#Fandom terms have different meanings for a reason!!

[murky-tannin]

I miss people distinguishing between AMVs, PMVs, and animatics. especially the latter two. The amount of times I've gone looking for animatics only for PMVs to pop up is incredible

[thedrotter]

Mili from gote to handa!!! these were originally simple doodles but i had to polish it because she's my favorite from the game

[indi-glo-archive]

guys.

[markscherz]

I'm sorry... snake paper? Are things heating up in the snake researcher fandom?

16 February 2024: A team of researchers (including a generally well-respected anaconda expert) found minimal and partly contradictory genetic differences in green anacondas over an enormous area, summarily dismissed all previous work on the taxonomy of green anacondas, and gave the mitochondrial lineage concerned a new name, along the way making some huge fumbles that show plainly that they have no idea how taxonomy works or what certain technical terms mean. They published the work in a journal from a suspect publishing house that is known to rush, skip, or ignore peer review as and when it suits them. And apparently there was some suspicious funding involved, though I don’t know much about that. They made a media storm with ‘a new anaconda!’ but within minutes there were people raising huge red flags about the paper, for the reasons enumerated above and others.

The response from ‘the community’ has been swift and harsh, but mostly fair, in my view. The discussion on ResearchGate reflects this pretty well. There are some bad takes about keeping ‘wokism’ out of science; I would argue that it remains critical to incorporate native peoples, knowledge, and languages into taxonomic work—just not the way this was done, in flagrant and intentional conflict with the established methods and protocols. There are also responses in the discussion by the lead author that show that he is evidently impervious to all of this criticism, and stands by the belief that the work and taxonomic reasoning is sound.

19 March 2024: two papers were published simultaneously in Bionomia, that both enumerate and rebut the problems of the original paper. And I know there are more on the way, though I don’t know if they are all going to be completed now that two responses have already been published.

The one thing I would weigh in on from my perspective is that it is the *taxonomy*, and not necessarily the evidence presented in the paper, that is the biggest problem. Species are described based on mitochondrial data alone all the time. Some of the results are quite interesting. But the taxonomy of the paper is a mess, full of contradictions, cherry-picking, and terminological errors. In the hands of competent taxonomists, the work might have been much more difficult to dispute. But also, no competent taxonomist would have assigned a new name to this lineage; there are too many existing names that would have priority, if it is worth recognising.

Undoing public perception of there being a new anaconda species will take years, if it can ever really be achieved. Always easier for media stories to go around than corrections.

TL;DR big snake paper made big mistakes, and within a month was dismissed. It has probably done lasting damage to perception of anaconda diversity.

[lurkingshan]

Japanese BL Starter Pack

It’s been awhile since I dropped a rec list, so I am here today to share one that is very near and dear to my heart—a Japanese bl primer for those who are new to the jbl game. I created this for @neuroticbookworm to help her on her journey when she decided she wanted to start getting into Japanese works. The fandom (on Tumblr and generally) tends to focus primarily on Thai shows because they are the easiest to access for international fans, since Thailand is working its way toward world domination via ql media and wants us all to be able to watch. But there is a lot of great stuff to watch beyond the easy access Thai channels, and Japan is the country where this genre originated, so its shows are important for anyone who considers themselves a bl fan. Japan doesn’t cater nearly as much to the international audience so tracking down the shows sometimes takes some ingenuity and can-do spirit, but that’s part of the fun!

And so, the list! Bookworm is about halfway through it and having a ball, so I figured it was time to stop hoarding it and share it with anyone else who would like to dip their toes into jbl and isn’t quite sure where to start. A few notes: 

I am not here to teach you about the deep roots of the jbl genre or give you a primer on yaoi manga. I am by no means an expert and there are other places to find that information. Start here with this great post by @nieves-de-sugui and then maybe wander over to @absolutebl to read up more on the evolution of the genre.

This list is by no means an exhaustive accounting of every important Japanese bl ever made; it is simply a nice sampler platter of the cream of the crop among various styles you will find in jbl. Watching through this whole list will not only expose you to some fantastic shows, but also give you a sense of what makes jbl unique and how the country’s style differs from others, and point you toward the types of jbl you’ll like most (they tend to put shows in pretty specific style and tone lanes and once you find the ones you like there are lots more where that came from). 

If you’re coming to this post as a jbl lover and you don’t see your favorite here, I promise it’s not because I don’t love it very much; I simply had to make some choices to get this down to a reasonable shortlist. Feel free to leave extra recs for others to find! 

I’m putting these in a loose suggested watch order that will take you through the various jbl lanes in a kind of popcorn style, because I always think it’s good to change it up so you don’t get too stuck in one mode, and it works its way up to most of the extremely Japanese stuff (you will know what that means by the time you finish). But do what’s in your heart and change up the order if you want, friends, I am not the boss of you! 

Cherry Magic (Crunchyroll or grey)

gif by @liyazaki

I believe everyone on Tumblr is pretty familiar with this one, which is not a coincidence—this is one of the most accessible jbls. Not in terms of actual access to watch it, mind you (we’ve all jumped through shady internet hoops to watch it) but in terms of its content and style. Cherry Magic is a classic workplace romcom with a magical twist, and it is charming af. It’s a great exemplar of Japan’s light and zippy comedy lane for bl—a lane in which, importantly, the romances stay chaste even when the actual plot is about sex, or lack thereof. My friend @waitmyturtles would kill me if I didn’t make sure you know that Cherry Magic also has a lovely follow up film. And bonus: there is now a Thai remake airing so if you watch the original you can get in on the discussion about the different adaptations between countries. This is pretty easy to find these days in all the usual places, but I strongly recommend watching it here.

Old Fashion Cupcake (Viki)

gif by @liyazaki

Moving on to a slightly more mature workplace romcom. Old Fashion Cupcake, another Tumblr favorite, is an age gap boss-subordinate romance, and it’s both very adult and somehow wholesome af at the same time. Sure, there is a lot of carnal desire going on here, but there is also a lot of wooing via fluffy pancakes. It’s a tight five episodes and a fantastic example of what Japan, with its extreme technical precision in writing, directing, editing, pacing, and acting firing on all cylinders, can do in two hours. There’s not an ounce of flab on this thing and you’ll want to watch it over and over again.

Utsukushii Kare (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Time to get a little weird! Weird is a key feature of Japanese media, and lots of jbls explore unusual relationship dynamics rooted in complex psychology. This is the first show on the list that will likely feel very Japanese if you’re new around here—my advice is to lean into it and finish the show, even if you get uncomfortable along the way. In Japanese media, discomfort always serves a purpose. This is a high school story with a twisted relationship at its center, and I’m not saying any more than that. Don’t spoil yourself and go watch it! This one also comes with two sequels—one short second season and one movie—that continue from the original story. They are less essential but still excellent.

I Cannot Reach You (Netflix)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Next up, another high school tale, but with a totally different vibe. This show is kind of a revelation in its willingness to tell a story about overwhelming desire—including sexual desire—with young protagonists. It’s rooted in a classic but often misunderstood trope, friends to lovers, and takes the angst of it seriously, giving us a low stakes story that feels extremely high stakes to our leads. It’s also gorgeous and uses a classic Japanese visual style (bokeh) that you’ll be dying to learn more about. 

His (Viki)

gif by @gabrielokun

Time for a break from high school, and we’ll sprinkle in a movie for some added flavor. His is a jbl film featuring a second chance romance between a stoic, introverted man who moves to a remote town to start over, and his ex-boyfriend who follows him there unexpectedly, adorable child in tow. Importantly, this movie does not take place in what we often refer to as the “bl bubble” where homophobia doesn’t exist; the leads’ experiences of being gay men in a homophobic society are hugely important to the plot and themes of the story. It’s a beautiful film and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. @bengiyo would surely also like me to tell you that this film follows a brief prequel show called His: I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love about the characters originally meeting in high school; I do not think it’s really necessary to watch it but completists can start there.

The Pornographer series (Gaga)

By now you should be ready to get into some classic Japanese fucked up psychosexual material, right? Right! The Pornographer series is told in five installments in this order:

The Novelist, a six episode miniseries

Mood Indigo, a six episode prequel series

Spring Life, a 15 minute short

Pornographer: Playback, a two hour film

Spring Life Continued, a 15 minute short

Confused by that distribution model? So say we all; sometimes Japan likes to make us work for it to make sure we really appreciate its many gifts to us. The story across these installments is about a very difficult to love protagonist, what makes him the way he is, and the also-unhinged-but-in-a-different-way man who finally gets through to him. It’s an extremely satisfying love story and one of the best character arcs I have ever seen, full stop. For this one, you’ll want to just pull the word problematic out of your pocket and store it in a drawer; nearly everything that happens in this story is problematic and that’s the point. Lean in! All of these installments except for the film are on Gaga, if you get that far hmu and I will supply you with the final puzzle piece.

Our Dining Table (Gaga)

You could probably use a break after those last two, so it’s time to shift over to a heart-tugging twofer: family trauma mixed with the cutest shit you’ve ever seen. ODT is an example of another classic type of Japanese show: the food drama (you will see the GOAT in this category at the end of this list). In Japanese culture, food is love, and the act of preparing food for your loved ones is a common path to romance. You’ll love this story about an isolated office worker who meets a pair of brothers, learns to cook as a way of connecting with them, and begins to heal from his own trauma as a result. The image above is a scan from the manga, which @troubled-mind curates to make extremely cool comparison sets like this one. Many jbls are faithful adaptations of yaoi manga source material, so it’s good to have a bit of familiarity with them.

Minato’s Laundromat (Gaga)

gif by @liyazaki

Japanese media loves to explore taboo, and often manages to do it in a way that is surprisingly light and chaste. This is an age gap romance between a teenager and his adult neighbor that explores internalized homophobia, emotional repression, and falling in love across seemingly impossible social chasms. It’s also a great example of old school yaoi seme-uke dynamics that still show up across the bl genre. Also, take my advice: end your journey with this one with the first season and just pretend season 2 doesn’t exist.

Eternal Yesterday (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Remember what I said about weird? Time to do that again, but with a heaping dose of grief and pain on top. It’s not a spoiler to tell you this show involves a major character death; a major character death is, in fact, the root of the entire story. This is a magic realist tale of first love turned tragic, and it will hurt and heal you. It is one of my favorite dramas of all time.

Restart After Come Back Home (Gaga)

And now for a break for your poor exhausted brain. This film is basically the jbl version of a Hallmark original movie, about a city boy who goes back home to the country and falls in love with a total sweetheart while working together on a farm. Enjoy it, bestie, you’ve earned it! 

Tokyo in April Is… (Gaga)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

You’ve probably noticed by now that emotional repression and failed communication are big themes in Japanese works. This second chance romance has plenty of both, and it’s a great example of a kind of muted emotional style that Japan does so well, where the surface of the story seems almost placid and calm even as deep emotion roils underneath. This one (and Eternal Yesterday above) are part of a special line up of jbls on Japanese channel MBS called Tonku (Drama) Shower. The shows air one after another in the same time slot on Fridays (in Japan, perhaps Thursdays for you depending on where you live) and you truly never know what you’re gonna get, but they’re all interesting. Warnings on this one for sexual assault and trauma. 

