#why was this such a huge chunk of this season when it got reduced to SIX EPISODES

[acerikus]

Finished umbrella academy season 4. What the fuck

[evolutionsvoid]

Welp, here is an entry I have been dreading for some time. Now you may assume this worry and hesitancy is because I have something against the species in focus here, and that would be incorrect. I got nothing against these creatures, I am totally fine with them. No, my issue is that this beast has a....certain look to them. A rather...monstrous appearance. Or, more specifically, is very dragon looking. "Of course it looks like a dragon, Chlora, because it is a dragon! Ya silly knot head!" are words I can already hear ringing from around the globe when they see what I am writing about today. It is a big ol dragon, and we all know how Chlora feels about dragons!

But take a good look at the Velue! See its impressive size! Its scaly hide! Its serpentine neck! Bear witness to its strength and mighty flame! "Now there is a dragon if I ever did see one," you may say. And this is the part where I dig my fingers into my headcap and groan at what is to come. Because the Velue is a grand beast of legend and power, who appears to be the perfect candidate for the True Dragon classification, and I got to be the person everyone hates in pointing out that IT IS NOT A TRUE DRAGON!

Oh how I must restrain my quill in this entry! How I desire nothing more to scribble pages upon pages of angry rants at the dragon legends and complete mess of classifications! Yet I must contain myself, lest Eucella reduce me and my writings to mulch. But I stand with what I write, because I am correct, that the Velue is not a true dragon. Because we have to remember that this classification is for reptilian beasts and I can already hear people scream "how is that not a reptile?!" It has scales! It has a snake-like look to it! That has to be a reptile! Yeah, well fish have scales too! And some mammals have scale-like structures too! SO I GUESS THOSE MUST BE REPTILES TOO, YA GNARLED GALL INFESTE-

Now let us professionally discuss this matter at hand. Professionally and politely! The Velue certainly has a scaled look to it, and its appearance does look reptilian, but deep research into their remains and structures have found that they do not align with typical reptiles, either old or new. Instead, the species we find most in common with them is the Tarasque! And if you have seen the Tarasque, then you know that those beasts are very much mammals! They have way more hair and the usual look for a mammalian, while it is much more reduced in the Velue, so what gives? Well, the current theory is that the Velue is like an ancient ancestor of the Tarasque, and possibly something that has been dubbed a "protomammal." A creature that is tied to mammals, but is old enough that it was around before they got all the stuff we associate mammals with! It is wild stuff to learn about, I must say! So despite its six limbs and scaled body, it is not a True Dragon! And I have been informed by my editor that we move away from this subject right away!

The Velue is found in temperate climates, often dwelling in forests. The shifts in temperature that come from changing seasons may be why they have such a shaggy body, helping them keep warm during the colder months. Their long necks are for getting food from trees, be it meat or fruit, as they are omnivorous (though with heavier leanings on the meat side). Velue live solitary lives, staking out huge chunks of territory for them to hunt in and call home. With their size and needs, there is certainly not enough room to share with others of their kind!

When it comes to hunting, their large size makes pursuit a no-go. Can't really chase down things with their slow gait and hefty weight. Instead, they rely more on ambush, letting prey come to them, or using their long necks to snare animals from above who thought themselves out of reach. Their heads can snap forth like a viper, lightning quick, to nab food before it can flee. On the other end, they have a venomous spur on the tip of their tail that can drop food and foe alike with blinding speed and crazy precision. And when all else fails: burn it! The Velue will use its flame to start small fires that flush prey out, forcing them in a direction of their choosing. And if their food burns to death, well, still a win!

Obviously, not much challenges a Velue, as they are heavily scaled, covered in sharp spines and have the weapons mentioned above. Yet, some larger carnivores may try their luck on the young or sick, while hunters and slayers seek them for other gains. Their quick neck and tail makes finding a blind spot difficult, and one wrong move can get you killed. Flame breath scorches any in their wake, and their huge bulk can crush foe who get too close. Other Velue may challenge them for territory or breeding rights, and these battles are settled by a duel of tails and neck. They coil their necks around each other and try to wrestle them down, all while the tails jab and stab in an attempt to achieve dominance. Watching one of these fights is fascinating, but best done at a good distance away. As they wrestle and shove each other around, they can cause a whole lot of collateral damage with their bulk. You would think they were going to knock down the entire forest from the sheer din!

In the regions they are found, Velue are called "dragons" and treated as such. To that, I will keep my mouth shut, because if their culture views them in that way, then who am I to tell them no? In cultural perspective, yes, let them be dragons, but if you dare tread over into my field with that idea, then I will start getting testy! Regardless of my opinions, the Velue are creatures that both inspire and terrify. Their likeness can be found on many crests and shields, and numerous artworks bear their visage. Unfortunately, their powerful presence means people like to hunt them for sport and bragging rights, while their nasty temper and hunger gives people the excuse to slay them. Velue will attack farms and towns if food is scarce, and they don't like intruders into their territory. Thus, conflicts are abundant, and many seek to kill them to gain glory and trophies. Velue materials are highly valued, and I have even seen coats made of their fur!

One last note I want to bring up is a new debate, or I guess idea, that has come up. With how many "dragons" that aren't "true dragons," some folk have gotten the idea that we create a group for mammalian dragon-like creatures known as "Dragon Beasts." That way we can lump all them together into something more dragon sounding! And to that I say, we already HAVE dragon beasts! That is the term we use for any creature with dragon-like features that isn't a dragon! What, we going to use the same name again?! Why does it have to be called an official dragon in science?!What is the hang up!? Call anything you want a dragon, I don't care! As long as it remains in the realm of common names and public views, I can tolerate it (kind of), but when you come trying to actually classify them as such, then I got a problem! Yes, Eucella, I know you told me to stop ranting about it, but I WILL! AND YOU CAN'T STOP M

Chlora Myron

Dryad Natural Historian

----------------------------------------

As promised! Some more dragons!

[esther-dot]

If Martin can finish his story in 2 books is something I have though about too. We drag d&d for rushing the last seasons & reducing number of episodes. But they still had 3 seasons after s5. GOT had also removed minor characters by merging storylines. I do think many major plot points will be same in next books. So I am not sure how he will manage to do all that without adding one more book. Unless he follows d&d, who moved characters across Westeros in one episode, it seems impossible to me lol

(in reference to this ask)

I agree. In some things, the fandom conflates valid criticism of D&D with unreasonable expectations. Martin said that he was writing an unadaptable story. He purposed to do that. The man worked in TV, we have to believe he knew what he was doing with all the locations and characters. He knew a truly faithful adaption couldn't happen, and he consistently said GoT was a faithful adaptation, so I think what D&D and HBO gave him was beyond what he had expected. They fucked it up in the end because nothing made sense, but deleting characters and redistributing stuff...that's standard when adapting a work. People do this for much more straightforward books. Of course they had to streamline something as massive as ASOIAF. It’s on D&D that they failed to make sense of the main characters/the ending as a whole even though they took these measures to get there, but a lot of people hate on GoT for things that Martin has since confirmed (Stannis burning Shireen, King Bran) or will 100% happen in the books (Dark Dany, Sansa in the North, Arya sailing away…). It’s not D&D’s fault a lot of us hate certain developments. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Also, Martin doesn't have to worry about budget, the ability of his actors to deliver certain things, viewership, getting renewed, etc etc all those things showrunners have to deal with. And then, instead of the books ever reaching a point where things are simplified, he keeps adding more characters, and they each have their own cadre which just takes what is already beyond the scope of a show to new levels of un-doable. And, I need to point out that he is so good at writing these additional characters, the fandom, people who are obsessed with these books and have been for years and years, don’t even know who is a main character and who's been introduced for a narrative purpose in someone else's arc anymore. We’re still routinely told Sansa doesn’t matter, that she isn’t part of the big five, so some of the criticism D&D get is more a reflection of the fandom’s misinterpretation of things than a failure on their part.

I also think that Martin’s belief that he would stay ahead of D&D was a problem. If he hadn’t thought that, hopefully he would have been more direct and told them exactly who matters and why, the entirety of their arcs from the get go which I think could have reigned in D&D’s worst instincts if they’d been schooled on it all from the beginning. The fandom thought this story was about the rise of House Targaryen, and since it looks like D&D knew Dany was bad news from s1, in some ways, they understood the story better than a huge chunk of us (scary thought). But I don’t think they had it impressed upon them that this was actually about the rise of House Stark or why Bran would be king until they’d gone too far down a certain path. Seeing as none of us can really answer the how or why of King Bran, it’s unreasonable to expect them to understand the importance of things the writer hasn’t written yet. I’m very curious what Martin told them in their conversations because I had the feeling they were trying to get his story out but found it impossible to do so due to their limitations/the direction they had taken and that’s why the ending is tacked on. Anyway, I agree with you that we can bitch about D&D, but there’s a lot of ground to cover to reach an end point that leaves a chunk of the book fandom scratching their heads and some of us in denial. They should have done more to get there in a reasonable way, but how was always going to be messy because right now, with what we have, it’s inexplicable. 

Recently I wondered if the biggest mistake was Martin not explaining why the precanon stuff matters. As in, the pre canon stuff establishes that it is the Martells who need justice against the Lannisters and the Starks who have bad blood with the Targs. The show really focused on the Stark v Lannister idea so as a show watcher, I found that resolution entirely unsatisfactory. And, a lot of show fans didn't understand the horror of a Targ with dragons arriving in Westeros, the history of wrongs that the Starks have with them, so they thought Sansa was at fault for having an issue with Targs and they didn't understand the position Jon was in when he found out he was a Targ. His grandfather murdered his grandfather. His grandfather nearly nearly ended the Starks. Jon being the one to end the Targs...it’s a nice response to that precanon stuff/Ned’s torment over his decision to hide the Targ baby. Knowing the facts about characters doesn't mean you understand why it matters, how it works in the story, and if the point of this pre canon stuff wasn't impressed on D&D, it doesn't feel like a problem to delete Aegon and Arianne, to rewrite Dorne, because they don't understand why they're being written into the story in the first place. They guessed R+L=J, but clearly didn’t understand why it mattered.

As for Martin managing to bring it home in two books, I follow people who believe that Dany will never go North, and if that’s the case, the zipping across the country will be far less. She will finally get to Westeros, remain in the South, and Jon will go South for Dance of Dragons 2.0. No back and forth. So, the traveling around really may not be the big problem. There is a lot that needs to happen though, and I’m not sure what all will happen when. The Starks have to retake the North, and I’m not sure that they’ll defeat the Others in Winds. But if we push that to ADOS, that becomes a very busy book. 👀 And after that (or possibly concurrently?) we have Dance of Dragons 2.0, and the political situation to resolve. Bran will have to end up South for a kingsmoot, right? As people die off Martin will be eliminating POVs which feels like it should be helpful, and going from Winterfell to KL is something they happened in the first book, but Martin has so many more characters/POVs/storylines now… If the show was accurate in the Dany & co going North idea and then everyone going South (which I entertain), that is a whole heck of a lot to fit into one book. 😬 You’re right. Looking at the endpoint and where we are, it’s a Herculean task to bring it home.

