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Growing up in a flower shop but not realizing your sense of smell is barely functioning garbage is kind of funny actually because there are all these lines in books and whatnot that are like “her fragrant floral perfume” and it’s like. Okay so she smelled like the fuckin floral food packet we put in the oasis foam to extend the life of the arrangements? Like grass and chemicals? And that’s attractive to you people? Because that’s like obviously the only smell flowers have.

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I really like the characterization of all the ancient heroes in CRK, because they all feel like real types of old people I’ve actually met, and that seems to actually be exceptionally rare for media in that kind of fantasy setting, despite how popular the trope of immortal/exceptionally long-lived characters may be

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Here’s the fic btw

Jumping on the Jambound bandwagon

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Jumping on the Jambound bandwagon

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My s/o and I have been rewatching old cartoons and m a n I always forget just how fucking normal jokes that were like “hey look a person society has deemed in some way undesirable. Everyone laugh!” actually were in like, the early 2000’s and earlier

Like we’re watching Futurama (rewatching in my case, but I haven’t watched it since I was like 12 so it’s been a while) and there was one bit in an episode where a guy was in some spa machine and he walked out and was perfectly cube shaped like the inside of the machine itself, and we both started to laugh, and then the dudes body collapsed into a pile of fat and we were just like Oh. The joke was actually just a fat man existing

And in the case of Futurama, it’s like, sandwiched in between so many jokes that are actually funny and/or which go out of their way to make fun of bigots of all sorts of varieties, (like, Zapp Brannigan exists as a character entirely to make fun of chauvinistic sexist dudes, for example, and there are frequent allegories about racism and some about homophobia beginning early on,) and you get the distinct sense that the writers maybe didn’t really slow down of stop to think about the actual humanity of like. The fat men or trans women who’d be watching or how just being the punchline in and of themselves might feel, and the message that might send and perpetuate, because even amongst the egalitarian/progressively-minded people at the time, so many of them had massive blind spots in how unequal they treated people of certain groups because they just… were maybe exposed to conversations about sexism or racism or homophobia, but not ones that (seemed to) affect a smaller or less visible population, like in the case of transphobia or ableism, or for whom the attitudes (at least seemed) less deadly, like fatphobia.

And it was so completely normal that you will find it in damn near everything, even kids shows. Going back and watching those things almost feels like being slapped in the face with all the cultural shifts that have happened in my lifetime at once

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Man it is such a fresh breath of air for my autism to have latched onto something with simple character designs for once

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I started playing that one cookie game. Rate my starter team that carried me through early game/proposed OT3 crackship

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3.X Speculation and maybe some wishful thinking based on a buncha leaks from the r/honkaistarail_leaks subreddit. So take it with a grain of salt, or maybe a whole shaker, because leaks are by nature questionable, subject to change, and at times simply bullshit. My speculations kind of assume many of the leaks I’ve seen (and linked) to be accurate. If you don’t wanna see Amphoreus leaks or spoilers, scroll on past.

Anyway with that being said I think we might be getting Abundance Dan Heng

So, first off, we’ve been getting some leaks about Dan Heng getting a new form on Amphoreus in 3.X, and that the Chrysos Heir with the Earth coreflame at the very least looks a lot like our boy Daniel. It’s Dan Heng dude, we’re getting earth Dan Heng. Off the bat, it feels a little out of left field, especially since he’s kinda got established powers that are way different from any earth-based abilities, but this sorta lead me down a path of trying to piece together or guess more details.

So like, each Chrysos Heir is essentially a hero that holds the power of a corresponding titan, (full chart of what we know about all of them here,) and though there have been some name changes and tweaks for our brand new shiny space fantasy setting, each one is more of less based off of a titan from Greek mythology. So Georios, the Earth titan, from whom Dan Heng is (probably) getting these cool new powers, is more or less a version of Gaia. A.k.a Mother Earth.