The End of the World With You (Viki)

Time for sexy and weird again, but even more so! This has to be one of the most unique bls ever made; it goes to some truly divine and strange places, and it feels incredibly queer while doing it. Made by the same screenwriter/director of the Pornographer series with a lot of the same sensibilities, but in a more heightened apocalyptic setting. This one has existential angst, a road trip, a redemption tale, and a variety of interesting side characters in the mix.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Gaga)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of the list and your reward is watching one of the best bls of all time, and a perfect slice of life food drama to boot. WDYEY now has two seasons (along with a couple specials and a movie that fall in between) because the universe clearly loves us. You can now get it on Gaga for easy access but I’m partial to the versions over at @kinounaniresource for better subs. Wherever you watch, settle in to get cozy with Shiro and Kenji and make sure to always eat before you hit play.

[renthony]

On "Consuming Content"

Every now and then a post crosses my feed that follows the vein of, "you have to do things other than consume media or else you'll be a dumb person who doesn't know anything about how the real world works and does nothing but pointless fandom stuff."

I hate those posts for three major reasons, not counting the inherent ableism and classism of "you must have approved Smart People hobbies or else you're worthless" rhetoric:

You don't know what people do or talk about outside of what you see on their social media. Responding to fandom communities on a fandom-driven website as if all these people are one-note cardboard cutouts of people is asinine. In many cases this genre of post feels like repackaged 2012 tumblr "not like other girls" and hipster discourse. Yes, yes, you think you're better than everyone else on this website because your hobbies are less mainstream, more morally pure, and have greater intellectual merit, we get it.

What do you even mean by consuming content? As someone who purposely avoids using the phrase "consuming content" because I find the term too vague to be useful, please be more specific. Are you including every single form of media engagement and art enjoyment? Are you just talking about mainstream TV and film? What about novels? Plays and scripts? Nonfiction books and instruction manuals? Do you mean to imply that going to a book club is a worthless non-hobby? Are you including academic reading? Are you including going to the art museum? Going to the theatre, concerts, or other performances? Taped liveshows? Watching sports events on TV? Are you including news media? Are you including YouTube tutorials about how to do various tasks, crafts, or other hobbies? Are you including trade magazines? Are you including industry publications in various fields? What constitutes "content," and what constitutes "consuming" in this discourse? Define it. "Consuming content" is a nothing phrase that people use to mean multiple different things depending on what they, personally, judge as valid media. It's a buzzword at best, and when the same buzzword can be used to describe both "idly scrolling social media" and "reading and discussing a book," it's a meaningless phrase.

As an artist and author, if engaging with media is bad and worthless, am I supposed to conclude that making it is equally worthless? If "consuming content" is a bad, lazy, worthless, fake hobby, what makes creating art a worthwhile pursuit? If I am constantly being told as an artist that engaging with media isn't a worthwhile pursuit in its own right, and the people who want to engage with my art are just brainless fandom losers, what incentive do I have to make that art anymore? Furthermore, to everyone reading this paragraph and thinking, "that's not what content creation is," I refer you to bullet #2: If the phrase "make content" can be used to mean "low-effort posts made to advertise cheap and useless products" as well as "being a novelist" or "getting a gig as a writer on a TV show," it's a meaningless phrase.

None of that is even getting into issues such as the way influencers are preyed on by both brands and targeted harassment from trolls. Influencer culture has major issues, but boiling those issues down to "stupid vapid young people who are too lazy to make real art or get real jobs" (which is a mindset I see frequently online) is unhelpful. So many people pursue influencer deals because they're living in poverty but are skilled at various social media and advertising related tasks, and just like any worker, they're being exploited because they need to eat. Labor rights for influencers are a huge topic that entertainment industry unions have been actively discussing and working toward. (Related links for further info: [x] [x] [x] [x])

"Consuming content is not a hobby" is a worthless statement unless you define what you mean by both "consuming" and "content." Quite frankly, you also need to define "hobby," because if you're putting requirements on what is and isn't allowed to be a "real" hobby, you mostly just seem like you're moving goalposts and defining "worthwhile hobby" as "hobby I, personally, think is good." Use more specific language to articulate your actual problems with the entertainment industry, the art world, influencer culture, or whatever else you're actually upset by.

Media and fandom can involve any number of enriching, satisfying hobbies that take up a perfectly acceptable and healthy space in someone's life. If you aren't into it, go find hobbies you do like and stop policing how other people spend their precious free time in this nightmare hellscape of a world.

[azuremist]

Haruka isn’t autistic-coded – he has an intellectual disability (and why that matters)

(AO3 Mirror)

A lot of people in the MILGRAM fandom (especially English-speaking MILGRAM fandom) state that Haruka is autistic-coded, as if it’s fact. Most recognize that Haruka is coded as disabled. (If you didn’t recognize that, I hope this post will help to explain why.) However, to state that he is coded as autistic specifically is incorrect. Haruka is coded as intellectually disabled.

Now, there are likely two things that contribute to this issue. One is the invisibility of intellectual disability as a whole, and another is the fact that a lot of this has to do with things that only someone who speaks Japanese would understand (such as complex vs non-complex words in Japanese).

In this post, I plan to lay out what an intellectual disability is and how it differs from neurodivergencies such as autism or ADHD. After that, I want to discuss the way Haruka speaks and uses words, the symbolism in his MVs, and how this lends to him being coded as intellectually disabled. Finally, I want to discuss why this even matters at all. Because, in truth, viewing Haruka as autistic instead of intellectually disabled leaves the viewer misunderstanding his story in a huge way that seems far too common in English-speaking MILGRAM fandom. So, I hope you listen to what I have to say.

What does it mean to be intellectually disabled?

Confusing autism and intellectual disability (henceforth referred to as ID) is not an issue unique to the MILGRAM fandom. They are quite commonly mistaken for each other, in the same way that autism and ADHD are both commonly mistaken for each other. And for the same reason, too – autism and ID are comorbid. This means that, if someone is autistic, they are more likely to have an ID. For this reason, it makes perfect sense to headcanon Haruka as autistic. I headcanon him as autistic, myself, actually. But, in this post, I’m going to be strictly talking about his coding, not headcanons, and he is very specifically coded with an ID.

So, what’s the difference? In the words of the National Institutes of Health, “Whereas ID is associated with general deficits across developmental domains, ASD is in fact defined by the observation that social communication deficits are particularly impairing.” (Source)

To say this in layman’s terms, autism is primarily characterized by difficulties in social communications. Cognitive abilities in autistic individuals vary, just like with allistic individuals, but the defining features are issues with social interaction and nonverbal communication. Autism by itself effects how effectively one communicates, but not intelligence. On the other hand, ID is a limitation on intellectual functioning, just like the name implies. This causes issues in areas like learning, problem-solving, and abstract reasoning.

A lot of people think ID is a synonym for ‘learning disability’. ‘Learning disability’ is an umbrella term that covers things such as dyslexia and dysgraphia. This isn’t the case. For one thing, ID can be a diagnosis on its own. ID is subdivided into syndromic ID, where intellectual deficits are present with other signs and symptoms, and nonsyndromic ID, where ID is, itself, the diagnosis. Examples of syndromic IDs include fragile X syndrome, and Down syndrome. For another, those with learning disabilities tend to have average to above-average intellectual abilities. Their disorder affects their ability to acquire and process information, but they are still able to learn. In contrast, ID affects the ability to learn at all, as well as affecting development and general function.

ID is a debilitating disorder. Many people with an ID cannot live independently, require help with self-care activities, and have limited communicative abilities. Understanding this – particularly, how ID is often a disability that requires a caregiver – is a key point to understanding Haruka as a character. But that’s to be covered later.

Words

The reason why this is a problem in the English fandom specifically is because the main thing tipping off the viewer to Haruka’s ID is the way that he speaks.

‘Weakness’, Haruka’s first-trial song, is written entirely in INCREDIBLY basic, elementary-level kanji – mostly hiragana and katakana. In fact, his first-trial song is misspelled in a lot of official releases of the song (‘Weekness’), which is a good way to get the same effect across. This is not the case across all platforms, though, for whatever reason. He also writes, in his trial 1 interrogation, with only that elementary-level kanji; often only one-word answers. The only complicated characters he knows are usually ones that mean something along the lines of, “I’m a stupid, idiot child,” which can be assumed to be because that’s what he has heard his whole life.

While I’m unsure if it is ENTIRELY in this basic kanji, his second trial song and interrogation is at least mostly written like this, as well. At this point, Muu is teaching him how to read and write (or, that’s what’s implied), but, even with that one-on-one attention, he is still speaking like a child most of the time to the Japanese ear.

When he’s forced to use or listen to words outside of this elementary-level kanji, he gets audibly confused, as well. In the AVIOT earbud collab, he has the voiceline, “Pairing seems to be in progress,” but, if you listen, he says “pairing” like it’s a question. (“Pair-ing?”) He doesn’t know the word is an English loanword that isn’t often used in everyday conversation, so he’s struggling to say it.

He also struggles when speaking to Es in his interrogations. He tries to say, “I will acknowledge any falsehood or silence,” but the words used are very advanced in Japanese. As such, he struggles with it, repeating, “False-hood? Si-lence?” Multiple similar exchanges happen in his interrogations, with Haruka misunderstanding words Es uses, and stuttering over unfamiliar words. The implication is that Haruka struggles with higher vocabulary or unfamiliar words, and with speaking and communication in general. He apologizes multiple times to Es for struggling, saying that he is not intelligent as an explanation multiple times. Additionally, in his second trial investigation, he talks about how he could never do the same things as everyone around him. When Es calls him stupid, he agrees. Es even states, “You really have no learning ability whatsoever.” When, mind you, having delayed or slowed learning is, like, the symptom of intellectual disability. It’s quite blatant. (Why is this not fandom consensus yet, again?)

Moving on from the point of how Haruka uses words, we can talk about other forms of word-based MILGRAM media. For example: when introducing himself, he says he thinks he’s 17, which implies that he isn’t actually sure. Additionally, there is lots of evidence for his intellectual disability in his interrogation questions:

He considers it impossible to learn another language

His dream is to ‘live normally’

He states he disappointed his father (not inherently an ID-related thing, but also, makes sense with his coding in mind)

Many answers imply that he’s been unable to live his own life, and he doesn’t really have any aspirations outside of being given attention

Finally, we have the lyrics to his songs. Again, on top of being written in very basic kanji, we have lines like the following, which include repeated themes of needing a caregiver (being ‘hopeless’ by himself), not being able to do what others can do, hating how he was born, and struggling to function. (I have bolded examples that I think are especially apt.)

“Why was I born like this? Why does it hurt so much?” / “Why was I born to be me? Why does it hurt so much?”