[elizabethsharmon]

reblog if you feel disrespected by skam france and demand official apology

below a full list of all the offenses:

Manon going back to Ch*rbage after he emotionally manipulated her to not testify against his brother (who got her drunk, took nudes of her, and kept blackmailing her) because “after all nothing happened = he didn’t r*pe her”

Making Arthur and Alexia a couple in the first place just so he could cheat on her with Noee and lie to her for weeks and then having her break up with him, only for them to suddenly being good friends in s6 and kissing in the last clip (which ngl almost made me throw up)

Bringing up Lucas’ insecurities and abandonment issues but never letting him talk about them with Eliott; posting some damage control posts on instagram instead and pretending like Lucas is fine with Eliott kissing Lola for the film (which he clearly wasn’t, the writers seem to not know him at all)

Wasting time to edit Tiff’s head onto different animals and posting things on that cyberbullying account that no one cared about instead of posting something from the grew + the worst social media ever

Not giving us a proper goodbye to the grew and not really saying anything about their future

Lying to the fans about god knows what we will see in s6 and baiting them to watch even though legit nothing of it happened

Not continuing Arthur’s story in s6 (fine, I don’t really care about that but we were supposed to see it so ???? )

Treating some fans more privileged than the others, giving them spoilers about the new seasons, inviting them on set

FranceTV Slash and SkamLaSerie instas mocking fans in their stories - saying stuff like Lola will cause the break up between Daphne and Basile, “addiction can be useful for flirting” (yikes), creating a ship war between fans in s5 by posting two photos of Alexia/Arthur and Noee/Arthur with a caption “we love them both, we can’t choose”, the host of the live of s6 calling people on tumblr “obsessed” and not apologizing when people said they’re offended by that, blocking people who were asking questions about why the SA was never mentioned again during the live

Liking all the praise but constantly ignoring fans when they were asking questions about writing choices and then blocking them

the rest of 50 offenses under cut cause turns out they really disrespected me more than I thought

feel free to add whatever you want if i forgot about something

None of the girls really apologizing to Imane at the end of season 4 after all they’ve put her through and after they took the side of the racist (who already had a history of drama with Emma) instead of their friend

Taking away Noee’s integrity and making her say “I love you” out loud (which was totally ooc cause an episode earlier she said LSF is her language and she doesn’t like her voice) after Arthur (who was leading her on for weeks) told her they can’t be together

Male gaze in s5 because even though the sign language is a body language, the way camera was lingering on her flat, bare stomach, a few times showing a close up on her boobs during the “song-dance” scene was male gaze

Lack of beautiful, slow-mo, piano music scenes for Alexia with Arthur staring at her awestruck because apparently she’s not worthy enough

Completely sidelining the deaf/hoh storyline in favour of cheating/love triangle plot

Reducing Camille to a translator and randomly making him Mika’s boyfriend because why the hell not

Completely forgetting about Mika and Lisa after s5 (did they ever find that roommate????)

Noee kissing Arthur right after he shared his traumatic story with her and overshadowing domestic abuse with cheating

Absolutely no follow-up about P*trick and domestic abuse after s5 

Having P*trick cheat on Arthur’s mom with Emma’s mom because they’re all one big family

Random crackfic farm episode that didn’t make absolutely ANY sense

Killing Fifi rip [*]

Arthur getting hit by The Car and being perfectly fine the next day

The Boy Squad becoming cheating apologists, Lucas giving Arthur the same advice he gave to Emma in s1 and Yann (who got hurt because of it back then) supporting it

Character regression, especially for Lucas, and the whole boy squad acting out of character

Continuously trying to make Lucas look like a bad guy because they knew we would forgive him everything

Arthur suddenly liking art even though it hasn’t been ever mentioned before and his whole instagram was filled with space related posts

Parallels between Eliott/Lucas and Arthur/Noee

Catherine - or lack of her - aka the queerbait from s3

Completely ignoring character’s birthdays - Basile and Manon (second year in a row)

Not introducing Lola before and making s6 about a complete stranger but still expecting the fans to like her from the get-go and watch the show by baiting the fans with the promise of “unofficial mains” (Daphne and Eliott)

Forcing the Lola/Eliott friendship and selling it in the promo as sister/brother relationship instead of writing it in a way that would make it flow naturally

Making Eliott Otteli Urbex King only to forget the plot after more or less three clips; also having Eliott hide the truth from Lucas for months and then pretending to resolve it in a text to Lola ??? which didn’t make sense in the first place but then it turned out that it was just damage control

Making Lola hook up with much older guys than her over and over again and having one of them s*xually assault just so Eliott could play the hero and save her; never bringing that up again

Making Eliott punch people left and right - anything to protect the ladies, Sofiane punching Ch*rbage in s4 can agree I guess

Making Eliott Otteli Urbex King only to forget the plot after more or less three clips; also having Eliott hide the truth from Lucas for months and then pretending to resolve it in a text to Lola ??? which didn’t make sense in the first place but then it turned out that it was just damage control

Letting Eliott talk about his past and insecurities only so Lola could prey on them later and emotionally manipulate him into drinking

Also Eliott not letting Lola apologize and brushing off her apologies because apparently that was nothing at all and it’s okay to let people walk you over and manipulate you 

Not letting Lucas speak for himself

The whole Lux & Obscurus plot, having Eliott write the film about his and Lucas’ relationship and what his love means to Eliott only to have Lola play in it, not adjusting the script so that it would fit the change and still keeping the Eliott/Lola kiss as a big fuck you to the fandom instead of having it end with a forehead touch and fade to black especially that they haven’t even showed it to us again during the screening of Eliott’s film (but it made all the other couples turned on enough to kiss in that exact moment so maybe it had a purpose) (it didn’t what the fuck was that)

Also acting like Lucas can’t spare a few hours to film it with Eliott cause he has to sTuDy FoR tHe BaC when they were filming it in the middle of a night on Friday, how is that realistic

Not giving Eliott any friends of his own and pretending like he’s a lone wolf even though he’s the biggest sunshine ever and he’s naturally drawn to people; acting like there are no other studens at his film school who could help him film his project so instead he let Lola find random people who knew nothing about filming to help him; having a bunch of random people at the screening of his film and if they were supposed to be his “friends” from the film school then I’m gonna throw hands

Acting like we will see what “minute by minute” really means and “see Eliott like we’ve never seen him before” which never happened

Switching POV for two clips only and they all revolved around Lola because they decided to go with su*cide attempt in episode 9

Also ending that episode with a su*cide note even though the next clip was before midnight on Friday

Giving Lola the worst therapist ever and a really poor attempt at cheering her up from the nurse

Enforcing that “having a loved one” is “the real reason to change” instead of sending the message that you should change for yourself first and foremost and showing that reaching out for professional help is a good thing and can really help you

Acting like ED can be cured by italian cuisine and not mentioning it again for weeks; having Daphne ask Lola not to go to rehab because they have each other and a few clips after that she’s suddenly after her first therapy (love that for her but there’s something huge missing here)

Making Lola’s life a living hell and a misery porn for 10 weeks straight

Making P*trick, Thierry and Lola’s biological dads The Worst (men are trash but it would be nice to see some good parenting on the show)

Giving all the members of La Mif two or three personality traits and not fleshing out their characters

Giving Maya a girlfriend because a season without a love triangle is a waste

Not really developing Mayla well and having their first kiss right after Eliott/Lola cursed kiss as a preemptive damage control to shut us up

Never mentioning why Lola was doing

Wasting a good chunk of the season on Tiff and that insta account and ending it with “she’s addicted to social media”

Giving Yann like one line each season after s3

Reducing Sofiane to the background dancer in s5 and s6

Hating female characters

F/M friendships are only possible if the guy is gay, otherwise cheating always had to be involved

and you know. in general. pretty much everything they did after s3.

[bittersweetcandybowl]

About that update schedule

Veronica: HEY EVERYBODY!!! The chapter is finally over next week!! And what a crazy one it was, huh??? Ending right in the midst of Halloween season, I so totally intended that…..

Anyway, next chapter will be a bit more chill but with lots of moments to look forward to! And after that, there are big momentous chapters we’ve been building towards for a while. And we’ll be able to enjoy them alllllllllll on a three-day-a-week schedule, right??

:’D

RIGHT?

Well.. allow me to be incredibly disappointing and admit that I don’t want to change the one-day-a-week schedule.. not yet.

I definitely want to get back to the original update schedule as soon as possible, but I thought I’d have the BIG SECRET PROJECT done or mostly done by the time “Witch Hunt” ended. That turned out to not be the case! I still have a lot more of it to do, and while I wanted to keep our promise, I just don’t think it’s feasible.

While there’s enough buffer to return to the regular schedule for the rest of 2019, I know how this kind of problem turns out. I’ll eventually start to panic as the buffer dwindles, and Souppy will be forced to dig up something old or schedule a comic that was meant to be BCI after the chapter that’s currently updating ends to maintain it. It happened with Grave Concern, it happened with Everyday Life. I hate it!! It feels like updating for the sake of updating, and I want to avoid that.

I’ve grown so much as an artist over the years, pages just don’t take me 15 minutes like they used to in 2008. Depending on the backgrounds, the amount of characters involved, the complexity of dialogue, some nightmare pages can take up to two days to complete! Part of the reason I got the estimation wrong was that from the slower-schedule announcement in December 2018, it took me until MAY to rebuild a 50-page buffer, because all these pages you’ve been reading have streetscapes and five costumed characters a panel and all sorts of things that are just so much more laborious than talking heads with gradient backdrops.

Many months ago Souppy organised a monthlong end of year trip to take a break and see family, so I’m also fully aware I won’t be able to work for a good chunk of time over the holidays… yet somehow I’m expecting myself to finish this demanding secret project while also updating three days a week again?

It just cannot work. I know my limitations.

Instead of giving myself goals that will make me miserable to miss, I’m deciding to say that the three-update-a-week schedule will return when I am finished with the secret project. Only then will I take a look at how much I have left in my buffer, how much work it’ll take to refill it, and then make plans to return to a three-day-a-week schedule again.

I’m sorry about that. This means there’s no current date on when the original update schedule will return. Souppy has estimations, but I don’t know how much longer this project will take and I don’t want to give myself a date to build anxiety around.

Not to be salty, but I’m sort of deciding this in a stubborn mutinous way. Mutinous to the world. I hate that I’ve been made to be so stressed out by this. I hate that the only hobby I have at this point is Pokémon Go, because I have no time for ANYTHING ELSE. I’ll wake up, play Pokémon Go, then work until 5 AM. Every day, unless I’m going out to figure drawing class or it’s someone’s birthday or something. The thought of quitting Pokémon Go or playing less of it to make more time to finish this project feels incredibly insulting to me. It’s something nobody has asked of me, but I feel an internal judgement. Like if I my project isn’t coming in on time shouldn’t I just devote more and more hours to it?

But I’ve done nothing else. I considered streaming Grandia and Grandia II for fun this year. That hasn’t happened and I can’t imagine it will anytime soon. Souppy wanted to stream Shenmue for some friends and that Dreamcast has sat unused on the desk since January I think?? (He’s been working nonstop on the huge non-art demands of this project.) I’ve felt too guilty to organise Puyo nights with friends to practice playing Puyo Puyo. I haven’t even given myself the time to DRAW Puyo Puyo fanart more than once or twice. I do nothing else but work on this project and play Pokémon Go to keep myself sane!! I haven’t visited my father since the beginning of the year!

Souppy has organised trips for us this year to break up some of the work, and I even feel guilty over those! Why don’t I just cancel our weekend trip to Florida and work on my project?? Why am I entitled at all??? The guilt eats me up.

But BCB has been alive and updating on time without fail for over ten years now. All I’ve done is reduce it from three to one day a week for a while. And once the project is done, I have no reason not to go back to three.

And while I don’t want BCB to become an unreliable comic, some habits other less-reliable comics indulge in are… okay! It’s self-care! It’s knowing limitations! It’s trying to avoid working yourself to death. Perhaps I should take a hint from all those dead webcomics and webcomics on hiatus out there and practice some self-care of my own.

And my self-care is to update one-day-a-week until the project I’m working on is done!!!! The end!!!!! in I hope it’s worth it. Don’t know what more to say other than I’ll keep suffering, but in a way I can manage.

I hope that is okay. Thanks for all your patience!

[bakubabes-and-ramble]

Opinion: What went wrong with the brawling in Bakugan?

Short Summary: I believe the reason, why the brawling started to go south and became boring to watch up from the second season, is that the ‘thinking’ behind the game started to flip and slowly disappear. What I mean here is the lack of strategy, planning, setting up and general depth, which the first season lay out and taught about. Ability spamming. And this stems from cutting back in some of the impactful game elements. The game got streamlined.

(Warning: Huge Wall-Of-Text under the cut)

I actually wanted to write a veeeeery long and detailed essay on this topic, but I realised, that would have been a huge cake for me to bite, so I am only going to go around the topic relatively superficially.*

*Maybe this came out more detailed than I had thought, thanks to Me sitting on this thing for weeks now. It was time to let the steam out.

(This is probably going to swing between the tones of ‘personal opinion’ and ‘objective criticism’ and is a bit ‘ranty’ so please forgive the inaccuracies and the fluctuation. I just felt I had to get this out of my chest, and promised myself to write this out as soon as possible, so I can get on back with the BakuBabes comic.)

Clarification: This is about the original anime series including Bakugan Battle Brawlers, New Vestroia, Gundalian Invaders and Mechtanium Surge. Language: English dub.

Side note: This piece of writing was inspired by the last time I rewatched some episodes here and there from the first and last season, and the quality of the brawling scenes showed a HUGE contrast.

