#Not meaning to swing at the hornet's nest lol

[wachi-delectrico]

Spent all of yesterday studying on the problem of Nationality and the creation of a National Identity and ngl I haven't stopped thinking and trying to figure out how yankee's modern idea of nationality came to be, specifically thinking of white American people who say they're of a nationality based on "ancestry" with no personal cultural ties to it

[azure-clockwork]

I love three houses discourse because I'm pretty sure everyone just picks their route based on which house leader they're the most gay for and then tries to defend their pick by pointing out the other sides's war crimes via twitter memes. Reader, all four of them do substantial quantities of war crimes. So many. We're just here because the woman with Issues and a big fuck-off axe said so, and then we gotta justify everything she did in the name of dismantling the class system. I mean, I'm here for that, but you could also try justifying Charm Man uses poison and perfidy to try to stop racism, A Sad Little Meow Meow gives no quarter instead of doing therapy, or the Thicc Pope tries to bring back her mom via human experimentation, depending on your tastes

[genericaces]

Do you have any characters in the buffyverse you don't really like?

I don't think so? I have some favored blorbos like everyone else, but i don't think there are any characters i actively (or even passively) dislike. Generally at minimum I appreciate characters for the role they play in the narrative as a whole

[woodsdyke]

might be swinging a bat at a hornets nest here but

specifically in denver at least ive noticed a lot of leftists are some of the most deeply unpleasant people ive ever met

like sure you know the basics of marxism but have you ever engaged with contemporary theory and have u learned how to explain those concepts without filling everything with jargon? or have u read like, anything else? have u considered reading a book and not incoorporating it into ur life is meaningless and no i dont mean just slapping ACAB on ur profile header

do you like... talk to your neighbors? like in a meaningful way? do u go out of your way to help people even if it's something like helping a neighbor shovel snow from their driveway or offering to go pick up their groceries?

i just have a met a lot of people who are some of the most bitter, condescending ppl who act Like That under the guise of being The Ones Who Are Right and are deeply unpleasant to well-intentioned ppl who might not be Radical Enough even tho the way to develop ur politics is thru... learning? and yeah 'go read a book' is fine if ur like me with a postgrad education, but what if the well-intentioned person is like, your dad who works 60-70 hours a week and never finished high school and possibly has a learning disability. u think im gonna tell my dad to go read early 20th century sociological theory???

idk i just think you can have All The Right Opinions but if you aren't, you know, nice, it really doesn't mean a lot lol

if u read this and got mad at me i need u to light a nice candle and have a little cup of tea or something and then not send me an ask about it

[liquidstar]

Not to risk swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest but how do you feel about the percy jackson series then?

not a bad YA series, i have no gripes with it on that end. but it doesnt really have anything to do with greece on a fundamental level, its just sort of using the gods as gimmicks or aesthetics. by that i mean that the series couldve pretty easily swapped out the greek gods with another pantheon, or create its own (though that would take more worldbuilding and wouldnt market as well- half the fun of it IS the fact that its a spin on a mythos everyones kinda familiar with. i dont think gimmicks are bad and its fine to use some pre-established things as themes to connect your story to) and it would stay functionally the same. it just doesnt really bother to engage with the culture it took the gods from in any real way. the closest its gotten is casting jason mantzoukas as dionysus (based).

overall i cant say this is a PROBLEM i have with the story itself, its more so just what i feel is a missed opportunity. i mean, there are 2 italian characters and they go to italy bc i feel like the author may see it as interchangeable to a degree lol. i simply wish we couldve been thrown an actual bone i guess, but as its stands its not a meaningfully greek series in any way. i dont think its saying anything actually deep about the mythos beyond its own narrative (which is fine, it doesnt have to)

MY MAIN ISSUE honestly is how the fandom thinks they know greek mythology after engaging with what is ultimately a very shallow interpretation of it. well researched, mind you, but Not That Deep beyond references and aesthetics. the fans think they just read the hellenist bible, but it is in fact just some YA fiction! nothing wrong with YA fiction, but dont use it as your sole reference point if you really actually are interested in hellenism. i think learning about the culture (of the time and the people today as well) is an important aspect of that too! percy jackson doesnt really give you much of that, because ultimately its not really trying to. and thats fine. i think you just gotta know that lol

[aihoshiino]

Between Akane, Kana, and Ruby, which do you think is the best written, and has more depth outside of their relationship/crush on Aqua? The argument I’ve been seeing most often from diehard fans of any of the three girls is that the other two (or one of the other two) don’t have any depth beyond liking Aqua. Been seeing this especially from people who hate Kana, but also from Akane haters and Ruby haters

Anon I truly believe you sent this with nothing but good faith in your heart but never before have I received an ask that looked more like the internet equivalent of someone handing me a baseball bat and pointing me in the direction of a hornet's nest. AND BROTHER, I'M ABOUT TO START SWINGING!!!!

