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dragonballwish · 1 year

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Oop that link actually opens the asks woah :0

HI FREND!! :D! Gohan moment… Ough… Beloved nerd boy. Idk what the overarching ask stuff is about but I share interpretation based on some of the asks I’ve seen and because it’s Gohan time >:]

Tbh my interpretation of him isn’t that he despises/doesn’t enjoy fighting at all because of the fact the whole Saiyaman arc exists. To me it’s more that he likes fighting but only on his own terms in a fight that he knows he can win.

Against an enemy he can surely tell is weaker, who isn’t a true threat and where he’s helping people by taking them down, then he might have a blast in the fight. Testing his strength out, not going rusty Y’know? It’s just fun! He’s still half-Saiyan so his craving for battle is still there but just to a much lesser degree.

When it comes to fights he’s forced into or where the stakes are so much higher… Thats when he starts to hate it. Unfortunately a lot of the fights the other Saiyans DO enjoy are ones just like that, which would have that expectation of ‘I’m supposed to like fighting when it gets tough’. Of course that view is based on opinion, preference and nothing else. Like someone who likes to play easy games to feel good vs someone who plays tough ones for challenge.

Gohan likes to take it easy, get action in the form of little fights against human criminals where he can use a bit of his power. When it comes to anything with higher stakes it’s a whole other story.

Also funnily enough- To me Gohan beast isn’t what most of the fandom seems to interpret it as (uncontrollable, full of rage etc.). To me it feels more like a cold, controlled power that has him give in to his Saiyan battle drive a bit more, but that is ultimately powered by his love and desire to protect his family and therefore keeps him grounded. This feels especially true to me considering how easily he was able to switch out of it after the battle and the fact he was just kind of… Chatting with Piccolo. Barely bothered by it.

Compared to most of the characters in the show Gohan is considerably more analytical and thoughtful, so he feels much less likely to give in to an uncontrollable rage as an adult. He’s just so full of love and care and has a family and friends, his human emotion keeps him in check when he fights to protect them. To Goku (majority of the time) and Vegeta battles are challenges, to Gohan they’re threats to his most cherished family. Unlike the others he just can’t find any semblance of joy in fights when majority of them he’s been a part of have just been… Life or death.

Heem heem ;-; Is my thoughts. More than I thought I’d write… ough…

Prefacing this to tell you the link is just to my /ask so yes the link opens the ask HAHAHAHA and the discourse was just opened because I wanted people to tell me their gohan opinions no matter what it is !!

HI FRIEND !!! You continue to have very interesting takes on the characters :]

I agree that gohan does like fighting smaller fights— it’s the stakes that make everything less enjoyable. Gohan doesn’t want the whole world to blow up if he loses !!! He would much rather have a friendly spar with the consequences being very inconsequential (pay the tab for dinner tonight, gohan)

And well, gohan has never been bloodthirsty, though his emotional capacity to go sicko mode has been there as a kid … but. He’s had enough time to grow out of it and come to terms with those emotions and learn to manage them. I agree with you (though I DO like the interpretation that he can and will go feral and also that he will get mad and stomp around if you insult his action figures (see: buu saga))

Gohan beast is cool but it’s literally just another ssj2 gohan v cell literally down to the core so any new interpretation is welcome. I don’t know if I really would say I think it’s him being cold and calculating but he very obviously wasn’t out of control. He had his wits about him and once the problem was solved he was able to relax whatever. So I agree there. I didn’t care a whole lot for that whole part of the movie so I zoned out 🤷

I think it’s because he is so full of love that gohan has so much capacity to go apeshit though and that’s why I think that became his thing.

Lovely interpretation of his character thank you so much for sending this to me!!!

[ join the gohan discourse time train ?!? Seats available here ]

#farceargon #and yes this was pretty clear and concise no worries #dragon ball #dragon ball z #dragon ball super #dragon ball super: super hero #gohan #gohan beast #wishpost #wishanswers

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voidix · 3 years

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So my dear friend @kittytudor and I were discussing some takes the fandom has on Dazai and especially his interactions with Mori and I thought I’d share

I really hate the train of thought that goes like “they’re super smart so they know life has no meaning and nothing matters” like that’s cynical for no reason whatsoever and just nihilistic

Yea when you are intelligent you see all the bad in the world and feel like you’re powerless to stop it a lot of times but the things is

You know scientists see beauty in everything geologist will get excited about literal dirt a marine biologist about a gold fish. When you’re intelligent you see all the bad but also all the good

However it’s easier to see the bad and often times it clouds your view but part of the healing process is starting to see beauty and happiness in the smallest things and I think that’s a journey Dazai is slowly going on.

So I really don’t think intelligence is the issue here and I’m gonna assume you’re an edgy bastard if you say so

I feel like Dazai’s issue is more the environment than anything and the lack of meaningful relationships. I know we clown the scene where he says actually living is okay now 1 day after meeting Chuuya but here is the thing. This might have been the first time he had someone his age who wanted to hang out with him or even less just someone his age who tolerated him. I personally know nothing about his life pre mafia but you can assume it wasn’t a good life if at age 14 you decide the bloody mafia is preferable to wherever you’re at at the moment

In my opinion Mori didn’t encourage it per se but he didn’t try to stop it either I really think that for him he did not expect Dazai would go through with it (again) and /or as cruel as it sounds if he actually did it which Mori didn’t think was likely he had one less rival to worry about but I really think that’s Mori’s reasoning for staying “neutral” for lack of a better word on this issue

That being said I’m sure being surrounded by death and suffering did not do any good for an already depressed 14/15yo

Which leads me to the second point. I really don’t think Mori expected Dazai to leave or tried to make him leave. For Mori Dazai was a powerful asset because of his ability and because of his intelligence that y’all are obsessed with. So why would you want to push that person away and it’s not like he was encouraging him to suicide here which would make much more sense than wanting him to leave.

And I have evidence

I’m gonna start it with: Oda did not die to set an example I don’t think so no. In his conversation with Chuuya he said something like “being a leader means making sacrifices for the well being of the group” or something like that and that’s what he did here.

He sacrifices Oda to get the permit.

The strange thing is I do think Mori meant what he said to Chuuya that he is a leader but also a servant to the mafia he wants the mafia to gain more power and that’s why he did what he did to get the permit.

I do think it could be a lesson to Dazai but not in the “if you cross me this is gonna happen to you” because Oda didn’t cross him Oda didn’t want power he is the last person who was interested in that. I think if anything it was more a lesson as in “when you take over this is something you’ll have to do and I’m showing you how it’s done”

Evidence for that is he was chuckling when he mentioned that possibility that Dazai would kill him and take one someday. And I agree that Mori

Wouldn’t mind if that was better for the Mafia. Like he wouldn’t make it easy for him and he wouldn’t give up but if he is defeated he wouldn’t be angry or annoyed because like I mentioned above I do think he was genuine when he said he is also a servant to the Mafia

My other piece of evidence is that when he showed Dazai the permit he seemed proud of what he’s done. The way he presented it and the entire scenario he seemed proud more than smug. If he really wanted Dazai out I feel like he would’ve been more smug about the whole thing and we know he can do that well.

And obviously there is also the fact he offered him not once but twice to come back. And what’s interesting is that the first time the offer was secret like he sent Gin and Higuchi and it was in a shady ass tunnel

Now the other time is where it gets interesting because it was very public in front of Dazai’s colleagues the black lizard and Fukuzawa.

Now Mori is a smart guy but also he has a sense of pride as we learned so I really don’t think he would risk being humiliated in front of Fukuzawa of all people just to mess with Dazai and he seemed genuinely surprised when Dazai said “you kicked me” and he didn’t offer him to just come back no he offered to be back as an executive and having Dazai decline and clown him in front of Fukuzawa like that I don’t think he would risk that if he was just playing

The thing is Mori is smart but he has tunnel vision in my opinion. He was so focused on getting the permit he forgot that this plan has consequences that aren’t just “we get the permit”

And also one of Mori’s issues is that he never takes into consideration people’s emotions. You can predict human Behavior to a certain degree a lot of times you can know what to

Say or what to do to get a certain result but the thing is humans aren’t algorithms they don’t always operate on logic they have emotions. And these emotions can be so strong that they override any crumb of logic left which is something I think Mori fails to understand. That’s why he didn’t expect Dazai to leave he forgot about the emotional factor.

That’s what Mori lacks but Dazai has and my evidence for this is a scenario we laughed at because it was presented in a funny way but I think that’s something that shows that Dazai is better at this 4D chess game than Mori.

On the Moby Dick he knew that Akutagawa would abandon everything to talk to him. If Dazai only operates by thinking about logical Behavior he wouldn’t have told Atsushi to do this but he realises that the emotional factor is one of the strongest drives humans have.

And you know I think Mori knows that when it comes to 4D chess Dazai would defeat him but he doesn’t mind that he isn’t scared of that. In dead Apple he couldn’t have possibly known the whole business with the pill but he told Chuuya to interfere. Mori has a strange sense of trust towards Dazai even now that they’re part of different sides.

I think Mori is has always been aware that although he says he does Dazai doesn’t actually want to die and I think the scene with the hyper and hypo tension medication in 15 shows this. If you actually want to die why would you Mix medicine with effects that cancel out each other and Mori is a doctor he knows this. That’s why I think he didn’t expect Dazai to commit and that he believes Dazai actually wants to live and because of that he will try and preserve himself and by extension Yokohama which is why he told Chuuya to go in dead apple, which is why he let Akutagawa go on the Moby Dick in season 2 because he realized Dazai wanted him to go there and he trusts Dazai to a certain degree .

I really feel like his underestimated the emotional factor and this will ultimately lead to his downfall. Like he didn’t expect Dazai to leave he wouldn’t expect anyone to react super emotional to god knows what he’ll do and thereby underestimate their response to that which will make him meet his end.

I don’t think the “you kicked me” is Dazai in denial he acted ok emotions or at least that’s not the whole thing. I think that Dazai’s reasoning for saying that is this:

Oda died so Mori can get more power which was part of Mori’s plan all along so looking at the bigger picture it was Mori’s plan and actions who drove me out of the Mafia so he basically “kicked me out”

Also I wanna add that I feel like Mori because he underestimates the emotional factor he doesn’t understand to this day why Dazai left like he knows it’s related to oda he can follow that train of events but in his mind it doesn’t make logical sense why Dazai would do that which is why he didn’t manage to win Dazai over back to The Mafia because in his mind be doesn’t know the logical reason why Dazai left which is also another reason why he was so surprised when Dazai said he kicked him

Also I’d like to add that I really don’t think he felt threatened or wanted to just get rid of him

Dazai was already suicidal so if it would very easy to make it look like that. And like I mentioned before if it was the best choice for the Mafia I really don’t think Mori would be that bothered about being replaced by Dazai.

I also don’t think he thought Dazai would be more useful on the outside because once again why lose a valuable addition like that

And it’s not like

He wanted to use him

As a spy or anything we know that would’ve been arranged differently see Ango

So Mori the logical guy he is wouldn’t want his enemies to have someone with Dazai’s ability because that’s a pain in the ass and also

He wouldn’t want an insider like Dazai to join his enemies and spill all his secrets. Dazai had a very high rank and like I said I don’t think Mori expected him to leave so he had no reason to hide things from

him so even without his ability he would be a very strong asset to the Mafias enemies so there is no way Mori would think he is more useful on the outside since

1. we already said mori has tunnel vision he couldn’t possibly predict that much that he thinks Dazai is better out

2. We established that he isn’t afraid of him

3. He wouldn’t want the ability and the information to fall into his enemies’ hands

4. If he was actually scared and wanted to get rid of him making it seem like suicide or actually driving him to suicide would be much easier especially since mori is a doctor

So yeah this is long thanks if you read until the end it was super fun to write this id love to know what others think I’m sorry if it’s a bit unorganised it’s copied from my notes app

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd Meta #Dazai osamu #osamu dazai #mori ogai #ogai mori #bsd Mafia

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legends-live-in-memories · 3 years

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I Have Too Many Opinions. ep. 1

lmao. i got encouragement to post my opinions on fandom things and now i want to make a miniseries doing just that. so here i am. doing just that.

im putting it under the cut cuz this was 4 whole pages including the disclaimer. yes i put a disclaimer and i explain why.

Anyways, here is the first piece in what inevitably will become fandom info dump, this time on thomas astruc’s writing on miraculous ladybug. but only some of my opinions cuz we would be here all day otherwise.

So… a disclaimer before I begin…

I do not hate Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir (yes i'm using their government name). I am quite a fan of the show actually despite its faults. I am also older than the intended audience but was obviously younger when the show first aired which is how my interest was piqued (the fact that its been 6 years and only 3 seasons says more about the show than me being a fan for that amount of time but also i never want to rush content creators cuz they're doing their best) and due to my age, there will be inherent bias in my approach of what i'm about to say as there is in EVERY opinion. The fact that it is an opinion should imply the presence of bias but most people tend to lack the critical thinking skills required to draw that conclusion ANYWAYS…

If I did hate the show I would not have this blog nor would I be even writing this because i tend to not give more than 2 seconds of thought to things i actively dislike (some of yall should give this a try) and i'm allowed to like things that are designed for an audience that i was originally a part of but grew out of. (I don't suddenly stop liking things because I'm older despite what many younger fans seem to believe about older audiences. I also don't need to be ‘allowed’ to do anything cuz i wasn't asking for permission anyways.)

This will not be character bashing, astruc bashing nor fandom bashing cuz, again, that would imply i hate any of those elements and if i did, i would not dedicate brainpower to them. Analyses and criticisms of media are fun and engaging and required if you wish to produce good enjoyable content. Now most of this should be already assumed and self-explanatory but people on the internet like to play morality roulette roll dice on purity culture and I rather have documentation that I am in fact not bullying fictional 14 year olds or a grown man. But alas, people get trigger happy whenever someone has less than 1000000% positive opinions on something they like and will throw out words they can't define (gaslight, baiting, toxic, problematic, gatekeep etc) in an attempt to defend their blind devotion,

which is not needed, if you like something you never have to defend it, even if i don't like it. If you respond to anything I post saying you disagree with me, I will not argue with you. I won't debate back and forth and try to convince you that the things you like are wrong. Unless you are being absolutely tone deaf to what i'm saying, you wont get a negative reaction from me. So don't try to fish for a fight. Please. I got metaphorical hands for days and I'm mean, you don't want me hurting your feelings on the internet. Do yourself the favour. Difference of opinion is how we get diversification in media and is inherently a good thing. Now that that's out of the way, please don't ever let me have to say that again. I beg.

Now onto the fun stuff

I didn't know what I wanted as a first topic so my trusty internet friend @moonlitceleste suggested astruc’s writing…

AND BOI do i got some opinions on ole tommy boi. Again I don't hate the dude. In fact, he has worked on a few shows that had defined my childhood, including but not limited to W.I.T.C.H. (all eps available on youtube for those interested, 2 seasons, general fun time all around).

So I don't think he’s scum of the earth but I do think his approach to writing mlb specifically has more misses than hits.