“Instead you kept calling me “hopeless” / You never called me by my name / You were always comparing me to someone else”

“If I tried and couldn’t say it, you would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless”” / “When I tried to understand it, you’ll make that disappointed face again”

“I just wanted to be your good boy” (what did the MILGRAM team want us to think when they included this line? likely that he’s childish or ‘hasn’t grown up’, right?)

“Mommy, look / I’ve done great” (calling her ‘mommy’ instead of ‘mom’ – again, ask what the MILGRAM team wants us to think when they included this)

“If only I could do what anyone else could do”

“It’s enough, I am a “disappointment””

“My life started in a wrong spot”

With regards to his relationship with Muu, he doesn’t understand why Muu using him would be a bad thing, or how she is manipulating him. People with ID tend to have poor judgment, and Haruka not being able to tell the difference and not caring about the difference between negative and positive attention shows this (although his trauma definitely also plays a role).

Finally, we have the trial song titles.

We’ve already discussed how “Weakness” is sometimes alternatively misspelled as “Weekness”, and that is because the title in Japanese is, arguably, misspelled, too. The Japanese title is a play on the phrase jakuniku kyoushoku, which is equivalent to the English phrase, “Survival of the fittest.” More directly, it translates to, “The weak are meat, the strong do eat.” The character for “strong” (kyou) is replaced by “together” (also kyou) – with the implication being that Haruka forgot which version of the word was correct for this situation. This also works to create a pun, of sorts, as this makes the title more like, “The weak are meat, communal eating”, creating an emphasis on the fact that there are more people eating than there are ‘weak people’. There are differing ways to interpret this pun, but one way is to view it as a statement on Haruka’s status as a minority, oppressed (‘eaten’) by the majority.

On the other hand, we have All-Knowing and All-Agony. In Japanese, this song title is Zenchi Zennou, which can be translated as “Omniscient and Omnipotent”, used to describe the Christian God. Once again, we have what we can assume is Haruka misspelling the title, creating a pun. One that is much more on the nose, as the character for “ability” (nou) is replaced with the character for “worry, distress, pain” (also nou).

It seems that the reason why Haruka uses new complicated words (aside from the words meaning “idiot” and the like) in All-Knowing and All-Agony is because Muu is teaching him. It features the more complicated “食” (shoku; food), when we know from Haruka’s 2023 birthday portal that Muu is bringing him meals. It also prominently features Muu’s name, 夢 (yume; dream), which is more complicated, as well.

Imagery

Now, we get on to the non-verbal, more visually-based evidence for Haruka’s ID. Be prepared for a lot more images!

Going back to Muu teaching Haruka how to write: it’s not just clear in his usage of kanji, but also how he writes. Comparing his handwriting, it becomes much easier to read after Trial 2’s start, and his writing is soft and bubbly; much like a teen girl’s writing might be.

All of these improvements are able to be linked back to Muu (both his style of writing and in the more complicated words that he knows), who we know is looking after him. Considering this, it’s pretty clear why he sees her like a maternal figure.

One of the Minigram comics shows the prisoners eating curry udon together. Of the four shown (Amane, Haruka, Shidou and Mahiru), Amane and Haruka are the only two who make messes out of their clothes. Since the other two characters in the comic have active roles, and Haruka has the most passive one, Haruka’s inclusion can be assumed to be because he is the only prisoner aside from the child, Amane, who would make a mess while eating.

Childish themes and imagery are seen scattered throughout his MV, as well, especially his first one. He draws with the skill level of a child, which is a very prevalent motif, and he is shown to sleep with a plushie.

Additionally, he seems to have trouble putting on his clothes. He wears two entirely different socks – not just different colors, but also two different lengths. His pant legs are also two different lengths when he tries to roll them up in his Trial 2 art, and he seems to exclusively wear slip-on shoes up until he befriends Muu (where we can presume that she begins helping him, and even then, they're not done properly).

There are various visual parallels drawn between himself as a child and himself as he is now (for example, the way that his clothes are a mix of his current shirt and the vest he wore as a child in All-Knowing and All-Agony), and he often compares himself to a child wanting praise.

Even the violent acts that Haruka is shown committing are also a sign of an ID. People with IDs tend to have meltdowns, and devolve into fits of violence. The reasons for these meltdowns vary depending on the person, but reasons can include anger / frustration (especially in reaction to not being able to communicate well), sensory overload, and confusion.

You may note that Haruka’s mother reacts the exact wrong way for dealing with these meltdowns. When trying to help someone experiencing a meltdown, especially a violent meltdown, the last thing you want to do is appear frightened. The number one piece of advice everyone gives for helping someone experiencing a meltdown is to remain calm. It’s also not advised to leave the person alone, either, because that sends the message, “I want to avoid you when you feel this way.” (Which I suppose, for a neglectful mother like Haruka’s, would be technically accurate, but still not at all helpful.)

It only makes sense that Haruka’s tantrums continue to get worse and worse.

But after the meltdowns fade, he seems to not understand what he’s done. He’s shown experiencing fear and confusion after he hurts something, even shown as his child self at one point. A major part of IDs is being unable to connect actions to consequences.

Finally, we go onto his body language. Frankly, I considered putting, “Imagine this as a real person doing these things and not an anime boy, and you’ll see my point.” Which is true. But I decided to go a little more in depth.

Swaying is heavily associated with people with IDs. This is, in part, because people with IDs have reduced postural balance, and general body balance. Because of that lack of postural balance, people with IDs tend to slump quite heavily, as well. Both of these traits are shown very obviously with Haruka, in All-Knowing and All-Agony.

In the same MV, he’s also shown biting his nails. Like autistic people, people with IDs stim, and this could also be a version of hand mouthing (repetitive contact between the hands and the mouth / tongue), which is also heavily associated with / often seen in intellectually disabled people. He's also shown doing this in promo art.

So, why does this matter?

Haruka being intellectually disabled is a huge part of his story, and, when taking it into consideration, it changes how one views his story a lot.

Haruka being treated better as a child makes more sense with this framework. He wants to return to when he was a child because his level of intellect then was seen as more ‘normal’. There wasn’t as much obviously ‘wrong’ with him yet. Children are expected to be a little slow, but it’s when they remain that way that many parents begin to become concerned. He yearns for when his mother didn’t know he was disabled, and when she treated him better for that reason.

Haruka being severely neglected / abused by his mother would be awful, no matter what, but him being intellectually disabled makes it so much worse. He needs attention and care from his caregivers even more so than the average child does, because he has trouble even functioning on the day-to-day without help. This is why he thrives under Muu’s care; she is meeting his support needs. Likely not perfectly (she’s just a teenage girl, and she is almost certainly not trained or educated in this regard), but even with the amount of support that she is able to give, Haruka is thriving. He’s more confident, he’s learning how to write, and he’s eating more consistently.

Without that care, he struggles so severely that he melts down regularly, going into fits of violence over the fact that his support needs aren’t being met (on top of all of the other emotional baggage that comes with any child being neglected by their parent). Haruka’s mother continued to ignore these cries for attention, for help, for care… Until it went too far.

The way that Haruka’s story is viewed changes drastically with this information. If Haruka was autistic, it would affect very few of the things that I listed. So much of Haruka's story hinges on specifically his intelligence level, not how he socializes. And do you have any idea how many people I’ve seen say, “He’s a neurodivergent with a shitty mom, but so am I, and I didn’t kill anyone about it”? No. If you are not intellectually disabled, you do not get to compare your experiences as if they are equal. If you don’t have an ID, your experiences cannot be compared in this way.

Haruka has a debilitating disability that requires support which he was not getting. He was experiencing ableist abuse at the hands of his mother, and he didn’t know how to handle it. All of his violence happened during his meltdowns, and his disability makes it harder for him to connect his actions to the consequences, or find alternate ways to solve his problems – this is all extremely important information and context when you’re discussing whether or not his crime is forgivable.

If you still don’t forgive him, that’s alright. But to neglect this aspect of his character is, to be frank, baffling, if you’re trying to participate in the spirit of the series and understand everyone’s crime to the fullest extent. And to make jokes, comparing your own experiences to Haruka’s, since you assume him to be neurodivergent and nothing else, does a huge disservice to his story! And, when it’s done to demean him? It honestly comes off a slight bit ableist.

So, I’d like everyone to keep this information in mind moving forward. Don’t infantilize Haruka for his disability. But do consider this information in your analysis posts, your discussions, and so on. I’d like to see this become common knowledge in the MILGRAM fandom, especially since the idea of him being specifically autistic-coded is so widespread by this point.

Thank you!

[vampireistic]

the problem with natlan / sumeru

warning: long post

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to preface this i’d like to say that i’m in no ways an expert in the topics present, i’m just an autistic dumbass with too much time on his hands who enjoys a bit of research — i’m in no way, shape or form trying to belittle players who are excited for the update, by all means i hope you enjoy it, i’m just trying to give criticism.

you can enjoy/play a game while criticising it simultaneously.

when it comes to the topic of racial diversity and a company like hoyoverse that’s based in china, there’s quite a lot of political baggage that comes along with it. while i’ll try my best to go over that, i’m afraid i can only give a very limited eastern european perspective on it and i’ll certainly get things wrong or misinterpret things — if you’d like a more thorough view on the politics, please go read the post made by @zeichannnnn (hope you don’t mind the tag my love)

firstly, i’ll be going over general misconceptions, ridiculous excuses and or stereotypes that i’ve seen commonly come up in this conversation.

any and all screenshots will have usernames cut off for privacy, i want to maintain a civilised discussion and not cause argument.

a lot of my critiques are more so towards the attitude the fandom has when it comes to this argument and their blatant colourism. as my friend above says, no one ever complained about characters in liyue/inazuma being paper white despite the fact realistically, no one in EA is that colour naturally. this of course stems from the beauty standards but that’s a discussion for later on.

the point is that if say a nation like liyue, had the same skin colour as a character like xinyan (who hails from liyue and has a liyue name) people would undoubtedly be upset. so why is it that when in terms of nations that are based off countries with a darker skin colour variety, complaining about the characters being white is seen as a problem?

culture isn’t defined by racial diversity, but when you’re monetising off the representation of different countries cultures, the very least you can do is show the actual diversity within said culture instead of slapping a cultural name on a white model (cue that one picture of the egyptian dude who looks like a plain american).

the idea that because it’s fantasy or anime, having black characters is surreal or improbable is rooted in white supremacy’s hold over unfair beauty standards as well as just the general consensus that black people are less desirable in media. which is completely false.

characters like dehya have proven that a character’s race is irrelevant when it comes to likeness, given the fact the chinese community ended up donating to charities because of said characters story.

the reason why the lightly toasted characters appear tan to you is because the rest of the cast is so horrifically pale (nahida’s hex code is #FFF7F1, cyno’s is #EEC6A6 which when placed next to each other may look like a big difference, but in reality the colours are on the same side of the colour wheel only a few spaces apart).

hoyoverse does in fact use culture as a mere aesthetic and costume to plant on white models. that is NOT to say they misrepresent culture entirely: this post goes over how hoyoverse is perfectly capable of doing impressive research to bring forth forgotten or unknown bits of culture.