In the silhouette that likely represents DH’s new form, all we can really make out is what looks to be an armored/scaled/clawed(?) hand and an orange glow from the flame he’s holding - probably his coreflame. Each of these mystery silhouettes has a particular color, and earth/geo in hoyo games in the past has always been orange, so to many fans that alone kind of suggests that Earth DH is gonna represent rocks more than plant life, especially since hoyo in the past has drawn a pretty hard separation between the two for characters, with geo and dendro in Genshin, and a lotta people are drawing comparisons between Dan Heng and Zhongli, because like. Something something pretty Chinese earth-flavored dragon man. But I think people forget that Star Rail isn’t Genshin, it doesn’t operate on the same elemental system or play by the same rules, and since Gaia represents both the land itself and all the nature that grows on it, I’d like to throw out the possibility that Georios will be the same way and that Dan Heng’s rocking both rocks and plants. It would also fit in really nicely with his other forms - in his regular 4 star form he’s got wind and maple leaves, and Imbibitor Lunae’s got water and lotuses. He’s kind of got a very nature-y pattern going on already, so that would fit him a lot better than just “oh he’s rock flavored now” would by itself.

To take it a lil further, my speculations on what his path might end up being is based on this count of how many characters we’re getting for each path and what we already know about upcoming characters and their paths:

We can probably safely cross off Destruction and Hunt, since Dan Heng already has versions for each of those, and I highly doubt we’re getting any repeat paths for the same characters, barring an upgrade from 4 to 5 star like Herta, which could technically happen with Hunt, but again, kinda doubt that’s the direction Dan Heng’s being taken since Erudition is very much Herta’s whole entire deal, being an emanator and all, and Dan Heng just ain’t like that. Harmony as well, because Tribbie has already spent that one singular slot (wild after there were so many in Penacony,) and Remembrance, since our roster for that seems to be filled up with Harmony Trailblazer, Aglaea, Castorice, and very likely March. Erudition has one slot taken up by Herta right off the bat, with whisperings of Screwllum possibly finally coming out in later 3.X versions, who was leaked to be Imaginary Erudition long ago, and though it could have been changed in that time, I’m just gonna assume he’ll be that until stated otherwise.

That leaves Nihility, Abundance, Preservation as possible paths for our shiny new Dan Heng. And if I’m placing my bets on one it particular, it’s gotta be Abundance, because:

There’s the whole situation with his previous incarnation/predecessor, Dan Feng’s memories still floating vaguely around in Dan Heng’s head due to the preceptors messing with his reincarnation.

Dan Feng knew healing magic, but Dan Heng doesn’t presently have that ability/know how to pull that off

He’s getting these powers on a planet heavily influenced by the Path of Remembrance, so there’s a strong possibility that something or someone there could more easily draw forth Dan Feng’s memories, and Dan Heng talk about facing his predecessor’s actions head on and not running from them, right around that time he stabbed that one guy. If given the chance to regain Dan Feng’s memories more clearly, I could easily see Dan Heng taking it if it means unraveling what exactly his actions and motives, which would make moving forward and possibly trying to right the aftermath of them a lot easier and more doable.

Doing so could very possibly bring back that healing ability in the process

Abundance would fit with the possible “mother nature”-esque theme in general, and the potential mother nature theme also kinda ties into that whole quest Dan Feng was secretly on to try and find ways to make new Vidyadhara since they can’t reproduce and have a dwindling population.

Maybe help from whatever the hell Georios is + memory recovery will actually give Dan Heng the tools he needs to not just try to make up for Dan Feng’s fuck-ups but also figure out a solution to his species’ infertility without accidentally causing a massacre this time? Idk man it kinda depends on what Dan Heng decides to do, exactly.