In order from best to worst I'd say right now, it goes Kana -> Akane -> Ruby. If you'd asked me this question in a pre-123 world I probably would've said it's Ruby -> Kana -> Akane but… well i'll be getting into what existing in a post-123 world has done for ruby's character soon enough anyway lol.

I fully expect to be hit with accusations of bias in this regard both because I just have generally always liked Kana and fandom lately has been so fucking weird about her but the reason I like Kana is because I think she's the most consistent and fleshed out beyond the scope of her relationship with Aqua. Like, to be clear, all the girls definitely revolve around him way more than they should - to a degree, this is just kind of the nature of the beast in a story like OnK where a lot of characters' foothold into the story are their personal relationship with the protag. But so much of their screentime and story relevance is eaten up by the romance subplots that it ends up coming at the expense of giving the viewer a strong sense of who they are outside those relationships.

This is the trap I think Akane falls into, to the detriment of her character writing. On paper, she's a super interesting character with a lot of potential to add to the story's themes and overall commentary but her actual role in the story and the context within which she's allowed relevance is purely just Being Aqua's Love Interest. Hell, her foothold into the cast period is just that she and Aqua are fake dating and Akane is catching both feelings and a sense of indebted gratitude towards him, so she's totally down to match his freak about it. There's a reason I think Tokyo Blade is her best post-LoveNow arc and it's because while the developing relationship between her and Aqua is an important part of the story, it's absolutely not Akane's focus when compared to everything else she's got going on with Kana. After this arc, though, she's given basically zero plotlines or things to do that aren't wholly predicated on Being Aqua's GF and the interesting underlying issues suggested to exist in her character go largely ignored in favor of her serving Aqua's story. She doesn't really have any relationships with the other cast members outside of Kana and even that ends up devolving into love triangle slop. The result is that, based purely on what exists in the text of the story, Akane is isolated from any other character that she could interact with to create a sense that she has a life and interior world unrelated to Aqua.

This is also why I say Ruby is the worst hit by the Love Triangle Brainrot Disease out of the three heroines because she had an interesting, lively character with a full world and social life that had nothing to do with Aqua only for 123 to come along and infect her with terminal love interest brainrot. Honestly, Ruby being Like This with Aqua right now is probably the biggest singular issue with OnK at the moment, because it means one of the series' primary protagonist is stuck in this malformed relationship cul-de-sac where the feelings we've spent the entire series building up and fleshing out have somehow simultaneously taken over her entire character at the expense of all her other ongoing plotlines while also going entirely unaddressed by the narrative. 123 essentially wiped Ruby's slate clean of anything that wasn't the AquRuby stuff and then proceeded to treat it like a massive joke for literally 20 entire chapters - once again, at the expense of what was a genuinely really necessary arc for her. Ruby's so-called 'revenge' peters out with a wet fart because all the moments leading up to it that should have given any of it weight are offscreened in favour of yet another panel of Ruby splooging over her brother. But despite this being like the one singular thing her character has going on right now, Akasaka is simply refusing to address the massive incest elephant in the room, which means that both Ruby as a character and the story as a whole are robbed of opportunities to develop and be developed by an exploration of how that massive taboo intersects with and affects… literally anything! Since 123, we've gotten exactly one chapter that bothered to even pretend it was taking Ruby's feelings seriously but despite it ending on perhaps one of The Biggest Status Quo Shifts in the whole series… it too has gone entirely unaddressed!!!

Both Akane and Ruby are trapped in this bog of having their entire characters reduced to revolving round Aqua while being disallowed from meaningful development that would probably advance or give closure to that relationship. Akane… sort of gets this with her whole "i'm his mom now btw kana you should suck him silly" thing and her big dramatic haircut but even then, she's still orbiting Aqua and his revenge quest because apparently she has nothing better to do. Ruby, meanwhile, is in this baffling place where the story is having to twist itself into so many pretzels to avoid addressing whatever the hell is going on with her and Aqua before the Akasaka ordained Most Dramatic Moment that she is not getting any moment-to-moment development that might even risk letting her address or untangle any of this stuff. She and Aqua are not allowed to have any direct on-screen interactions and even when they did in 157, it just felt plastic and artificial and honestly kind of forced because of that failure to so much as acknowledge UH, HEY, REMEMBER WHEN RUBY STUCK HER TONGUE DOWN AQUA'S THROAT?

