#{{ also on a sidenote: i finally got a blog theme i like and now i'm just rewording/revising rules (again) and junk. all i gotta do is-

[acoldsovereign]

{{re-posting this beautiful piece of art done by my darling mutual Winslow/Spider @viopolis!! Sometimes when I get frustrated by self-inflicted issues or whatever, all I have to do is look at this and remember I am loved and cherished in this space, as is my girl, Maiz. I'm still highly emotional over this-- thank you, friendo!!! I appreciate your presence on my dash so much!!

[frankensteined]

OKAY @govtdna ! if tumblr would let me tag you on that blog, effie! i said i’d do this and this is wicked dumb but i actually finally did it so now everyone’s gotta see! there’s captions on all of these pictures when you click on them, but still, in order, for your castor ugly holiday sweater collection:

for mark - it would have been so easy to just assign mark any of the hundreds of terrible sweaters i came across just on the principle of That’s How He Dresses, but instead of that he gets a matching sweater set for him and gracie  let’s all laugh at there being swans on them . and if we really wanna make it an uncomfortable holiday outfit: there’s no collar to button all the way up! 

for parsons - i have seen this sweater in person at the mall. it’s absurd. i make a face at it every time i see it. and yet...here? it’s very parsons. after a lot of vodka.

for rudy - he straight up got a terrible rudolph sweater just because they’re basically name twins and rudy’s such a shithead that he deserves the horror of a light up christmas sweater. but, sidenote: do you know how many sweaters i came across while looking for him that feature reindeer humping on them? which i’m sure he’d prefer, but i) Too Bad this is My Post  and ii) i could have assigned this sweater to rudy instead but i didn’t because i’m nice like that

for seth - i’m just playing favourites here: he gets a goofy, comfy food related xmas shirt instead of an ugly ass sweater, and it’s black too so you won’t even notice when he spills on it. ♥  

for ira - ira’s such a darling that he won’t ever get assigned a hideous sweater, he just gets this Actually Nice Winter Themed one instead! love that boy :’)

for emerson - this is the most hideous fucking thing i’ve ever seen and emerson deserves it for being such an asshole all year round :) (no but really it’s atrocious why did anyone ever make this thing???) 

for miller - miller, who is also an asshole all year round, but benefits from being My Favourite Asshole, can have this holiday themed...weapon...themed...sweater.......um.

for cas - i don’t want cas to get a sweater that might be itchy and bother him so, again, i’m playing favourites and he gets an ugly christmas blanket instead  

for abel - i doubt he’d ever get to wear this On The Ranch but i wasn’t about to leave him out! so!!!

BONUS SWEATERS FOR MARK AND...two other deserving brothers - for all ur asshole brotherly-wrangling needs xoxo

[princehcmlet]

Hi Guppy! I'm May, an Admin for CHVRCHESrp. Would you be willing to give us an opinion? Thank you for your consideration!

I’d be glad to give you an opinion, May! DISCLAIMER - everything said in this is just an opinion, if something seems insensitive I’m just trying to give my opinion honestly. Alright, let’s start with the icon (which I can see as the favicon on the blog). From what I can make out it is a wing with text over it. I think that you could take out the overlaying bar of text, and just write the initial of “churches” as a “C” in a dark colored, bold text over the wing. This would make icon much more simple and clear up what it is. Now for the main theme, I like how simple it is, but the detail of the church in the header, and the white, gray, red color scheme makes it feel heavenly or even hellish with the red. The only thing that bothers me is the embossed stroke effect and the transparent red. I would prefer, personally, for it to be a darker, straight, non-embossed stroke that is closer to the maroon you have set as an incorporation of you color scheme already. Red is such a difficult color to work with in graphics, and it looks a lot more professional and beautiful (to me at least) when it is a darker maroon/deep red, and when it is not embossed out. Otherwise, the theme is very organized, I think you could shorten your timeline (even though it does show each of the milestones of the story, maybe there could be a better location where they’re listed?), this also applies for the event dates, because it goes all the way back to 2016, which it’s always nice to update and keep things tidy with spring cleaning. You could always create an archive sideblog that has a page of events and what occured, the progression of the storyline, and leave the main to the most current updates and upcoming/past events? 