The first big miss is that he has no idea how to write 14 year old girls. At all. Almost every girl he has ever written feels like some terrible archetype built entirely for marketability and childish projection and pubescent self-insert (kind of). He has never been a 14 year old girl. I have. In fact when the show first aired, I WAS around the (assumed) age of the mlb characters. The behaviour he passes off as quirky or awkward or just the character’s genuine personality tend to perpetuate harmful stereotypes of teen girls found in the media and are never actually addressed as harmful. they just get swept under the rug. Marinette’s exuberant collage of teen heart throb model boi Adrien Agreste and her very painful almost fan worship she has of him (which flip flops like a paper sandal in the rain) being portrayed as a cute school girl crush uwu, Chloe being the y7 Regina George, Alya being the token best friend of colour with her ‘sassy’ personality (i want y'all to imagine me eyerolling so hard i bust a vessel in my eye), Kagami being the very damaging Perfect Asian Child stereotype. And before y'all get on your dusty soap box and defend going on about “BUT IT'S FOR CHILDREN”,,,, know this.

i don’t give a solid fuck.

Not one.

Children arent stupid. Children are always going to remember the richy bitchy blonde who bullies the art kid, and the big kid, and the shy kid, and the non white kids, and was only nice to her equally rich white friend who she probably had a crush on or was only ever civil to her equally white lapdog. They're going to remember the half asian girl who was never allowed to actually be asian or the only black girl who existed solely as a soundboard for enabling bad habits or chastising the main character for the same habits she enables in the first place (boi aint THAT a topic for later). Like do i really need to explain that alya chastising marinette for taking max’s spot in gamer just to play with adrien rings absolutely hollow when she actively encourages her to sabotage the contest she’s in just so Kagami doesn't win?? Like I don't have to explain that right?? Again kids arent stupid and its quite something that Mari gets chastised for proving herself the best video game player regardless of her intentions just cuz it comes at the expense of max’s feelings/ego but is actively encouraged to sabotage not only kagami but herself by extension cuz kagami is ‘competition.’ Adrien is not a trophy to be won. And no I don't expect 14 yrs old to be perfect and to always make good decisions but these decisions are never addressed as being bad decisions. they get swept under the rug cuz those decisions were necessary for the ‘plot’ but astruc can barely keep characterization consistent and his characters suffer for it and it's the same children you preach are watching it that suffer as well. Cuz guess what? I KNOW 14 yr olds aren't like that cuz i've been there done that (this is the last time i'm saying that i promise) so I know astruc is just metaphorically throwing darts to figure out who says and does what without consideration for pre established personalities to drive the stalemate plot along. The same kids you say are watching this don't know that that's not how preteens work and will absorb and internalize those dynamics like baking soda and vinegar. Cata-fucking-strophically.

And I haven't even gotten to the boys yet. Which honestly doesn't require much explanation anyways cuz they suffer the same fate as the girls. Tired archetypes with nothing to give them life. Nino falls into Adrien’s person of colour token best friend who dates the female lead’s person of colour token best friend so they can have cute double dates uwu. Except the plot goes nowhere and we have no inclination of romantic development beyond moments that only act to actively convince me to anti ship the lovesquare (i don't want to do that so i self indulge in fanon that actually cares about the characters and plot. may i interest you in True Sight on AO3?). Max is the residential nerd but it doesn't matter (cuz he and everyone are dumbed down for the sake of ‘plot’), kim is the sports jock (which interestingly subverts the asian comedic relief stereotype but only barely) and luka is cute older guy ™ that wears black nail polish and is in a band. The point of all this is to say there is no depth in the characters. It's especially blatantly obvious with the characters astruc doesn't like (chloe). Again, it being a show for kids is not an excuse to be absolved of putting effort into the characters you make.

This is one of the biggest misses astruc has. I haven't even gone into all the nuances of this particular miss. And i havent gone into how that works against him in the plot either. Mostly because the plot itself hasn't gone anywhere and partially because I wanted to go into the plot (or lack thereof) separately as its own miss.

AND BOI is it a miss.

SO home boy astruc wanted to reap the benefits of a serial show with ‘engaging’ plot without putting in any of the work to make a linear storyline and relying on the episodic format for, again, marketability. You can't have the best of both worlds, you are not Avatar: The Last Airbender. Which btw has a lot less episodes and a desired end goal that didn't involve top dollar. Legend of Korra did but that's not the point and it had its failings with that too. I challenge you, tell me how many episodes actually contribute towards a plot point or introduce new thematic elements to the show? Can you name them? I can and I'm going to include the plot points that moved the story in some direction if only temporarily. Yes only temporarily for some of these and i will explain later. (if you're in the server you already saw this list *wink*)

25/26. Origins- self explanatory, the beginning of the story,

24. Volpina- introduction of the grimoire and Master Fu (kind of) and no, Lila is not a plot point,

28. The Collector- proper introduction of Master Fu,

37. Sapotis- introduction of Rena Rouge,

41. Syren- introduction of new aquatic power ups,

44. Anansi- introduction of Carapace,

47. Frozer- introduction of new ice power ups,

48/49. Style Queen- introduction of Queen Bee,

51/52. Heroes’ Day- introduction of Mayura and mass akumatization,

66. Startrain- introduction of Pegasus,

67. Kwami Buster- Marinette wears multiple miraculouses,

68. Feast- backstory as to how the miraculouses were lost,

69. Ikari Gozen- introduction of Ryuko,

70. Timetagger- introduction of Bunnyx,

71. Party Crasher- introduction of Roi Singe and Viperion,

73. Chat Blanc- alternate timeline that essentially means nothing but got a reaction out of fans anyways (myself included)

77/78. Love Eater/Battle of Miraculous- Marinette becomes guardian and other heroes lose their miraculous,

New York Special- other heroes exist and there is an American miraculous box,

That's 21 episodes. 21 out of a heaping 78 plus 2 specials. Everything else was just your typical akuma of the day episode and everything that happened outside that had no lasting consequences on the plot thanks to the miraculous status quo. Was it entertaining to watch Lila stir the plot of the class dynamic? Hell yeah. Too bad it meant nothing by the end of the episode cuz we were struck with miraculous status quo. She literally doesn't appear again until Heroes Day. that is from episodes 25 all the way to 51, she means nothing and yet she is treated with the severity of a b-villain/rival thing. She means nothing by the end of Volpina if I'm being honest. She is only relevant for 20 mins of episode time she’s in then it's back to magic status quo that undoes any shift in dynamics and relationships. It's like Spongebob who can't get his driver’s license. The worst part is I actually like Lila and I wish the story treated her with the seriousness we as an audience are expected to treat her with. Despite being painfully inconsequential by the end of each of the 3?? 4?? episodes she’s in, it's entertaining to watch a character create drama just because.

Too bad it means nothing.

Astruc is constantly building up suspense to something ‘important’ only for it to not deliver and fans are constantly having the rug pulled out from under us. Oblivio teased us with a reveal only that gets undone cuz memory akuma. Chat Blanc teased us with romantic development but that gets undone cuz time travel bullshit. Feast introduced more miraculous lore and the history of the guardians but that means nothing by the next episode or ever (i'm not including any reference to the season 4 trailer cuz i've been around the block a few times and im familiar with this lil dancy dance). Heroes Day teased us with a possible future team of heroes but that gets undone in Battle of Miraculous cuz ????? why?? (here's why; astruc was having a jolly ole time letting us know how irredeemable Chloe is at the expense of shooting his own stagnant plot in the foot. Again, discussion for later.)

Too bad anything that slightly swerves off course from the akuma of the day gets undone or ignored. Too bad nothing has any lasting consequence. I mean, if anything did, the episodes would have had a consistent order and release schedule so im not scrambling to watch the leaked ep in Portuguese or something while the french dub is two episodes behind while the english version hasnt even been dubbed. I really wonder how he plans to conclude the show when he’s so afraid to step out of the corner he painted himself in.

Again, not going into nuances. If you want you can ask for more specifics (i doubt anyone would) but this is really just a slightly detailed general overview of my opinions on astruc’s writing.

I was going to include another miss in his approach to this show but imma save that for another time.

How’s that for a ‘first’ post?

#mlb #opinions my guy opinions #i dont wanna tag this as salt #but mlb criticisms and analyses #IHTMO #the hashtag for this series #thomas astruc #miraculous fandom #miraculous ladybug #miraculous: tales of ladybug and cat noir #yes the government name again #come get yall juice #miraculous

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anathewierdo · 3 years

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I’m okay... and I’m surprised by how true that is

I remember being in my first year of high school and just binge watching Supernatural every chance I would get

And I went through the first three seasons going “ok this is awesome but I wish we’d see more of Jo, of Ellen, of Ash, of Bobby, like the brothers are great but I doubt it’s eleven seasons of this”

And then I got to season four and I met Cas and my brain just went “Hoooooly shit this guy! What even is the deal with this guy?! Friend or foe?! Oh he’s a reluctant friend, I like”, but I saw how Dean was with him, I saw The End, I saw that episode where they go after Raphael and I just went “ok so they’re either super duper best friends or they’re boyfriends I’m sure of it”

Then I saw seasons 6 and 7 and I went “did– did they just broke up? Did– wait they’re not best friends anymore NO”

Also, I will forever be grateful to Felícita Day and Robbie Thompson for Charlie Bradbury. She gave me strength and made me smile in some very dark days :).

AND THEN season 8 happened and I went feral. Like holy crap! Benny was amazing! We met Eileen! The whole purgatory plot line was awesome! The drama between the brothers and the problems between, well, EVERYBODY had me at the edge of my seat and then that flashback happened to where Cas let go of Dean’s hand and I just went “Oh my god they’re so together holy shit I bet they got together”

Season 8 was my favorite because of all the things. And that season finale will always remain my favorite because Sam, because Crowley, because Castiel, because Eileen, because Dean... I was just staring at my screen going “this is new levels of epic”. So many storylines were happening and I loved how it all came together for that season finale. It was heartbreaking. It made sense. It was a plot twist I never saw coming but made perfect sense to me in every episode and I loved every second of it.

And I was fine with Dean and Cas not being shown as together together because I kept going “they’re there but they’re not ready. There’s too much going on.” And as a baby queer who was always looking for older queer characters (because I love seeing older queer people, it reminds me that being queer was never a fashion thing like my parents say), the possibility of Dean, of Cas, of Sam being queer meant the world to me, because hell yes, it’s super valid to figure out who you are regardless of your age and who you have or haven’t slept with.

Season 9, 10 and 11 came and went and I just kept going “Cas is so fucking in love. Dean is so fucking in love. They love each other so fucking much” because of how much they would do for each other (don’t get me wrong the Cas being homeless storyline broke my ducking heart)

But like, Cas gave up an army for Dean. Dean refused to do anything that would risk Castiel when he was possessed by Lucifer to defeat Amara. Dean’s “attraction” to Amara was very obviously forced from Dean’s part, because it was some sort of spell.

And season eleven had its issues, but I liked it nonetheless.

Then Mexican Netflix took down Supernatural and my only way of watching the show was through YouTube clips and gifs here.

Then I met someone who sent me season 12 and I just kept going “HOLY SHIT HOW”

Because we got Mary, we got the Men of Letters, we got the whole Nephilim storyline and I was losing my shit because I didn’t– I didn’t know how to process it and I admit I hated Mary for the longest time but rewatching Supernatural two years ago gave me more of a chance to understand her and I actually like her now that I saw her grow in the show (I can’t say the same for John).

Then there was Dean and Cas and they were still fighting to keep each other alive (although they fought a lot from what I remember) and it always seemed like they were just on the brink of being together together but it never happened, and I both hated it and loved it because those two still had some growing to do.

Season 13 messed me up. In the best kind of ways.

Also! Throughout the seasons the family and the Supernatural world grew and grew and grew and I just loved seeing these characters. It fucking broke my heart when we’d see an old friend and they would just die by the end of the episode... but still, I loved those characters.

I loved how Supernatural went from a very white, very straight show, to a show with very good representation sprinkled here and there (sometimes).

Supernatural was problematic and sometimes even bad in a lot of ways, but it was that sprinkle of great representation that kept me there. Because family didn’t end in blood, and it didn’t start there either. And that... that was huge to me.

I cried when Eileen, when Charlie, when Kevin, when Missouri, when Bobby and when others died. How couldn’t I? I grew to love them and know them and it hit home when one of them fell.

Season 14 happened. And I was... I was blown away. For the first time ever I felt like Supernatural had truly reached their wall. Like they couldn’t go any further.

And then G.O.D. Himself was the final villain and I lost it.

The meta, the symbolism, the whole concept of free will.

I was in cloud nine with the possibilities of where this all could go.

And I enjoyed season 15. Ups and downs and everything. I really did. 15x18 was the best thing that could’ve happened because Cas went off script one last time and saved Dean simply by living his truth... to me, it was the silence in the last two episodes that hurt me, but not 15x18 itself.

It felt awesome to see Cas be himself without fear and go down with a smile on his face because he felt truly, genuinely happy. I cried like a baby because he was gone, but I felt so happy for him because he was happy. Because I felt seen.

Then the finale happened.

And I’m not gonna lie, it felt like a kick in the face.

Suddenly the family was gone. Suddenly the show was in 2005 again. Suddenly, it was only Sam and Dean and... I don’t know, it just felt so... empty, to me. After years of the guys not being completely on their own, to see them alone again felt, well, it felt wrong. But that’s just me.

I also feel like Chuck went down too easily but that is not important right now😂

I mean, we even had a full blown episode where we were told that an ending where a brother died and the other lived was not a good ending. We had this episode where we were told that Castiel was the living embodiment of Free Will because he was the piece that Chuck never counted on, never took in consideration for the story. Castiel, our Castiel, was the only one who went truly, genuinely off script. And by doing so, he was the one who messed with Chuck’s plans.

And obviously I’m not taking away credit from Sam and Dean and their family. God, I loved watching this story grow.

And this show... this complicated, problematic, somehow still heart filled show, ended with a Heaven ending.

I dunno, I was just hoping that having peace didn’t mean having to die to get it. I was hoping that they wouldn’t be alone in the finale because alone? Sam and Dean are great. But with their family? Sam and Dean are unstoppable.

And I get it, anyone can die at any time, but it still felt wrong. That final episode felt wrong.

I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just sharing my journey with Supernatural.

It took me a month and a half to gain the strength to even watch an episode of Supernatural again without shaking and breaking down crying. It took me a week to get back to some sense of normal without crying and feeling like I’d been slapped in the face.

I can’t even listen to Carry On My Wayward Son anymore 😂

And it’s not okay. It’s not. And I’m not looking for validation or anything. I’m just feeling. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

I still am hurt by what happened. But I’m not gonna go lash out at the actors, or even at the writers. I’m mad at the tv network itself.

And it’s totally, completely okay if you enjoyed the finale. It is! I’m happy for you! You saw something I couldn’t and that’s okay! I’m not here to tell you you’re right or wrong for enjoying it. 💖

What is wrong is hopping on other people’s blogs and sending them hate and slurs and invalidating their feelings (like some certain anons and even people that felt too cozy doing that to me)

I’m gonna keep on trying to move on whether I like it or not. I’m gonna find a way to truly enjoy Supernatural again. I’m gonna keep on shipping and making my tumblr experience good for me, because I’m my number one priority and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m gonna keep making friends and I’m gonna do my best to keep my blog a positive space.