anyway. ALL THAT UP ^ THERE ^ is the reason I think Kana is the character who feels the most fleshed out beyond the bounds of her relationship with Aqua, ironically because of having comparatively less romantic focus and explicitly romantic interactions with him. Because less of her screentime is taken up by romance drama, it allows her to just breathe and exist as a person without her entire role in the story being Aqua's Love Interest. Her major moments of development are all built on Kana's own backstory and baggage which has basically nothing to do with Aqua and everything to do with her own insecurities, her history of abuse and abandonment, her obsession with acting and her fervent desperation to cling to the entertainment industry even when it has made clear that it doesn't want to make a place for her anymore, because so much of her personhood is warped by and tangled up in her childhood growing up in the public eye. That's not to say Aqua isn't involved in Kana's arc and he has an undeniably huge impact on her, but when you look at the ways his interactions with her push her story along it very much feels like Kana is just having her own arc that Aqua is serving and sometimes intersecting with rather than the other way around (as it feels for Akane and Ruby).

WITH ALL THAT SAID… it is just blatantly a bad faith reading of the series to the point of flat out lying about the contents of the story to say any of the three heroines have nothing going on outside their relationships with Aqua, even if we don't get as much focus on that stuff as I'd like. Ruby has her whole history as Sarina and the experiences of abuse, disempowerment and abandonment that have created the bullheaded high-energy Ruby of the present day. Akane struggles with low self-worth and tendencies towards creating narratives for herself and other people in her head that don't always survive impact with reality. Kana has… well, I rambled about all that up there lol. In fact, all three of the heroines are interested in Aqua for imo, at least hypothetically well developed reasons that have observable and tangible roots in their own histories and personal baggage and how Aqua, as a person, has impacted them.

The issue is not with the girls themselves or their feelings for Aqua. The issue is that Akasaka is a romcom guy flying by the seat of his pants trying to write a murder mystery character drama and it's just not what he's cut out for. So he falls back on what he knows - the romance stuff - regardless of how it does or does not cohere with the arcs of the characters involved or the wider story at large. He simply doesn't have the chops to balance both halves of the story at once and his clear interest in playing shipping drama for all its worth has ultimately compromised the integrity of the surrounding story, to the detriment of the characters involved.

[considerablecolors]

Me: ok ok so basically it all started when i was listening to Cool As I Think I Am yeah? and im like omg Peter Spankoffski is literally everything and more that Jeremy Heere from Be More Chill tried and failed to be

Them:

Me: like Cool As I Think I Am? that's LEGIT literally just the Chad version of Loser Geek Whatever

Them:

Me: AND THEN. I'M LIKE WAIT. NONONO. ALL THE CHARACTERS LINE UP BRO. like you have the sidekick that the fandom immediately adopts as their favorite little queer icon that makes constant references and has one of the saddest scenes in the show and deserves better? MICHAEL AND RICHIE

Them:

Me: a really quirky out-there girl that loves musical theatre? CHRISTINE AND RUTH BRO

Them: i-

Me: AND AND AND. A BULLY THAT'S LIKE OBJECTIVELY A BAD PERSON THAT THE FANDOM CAN'T HELP BUT LOVE BECAUSE HE SHOWS ROOM FOR KINDNESS YEAH??? RICH AND MAX MY DUDE

Them: uh-

Me: AND FINALLY IT CLICKS. NAH MAN. IT'S NOT JUST THE CHARACTERS. IT'S THE PLOT TOO.

Me: nerd guy and his friend(s) getting bullied and used to it, when he decides he's going to finally change the status quo because there's a girl he likes. then the bully intervenes and changes the status quo FR FR. it's all your standard high school drama and THEN a supernatural force intervenes and turns shit dark!!

Them: well-

Me: LIKE LIKE there's a party thrown where everything horribly goes wrong!! everyone starts being nicer to the nerd and you think it'll be fine but then nerd guys friend's start getting hurt and suddenly the entire school/world is at risk, PLUS the dream girl is at risk, so nerd guy is like SHIT gotta fix things

Them: i mean-

Me: THEN THE SHOW HAS A SUPER HAPPY UPLIFTING CHEESY ENDING WHERE EVERYTHING IS FINE BUT THEN. LAST MINUTE. THE SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT GETS TEASED AGAIN AND YOU'RE LIKE *GASP* IT'S NOT GONE IT'S STILL A THREAT WAIT I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT BUT THEN YOU DON'T GET TO KNOW

Them: so um-

Me: LIKE IT ALL LINES UP. THE MIX OF CLASSIC SHOWTUNES SOUNDTRACK WITH A POP/ROCK TWIST. THE SLIGHTLY OUTDATED TEEN LINGO. THE UNDENIABLE HORNIEST OF MOST OF THE CHARACTERS. NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE IS LITERALLY JUST THE BETTER VERSION OF BE MORE CHILL!!