even aside from the problems with racial diversity, the character design department has been known to completely fail when it comes to accurate representation. from the sexualisation of the kimono in characters like raiden shogun (which even the eastern part of the fandom have been upset about) to the character of yunjin where the chinese player based believed she was more like a lolita inspired caricature than a real depiction. they don’t understand how to mingle tradition with modernism.

in all fairness, it is difficult — and i will praise the game for making natlan much more technologically advanced and vibrant than people were expecting because having the one nation that’s based off africa and indigenous people be a wasteland would’ve ultimately been a problem. personally, i even love the slight mashup of “tribes” and the pokémon esque aesthetic — its new, and a smart way to bring two things together.

same thing cannot be said for how hyv ignores the fact darker people of colour are also significant when it comes to the building of culture.

please read over these that go more into depth about problems:

natlan being an amalgamation of three separate countries/cultures.

misrepresenting both continents natlan’s based from

another thing that’s always bothered me is the excuses people used in sumeru about the presentation of characters that were based off real people; specifically, kusanali.

yes, she’s based off a hindu moon goddess who’s described as pale and sure that could’ve been the reason she’s nearly the colour white — but how come candace, who’s based off kandake, a fully black woman, is presented as being slightly tan? you can’t pick and choose what you represent and honestly the idea that nahida’s character is supposed to be a depiction of the moon goddess is disrespect to the goddess herself (please go look at a singular picture of her and you’ll understand the utter tragedy).

hoyoverse also has a bit of a history with both whitewashing their slightly tan characters (nekomiya from zoneless zen zero, arlan from honkai star rail etc) but i think one of their biggest proofs of disrespect comes to carole pepper from hi3.

now, this is not at all me saying you can’t present female characters as very muscular — no. in fact, i would’ve loved if characters like beidou had a similar sort of build. but out of all the characters you could’ve chosen to give this to, you chose a black woman.

would this be a problem if it continued with other characters? not really. the issue lies within the fact the ONLY mother in game who’s presented as buff and “masculine looking” is a black woman — something that’s quite literally a stereotype against black women who are regarded as “naturally less feminine” than white women.

eastern beauty standards

the assertion that eastern beauty standards prevent the inclusion of black characters in video games is not only invalid but also reflects deeper issues of bias and systemic exclusion in the gaming industry. this argument is flawed for several reasons, including the diversity of beauty standards in eastern cultures, the global nature of the gaming market, and the responsibility of creators to reflect and promote inclusivity.

to claim that eastern beauty standards universally exclude black characters oversimplifies and homogenizes the diverse beauty ideals present in countries like japan, south korea, and china. these cultures are not monolithic and have their own histories and contemporary movements that embrace a variety of appearances.

creators in the gaming industry have a responsibility to reflect the diversity of the real world and promote inclusivity. video games are a powerful medium that can shape perceptions, challenge stereotypes, and foster empathy. by including black characters, game developers can contribute to a more inclusive and equitable society. this requires intentionality and a commitment to representation that goes beyond mere tokenism. the argument that eastern beauty standards prevent such inclusion suggests a lack of willingness to challenge existing norms and expand the narrative possibilities within games. hoyoverse have themselves stated in their mission statement that their goal is to show inclusivity.

that’s not to say it’s not clear that china’s beauty standards have unfortunately affected the gaming market: but for a game that brandishes itself on localising itself for a global audience (meaning, outside of its region), it’s a poor excuse. those standards aren’t universal and shouldn’t be used as gateway into designing.

once again, i am NOT at all very well versed in politics especially one that’s overseas (well, next door neighbour in a way) so i definitely will misinterpret or misunderstand things unintentionally and if i do, i’m really sorry.

historical nihilism to me doesn’t relate to black people, just actual story events (hence why hoyoverse had to put a warning label for fontaine that the events presented didn’t represent that of the real world and any similarities were mere coincidence). black people existing isn’t regarded as “politically harmful” neither is it an extraordinary idea — it’s just another group of people.

although, the CCP has a MASSIVE history about their demonisation and hatred of black people therefore, even without the idea that the censorship stems from something like historical nihilism, it’s likely something to do with individual prejudice.

politically, i can semi-understand why hoyoverse is in a tight space for racial diversity. but that doesn’t mean i’m willing to baby a company that profits billions worth of profit from other cultures that they misrepresent and i’m even less inclined to hold the hands of hoyoverse dickriders who believe people complain about race just solely to whine. it’s a real systemic issue, and one that’s prevalent in a multitude of games aside from genshin.

people from the cultures presented are rightfully upset and they shouldn’t be told to just “accept”mediocrity. it’s their culture and identities being ridiculed, it’s their identities being profited from for the sake of aesthetics for a game that preaches inclusivity to the people that are willing to ignore its prejudice.

hell, even as a polish person, just thinking about what they’ll do with snezhnaya upsets me even if it’s not racially based — once again, the media emphasises the idea that eastern europe / slavic culture is purely russia meanwhile they steal little things from all of the surrounding countries in eastern europe (won’t forget the fact they changed that password thing in sumeru from “ravioli” to “pierogi”).

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TL;DR hoyoverse uses other people’s cultures and identities as an aesthetic and proceeds to profit off of it while misrepresenting the sample of people they chose to depict and while a political argument can be made in this regard, ultimately the backlash from people rightfully feeling unjustified in the lack of racial diversity is what amplifies these colourist attitudes: and while hoyoverse has seemingly much more legal repercussions to commit to their idea of diversity, the fandom has no excuse for their disregard of different identities.

also just a funny thing my friend and i did to show just how white these characters are lol

“ blackwashing “ versus “ whitewashing “

i feel like i need to add this little section too because i know there will be a lot of people that draw or reimagine the characters in a variety of different skin tones, and i know a lot of people will be upset (usually it’s just the lowlife weebs who cry at the thought of a black woman being in the same room as them).

historically, media, including video games and anime, have predominantly featured pale-skinned characters, often neglecting the representation of people of color. this lack of diversity reinforces a narrow view of beauty and heroism, contributing to the systemic exclusion of non-white individuals. blackwashing helps to rectify these historical imbalances by providing a broader spectrum of racial representation. it challenges the default assumption that characters must be pale-skinned and introduces audiences to a more inclusive range of appearances.

representation matters profoundly in media. seeing characters that reflect one's own identity can have significant positive effects on self-esteem and cultural pride. blackwashing creates opportunities for black audiences to see themselves in roles and narratives traditionally dominated by pale-skinned characters.

critics (once again, youtube creators and tiktok lmao) of blackwashing often argue that it disrespects original character designs or cultural contexts. however, the impact of changing a character's skin tone is minimal compared to the harm caused by whitewashing. whitewashing often erases the cultural significance of non-white characters, perpetuating stereotypes and denying the rich diversity of the source material. blackwashing, in contrast, does not erase cultural identities but rather enhances the inclusivity of the media. it provides a more diverse and representative depiction without detracting from the character's original essence or storyline.

in addition, usually when a character is black in fantasy media or even just an anime/game with a lore based story, it’s because their race is significant to who they are (i.e tiana from princess and the frog who faces racial discrimination — without her being a person of colour, this storyline and the events that follow wouldn’t make sense).

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i’m sorry for such a long and probably nonsensical rant, but this has bothered me into absolute oblivion especially the community’s response to the uproar of people who rightfully critique and are upset by the company.

[allastoredeer]

I have no problem with al being a bottom, I just have a hard time with bottom king lucifer as a top. May I have examples to try and see your side?

Exhibit A:

Dat smirk.

Exhibit B:

Soft Top Lucifer

Exhibit C:

Demon Top Lucifer

Exhibit C:

That sexy shoulder bop

Exhibit D:

Look at this guy.

Exhibit E:

Obvious one.

Exhibit F:

I just wanted to post this one cuz I like his smirky little face.

LOL no, seriously though, there's no specific way a character has to act or behave to be deemed a top, bottom or switch. It's a preferred sexual position that isn't dependent on outside factors, it's just what a person enjoys, and what the reader/viewer wants that character to be. That's essentially what it is. It's not based on logic, it's based on what position the fan prefers for them to be in.

Lucifer could do his sexy little shoulder bop and still be a bottom. He can give the most suave, seductive smirk and still be a bottom. It's different for everyone.

But as for why I like top!Lucifer, here are a few reasons:

A) I really like it when shorties top. So often, in almost all fandoms I've been in, the default for a popular ship is the shorter one bottoming and the taller one topping. As a shortie myself, I just...ugh, I get so tired of it. Especially since the bottom is typically softened, UwU-ified, and turned into this delicate little flower. Bringing personal feelings into this, I've been very short and very thin all my life. I've literally been described as "delicate" before, and as someone who enjoys sports, running around, and is just a loud, rough and tumble person by nature, I absolutely hate it. It's given me a lot of mental and emotional issues, and a lot of the treatment and comments I've gotten has made me feel belittled, vulnerable, and weak. So, while being a bottom doesn't mean you're any of those things, short characters have been treated like that for a majority of the fandoms I've been in, no matter what their personality, stature, behaviors, or attitude was, and seeing it brings out of love of dark and negative feelings that I'd rather not re-live when I'm trying to enjoy myself in fandom. (Which is another reason why I dislike so much bottom!Lucifer because he's so often softened down and turned into this naive, dare I say, helpless little lamb. The moment Alastor overpowers him or easily manipulates him into a deal, I am outta there.)

B) Lucifer has that top energy. Can't explain it. He just does. To be clear, I don't see him exclusively as a top. He's a switch. But I do headcanon Alastor as exclusively a bottom, so in any radioapple relationship I write or draw, Lucifer will top.

and C) the most important reason: I like seeing Alastor get railed.

Alastor bottoms in all the ships I have for him and Lucifer is no exception. Besides, I find a lot of versatility and potential in Lucifer being with/fucking a sinner, especially considering his distaste of them. Makes for a good hate-fucking scenario, or a very emotional and in-depth character deep dive of him coming to terms with his own bias and internalized hatred of them and finding love and companionship in one of the very people he despised. That's some delicious mental turmoil and the perfect opportunity for character development.

(LOL there's a lot of talk of Alastor not bottoming because of his ego, and yet nobody considers that maybe Lucifer wouldn't bottom for Alastor because he's a sinner. He is the embodiment of pride after all. So, combining that with his disdain for sinners, would he really "stoop" so low as to let one of them fuck him? Food for thought).

But seriously though, when it comes down to it, I just like Alastor bottoming and Lucifer topping. Yes, bottom!Lucifer and top!Alastor has been soured for me due to popular fandom depictions of it, but even before those were popular, I simply preferred Alastor bottoming. I enjoy it more, not just for his character, but just...because. I just do.

Thing is, I don't think there has to be a list of reasons for why you prefer a character topping, bottoming, or switching. People are allowed to do whatever they want with these characters. It's fandom. This is a playground. We don't have to have a reason, we're just here to have fun.