I am warning y’all though: there is a difference between hate and criticism. Me criticizing an actor’s actions is very different from hating them. And let’s be honest, I’m not taking my little opinions outside to the real world. I’m not gonna go knocking on someone’s door yelling “I don’t like you” to their face 😂 that would be pathetic. And most importantly: nothing’s gonna happen to them because little old me went “that was wrong of you to do”.

I’m not that important, y’all 😂 I don’t have that sort of impact on people’s lives.

I’m gonna enjoy the SPN family because that’s the fandom I want to stay in. I’m gonna post love towards all my favorite characters and reblog the fics and art that you talented and amazing people put out on the world because they are awesome.

I’m gonna stay right here. And I’ll have my family with me.

The show ended on a sour note for me, but I’m done letting that... that event, keep dragging me down.

Disasters so far aside, I’m looking forward to the rest of 2021. I’m okay. I’m gonna be okay.

I wish you all the best. And holy crap if you got this far, you are an absolute champ.

Here, have a DeanCas hug in compensation for the long post

Take care of yourself, take it one day at a time. I’m here if any of you want to talk. And I’m looking forward to posting more writing.

For now, I love you and I wish you a good night 💖💖💖💖💖💖

#personal #supernatural #supernatural family #love me some destiel #love me some supernatural #as a treat XD #wow this post was therapeutic #sorry for the long post

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maiassensibleblog · 4 years

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Dear theatre people, this is what I mean when I say theatre is elitist...

(All views expressed are my opinion).

I’ve been considering whether now is the right time to post this but when theatre comes back (which it will, it must), it cannot look how it looked before. I love theatre with all my heart, it is the part of my life that heals the most. But the industry drives me crazy.

I want to address the questions: Why don’t people go to the theatre? And why don’t people care about theatre? My perspective is from a West End theatre goer who is working class, not white and not straight. I am not involved in making theatre and do not desire to be involved.

To answer this huge question, I’d like to start with two definitions:

Elitist: Relating to or supporting the view that a society or system should be led by an elite.

Inaccessible: Unable to be reached.

I often see people asking “why don’t people go to the theatre?” with only responses related to accessibility. When we talk about accessibility, we need to consider barriers such as ticket prices, geographical location and ableism. An awful lot of people are not stopped by accessibility, but they do not go to the theatre. Why? Theatre is elitist.

Elitism is the feeling that you do not belong in a space because the people who are there are different from you and often appear to think they are better than you. In my opinion, this is the reason that the general public do not care about theatre. Elitism is built into the theatre world and this has only been highlighted recently through the BLM movement (I don’t need to go into this here, you’ve all seen it).

From a personal perspective, I’m privileged to have been going to the theatre since I was tiny. We didn’t have a lot of money but my mum was really good at finding deals on tickets and I grew to love theatre more and more as I grew up. I go around once a week and see a lot of off West-end stuff. I, a seasoned theatregoer, feel elitism every time I go to the theatre. I will elaborate on these in the sub-topics below but I wanted to point out that I am somebody who is relatively confident around the elitist feeling, imagine if you aren’t. You just wouldn’t bother and that is what we’re seeing.

Tickets

The first thing I would like to discuss may seem to sit between accessibility and elitism but getting affordable tickets sits in with elitism in my opinion. I am often asked how I can afford to go to the theatre so often and my answer is always I know where to look. Why do theatres feel that it is acceptable to hide their cheap seats? The only thing that is achieved here is keeping theatre for those who know where to look.

If you have not be brought up around theatre folk, you don’t know that day seats exist. Even when theatres advertise and say something like “£15 day seats available”, people who do not know anything about theatre will not have a clue what that means. They won’t know the difference between a digital lottery and a regular in-person day seat, they won’t know how to press buy now just at the right time on TodayTix to get a rush ticket. Having cheaper options does improve accessibility but the way it has been done doesn’t serve to reduce elitism.

Put yourself in the shoes of somebody who has never been to the theatre before. They see a poster for a musical that looks amazing, they google it, they see decent seats for £100+. They decide to go for the £30 option in the Gods. They feel ripped off and don’t bother again OR they know that those are crap seats and don’t bother at all. There is nowhere on that main booking page that mentions cheaper, good seats. That is telling people that they only deserve good seats if they’re rich. That is elitist.

Image

My next two points spill into each other, but they are not the same thing. What do you think of when you think of somebody who goes to the theatre. We all just thought of the same old, white couple. They tut at young people who talk at interval? Yeah we all know the type. It’s amazing that these people, who usually have disposable income, go to the theatre and spend money there but they are coming anyway. Why are you therefore using them to advertise?

Some theatres do this amazingly (Bush, Soho, Young Vic, loves) but most don’t. Some shows have gone too far (looking at you Heathers West End transfer) but think: What is the demographic that you think would want to come, but isn’t? If you’re trying to attract non-theatre goers, they have to see themselves in those who are recommending it.

Obviously, some known reviewers have to be included to keep the regulars in but theatres must start including a wider range of reviewers, they must be open to criticism from young people, queer people, Black people... Then, they must show the faces of these reviewers in their advertising, they must include their views using their vocabulary. And once you get these voices (and start respecting them), theatres must start taking these views into account. A mainstream producer actually listening (and properly listening) to the views of not the mainstream critics? That is revolutionary. That’s showing you’re willing to change.

Etiquette

This is the big one. Theatre etiquette is elitist. I’m sure many people know what I mean by this: Hushed tones even when the show isn’t on and you’re in the bar, FOH using theatre-y vocabulary to usher people places (even things like “the house is open” mean nothing to people who aren’t in theatre), expected restraint to reactions towards what’s happening on stage. I’ve never been to a theatre that doesn’t use vocabulary that would be alienating to non-theatregoers. Only a few theatres don’t have that feeling of “we’re better than you” hanging in the air.

I have been told that I do not match up to people’s ideas of expected theatre etiquette twice outside of fandom things. I remember them both. Once, I was laughing at funny moments during a funny play. The second time I was talking to my friends excitedly at interval and had some older theatre-goers tut and ask us to be quiet (hun, it’s the interval). As I mentioned, I go to the theatre all the time, I generally conform (even when I hate it). Imagine how you’d feel if you didn’t know the nonsense rules.

The solution? Dismantle the rules.

People dismiss panto because is does this and it’s the least elitist theatre out there. Stop getting on your high horse about people openly enjoying themselves. And to those panicking, very few people are actually going to chat their way through a whole show they’ve paid money for.

We need more relaxed performances. We need more for disabled people but we also need more for young people, where they can react to what’s going on during the show and whisper to each other about it.

We need more sing-a-longs. Musicals can create an amazing fandom this way. Six is doing an amazing job because they’ve fostered this environment. Imagine a Hamilton sing-a-long. Just sit in that for a moment. Imagine a person who had never been to the theatre before and has heard a few songs of the soundtrack getting the feeling of a gig from the theatre. It’s powerful and it needs to happen.

Shakespeare

Nothing exhibits the elitism of theatre more than Shakespeare. The sheer prevalence of it. And, I’m going to say it: Nobody fully understands what’s going on.

Why, as an industry, are you all so obsessed with a sexist, racist, homophobe who died in the 1600′s? People alive today are writing plays about stories that people want to hear, in a language that people can understand. Commission them.

That is all on that.

Secrecy

There’s certainly something to be said about keeping the magic of theatre alive by keeping tricks a secret. I totally appreciate and love that about this art medium. You watch things happening in real time that look like magic and it’s beautiful.

However, the secrecy around productions has gone too far. Why are full on HQ recordings of shows being filmed for them never to see the light of day? I have seen the argument that people will not feel the need to watch the show if they have seen a recording but I have only seen that argument from people who work in theatre. Listen to the people who just go to the theatre. I don’t know what I can actually say to convince the industry of this, but theatre people will still come because there’s nothing like live theatre.

What you will do by releasing a good recording is open the show to the masses (and make money from it). You will essentially be building a fandom. People can watch football on TV but choose to pay for a ticket to go watch live because it is a different experience. People can listen to a band but choose to pay for a ticket to go to a concert because it is a different experience. It is the same thing. You honestly need to get over this because I think this is a massive reason why this elitism still exists.

Also why not release HQ footage even as a trailer? Stick it on YouTube for free, get ad revenue and advertise.

These are just a few things that need to be taken into consideration when theatres re-open. Theatre must come back better and stronger than it was before and it must get more people in the room. The people will need art.

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. - Toni Morrison

#theatre #theatre culture #west end #broadway #elitism #opinion

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x0401x · 4 years

Note

Have you watched Tsurune, by an chance? If yes, what do you think about it?

Finally managed to write down a reply for this! (Told y’all I was gonna do it and I did not give up, lmao.)

So this ask caught me off-guard for two reasons: one is that I never see it coming when people send me Tsurune asks now that the anime is long over and the fandom is inactive, and the other is that nobody has ever asked me this question so straightforwardly. Whenever I got asks about Tsurune, people would question me about the differences between anime and novel, the anime versions versus the canon versions of the characters, fanservice and ship tease, alterations in character relationships and my opinions on specific episodes, chapters or scenes. As far as I remember, no one has ever asked me what I think of the anime (or the novel) in general.

I won’t go into the novel since this ask is just about the anime (I can do that in another one if you like), but I’ll end up mentioning it every now and then because it’s pretty impossible to discuss about an adaptation without talking about its source material. Still, I promise this review won’t be centered on that.

This is actually a very condensed version of my thoughts, because the real thing would be a bible. It’s still a lot, though. Here comes a long-ass ride.

I guess I should start by making clear that I usually follow the history of KyoAni’s productions very closely as I’m a big fan of the studio. This includes reading the novels and mangas they adapt into anime as well. I had read volume 1 by the time the Tsurune anime came out, so I already knew what the canon was like. I must add that I was also familiar with Japanese archery to some degree and I was reading Zen in the Art of Archery when the anime was airing (it’s referenced early in the novel, so I decided to give it a try).

With all of this being said, when it was announced that Tsurune would get an anime, my first reaction was to worry. This surprised even me, because I usually have high hopes for any KyoAni adaptation, even the ones I end up not liking. I mean, it’s a studio filled with brilliant stars and holds the golden standards of the whole industry, so even when the content isn’t good, the quality of the animation itself is enough to make their shows worth anyone’s time. But the choice of director had me very concerned.

Now, this is Kyoto Animation that we’re talking about. In no moment did I fear for the animation’s quality. Most of Tsurune’s staff members, if not all, already had previous experience working on Violet Evergarden. And we all know that even newcomers freshly graduated from KyoAni’s preparatory school can make a stunning visual masterpiece. Yes, I am talking about Kyoukai no Kanata. And yes, I said visual masterpiece, because we also know that what these productions normally lack is the most essential part: the content.

In those cases, the one who actually makes a difference is the director. I’m a firm believer that the more inexperienced the staff is, the more competent a director they should be placed under. If not a senior animator, at least let it be a rising talent with the best prospects possible. But the schedules usually don’t help with that, so these hatchlings ended up under Yamamura Takuya’s wings.

To elaborate a bit further on why I think brighter animators should be the ones leading new packs (no, it’s not discrimination against the less accomplished, because you gotta start from somewhere), it’s because they usually have this knack for bringing the most out of the stories they’re working on. When the story is great by itself, that’s a different thing, but when it doesn’t quite reach its full potential with just the text, then the one to give it life has to be a person with more vision.

Am I saying that Tsurune is one of those stories? Absolutely. Tsurune is about archery, which is an art that is best appreciated when observed. You can’t get everything out of it just with words, and there are many things in it that people who don’t know much or know nothing about Japanese archery wouldn’t understand without actually seeing them, so the series obviously needed an anime in order to reach its full potential. But other than that, I’ll be honest: I love the Tsurune novel for its cultural baggage, the handling of its characters and its fairly innovative views in the repetitive and boring scene that sports animanga are nowadays, but I don’t consider it a well-written novel. Because it isn’t.

This might seem controvesial coming from someone who defends the canon with claws and teeth, but I’m aware of its flaws. I think Ayano Kotoko has a lot of room for improvement, and she’s evolved remarkably from volume 1 to volume 2. But volume 1 is what the anime was based off, so there was a deep need for a clinical eye in that production. One that could measure the original work’s strengths and weaknesses and balance them out by powering one up and overcoming the other. And also a certain level of knowledge about Japanese archery. Sadly, Yamamura Takuya didn’t have any of it.

As much as I admire Yamamura as a key animator and in-betweener, I believe he has a long way to go before he can be considered a good director, and I certainly don’t think he was ready for his debut when he was put in charge of Tsurune. I would rather, and I mean this in a good way, have seen him work as anything else for the rest of his career. Being a series director was too much for him. I say this taking into consideration not only the fiasco that the Tsurune anime was in sales but also Yamamura’s history in the studio before becoming a director.

This might sound funny, but Yamamura had no idea how big Animation Do and KyoAni were before he decided to join. He also was never very skilled. His in-betweening was actually not approved at first when he was trying to enter the company. He even once admitted that his knowledge of animation was extremely limited at the time, and what a time that was, because the studio was busy up to the neck with the making of Lucky Star back then. He didn’t know left and right, basically, and he recalled in an interview from last year that he is still surprised the studio actually hired him.

Despite all of this, Yamamura joined the company with the intention of becoming a director. While he did manage the feat in the end, it took him +10 years and a few frustrated attempts. Animators usually start out at in-betweening and earn other positions through passing exams. Yamamura failed his first exam to be key animator, only managing to pass half a year later. He also failed his first exam to become a director. At his second attempt, one of their colleagues even suggested that maybe he should stay a bit longer as a key animator, and I couldn’t agree more. While he did pass the test, I can only bring myself to think that he did so with an average score.

Now, I did say that this info came from a 2019 interview, when the Tsurune anime was already over. But they weren’t really what shaped my opinion on Yamamura regarding his direction. It was the anime itself. But this interview served to confirm something I had already noticed from his tragectory to series direction: with him being in the studio for so long and having worked on so many titles, it was weird to me that he was rarely an episode director in comparison to key animation and in-betweening. Episode direction is a step that I consider crucial for one to become either series director, animation supervisor or series composer. I do know that quite a few directors take just as long as he did or even longer to debut and actually do thrive in the end, but observing Yamamura’s work always gave me the impression that he was better off following decisions made by someone else rather than making his own.

Yamamura also loses points with me in that he’s backed up within the company by Kawanami Eisaku, another director who doesn’t get rave reviews on his works. He’s the one who replaced Utsumi Hiroko after she migrated to Mappa, and ever since he took over the Free! franchise, its sales decreased to less than 1/3 of each of the first two seasons separately. I personally don’t like that he seems to look down on Utsumi despite his lack of success in inheriting her legacy, but leaving this aside and focusing only on his skills, I’m not fond of directors who opt for simplistic approaches in general. I think animation is a medium that should be used to amplify the appeal of the source material, not water it down. It also feels like these kinds of directors are always trying to play safe, which (they don’t seem to realize) goes against the audience’s expectations and kills the hype. It strikes me as cowardly, to be frank. I also don’t like when they ignore what the characters had been building up and simply retool them to their own tastes. I was praying that Yamamura would be different from this bad example, but turns out he was actually worse.