Them: were you-

Me: BUT THEATRE KIDS AREN'T READY TO HAVE THAT FUCKING CONVERSATION YET SO I JUST HAVE TO SIT HERE, KNOWING I'M RIGHT, SWINGING MY BAT AT THIS HORNET'S NEST, TRYING TO SPREAD THE GOOD WORD, BUT THEY HATE ME FOR SPEAKING THE FUCKING TRUTH

Them: ...

Me:

Them: ...

Me:

Me: OH MY GOD. OMG. I'M SO SORRY I'VE LEGIT JUST BEEN RAMBLING HAVEN'T I

Them: ...

Me: ughhh that's so embarrassing lolol okok so anyways

Me: i'll get to the point lol sorry

Me: ok so um basically i was interested in commissioning you to make like- basically think of it as like an episode of Nightmare Time but it's like Pete x Michael ok?

Nick Lang: um.

Matt Lang: that's not really how this...

Nick Lang: yeah, we don't really do that

Me: oh :( cause you guys are homophobic?

Matt Lang: OKAY-

[bereft-of-frogs]

Just continuing to swing a bat at the hornets nest I feel like my biggest regret about this series is that for like an episode and a half, they made the Sith really scary. And not just in the Vader in Rogue One/Fallen Order way, this terror of their raw power and brutality, but the Sith were really creepy. And then… I just wish we had gotten to hang onto that for a little longer, that horror aspect. Remember that spooky scene of him descending from the shadows? We were a real country once.

Because I’m just sorry, this whole dark romance angle just does not work for me when the end result is the wholesale slaughter of millions (billions? What’s the empires death toll up to? How many people lived on Alderaan?) of innocent people and decades of fascism. I hope you can understand, this isn’t necessarily in the anti way like I’m not judging if it does work for you, I get the theoretical appeal behind enemies to lovers and villain romances, I just think some of the horror that could have been really effective for me got sort of undercut by the back half, and I personally wish we’d gotten to linger on stuff like the horror of bleeding Sol’s crystal and becoming a thing ruled by hate and anger. The like weird triumphant vibes don’t really land for me as effectively as the horror vibes. I miss the horror vibes 😭

That being said, I actually liked a lot of this episode! Predictions were pretty spot on lol, which is why I think I’m taking Sol’s death and that he went down for the murders a lot better than some others in the tag. Take your time guys, I’ve just been almost certain this was how it was going to play out since like June 20th (I have a time stamp on the post, would have to check I think it was around there). The duels!! Leaks said the best duels were in episode 8 and they were indeed really good.

Also my Jedi ladies did nothing wrong. Made it to the end without Indara being revealed to be a secret double reverse twist as the secret Sith Lord, so I don’t have to go on any sort of Reddit apology tour. People are going to be hard on Vernestra but I mean…that scene with the senator was basically just a series of anti-Jedi propaganda and was giving me major Ghirra Starros and the Nihil crisis vibes, I’m sorry to Sol but I also understand why she’s acting this way, she has to protect the people she’s leading. I think she also knew that no other explanation would fly in light of the evidence, even if she knows the truth. Sorry Sol, but I did call this one 😂 And Bazil’s testimony lol, because you know Bazil’s evidence was going to be damning.

This will probably be more coherent when I’ve had more time to think thoughts but that’s my immediate reactions, I’ll never hop off the Jedi lady defence train

[kustas]

Wanted to say I hope your post does not break containment as I feel it may be one of those swinging at the hornet's nest / 'how dare you say we piss on the poor' as I think your point is very true! I also wanted to genuinely compliment you as this is one of the first times I've seen a post about exploring 'nicher art' where said person is actively pursuing less known media AND adjacent mediums (illustration, western comics, animation) while not degrading ones that are more popular. People gotta start engaging with more 6/10s and series with 10 readers on MAL lol (1/2)

Like you said on the post, series that hit the wide media appeal don't (or rarely) hit the sweet spot of your individual self because by nature they are more universal. I emphasize the '6/10' rating especially though because sometimes they're rated that low BECAUSE they're misunderstood or highly specific. Idk, something I've noticed from time to time. Thank you for your service OP hope this doesn't come off as weird or anything. (2/2)