When the first time I tried to write about this, I specifically wanted to look into the second season’s fighting system (and comparing it to the first season’s matches), because I wanted to have a picture of what I intend to fix/change in the BakuBabes AU exactly with the first teamfight. (I hope I can pull off what I would like to..). This is what that rant had looked like (before I decided to scrap it) :

As much as I admit, the second season is my favourite from the original Bakugan series, there are a couple of issues, which always bugged me.

Compared to the first season’s game mechanics and ever-ongoing tactical tinkering, the second season’s brawls just feel a bit ‘shallow’ strategy-wise.

In the first season there were a lot of tactical elements (multiple gate cards/bakugans and their physical placements, reverse thinking with tricky cards, generally more diverse card effects, the throwing itself as an important part of the game, the different non-Gpower related aspects of the monsters mattering more…), which added a more ‘strategy-game’ feeling to the fights. This started to go into a more ‘dog fighting’ direction (dropping the calculations with numbers and strict rules) with the final battle against Naga and his minions and returned in the second season and continued on to the further seasons. This in itself wouldn’t be much of a problem, moreover, at least it differs the seasons from each other and gives seriousness for what is going on in New Vestroia. The stakes are higher, and so do the Gpowers rocket into the sky. But at the same time, there are many aspects, where things got simplified and cut off: The reduction in the gate card usage and effects (seriously, I can not recall more than like three gate card effects, which were used throughout the whole season), and most of the abilities weren’t unique or special, they just reduced Gpower from the enemy or added to their own (or both at the same time). The biggest portion of the Bakugans’ and the brawling’s ‘power’ got locked behind ability cards, and this resulted in a ‘snowball-Gpower racing-ability card spamming’, which annoyed me out of the Universe. To counter an ability, you had to activate another ability and so on, spiraling into a snowbally mess, and the only deciding factor to win was ‘to be the last one to pull an ability card’.(I don’t rememeber there being any regulations regarding the limitation in the number of activable ability cards.)

Ironically enough, in S2 Ep40 (where they pulled the ‘cheating-field trick’), it just showed, what was the weak point of the battles:

Volt: “The only thing, that’s going to decide the battle in here are the Bakugans’ original base power levels, which means…” ( it doesn’t matter how many abilities you activate, you’re going to lose anyway… )

That means: The monsters and players without their ability cards are effectively useless. That’s it. This shows how the abilities overweight everything else. This wasn’t really a thing in the first season, you could play around it… It was more about setting up situations to your advantage and counter your opponent through different means…

Retrospectively, I had the feeling, that everyone was just throwing around abilities randomly just for show-off. But ^that^ was the reason why the fights got a bit boring. The spamming just made it seem like activating an ability is no longer something big or flashy. It’s a ‘must-move’ and anyone ‘silenced’ (= denied to activate any abilities) can be instantly shutdown by their opponents. Gatekeeping the power this way just pushed everything into a boring and monotonous direction. The only reason you didn’t know, who would win, is because you didn’t know where the snowball would end.

For diversity they added Trap Bakugans, but these were just extra summoned units and to function properly, they required ability cards as well.

Yeah, it isn’t finished and I just tried to set-up a rough summary for myself.

But rewatching the first few episodes of Mechtanium Surge is what gave the answer to the ‘where did the whole brawling system go’ question.

Compared to the first season - during the 2nd-3rd-4th seasons - the whole game got streamlined and simplified, reducing it into ability spamming and sometimes opening a gate card. It finally hit a deep point in the last season, where activating an ability meant either pulling up some shield or shooting a laser beam /projectile out of one’s mouth/hand/stomach… (Looking at you, Mechtanium Surge…)

I know, that every season brought in something new to play with (Traps, Gears, Bakunanos, Weird Bionicle Thingies Mechtogans..), but none of these brought back the depth of the game, because all of these were just ‘cake-topping’ elements. They didn’t change the game fundamentally, the lack of different basic core mechanics remained problematic and untouched.

Abilitiy spamming

Lack of planning

Lack of explanation

Without strategy: skill = ?

1.The ability spamming roots in the weight ability cards gained over everything else.

Quotig this from the early version:

“The biggest portion of the Bakugans’ and the brawling’s ‘power’ got locked behind ability cards, and this resulted in a ‘snowball-Gpower racing-ability card spamming’, which annoyed me out of the Universe. To counter an ability, you had to activate another ability and so on, spiraling into a snowbally mess, and the only deciding factor to win was ‘to be the last one to pull an ability card’.(I don’t rememeber there being any regulations regarding the limitation in the number of activable ability cards.)

Ironically enough, in S2 Ep40 (where they pulled the ‘cheating-field trick’), it just showed, what was the weak point of the battles:

Volt: “The only thing, that’s going to decide the battle in here are the Bakugans’ original base power levels, which means…” ( it doesn’t matter how many abilities you activate, you’re going to lose anyway… )

That means: The monsters and players without their ability cards are effectively useless. That’s it. This shows how the abilities overweight everything else. This wasn’t really a thing in the first season, you could play around it… It was more about setting up situations to your advantage and counter your opponent through different means…”

2. I definitely miss the thinking and the tactical mid-brawl break-downs, which explained, why did the players do what they did. It gave an insight of their strategy and showed, how differently each brawler played, how many strategical options there were. Reducing the available gate cards’ numbers to one instantly removed the weight of setting up and thinking in advance.

The same goes for introducing life gauges instead of the limited amount of playable monsters.

Getting your Bakugan knocked out had it’s strategical impact, it was important not to lose 3 times. But the G power level difference didn’t matter within one round, you didn’t have to sacrifice extra abilities into a lost battle. You could risk it regardless, but that is what tactics is all about. On the other hand, the opportunity of chunking as big portion of your opponent’s health bar as possible just induces the spamming even more. To make the power difference bigger, the players throw an unnecessary amount of abilities into the game - but only swinging the match back and forth - until someone decides not to / runs out of cards (?). ( This is going to be half-answered in the 3rd pointˇ )

Talking about strategical impact, in the first season there were a lot of special effects, which could backfire if you didn’t use it right. Like ‘The monster with lower G power wins this round’ card for example. It wasn’t ensured, that the person gets the benefit, who activated it, there was a background risk-reward system going on. You could play the tricky way, a high risk-high reward style. Or going a traditional straight-up way, with less planning and more predictability. This is why you had to be cautious and mindful playing your cards, thinking before doing and not just throwing them in a pile to boost the numbers (Which they later on sacrificed on the altair of ‘We must make the fighting look EPIC and big and LASER BEAMS!! What are the G power numbers even?’)

Quoting this from earlier:

“But at the same time, there are many aspects, where things got simplified and cut off: The reduction in the gate card usage and effects (seriously, I can not recall more than like three gate card effects, which were used throughout the whole season), and most of the abilities weren’t unique or special, they just reduced Gpower from the enemy or added to their own (or both at the same time).”

Not only the card effects lost their versatility, even the Bakugan had the same set of streamlined and one-way abilities. Visually everyone had a shield, a laser beam, 5 different projectile attacks regardless of attribute or range type…

Not even attributes seemed to play any kind of role anymore. I remember something about the elements actually countering / being weaker against each other in a circular rotation, like in the Defenders of The Core game: For example Pyrus being weaker against Aquos, but stronger against Darkus attribute enemies. I couldn’t find sings of this either in the later seasons. But this was hard to figure out, because…

3. Half of the rules weren’t even explained in the show later on for my confusion. Just as an example: for a long time I’ve had no idea, how much HP the players’ life gauge had in the second season, simply, because no one stated it anywhere. I had thought, life points were randomly reduced from the opponents. Until one day, I had figured out, that a. The power level difference marked the quantity and b. The total life points were 500 points (once calculating back from 300 G power difference worthing 60% of the life gauge).

It’s not neccessarily bad, if there are things you have to find out on your own or by the help of others. My problem was, that this wasn’t stated in the very first source anyone could get about the game. ( Realising this life gauge thing was such a ‘wow! now it makes sense!’ thing for me, but it turned out to be a basic thing, and felt so dumb about myself for not noting this earlier… )

The same goes for actually noticing, that each ability was used only one time per round. But it wasn’t stated anywhere again. First I didn’t even pay attention to it, because up from the second season monsters started to have so many abilities in their kit, I thought it had been whatever, because they had enough to still spam it. Let alone, the numerical depiction of the battle was slowly neglected (and finally dismissed in the last season), so I had no idea anymore, what the heck was going on. And even if they showed the numerical changes on the ‘bakupod’ screen, those either weren’t explained as well, or didn’t show any kind of consistency to me. Without the numerical values, the sometimes seemingly random match-outcomes rendered the relative power level difference of the monsters nonsense. (^Talking about Gundalian Invaders here) The only sure thing we had known in the end, is that Drago is ‘the best’ and beats literally everyone else.

(With this in mind, it just gives me the feeling, the reason Dan could constantly faceroll literally everyone in the end and still remain ‘the best’, is because he had Drago, who was overpowered as heck. I believe Dan was a good brawler but otherwise he couldn’t have been ‘the best’ if not for Drago. He had the heart and fierceness to fight, they had the mutual respect for each other with Drago, but he was reckless and wasn’t known about planning or being too tactical about things. I also can’t go over the fact, that Drago was unbalanced and generally oppressive to play against, and I didn’t like how they made him and Dan the story’s ‘chosen one’s, which totally goes against the message of the whole show about ‘being stronger together with your friends’…But this is a topic for another day. I tried to focus here on the fighting system itself and exclude my problems with the plot or other elements…)

4. What is skill anymore?

In conclusion of all the above, I just get no sense of difference regarding the players’ strategies later on. Mostly, because the reduced room for tactics doesn’t allow them to have any options. There is just one way to play the game and it became uninteresting to watch. Streamlined ability spamming.

Nothing from the first season matters anymore. Strategy, forethinking, setting-up… skill is something, which could play around with these things. With these gone, what remains? The order, you put down your abilites?

(I even found it funny in the third season, when someone activated a random ability, their opponent went ‘Wow! That was so skillful!’… Activating an ability in itself without any context is just like pressing a button… I am confused, where is the skill in this?)

Probably this is where I end my monologue. I kind of ran out of thoughts for now. I talked more from a personal view as a viewer of the show, trying to understand, what they attempted to do with the brawling system. I hope at least I could say something relatable. If not, that’s okay too: This meant to be a rant/opinion post anyway.

If I got something regarding the show wrong / somebody knows about it better, feel free to correct me.

For those, who actually made it to the end of this mini-essay, I leave my respect and some fun facts here about the header drawing: The headline Alice-half was originally made to go with this Alice-Masquerade headcanon/opinion post, as an illustration, but I ended up forgetting to use it there. And the other half with Dan pouring abilities like my salt was innitially made to be a joke for myself, but it ultimately fits the comparation of season one vs. season four, so I put the two together and Voila! A perfect depiction of the situation.

A random thought for the end:

(Okay, I have to be honest here: After I had watched all the seasons to their ends for the very first time, I realised, that up from the second season I had less and less memories of each seasons, and didn’t get, why.. But now after rewatching Gundalian Invaders and some episodes from Mechtanium Surge, I understand why my brain used to shut-off during every battle scene possible: the only impression I will ever have of the last seasons fights is ability spamming and flashy laser beaming, nothing else…)

Thanks for coming to my TED rant!

[ajholdsamb]

Petra- A world wonder that is truly deserving of the name

We have spent the past two days in Petra, a 2,000 year old Nabatean city that is carved out of ancient sandstone cliffs and looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It is the most famous site in Jordan, receiving over half a million visitors a year. Many people travel to Jordan just to see this site and I can see why. Made famous in modern times by movies like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Petra was famous long before that as the Nabatean capital city. The Nabateans came from nomadic tribes of desert people, who became extremely wealthy by controlling the trade routes between the Graeco-Roman kingdoms to the west and Indian and Chinese empires to the east. AJ want to insert more backstory here?

[Guy AJ: OK! Petra is to me a reminder of how fortune comes and goes and how it can build but also reduce empires. About 2,300 years ago a group of nomadic Arabs, later to be called the Nabateans, occupied parts of Southern Jordan and happened to be at the right place at the right time. The world was getting smaller and cultures were coming into contact with each other unlike ever before. Alexander the Great had just introduced half a continent to Greek society, sometimes after razing a town to the ground then building it back up with more floral patterns in their columns. Anyway, all this cultural exchange meant people wanted more things from further away places.