For now I’ll be talking more about the plot of the rp, the organization of information, and pages that contribute to that. Your navigation is very well put together, and I think all the links are very fitting. It allows players to click through links for every step of the rp. Now to touch on the plot, which I love that you’ve separated it into seasons. It gives a full detail of what has happened, and lets new players in on what’s happened in the past. While the plot is very interesting and full of details, it does feel a bit diluted. By that, I mean that there are so many details and characters to keep track of that by the end I had more questions than answers. I think maybe before the plot (in another tab section) you could have a list of terms, people, and character information that is important to understand the plot. For example, it would’ve helped to clear up if Lucifer and Satan were the same person because I did not understand that well. And also, because the characters were very specific to the group, it would have been helpful to add their descriptions beforehand so I wouldn’t have to go searching through the blog for their information/bios/players. Another question I had was about the Church of Saints and Sinners. I’m guessing from the names that the Saints revere the God that died from illness/angels and that the Sinners revere Satan/Lucifer/demons, but this is something that is not made clear in the plot. Or if it was made clear I missed it. You have something really good going for yourself because the plot is very original, but I feel like it was a little confusing to follow or understand some points that are not gone over in much depth. I should be able to understand most if not all the rps components without having to go onto several different pages. However, your powers page helped me gain a lot more understanding with each of the character types and how they fit into the story line. I still think it would be worth it to add short summaries at the beginning of the plot, so if you happen to click the plot first, like I did, you won’t be confused continuing to go through the links. Similar to the power types page, the churches page gives more information, but still I want to know if they worship a specific deity in each of the churches, that is still unclear to me at least. Continuing on, I love this unique style of Events and Tasks you’ve created, as well as the way you’ve developed your point system. I’ve never seen this done before, and I applaud the admins on this idea. Nothing bad to say there. Your page for characters is also very organized and easy to get around. I like the way the page is set up so that the players will have plenty of open opportunity to develop their character because there is no full restricting bio, but the characters still have pieces that make them standout! I can say nothing bad about the characters. I like your use of diversity in faceclaims, both underused and frequently used. 

Let’s talk about the rules and the application. I’ll start with the application, which . For your rules, I think that you should move this rule “Once accepted, please adhere to game canon, including bios, posted information, and your accepted application,” into it’s own bullet point. It doesn’t quite relate to the section before about the OOC blog. I also think it would be nice to move the OOC rules you have on the checklist over to the main rules page anyways (that way it’s note broken up and if it’s left in the checklist it’s just an important restatement of the rules). If more of the OOC rules were on the main rule page, I think it would feel a lot more complete, otherwise all your rules are very clear and helpful to players. I think the application is fine, too, it’s in basic form! 

I’ll wrap this up with the other pages and sidenotes. As for the checklist, it was very nice to include all the needed links. It’s also very organized, but I still think that the OOC rules (and even maybe the IC rules) should just be on the main rule page. That way it keeps everything a bit more organized and, unless you’re restating important information to the players, makes it feel like less information to sort through. This is more of a sidenote, but I see that your main tag to track is just “chvrchesrp”, which makes sense to keep everything in one place, but it’s a personal thought that it might get cluttered with starters, tasks, activities, admin posts, etc., and therefore get very hard to sort through. So, it might be nice and more organized to develop separate tags for specific information. And let me know if I just missed the other tracked tags, but I swear I went through your navigation several times for a page! Otherwise, checklist looks good. I really love the cohesive themes from each of the pages, I think that the locations page is really lovely, the way you set up your masterlist is wonderful, too, and I like the admins page which gives us more detail into you as admins. The only page that I take issue with is the weather page, which while an important detail seems insignificant and like something I, as a player, wouldn’t want to have to go into the navigation to look for it. I’d suggest replacing that page with something else, and just adding another sidebar place with widgets you can just incorporate into your theme. If you end up going through with this idea of moving the widget to another section of the main theme, I can suggest a few websites for that. Otherwise, the worldbuilding you’ve created is relevant (especially with the other blogs of the radio, the musing blog, and so on). This is just another personal sidenote, I think you should call the “customs” tab on the navigation “custom roles”, take it off when the roles are all filled, move the link to the top of the application/rules, or possibly something else? When I first read it I thought it might be some kind of etiquette or traditions section of the blog, but I was surprised to find out that it was actually targeted towards player-created characters.

So, before signing off, I’ll give my final thoughts. I think that this roleplay is fixed up with extremely dedicated admins who have most likely spent days and restless hours trying to formulate each piece of this roleplay. For that, I commend you and congratulate you for keeping a roleplay open for this long and for creating a unique property. The main points I struggled with when going through the blog is just how complicated it seemed and how much information there was. I am the kind of person who gets overwhelmed as a new player if I join in the game a bit late, or it there is already a lot that has happened. So, I think that the plot and the terms and keeping track of all the pages did become a bit engulfing and overpowering. So, I think it would be very, very helpful, if you as admins kept the main page as organized and tidy as possible, it would help new players feel more comforted in joining and allow old players to more easily look through past accomplishments. I had so much that I really didn’t get to talk about in this opinion, but I hope what I focused on helped to organize my thoughts a bit more and got through to the admins.