Ayyye, you're welcome! That's a really sweet message :) I'm not too worried about it breaking containement given that I can just lock reblogs. I'm not online enough to be aware of nerds vagueing me because they're mad at my blog posts and I haven't done anything wrong except be a widdle pretentious which I am happily self aware of. (takes long drag of my black and white cigarette)

Truth is - I don't think there's "bad art" because its so subjective. Fighting people over taste is a losing battle in the first place because that's their problem not yours and it's not something you can change! What I /do/ notice a lot online in the fandoms I breeze past is that a lot of people seek weirder stuff but don't put the effort behind, and that's how you end up with people getting really damn invested about something like say, MP100, and praising its visuals by calling it experimental. North american pop culture especially is dominated by corporate giants in a way that might make it harder to find indie stuff, and north americans tend to not go look for stuff that's alien to them in the first place. It's why platforms like Tumblr rule - it's relatively easy to find new stuff when your dashboard is full of people posting about their own tastes. And that's why I submit myself to the mortifying ideal of yapping about the shit that has those 10 MAL readers and posting pictures of it!

There's no bad art and that includes popular commercial stuff. It'd be hypocritical of me to shit on that given one of my fav movies ever is a Mad Max and i've defended the Beatles' music as good online :p Popular stuff is popular for a reason

But damn if you are seeking some thrills through media I still am dead convinced finding some amateurish and/or weird ass and/or gruesome and/or experimental will give you the high no hollywood production can reach... And that if you only stick to the same sort of mass appeal media you'll be left with a lot of pent up invisible frustration made up of all the stuff they cut out for optimised dollars

Also, there's always gonna be indier than you. I might appear versed in obscure shit but in truth I am only one of thousands of a specific type of nerd who somehow wandered onto this platform instead of infighting about Meaning on ageing french book forums. It doesn't matter very much and I am happy to be surrounded by all types of nerds and share each other's beloved little things :) ~

[edgepunk]

I'm probably swinging a bat at a hornet's nest, but some of the posts circulating on here "criticizing" Cyberpunk were straight up stupid. Some popular post on here said that it's bad the game has huge 50GB+ updates and that it's unheard of when,,,, no? lol almost every game has huge updates? That doesn't make it a bad game?

It's also bad that the developers kept updating the game to fix the issues, apparently leaving it in its piss poor state is better than keep working on it. (note: I am not defending the "eh we'll fix it later" mindset that's been prevalent in the AAA industry)

By all means, criticize the horrific development and the way the investors/execs were treating this whole thing, but these are stupid complaints that aren't exclusive to Cyberpunk. I'm not defending how the game was handled, I fully agree that update 2.0 is what the game should've been like at launch, but these are not good arguments. And the fact that those posts get thousands of notes shows that these people know nothing about these things.

Like, I'm still flabbergasted by the "the game is bad because it has a big update" argument when you compared it to Bee Gee Three in the same post which also has huge 50GB+ updates.

[rescue-ram]

How would you rank all the popular mash ships?

Ooh, thank you for this beautiful shiny bat, I can't wait to swing at the hornets nest! (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

I mean, the real question is what counts as a popular MASH ship because by most metrics it's just BJHawk, TrapHawk, Everyone Else. And some ships I like or find fun to think about are insanely niche lol. So I went on AO3, excluded all the platonic ships and BJ/Peg until I got the 10 "most popular" MASH ships, and I'll rank those :3

TrapHawk THE ETERNAL OTP. Like, truly my One True Pairing, I've loved these little guys for over half my life, they have great chemistry, they're great friends, they're flirty and sweet and you can go angsty or fluffy with them with ease. Many potential story angles, great fun. I ship a lot, and find many MASH dynamics fun to explore, but they are definitely my number one.

Hawkahy Admittedly this is 90% Quordle's fault lol, but they are interesting to me. Little bit of a quieter ship made up of many small moments, but even in the movie they are drawn to each other and have some cute moments. I'm kind of obsessed with the angle that, after Radar leaves, they are the two old timers at the 4077th, that Mulcahy is the only one who's been there longer, that Hawkeye is the first responder and Francis is the last... Many fun parallels, pleasingly contrasting personalities, great humor between them, and some good chemistry. The biggest obstacle is their differing ideologies, but I think that could be explored in an interesting way.

SidHawk Some really great moments between these two, good chemistry and humor, I think they'd be well matched and very sexy/fun to read or write about, with some fun messy angst potential as well.