I got a really bad feeling when the anime PVs of Tsurune were released. My very first impression was that Yamamura was still too much of a beginner and he wouldn’t be able to make Tsurune into a successful anime. I know this might seem like an exaggeration, but here’s the thing: ever since KyoAni started making its own titles, I’d never seen lack of hype for their upcoming works. Ever.

Until Tsurune.

Every time a PV of a KyoAni show comes out, people go crazy. It’s not always a frenzy like it was with Free! in its heyday or Violet Evergarden when the novel commercials were the only pieces of animation we had of it, but there’s usually lots of debate and speculations going on. With Tsurune, almost no one cared. You’d see next to nobody talking about it save from a few people on Reddit. And honestly, why should they bother? It didn’t seem promising at all. Didn’t show much of the characters or the story’s premise, didn’t highlight any particularly interest aspect of the plot and didn’t leave any impression animation-wise. It was very bland, to say the least. Unfortunately, so was the anime series.

It might be blunt of me, but my overall evaluation of Tsurune is that it was a really boring show. Nearly all elements that made the story and characters interesting were either taken out or squeezed into a cookie cutter mold, cliche version of what they looked like they were going to be at first but turned out not to be in the novel. And I say this because one of the things that make Tsurune a good novel is how it turns stereotypes upside-down. It introduces the readers into what seems like is going to be a typical sports shounen and starts out describing the character archetypes in the most common ways possible and puts them in the most common situations possible, then it reverses them all. That’s what’s most charismatic about the books. It’s what incites actual character development and gives us different sides of each relationship, yet the anime makes no use of it.

The anime also hardly makes any use of all the mystic, Zen and lowkey folklore-ish veils of the novel, which are supposed to add up to the archery elements. The Zen part is actually essential since Japanese archery is fundamentally a Zen form of art. Yes, art. Japanese archery is, in fact, not a sport. This is one of the aspects that elevate Tsurune above other works of the sports genre: it’s only categorized as such because it can’t fit anywhere else, but it’s not really a sports novel. That could have elevated the anime to the same status too, if only the studio hadn’t treated it like a sports one. But they made that mistake.

Still, I think the biggest sin in this adaptation was to try to cling to tropes that are considered successful and ignoring the characters’ personalities, which didn’t match these tropes at all, resulting in both characters and bonds being utterly destroyed and the flow of the story slowing down to a slug pace. By the second half of the anime, literally either nothing interesting happens or the things that were supposed to be interesting don’t hold the audience’s attention enough, which the animators attempt to cover up with queerbait. Everything is so tediously predictable that I’ve seen countless comments from the Japanese side of the fandom about how similar the Tsurune anime was to Free! and how “KyoAni only ever makes male characters like that, don’t they”. They were referring to Seiya and his weird jealousy, by the way. Even first-timers could tell that the characterization was a disaster.

The sad thing is, they were right. The Tsurune anime really did feel highkey like a Free! copycat in the characterization department. The main character is always getting swung about by everyone around him. The best friend is very clearly co-dependent. The deuteragonist is revealed to be bitter because of a deceased relative and is an asshole to the rest of the main cast for a good portion of the series. The rival from the other school is rude as hell for no reason and he’s got annoying groupies on his team who don’t exist outside of idolizing him. There are only four female characters and they have almost no screen time. And the list goes on.

As for the animation itself, I would like to say that it was perfect, but what really rang the alarm in my head was the many beginner mistakes so evident here and there, such as missing frames, the opening theme starting out of nowhere, the colors of the background often being too bland, lack of movement or scenes where the characters are too static, etc. I shit you not that when I saw the title splashing onto the screen all of a sudden in the initial ten seconds of episode one, the first thing I thought was, “This won’t sell well”. Sure enough, it didn’t.

So there you have it. I didn’t like the show. The only things I enjoyed were the archery scenes and the soundtrack. The rest simply didn’t do justice to the original work. I hope this summary has explained why, but if you want more info on it, maybe visit my Tsurune tag. You’ll find me elaborating more on particular topics in response to similar asks. Or you can send me other questions if you feel like.

That’s it!

#tsurune #how cool is it that i finished just in time for the anime's anniversary lol

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penguiduck · 4 years

Text

The Relationship Between Online Readers & Writers: How to Write the Best Feedback

Introduction | Part 1: What is this Relationship? | Part 2: Creating Motivation and Appreciation for Readers | Part 3: A Day in the Life of… | Part 4: Creating Motivation and Appreciation for Writers: Perspectives | Part 5: Creating Motivation and Appreciation for Writers: Implementation | Part 6: How to Write the Best Feedback | Part 7: Where Does This Leave Us?

Since I've put so much emphasis on providing feedback, I believe it's only fair if I offer some instruction as well.

1. Thank your writers. They put a lot of work into producing this content for you — it is only gracious to thank them for their efforts. If someone gave you a piece of art or a homemade gift, the correct response is gratitude. Why is writing any different?

2. Be personal. It goes without saying, but writers are not robots who can crank out writing nonstop. They are providing you content that is creative and comes from the heart — the writing process is a subjective, tedious one. I think it is only gracious to reflect that same warmth and care in your feedback. Speak human to human. There is someone with very real feelings and thoughts on the other side of the screen.

What are some ways to be personal?

a) Pay attention to writers’ notes. There may be certain events going on in their lives. Maybe they’re struggling with the illness of a family member or celebrating a positive experience. They obviously only include information they wish to share. If a friend came up to you and said “It’s my birthday!” would you ignore them? Probably not; it doesn’t seem polite. Or if a friend said “I’m feeling a little bummed out. My dog passed away,” the socially correct response is to offer your condolences.

b) If you happen to realize that the writer is reaching a milestone — 100 chapters, one-year anniversary on AO3, etc. — celebrate it! Congratulate them!

c) Bring up past conversations. While your feedback is speaking to the writing, you are allowed to bring up past interactions that can enrich your comments. Maybe the writer mentioned something about a plot twist a while back. Adding a “I remember you mentioning this!” can really make writers feel special because that means you were paying attention.

3. Be specific and relevant.

I mentioned this in the previous chapter, but I think it’s worth mentioning again: I have a fuel tank for my inspiration when it comes to writing. I can run on a near-empty tank, but it’s difficult for me to do, and I struggle with creating content. It’s far easier for me to write and put out quality work when my inspiration tank is full. Every piece of feedback I receive fills it with a certain amount of inspiration.

Quality feedback refills my inspiration tank far more quickly than vague and general comments do. What are ways in which you can be specific and relevant to increase the quality of your comments?

a) You’re obviously reading this particular piece of writing for a reason. What makes you choose this story over others? What makes it special or unique? Is it the writer’s personal style? Their knack for detail and imagery? Do their sentences flow beautifully? Is their characterization spot-on? Tell them why you choose to spend your precious time reading their writing!

b) What about the characters? Does your writer have a strong grasp on keeping these characters true to their original interpretations? Are they exploring facets of their characters that you’ve never seen done before in other fanfiction? Is there a particular character that gives you the warm fuzzies, especially because of the way they are written? Is there someone you really don’t like? Why?

c) Be relevant. Leaving a comment like “PIES. I LOVE PIES” when there is a brief mention of a pie in the story doesn’t tell writers very much, unless you explain why this particular item is of note to you. Otherwise, this is not unlike going to your friend’s choir recital. Maybe she sings something from “The Lion King,” and your response is, “I like warthogs.” It’s a pretty strange comment that doesn’t speak to her performance. Let’s be a bit more cognizant of how your thoughts can come across relevantly.

Did you like the way they incorporated pies into the piece? Did you find it coincidental that they added pies because you just made one? Instead, you could say something like “I found it really interesting that you had [character name] go with pies because I was just grocery shopping and decided to buy a pie, even though I don’t really have a sweet tooth. It’s pretty impressive, though, for [character name] because pie dough can be really tough to make! I’m impressed he figured it out!”

d) How are you feeling about the progression of the story? The plot? The small details that writers add to make it more interesting? Do you have any thoughts about what might happen next? Would you be particularly excited about a certain event taking place? Perhaps you have a strong opinion on a character’s actions or choices?

e) How does this writer’s work affect you emotionally? Has there ever been a time when you were feeling upset or overwhelmed? Maybe you picked up a story from this writer, and you felt better. For me, knowing that my work can help give someone an escape or a place of respite from the real world is absolutely astonishing. Communicate this with your favorite writers. Trust me — they will be glad to know that they have helped you.

4. Be thoughtful and kind. This should be obvious, but sometimes it’s not.

While I think writers should be open and receptive to constructive criticism, I also think readers should be sensitive and mindful when giving it. If you are interested in offering criticism, it’s generally good practice to ask if the writer is receptive to it first. I welcome thoughtful criticism, but others may not. Criticism, no matter how fair or unfair, can be absolutely devastating to writers who are not ready for it. Harsh criticism can even break someone’s spirit.

Writers are artists who wish to share their craft with the world for you to enjoy. In doing so, voluntarily or not, they offer their work up to critics — but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily wanting to have their writing picked apart, concept by concept, word by word.

Here are some considerations if you wish to provide constructive criticism:

a) What is your intention? Would providing critical feedback be constructive and useful to the writer? Remember that criticism is meant to help writers become better writers —otherwise, it wouldn’t be constructive. Instead, your comment would be considered malicious, spiteful, or just plain spam. I think it’s vital that you assess this before providing criticism.

b) Is your criticism reasonable?

If you notice some characterization or detail about something canon-specific that is not correct in chapter 1 and the writer is on the 47th chapter, are you expecting them to go back and edit all 47 chapters? This is not a reasonable expectation, and mentioning something like this, correct as you may be, is not helpful and could potentially be very discouraging.

c) Is your criticism well-founded? I understand this is highly subjective, but I’ve received some harsh and nonconstructive criticisms before that don’t have any basis. Either, the commenter completely misinterpreted my meaning without giving me a benefit of the doubt that my intentions were good or they don’t realize I actually addressed their point in future chapters or they were just incorrect in their research. Please make sure that before you submit your constructive criticism, your logic is sound to the best of your ability and that you’ve considered the writer’s point-of-view.

d) Say something nice, please. I don’t think it’s good etiquette to have your first interaction be negative. Providing constructive criticism implies that you care enough about the content and writer to help them improve — if not, hit the back button and move on with your day. If so, then that means there must be something redeeming about the writing that makes you wish to be a part of its success. Show that. Otherwise, your constructive criticism may not come off as constructive at all — instead, it could be interpreted as unkind, and if you really do have best intentions at heart, then being kind is a minimum requirement for interactions.

Talk about what you like about a writer’s work first and even explain why you’re providing criticism. Start with something like: “Hi! I absolutely love that you’re writing for this fandom. I think you write [character name] very well, better than most interpretations I’ve come across! If I may, I’d like to discuss your most recent portrayal of [character name]. I see where you were coming from, but I think he may have been a little too forward because [insert reasons]. What was your thought process behind this? Other that particular scene, I’ve been very pleased with your portrayal! ”

Really, take a page out of Thumper’s book: If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.

Below, you will find a hodge-podge of questions that may help you construct your feedback:

Who is your favorite character? Why?

What do you like about this author's writing style?

What makes this piece different than others?

Has any part of this piece/chapter made you smile? What was it?

Give your honest opinion on an character, whether you like or dislike him/her.

How do you like the main character? Why?

What do you think is going to happen next? What makes you think that?

Is there a character you just want to suffocate in hugs?

Do any of the characters remind you of someone else?

What is it about this piece that has had you following it for so long?

If there is a cliffhanger, what makes you so anxious to see what happens next?

How do you think this story will end?

How will this piece ending make you feel? Will you be sad that it's over?

Is there a character you pity?

How do you feel about the villain(s)?

If this story were real and you really were the main character, who would be your best friend?

For WWYFFs, who is your favorite bachelor? Why? Can you even choose one?

Has this author ever written a part in this piece that made you uncomfortable? Why?

What's your overall opinion on the main character's behavior?

Did a part in this piece/chapter make you crack up? What was it?

Do silly thoughts ever enter your head while reading this piece?

Tell the writer how much you love them for writing this.

If the writer has any RL issues or concerns, respond to them (condolences, best wishes, etc.).

Did the antagonist ever do something where you just wanted to punch him/her in the face?

Has this story ever been an escape for you?

Do you ever think of this story out in the real world?

Why do you think this is one of your favorite pieces?

Is there something you don't like and would like to change? Be sure this is constructive.

How did this chapter/piece make you feel?

Make a prediction about anything — a character, perhaps?

Do you like how the characters are developing?

Is there a line in this story that made you laugh out loud?

What emotions did you have while reading this? Did you feel angry, frustrated, awkward or sad?

Has there ever been a point in this story when you're on the brink of tears?

Do you feel that this author's specific writing style has contributed to your enjoyment of the piece?

Thank the author for taking the time to update in a very busy period in her life.

Do you have an idea that you wish to share?

Is there anything that confuses you and you wish for clarification?

Is there something in this story that you can't wait to be resolved?

Analyze a character and try to explain why s/he does what s/he does.

Do you for see any problems with this story?

Tell the author how much you appreciate them.

REVIEW/COMMENT TEMPLATES

Finally, I’d like to leave you all with some templates you can use. Of course, it’d be most personal and heartfelt for you to construct your own comments and reviews, but I understand not everyone feels comfortable doing so, and utilizing these templates to help get your thoughts across is certainly better than leaving no feedback at all! Edit whatever you’d like, use pieces, combine templates — it’s in your hands!

LOVE AND GRATITUDE

“Hi! I’m so thrilled to have found this story. I’ve been looking for a good [fandom] fic with a [character names] pairing for a long time now, and to see one of his quality just made my day! Your writing is [superb/detailed/professional/etc.], and your characterization [is honest/is spot-on/makes me weep with joy/etc.]. I am going to be following this with a very close eye. Thank you so much for gracing the world with your beautiful writing!”

“Admittedly, I didn’t think I’d be getting back into [fandom], but I saw your fic and began reading it on a whim. I am now intrigued and looking forward to what happens next. I absolutely love how you portray [character name]. [He/she/they] are exactly how I imagined [him/her/them] to be in this situation that you’ve crafted, and I look forward to more. Can’t wait for the next update!”

“This is brilliant. I’ve never seen another story like this, and I thank you for sharing your talents with us and the [fandom] fandom. You make me gush every time you have scenes like this, and [character name] just makes my heart thud!”

“Ugh, that cliffhanger! D: I can’t believe you just cut it off like that — now I’m going to have to wait impatiently for the next update. I hope [character name] survives. It sounds like a terrible situation to be in, but you wrote it so [beautifully/hauntingly/well/etc.]! Will be eagerly awaiting the next chapter!”

“OH MY HEART. You always create the most [lovable/intimate/disgustingly cute/etc.] moments, and I just want to puke rainbows and sunshine. I LITERALLY SQUEED. In fact, I squeed so loud, my [mother/boyfriend/partner/sister/etc.] asked me what was wrong!”

