conflict into this.

(Of course as it is Haxus didn't know she was a girl—more on that later—but that's purely arbitrary. A show that wanted to sell Pidge having a gender conflict would have made Haxus realize she was a girl, especially given Coran's "we were supposed to think you were a boy?" in the next episode. You can’t just pretend it’s so obvious then have nobody else notice it ever.)

Now, I of course acknowledge not every worthy plot twist has to be able to be guessed by the audience prior to the reveal. But it doesn't work here. Because here's the reveal: Pidge is all "I was afraid you'd think differently of me" and the whole team is all "of course not!" and that's that.

Wait, she was WHAT now?

We have not seen Pidge struggling with this. At ALL. There is zero emotional weight to this scene because there were absolutely no stakes shown. You cannot have her say "I've been worried you'd think of me differently" when you haven't fucking shown her worrying that they'd think of her differently. This is writing 101, guys. And then Shiro is all "owning who you are is going to make you a better Paladin"—WHEN HASN'T SHE? Literally the thing she's been shown struggling to accept is THAT SHE'S A PALADIN! Not that she's a girl!

This reveal is bad. It's so, so bad. The only way I could make sense of it after first watching it was assuming they'd wanted to make her trans and chickened out at the last second. Nothing said in this scene seems to be part of the same show we've been watching for the past five episodes. It's not clever or interesting, it's just bizarre.

But now let's take a step back. Because in order to set up this terrible, pointless, non-event of a plot twist, we have also done great violence to certain characters. We have turned Pidge and basically all of Galaxy Garrison into morons.

Is Pidge not supposed to be a genius? What exactly was her thought process here? The whole wide world of possible disguises was open to her, and she went "I know! I'll pretend to be a boy, and I'll make myself look identical to my brother, the famously MIA space explorer. Nobody will catch on." Really, Katie? You couldn't buy some hair dye, maybe a spray tan?

And then nobody fucking does catch on. The Kerberos mission is so well-known it's being used as an object lesson for cadets, Pidge flips out every time the mission is brought up, and not one person thinks "hey, this kid who looks exactly like Matt Holt totally freaks out whenever the mission Matt Holt disappeared on is mentioned." This does not hold up if you think about it for more than two seconds.

Why does she even need to look like Matt for meta purposes? Oh right, because of the picture that was attempting to carry the entire load of this twist. Great. That's totally worth the blatant insult to everyone’s intelligence, not to mention the affront to common sense.

On that note, one specific point of the disguise: why does Pidge wear glasses? We know she doesn't need them. She takes them off to wear her helmet, Katie never wore them. And sure, they make her look less like Katie Holt... but they make her look more like Matt Holt. This was fairly weird even in season 1. It only gets weirder when we finally meet up with Matt.

Oh hey, guys. She's not just wearing a pair of fake glasses that make her look more like her famously MIA brother. She's wearing his literal glasses. Which, incidentally, we know are functional prescription glasses because he says he doesn't need them anymore because the Garrison fixed his eyes.

How many people did this go through without anyone pointing out that wearing glasses you don't need actively fucks with your vision? 

Yes, I know this is a show about alien space cats that I'm holding to standards of opthalmological realism. But most television manages to understand how glasses work. And again, it's just pointless. Why not just have Katie wear glasses to begin with? Oh right, because we need the guy in the picture to wear glasses and the girl not to because SMART PEOPLE DOING A PLOT TWIST, DERP!

It didn't work, guys. It didn't work at all. You know how people figured it out early? Because you gave her a female VA and we've had thirty years of "lol Pidge looks like a girl" so hey look, the picture confirms the meta theory that people were pitching even before we saw the character designs. Doesn't add even a shred of impact to the reveal. The only way to add impact to the reveal was if she’d actually been worrying that the others wouldn’t accept her being a girl. But no.

And after all this dumb, what exactly is there to show for it? Well... nothing. Nobody else in the show knows she's a girl. Aliens consistently refer to her as male. The team has used female pronouns for her what, once in seven seasons? Miss the right four episodes and even a viewer wouldn't have a clue.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the stated rationale that gender shouldn't matter. Know how else they could've shown that? JUST MAKING HER A GIRL IN THE FIRST PLACE. I mean, if they're going to crow about how brilliant they are for "plot twist, she's a girl!" maybe people should at least be able to tell she's a girl after said twist. Or hey, even better, they could make her trans, or genderfluid, or non-binary, put in some rep that would actually be brave and interesting. But no, instead we get "she's totally a cis girl, but it doesn't matter and nobody can tell because she's there to represent people who don't fit neatly into a box!" That's pretty much the worst of all options, guys. Good job.

And then everyone went “OMG yes! You made Pidge a girl! Yay rep, you’re so smart!” without the slightest shred of critical thought on how it was handled, while a tiny handful of us hoped it was just a fluke, the product of a showrunner pet project that didn’t signify anything for the rest of the series.

Then we got Keith’s Galra reveal, which somehow managed to be even worse.

Then we got season 4 making the bulk of season 3 immediately irrelevant.

Then we got two years on a space whale.

Then we got season 7, where everything is garbage. 

Every season has just been more and more ridiculous plot twists in place of character or consistency. It turns out nope, if we wanted to see where this show was going, the horrible Pidge twist was the ONLY part of season 1 we should’ve looked at. Let the salt flow freely.

Okay, I think that's it. Thank you for coming to my TED talk?