BJHawk Oh many complicated feelings on these two. I ship them in a very angsty, dramatic, messy kind of way. Would love to see a slowburn that really got into all the obstacles to this ship. I think their relationship would necessarily change quite a bit outside of the war in a way that would be messy but fun to explore. Overall my take on this is very different from the most common takes on them, which often ignore other people in their lives, characterize BJ in a way that's much calmer more mature than how I see him, or use tropes I'm not fond of, but eh. I think there's many interesting angles to work with them, I have many ideas I'd like to explore with this ship, but they're not my end game or OTP.

FrankMargaret Not sure I ship them, per se, but I think they are the most sexually compatible couple we see in the show, their neuroses are so perfectly aligned. Great chemistry on multiple levels, they unfortunately bring out the worst in each other, but they're such a good duo and a lot of fun, and I KNOW the sex was amazing and I love that for them lol. The ultimate crazy4crazy hand in unlovable hand ship to me.

HouliHawk Most of the boomers/Gen Xers I've talked to ship this lol. I like them a lot, their relationship has an interesting arc, and I think they're well matched in many ways. Don't really ship them, I prefer them both with other partners, but I fully get this one and think there's some good chemistry between them.

CharHawk Good comedy between these two with some sweet moments in canon to build on, I have a few ideas that I'm nibbling on, but I think if they had met outside the war they would never ever think about getting together, they are just so different, I have a hard time seeing sexual or romantic chemistry between them. Many obstacles for this ship to overcome.

DonnaCharles Complete neutrality on this one from me.

CharKlinger GOD FUCKING BLESS that one guy who has written over 400 fics for this pairing, cut me off a slice of that creative energy!! A genuine and sincere tip of my cap to stateofintegrity. The fact they've singlehandedly gotten their rare pair to within spitting distance of the second most popular ship in the fandom is astounding, if they actually lap TrapHawk I WILL go fully insane and dedicate my life to writing drabbles until TrapHawk is ahead again, but I don't like this ship and have no interest in it.

BJHawkPeg No ❤️ I think this would be a disaster- potentially a very funny/interesting disaster to read or write, but no ❤️

[atjsgf]

... that Xavier apologist part is new. Explain?

I was gonna accuse you of trying to get me killed on the guillotine fetishist website, but then I remembered I put that in my bio fully willingly knowing what site I was on, so, yeah, this one's on me.

Someday if I feel like swinging a bat at a hornet's nest I will write a whole essay about this, but the basics are:

When people say "Magneto was right" what they actually mean is "My politics, which I have projected onto Magneto, are right."

Likewise, when they say "Xavier is a liberal (derogatory)" what they mean is "the politics I have projected onto Xavier, which are the politics I associate with my IRL enemies, are liberal (derogatory)."

Both statements have little to nothing to do with the actual politics displayed by either man in canon.

Magneto (at his best) operates on the assumption that the mutant-liberated utopia is just around the corner. Xavier operates on the assumption that the world we actually have is the world we're going to have for the foreseeable future, and that it's in everyone's best interest to try to improve that world. There's value in idealism, but there's value in realism, too.

"He gave Kurt a watch to make him look human!" Yeah and that watch is the one thing keeping Kurt from getting hate-crimed on the daily so what about it

Recognizing the reality that mutants with visible mutations are often subjected to violence and giving those mutants the ability to ward off said violence =/= endorsing that violence

"But remember how Mystique said she doesn't hide who she is cause she shouldn't have to!" Good for her! This line is then followed by her son staring longingly at her because the filmmakers were allergic to the comics that co-producer Kevin Feige kept trying to sneak onto set like contraband, so maybe we can zoom out and take all of this in context, as a story with characters who have differing political opinions inside the fictional world they live in, instead of a political manifesto for the real world with real world stakes.

Just generally Xavier's politics seem more attached to the reality in which he lives than Magneto's, whose politics seem largely driven by emotion and trauma. It's understandable; that doesn't make him correct.

This all being said: I actually like Magneto as a character more than I like Xavier lmao.