It would be neat

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I was talking to my s/o about this recently, but though I think the writing in Steven Universe went downhill in a lotta ways over time, one of the things that made it feel the most unrealistic wasn’t necessarily Steven resolving other people’s conflicts and getting every bad guy to hug it out and try to be a better person or whatever, but the fact that he’s pretty much the only person he knows who handles emotional shit in a calm, mature, and reasonable way, so it comes off like he just happened to miraculously spawn with insanely good conflict resolution skills and emotional intelligence (at least compared to everyone else) despite having no one teach him those whatsoever. Like, that’s not to say people can’t be more emotionally mature or whatever than the people who raised them in general, but like, I think all the chill people I’ve met with asshole parents at least learned how to interact with and treat others through school and friends and things. They weren’t just born inherently better. They learned there were other, better ways to be than the ways their family acted from their peers! And Steven never went to school and didn’t seem to really have human friends til Connie. An argument could be made that that part of him is Greg’s influence I think, but uh, as chill as he is we never really see Greg even have to display anywhere near the level of emotional intelligence Steven is forced to employ pretty much every other episode after a point, and on top of that Greg is purposefully shunned by the gems and kind of shut out of a lot of aspects of Steven’s life. And also, he’s got like, decades on Steven? So Steven just feels as though he is better than every adult around for absolutely no reason.

But what trips me up even more is the fact that every single character on the show reacts to having lots of big bad feelings in the exact same way: lashing out and taking their feeling out on other people. Like, every single one. Like, I know people do that, apparently/allegedly. But the concept of that being more than like, how a quarter of the characters handle their internal shit tops is completely and utterly batshit bazonkers to me. And every new character that had their tantrum of the week cheapened the impact of all the previous ones after a while, because it plays out in the same pattern every single time, it makes them feel all like they’re the same (asshole) character with different coats of paint and it makes the show and development feel cyclical. I’ve seen people consistently praise how the show depicts trauma - but personally, I think it’s atrocious, because in real life not everyone acts the same damn way about it. It was written as though trauma was always some kind of sleeper agent that lies in wait, threatening to transform any given character into a humungous, collosal cunt when activated. I think the show would’ve felt less repetitive, and the cast more realistic and well rounded if anyone had a fucking diversified reaction to anything. I am personally just completely and utterly unable to suspend my disbelief long enough to think one person could be surrounded by not only THAT many emotionally stunted freaks of nurture, but also ones who just *happen* to be emotionally stunted in the exact same way. (At least, that they’re not all related to, and thus stuck together via obligation and the fact that no one else who isn’t blood-related will put up with them. Some of them may’ve been Steven’s family and all, but damn, he just keeps fucking finding these people.)

I have known so many people in my life who just cannot be pushed to raise their voice or lash out at other people no matter what they are put through. To get a bit personal, my dad is one of them, I cannot picture in my head what him yelling would sound like, because I’ve never heard it. It’s so incredibly antithetical to his personality. He’s always taught me to be calm, logical, and to think critically about everything. If I we had a conflict or disagreement about me doing something growing up we’d both explain our positions and reasoning and either I’d be like “Oh you’re right, that would be a stupid and dangerous thing for me to do, I’ll stop doing it,” or he’d be like “Maybe you have a point, maybe this rule or this societal expectation of children is unreasonable and unnecessary.” (Not that either of those things happened often, because we both have brains embedded in our skulls.) That’s not to say that he necessarily handles his negative emotions well, per se, he’s had such a long-term penchant for depressive moping that his friends have been comparing him to Eeyore for as long as can really remember. But like, that’s my entire fucking point, it that there’s a MASSIVE fucking spectrum of ways in which people can mishandle their own emotions. My mom can’t handle conflict, she’ll avoid problems so hard she convinces herself there aren’t any, and holy fuck is that unhealthy as shit but it’s also completely incompatible with being the kind of person who explodes on people and has a gamer rage moment. A person could also react with something like self-isolation. Or shutting down. Developing an addiction. Unhealthy obsessions. Depersonalization. Derealization. Becoming less emotional. Fear. Phobias. Panic attacks. Insert psychosis symptom here if you’re feeling spicy, I don’t fucking know. Etcetera. These things are sometimes shown in SU, to be fair, but I only really remember it ever happening as a lead-up to The Big Inevitable Explosive Moment. Deep down everyone in the show is exactly the same. There is none of the complex diversity of how people feeling bad stuff can go wrong in there, which is a big problem when the show ultimately becomes about that. Every added character that reacts this way makes the previous ones flatter. It becomes obscenely predictable, and when you combine predictability with intense negative emotions you get a recipe for exhaustion. Steven Universe just becomes exhausting to watch after a while. After a certain point it just starts to feel like trauma porn.