“Your writing style leaves me [breathless/wanting more/etc.]. <3 The way you string words together is just pure poetry, and it is a [joy/treat/etc.] to read. We need more people like you writing

“I don’t usually read original content online, but this piece caught my eye, and you did not disappoint. The world and plot you’ve created is [creative/heartrending/exciting/etc.], and your characters are [memorable/endearing/so much fun/etc.]! I find myself entranced with [character name]. I feel like I can really relate to [his/her/their] plight. Looking forward to the next update and seeing what [character names] are going to do!”

“This story feel so professionally written to me. You could absolutely take this and publish it. Your writing is [beautiful/flawless/a joy to read/etc.], and I so admire your ability to consistently give us content. Please keep writing and sharing with us! I cannot get enough of [story title], and I look forward to every update.”

“I’m super curious about [character/plot/feature/etc.]! I feel like this is a concept that has been done before, but I’ve never seen it executed as effectively as you have! I am looking forward to reading more about [insert characters] and how they’ll react to [events].

“I cannot tell you how much this story means to me. I know this is just a piece of writing (albeit quality!) posted online, but you have helped me get through some really rough days and events in my life. The way you weave this story and its characters makes me feel like it’s all alive. Sometimes when I’m feeling particularly sad, I just come back to this fic and read a few chapters. Your writing is beautiful and real and optimistic, and it just makes me feel like I can rely on it as a place to retreat to when I need it. Thank you so much for taking your time to write. Your work is truly a treat and blessing.”

“[copy and paste quote from story]

This was my favorite line from the story. I found it so [funny/wholesome/particular/etc.]. You have such a good grasp on [character name/writing dialogue/development/etc.] Looking forward to more!

CHEERS AND CONDOLENCES

“I’m so sorry to hear that you’re having a rough time because of [reasons]. I hope you know that I’m here to support you, and if you need to take a step back from writing for a little while, I completely understand. I always enjoy your work, and for the quality and joy you’re giving us, I think you should take your time and write only when you’re ready to enjoy the process. Please take care! <3 You are in my thoughts!”

“Congratulations on [xyz]! That is such a big milestone, and I’m so happy for you! It’s amazing that despite all of your RL achievements, you’re still willing and able to dedicate the time to write for us. <3 Sending love and support! Keep it up!”

SOME FRIENDLY ADVICE

“Hi! I absolutely love that you’re writing for this [fandom]. I think you write [character name] very well, better than most interpretations I’ve come across! If I may, I’d like to discuss your most recent portrayal of [character name]. I see where you were coming from, but I think [he/she/they] may have been a little too [forward/angry/quiet/etc.] because [insert reasons]. What was your thought process behind this? Other that particular scene, I’ve been very pleased with your portrayal! ”

“First, I am so glad I found this fic. I am impressed by your writing capabilities and think you’re doing a wonderful job! I don’t know if you’re looking for any feedback on [xyz], but I have [experience/knowledge] on [xyz], so I thought I’d shed a bit of light. The only thing I noticed was [reasons] — in reality, [insert explanation]. I can give you a few sources [insert link(s)], if you’re interested in reading more. I am also happy to answer any questions for you! Please let me know how I can help! Like I said, though, aside from that just teeny detail, your writing really is superb. I love your [creativity/portrayal/writing style, etc.]! Can’t wait to read more!”

If you found that this guide or these templates were helpful to you, please share the wealth with other readers and writers!

Also posted on AO3.

#writing #writing tips #writers of tumblr #writeblr #writing advice #writing tutorial #writing help #feedback #readers #providing feedback #writing problems #writing positivity #writers #writing encouragement #writers and readers #kudos #currency

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transsexualhamlet · 4 years

Text

Trans Headcanons

Ok I’m going to make a giant post about this because it’s one of the few things I can actually address, as a trans person. Obviously I cannot speak as to the opinions and experiences of all trans people, but I’m just gonna give you my take.

So obviously in fandom lots of people like to headcanon characters as trans, and in general I think that’s a fantastic thing as well we’re not exactly swimming in representation. But what comes with cis people tryin to write trans characters is that... things get... problematic. Quick.

Headcanoning male characters as ftm

I am this variety of trans so I get excited when people headcanon ftm but I’m almost always completely disappointed.

First off I need to address the “people” who headcanon male characters as trans ftm for that Spicy Fetishization. This is generally, I’d say... more than half of trans headcanons I come across in fics at least, and in this context is used solely for sexual purposes which is disgusting so stop.

Of course it’s ok to write trans people having sex, because well, trans people have sex, but cis people don’t realize that dysphoria plays a huge part into what people are comfortable with. So just a fun fact I feel like it should be obvious trans guys aren’t gonna want to have sex like they’re a straight female, and trans guys are not all bottoms.

I would also like to address when headcanoning a male presenting character as ftm is good or bad rep completely without the sexual element because cis people seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of Trans Vibes. I’m gonna use mostly ons examples so hang on tight.

Problematic, bad characters to headcanon as trans-

-Yoichi

-Mika

-Shinya

I see an egregious amout of these, and the pattern for this is somehow, cis girls see a feminine boy and think that they’re a good person to think is trans. No. This is the opposite. These three characters in ons are some of the more feminine guys, and therefore come off as gay, in a cis male way. Trans guys generally do not act like that, and although there are plenty of feminine trans guys, they do not behave like that.

Addressing the problems with people saying Mika is trans- People don’t understand dysphoria. He has always been very feminine, and in the case that he was trans that would just. Not work. You could look at that boy and be asking what gender even is he if you didn’t know, and generally trans guys aren’t for that.

With Yoichi it’s even more ridiculous. He’s one of the worst characters I could think of to view this way, as this pushes the most UwU Soft Boi fujoshi shit onto him. If y’all aren’t aware the fetishising girls really invalidate trans folks by assuming they’re all basically the stereotype of Yoichi- small, awkward, shy, complete pushovers, and just. Nah. Same really goes for Shinya, because though he’s more confident he’s very cis gay guy and making him trans pushes the same “make the more feminine person in a gay relationship trans”. Stop it.

If you had to headcanon someone as ftm in ons I’d say some of your best options would be probably

-Kimizuki.

-Yu (though there are many conditions because he’s a victim of a lot of the fujos in fanfic with this.)

I’m trying to think of more but to be honest, that’s your best bet. If you want to go with someone else, Guren might be ok, it would just be harder to explain.

Kimizuki is the best one out of all of them to be headcanoned as trans because he breaks the problematic stereotypes, and if you think about it would make much more sense than the characters ppl usually say are trans.

He is a character who’s fairly obsessed with presenting masculinity and trying to be the strong one in the group, which is a very trans guy thing to do, and it would be the easiest to explain without going through hoops like characters that have a lot of backstory would. He doesn’t look or act feminine at all, but he has more feminine skills like cooking, and he feels ashamed of those aspects of himself even though he shouldn’t. Those are the kind of things that make someone go “that would be nice rep”. Also his hair is dyed pink, like what cis person does that?

With Yu, I see many more people in fanfic try to use the trans thing for him, and out of the context of shipping I think that’s perfectly fine. He is a very relatable character for ftm gremlins like myself and it’s reasonable to say that, although there would need to be a few adjustments for taking into consideration at one point he would have presented as female, probably during his time in sanguinem. That doesn’t really present any problems if you just adjust accordingly. Guren would be cool with “hey dad i’m a guy” and I think that would be pretty epic. But when taken into the context of, well, mikayuu shipping.

To be frank, most of the trans!yuu fics that exist are straight up just for fujos to go “hey look at this gay bottom he’s trans so he’s basically a girl and watch him act like a girl during sex” stop it. Stop it please.

On trans girls

obviously, I am not a trans girl, and I know like. one trans girl. total. So I don’t have as much insight on this as trans ftm but some of this stuff is just common sense.

First I need to address the obvious, the phenomenon that is apparently such a thing in anime and manga for no good reason. The “this character who has a female voice actor, dresses and acts completely like a girl but is stated as male for some fucking reason” is just... hhhhhhhhhh. I think the only reason these exist is some weird japan fetish but I’m not fond of it. Headcanoning these characters as trans girls is in fact completely fine and I’d encourage it, unless them being male is actually somehow an integral part of the plot.

In the case of Asuramaru, I’d say absolutely go ahead. It makes even more sense with this character because Asura used to go by a different name and dressed much more masculine back in Ye Olde Greek Dayes but now has this demon glow up with a much more feminine look, a literal dress, a crown, hair down to their ass- that’s honestly the most valid thing you could say.

In the case of characters presented as female in canon, it’s much more difficult than trans guys because of how girls are presented in anime and manga. And by that I mean,,, hyper sexualized and misogynistic.

In this case I’d always say ask someone trans before jumping to conclusions. Also be wary of the “this is a masculine girl, she must be trans” because well. Again, masculine trans girls are valid but that can’t be your only reasoning PLEASE. I’ve seen trans Mito before in a fic, and tbh that’s ok, but only if you know what you’re doing with it. It can be explained pretty well with her, since she used to present as hyper feminine and pretty comphet with the guren thing, but she’s calmed down in vampire reign and I think if that has to do with her starting her transition at like 16, that’s totally fine. But that has to be handled with care, and be aware that she’s like. The most masculine girl in the series. She doesn’t wear a skirt like literally every other girl in the show, she uses physical force and her fists to fight instead of a weapon or magic, and she’s extremely headstrong. Although it would be fine if she was trans, those aspects of herself are not what would make her so, since even though it would be epic those things could cause dysphoria.

On nonbinary headcanons

These are significantly less problematic than a lot of other types, since they’re generally made by people who know what the hell they’re talking about. And there’s really no parameters for nonbinary people, so if you see someone who gives off No Gender Vibes go ahead and sprinkle in some they/them!! They don’t even have to look androgynous, though if you see a strictly single gender presenting character and want them to be enby prepare to have some explanations. Good examples of this would be

-near from death note, that gremlin wears nothing but pajamas and proceeds to grow hair down to his ass as an adult, plus the austistic coded bit... we don’t have a concept of gender tbh

-practically any demon from ons but raimeiki or gekkouin, they all just have the best vibes

-Shikama Doji, you think that bitch knows what a gender is??? Got lost in the wings pal

Just be aware of the differences needed between thinking “this person is presented as __ canonly and that is in fact their sex just not their gender” or “this person is trans fem or trans masc but isn’t strictly male or female” because those are different.

Bottom line? Ask a trans person, and don’t write a trans person just for their body.

#owari no seraph #trans #idk what to tag this tbh I don't talk about this stuff all the time #trans ftm #trans headcanons #death note #kind of

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jamlocked · 4 years

Note

C, J, U, V and X :))

C - A ship you have never liked and probably never will.

Ohhhh, boy. I could go three ways on this really...or maybe two, idk. I feel like my answer will be taken as problematic - - and I’m going for it anyway, because it’s just my opinion.

The ship I dislike the most is Sherlolly. It’s not because I don’t like Molly - I do, a lot. It’s not because that would make Sherlock straight or bi - the whole argument that used to fly about that Sherlolly = homophobic is fucking gross. It’s just not a ship that does anything for me. I used to think that I just found it boring (and this is NOT me saying that Molly is boring, or het romance is boring, or any of that), but I’ve come to realise it’s mostly because it vibes with the part of Sherlock’s narrative I like the least. The whole, ‘Sherlock was weird and abnormal with no friends, but now we’re going to turn him into a complete human being’, thing. Which, VOMIT.

Again, I’m not saying that het romance is too ‘normal’ to fit here. Sherlock could have a massive thing with Irene, and that would have a vibe I like far more. The issue I have with Sherlolly is that Sherlock has always been an extreme type of character in whatever canon. Molly, in BBC canon, is this wonderful character Sherlock came to find a great friend in. The notion that he could ‘learn to be normal/complete’ seems to be the arc of the four seasons, complete with the whole ‘I love you’ scene in TFP, where they full dangled the possibility of future!canon!Sherlolly by at least making Sherlock think about it seriously. It seems to equate with ‘the more we teach Sherlock to fit into ‘normal’ society, the more chance he has of having a ‘normal’ relationship, with someone...’ - okay, I’m not going to hold Molly up as a bastion of normality, given she falls for sociopaths and does autopsies, but even if you take that into consideration, it’s still the most ‘normal’ relationship the writers could put him into. A casual viewer would go, ‘he’s got a girlfriend now, he behaves better, he gets on with his family, he’s straight/white/upper middle-class = totally a character I’m easy with’.

And that’s just not what interests me when it comes to relationships I want to watch. Now, if we’re talking about dark!Molly who’s into Glee and cats, but also runs a black market organ business and wants Sherlock to help sort out the competition - I’m totally here for that. If Molly likes her knitted cardigans and secretly wants to kill Sherlock, while he likes his suits and is madly in love her but also wants to use her to get to her criminal mother who harvests dead bodies and practices necromancy? I’m all ears.

But ‘Sherlock gets a girlfriend, solves crimes, learns manners and is never obnoxious again, and OH LOOK WE FIXED HIM’ - fuck, no. ...that was a lot of words, and I didn’t explain it very clearly, but I’ma stop now.

J - Name a fandom you didn’t think about until you saw it all over Tumblr. (You don’t have to care about it or follow it; it just has to be something that Tumblr made you aware of.)

Tumblr has made me aware of BTS, The Witcher (although I had seen adverts for that on Amazon, but idk anything about it), Hamilton, Moomin, MASH, The Mentalist, Kyo Dir en Grey, Elementary ...oh man, there must be more, but I forget. I’ve been here a few years now. I’d heard of most of these shows/people before Tumblr, of course, but didn’t know much about them. And still don’t on some of them, but am definitely aware of them now.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

Jim Moriarty, obviously. HE IS SO FUN. And there is such pain under the smirk, and THOSE SUITS, BABY. I am the biggest sucker in the world for obsession, and ...well, see my answer to X in a minute. There’s nothing about him I don’t ove. So much scope to play with in fic as well.

An old fandom of mine - Les Mis. My fave character is Javert, because of course I love the most awful dick of them all. Again, with him, see X below. And also again, so much to write about. I literally nearly based a PhD proposal around him, and his representation, his place in 19th century France, his attitudes and where they came from. Did you know the character of Sam Gerard in The Fugitive is based on him? He’s relentless, he’s unforgiving, and he collapses at the end in the most spectacular way possible. Total prick, and I fucking love him. :D

I’m really trying to think of character I love who isn’t a total douche, just for the sake of variety. But I can’t, so lets go with Gene Hunt from Life on Mars.

I expect most people won’t have heard of/seen this show (but omg they might be making a new series, sa;ldfkjsalfksj I CANNOT :D), but if you can watch it, you should. Gene Hunt is awful - a 70s cop with all the faults of the time. Corrupt, mostly alcoholic, sexist, violent, homophobic, racist...but also hilarious, and there’s a really big heart under there. You learn that he might do nothing but call people the worst names in the world, but he always ends up doing his job in. If you watch this four minute video, you’ll get the gist. If you’re a fan of the Discworld series and you like Sam Vimes, you’ll recognise Gene. He’s the arshetype of Copper, and he goes on this great arc from being the stereotypical bad copper of the 70s, to being something quite different. And he really is hilarious, with insane charisma. He and Sam Tyler are the perfect double act. :D

V - Which character do you relate to most?