This is an aside but I guess it's kind of related, so I'll throw it here: Dark Phoenix actually briefly introduced the most interesting philosophical and moral quandary in the entire XMCU via Mystique and Xavier's conflict over Xavier using the X-Men in part to garner good PR for mutantkind. Then she dies and they just forget about it lol

Stan cherik

[susandsnell]

1, 6, 24 😉 xx

eeee, thank you so much ditty!!!! you're an absolute gem, hope this solstice thursday is treating you well!! <3

choose violence ask game 🔥

1. the character everyone gets wrong? pick a Batman Rogue. any rogue. literally any of them, and they will be Flanderized to hell and back over one to two traits they may not even have canonically possessed for two to three decades. I readily and wholeheartedly admit that this is not entirely the fault of fandom, and is at least partly owing to the broader problem with having long-running comics universes, because there is such a huge variance in characterization (and quality of said characterization thanks to the overabundance of edgelord and bigoted comics/comic media writers), in the gravity of their actions and where they land on the moral spectrum, and even in motivation that it is nigh impossible to even say what getting said character 'right' means unless the person is talking about a specific iteration (ex.: someone writing fic or making headcanons about specifically Paul Dano's Riddler from The Batman 2022, who has a very particular voice/ethos/motive distinct from your other Riddlers, though there are core shared traits). But of this bunch, i'd have to say my poor Ivy gets it the worst. I'm truly glad she's evolved beyond being just another Temptress of Men Who Hates Them But Also Needs Their Validation Through Constant Sex (although done right she's still a great femme fatale wasting their time and catfishing them for eco-terrorism purposes), and of course as a canon queer character she means the world to me, but as is the case with every popular female character, she's either Holding The Braincell (aka everyone's mom, and I don't mean in the kink way), or Irredeemable. A lot of this does arise from how poor the execution of modern canon Harlivy has been because of respectability politics, but reducing her to Snarky Husky Voiced Plant Lady Rolling Her Eyes At Harley's Antics, making her have her shit way too together (she's always sent to Arkham!), making her the one-sided babysitter/healer of Harley's problems (and by extension, the problems of any other woman), making her a snarky queer auntie to the Batkids (vomit, it's as cringe as the rest of mainstream Batfam fanon), making her have way too much emotional intelligence to the point of counselling others (she's not even one of the psychologist rogues!), having her whole existence revolve around Harley....it's exhausting. (And again, unfortunately something the writers are fucking up in canon constantly, too.)

Fandom as a whole is allergic to women having flaws that impact the narrative concretely without demonizing them for it (when the dudes doing the same and worse are adored and worshipped for it), doubly so if she's BIPOC or queer (because again, double the respectability politics), so they flatten out those flaws and it's like, is she even a villain anymore with her own motivations and ethos, or is she a big tiddy witch gf from a paywalled phone app dating sim? Let her be as complex and angry and jagged and hypocritical as the other male rogues, my god!! (Sidenote that I'm not against retooling characters' designs/presentations/tactics anew entirely for a new universe iteration, especially if it refreshes the narrative, so long as they're interesting and true to some spirit of the character. In other words, masc Ivy's are fine and more than welcome lol.)

6. Which ship fans are the most annoying?

Oh, you really want me to swing my bat at the hornet's nest with this one, huh? While the cheat answer for this is "all of them if you spend enough time in any given ship fandom", I'm the most frequently exhausted by migratory Good Girl Fixing Bad Boy fandom. Fuck it, I'll name names with periods. The Zutar.a/Reyl.o/Darkli.na/Dae.myra et cetera fandom. The ships themselves, I can take or leave (though my main gripe is frequently their execution is just boring). There's no moral objections on my part, to be clear. I'd be hypocritical to take that tack considering my own tastes in markedly more fucked-up shit and like, hello, I cut my teeth in Phantom of the Opera fandom since I was 12 and love gothic romances, so like, glass houses. My issue comes in where these types without fail are consistently smug about the potent feminism inherent to ships they specifically in fanon interpret in the most boring, gender essentialist, wattpad daddy-dom-size-difference kink ho-hum ways imaginable because...it makes them horny, and woman horny about traditional gender roles equals feminism somehow. If it stopped there, I'd've never developed such an animosity, but no no. They make arguments about how much more feminist it is than the (often canon) hero/heroine ships because Feminism Is When Woman Is Treated Like Property By The Man I Find Attractive. They act like cishet romances, usually between two white characters, is the most marginalized thing imaginable and whinge that artists/studios/creators are "too cowardly" to "include romance" if it doesn't go canon in the way they like, as if more marginalized romance stories aren't fighting tooth and nail just to get off the ground. And on that note, the bigotry I have witnessed firsthand in these circles is just appalling; this is a fandom-wide issue and certainly not exclusive to any one shipping community, but the amount of times I have seen them come off as just frothing at the mouth to be homophobic should a slash shipper not bend the knee to the Great Potent Feminism of their ships, and the amount of times the mask as come off is just. Whew. It's okay to just be horny. It really is. One does not have to make a Social Issue Thing about it.