If you can't see Lucifer as a top, Anon, that is a-okay 👍👍Thanks for asking for a different perspective though, it's always awesome when a person seeks to understand someone else's point of view. I don't know how well of a different perspective I offered, though. I have a hard time answering questions like these bcuz they just don't make a lot of sense to me. It's hard to say why I like something when I just...do. I just vibe with it.

To boil it all down, my examples/answers are all based on what I like and how I feel. I like bottom!Alastor cuz I enjoy it. I like top!Lucifer because I love seeing Alastor get railed - especially by a big, powerful demon king. Very yummy.

Also, LOL, considering Alastor is exclusively a bottom to me, anyone I do ship him with will automatically be the top, regardless of who they are XD So I guess that's an important factor to consider too 😂

I don't know how well I did with answering this, but I do want you to get the perspective you were looking for, so! My fellow bottom!Alastor truthers who are reading this, drop why you like bottom!Alastor in the comments below for our lovely Anon!

I'm curious about what you guys have to say too.

[dedalvs]

Hello there! I was wondering if you could possibly translate this quote: (I know it's a different fandom, but I was wondering if you could translate it anyways. I think it would be neat to see it in High Valyrian.)... "Not all who wander are lost."

So listen… I know this wasn't the intent, and I know that you're kind of standing in for tons of people from my past, but like… When people ask to have something translated, do they really not give any thought to the grammatical complexity of what they're asking for? And 100% this is not just you, but like… Embedded clauses, relative clauses, counterfactuals…

Something I didn't realize till I started creating languages for a living is translation is my least favorite part of language creation—and it's what I spend the most time doing.

Okay, so, "Not all who wander are lost". Good lord. First, there's "lost", which has a literal and metaphorical meaning in English. Absolutely no idea if this would translate in High Valyrian, and I'm pretty sure I don't have a word for "lost", and I don't even know how to go about creating one. Spanish perdido essentially comes from "wasted" or "squandered". We know where English "lost" came from. There actually is a word for "to lose" in HV, but it's to lose a battle. Doesn't make sense to use it here. So I'm going with something that kind of evokes that mists that surround destroyed Valyria and use the locative of "fog", so to be sambrarra "in the fog" means "to be lost".

I also don't (or didn't) have a word for "wander", but I made a derivation based on one of my favorite words, elēnagon, which means to oscillate or swerve. Jorelēnagon now means "to wander". Seems to fit.

And that was the easy part. A relative clause is something like "The dragon that I saw is big". "Whoever I saw is big" also features a kind of relative clause—an indefinite relative clause. These things are absolute murder to create. But no. It's not just that. It's a modified indefinite relative, because it's not "Whoever wanders is lost", it's "All who wander are lost". BUT IT'S NOT JUST THAT. It's negated on top of that. NE. GA. TED. And not just in the usual way: It's the Mothra fumbling quantifier that's negated. It's not whoever wanders. It's not all who wander. It's NOT ALL who wander. This is like my nightmare—being asked to translate something like this. This is giving me flashbacks to season 1 of House of the Dragon when they asked me to translated "Would that it were", as if that was some reasonable thing for a human being to say in any language ever.

Anyway, if you type "indefinite relative clause" into my High Valyrian grammar, you come up with nothing, because I always forget to write down how the hell I decided to do them. I think because I have both relative adjectives and pronouns that I can just use the damn pronouns by themselves. God. "Not all…" Are you kidding me?! You know High Valyrian has a whole collective number to handle "all", right? What, do I just negate that? Will the meaning be the same as a negated quantifier?! Like it's [[not all] who wander], right? And you can bracket like that because they're all separate words. But what if "all who" is one word? What then?! BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT IT IS!

(By the way I just added a sentence to my grammar that includes the phrase "indefinite relative clause" so I can search for it. It's not like this wasn't written up, but I honestly probably forgot what the term was when I wrote the section the first time and I never revisited it.)

Okay. I'm calm and cool. So. Returning to the translation. There are two types of relative pronouns: One that refers to people or things, and another that refers to concepts or ideas or places. We're talking about people here, so we need the first one. And we need it in the collective. That's lȳr. Leaving the negation aside, this can be translated fairly easily:

Jorelēnus lȳr sambrarra ilza.

Okay, that's "All who wander are lost". I chose the aorist subjunctive for the relative because it's like "anyone who may wander"; I think it makes sense. Lȳr is grammatically singular, so it triggers third person singular agreement in both verbs. Since we're using ilagon as a locative copula here, I think (think) the present tense makes the most sense. So that is "All who wander are lost".

Now how the flarking frump do you say "not all" when "all who" is lȳr?!

So since lȳr is a pronoun it can be modified with an adjective, which would like like this:

Jorelēnus dōre lȳr sambrarra ilza.

But the problem with that is I don't think it gives us the intended meaning. I think that means "None who wander are lost", and that's not what the intended meaning is at all. It is basically "Some people who wander are indeed lost—perhaps many of them—but some of those who are wandering are not, in fact, lost". This is also why you can't negate the matrix verb. That would mean "Anyone that might be wandering is not lost"—again, not the intended meaning. This is the crux of the whole translation: Negating the quantifier and not what the quantifier is modifying.

For that reason, the only thing I can think to do is to go to a much more prolix, and, frankly, un-Valyrian-like expression. This would mean taking the relative pronoun out of the collective, putting it back in the singular, adding in a quantifier, and negating it. That would be this:

Jorelēnus dōre tolvie lȳ sambrarra ilza.

Is that it? I honestly don't know. It is a translation; I'm not sure if it's the best translation. Another possibility is to re-translate it and say "A few who may wander are not lost". That would look like this:

Jorelēnusy lȳn sambrarra ilosy daor.

The pronoun is now in the paucal, which triggers plural agreement on both verbs. (And, by the way, thank goodness sambrarra is a noun phrase; it doesn't have to agree with anything!) And this is, basically, "A few who may wander are not lost".

I feel like the second translation is better maybe…? It feels more Valyrianesque. But I'm not 100% sure it conveys the same sense.

Anyway, I started translating this a little over two hours ago. That's what this takes. That's how long something this complex takes. Granted, it didn't have my full attention at all times, because I was watching Booksmart, but this was my second time watching it, so I didn't have to give the movie my undivided attention (though it had been a few years; there were bits I didn't remember). But yeah. Translation. My god. Like…why. Creating languages is fun. Translation is work. (And if it's not work, you're doing it wrong. Mic drop; soap box kicked.)

[cinnamonest]

With this whole 'rape fantasies are a result of misogyny as they allow women a guilt free sexuality cos they have no autonomy'

Surely that means your writing and fantasies are contributing to misogyny? Adding to it and normalising it?

Like isnt the answer to write and encourage fantasies of empowerment? Not abuse and rape?

Just seems crazy to me like 'we do this because of misogyny. And we'll keep doing it'

Obviously some behaviour come from misogyny and exist to combat it. This... really doesn't

I just don't think it's a feminist win when your writing is indistinguishable from that of a misogynistic man's.

This isnt an attack on you it just really seems like common sense that if something exists because of misogyny the last thing we should do is feed into those ideas

(I assume this is coming from this post, so I might reference that a bit here)

No worries, I fully understand how this can come across negative to those who do not have the same experiences and I appreciate you approaching the matter in a non-attacking way with genuine desire to have dialogue on the subject. I'll do my best to address these points individually.

>Surely that means your writing and fantasies are contributing to misogyny? Adding to it and normalising it?

In the past few years fandom culture has become a bit obsessed with the idea of "normalization" to the point that the definition of the term has been a bit skewed, which creates issues with these discussions.

There is no concept of which existence of content containing it alone constitutes normalization, by the actual definition of the word. Normalization is the process by which it is distributed and way in which it is presented, and intent of its creation.

Normalization via fiction is a process in which a creator, generally intentionally, creates content that presents a concept as, well, normal. That is, not reprehensible or problematic to replicate, and presents this to a population with the intent of them accepting the idea as something acceptable in reality. Generally it also necessitates that the creator will try to ensure the media is viewed by mainstream general audiences who would not normally seek the content out, since the purpose of normalization is to make an idea acceptable amongst a population.

That is the opposite of what I am doing, which is creating a private space filled with warnings. I am going out of my way to ensure that people who do not want to see this content, have the foreknowledge to opt to avoid it.

By definition, if you’re creating content and ensuring that it is heavily warned, and marketing it as such that only a niche group who likes such content seeks it out, that’s not normalization by any reasonable metric.

>Like isnt the answer to write and encourage fantasies of empowerment? Not abuse and rape?

For some people, I’m sure that would help them, and in that case, that is a great solution for them.

But people are different, and certain things that help some, don’t help others. The types of fantasies that would probably be called “empowering,” personally do nothing for me but make me uncomfortable, in the same way that the sort of content I write makes some people uncomfortable. It does not have the same positive effects on my mental health that this form of content does.

>Obviously some behaviour come from misogyny and exist to combat it. This... really doesn't

That's fair — but it doesn't have to.

It is not intended to directly combat misogyny in any way, there are other ways to do that, and this does not have to be one. It's primary purpose is catharsis and the ways in which it benefits me and, as is my hope, those who choose to consume it.

>I just don't think it's a feminist win when your writing is indistinguishable from that of a misogynistic man's.

Again, I never had any intention for it to be a "win" — misogyny is the reason for why I have these desires, but in making what I make, my purpose is to provide catharsis for myself and others.

But also, I would heavily contest that it is indistinguishable from male fantasies. As someone who has seen actual men's misogynist fetishization fantasies, they are very different.

Female disposability and the complete worthlessness of women’s very being — that is, women being non-human objects that are interchangeable, and made to be used temporarily and replaced — is the core defining characteristic of male fantasy/sexuality. Male fantasies almost always involve multiple women to one man, largely because he does not have any actual bond with women, they are items to be collected, no interpersonal relationship actually exists.

The lack of interpersonal connection and lack of personableness itself is fetishized by men, what men get off to is the power they feel from completely disregarding the woman as a person in any way. The very act of the woman being thrown away after being used is fetishized.

In male fantasy, there is no interpersonal connection or affection of any kind, whereas that is one of the defining themes of content like mine.

Tl;dr — while misogyny impacts all women, the severity and form of it in different upbringings, environments and cultures can create misunderstandings and strong reactions when different people react so differently to the same content and thus form misconceptions about each other's perceptions and intentions, but I believe both sides of this argument are usually coming from a place of good intent.

While I fully understand how it would be difficult for those who do not have the same experience to grasp mine, I just ask for mutual understanding that some forms of content help some people, in the same way entirely different forms of content help other people.