I think a large part of the reason why Steven Universe gets so much flak is because these patterns don’t reveal themselves until you’re deep into the show. At that point you’re invested. I followed it for the years and years it aired, watched every new episode, because I was incredibly invested in the characters, and when it had good moments it had really good moments, and certain characters, like Pearl, were handled incredibly well, but the character writing felt as though it slowly degraded as we watched every character go through the same cycle again and again and again and if they were a main character they’d learn very little and then do it again. And whenever a character wasn’t the focus of an episode, and were just on the side or in the background, they almost seemed to flatten into a caricature of themselves - Peridot’s probably the best example of that, she had such a good arc and development and then when she was sidelined she just became like some obnoxious possum that was There sometimes. I think the writers, above all else, had a problem with neglecting whatever aspect they were not currently actively zoomed in on, which made the big picture… messy. In a good, well-written story, the characterization drives the narration. In Steven Universe, established characterization was consistently sacrificed for the sake of narration. And the show had enough good moments and enough spikes and dips in quality though that it felt like maybe this was just a bit of a rough patch, and it’d pick up if you were patient with it. It starts out light-hearted and childish, like Steven, and it very slowly gets heavier and more emotional as time goes on and people around him place more on Steven, and that’s perfectly fine, but it does mean that what a lot of people initially loved about the show died off and was replaced by something else. Which, I think would have been something viewers picked up on and praised if it was well executed, but it wasn’t. It just wasn’t. Because of the above shit I just described, it slowly tanked as it got more emotional. And I think because the show is so incredibly emotionally charged, when people get disappointed or mad at it, that emotion is amplified. Take this post as an example of this effect, if you wish. I’ve watched many a shit show, and none has stuck with me more for so many years after it ended than Steven Universe, none have ever quite frankly pissed me off enough to write this many words about what went wrong with it.

That is why SU gets so much hate, I think. I don’t want to see another damn post on my dash with a conspiracy theory about how everyone just has it out for Rebecca Sugar or doesn’t get what a big deal Ruby and Sapphire were whatever, because overwhelmingly the people who go complain and/or have complained the most about SU, especially after all these years, are former fans who spent years following it (and there are a fuckton - it was MASSIVELY popular when it was still running) and were so incredibly disappointed and pissed off with the direction it went. And those people have legitimate and valid criticisms of the writing that are irrelevant to, cannot be logically dismissed by, and can and should coexist with things like the important cultural impact of Steven Universe in queer history or the identity of its creators.

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I spent literal months going “man I wish they’d release a character with a flapper-inspired design for Penacony since it’s inspired by 1920’s America and whatnot” whilst maining and constantly staring at Aventurine the entire time before it clicked for me that he’s the resident flapper and his outfit is basically a 50/50 fusion of both masculine and feminine 20’s aesthetics actually and that’s like pretty cool

And then I went “but what if we dialed the flapper aesthetic up to 100” just for funsies because I wanted to see what it’d look like. So here you all go