24. Topic that brings up the most rancid discourse? Weird corollary to the above question, and kind of an overbroad answer so I apologize, but Appropriate Amount Of Condonation Versus Condemnation of both characters, and works of fiction as a whole. I feel like the purity culture discourse has gotten so toxic it's gone completely 0 or 100 "if you watch something where something bad happens You Yourself Are Guilty Of This Thing" or "nothing fictional has any impact whatsoever", when my take is a more nuanced idea of media normalizing and reinforcing certain biases, but also, it's not real lmao. If the work itself espouses certain troubling viewpoints it's unsurprising if the audience takes that on (ex: Frank Miller perpetuating racism and misogyny through his writings), but people are such whining babies about so much as glimpsing any kind of Problematic Media (especially miserable if you're a horror fan) that I understand how the knee-jerk defensiveness arose. On the other hand, the baby got thrown out with the bathwater, including by opportunistic bigots who want to shut down any and all critical discussion of social issues present in or surrounding their interests, lest it Spoil Their Fun (and to silence people over whom they're privileged), to the point that any critique from a moral standpoint is immediately branded as Purity Culture with no regard to nuance or the context of the perspective of the person making the critique. So for example, you have people who throw hissy fits about Catra from She-Ra getting a redemption arc and you have people who thoughtfully point out how the writing of certain tropes in a given work perpetuate transmisogyny, and they're all thrown in the same basket and it's exhausting. No space for nuance, you're either Pro or Anti, and to quote Sarah Z's excellent video on this issue, I for one am a tax-paying adult woman.

[thestobingirlie]

I was thinking and the same justification that parts of fandom use to defend Nancy is the same that's used to defend Billy. They're traumatized/abused, so their actions that hurt people are okay/ they don't have to take agency over their actions.

answering this ask kinda feels like swinging a bat at a hornets nest lol

i don’t know if i’d quite compare the two characters, but i do get what you mean. people tend to get protective over their favourite character, and often try to write over their wrongs with explanations, or even just erase the wrongs entirely, and pretend they aren’t there, using trauma as an excuse for bad behaviour. and i like the way you worded it, that people act as if they have no agency over doing bad things, like it wasn’t a choice they made. a choice informed by trauma, yes, but still a choice.

[heliianth]

Ohh im glad i didn't bother you <3 (also i ate the word where i meant he's not a sweetheart lol doesn't mean he goes out of his way to be mean to people either i wil die on that hill)I love discussing characterizations and such or analyzing trends that why i mentioned from my pespective shadow fans always mischaracterize him the most(more that sega)</3 they take him to extremes where he's too water down or he's idw shadow(sorry). Years ago it seem like people said "he's and edgy mean vegeta i hate him" and now the difference is "he's such an asshole, mean bastard lame loser i love him <3 has always been get over it". All the characters get a bad deal especially the introverts(sonic im so sorry) in favor of thing that are "funny" "relatable" "loveable lame" more to people tastes in general, is very interesting(and not my preference at all). Anyways poor guy hope someday they can set him up better(06 feels more truthful to me) there's lots of potencial for this one introvert, asocial guy(all of them please)if you want to check this blog fukurou-hoseki talk a lot about the games and analysis, especially sonic himself, bye have a good week

i agree that a lot of mischaracterization happens within fan spaces as well. i think bad portrayals, like in boom, which had a shadow with very little depth and an excess of edge, caused a lot of people to "pendulum swing" in the extreme opposite direction by insisting that shadow isn't like that at all—that he's actually very shy and nice and has friends, and all that. and while not all of that is bad, it also means lots of his flaws arent acknowledged. now we see other fans try to push back against that by insisting that hes a COMPLETE asshole, that he was always meant to be and insisting otherwise is woobifying, etc etc. like u said. very little room for middle ground sometimes. i also agree that 06 is a very good representation, and i like it mostly because it feels like a good culmination of the other games' work on his character arc

i also agree that sonic gets hit with the fanon stick really hard over here, i tend to have unpopular opinions about him and so i dont really open my mouth bc i feel like that will ruin peoples fun. shadow seems to be a more divisive character so i feel more comfortable poking fun at ideas i disagree with or stating my opinion, but theres seemingly such a wide "consensus" abt sonic that i feel like i would risk swinging at a hornets nest, even if i dont think anyone who would see it would actually be mean like that :')

i have heard of that user, i think ive scrolled thru their blog a few times so i kind of understand what they get at. i may follow in the future & i may not, i often get really anxious following first especially if its an analysis blog and i also do my own analysis (though i wouldn't consider my one-off jokey-tone posts serious analysis). but i agree with a lot of their sentiments, sometimes i disagree but thats just life

have a good week as well! i really loved talking with u <3