Jim Moriarty. I may not be a criminal mastermind, but only because I’m not that smart. And don’t have his level of swag, because c’mon. Who does?

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

AHAHA. My bulletproof trope is ‘two sides of the same coin’. Sherlock/Moriarty. Javert/Jean Valjean - who, incidentally, were two characters based off one man; Vidocq. (A man who more films should be made about, incidentally.) These two are literally two sides of one man. Even Gene Hunt represents part of Sam’s psyche in Life on Mars, as well as the more obvious old vs new, forensic vs gut instinct.

But yeah, in literally any fandom, you show me a protagonist and an antagonist that are more or less the same person, and I’m there. Cannot get enough of it.

#anti-sherlolly #sherlock #life on mars #les mis #javert #fandom #all about meme #omg that got so long I'M SORRY

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monkeymindscream · 4 years

Note

What are your thoughts on Krinkle?

Random question, but I can work with it.

A couple years ago I made a post talking about how Krinkle was my least favorite character in the show. I’ve since written for him a fair bit, and have come to realize he is really fun to write.

Like - y’know how actors will talk about how much fun it is to play a villain, because they get to do things they wouldn’t normally get to when playing a hero? It’s kind of like that. When things happen with other characters, their responses need to be within certain parameters of logic. All that goes out the window with Krinkle. Something can happen and instead of moving from point A to conclusion B, Krinkle can jump all the way to point XIII. The plot he’s following will always be four steps to the left of whatever the main cast is doing, because he willfully exists in a narrative all his own. That is immensely entertaining to write, and to date the pieces I’ve written from his perspective are among the things I view least critically of my work. I’ve become paradoxically fond of him as a result.

...to a degree. I unfortunately still find it really difficult to sympathize with him at all. Frankly I find it difficult to understand how anyone could sympathize with him. Him specifically, I mean; I can completely understand feeling sympathetic/bad about the position he ends up in. But towards him personally as a character? Ehhhhhhhhh...

Something I realized while pondering how to phrase this whole thing was I never really interpreted Krinkle as a depiction of mental illness. I mean that’s absolutely what he ended up being, and regrettably not an especially flattering one at that. Which I mean - early 2000s, what can ya do besides try to be better moving forward? But anyway yeah even as a young kid watching the show for the first time, I always saw Krinkle as more of an exaggerated parody of a crazy fan, not a crazy person. Primarily because he was exhibiting traits I’d seen around forums and in fanfics at the time, just cranked up to 11.

For example, his first appearance sees him attempting a very popular method fanfic writers would use to get their OCs on the Team. Specifically the Team would be in trouble, the OC would swoop in to help, and BAM now they’re a Hyperforce member. Plus his entire second appearance is basically one giant spoof of a self-insert fanfic as a whole: The aforementioned insert takes the main character’s place on for no reason, the insert has all of the same powers of the main plus a lot they don’t, they have a tragic backstory, the whole world (and plot) is centered around them and their whims, all that.

That’s how most of Krinkle’s plans play out, honestly - he tries to apply fanfic logic to his actual life, and then gets angry when his leading actors don’t stick to his script. And his actions seem too... how to put this - pointed? from the writers’ end to not have been intentional. Which is why I don’t think he was supposed to be a stereotype of mental illness, but rather a playful jab at the fandom.

He turned into a stereotype of mental illness anyway (showing him in a padded room certainly didn’t help), but for what it’s worth I don’t think it was the goal. Which calls forth a separate conversation regarding writer intent vs. fan interpretation, but that’s a whole thing just on its own. So I’ll drop this point here.

Going back to me not personally feeling any sympathy for him - I openly acknowledge that’s maybe a little weird considering how ardently I’ve played devil’s advocate to some of the other villains from this show, but hear me out. The others are often SO over the top and Saturday morning cartoon supervillain-y that I have an exceedingly difficult time feeling a genuine emotional response to their actions beyond “mm. bad. don’t do that.” Moreover, the worst of what the other villains do would be rendered impossible if the fantastical elements of the show were removed, which again makes it hard to feel especially offended by them.

Krinkle, though? All else stripped away, a considerable chunk of what Krinkle does is still both very possible and very unsettling. You can connect a lot of his behaviors to real-life stalkers. And it gets really hard for me to reconcile this stuff with the kids’ show he’s in, sometimes. What I’m trying to say is sometimes he feels a little too... real, for me, I guess.

Further muddling my opinion on Krinkle is that - whenever I see him being discussed - I get unreasonably defensive on the Team’s behalf. It always seems to swing back around to how badly they handled the situation. For example there was one comment I saw on A Man Called Krinkle on YouTube years ago (like I’m talking "if you wanted to upload the episodes you had to split them into three parts” YEARS ago) where someone basically said how sorry they felt for Krinkle, and was berating the Team for putting him on Ranger 7.

Ohhhhohoho y’all-

So, first issue I take with this, just straight off the cuff: What the hell was the Team supposed to have done differently? Kept him around, tried to fix his issues themselves? Visited him at Ranger 7, fed into his delusions to make him feel better, perhaps? Does this person expect real life stalking victims to make an active effort to help their stalkers get well, too?

Also- ALSO: The Team is comprised of five (canonically somewhat socially-isolated) monkeys and a freshly thirteen-year-old child. The “adults” in the situation’s response to their first leader going ‘round the bend was “PUT HIM TO SLEEP FOREVER,” presumably because they just didn’t know what else to do. How could any of them possibly know what to do with some rando who had mental health issues clearly beyond what they were capable of helping? One who - I’d like to remind everyone - broke into their home, took them hostage, attempted to force them to unwittingly kill the kid they’d adopted, and then tried to commit murder-suicide?

(I realize that this is swiftly turning into me just getting feisty about this one comment from a minimum of 14 years ago. Look at me care.)

Also... this might just be me interpreting things wrong, but Krinkle kinda, sorta... doesn’t seem to want any help? Or acknowledge that his actions are in the wrong at all? Because okay, he claims he built his own “perfect world” because he was sick of humanity (and wherein everything has his face and his every whim is immediately catered to; don’t try to tell me that shit don’t mean anything). And to even get the chance to build that world, he had to forcefully take over the facility that was conceivably trying to help him get better. That feels... pretty indicative of how much (or little, rather) he must’ve cared about improving. Which, if this is accurate, means that Krinkle was actively choosing to continue risking harm to other people and putting his needs and wants over theirs.

So um. Those are my thoughts, I guess? I think it’s interesting to explore his psyche but I really, really dislike him as a person. Obviously if you do like him/feel sorry for him/disagree with me on any count that’s completely fine. You’re absolutely entitled to your opinion. But yeah, that’s personally where I stand.

#Anonymous #muttering about monkeys #Krinkle

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questionablygourmet · 5 years

Text

I Like This Show A Normal Amount: Will Graham As Autistic Representation

In a previous meta post about Will, I briefly alluded to my appreciation for Will as good autistic representation, and for Free-For-All Friday, @tin-can-paladin prompted me to do as I’d said I might and write a Thing about that. (Hopefully today is the day I actually get this post finished and up!) So here we go.

First of all, this post will be starting from the premise that Will is an autistic character. I don’t particularly care if Hugh’s said he’s not; whether or not he meant to, he and Bryan gave us an autistic-coded character and I reserve the right to be delighted about it! (Actually, that’s not quite true - I do care, in the sense that I wish he hadn’t said that, because acknowledging portrayals of characters on the spectrum that aren’t a walking fucking stereotype played for lulz *cough BBT COUGH* or as a tragedy inflicted upon their neurotypical family members as being on the spectrum is Important. But whatever.)

This post will address aspects of Will as a character, but also to an extent how he’s handled in the wider context of the show, and why that matters.

Agency

This was my primary focus on that previous Will meta post, but in context of autistic representation, I think it’s an important thing to highlight in this post as well: Will Graham is a whole-ass adult in control of his actions even when other characters don’t think so (see: Alana, Jack, et al in late season 1) or are actively trying to subvert that (see: Hannibal, You Asshole).

Autistic characters in various media are all-too-frequently infantilized and handled as though their environment/circumstances completely dictate their behavior. Will both implicitly and explicitly (“You can’t reduce me to a set of influences” - ironically for a later part of this post, the next thing he says mentions behaviorism), resoundingly rejects this, and I love that as part of his narrative in general but also as an autistic character in particular.

Empathy

This one’s gonna be a doozy. There’s a lot to talk about here that all generally falls under the heading of “autism and empathy,” so I’ll do my best to stay organized.

First, the simplest: He cares! So! Deeply! And complexly! And we know that throughout the show!

Frankly, this in particular massively exacerbates my irritated wish that the creators would explicitly acknowledge him as autistic because holy shit the stereotypes he combats with this. Autistic people in the real world have widely varied, diverse relationships with empathy and compassion (which are different things, and I have some beefs with the way the show uses the word “empathy,” but that’s a digression and this is already going to be a long post), but media largely erases this, conflating difficulties with normative, neurotypical-passing social behavior with inability to empathize, and/or display compassion, and/or even feel emotions (FFS).

There’s a related point about “normative-passing social behavior” that I want to expand on a bit, here: we see a lot of profound differences in demeanor for Will over the course of the show, and that’s something I’ve seen interpreted as manipulation sometimes when it really isn’t. (Not to say Will is not manipulative/capable of being manipulative, because he is, very! But not everything calculated is necessarily manipulative, and I see the two conflated a lot and that annoys me.) Will has, to my eyes, four basic social “modes.”

I’m Dealing With Most People With Whom I Have No Particular Antipathy Or Affection - Aloof, and either standoffish or polite depending on how his boundaries are being treated. He’s not particularly interested in making people comfortable when they’re making him uncomfortable (and being a white dude generally enables him to take this attitude without big repercussions), and people frequently make him uncomfortable.

I’m Dealing With Someone I Perceive As Vulnerable - Exaggeratedly calm, kind, careful. He’s trying to connect and provide comfort and support. He’s minding his every move and word because he doesn’t want to cause harm incidentally. (Abigail, Peter, Walter, etc. and to some extent, Margot, though with her it’s mixed with other attitudes.)

I’m Dealing With An Enemy - This is where the manipulativeness (and even, particularly in the cases of Bedelia and Hannibal, cruelty) comes in. He’s minding his every move and word because he wants to elicit a specific response from the person he’s interacting with. (This comes into play with Jack and Alana at various points even though they are rarely full enemies.)

I’m Dealing With A Trusted Friend - Has neither the deliberation of 2-3 nor quite the standoffishness of 1. He’s neither projecting an image appropriate to a specific kind of fraught social situation, nor actively trying to deflect attention and interaction. In my opinion we really only see this with Hannibal (in season 1 and then with flashes of it in 2 and 3) and Molly, though he gets close in a handful of moments with Alana, Beverly, and Jack.

All these modes deal with a) to what extent he is acting, and b) why he’s acting. And I love that we get to see this breadth of social interaction modes from him, because that is an accurate and sensitive portrayal of an autistic adult, reflecting the often-dramatic differences in “difficulty setting” of an interaction - how and to what extent are we expected to (or otherwise have a need to) mimic neurotypical mannerisms? What are the stakes of the situation? These are explicit considerations for a lot of autistic people, and Will demonstrates that vividly throughout the series.

Another way in which empathy and social interaction come into play in terms of autistic representation is that Will can and does form strong social bonds - not very often, because the way most other adults treat him isn’t conducive to it, but with people who display acceptance/a lack of judgment for his non-neurotypical reactions and behaviors, and importantly, who don’t treat him as Other for the way he can reconstruct crime scenes, we see that can form very strong bonds. Hannibal is obviously the prime example of this, but also Molly, and to a much lesser extent, Alana and Margot. (Though Jack refers to him as a friend and they have some friendly interactions, their bond is not a strong one and not at all marked by the kind of humanizing acceptance it takes to get truly close to Will.) People who accept who he is, and who are neither threatened by his skills nor dependent on them.

Finally, in this section, let’s look at the crime scene reconstructions and “getting inside killers’ heads” bit.

I have complex feelings about this aspect of the show, or more precisely, how other characters talk about his reconstructions and serial killer profiling - they (even Hannibal, to an extent) talk about it in mystifying terms, and I thoroughly dislike the term “empathy disorder” that gets thrown around so much in seasons 1-2 to explain what he does. Will is apt to testily correct people that he just interprets the evidence, and that is exactly what he is doing. His vivid imagination coupled with years of active study of criminal psychology allow him to take that interpretation a lot farther than anyone else would, and sometimes make intuitive leaps that the other characters can’t follow. But it’s clear that this intuition is founded in concrete evidence, as we frequently see him stymied when he doesn’t quite have enough of it, much to the frustration of Jack, who is particularly shitty about treating him like an oracle.

I like that Will gets to stick up for himself and correct people on several occasions, but I wish the ableism and the Othering was less pervasive amongst the other characters because it makes me want to slap them. I find that I really appreciate how most of the fic I’ve read since entering the fandom thoroughly and often explicitly rejects the pseudo-magical divination and/or Crazy Person With Magic Brain angle.

Perspective

There was something I was reaching at that was eluding me in my first attempt at this draft, and then I ran into an excellent article about writing autistic characters that suddenly and thoroughly solidified it for me. It’s really brilliant; it discusses and illustrates the strong difference between a behavioristic (see previous reference) approach to characterization and a humanizing one. Behavioristic analyses divorce themselves from the actual mindset and experience of the subject, whereas humanizing portrayals display the subjective experience of the person who is perhaps behaving in a way other people may find confusing.

Since Will is the main point of view character in the show, we get front-row seats to his subjective experience and can therefore more properly empathize with him. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. The behavior that Jack and various other characters are exasperated, impatient, and/or unnerved over all looks pretty reasonable when we know how Will is experiencing the crime scene, or are seeing his nightmares and hallucinations along with him! And while the nightmares and hallucinations in season 1 are a matter of encephalitis and trauma rather than neurotype, it still matters that we’re led to understand something of what he goes through, from his own perspective rather than an outside one.

It’s incredibly necessary emotional context moving forward in the show, giving us an autistic character who is flawed but deeply human and whose darkness we can understand.

#hannibal #will graham #my meta #meta #thanks for the nudge to actually write this #it was difficult enough that it probably wouldn't have happened without said nudge #but i really wANTED to write it so #I Like This Show A Normal Amount

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scripttorture · 5 years

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How much do you know about torture apologia at a government level? Like people who are actually paid to torture terrorist? I feel like that is a government-approved thing unless I’m mistaken. How can they not see they’re getting no information or just plain wrong information? And these ‘professionals’ are hiding their mental health problems? Or is the FBI torturing terrorists for information not as real as we are lead to believe? I’ve got a story idea about a victim mistakenly accused.

Thisis a pretty broad question. And it also sounds like it’s trying tostart a debate over getting writing advice. I’m going to give itthe benefit of the doubt and take it at face value as a writingquestion.