[theminecraftbee]

so a thing this fandom does that remains FASCINATING to me, as a function of the fact a lot of this fandom is people's first fandom or only current fandom, is just... assume a lot of things it does is a scourge that this fandom has invented or doesn't exist outside of it? or like, is uniquely bad here? and i won't deny that sometimes mcyt fandom is a bit more intense by virtue of numbers, but like...

duo names: confusing fandom-injokes to describe duos and groups tend to be an anime fandom thing specifically for many historical reasons, but they're not uncommon. hey quick--if you haven't been in KHR fandom, can you guess what 1827 is? no? i'll give you a hint: that's actually a ship name. or, ygo fans, tell me the difference between puppyshipping, prideshipping, violetshipping, and rivalshipping. my hint is that they're all kaiba ships and two of them are actually the same ship. good luck!

reducing characters to a specific trait: have you read fic in another fandom before? i would recommend you go do so and come back to me. my example here is "sasuke likes tomatoes", for the record.

common au fanon that's confusing to outsiders: my deep cut here is "when i got into certain tv fandoms i was baffled by the existence of sentinel/guide fics", which is a slightly older tv fandom thing so many of you probably don't know what i'm on about. but trust me: in certain fandoms it's ubiquitous and unless you've watched a completely different tv show you're gonna have to entirely pick it up from reading fic. oh hey, hybrid aus and watcher!grian, nice to see your relative here,

fanon being treated as canon: did you know there's this whole bnha character, naomasa, who is treated as canonically having a lie detector quirk? did you know that, best i can tell, that's not in canon anywhere, it just got echoed through fanon enough that everyone treated it as canon? 'fanon trait becomes so ubiquitous everyone assumes it has to be there' is not a new thing. also, batfamily fans, i have been lead to understand the tim and coffee thing is also this.

characters being treated badly to make a different dynamic look better: the fact we have the term 'character bashing' tells you all you need to know, here. if anything my one complaint on this front isn't even that it's happening--it's that i wish bashing and/or "not [character] friendly" was tagged a little more frequently, haha.

characters being reduced to their family dynamics: tale as old as time. "even the family dynamic thing" yes even that. just because this fandom tended to be particularly ship-adverse in the past didn't mean it didn't do basically the same behaviors as any fandom with shipping did with those dynamics, just gen. and other gen fandoms also do that. yes, down to the "and shipping reduces them to a ship, unlike my gen dynamic, which is very in-character; why can't people just be friends?" thing. some of you have to have been marvel fans right.

characters being reduced to their ships: some of you have to have been marvel fans right.

The Discourse: yeah this is an "actively running show" fandom thing, but also a hiatus fandom thing. ask a homestuck about vriskourse sometime. as much as i hate to say it, it probably made doomsday discourse look cute.

and those are just like... some things i've seen people complain about on my dash recently. idk it just hit me there are probably fans in mcyt fandoms who are assuming that some things (like hybrid aus or duo names) are the kind of things that only happen here, so i thought i'd offer some examples of other places they happen! i also have even more examples if you'd like.

to be clear: this isn't shaming anyone for complaining about any of these things. lord knows i go complain to my friends about it all the time, just the other day i was complaining in the category of 'they keep bashing my guy'. it's more of just... a gentle reminder that maybe we're big, maybe we're loud, maybe we have problems... but these problems aren't always unique.

so uh. we're all suffering together i guess...?

[thecoolerliauditore]

Very Long Post about Flower Husbands, Interpretation and Character vs Content Creator

This is a toxic flower husbands post. Btw.

I'm not sure when or why it happened but somewhere between limlife and the 24th joelshipping discourse cycle, "flower husbands is toxic" became a mainstream opinion on both here and traffictwt, usually sourcing Scott's ingame words and actions as evidence.

This interpretation has existed within the fandom for a fairly long time, although the words "toxic" and "abuse" were often omitted. Here's one example of a popular post that implied FH was less than ideal for Jimmy.

This does not mean the interpretation was widely accepted, however - hell, I even put this under a cut and warning for a reason. For every toxic FH believer that comes crawling out of the woodwork there comes another post defending their legacy.

For the record, despite what some threads on twt I've read seem to imply: There is nothing morally wrong with liking a mcyt ship regardless of what discomforts other people see in it. There is no explicit "wrong" way to interpret the series. There is no canon. It's fandom shit. It's not that serious.

However, I'm unfortunately abnormal about this series and possibly mcyt as a whole. So I'm forced to grapple with the fact that most non-toxic flower husbands posts seem to either self-contradict or come off as purposefully trying to incite some sort of culture war. As such, here's a list of common arguments I see proposed against the toxic flower husbands interpretation and why I personally don't find them convincing:

The CC Side of Things

Alot of anti-toxic flower husbands posts will accuse toxic flower husbands fans of disliking Scott, the content creator IRL guy, and often imply the interpretation is born out of homophobia -- usually through some variation of the phrase that the interpretation villainzes "the only openly gay CC in the series"

I take issue with this. While Scott is the only homosexual CC in the series, Cleo and Martyn have both been here since 3L and are both very openly queer. Gem has also since joined. You could argue that Scott is The Gayest but that's opening a can of worms in terms of queer discourse I don't think I want to go touching anytime soon.

Even if he was the Only Queer CC In the Series, applying different standards of fanon to Scott just because he is gay feels.. wrong to me. In the same way it's often argued that Jimmy does not need to be babied from his friendship dynamic, Scott too is a grown man who can simply choose to not look at fanart/fanfic if it upsets him, which from what I have personally observed, he hasn't shown any sign of feeling "uncomfortable" by more intimidating or villainous portrayals in the past.

Here's an example of him liking my art that did not paint him in a completely morally good light.

Why can't gay people be calculating? Controlling? Abusive? Why are we applying a higher standard of morality to the gay CC when the rest of the fandom is having the time of their life calling Grian a homophobe, a murderer, calling Scar an arsonist, calling Martyn a loser and pathetic, so on and so forth. Is telling a story about an abusive gay relationship any more "problematic" than telling a story about an abusive straight relationship?

I don't want to imply anything about peoples intentions but it feels sometimes, to me, that the "homophobia" card is being played out of some obligation to protect Scott and his brand rather than out of genuine concern for homophobia in the fandom -- because then, I ask, where is that energy for critiquing the homophobic humour prevalent in CC circles?

I've certainly heard Jimmy make jokes about Scott's sexuality in videos before. Where's the breakdowns of the infamous "I am a straight man and would like to be represented as such" incident from Pirates? Where's that energy for referring to shipping as a "bit" or Etho "gagging" at fanart of him and Bdubs?

I'd even go to argue, in terms of homophobic caricatures, Martyn and Iskall are both often more akin to the classic "gay guy in love with you who won't take no for an answer" stereotype than Scott has been. Martyn at least we know is queer, does it simply not matter in his case? Despite the fact that Martyn is very much more villainized than Scott is, to the point where his Limlife win is often portrayed as maniacal and cackling rather than with the solemn acceptance of Scott's LL win or the heartbreak and regret of Grian's 3L win? Please know that I personally Do Not find these portrayals homophobic (although the Iskall side of things has peeved me in the past), I'm just questioning why homophobia in the fandom seems to start and end with one guy only.

In addition: "internalized homophobia" is certainly a thing, but the vast majority of toxic FH fans in my circle at least are very much gay. We're on Tumblr. Fork found in kitchen. I've seen more than one person express that Scott's behaviour in one or several of the seasons was reminiscent of a toxic or abusive ex, or reminded them of some other trauma. It just seems unkind to me to claim "homophobia" and then turn and tell very gay people talking about their very gay experiences that they are somehow The Problem.

Jimmy Likes It, Though

Often in response to toxic flower husbands posts, people will cite the many times Jimmy has said in the past that he actively requests to be bullied, as part of his youtuber persona, since he finds it funny.

I've always found this kind of strange, since unlike the homophobia claims which 99% of the time are unambiguously about the content creators, this is often said in response to people talking about the series as a story with characters first and foremost.

While the area of interpretation differs for all of us, most people do not choose to include behind-the-scenes youtube talk as part of their storyline, since this detail changes Jimmy's character drastically and impacts the tone of the series overall. So what, they were dropped into a death game arena and Jimmy... told everyone they should bully him, cus he thought it'd be funny? Offscreen, with no interactions or monologue in the series itself even alluding to it? It's kind of awkward to work in and there's really no reason to if what you are invested in is viewing the series as essentially an ultra meta theatre performance.

Now, I personally do work in some out-of-series material into my headcanons and interpretation, so let's say that Is a canon part of Jimmy's character -- maybe he knew the group beforehand and this was their established dynamic, or he simply offscreened it all. Now we have to deal with the fact that this is interpretation and the unreliable narrator aspect of the series.

Jimmy (the character) might've asked for this, but under what circumstances? Why does he want this? Is this really healthy behaviour or is it self-destructive? I never see this explored and instead "Jimmy says it's okay" is treated as word of god, which I find to be painful to deal with when it comes to this series (I'll get to this later).

Even if we throw out the character side of things completely, there are perfectly valid issues to have with this dynamic. I've seen people debating the ethics of presenting this type of humour to a young impressionable audience, I've seen people who find it upsetting because it reminds them of their own toxic friendships. CCs have no authority here, Jimmy does not decide where peoples discomfort starts and ends.

I admit this is a far reach, but indulge me and imagine for a second if the roles were switched and the homophobic jokes about Scott were what was leaned in to but Scott claimed he "liked being bullied". Would that be okay too?

People are Allowed to Dislike the Real Guy, it's Okay

There are plently of reasons to dislike CC!Scott that aren't rooted in homophobia, I can assure you.

Let's put it this way: Scott does not have to read this post if he doesn't want to. In fact, he'd have to actively go out of his way to see it in the first place. The fanfic writers are not calling him an abuser in his youtube comments section. This fandom bullshit is not clogging his notifications.

I don't dislike CC!Scott, I don't love him either but I think he's just kind of your average kind of a loser youtuber guy. But even if someone truly did find him to be the most abhorrent human being to walk the earth, talking about it on tumblr should not hurt him. You often see reminders that Jimmy is a grown man who can speak up if he finds things in videos hurtful, and I'd go on to argue that the same logic is never given to Scott who is, also, a grown man who can control his internet usage.

It's all just Minecraft and jokes

The most buzzkill of all rebuttals, in my opinion, is this argument that toxic flower husbands is "taking it too seriously" and that they are just "friends playing Minecraft".

Like when people bring up Jimmy's behind the scenes request, this confuses me because it is brought up 99% of the time to rebut posts that treat the series as a storyline rather than a youtube playthrough. You can't have the grief of Scott losing his husband and Grian's despaired suicide and Pearl's sanity slippage and still acknowledge that it is all "friends playing minecraft".

In fact I'd even argue flower husbands is pretty non-toxic if you look at it Purely from a friends playing Minecraft perspective, but that is never the case. Scott's grief over Jimmy's death is treated with utmost seriousness, but Scott hitting Jimmy for not listening to him or wanting to "whittle him down to nothing" never is. It's this pick-and-choose that drives me insane more than anything else.

In addition to this, while I might be mistaken, it seems like most FH fans are not super accepting of RPF so I wonder what the intent is in the first place.