And what better place to be at that time than Jordan? It is located at the converging point of Africa, Europe, and Asia, a crossroads of significance since the first of our species left Africa. The Nabateans controlled trade routes through this important hub, and were able to acquire great wealth from Indian spices on their way to Alexandria and Greek statues passing through to a Red Sea port. They used their wealth to construct massive and awe inspiring tombs in Petra, which AJ and I stared at in amazement over 2,000 years later, but Petra is so much more than a valley for the dead.

Petra is thought to have been a city of several tens of thousands of people, who bartered over goods in markets, practiced religious rites in temples, and debated public policy in the city’s civic center. The remains of these institutions are mostly in rubble in Petra’s basin area, but the thousands and thousands of potsherds we observed walking around are testimony to the many people who lived here in the literal shadows of the dead from the tombs that ring the city.

Petra was incredibly cosmopolitan - the tombs incorporated stepped motifs from Mesopotamia, obelisks from Egypt, and ornate entablatures from Greece. The columns at Petra are distinctly Nabatean, however, with tops that point out like bull horns unlike any other classical style I’ve seen.

If fortune created Petra than a loss of fortune eroded it. By the time Petra was absorbed by the Roman Empire in the first century AD, new trade routes and greater confidence in seafaring made Petra increasingly obsolete. Although several earthquakes destroyed parts of the city in the following centuries, it is a ruin not from natural disasters but from money drying up and people gradually leaving to find better prospects elsewhere or to return to the way of life of those who founded Petra, herding in the Arabian desert like descendent Bedouin communities do to this day. Petra is a reminder that the good times don’t always last forever, cough, cough USA.]

Now that you have a little backstory, I’ll go into our experiences. Because we saw SO MUCH during our time in Petra, I’m going to write this blog post a little differently. Rather than chronicling everything, I’m going to narrow it down to the top five sites we saw and our top four practical tips. This should give a good overview of our experiences but also not take twenty years to write. Let’s start off with the practical and then get into the fun!

Top Four Practical Tips for visiting Petra

1)Go for more than one day, and stagger your entrance times

This probably increased our enjoyment of Petra tenfold. Through our Jordan Pass (which is a great deal by the way- it includes your visa fee and the entrance fees for every site we are going to visit in Jordan?!) we had bought two days in Petra. If you’re into archaeology, geology, nature, or just like to take it slower I recommend going for at least two days, because Petra is unique and wonderful and huge and there is just so much to see. You can check off the biggest of the sites in one intense sweaty day, but it is so much more enjoyable to take your time.

We decided to start off our first day super early, so we got into the park at the opening time of 6:00. Petra can get really crowded, but at 6:00 the only person there was the one sole ticket taker (we even got confused for a second, thinking that maybe the site was closed). This was such a good way to start off our first day because during the 40-50 min trek in we were often BY OURSELVES. This was especially cool during the walk through the siq, a box canyon with 500 ft. tall walls that meanders magically through to take you to the reveal of Petra’s most famous site- the Treasury. As we were leaving at 1:30 pm this walkway was packed with people and speeding carriages and decidedly less magical.

Getting in early we were also able to appreciate the main sites without being inundated by other tourists or salespeople. We actually got photos of the Treasury without other people in them! At one point on our first day I was like “wow AJ we’ve done so much already, it must be time for lunch” but it was 8am.

Starting early, we were able to do the intense hike up to the ceremonial high place while the weather was still cool. During the downhill hour and a half meander through the Wadi Farasa trail it started to get hot, so I was very happy to not have to climb a bajillion stairs again. After that we we saw a couple more of the big tombs, but then during the hottest and most crowded part of the day we were able to peace out without guilt because we knew we had another day. It was only 1 pm when we began the hour trek home, but by that point we had already had a full 7 hour day.

On our second day, we slept in and got started at 10. We actually began at the museum (which is really well done!) so we didn’t make it into the park until 11:00. Because we had already seen a lot of the main sites we were able to walk straight through to the parts we hadn’t seen and take our time. Then in the mid afternoon we began our all uphill hike to Petra’s Monastery.

I was worried about hiking uphill during the hottest part of the day but because we had gotten a late started we had energy, and a good chunk of the path was shady (side note-this is supposed to be one of Petra’s low seasons because it supposedly gets so hot, but it was in the 80s for us- not too bad!). We were able to have a picnic and enjoy the views, and then walk back through Petra during golden hour right before sunset. Again, there were almost no people! I think many visitors do a quick one day tour where they come in between 10-11 and only stay for a couple of hours. It was so nice to have the full two days in Petra, to get it when it was not crowded, and to see it in the different types of sunlight.

2) Think of the practicalities (you’re going to be doing a lot of hiking)

So real talk, AJ and I looked like dorks in Petra. We were wearing long sleeve tactical hiking gear with pants and had backpacks on with 10 liters of water and snacks (& when I say WE carried 10 liters of water I really mean guy AJ did, he’s such a beast). And yet we saw people in fancy dresses and high heels with no water?? Granted not everyone has to hike for 8 hours a day like we did, but it’s still at least a 50 min hike in through the dirt. You can buy water in the site, but it is way overpriced and it was nice to never have to worry about getting stranded somewhere without it. Plus we drank all of it and never got dehydration headaches👌🏻. It’s also fun to pack in a picnic to enjoy in the park. There are a couple restaurants in the site, but if you bring your own you can pick your spot (with lots of awesome views to choose from). There are also toilets on site, but it’s good to bring tp and handsanitizer because they are often not well stocked. Since it gets super sunny, wearing pants and a long sleeve t-shirt was clutch for the rocky trails, sun protection, and out of respect because despite tourist short shorts, we are still in a Muslim county.

If nothing else, at least wear tennis shoes and bring water.

3) Climb to some high places and get some views!

We did two uphill hikes while in Petra, one to the Ceremonial High Place (for ceremonies) and one to the Monastery. We took both slowly, and while they were steep & straight up hill, there were steps that made them doable. Each climb took about 45-60 minutes one way, with lots of breaks. The views at the end made them all worthwhile. It allowed us to pull back and really see the landscape of the wadi (valley). Both hikes ended up being two of our favorite aspects of Petra- so I’ll talk more about them later.

4) Don’t just try to check off all the main sites- go off the beaten path

Maybe because I had only really seen pictures of the Treasury, I didn’t realize before visiting how large Petra is. Since it was a complex city, the site is spread out and there are SO many places to see. On our first big day I realized just how exhausting trying to check off all the big ones in one day truly is. Some of our favorite aspects were going off the beaten path and exploring random less famous aspects of Petra. It’s fun to find your favorite tomb or take a rest on a side trail, all of which you don’t have time for if you’re trying to power through all the greatest hits.

Now on to the fun stuff!

Top Five Sites of Petra

5)Exploring the unnamed tombs

This fits in very well with our last tip from above. At around 7:15 am after hiking through the siq and spending some time at the treasury, we wandered off the main path to explore some of the unnamed tombs. Each tomb is different, it is fun to pick out your favorites and think about the people who would’ve been buried here or celebrated in these smaller places. They are more intimate than the larger tombs, and it feels really adventurous to get to walk around in these ancient buildings. The sandstone is often gorgeous, and it was really peaceful to take a break in these cool chambers. Also AJ named one the tomb of the drunken sailor cuz it was slanted.

4)Wandering through the Siq

Walking through the siq was a magical experience every time it happened, but especially without crowds and in the light at dawn and dusk. The first time it came as a surprise. We were hiking down from the visitors center when all of the sudden the landscape changed and we were at the entrance to the Siq, a 500 ft. tall canyon with imposing walls that almost block out the sun. Running along the path you can still see the distinct curves used for the Nabatean irrigation system. There are sculptures hidden along the pathway including the remains of what would’ve been a 10 ft. tall camel carving. You can see why the Nabateans would have chosen this geologic feature as their grand entrance, and it served to create a sense of magic for entering this special place.

3)Hiking the Wadi Farasa Trail

On the first day after I thought we’d be in Petra for months but it was only 8 o’clock, we started our hike up to the Sacrificial High Place. I’m glad we started early because it was a steep 45 minute hike and at 8am it wasn’t too hot. After a brief kerfuffle with a donkey (a Bedouin woman was trying to call it to her but we kept accidentally scaring it uphill), we made it to the top! There are panoramic views of Petra, including Aaron’s tomb. This was a sacred place where the Nabateans worshipped the sun and moon with a built in blood drain for sacrifices. It’s easy to tell why it is sacred- up there it’s so easy to feel close to the sky. AJ and I took a moment to lie down on the top to worship the celestial deities as the sun and morning moon faced off above us. Also, it was a tiring hike and we needed to lie down. Next, rather than going back down the steep way we came, we took the Wadi Farasa trail. There was all sorts of cool archaeology (a giant lion fountain!) and geology (sandstone with manganese and iron stripes!) to see on the way down. My favorite part was the the combination of the tomb of the Roman soldier and the garden triclinium because they are directly across from each other, and with the rubble from the column lined promenade it was easy to picture how the ancient people would’ve used this beautiful space.

2)The hike to the Monastery/the end of the world

Our second favorite site was on our other high place trek. This one we did in the late afternoon, and since it is through a canyon it was often shaded. We had a picnic lunch at the top in front of the monastery (one of the largest tombs in Petra that was later turned into a church). However, my favorite part was a spot beyond the monastery. We hiked 15 minutes further to the edge of the mountain to this little Bedouin tent & the views were INSANE! We could see so many mountain ranges come together to into this steep valley, with a convergence of different types of rocks. Guy AJ liked it because, in his words, “we’ve finally reached the edge of Petra.” In other words it was the first time we looked out and didn’t see any archaeology; we had found an end to this seemingly endless site. It was one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen.

1)The Treasury reveal

The treasury (or the Khazneh) is the most famous site in all of Petra. Its location is featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as countless other movies. In person the detail and scope is awe inspiring, and made all the more impressive by the long walk we had just had through the Siq. The first time the canyon opens up we saw this amazing 2,000 year old building. It was wonderful to get it almost to ourselves in the morning, and we also got to say goodbye without the crowds on the last day. It’s the most famous part of Petra, but for a good reason.

All in all Petra is one of the coolest places I’ve ever seen, a highlight of this trip and of my life.

Love,

The very impressed Ajs

[thecinephale]

Super Girl: The Effort to Look Female

Harrisonburg is not rural Virginia. It’s a city. It inhabits over 50,000 people, includes James Madison University, and has gone Democrat every presidential election since 2008. Still, I spent the last few weeks with my stomach in knots, working out a strategy for my weekend there. While the wedding I was attending was right on the JMU campus, our Airbnb was deeper into Rockingham County, my girlfriend’s grandma lives in Stuart’s Draft, and we had to drive through all sorts of places to get there and back from Brooklyn. 

And as my friend Kelly said, “It’s a college town, sure, but there IS a Cracker Barrel.”

***

Next week marks my one year on hormones. Some trans people call this a second birthday, but for me that date is too nebulous. Do I claim the doctor’s appointment that acted as a first consultation? Or the first time I let a green oval of estrogen slowly dissolve under my tongue? Maybe it’s a month further when my bloodwork came back normal and I began taking a proper dosage?  

I prefer to think of transitioning as a process with many beginnings. If I had to pick a date, it would be May 12, 2017, when I fully came out to myself. But even this erases the person I was at 16 who dressed in drag for the first time. 

A year on hormones doesn’t feel like a landmark. It feels like I’m running out of time. Everyone is different, but I know generally there’s a timeline of when changes occur and when they stop. Some people claim it’s a four year process, but most people see the majority of changes in the first two years. I’m halfway there.

***

Sunday night the first trans superhero appeared in mainstream media. Nicole Maines portrayed the character of Nia Nal on The CW’s Supergirl in its fourth season premiere. Like hormone birthdays, this monumental event can’t be reduced to a single day. Nia isn’t a superhero yet, for now just a reporter working under Kara/Supergirl. And her transness has not been discussed. Both are known because they were announced at Comic Con back in July. The first trans superhero in mainstream media, played by a trans actress. 

Nicole Maines knew she was trans when she was 3 years old. By the time she was able to vote, Maines had successfully sued her school district, ensuring basic human rights for all transgender students in her home state of Maine. The CW’s marketing team has played up the “real life hero plays on-screen hero” angle and they’re not wrong. 