[saotome-michi]

I'm someone who agrees with your opinion on yoi completely! A lot of my friends are big fans so I don't really have anyone to discuss my issues of representation with seriously, so I'm happy to have found your blog!!! Also, what are your opinions on Flip Flappers and their LGBT representation?

Hello! Sorry for the late reply, wanted to finish watching Flip Flappers before I answered your ask ;) also I’m glad you’re enjoying my blog and yoi criticism posts!

I’m not 100% sure what you mean by your question though. Are you asking whether I think Flip Flappers is LGBT rep? Or are you asking about how I think Flip Flappers depicts Papika/Cocona’s relationship?

If its the former, I’ve talked about how anime is a gray area when it comes to lgbt representation. Particularly shinya anime. It’s just not on the same scale as tv dramas or mainstream movies or books (that are not marketed as BL or GL). So while there are probably Japanese wlws who love Cocona and Papika’s story to most Japanese ppl it just doesn’t really “register” as LGBT representation, y'know? Especially since Yuri at this point is a well-established genre.

You can kind of see that in this interview with the Flip Flappers Director, Oshiyama Kiyotaka (https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/5m1p17/an_interview_with_flip_flappers_director_kiyotaka/) Note the way he talks about yuri, as something “viewers nowadays find easy to hook into” with its own rules and conventions that one shouldn’t break.

If it’s the latter that you’re asking about however, I can talk about Papika/Cocona and yuri references. I recommend that you first read a post I made on yuri media recently, including the article that I link to in that post.

Post: ( http://saotome-michi.tumblr.com/post/157599879119/i-got-these-two-similar-asks-so-i-thought-id)

Finished reading? Cool, let’s move on to Flip Flappers.

(SPOILERS!!!)

Flip Flappers is a moe anime with really obvious yuri themes and references for yuri fans. The setting has no boys who are Cocona’s age and few important male characters,and the Papika/Cocona relationship is sprinkled with romantic undertones.

The main theme in the anime is Cocona’s fear of making her own decisions and failing. For example, Episode 3 with the desert land has Cocona running into a goddess(?) who just oozes the ero sadomasochist yuri archetype. Her interactions with Cocona warn us of Cocona’s desire to submit. Not sexually, but just submit in every way possible by letting someone else take the reins and make the decisions for her, which foreshadows what Mimi does towards the end of the series. Similarly, Episode 5, which is chock full of Class S Yuri references, from the all girls school to the constant lily imagery, has Cocona and Papika fall into a loop where they become passive participants in the dimension.

Ep 7 is the fan-favorite episode for Papika/Cocona. I’ve seen meta posts here on tumblr saying that its about Cocona struggling to leave the closet which was ?? to me tbh. I can understand why people interpret it that way, but to me this episode was strictly about Cocona’s lack of confidence in herself and her relationship with Papika, placed in the format of a dating sim/otome game. At the beginning of the episode, Cocona is scared that her actions in PI have caused Iroha senpai to change. This causes her to lack faith in herself and Cocona, which is why the PI in this episode is a world that doesn’t change, where Cocona and the different Papikas can do whatever without fearing the consequences of their actions. However, after spending time with the different Papikas, Cocona realizes that such a world is not worth it. She’d rather stride forward, knowing Papika will always catch her, and live with the consequences.

Sidenote: You know that nail clippers scene in ep 7 that ppl on reddit/tumblr were saying was a sign of lesbianism? I actually thought of the Japanese horror legend thing that goes “Don’t cut your nails at night otherwise your parents will die and you’ll never see them again” especially with the creepy Papika in the scene (btw this legend freaked me out as a kid I never clipped my nails at night) Thought it was a hint that Salt was Cocona’s dad. But as it turns out, they literally just put the nail clippers there for fun lmao. No deep meaning to it at all, they just brainstormed what could be in the desk and someone suggested nail clippers and that was apparently the most interesting idea they had. Source: https://mobile.twitter.com/315ByFFK/status/819949388134957060

I’m not denying that a part of Cocona’s journey is acknowledging her ~sexuality~ but I disagree with those who focus solely on that. On a more basic level it’s about Cocona finding the courage to make her own decisions and Papika helping her do that, by assuring her she’s not alone and by pointing out the ways their world is fun. Hence why the PI at the very end of ep 13 is a dull, drab world- because Cocona thinks that its a world without Papika.

But now that I’ve finally finished Flip Flappers I’m wondering if there’s PapiCoco fic that actually acknowledges that Papika is mentally around 18 years older than Cocona and is besties with her parents. Where is that fic, I would like to read it.