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@labyrynth Imma more heavily push back on that pushback because while you do have a point that western and Chinese audiences in general have pretty different ideas of what’s masculine and what’s feminine, my point is that Aventurine’s design, (and much of Penacony in general) is pretty clearly heavily based on 1920’s America, and I think deliberately mixes specific aspects of both men and women’s fashion from that particular time and place, when masculine and feminine fashions were very much separate. To be more specific, his design slaps a lot of details, ornamentations and overall motifs you would have only really seen in women’s fashion on a masculine silhouette. (This still applies despite him not being from Penacony - his design is still very much meant to evoke it, he is still considered a Penacony character, and I’d argue that aside from just story reasons literally all of the playable Penacony characters being from elsewhere is meant to be reflective of how a large part of the US in that time period, especially in big cities on which Penacony was based (coughNewYorkcough) were absolutely chock-full of first and second gen immigrants because up until acts passed in 1917 and 1924 implemented literacy tests and heavily restricted immigration, all you had to really do to become a US citizen was just show up on a boat but I digress.)

Also it gives me an excuse to blab about fashion history and character design in general. A lot of the links I’ve provided go more into detail and provide visuals, I’m largely just summarizing and picking out what I think is relevant.

We’ll start with the most obviously masculine aspect of his design, which is his silhouette. He’s wearing a three-pieced suit, a long overcoat, (none of which ever really looked anything like what Aventurine’s wearing but we’ll circle back around to that,) and a fedora, all pretty normal menswear stuff in the 20’s and a good while after. Of note I’d like to point out that mens fashion (like women’s fashion, but not as dramatically) became a lot more structurally simplified in this period, with the button count on suits sometimes going way down to 1 or 2 buttons, which is pretty much what Aventurine’s got going on. [https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1920-1929/ and https://vintagedancer.com/1920s/1920s-fashion-men/]. …Tumblr wouldn’t let me link it the same way I did everything else, for some reason. Damn jank-ass webbed site.

Flapper fashion included a very large variety of outerwear, but I’d like to direct you to look at some of the fur-lined winter coats here, and then maybe take another look back at Aventurine’s coat.

Feathers were a very common adornment in women’s fashion at the time, particularly on hats and in feather boas. Peacock feathers were a popular choice. (As well as ostrich feathers, particularly for boas.)

Peacocks as a motif in general. Since Japan opened its doors to trade in 1858, a lot of new inspirations that western artists and designers took from slowly seeped in, the peacock included amongst them, wherein it very quickly became associated with beauty, exotic luxury, and vanity. [x] At the beginning of the 20th century it began to appear on accessories, [x] and starting in the 1910’s, female stars began dressing as peacocks on stage, and “the male bird became a symbol of exotic femininity and fantastical extravagance.” This was despite the long-held superstition (in western theater and in general) that peacocks were bad luck because they embodied the evil eye, [x] though the opposite holds true in Chinese culture, where they symbolize good luck, as well as beauty, dignity, and heavenliness. [x] In the context of Aventurine I find this especially interesting, because frankly, I’d argue he’s really got all of the above going on rather than one or the other.

I’d argue that just because a character is made by a Chinese game developer, that doesn’t mean that western symbolism, sensibilities, and influences don’t come into play, especially when the character is pretty explicitly based on/inspired by western culture and they know the game’s got a worldwide audience. Take Dr. Ratio as another example - he’s obviously Greek themed and his outfit evokes a toga. The swirl pattern all over it is probably a golden ratio visual pun. He’s wearing a golden laurel pin in his hair, a symbol of honor and achievement worn by artists, athletes and scholars for thousands of years, and it’s got the same number of leaves on it as he has PhDs. The little gem on his chest is tyrian purple - a color historically reserved for royalty, reflective of him having an incredibly distinguished status. He’s got an owl on his shoulder, which is a symbol of Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. Interestingly enough, according to that thing I linked earlier that explained a bunch of the symbolism of different birds in Chinese culture, it would seem that owls are a bad omen, because of their big scary eyes and the fact that their call sounds like a word for gravedigging in certain dialects. And honestly the whole not being recognized by Nous thing could be seen as ill fortune, while overall he could easily come off as negative or gloomy, especially if you’re playing with the Chinese, Japanese, or Korean dubs, where his voice is a lot more… I guess stoic? (I love English dub Ratio but he is a lot more… emotional sounding? And perhaps that too is something that more suits broadly western sensibilities. Idk.)