Ithink the short answer is essentially: read Rejali. He covers this inconsiderable depth, it’s the last third of his book. I’ll do mybest to summarise his points but I can’t produce 300+ pages ofevidence plus sources on a blog like this.

O’Maraalso talks about it a fair bit and Cobain’s entire book is aboutthe links between torture and the British government. Granted Cobaindoesn’t know a thing about torture but the pattern of legalwrangling and political apathy he records is incredibly valuable.

Thereare a couple of points I think are important going forward.

Thefirst is that although information is often the justification givenfor torture it’s rarely the point.

Somethingcan be justified, ignored or tolerated in someparts of a government and stringently punished in other areas.

Inlarge enough organisations leaders can be genuinely unaware what somemembers are doing.

Sogiven those points let’s start with the second question becauseit’s easiest.

Inmodern democracies people are notpaid to torture. That is not their official role. They are hired asguards, soldiers, teachers, care takers, nurses, doctors, police anda handful of other professions.

Thatis they are being paid for.And it’s not what they’re doing.

Whetherwhat they’re actually doing (torture) is condoned by anyone furtherup the chain of command then their immediate superiors is reallydependant on the circumstances. And very difficult to prove.

Governmentapproval of torture in modern states rarelylooks like top officials saying ‘We torture people!’

Here’sthe kind of phrasing it looks like instead:

‘These particular set of abuses are not torture because-’

‘This isn’t really painful’

False equivalence such as ‘Well I diet voluntarily so starving someone can’t be harmful’

Outright denial ‘Our troops could never do that!’

Ouright denial Part 2 ‘Well no one told us that was happening!’

Shifting the blame ‘Those people are lying to get into the country/get money/get attention etc-’

Shifting the blame Part 2 ‘Those people deserve it because they’re mentally ill/an ethnic minority/poor/violent/look like trouble etc-’

‘Obviously we don’t torture people but we should because it would work!’

‘We need strong measures in these desperate times!’

The sort of political/cultural outlook that links efficiency to ‘toughness’ and sees kindness and compromise as weak

Tortureapologia on the government level thrives on plausible deniability andredefining terms until they’re unrecognisable.

Forthe purposes of your story I think you’d probably be better offstepping back from the FBI.

WhatI mean by that is- if you’ve been looking for sources specificto the FBI that’s why you’re so confused. Those sources arepoorly collated, poorly studied and (personal opinion) deliberatelyconfusing.

Awellstudiedwell recorded example of torture as unofficial-government-policywould be the Franco-Algerian war. And this is alsobeset by confusion because a lotof the sources from the French side were written by torturers tojustify their actions after the event.

Onceagain I’d recommend reading Rejali and for greater context on whathe says Alleg’s TheQuestionand Fanon’s appendices to TheWretched of the Earth.

Yestorture continues because of governmental positions. But that doesn’tnecessarily mean outright orders to torture.

Itcan mean a lack of political will to eradicate torture, ie no one islooking for it. It can mean officials being aware of torture andchoosing to ignore it.

Myimpression is that apathyrather than malice at the top levels is the key. In the worst cases,yes there was outright malice from some individuals within a largergovernment. But it’s the apathy of the majority that allowed forabuse.

Governmentapproval doesn’tlook like a high level official ordering troops to torture.

Itlooks like the state Governor seeing that most of the police in theirstate probably use torture and sitting down to do this calculation:‘Am I more electable next year if I try to tackle this or if Iignore it?’

Italso looks like a Commissioner seeing that a person arrested for anemotive crime like terrorism has been complaining of ill-treatmentand doing this calculation: ‘Do I look better in the public eye ifI seem like I’m standing up for a person from a hated minority whois accused of doing something awful?’

WhatI’m driving at here is that- the reality is a lot more nebulousthen what you seem to be thinking of. Tacit acceptance, differentpriorities, cowardice- are all much more likely then the kind ofscenario where the elites explicitly order abuse.

Ithink I should move on to the third question which is just as tricky,before I get bogged down in labouring the point.

Howdo organisations not realise the information they get from torture iswrong?

Theshort answer is that by using torture they destroy the systems thatallow them to double check information. Because they can’t doublecheck anything they don’t realise that they’re working withincorrect information.

Iwilltell you how that happens but let’s have an analogy first to giveyou an idea of how skewed this makes the base information.

Imagineyou’re looking for information on the internet about something youhaven’t seen but you can’t use wikipedia, any popular searchengines or any official sites. You are going entirelyby searching tumblr. And you can only access the first piece ofinformation that comes up with any tag you search.

Picka popular fandom and imagine the kind of screwed up view you’d getof a character if you tried to find information about them like this.I am picturing the Flash fandom and Captain Cold and imagining justhow easy it would be to walk away with the impression that thecharacter was a main character not a bit part.

Nowlet me show you how including torture in an investigation is theequivalent of blocking yourself from everything but a hellsite with abroken search algorithm.

Sothe first thing to appreciate is that torture breakstrustwith the public. If torture is common place then no matter how‘secret’ an organisation tries to keep it the groups who areeffected find out.

Wenotice when people around us go missing. We pay attention when thereare stories of people ‘like us’ being hurt.

Andwe lose trust in authority. We stop reporting crimes. We stopvolunteering information.

Whichcuts an organisation off from the mainsource of accurate information they can get: voluntary reporting bymembers of the public.

Wedon’t report strange things our family or friends have done if wethink it might get them tortured. We don’t mention that we saw atall ginger man leave a back pack on that street near where the bombwent off.

Frompersonal experience- sometimes you stop reporting things even whenyou’re completely outside the context that taught you organisationscan’t be trusted. I’ve been assaulted in the UK and genuinely didnot consider calling the police. Because I learnt young that policeexist to ‘make people disappear’ and the habit is hard to break.

Thesecond point is that torture produces a lotof lies and human beings generally are terrible at telling whensomeone is lying.

Sotorturers don’t have access to the biggest source of accurateinformation but they dohear a lot of lies.

Thethird point is that when torture becomes part of an organisation thenpeople spend lesstimeconducting genuine investigations and fact checking.

Torturerstend to be pretty arrogant and they usually report looking down onpeople in their organisation who don’ttorture. Basically they seeing doing the hard work of a genuineinvestigation as boring and beneath them.

Thisworks togetherwith the first two factors to make it almost impossible to fact checkthings.

Imaginea group of 50 people tasked with investigating a particular incident.Five of them are torturers, so they’re not actually investigatinganything. This takes our number down to 45.

Thenwe remember that the torturers are generating information, even ifit’s false. Which the other members are investigating.

Let’sgo with low estimates. Let’s suggest each torturer has one victim aday (this is unlikely, real numbers are probably much higher) and outof those they get an average of two ‘possible leads’ each day(this would vary a lot, some victims would say nothing, some mightthrow out as many as twenty names in a day). Let’s also pretendthat a potential lead can be investigated by one person (this isinaccurate, I’d generally expect at least 2-3 people for each new‘lead’.).

We’vejust got rid of ten more people on the first day.

Let’spretend that it takes three days to investigate a lead. This is alsoa very low estimate, properly following up a lead can take weeks.

Withour low-estimate fictional organisation we’ve reduced the amount ofpeople doing useful work to 15 in the first three days.

Fifteenpeople trying to do the work of 50, while the torturers keepgenerating lies that are wasting the time of everyone else.

Thiscripples the organisation’s ability to work as all the time andenergy is going into investigating lies.

Andwhilethis is going on the torturers are still torturing. And they’reassumingthat their information is correct.

Sothey’re generating morelies that supportthe previous lies.

Letme give an example of what I mean.

Saya torturer takes in a random person. This first victim knows nothingabout the terrorist group but if they don’t give a name thenthey’re going to keep being tortured.

Sothey tell the torturer Wednesday Adams is definitely the leader ofthe terrorists in this area.

Nowa genuine investigator is wasting time looking for Wednesday Adams.May be they come back in a week and say that no such person exists.

Bythat point the torturer has been asking a lot of people aboutWednesday Adams. And some of them will have sworn they saw WednesdayAdams, that Wednesday Adams was behind that attack and that she haslinks to this other organisation and also that thing I saw on thenews once and- So on.

Itspirals.

Maybe it gets to the point where the torturer finally accepts there’sno ‘Wednesday Adams’ on the census. But by that point they’vestacked a lot of their personal reputation on the existence of thisshadowy leader.

Sorather than admit they’re just wrong, they assume ‘WednesdayAdams’ is a pseudonym and now they’re asking everyone what herreal name is. Now they have six different possible ‘realidentities’ for Wednesday Adams.

Andthis is how organisations can fail to notice that torture doesn’twork.

Becausethe scale of misinformation is just so huge. Because the amount oftime it takes to provethe information is wrong gives the torturers more time to embellishthe lie.

Becausesuperiors who are genuinely unaware torture is going on in theirorganisations might well look at this torturer, who keeps coming upwith new information, and these ten genuine investigators who comeback with nothing but dead ends, and decide that the tortureris the only one ‘getting things done’.

Itdoesn’t matter that they’re wrong. Because it takes months,years, to prove that they areand everyone in these organisations is under huge pressure to haveanswers now.

OKlet’s move on to question four; mental health problems intorturers.

Firstoff, I have yet to meet a mentally ill person who hasn’ttried to hide their mental health problems at some point. The worldis not very accepting of mental health problems whatever the context.The pressure to hide them is immense. In some places people are atreal risk of violence and abuse if their mental health problems arenoticed as mental health problems.

Inthat context- it isn’t surprising that torturers do try to hidetheir symptoms.

Thetoxic sub-culture torturers tend to produce is- It’s incrediblymacho. It tends to rely on ideas about how the torturers are ‘toughand strong’. It equates violence and lack of mercy with strength.

Itviews mental illness as weak.

Andbecause the people within these groups are violent, because they havea tendency to turn on each other, there’s a huge pressure to hidemental health problems. That’s way before you bring the widerorganisation into the picture.

Manyof the organisations torturers are typically part of actively try toscreen out mentally ill people. Being obviously mentally ill can meanlosing the job.

SoI don’tthink it’s particularly unusual that torturers try to hide mentalhealth problems.

Howsuccessfulthey are at hiding them is a different question and it’s difficultto answer.

Becausea lot of people are moved or dismissed on mental health grounds andthis does notmean they were involved in anything abusive.

Tortureis difficult to prove. Most torturers are not charged. Their crimesare not recorded as part of their record. They are not hired astorturers.

Accordingto the WHO around 10% of the global population has a mental health problem.

Howdo you tell the difference between the people who are just mentallyill, the people who developed mental illnesses because of ‘ordinary’job stress and the people who developed mental illnesses because theyabused others?

Withoutaccurate, fair recording of torture accusations itis impossible to tell.

Personally?I think it’s highly likely that a lot of torturers can’t hidetheir mental health problems well. That they reach a point and have abreakdown on the job. Then they lose their job.

Butall of that can happen with no record of abuse.

Weneed more research on torturers. Desperately.

Andanswering these questions about the circumstances around how peoplestop is incredibly important. It can help us spot them, it can helpus spot people who might be targeted for recruitment by torturers. Itcan help us stop torture.

Andright now there are frustratingly few answers.

Whichleaves the final question- Are the FBI torturers?

Honestly-I have no idea. I am not particularly interested in America orAmerican history. I am not American. I do not go out of my way toread things about the FBI and could tell you very little about whatthey do.

WhatI can tell you is that organisations likethe FBI have usually tortured at some point in their history. Thatglobally the United States has developed a reputation for doublestandards.

ButI can not make a definitive statement on a group I know next tonothing about.

Inorganisations likethe FBI iftorture is going on it’s often not in the entire organisation. Itis often particular branches, particular units, particular areasrather than the whole country-wide organisation.

It’seasy to make broad statements like ‘the Chicago police torturedpeople in 70s’. And that’s not untrue.

Butif we’re being specificit would be more accurate to say ‘there was a cell of torturersoperating within the Chicago police force in the 70s and the widergroup failed to stop them.’

Wasthe entire Chicago police force responsible for the abuses? I wouldsay yesbecause it was literally their job to stop these abuses and they didnot. However they were notall torturers. They were not all actively engaged in torture and Ithink it’s extremely likely that many people at the time simplydidn’t realise what was going on.

Incompetence,not necessarily active abuse.

I’vewritten an awful lot. It should be a start at answering some of yourquestions. But all of these questions are complex and difficult.

Idon’t think, in this case, you can take my answer as a substitutefor wider reading.

Onceagain, Rejali.O’Maraas well.

Allegfor the survivor’s perspective on what both describe.

Cobain,to be taken with a pinch of salt and read afterRejali because Cobain is not a scientist and falls for apologia quitea lot.

You’vechosen to tackle a story that’s going to be a lot of work. Try notto be discouraged by that.

Theseare important stories. And they deserve to be told properly.

Ihope that helps. :)

Edited for typos

Edit 2: @dude1818 That is really not funny and I don’t appreciate you trying to turn discussion of a serious crime into a joke.

I’m aware of the formatting problem and I’ve been trying to fix it for some time. I’m going to try another fix this week but I can’t actually test whether any of my attempts work because I don’t have a mobile phone.

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#tw torture #behaviour of torturers #writing torturers #torture does not work #torture as interrogation #torture apologia #torture apologists #effect of torture on organisations #tw police brutality #Anonymous

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whitewolfofwinterfell · 5 years

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Can you do one of your metas on Elena, her strengths, flaws and why you (and I!) still like her despite the fact that many understandably don't?!

Yes! Thank you so much for sending this in. I love any opportunity I get to talk about and defend Elena, because I think she’s such an unfairly hated/disliked character.

I actually wrote a very in-depth meta about Elena before here, but since I did it a couple of years ago now some of my opinions and thoughts have changed since then. What I speak about in the sections about Elena being a Mary Sue and her strengths and weaknesses are still what I think, so it’s particularly worth reading that, because that’s relevant to this question.

The thing is with Elena is, yes, she’s a flawed character, but characters should be flawed because human beings are flawed. Elena’s flaws are exactly what make her relatable and real. Based on what I’ve seen in fandom over the years the main reasons people seem to dislike Elena are because she’s selfish, a Mary Sue or undeveloped as character. In my previous meta I explained why she’s not a Mary Sue, and I stand by that. As for the selfish part, I agree with it wholeheartedly. Elena is selfish, but who isn’t? I don’t understand disliking or hating on a character based on their selfishness because selfishness is a natural human trait that is instilled in all of us. In fact, most of us have to actively try to not be selfish and to be more considerate of others, because we’re naturally hard-wired to think of ourselves first. I would argue that Elena isn’t anymore selfish than any other character on the show and that rather than selfishness, it’d probably be more accurate to refer to it as self-centredness. And you might think those two words mean the same, but to me, selfishness is actively choosing to put your own well-being above others at the detriment of those around you. Self-centredness is a tendency to think about yourself first and to be oblivious to the impact that has on others around you. So, I’d say that Elena was self-centred rather than selfish. She had a tendency to think about how she felt and how things affected her and wasn’t always able to see how others around her were feeling or how they may be affected. The claim that Elena was undeveloped is also a valid argument. I like Elena but even I’m not blind to the incredibly poor characterisation and development she had. I understand the writers intentions with Elena, but unfortunately, it didn’t really work. It felt like Elena never really went beyond her original character profile. It’s like the writers sat down in a room and decided the core traits they wanted her to have in the pilot episode and season 1, but they never really went beyond that. So for me, a big part of the reason I like Elena is because of the potential her character had and the fact that I feel like she’s unfairly hated, as I’ve already mentioned.