Furthermore, I do find it odd when it seems like the issue is that abuse specifically is "taking it too seriously" in a series where murder is pretty much the main theme. Adultery is mentioned multiple times in Double Life. Martyn even says the words "toxic relationship" in Double Life regarding himself and Cleo. It's clearly something that is referenced directly in the series and not any darker than what is already commonly accepted in fanon, so I don't understand why it's such a taboo and gets hit with the "no fun allowed" stick more than Scar being a cannibal serial killer.

With the same logic, I could argue that Scott was serious when he said Jimmy was useless, redundant, etc. and joking when he said he was sad his husband died but. I don't do that. Because that'd be insane

But Scott Loved Jimmy

Onto the stuff that's more purely in-universe, the argument is more uncommon now but I used to see alot of claims that flower husbands couldn't have been toxic because Scott "loved" Jimmy, usually citing the positive interactions the two do have throughout Third Life.

I think this is kind of difficult to talk about because, to me, it comes from a genuine misunderstanding of how abusive relationships work and what they look like. I won't lecture the reader on the theory behind abusive relationships and the trauma bonding cycle but I will say that the good does not balance out the bad and sometimes, context is severely lacking.

E.g. the cake. Late in the series Scott bakes a cake for Jimmy and hides it for him to find. This is a moment that I think is fascinating because it showcases both Scott's genuine care for Jimmy and the sadism he gets out of Jimmy's suffering at the same time. Jimmy is actively afraid of the cake, says to Scott that he thinks it's a trap and tries to get Scott to try it instead because Scott was still on green. Scott simply laughs and pushes Jimmy to try it, later mocking Jimmy for being scared at all.

Scott not taking Jimmy's fear seriously in this scene always seems to get cut out, or is paired with the usual insistence that it's okay because it's a "joke", and the cake itself is what is focused on.

Long story short: Abusers can love and care for their victims, abusers can be romantically attracted to their victims, abusers can feel trapped in the cycle just as much as the victim (e.g. the classic "look what you made me do" wifebeater excuse).

"Home?" "Home." and Word of God

In a similar vein, lots of people point to Scott's Third Life ending as proof their relationship had a happily ever after. This is one example of a trend I see within rebuttals where Scott's word is often treated as canonical Word of God.

Word of God, for those unaware, is the concept in storytelling of communicating definitive, unbiased information to the audience. Some iconic examples would be the Star Wars intro scroll, or any of the "once upon a time..." set-ups in fairy tales. Sometimes a character will temporarily possess Word of God and lose it later, such as Katara's intro narration in ATLA.

The subversion of Word of God would be Unreliable Narrator, where the person telling you the information is, in some way, not to be trusted. Some media play entirely on this concept, the Stanley Parable being one iconic example.

My personal interpretation of the traffic series is that every POV is unreliable narrator, with some being worse offenders (e.g. Scar and Martyn). I feel like it does a disservice to other POVs if you simply take one as Word of God, since some characters really do seem different until you see their side of things (some poignant examples would be Last Life Joel, Last Life Scar and Double Life Pearl). However, I must say again, this is not Correct nor is taking one POV as Word of God Wrong. That's just the rules I'm used to operating under.

So first off, operating within my rules: the "home?" "home." scene only appears in Scott's POV and is never acknowledged outside of that one scene. Jimmy clearly remembers the events of Third Life but never says a thing about him and Scott's shared afterlife (more on Jimmy's behaviour post-3L in a bit) and neither does Scott himself. To me this scene has always been either a tragic dying hallucination or an outright lie Scott invented to cope with the events of Third Life. I don't think there's any reason for me to believe the Jimmy in this scene is really Jimmy.

With that being said: taking the scene at face value as something that actually happened and it being a real afterlife Jimmy and Scott were sent to, there are still sinister elements that go entirely unacknowledged. Scott specifies that the flower valley was decorated to his plans, never mentioning Jimmy's, the same valley he previously insinuated he designed specifically so that he'd be "over" Jimmy.

Including Last Life and beyond as part of canon: this is very much not the "happily ever after" for Scott and Jimmy as. Well. They don't stay there and end up getting thrust into another death game where, again, this scene is never spoken about again and Jimmy only acts more and more antagonistic towards Scott as the seasons progress.

Disregarding Last Life and beyond: there is so much ambiguity that it's hard to take it all at face value, are there any other players in this place? Are Scott and Jimmy doomed to die knowing no one and nowhere else? Can Jimmy walk 15 minutes westward and come across the home of the guy who murdered him? Or is this a paradise where all the players can remain? What about Scott, is he going to go back to treating Jimmy the same way he did when they were both alive? How does he deal with the fact that his dead husband is suddenly back?

I do think this last one (taking Scott's POV as word of god + disregarding everything past this point) is the closest you're gonna get to an entirely non-toxic reading of this scene, but even then you'd have to work with the previous episodes of Scott hitting and berating Jimmy continuously.

Finally, one last issue I take with the "Scott's word = Word of God" interpretation is that it is, once again, inconsistent. If Scott ever says anything to contradict his "good husband" persona it's written off as a joke, but him saying that Pearl "cheated on him" is treated as if she really did commit adultery. There's also things that are just ignored, such as Scott saying "You guys (the audience) are obsessed with flower husbands, when really it's just been me and Pearl," in Secret Life -- words that would imply he really did not care that much for Jimmy.

"Nuance."

I see people just saying the word "nuance" or "scott isn't abusive it's more nuanced" like that's an actual sentence with worth really often. I'm sorry this section is harsh but "nuance" is not an argument, abusers can have nuance, real people are always nuanced and real people can be abusers. To imply that abuse cannot be "nuanced" is a little insulting to me.

Please just say "idgaf" and move on this isn't politics we don't need flower husbands centrism

Jimmy is the Abusive One

This one drives me insane but I see it fairly often and I. honestly don't know what to make of it. Sometimes it's coupled with an insistence that you can make anyone in the cast abusive if you try hard enough which... yeah I, I agree. We're agreeing here.

Seemingly most prominent during Limited Life, there's some claims that people are unfair towards Scott and that Jimmy is the real abuser, but I find the examples of his behaviour weak more often than not because they are usually 1. in direct response to something Scott did, 2. using psychic powers to sense characters motives (such as claiming he is guilt tripping people when he apologizes when nothing suggests that is the case) or 3. behaviour that not only is not toxic, but is very much harmless

Examples of the third one include things such as him refusing to say "love you" back to Scott during Limited Life and Secret Life, which he is not obligated to do. Some people insist he "owes" it to Scott somehow for Third Life which I find not only overestimating how much Scott aided Jimmy during Third Life (Jimmy Did die first, after all) but kind of. Dangerous? To say that you can somehow "owe" another person love and affection if they perform enough chores for you.

Another is the claim that Jimmy acts overly flirtatious with other men which hurts Scott which. I feel like needs an essay or two on slutshaming to make my point clear.

What really does me in is that this point is often paired with the insistence that Flower Husbands Would Be perfect if Jimmy just stopped "acting out" and did what Scott wanted him to. I don't really know how to explain why I find that kind of bad.

To me, it seems as if it's almost an admission that the further away from Third Life you get, the more clear it becomes that Jimmy does not have the highest opinion of Scott and in order for the non-toxic interpretation to still apply you need to stretch things, which often comes with the unfortunate side effect of saying some historically not awesome things about people like Jimmy.

Why Only Scott?

This often comes in hand with the first point about homophobia, with claims that Scott is the only one accused of being abusive to Jimmy, when others like Grian and Joel are the same if not worse.

This is another take that's strange to me because.. It's just untrue? I think it might be the shock of the culture shift of toxic fh that's spearheading this, but most of the smallidarity stuff I've seen, for example, come with some level of acknowledgement that Joel is a massive bitch. Sometimes it's through bully x victim AUs or storylines where he learns the error of his ways, but he's a bitch to Jimmy like. Most of the time.

Solidarian is a much lower sample rate ship for a character with a way too high sample rate but Grian characterization ranges from "pure evil watcher who feeds off suffering" to "previous abuse victim with trust issues". Very few times have I seen Grian presented as purely good in interpretations.

MOST of the jausage stuff I've seen is straight up sausage being. Weird.

There was a hilarious confessions blog anon awhile back that tried to claim shipping scarian was somehow morally wrong because Scar(???) abused Grian(???). It happens.

To add to this: very few of Jimmy's other romantic interests were literally calling himself his "husband" while hitting and berating him. The only other "canon" couple I can think of that come close is Jizzie and the way Lizzie will sometimes hit Joel, but that is primarily outside of the life series and their crimes against eachother in the series are always capstoned by almost cartoonish antics of "still love you, tho" (e.g. Joel putting Lizzie's stuff in a chest after she gets killed by a zombie or them choosing to team up Despite it All near the end of Last Life) -- I have more thoughts regarding them but this isn't the toxic jizzie post so I'll leave it at that.

Very, very rarely will I see someone who believes flower husbands is toxic but thinks joel/grian/fwhip/sausage/etc. are Completely fine. I also think it might just be that people talk about Scott more since Flower Husbands is the Iconic Ship and that gets numbers biased into people Only thinking Scott is bad for Jimmy.

It could also be argued that some of the Double Life pairings have the same level of toxic married couple energy that Flower Husbands does, but I'd argue that the soulbounds have enough variety that interpreting them as wholly romantic is difficult to do. There was also less hype overall with some of the most "toxic" pairings in DL, such as Impdubs or Box Boys, which makes it hard to find content for them -- I did a whole little liveblog of it calling Impdubs toxic as fuck. Y'all just didn't see it. Most of DL's toxic relationship themes also come from divorce quartet but admitting that those four have romantic tension in-universe gets you sniped in this economy.

To end: I talk about Scott more than the other guys because. I like him more. I like talking about people I like.

Conclusion (AKA who fucking cares)

I feel the need to restate my intro: no one actually fucking cares.

I've been talking about inconsistency in the "rules" of interpretation throughout this and I stick by my word but I think I'd have to mention that, in order to view this series as a storyline in the first place, you'd have to make some exceptions. I don't listen to the lines about youtube or viewers or when Grian talks about planning the series. I don't think it'd be Wrong to view Scott's POV as Word of God, disregard everything that implies he's a bad husband, not consider anything past "home?" "home." canon, so on. It would not be an interpretation I, some random asshole on tumblr, enjoy personally but if you're having fun you really should not give a shit about me.

However that doesn't mean people can't be rude or just straight up wrong or hypocritical when they claim toxic flower husbands interpretations are "homophobic" despite being antagonistic towards the gay people writing them in the first place (I've seen a ridiculous amount of middle school level namecalling for like no reason??) or claim that the interpretation is for people who "haven't watched their POV" as if a certain takeaway of a minecraft series presents you with some sense of superiority for understanding the cube guy harder than those horrible, horrible HATERS who think Scott killing himself over and over is sad to watch.

Oh and don't mention Pearl's role in all of this the only time I've seen someone try to bring her up I had to read it like five times and I'm still not quite sure I understand

[cantheykillmacbeth]

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, there is a prophecy made to the eponymous Macbeth that "no man of woman born can kill him." Ultimately, Macbeth ends up being killed by MacDuff, who sidesteps the prophecy due to being a C-section baby.