I knew I was trans 20 years later in my life, after I’d finished my first puberty and voted in two presidential elections. Maines and I have drastically different experiences of transness, and yet I spent the last several months watching 65 episodes of Supergirl (plus crossovers!) to prepare for her debut this week. Sure, most trans women don’t look like Nicole Maines. Most cis women don’t look like Melissa Benoist. This is how this works.

***

Once I decided to go on this trip to Virginia, I also had to decide how I was going to present. I’ve been, as they say, full-time since February. Some days I just wear jeans and a t-shirt, like most women, but it’s been a long time since I’ve actively pretended to be a man. It always made me feel awful and as my breasts grew (now at a C cup!) it became more and more difficult. My girlfriend’s extended family knew she was dating a woman, but didn’t know I was trans. I felt up to the challenge. This weekend I was just a woman. Period.

It’s been my experience that the most mindlessly validating individuals are those I’d least expect: catcallers and the elderly. My guess is they have limited knowledge of transness and classically feminine signifiers like a skirt or long hair makes their animal brain think woman. Of course, if they notice their “mistake” the catcallers will be especially cruel. Still, these experiences factored into my expectation that a high femme presentation would get me through this weekend. 

I have no idea what I look like. I’m not sure I ever will. Intellectually I know my face has feminized, but I don’t know how much. I don’t know why sometimes I get correctly gendered, but mostly not. I don’t know if people are just humoring me or saying what they’re supposed to or being kind when they say “Miss.”

I appreciate this effort, but it’s not what I want. I want to look in the mirror and see a woman, I want the people in my life to look at me and see a woman, and I want strangers to look at me and see a woman.

In Virginia, nobody saw a woman.

***

The most trans-related scene in Nicole Maines’ first episode didn’t feature her at all. Martian J’onn J’onzz (David Harewood), recently retired, has joined an alien support group. While Supergirl has previously leaned hard on the alien as immigrant analogy, this scene isn’t the first time the show has equated alien status with queerness. Season two introduced an underground alien bar that was obviously meant to evoke the historic haven of the gay bar.  

An alien that looks human begins by saying he’s at the group to share his happiness. “For the first time since I’ve been on this planet I feel like I fit in,” he says with a smile. “And it’s because of this.” He taps a device on the side of his head that reveals his true alien form, before switching back to the human veneer. 

An older alien who looks human but has pointed ears and tusks on his forearms pushes back. “Who decides what’s normal? Why should we have to wear these devices that change our appearance so we can be tolerated?”

The first alien responds with the obvious: “Well, that’s easy for you to say. You just look like a Tolkien fan.”

***

Whether we want to look cis and whether we have the ability to look cis is certain to be a heated topic between trans people, because it’s often a heated topic within ourselves. Everyone is taking stock of what they have and what they want. And sometimes it’s impossible to distinguish what we truly need to feel okay and what society tells us we need. I identify as a binary trans woman, not because I believe in the gender binary, but because I’m close enough that I can live (for now) with that conformity. The more gender non-conforming you naturally are and the more gender non-conforming you desire to be the more external pressure you’ll receive.

I’m 5’5 and 110 pounds and within my first three months on hormones I’d developed breasts. These are my natural privileges. My body hair, facial hair, and Adam’s apple are my negatives. The curly hair on my head and my masculine but not that masculine face are up for debate. Every week I get an hour of electrolysis done on my face, which is the process of hot needles and tweezers manually killing every hair follicle. It’s more painful than it sounds. I’m one year into this process and have at least another year left. It costs $75 per session and my ability to afford that at all is another privilege, while the huge chunk of my income that takes up is another negative.

My facial hair is my biggest insecurity and whenever I get misgendered I assume that’s the reason. My mom regularly insists it’s my Adam’s apple and if I would just get that surgically reduced I’d be able to “pass.” The truth is probably more complex. A mix between stubble, the Adam’s apple, and the small characteristics that are targeted in a comprehensive surgical process known as Facial Feminization Surgery. 

I’ve never wanted FFS. I can’t even decide if I want the Adam’s apple surgery. Going on hormones was such an easy, obvious choice for me, but these surgeries can feel like a betrayal of my transness. I don’t want to look cis. But I do want to look like a woman. I’ve started to worry that for the rest of the world those will always be the same thing.

Due to my size I thought I would be like the alien who looks pretty normal but just has tusks on his arms. I could proudly be like, “Look at my tusks/Adam’s apple! I’m an alien/trans. Deal with it.” Maybe I’m really the other alien, whose life is consumed by their alien status unless they change themselves. Or maybe we’re all both aliens and the support group is our minds. Two sides debating, one that looks in the mirror and sees a woman with some unique qualities, another that looks in the mirror and sees a man who needs to change.

***

I wasn’t misgendered until halfway through the wedding reception. I certainly got stares, but it was unclear whether those were lesbian couple stares or transgender stares. I chose to think lesbian couple. Last week my electrologist worked under my jaw so I could wear a full face of makeup. I wore a blue and white Kate Spade dress that was conservative yet flattering. I had on heels and my hair was up. It was the most femme I’ve ever looked. If a random catcaller correctly gendered me the week before when I was wearing a sweatshirt and no makeup, then surely my gender had registered now.

Again, the goal is not that no one knows I’m trans. The goal is for people, without thinking, to say “she.” If afterwards they go “Hmm is this one of those transgendereds I’ve read about?” then fine. But I want to win over the gut instinct. I know this is wrong. Our identities shouldn’t require any external validation. But they do. 

Once I began interacting with people and there was cause to gender me, I did about 50/50. But even when correct there was a pause. I suddenly felt very foolish. This idea I had that I was my harshest critic, that the man I saw in the mirror would look like a woman to these Virginians, was painfully misguided. I look how I look. It will continue to change gradually as I continue hormones and electrolysis, and this may or may not change how others perceive me. I can then choose to alter my appearance further with surgeries or, simply, accept the way I look.

***

“There’s nothing slight about fashion,” Nia says pitching a story. “It’s one of the most visceral forms of art. What we choose to wear tells a story about who we are.” A trans woman believing in the power of presentation is not exactly groundbreaking. But the show has always been filled with clichés that work because they’re true. 

What struck me most watching Maines’ debut was the immediate fondness I had for her. This, of course, has as much to do with talent and charisma as it does transness. Maines injects Nia with an immediate likability, an awkwardness that recalls season one Kara, but with an added vulnerability. I’d framed this character as a necessary first step. Sure, she looks like Nicole Maines… still a trans superhero! But watching her on screen I became very aware that I don’t know Nicole’s insecurities and I don’t know Nia’s. I don’t know anybody’s experience of transness except my own. I don’t even know what gender is or what it means to be trans. Nobody does. We may craft personal narratives to decipher our wants and needs. Cis society may craft narratives to understand, or, more commonly, to erase. But we don’t know. I don’t know why sometimes I look one way to some people and a different way to other people. I don’t know why I have some insecurities and not others. I don’t know why some clothes feel good. Or why some do not.

What I do know is that it felt good to see Nicole Maines on screen. I know that when Kara looked at her and said, “Oh my God. You’re me,” I thought, no. She’s me.

[him-e]

hello Claudia, there's a lot of metas about how show sansa has been occ and her writing is contrived, i know the show is terrible i Watch-hate myself and the whole rape-revenge stuff in s 5-6 was awful, but i can 't shake the feeling that there is a lot of veiled sansa-hate in those metas, like people in the fandom are upset that she have a little bit of whatever agency she has, that she is lady of winterfell, even the shipping stuff , idk why i fell this way ?

I feel like a lot of the got discourse exists because people have their own headcanons about where the books are going, and now the show is ahead of the books so naturally if something tears their headcanon to pieces, it must be a) bad writing; b) ooc; c) benioff&weiss’ evil masterplan to erase a character’s narrative and replace it with their fave; d) all of the above.

The show is a separate canon verse now. While it’s the best basis we currently have to predict future plot developments in the book series, it’s not the books, and nothing irritates me more than endless complaints and comparisons with book storylines that haven’t happened yet, because there’s always an underlying presumption of knowing what will happen in as*oiaf(which we don’t, only George does) and also the presumption that everyone should care for what happens inas*oiaf (say I’m a show only fan: why on earth should I care for some yet non-existent book storyline? Why do you keep telling me that Sansa is supposed to be in the Vale? Why should it mean anything to me?)

Show!Sansa is not “ooc” because she no longer resembles book!Sansa. Show!Sansa CAN be ooc, but only compared to how she’s written in the show. (which is a thorny issue, because how do you distinguish “ooc” from regular character development or from the character suddenly displaying a hidden or latent trait of their personality due to trauma/abuse/stress/life changing events/etc.? it’s not clear cut, and I personally think the term ooc is often misused and misapplied in meta). Show!Sansa being in charge of Winterfell is not “ooc”, because her being in charge of Winterfell has been built up by the show’s narrative for years. You may hate the way they wrote it or fundamentally disagree with the path they chose, but that doesn’t negate that they chose it, they built it, and they’re sticking with it.

A lot of the (anti) Sansa discourse also revolves around the fact that GoT fully embraced her as part of the stark crew and is making her show her stark colors, literally and figuratively, which means her narrative and imagery inevitably tends to overlap with that of Arya, Bran and Jon, as they’re all members of the same family. Wolves, winter, the pack, Winterfell, roots, the godswood, snow, dark and furry robes, some of these themes and images are more central and specific to one starkling than in the others, sure, but they’re all, at the end of the day, inherently stark themes, and it’s perfectly appropriate that they start resonating with all the starklings at this point of the story, since a huge theme of the books is how the starks are stronger than the people who tore them apart and they’re finding their way back home, aka Winterfell, aka the pack, aka each other, despite all odds.

I’m more forgiving when it comes to the argument that the show tends to treat Arya like shit and reduce her to a one note character while Sansa is given the chance to show more facets of her personality, because that’s not entirely untrue. I can see why it gives the illusion that Sansa is treated better by the narrative—when she was actually robbed of a huge, crucial chunk of her book arc to replace a minor character in a horrific rape storyline. And tbh, it’s not entirely an illusion: despite all the awfulness of season 5, the various ripple effects of removing her from the Vale too early, and Sansa herself being written unevenly, you can see there’s at least the attempt to have her front and center, in a place where all eyes are on her and where she can interact with crucial people and impact the main plot meaningfully. Whereas the changes to Arya’s storyline were mostly intended to simplify things, give an abridged version of her arc, cement the popular ~smol badass~ image the gen audience loves so much, or (at best) keep fandom favorites like Sandor and Jaqen involved with her (which occasionally resulted in using Arya merely as a crutch to show off said fan favorites).

so in conclusion I think the show is partly responsible of the sansa discourse with its uneven handling of Sansa and Arya’s storylines… but I also think most of this wank comes from a place of wanting Sansa to remain forever confined in certain headcanons-turned-fanons.

[valeriemperez]

i'm really confused about what's going on w/Caitlin? there was an interview that said iris and caitlin have "a lot of feelings" about what went down, but right now they seem cool. maybe it'll come to the fore in 4x05? but then what will caitlin do for two episodes? and also, what do you think wally's storyline will be this year? didn't someone say he had a big one?

I think the lots of feelings are just the actresses’ headcanons because they don’t get anything to work with in terms of their relationship, lol. But in all seriousness, I think Caitlin will be hiding her powers and meeting Ralph until 4.05, which is when her powers will unleash due to Amunet and maybe that’s when the feelings will come out and Iris will be like, “What, were you just gonna keep lying to us until the next time you try to kill me or Barry?”

As for Wally, yes, everyone said he would have a big story. But unless it’s a big story in 4.03 specifically, I don’t know what they mean. I guess it’s just feeling overshadowed by Barry and wanting to find his place.

Please let your twitter followers know to tag all their flash tweets using #TheFlash #Westallen. I see so many ppl who write lovely tweets about iris/wa but don’t tag. With all the hate Candice is receiving we should be filling the tag with positivity more so than before.

Yes, please use #TheFlash and #Westallen hashtags to be as positive as you can about Iris, Candice and WA! Tag Candice herself and the writers too when it’s something really cute.

In this week's Ask Ausiello, there was a piece on Harry showing up in 4x03 with some bad news. And since the press release said he's coming to give Wally a message from Jesse, I'm guessing that's what the bad news will be. (And in turn, whatever the bad news is will presumably send Wally on a self-seeking journey away from Central City.) Any ideas what it could be?