Overall, I really don’t think Elena was that flawed, except for her self-centredness and indecisiveness. The biggest flaw of her character was the inconsistent writing that failed to fully build upon her as a character or explore her nuances and sacrificed her characterisation and development for the sake of her romantic relationship. I think that over the years people have exaggerated her flaws in open rebellion against the writers who plugged Elena as this wonderful, selfless heroine whom everyone worshipped and adored. Whenever there’s a character like that people deliberately search for their flaws. This kind of writing also tends to turns people off the character and instead they start to root for the ‘underdog’ or the character that is sidelined (in this case, Bonnie and/or Caroline). So a big part of the problem with Elena’s character comes from the writing and the way in which the narrative constantly centred on her, put her on a pedestal and tried to push her as being special, which people begrudge.

Ironically, the reason I love Elena is because I don’t think she was special. She was just a very normal girl who wanted what most teenagers want - to get through high school, have fun with her friends and live some semblance of an ordinary life with happy moments in between. She wasn’t perfect, she wasn’t special, she was just a girl that tried her best in impossible situations. She didn’t always make the best decisions and she wasn’t always the embodiment of empathy and compassion, but she showed amazing strength and resilience in the face of adversity. Time and time again she experienced tremendous traumas but she dealt with them as best she could, and in the process remained an optimistic and kind soul. Her resilience was undoubtedly her biggest strength. It still astounds me that Elena was able to overcome so much pain and trauma.

When people criticise Elena’s character, I think they fail to consider that although we’re not explicitly told it Elena consistently exhibited signs of depression. She explicitly said that after her parents death she didn’t want to live, she stopped enjoying her hobbies such as writing and cheer leading, but most significantly, she displayed reckless behaviours and suicidal tendencies. Unfortunately, her suicidal tendencies have been brushed off as being acts of “sacrifice” to save those she loved. I’m not saying they weren’t sacrifices, but her willingness to die was not normal for someone with a healthy mindset. I would die to save someone I love, but it wouldn’t be an easy decision. And perhaps that makes me sound like a terrible person, but I don’t want to die. I have a strong desire and instinct to live and sacrificing my life for someone I love is something I’d do, but I’d be absolutely terrified and heartbroken. However, when Elena was faced with the possibility of her own death, she didn’t seem to care. She passed it off as “I’m doing it to protect the people I love”, but whether that was true or not it doesn’t change the fact that she was going to die. The way Buffy reacted to finding out she was going to die is exactly how I would expect a teenager to react to receiving that kind of devastating news (x). Elena never reacted like this at the prospect of dying. In fact, when she died in 3x22 she seemed at peace, as though she was okay with the fact that she was dying. Afterwards when she woke up in transition she literally said, “I was ready to die”. It’s strange, because I always accepted that Elena didn’t want to be a vampire and that she was heartbroken at the start of season 4, but on reflection it doesn’t make sense. Elena has been around vampires and she knew that although it has it’s cons, she could still have a relatively normal life. Plus, she had a support network around her, particularly Caroline who had literally gone through the process of becoming a vampire two years previously and who had adapted to it brilliantly. I look back now and the only explanation I have for Elena’s reaction to becoming a vampire is that she wanted to die. Lets not forget that a few episodes later in 4x06 she tried to kill herself. She was under the influence of the Hunters curse, but all the curse did is bring her own self-loathing and suicidal thoughts to the forefront. And notice how in her relationships with Stefan and Damon she made some sort of reference to how they provided her with a reason to live. About Stefan: “After my parents died I kind of felt like I didn’t know how to live anymore. Like I didn’t want to. But then being with Stefan, somehow I just figured it out. And that’s what love should be. You should love the person that makes you glad that you’re alive.” About Damon: “ I’m not sorry that I met you. I’m not sorry that knowing you has made me question everything, that in death you’re the one that made me feel most alive.” Elena actively searched for something to live for in her relationships with Stefan and Damon, which just demonstrates to me that outside of those relationships she felt she has no reason to live. That’s hardly healthy and also explains why her relationship with Damon became so intense in seasons 5 and 6 to the point that she described him as being the one that defined her and felt that she couldn’t live without him.

I could continue assessing this aspect of Elena but it’ll get too long. The point is that Elena endured a lot of hurt and trauma and people crap on her for some of the shitty decisions she made (none of which are really that bad, they’re just generic incidents of self-involvement that we’re all guilty of) without taking into account the context of her character or her mental state. Even the fact that she entered into relationships with vampires as a human is indicative of self-destructive tendencies. Regardless of the humanistic qualities Stefan and Damon had, the fact that they were vampires was obviously only going to bring strife to Elena’s life, but she disregarded that and chose to be with them anyway. Elena had a lot of deep-rooted emotional issues that she didn’t really ever get to deal with because every time she tried to make progress and heal something else traumatic happened to her. People don’t want to accept that Elena was a victim because the narrative placed her as the victim, and it pisses people off, but whether you like her or not she was a victim. Almost everything that happened to and around Elena was as a result of what she was (the doppelganger) or who she was connected to (Katherine, Stefan and Damon primarily) rather than her own decisions or actions.

She was also a victim of the writing. I don’t want to bring ships into this too much because that’s a separate issue, but Elena’s entire characterisation was sacrificed for the benefit of her relationship with Damon. The writers had to change her in certain ways to make that relationship work and instead of Elena having the kind of development we generally expect characters to have (whereby they change for the better), she actually regressed as a character. Elena’s entire character was built around the idea of her being compassionate, empathetic and nurturing, and being a good friend, girlfriend and sister, but all of that immediately became null and void when she got into a relationship with Damon. How could we believe that Elena was compassionate and a good friend/sister when she willingly entered into a relationship with a man who abused and raped her best friend (Caroline), murdered her brother in front of her and kidnapped and threatened him later on in the series, brutally attacked her other best friend (Bonnie), murdered Vicki and turned her into a vampire and killed Aaron. Those are just the bad things Damon did to Elena’s friends and family that I can recall from the top of my head. And this is also a core aspect of Elena’s character that people have a problem with - her entire characterisation no longer stands when she gets into a relationship with Damon. No matter how much the writers tried to tell us post season 4 that Elena was a kind, selfless and caring person, friend and sister, being with Damon automatically invalidated all of that. For Elena to make sense as a character and exist in that relationship, they had to completely re-establish her entire personality and core traits and the writers couldn’t be bothered to do that so just swept it under the rug. The problem is that fans don’t turn a blind eye to things like that they notice it.

So the big question here is why do you, and I, and others still like Elena? Well, I can only speak for myself, but I like Elena because (prior to season 4) she was a genuinely sweet and kind-hearted person that was relatable and had lots of potential but that was done a great injustice by the writing. Elena could’ve been one of the best loved characters of all time if the writers had known how to handle her, but they lost her character amidst the triangle drama and her relationships with the Salvatore brothers (honestly, I think if the triangle didn’t exist, Elena would’ve immediately been a more well-liked character generally). She didn’t do anything to warrant the terrible things that happened to her and has been consistently bashed by fans who nit-pick the minor examples of self-centredness she displayed and overlook all the kindness she showed and the hardships she endured. The horrendous traumas she suffered through have been glossed over but honestly, as a 17 year old girl that went through everything she did, she showed incredible strength and resilience. For that alone, I cannot do anything but love Elena Gilbert.

Also, as a side-note, on a more personal level, I relate to Elena a lot as a character that’s considered flat and boring and that people see as lacking in conviction. I’m always very insecure that I’m dull, that there’s nothing interesting about me and that people will find it difficult to like me or connect to me because I’m a very neutral character. I also worry because I don’t have a specific path in mind for my future or one thing that I’m passionate about and want to dedicate my life to. And I feel like people a lot of people in real life really are like this. Not every single person in the world is super deep and multi-layered with really well-defined personalities. Not everyone is fun, vibrant, charming and charismatic. Likewise, a lot of people don’t know exactly what they want out of life (in fact, I’d argue people who know what they want are in the minority of people). A lot of people are just dull and ‘ordinary’ and don’t have their lives mapped out. We have this tendency to analyse characters based on their traits, their strengths, weaknesses, hobbies, desires, fears etc. which is fun and I love to do it, but real people are more complex than that. If I asked people that know me to describe my core personality they probably wouldn’t be able to (hell, I don’t even think I’d be able to!), because you can never really articulate the essence of what a person is no matter how hard you try. People are contradictory and personalities, feelings, thoughts, morals, beliefs etc. are very changeable. There are core aspects to who we are, but people can change the way they think or behave or what they believe all the time depending upon circumstances and experiences. Elena may not necessarily have a core personality or characterisation that is maintained across the series, but in a strange way, that makes her more human to me than any other character. And I relate so much to the way that Elena never really knows what to do when it comes to making important life decisions. It’s important to remember when analysing Elena that despite Nina looking (and being) older than 17, Elena is supposed to be a 17 year old girl. Most teenagers that age don’t have a clue who they are, what they want or who they want and are just living day to day and seeing where life takes them. That’s exactly what Elena did and since she “made it” it gives me hope that I will one day too.

Thank you so much for asking, lovely! I tried to keep this short, but I have a lot of thoughts and feelings when it comes to Elena. Hopefully I made sense, because I felt like a lot of this was very muddled and explained terribly.

#answered #my meta #tvd meta #elena gilbert #anti-delena #theofficestan

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buddiebeginz · 6 years

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I’ve been thinking a lot about why I never really took to Seb and his entire storyline. Obviously Rebecca played a huge role but I feel like she wouldn’t have mattered as much if Emmerdale recognized their mistakes and took time and care in how the rest of the story played out but they just didn’t.

I mean look at how messy everything was last year. Rob was mostly ambivalent towards Seb until he was born as he spent the majority of last year obsessed with that stupid revenge stuff against the Whites. We’re meant to care about Seb yet it felt like the show never did. We never even got one scene with Rebecca in the room talking to a doctor (until the birth which was rushed af). We never got one scene hearing his heartbeat, or seeing him on an ultra sound screen, or even knowing that Rob had seen him on the screen. For the longest time I wondered if Rebecca was actually even pregnant because of how little focus the pregnancy was being given, Emily wasn’t even padded until like the last weeks before Seb was born.

Then there was Aaron’s part in things which was and continues to be poorly handled. In the first place Aaron was left out of most things to do with Seb last year. The show also made it clear that Robron broke up not because of the cheating but because of the baby. The very idea of Seb caused Aaron’s mental health to spiral into such a dark place that he almost ended up back on spice, ended up attacked by Jason, and was self harming again. Rob didn’t even feel like he could tell Aaron he wanted to keep the ultrasound picture he had of Seb because of how much he knew it would hurt him. ED made it so Rob had to choose between Seb or Aaron. How was all of this a good way to get people who’ve loved Aaron and Robron for years to love this baby?

When Seb was born Emmerdale had the opportunity to get Aaron back involved, in fact that’s what I assumed they were doing when they had him helping Rebecca with her car and taking her to the hospital. But nope. He was treated even more like an outsider the whole entire episode. It was obvious this was about Rob, Rebecca, and their son and Aaron didn’t factor. They could have had Aaron there to sit with Rob in the waiting room to support him if there were some complications. Maybe they could have both gone and looked at Seb in the nursery together which would have been something that bonded them both to Seb from the beginning and showed where the story would be heading but instead Aaron was totally disconnected. Sure there was the talk they had the next day at the scrapyard but it was mostly Aaron encouraging Rob to be a dad to his and Rebecca’s son. Aaron even talks about how he wanted to have a future with Rob and wanted to have kids with him but how they can’t now. Every step ED continued to take with this sl they kept it clear Rob, Rebecca, and Seb were on one side Aaron was on another.

Whenever Rob was around with Seb Aaron seemed so hurt to even look at him. Aaron didn’t even want to touch Seb. Which is why I found it kind of crazy that pretty much overnight ED had Aaron holding Seb and agreeing to watch him without any real explanation. And let’s say maybe Aaron’s feelings on things were changing, he missed Rob, and wanted to get to know Seb but this is all inferred because ED never made ANY of it clear. There was never any real show of progression with Aaron’s feelings. Even when Aaron babysat Seb for the first time (before Valentine’s Day) when they had the perfect opportunity to show how he was feeling they showed nothing. Not only was this the first real considerable amount of time Aaron was spending time with Seb but time on his own so ED could have done a lot with that but they just didn’t care.

Then we basically went from that to the reunion where Aaron was all ready to take on having Seb and Rebecca in his life full time without much of an explanation. I believe Aaron loves Rob enough to be willing to do most anything for him but I still think it’s lazy writing to not explain how Aaron got to that point. Since then I feel like things have continued to be messy. Fandom acts like it’s cut and dry that Robron are Seb’s dads and have been raising him together but for as much as it’s obvious that Aaron himself feels like a dad to Seb ED keeps driving home the message that Seb is Rob and Rebecca’s first and foremost. When push comes to shove he’s not Aaron’s son.

I also feel like this family sl with Robron and Seb is lacking a ton of depth. We’ve gotten a lot of scenes with Robron and Seb this year but hardly any real insight into how they feel about being fathers and how their relationship with their own fathers affects those feelings. Which in my opinion is vital considering how dysfunctional they’re own paternal relationships are. We had Rob asking Aaron to adopt Seb but it seems like it was only because he thought Rebecca had left considering the subject was basically dropped after Rebecca came back. When Rebecca went missing Rob said multiple times that Seb needed his mother and that nothing could move forward without her. No matter what Aaron said to reassure Rob that they could raise him together Rob didn’t want to hear it.

Then Rebecca decides to leave and Rob makes the decision to let Seb go with her without so much as letting Aaron say goodbye. Now I love Rob and I wanted Seb to go but I think that was so messed up where Aaron is concerned. You can’t say that Aaron is his dad one minute and then act like he has no say the next. Now we’re in this crappy limbo where Rebecca continues to have all the power and Rob is siding with her even more than before while we wait to find out what happens with Seb. When Aaron said he was backing off from Seb Rob should have made it clear he’s Seb’s father too but he didn’t.

I just feel like I can never love or want Seb to stay when I look at all of this stuff combined. I love Rob and Aaron too much to just say yeah that’s okay how they’ve been treated this is how they deserved to have their first son. This storyline continues to be offensive, ED continues to show they don’t care especially about Aaron or his feelings. They continue to act like a man and woman will always trump a same couple especially when it comes to raising a child. A cute baby just isn’t enough to make forget all of this. So when I say I want Seb gone It’s not just because of the ons, it’s not just because of Rebecca, it’s all of it.

#rr*#anti seb #anti rebecca #tw: self harm #tw: pregnancy

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