With the wording of this prophecy, it can be said that quite a few fictional characters could, theoretically, kill Macbeth if they wanted to. Several factors could make you exempt from this prophecy: being any gender other than a man; not being conventionally "born"; and birthing parent is not a woman. Here are the three main criteria that will be analyzed for a character:

Gender Clause: A character applies for this Clause when they do not identify with the term "man" in reference to themselves. Inversely, the are disqualified from this Clause if they do identify with the term "man." Since characters' gender identities are rarely looked this far into, it will be assumed that if a character uses strictly he/him pronouns, then he will be disqualified for this Clause by default.

Unconventional Birth Clause: A character applies for this Clause if their inception was done in some way other than a conventional live birth. This could mean they were extracted via c-section, delivered posthumously, hatched from an egg, manually constructed, etc.

Birth Parent Clause: A character applies for this Clause when the person attributed to their creation does not identify with the term "woman." This functions similarly to the way that we handle the Gender Clause.

Unique Exception: This is used for any character with some other loophole, such as being able to canonically change the path of fate.

Google Doc Link for all characters already covered

FAQ under the cut, PLEASE READ BEFORE SUBMITTING:

Why isn't there a Species Clause?: A character's species is not taken into account for the "man" portion of the prophecy, as a character of a different species can still identify as a man. Why isn't there an Age Clause?: Unless the character specifically says that they are not a "man," but a "boy," (See: Peter Pan) then a young male character will still be disqualified for the Gender Clause. How would a genderfluid/trans character be counted?: Whether or not a character applies for the Gender Clause is determined by how they personally identify at that specific time. A genderfluid character could kill Macbeth one day, but not the next; a trans woman could kill Macbeth, but a trans man could not. Who runs this blog?: We currently have 2 members, Mod Anthem and Mod Pepper. Mod Anthem made the blog initially, and Mod Pepper is its sister here to help. Mod Anthem also runs @periodiccompletionist Could the owner of this blog kill Macbeth?: Yes, I apply for the Gender Clause due to being a demiboy(? it's complicated) who does not identify with the term man. How do I know if a character has been done already?: I tag all submissions with the character's name and associated fandom. You can also check the Google Doc linked above the cut. Could [character] kill Macbeth?: This is what the ask box is for! Feel free to submit whoever you want when it's open. Is the ask box open?: Check my bio for ask box status updates. :) I sometimes close it to work through backlog, and have anon turned off to cut down on the amount of asks coming in. Can I submit real people?: Yes, but I will most likely not give an answer in my post; these sorts of details are often highly personal, so I will not be doing research on them for this without their consent. If they're on Tumblr, they can respond to the post itself and give the definitive answer if they so choose. What should I do if I have a correction/rebuttal to a post?: Please do this in a reblog instead of an ask/DM/reply; it makes things much easier for me. My submission didn't get answered. Should I submit it again?: I would strongly advise against it. It's most likely that I didn't answer it for one of the following reasons: I haven't gotten to it yet through the backlog; it's a real person not on Tumblr; the character/media was too difficult to research (I'm not going to be reading/watching through the actual source material, sorry); the character/media makes me personally uncomfortable; or someone has already submitted your character. If you're REALLY curious about what happened to your ask, you can send me a DM and I will give you the reason why or tell you if I didn't receive it. Are you dead?: No, I just have ADHD. Errm, actually, wasn't the prophecy just a trick to fuel Macbeth's hubris?: Great job, you just defeated the entire point of this blog! What the hell do expect me to do with that information? Delete my account?? Ruiner of the spirit. Jarvis, piss this guy's pants. How do you pronounce axolotl?: a-SHOW-loa(tl). (tl) represents a sound that we don't have in english, but is commonly used in native Nahuatl.

What media properties should I avoid submitting?: Dialtown (makes me uncomfortable), Homestuck (personal reasons), Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss (or anything vivziepop-related), Harry Potter (JK Rowling is a bitch and I'm the only god here), Slay the Princess (want to play; avoiding spoilers), Hades II (want to play, avoiding spoilers), FNAF (you actually can submit this one but be aware that you will not view me the same afterwards also all my homies hate Scott Cawthon)

[tocomplainfriend]

Danidraws again! Ace and Aro - phobia detected!

TW: Ace and Aro phobia, Arophobia, Acephobia!

Dani made fun of a AroAce Alastor fan for drawing him for AroAce PSA posts:

Person killing fun and comfort of other people, cause... IDK... you are just an asshole, I guess?

Why so mean about a AroAce doing a PSA for people in the fandom who have, time and time again, not known this same things. -And discriminate and attack people cause of not knowing shit.

This sounds like such a "UM! ERMM! Canonically, this character wouldn't b-" shut up. Let Aroace people have their conform and care to explain things to people! You are mean for no reason

Also, the fact of Alastor possible not knowing about Asexuality out of pure guess isn't correct. #1 People can fully use his character for pride month art and AroAce PSA stuff! #2 Asexuality as a term has existed since late 1800 and related stuff to rights of people of different sexualities. In the 1900 Schlegel was quoted: “Let the same laws for all the intermediate stages of sexual life: the homosexuals, heterosexuals, bisexuals, asexuals, be legal as they are now in existence for the heterosexuals” search it up. #3 what's stopping him from learning it, or making fan comics of him doing so?

Sorry, all your knowledge of previous queer awareness comes from the 1980s to 1990s only.

There are many stories of people (FROM AGES AGO) that fall into being Trans! That the term didn't exist all those years ago-it doesn't delete anything from that, or that people can see themselves in them and do PSAs with them in it!

He could've known or not.

(Dani, and anyone, would totally do something with characters they identify with in their own ways too, like this shit is so dumb to complain about as if no one did similar stuff!)

Literally a hypocrite:

Being mean to people about stuff!

(other things about DaniDraws)

[serpentarius]

been trying to wrap my head around the cancellation of "Our Flag Means Death" and why it hurts so fucking much. lots of folks who are much more eloquent than I have summed it up perfectly, but I still think it’s important I add my voice to the matter. 

It really, really sucks that the hurt is being compounded on us every time another queer/minority-led show gets prematurely cancelled. and for a long while, we also had to deal with the many shows that deliberately queerbaited us, which was a shitty and traumatic experience unto its own. And even though we’ve largely surpassed that early-‘00s-flavoured brand of queerbait now, mainstream queer media is still predominantly white-led. With the cancellation of OFMD, we've lost one of the very few intersectional queer shows in the mainstream. Shouldn’t we be beyond asking for crumbs at this point? Shouldn’t we get unabashedly intersectional shows helmed by and starring queer, BIPOC, and trans folks without them being axed for no rhyme or reason?

It’s exhausting at this point, honestly. OFMD has done so well in terms of viewership and engagement and fan response—almost entirely due to word of mouth and little thanks to the Max marketing team, mind you—and even still the show got cancelled? Can they make it make sense????

For me, the thing most akin to this OFMD situation was when Sense8 got cancelled. And yes, the fandom fought, and we eventually DID get a movie that wrapped things up years later! That gives me hope for OFMD, that maybe another network will pick it up, or maybe they’ll be able to make a movie someday. But what makes me sad about cases like Sense8 is knowing that the creators still had to force the narrative around the amount of time they were given. That the corporate overlords who only care about numbers and profit dictated how much time they had to wrap up their story.

And it fucking kills me that DJ only wanted one more season. One more season to complete the vision.

I'm just so mad that queer people are constantly being jerked around and used for profit and then left high and dry. And then we're given excuses like "oh there's no budget" or "oh there's not enough viewership, that's all it is". like, sure, maybe those are contributing factors, but then I look at all the useless garbage shows that have little viewership and high budgets that keep going forever and then I think "hmmmm, the math ain't mathing." It's fucking transparent; the corporations can spew all they want with their rainbow capitalism and talks about diversity, but the evidence is clear, and they can't convince me homophobia/racism/transphobia/etc. is not a factor in these decisions.

Anyways, back to OFMD. OFMD made me fall in love with fandom again. I drifted away from fandom for a while in my 20s, and while OFMD wasn't the first fandom that drew me back into the madness, it's certainly the largest. The sheer amount of creativity both within the show and outside of it has blown me away; I've read some of the best fics, seen some of the best art, and witnessed some of the most incredible creativity from people in this fandom.

And let's not forget the role of the show's creators and how they've interacted with us fans. They made us feel seen. And made us feel loved and valid, even when we were being weird and loud and horny. It's so fucking rare to see that. But they understood; understood that the show they made was for us, for any of us who've been marginalized or made to feel Othered or different or stuck in life or unsure of our identities. And they gave us so much love for it.

The story... man. The unique combination of quirky humour and bright visuals and dark, introspective moments, the gorgeous costumes and soft, lovely, unabashed queerness, and veteran actors and new actors all getting to shine, brilliant comedic actors getting to show off their dramatic chops and vice versa. For me, seeing Rhys Darby - an actor I've loved for a long time, but who I never thought I'd see in a leading role - getting to be the romantic lead in a queer role? And seeing acclaimed director/producer/screenwriter/actor Taika Waititi play opposite Rhys, as an indigenous Blackbeard? Fucking incredible. OFMD Edward Teach you will always be famous to me.

Anyways... despite my long ramblings here, I still don’t think I've been able to get to the root of WHY exactly this show has inched its way under my skin and stayed with me in the way it has. Maybe I'll spend years trying to understand it. But I DO know that it's in part to do with seeing both older queers AND a diverse range of queerness onscreen, in a way that I've never seen in media before. I DO know that OFMD has forced me to look inwardly, and allowed me to realize some important things about myself. About my own queerness, my own identity, things I'm still figuring out. I've cherished being able to see myself in Stede, in Ed, and each of the crew members. In Roach’s love for cooking, in Oluwande’s ability to mediate; in Jim’s quick temper, in the way Izzy builds walls to guard his heart. In Buttons’ quirkiness, in Wee John’s sass, in Frenchie’s ability to turn pain into humour; in The Swede’s silliness, in Lucius’ bluntness, in Pete’s soft heart beneath the skepticism. Lastly, OFMD has inspired me. To create, to write, to draw, to devour other peoples' works and worlds while I sit in sheer, overflowing joyousness at their talent.

so yeah. the news of this cancellation is upsetting and hurtful and disappointing. And it's making us cry, and it's making us grieve, and may make us hollow and numb at times because we've lost yet another thing we love so deeply before it was meant to go. It's so much more than "just a TV show". It means more to us than any passive mindless idiotic mind-numbing bullshit - because even though there's a time and a place and a purpose for that type of media, it's the thought-provoking work, the work that creators pour their entire hearts and souls into, that hit us deep in our own souls. The work that changes our lives. The work that has the ability to save lives, as I know OFMD has done for so many. 

please know I'm sending immense amounts of love and strength to those of you who are also hurting. we'll get through this, one way or another, and I'll keep up with the hope that we'll get more someday; but in the meantime, I'm holding you tight. ❤️️🫂