I’m really at a loss. Is Jesse sick? Did she lose her powers? Is this the pan-dimensional version of dumping his via text?

So KL I guess went to an audition in LA today, and I mean I don't know the whole process of casting but normally after they find who they want isn't the intent to start filming soon? Were still right in the middle of them filming S4 so him going out this soon for other projects has me worried again he won't be sticking around after S4 or even to finish the season at this point.

Yeah, I feel like filming starts at most a few months after auditions. I guess it could possibly be auditions for a hiatus project, since if it’s a big film it might take up to 6 months for filming to start. But it’s definitely concerning.

Once again I'm worried about Keiy. Now he is back in LA doing auditions. I think they cut him or severely lowered his number of episodes/ reduced him to recurring.

I really hate that they’re not coming forward and telling us what the deal is. Maybe it’s time to start tweeting the writers and asking? Not accusing, but wondering.

youtu(.)be/LYJ8AJFmgzo I stumbled upon reaction videos and this guy just LOVES Iris. After the hate Iris got from the episode, this reaction vid made me smile.

This guy is awesome and everyone should watch him!

So to add onto the weekly trends to support Iris, I think it also doesn’t hurt to report any negative tweets or IG posts that tag CP, I recently reported a pretty disgusting tweet directed towards her and Twitter actually took it down not saying that we should go look for it but if we happen to come across it I don’t think it hurts to report it, It kind of also sends a message that it won’t be tolerated

Yes, I did too and it got taken down as well! It’s definitely better to report truly vile stuff than to engage with whoever said it - especially if it’s in Candice’s mentions.

Guys, let the fanboys and fangirls lose their shit over Iris getting more screentime and being the queen she is. Maybe someone will be kind enough to give them a Straitjacket when they're done. I remember back when we were voting for the TCAs online this year, haters spent more time shitting on CP than focusing on their faves. Oh well.

Which is why we should be so focused on uplifting CP that we don’t even notice the haters!

I definitely agree with that anon about why these fan boys/girls lose their mind over Iris and I agree with what you said as well but I also think a huge part of it is that they are just that stupid. I mean I would think most would get her saying “we are the flash”just meant her saying they are the team, but these idiots took it so literal. So it’s like we’re fighting with ppl who to put it nicely aren’t exactly the brightest.

LMAO, you put it so politely, but you’re right.

Don’t know if you got my last ask about KL being away again from filming but it looks like he went for an audition and what I was wondering is if you think this will be his last season? I say this because going for an addition when they still have a good chunk of filming left for S4 seems a little soon no? I mean when their casting for tv/film isn’t the intent that production will start shortly after?

I did! Sorry, just slow. And I’m as worried as you are, but there is a chance it’s for a big movie that he would film over hiatus, so... Fingers crossed?

[junker-town]

Everything you need to know about the NFL’s rookie wage scale

Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

How rich do rookies get off their first NFL contract? Not very.

Gone are the days when rookie contracts are heavily negotiated, limiting some players’ need to hire an agent and giving teams more flexibility in making their choices. The league now operates using a rookie wage scale for incoming NFL players, reducing what had become a series of outrageously expensive deals for players who didn’t always pan out.

With the elimination of a huge payday right out of college, the importance of spending wisely has been a growing trend. There’s more education for young players on how best to make their money last, in a league where job security doesn’t really exist.

Before the 2020 NFL Draft, Dolphins cornerback Byron Jones offered such advice to the new rookie class:

My advice to 2020 rookies: DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY. That number you see on your contract is fake. You will pay roughly 40% to 50% in taxes, agent fees, union dues, 401k account + necessary insurance. Also, a large portion of your contract is NOT GUARANTEED. (1/5)

— Byron Jones (@Byron31Jump) April 23, 2020

Do not live a lavish lifestyle. Although your mom may deserve it, she does not need a $100,000 car. She does not need a $1,000,000 house. It is not the time yet. If you protect your money early, you can live a comfortable life forever and provide for your family. (2/5)

— Byron Jones (@Byron31Jump) April 23, 2020

That echoes what his teammate, linebacker Jerome Baker, heard when he entered the NFL in 2018. At Ohio State’s pro day that year, Baker — a third-round pick for the Dolphins — spoke at length about the advice he’s gotten throughout the draft process, most notably regarding making smart financial decisions.

“Not every football player is a millionaire. Just throwing it out there,” Baker said. “We’re not rich, we’re not. Once you throw in the taxes and the things you have to pay for, you’re not that rich.”

Now that there’s a cap on rookie deals, there’s even less time for players to make their mark on the league and more importance on signing an unrestricted second contract.

What is the rookie wage scale?

The wage scale boils down to the top draft pick getting the biggest deal, and a scaled back dollar amount for each pick thereafter. The further players slide down draft boards, the less salary they’ll see and get less in guarantees.

Each drafted player gets a four-year deal, and first-round picks have a fifth-year option built in for teams that must be exercised between the players third and fourth years. Undrafted free agents are also subject to the rookie wage scale, but are only eligible for three-year contracts.

What is the wage scale for 2020?

Teams had money allocated against the salary cap before the draft, based on the rookie pool and the league’s salary cap, which in 2020 is $198.2 million. Each team’s rookie pool will look a little different based on their salary cap situation, but a safe calculation is $610,000 (the first-year minimum) times the number of draft picks.

How much are this year’s rookies getting paid?

Last year, No. 1 pick Kyler Murray signed a four-year, $35.2 million with the Arizona Cardinals. His base salary was $495,000, but with a large signing bonus, his total cash earnings was more than $24 million in 2019.

The final pick in the draft, Caleb Wilson, was also drafted by the Cardinals. He signed a four-year, $2.59 million deal, but he didn’t earn that much because he was waived before the season started and later signed to the practice squad.

In 2020, the Bengals will most likely take quarterback Joe Burrow with the first pick. His deal is expected to be worth around $37 million:

#1 Overall Contracts ’20: TBD, $37M(ish) ’19: Murray, $35M ’18: Mayfield, $32.6M ’17: Garrett, $30M ’16: Goff, $28M ’15: Winston, $25.3M ’14: Clowney, $22.2M ’13: Fisher, $22.2M ’12: Luck, $22.1M ’11: Newton, $22M -------------------- ’10: Bradford, $78M

— Spotrac (@spotrac) April 23, 2020

Using Spotrac’s projections, here’s the average salary in total value for players drafted in each round:

First round: $18.4 million Second round: $6.9 million Third round: $4.4 million Fourth round: $3.3 million Fifth round: $2.95 million Sixth round: $2.8 million Seventh round: $2.7 million

When and why was it enacted?

An agreement was made between the league and the NFLPA during the lockout in 2011, applying a rookie wage scale for draft picks as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. Heading into negotiations, teams were upset that they were having to empty their wallets for first-round picks — which were nearing franchise QB numbers — and veterans were mad that rookies were outearning them.

In March 2020, the NFL and NFLPA negotiated a new CBA, which included higher increases for rookie minimums and the subsequent years of their contracts.

Can players re-negotiate their rookie contracts after Year 1?

No. Players aren’t able to negotiate salary until their fourth year, which has been an issue for players who excel after having fallen to a later round of their draft. Seahawks QB Russell Wilson was a third-round pick in 2012, and despite leading his team to the Super Bowl in 2013 and 2014, didn’t see over $1 million a year base salary until his second contract in 2016.

This new reality has led to some new advice being handed down to incoming players. Baker noted at his pro day that former NFL safety Mike Doss told him, “your first contract, just save everything.”

This echoed the advice he got from 2016 draft pick Joshua Perry, who told the Baker, “Second contract might be different, but the first contract, you’re not rich.”

Whether it be to injury, a deep roster or a host of other hurdles, rookies have an uphill battle to become a roster lock in the league. Until they do so, it’s imperative they make wise financial decisions to ensure the money from their rookie contract lasts.

Do rookies still need to hire an agent?

As the rookie deals and how team’s utilize them evolves, so do the questions that incoming NFL players have to ask themselves, including whether to hire an agent.

For someone like Joey Bosa in 2016, having an agent to act on his behalf was beneficial. The 2016 No. 3 overall pick ended up missing the first four games of his rookie season due to a hold out in training camp over contract terms. While salaries aren’t up for negotiation, signing bonuses and offset language are — Bosa ended up getting four years guaranteed and the largest signing bonus ($17 million) in Chargers’ history. (He went on to win Defensive Rookie of the Year, so it worked out for both parties.)

Those types of negotiations don’t happen often, though, and players like Ravens first-round pick Lamar Jackson decided to forgo hiring an agent altogether. Instead, the quarterback has a manager (his mom) and a lawyer to help with all the backend stuff. There was a big stink made from various outlets about Jackson’s decision, but he spoke about his choice to represent himself back at the NFL Scouting Combine.

“I know coming in as a rookie, agents don’t really negotiate anything really,” Jackson said in March 2018. “You’re going to get the salary you’re going to get, or whatever, and I decided I don’t need him. He’s going to be taking a big cut of my paycheck anyway, and I feel I deserve it right now.”

Baker Mayfield, the No. 1 pick in 2018, also hedged on the possibility of going without an agent through the draft process, but ultimately decided to add one to his arsenal. There are pros and cons for each player as they decide whether to hire an agent, and despite a long list of pros, losing out on a big chunk of money right out of college can’t be ignored either.

[birchwoodswolf]

Are you okay? I'm sorry the fandom's been rough on you- it kinda sucks, but there are some really cool people here! (You're one of them, obviously.)

Full response under the cut, because this is kinda long and personal.

Anyway, here are the tags in question that almost certainly incited this ask (originally from this post):

#listen;;; okay;;;;; im so fuckin tired #ive had to deal with this shit for five years with no fuckin Release #this is literally the only reason ive stayed in the fandom after all this time: the fact that i fuckin KNEW that something would happen here #and now im so close to being RIGHT #and sure the hagemans giveth and the hagemans taketh away but they’ve already taken so much

#all i know is that either way im probably gonna be leaving the fandom after ns8 and id prefer to go out on a good note #if they’re just going to be fuckin julienbaiting trash till the end then fine by me i wont fuckin bother watching this stupid shit anymore #and if they go through with it? congrats; and now he’s dead permanently (probably) #and considering that the hope of his existence has been the only force keeping me from escaping this hell fandom #i for one cannot wait to be freed from my chains

And yes, I mean every word of that - but it’s not for the reason you’re alluding to. Honestly, I’ve had no huge issues with the fandom that would force me to leave (disregarding all the Disgusting Shippers) - there are some good people, and I’ve made a lot of friends here. It’s just that I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with the show over the past several years. The only thing that’s kept me from leaving has been a feeling - almost a premonition - that Julien was going to get a better send-off than what he got in S3. After all, it ain’t over til the fat lady sings, and at that point, the fat lady didn’t even exist.

Am I so petty as to completely disregard the show because I’m mad about how my favorite character was treated? No, but I’m still really disappointed in it. He and Zane had (and by comparison to all seasons since, still have) the best platonic relationship in the entire show, possibly only tied with Cyrus and Pixal (and Cyrus hasn’t seen Pixal since the end of S3 - what’s with Ninjago and either dividing, ruining, or otherwise negatively interfering with parent/child relationships?). The love they had for each other was pure, simple, and unconditional - and in a way, they completed each other.

But the biggest issue I have with Ninjago, the most significant reason why the newer seasons piss me off so much, is the inverse relationship between the quality of the story and the quality of the visuals. Because, for whatever reason, the show can’t have both.

Sure, the pilot, S1, and S2 look decent - but they’re nothing compared to the later seasons. For an example, compare the water physics between the opening scene of Tick Tock and Morro’s death scene in E54:

It’s practically night and day - and this is only one aspect where things have improved significantly. Take the Spinjitzu; in the early seasons, it’s just a normal, flat tornado, but when Kai uses it in E55 (as one example), you can even see sparks flying off of it. Or how complex some of the areas have gotten, how much detail is present now compared to back in the early days.

Or the lighting. Or the effects. Or the creature designs. 

The show has become more and more beautiful, but in the process, the story and characters have been completely decimated. The plots have also gotten much lazier - there could’ve been any number of ways to resolve S6 without resorting to retconning all of it, but nope! They lazily retcon it and create a huge paradox (as Sensei Yang’s temple was left floating in the sky, even though it was only pulled up there in E60 - which was obviously retconned, as only twelve minutes of S6 are effectively “canon” to the current timeline).