Point is, though Chinese symbolism may not have been thrown out the window there, he is nonetheless clearly heavily influenced by the symbolism of the culture he’s inspired by, with both fused to make something that works for both audiences. I don’t think Aventurine is really any different. I think to ignore the feminine aspects of his design within cultural context assumes that the Chinese character designers (and the writers they work with) just didn’t do their research well enough and slapped masculine and feminine fashion together by complete and total accident, which I think does them a disservice, especially when they pack so many designs full of meticulously researched little symbolic or cultural details.

I also think that the issue of trying to get queercoding past Chinese censors seriously complicates any discussion of a given character’s masculinity/femininity or gender in general, and Hoyoverse has like, a whole history with tryna depict queer people anyway (original Bronya/Seele HI3 comic kiss, anyone? Chinese government specifically saying no femboys allowed and then explicitly naming Venti, anyone???) But like, that’s a whole nother can of worms.

I spent literal months going “man I wish they’d release a character with a flapper-inspired design for Penacony since it’s inspired by 1920’s America and whatnot” whilst maining and constantly staring at Aventurine the entire time before it clicked for me that he’s the resident flapper and his outfit is basically a 50/50 fusion of both masculine and feminine 20’s aesthetics actually and that’s like pretty cool

And then I went “but what if we dialed the flapper aesthetic up to 100” just for funsies because I wanted to see what it’d look like. So here you all go

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I find it really funny how the horny art people have been drawing of Sunday seems to have done a complete 180 since his release. Like, beforehand, he was this incredibly controlling antagonist in charge of shit and trying to enforce the Order on a whole ass planet, so a lot of the suggestive art people were drawing reflected that, as soon as he gets knocked off his perch people get handed him in magic thorny angel bondage with his wings as a blindfold and also he’s crying and is just standing in the middle of the battlefield like this

Never seen like a whole ass fandom totally pivot like that lmao. Even the way I keep seeing people draw him, like face and body structure-wise, has shifted noticably on a larger scale. Ngl it’s kind of fascinating to watch everyone twinkify this dude in real time

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I spent literal months going “man I wish they’d release a character with a flapper-inspired design for Penacony since it’s inspired by 1920’s America and whatnot” whilst maining and constantly staring at Aventurine the entire time before it clicked for me that he’s the resident flapper and his outfit is basically a 50/50 fusion of both masculine and feminine 20’s aesthetics actually and that’s like pretty cool

And then I went “but what if we dialed the flapper aesthetic up to 100” just for funsies because I wanted to see what it’d look like. So here you all go

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I chose not to continue an argument online with someone who, when presented with statistical demographic data that completely undermined the point they were arguing, went “nuh-uh I don’t believe that” and then argued against a bunch of points I didn’t make or even imply

In fact, I have proceeded to not continue this argument for about an entire three weeks now, despite the fact that I can in fact still reply at any time and their idiocy has been chewing away at the back of my brain the whole time, and I could not get the damn mental reply I had out of the back of my brain throughout the entirety of finals week and while I had essays that actually mattered to write

I am very very powerful and deserve an award for this

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The knowledge that I’m not “supposed” to use words like dumb, idiot, stupid or moron in an academic essay

Vs.

The fact that actual essay I’m attempting to write is a media analysis of how conspiracy theories and the people who believe in them are depicted in Invader Zim, and how that reflected the ubiquitousness of UFO conspiracism in pop culture at the time the show was made and the attitudes of many towards that, and I can’t possibly avoid those words because the fact that people in the show are overwhelmingly colossal idiots is kind of a huge part of the point of the show, to such an extent that addressing that fact is pretty much unavoidable, and also the word “moron” is literally in the title of one of the specific episodes I’m spending the most time talking about

Fight!