Then there’s the love triangle for lazy drama, and all the time they had to waste afterwards attempting to “fix” Jaya (which, to be completely honest, hasn’t worked at all). Most of the other relationships the show has teased haven’t worked out well, either, because there’s always something Really Bad about them (whether it’s the obvious emotional dependencies exhibited by Jay and Zane in their relationships, or all of the incest jokes with Kai and Skylor in S4, or whatever the fuck is wrong with Wu and Misako, which I honestly can’t put a name on).

And don’t even get me started on the characterization! Literally everyone has been reduced down to one or two traits - “robot”, or “annoying”, or “impulsive”, or “foodie”. Sure, these traits were always present back in the early seasons, but they weren’t nearly as exaggerated then as they were now. Jay’s and Zane’s characterizations have especially pissed me off - Jay’s extremely annoying practically 24/7 (especially in S6, jesus fuck), and after he went Titanium, Zane’s become a smarter-than-you asshole who’s always trying to fix shit by himself. (I could honestly go on about him all day, but I won’t.)

Out of the last several seasons, the only one that I can definitively say I liked was S5. The plot was interesting, and I could form an emotional connection with it; the characterization was still decent (or at least not anywhere near as bad as in S6); a ton of cool concepts were introduced, such as the Cloud Kingdom, the Realm Crystal, and Nya being the Water Ninja, among other things; and I liked all of the new characters.

I also liked Day of the Departed, and S7 was decent, but S3, S4, and S6 were honestly terrible. S3 and S6 don’t need any explanation (as the only redeeming qualities are some of the new characters, as well as the last 10 minutes of E34 and TLR); but S4 was mostly just because I was having major issues with the fandom at the point, decided to take a break from it, and never got back around to watching it (as I only came back to the fandom as soon as the S5 hype train got rolling).

And speaking of fandom issues, boy do I have some. I hate how a lot of people in the fandom are extremely homophobic and/or transphobic. I hate how a significant chunk of the fandom ships Lloyd with the other Ninja, even though they’re all adults and 5-6 years older than Lloyd. I hate how a lot of those same people ship Nya with a man at least twice her age.

I hate how Morro is included in photosets of “all of the main ninja!!!!!” more often than Nya. I hate how some people in the fandom romanticize the way Morro abused Lloyd in S5. I hate how the entire fandom has a double standard when it comes to people who have done bad things: how if they’re young and conventionally attractive, they’re a ~smol pure bby~, and if they’re not, they’re the evilest scum to ever live.

I hate how nobody cares about the side characters. I hate how nobody acknowledges good friendships, only ships. And I hate how nobody thinks for themselves, thinks for even five seconds, before following along with whatever is popular.

The only reason I’ve stuck around this long - which will be five years in November - is because I’ve had just a bit of hope. A small, feeble hope - one that I could finally get a good ending, that I could finally be satisfied with the show. That I could finally watch the show because I want to watch it, not because I feel like I need to.

And that moment is finally so, so close - I can feel it in my bones. I’ve wanted to be able to escape for years, but I’ve never been able to; I’ve always been dragged back in. And now that freedom so close, that it’s almost here, I’m more afraid than ever that it’s all going to come crashing down.

And on top of that, I don’t really feel all that appreciated here. My meta posts get some attention, but only if they’re short. My music boxes get some attention, but Tumblr doesn’t let them show up in the tag, and thus they get far fewer notes than they really could/would. My fics get few reblogs and even fewer comments, because the “you should always reblog art and give good feedback to support the artist!!!!!!!” doesn’t apply for fanfic writers. And don’t even get me started on my theories, especially my Samurai X theory as of late; I put a lot of effort into those - to make sure that they’re hole-free, to make sure that they make sense, to make sure that they could possibly happen - and all I get is one or two comments from people who really appreciate the work I’ve put into it, and criticism from people who already have their minds set on whatever arbitrary explanation.

For all of these reasons, I really want to drop out of the fandom, or at least hibernate for a while. Most of the people from earlier in the fandom’s history - including lots of my friends - have moved on to other things at this point, mostly because they didn’t find it worthwhile to stick around. They’ve all been able to leave, but I’m still stuck here.

Which is why I’ve honestly resolved to drop out of the fandom after NS8. By that point, I’ll have gotten one of two things - either a good send-off for my favorite character, one that I’ve been waiting for for five years; or a final confirmation that this show no longer has anything to offer me. It doesn’t mean that I won’t like the show anymore, or that I’ll stop watching it - it’s just that there won’t be any reason for me to be active in the fandom, and thus I won’t do so as often.

So yeah.

[jkid4]

An update on my fundraiser and my life.

I’m sorry that this update took so long. I’ve been fatigued from financially supporting my parents that all I have the energy for is going to and from work and going straight to sleep after eating dinner. At this point I have a condition called brain fog but it’s not official because I have not been to the doctors for a check up for a long time.

For various reasons, the fundraiser (https://www.youcaring.com/jkid-801302) has stalled due to a lack of interest, ignorance, and sometimes outright hostility when I tell people my situation. Rest assured that all the money from the fundraiser so far is in my savings account. I tweeted to 10 to 15 people on twitter telling them my story, and no one replied back.Most if not all of them are people who supported the bernie campaign or actual progressive supporters. Some of them were black music celebs.

The entire experience in raising funds was a true eye opening experience and it’s clear that we don’t care about struggling millennials or the struggling poor. l What I noticed is that if you asked for money you will be questioned for it constantly if they do not run away, give unsolicited appeals to god, or say endless amounts of platitudes to make you go away or eventually disappear as soon as you talk to them about your fundraiser.

It’s bad enough that advocating for the poor and working class on reddit long enough that you get attacked by neoliberals for their precious “global poor” and cheap electronics you can’t afford to buy. Despite showing them evidence, they have some sort of amnesia about history and repeatedly gaslight me about how “great” the economy is while I can’t get a better job because of how awful the job economy is unless you have someone willing and able to help.

For all intents and purposes in the US: Socio-Economic class is the final taboo in the United States.

I've been supporting my parents for the past two years since October 2014 and we are effectively living in the house we rent month to month because my parents do not want to renew the lease want to go month to month. The landlord refused is now he wants to sell the house, meaning that anytime we could get a 30 day notice to vacate at anytime while he is trying to sell the house. My mom directly suggested that I buy the house, and I could not object because if I did, she will be upset and we will get into a fight.

At the same time my parents complain about not having a new car to replace the old one. There's a reason why I’m hesitant to getting a car and learning to drive a car because if I made all the effort to do so, they will quickly turn me into a errand boy during the weekend. My mom, knowing that I live paycheck to paycheck asked me for a birthday present of concert tickets. Despite me dropping hints, some small and one large one that I told my mom that I’m not their surrogate husband. It takes so much energy to be diplomatic with them when it comes to income. We still argue about money every week.

At this point they don’t job searching as much anymore a job because of appointments, relatives, and going out with people. They’re in the mindset that they insisting on me that a job will fall on their lap.

When they do try to find work, they get screwed in the end. One of my parents did found a recruiting job, thought it was full time, but they switch her with a part time job with primarily commission based work. They got into a job training program but the state government is dragging their feet in the process as usual.

Recently, last week my mom also fell down the stairs and could not get up until I got her up. Now I’m also worried that her health could worsen and I could be forced to be a caretaker for rest of my life.

My health has gotten worse. Mentally, and physically. Now I get fatigued during the day and it’s been this way for months. At one point I could not write, type or speak properly, sometimes I get jolts in the body when I lean my body against a desk. At my same time i could not speak straight and mispronounce words more often.

Worse, I have to renew my forbearance papers and I only have about 430 days left of it if I choose to renew them. I have not paid a dime back in my student loans. And if it was not for my parents unemployment I would have paid a significant chunk of my loans back.

I sadly do not have the energy to support my parents anymore. I’ve already have to sacrifice a lot of opportunities and still people who never have the same problems as me insists that it’s “not too late” and “I’m young” despite seeing me growing a huge beard due to the fact that I don’t have haircuts often. I don’t even bother washing my clothes often as I usually wear the same clothes the whole week, I don’t take showers or brush my teeth now a days and there isn’t any point in doing so because my life is reduced to being a welfare check.

I do not even look forward to or enjoy anything anymore because I either don’t have the money or the energy to do so. Not even anime, not even video games, not even the seasonal conventions I go. I can’t enjoy them if I have to worry about money every week and survival. My brain is on survival mode for years basically trying to keep my family complacent and comfortable that they will be unemployed for a long time and don’t have to worry about getting a job and not having my it collapse and having them and their extended family blame me.

Sadly those same things anime, conventions, and video games are the only things that keep me going. If one of them is taken away for any reason: I will walk out of my family. I’ve already snapped at my mom a few times and she knows that her relationship is faltering, but I can’t address it to her as they’re psychologically and financially dependent on my existence.

At this point, my career and social goals are at a stand still and I have to move out to another city. It’s the only way I can start over. If I don’t, will not be able to move out until I’m 41 the age where my parents will be at 62 will be eligible for social security. I love my parents but they need to be independent again.

Basically: Either be irresponsible and abandon my parents to the streets or get used being a living welfare check until the age of 41.

The only thing I have left is a PC that I recently bought with my tax refund that can play most games as well. Maybe if I can create a live broadcast of me playing a series of games live for twitch.tv to raise some money so I can move out from my parents.

Because at this point, I’m done. I can not support my parents anymore.

[fandomflail]

Neal Cassidy: Son, Lover, Father, Wasted Opportunity

Series Analysis: Here, at the End of All Things, 1/?

As we approach the end of the season, and what looks to the be the end of OUAT as we know it, I find myself contemplative on my fan journey. I’ve been on board the OUAT train even before it aired, when the previews were out teasing the premise of the show. I’m a huge Disney nerd, so Emma Swan was everything. She still is. What a journey it has been!

Today, on my mind, is Baelfire. A character who literally drove a huge chunk of the plot, is intimately connected to not only Rumple, but Henry, Emma and Hook.

1. Before Colin O Donoghue was cast, (i.e chemistry between Hook/Emma off the charts), Neal could have easily been Emma’s love interest.

Neal was the reason Rumple wanted the Dark Curse cast. Emma was destined to break it. There's a brilliant symmetry there, that could have played into the mythos of the show later, had they wanted to. The possibility has always been there, despite the fact that in Tallahassee, there was a very clear parallel Swanfire versus Captain Swan. I believe CS was always meant to be after they cast Colin, but they hadn’t actually ruled out a possibility of a Neal/Emma reconciliation at the time.

2. Redemptive arcs and the capability of forgiveness of this show would have given Neal an integrated part of the plot.

Neal would have had to actively mend the relationship with his father (possibly altering the magnitude of Rumple’s ‘evilness’), would have had to develop a friendship with Belle outside of their connection to Rumple, would have worked earnestly on being a good father for Henry, and of course, making amends with Emma and being her friend. There’s also Killian, who would have had to directly ask for forgiveness and make amends to Neal for being such a shitty person for selling him out to Pan all those years ago.

Not only that, but Neal was obviously stuck as a teenager longer, given his immaturity, the talking Emma down and deriding her, as well as the general defensiveness he exuded. He wasn’t a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination, but he was by far, far less problematic than Rumple, Regina, Zelena and Killian, all who have had chances of being forgiven and their own happy endings (to varying degree of success). More importantly, he’s the ‘realest’ character in terms of misdeeds. The things he did are things that happen to us all the time, so while viewers may find it harder to forgive because its closer to home and more personal, (i.e the disbelief of actually murdering peasants makes it easier to disconnect from TV crimes), it also gave him and audiences a great pay off for amendment and forgiveness.

By killing him off, then doing the worst by whitewashing him and naming Emma Swan’s BROTHER after him (seriously, what the fuck, who does that), they assassinated his character and completely removed any chance of him earning his redemption and happiness. I call shenanigans by the way, about the fact that NEAL didn’t have any ‘unfinished business’. Like are you guys kidding me? Was he that chill of a guy that he just didn’t care?

3. Co-parent and Father

How amazing would it have been, to have Emma, Regina and Neal getting frustrated with each other, showing the complications of co-parenting a teenager when none of them live in the same house, are not romantically entangled and have other partners? Or Regina being short with Neal and him standing up for himself? Neal, Killian and Robin working around each other carefully with Henry as father-figures, before teaming up and teaching him All The Things?

4. Emma

As member of Emma/Happiness, I feel like all the show’s whitewashing of Neal has hurt her the most. She didn’t want to tell Henry about how he treated her in S1 because she wanted him to have something to look forward to (given her own self worth and Regina’s shittiness), she never told her parents the truth about him either (otherwise no way in hell would they have named their son Neal for god’s sakes), she bit down all the truth or nastiness in Season 2,3 without fighting back because he reduced her to teen!Emma, etc. 

How amazing would it have been to see Neal admit to his cowardice, realize that in some ways he is much like this father, work through that, be forgiven by Emma that moves into an amicable friendship? The tragedy here is that Neal NEVER got to learn about adult!Emma, a friendship that could have been built based on their continuous disbelief at the madness of fairytale life, of Emma understanding why Neal wanted to run away from it all, truly understanding the depth of why his relationship with Rumple was so bad, etc.

In short, having Neal in the story would have DRAMATICALLY changed the plot (if they had one). Zelena’s imprisonment of Rumple, his subsequent PTSD, his reunion with Milah (which might have ‘saved’ her from Rumple’s further assassination, she deserved better SMH), Henry’s author journey, and oh my lord, Gideon. Imagine him fighting tooth and nail and scrappy to save his brother.

Also, given that Captain Swan was always going to happen, True Loves and all, imagine how much more nuanced the writing could have been for their relationship to develop without killing off the guy who never even posed that much threat in the ‘love triangle’. 

Neal, in the immortal words of Adele, we could have had it all.

Additional reading: @screwballninja‘s meta about Neal.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Not sure if you or someone else has touched on this yet (so much meta out there right now it's hard to keep up!) but after seeing a gif set of Dean poking around with the voodoo doll, I saw someone mention in their tags that that could've been a call back to Dean's trips down torture avenue. Thoughts?

Oh I am not keeping up with the meta at all. I’ve got like 10 tabs of my dash that are circa 12x10 to read, never mind more asks than I know what to do with (sorry, I’m working on it and WANT to answer them :P) 

I think that reading makes sense because Dean lost his memory in great big chunks of SELF not TIME, so we didn’t get him regressing in age we got him losing identity. Like, he seemed boyish and dopey but that was because he’d forgotten who he was and literally every expectation the world had of him or all his character-specific anxieties, not because he had forgotten his way all the way through his life down to childhood… Considering how abstract those memories are they probably went first, tbh, which is why he seemed cheerful right from the start, since even by the diner, he lost his germphobia, and a lot of social anxiety and other little details which you could imagine building up subconsciously over the years of trauma and general unpleasantness of his life. 

By the end he was reduced down to a very instinctive version of Dean who was operating on very very basic principles that he understood his environment without knowing it, and in a way knew what he was for when it came to loading a gun and going into a house to shoot witches. I guess it was like being in a dream at that point - you never have any context to your life and you often forget everything about yourself except for what is right in front of you. But even then you still kind of know how to react in a scenario and Dean probably just kept on reacting like, the instinct to examine the car, to load a weapon when he was told, to spot a creepy house and head towards it, and then to react as he did because of the conditioning to be a “hero” and to kill evil that’s so deeply ingrained.

(For some reason I’m thinking of the action figure in 9x07 that was like “i clobber evil!” all the time before they roasted it on the oven :P But yeah, more seriously, had all the shades of his real season 9 stuff, with the Mark and Cain telling him he was a killer even before he gave it to him…)

Back when Dean was messing with the doll, he could still talk and I think had a better sense of self still; I have my headcanon but at least the surface text seemed to be he remembered Sam at least as late as hearing him get captured by the witches. If we take that as the second to last step of losing his sense of self before as far as we saw him go, I think it’s possible it was a reference to torture and how it’s a part of him, but in that kind of way where they don’t have to go really dark with it. Since Dean wasn’t losing memory backwards, but losing chunks of self, the main part of which was his memory (he managed to lose the actual clear idea of what hunting was just by the end of investigating at the bar, as Sam had to explain it to him, but even just arriving at the bar, he was struggling to keep up with stuff like the FBI cover but I think he still knew somewhere he was a hunter, and Sam just had to remind him of the specific job, not the entire concept, and that slipped somewhere. I mean they got to the office while Dean could still remember how they’d started the case and some details of it…) I think it’s only really when Rowena shows up that we start to see Dean losing actual huge chunks of personality and self - we see him losing everything in front of the mirror that makes up his individual identity but before that Sam had managed to briefly remind him of who he was and bring him back to himself for a quick chat before it went again. So only after Dean loses all that stuff in front of the mirror is he truly sort of a blank slate instinctive Dean.

At which point I am reminded in 4x16 of Alastair telling him that he “carved him into a new animal” - because before that we almost never/just didn’t see Dean torturing anything, but after Hell it became much more normal for them to do, and especially later seasons when Dean stops angsting about it so much and I think resigns himself to the fact that’s just a part of who he is - so for example torturing demons to find Lisa in 6x21, or torturing monsters to find Cas in Purgatory, is just his reaction to a situation like that. At the core, he has changed, and it’s a big part of his self-loathing and that sense of himself he has as a killer.

Rowena giving him the doll to play with is pretty funny on the surface (lots of fandom comparisons to Trump because of the hair :P) but Dean has no idea, and he still takes to poking it with the pins as a fun game. I don’t think he knows he’s causing actual harm, but that gives it a kid with a magnifying glass and some ants feel. He doesn’t have a concept of torture, but they’re still showing him doing it? He has a lot of human empathy for Rowena and her story (he thinks she has a lot of snuff! I melted :D) but the doll is given to him almost like an inhuman enemy, and he’s given the weapons to torment it, and away he goes, quite curious, and sort of vicious when he’s jabbing it repeatedly. 

As someone else has pointed out, him sliding the pin under the stitching for the eye is directly the threat Toni levelled at him at the start of the season when she was boasting about how much torture she knew. I think the proximity of those is more than enough to suggest there’s a solid link >.> She studied intentionally, while Dean was forced into that, and it changed him to the core, and now this reveals that at a certain level of losing himself, Dean still retains all that information about how to be a torturer. 

I still think he was pointed like a weapon at the witches, as a last resort from Rowena I guess… If they’d had a different circumstance and someone had urgently made him torture, I wonder if he would have done it. He didn’t have a problem killing the witches, and he still had the vague idea somewhere in there that he was a hero fighting evil even if he didn’t know any of the hows and whys, it apparently still called to him. If someone had convinced him a thing was very evil and needed torturing, despite Dean looking so uncomfortable about Rowena calling him a killer, would he have accepted it had to be done and got to work torturing? The doll suggests there’s at least half a chance >.>

[bonerhitler]

I meant to write about more than just TV shows, I swear.

So, I've been binging on Game of Thrones lately and it's got me thinking about adaptations. What makes an adaptation good, what makes them fail and why are so many film adaptations so utterly reviled? Well a lot of the reasons behind these things stem from the same basic cause, and that is medium differences. When a director, author or creator of any profession adapts another work but fails to properly take into account the sheer enormity in difference between, say, a visual and literary medium you get problems.

“The Book Is Always Better” is perhaps the flashing red siren of any film adaptation of a novel and the core root of that is fairly simple. When you work in a literary medium you create a scene, setting or even an entire world on your own. You can use all of the reader's senses as you see fit and their imagination fills in all else. They also get far more freedom to play with the narrative, a novel isn't on a time constraint and unless the writer is doing something wrong, their narration isn't going to be breaking flow or disrupting the scene. But narration also doesn't take time, so the reader can get the full and detailed picture of the frozen cellar as soon as the character steps into it, they know how bad it smells and what it smells like as the character smells it.

With a visual medium, like television, the director needs to be more, well, direct. You can't just tell the viewer how awful the room smells, or how cold the air is. There needs to be direct and visual confirmation or implication, otherwise that information is just lost. But, again, you can't just have your main character walk into a room and complain about how bad everything smells and how cold it is. So things have to change. Rather than having a narrator read word for word the paragraph from the book describing the room, or having the character say “That smells awful!” you have them walk in, their breath fogging in the cold air, and visually react to the stench while the camera shows what's there. Of course, that's just the obvious kind of change that has to happen though, the kind that are to be expected.

Compounding this is the fact that a literary medium can give you insight into a character's personal thoughts. A Song of Ice and Fire in particular presents its chapters from the viewpoint of a specific character. You get a very good sense of who they are, what they think and how they think based on every detail. Whether it's an internal monologue about how disappointed they are in old friends, or a young kid feeling self important and indignant at being treated like a kid. In a show however, like Game of Thrones, you can't just have characters think aloud non-stop. You can't narrate their every thought so you have to improvise. Create new conversations to let them voice their thoughts, or let the actors emote in ways that convey their mental state without saying a word.

But what about unexpected visual changes? Costumes, character design and other details that get mucked about in an adaptation. Well simplicity, functionality and plausibility for the most part. In Game of Thrones at one point the character Tyrion gets wounded, leaving a distinct scar across his face. It's noticeable and above all else, the scar effect is practical while still leaving the actor's charming looks intact. In the book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, however the same character gets wounded in the same battle under different circumstances and the end result carves off most of his nose. It would cost a lot of money, and time to apply CG to the actor in every single scene he was in afterwards to make him noseless and simply isn't worth it given that he's one of the main characters, and chances are it wouldn't have looked great. Game of Thrones' CG is passable at best honestly and having it on a character up front and center like that just wouldn't work to the show's advantage. That leaves makeup effects. To be honest I have zero idea how difficult it would be to make someone look like they lost a nose with practical effects, I can only assume it would have taken several hours every time they needed to do a scene and been very uncomfortable to wear.

It's easy, then, to dismiss Game of Thrones as being far more shallow than A Song of Ice and Fire. You wouldn't be wrong in many regards, it certainly is more crude than the books and tries its hand at comedy more often and goes as far as to spell out its plot so even the less aware viewers can keep up. But that's because generally speaking the people who are sitting around watching TV are looking for a different, and usually more shallow, experience than reading a novel. Audiences themselves are a huge reason behind why adaptations change more than just minor visual details, and it's why I so briefly mentioned that the scar makeup kept Tyrion's good looks safe. Because TV audiences attach themselves to the designated heroes of the show, and calling for the deaths of the designated villains.

But does being shallow make Game of Thrones a bad adaptation? Not necessarily. As an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, I think it's fairly solid. Shallow, yes, but solid. It's more akin to an abridged series than a full on 1:1 take. Events are compressed and streamlined to avoid a lot of scenarios where characters are just on horse traveling, or otherwise doing nothing. Due to the fact that they had far more material to work with on the earlier seasons than the author of the books had while writing, they were able to link a few plot lines together and have them culminate in interesting, well sometimes interesting, ways. Is it flawless? Certainly not. Especially not the latest seasons where it starts to tread over unwritten waters, presumably equal parts G.R.R.M.'s word and screen writer fanfiction and the plot starts to sink a bit, but the track had been set so directly that even book readers had predicted a good chunk of events ages ago so it's just a matter of seeing pieces fall into place now and hope the ball doesn't get fumbled the last few yards.

But is “fairly solid”, and lets face it people would disagree with that, the best we can ever really hope for an adaptation of a novel? Not at all. But before I get to that, I'm going to take a moment to talk about flim adaptations since that's what I meant to do and then spent this whole piece rambling poorly about Game of Thrones.

Here's the big problem with a film adaptation of a book. Time constraints. The longer a book is, the harder it is to fit most of it in to the film. This is a massive problem the Harry Potter film series ran into like a bird slamming into a window. By the time they hit the fourth harry potter film it was reduced to a mere skeleton of its self and still barely managed to fit the actual plot of the book into it, while still stripping out most of the interesting parts. Even splitting the last book into two films didn't resolve the issue much, it just made everyone annoyed they now had to pay to see two movies.

So, getting back on track here, if film adaptations of books are a bust, what is the fix? Well Game of Thrones and a few other series, like the Netflix adaptations of comics Daredevil and Luke Cage, have helped pave the way for the fantastic A Series of Unfortunate Events adaptation. One of the best novel to visual adaptations I've seen yet, it manages to capture the style and presentation of the books excellently while still remaining fairly solidly visual. And that is what I think we need, rather than more big budget harry potter style pretender would-be franchises and flops. TV Series made with love and care. To be honest, I would love nothing more than a similarly done Harry Potter TV series, the episodic nature would allow plots to develop far more naturally and give the writers more time to devote to the interesting parts of the series.