#and the fan response to both of them baffled me

[knowlesian]

something something the era of Obligatory Deaths in genre fiction led to a place where a lot of fans can only process character death through a lens where there’s no such thing as a narratively valid and purposeful tragedy whiiiiiiiich isn’t great, bob

[mrsbuckybarnes1917]

Bucky isn't a fan of children roaming the streets in costumes and asking for candy. But it only takes one little boy to change his mind.

This is my Halloween contribution to the fandom and a shoutout to @jessybarnes, congrats on reaching 500 followers!

Word count: just over 1k

He had just gotten home. Bloodied and bruised. There hadn't been any time for him to change. In fact, he had barely stepped through his front door when his phone pinged with a notification from you.

Went to the store to grab more candy!

Bucky scowled. Halloween. He didn't have time to think about such mundane things as your favorite pagan holiday. Naturally, you felt otherwise and had taken the liberty of decorating his home for him.

It was lucky he lived in an apartment building. What was the likelihood that any kids would-

"Trick or Treat!" A chorus of voices accompanied a knock on the door.

His shoulders drooped in disappointment. Maybe he could ignore it?

"TRICK OR TREAT!" There was only one voice this time but louder than before.

Bucky was a patient man who knew multitudes of silence and stillness. He would be patient.

"Come on, Mister! I saw you go inside!" The voice of a little boy who was far less patient than he was.

A sigh escaped Bucky's lips. He was exhausted and didn't particularly want to deal with the emotional baggage that came with the way he expected a child would react to his appearance. He knew people still saw him as a monster, despite his pardon. He had no desire to see fear reflected in the eyes of innocence. But the pounding didn't stop.

He looked around wildly for something to give the expectant youth. His eyes finally landed on a bowl beside the door. There was one candy bar left inside.

Well, it was better than nothing. Bucky grabbed the bowl and wrenched open the door. An audible gasp stopped him in his tracks. He looked down to see an eight year old boy dressed as Captain America standing before him, mouth agape.

"Here kid, this is all I've got," he held out the candy bar to the frozen child.

Both Bucky and the boy stood facing each other for what felt like an eternity to Bucky. Neither of them moved and Bucky wondered if the boy's jaw could drop any further. His silence was making Bucky very uncomfortable.

"Look kid, just take this and go," he dropped the bar into the kid's pumpkin basket. As an afterthought he added, "you don't have to be scared."

"Are you an Avenger?" The boy whispered.

"Not exactly, kid."

"But you're friends with Captain America?"

Bucky was loath to answer this question, but he couldn't exactly deny that he and Sam were friends.

"I guess you can call us friends."

"Do you have superpowers?"

Bucky shrugged. He thought of superpowers belonging to heroes. He would never describe himself as one.

The kid smiled and continued talking despite Bucky’s nonverbal state. “My dad lives in Washington DC now.” 

“That’s nice?” Bucky felt the need to respond to the wide eyes which hadn’t left his face since he opened the door.

“I went to visit him over the summer. He doesn’t live with me and my mom anymore.”

Bucky didn’t miss the glaze of sadness which washed over his face, and he didn’t like how it made him feel.

“Did you like it there?” he asked the boy.

“Yeah! He took me to the Smithsonian.”

Bucky finally understood what the boy was telling him.

“I read about you.”

“Oh.” Bucky’s face fell. The kid had read about the Winter Soldier and his past. “Look, I’m not-”

“You’re my favorite!” The kid was positively beaming up at him.

“F-favorite?” Bucky stuttered, utterly baffled by the response he was receiving. “Favorite what?”

“Howling Commando!” He bobbed up and down with excitement. “You’re Steve Roger’s best friend!”

“Yeah,” Bucky’s face softened and he replied softly, saddened by the thought of his oldest friend. He missed Steve. He looked down at the child before him, his bright eyes and blonde hair. “What’s your name, kid?”

"Steve," he smiled. "My mom named me after Captain America because he saved her life when she was pregnant with me. Dad tells me what happened as a bedtime story on my birthday." The light behind his eyes dimmed with his last words. "He missed it this year."

"I'm sorry, pal."

"Next time I see him, I'm going to tell him I met an Avenger!"

"I bet he will be real impressed!" Bucky smiled, choosing not to correct little Steve.

"When I grow up, I wanna be just like you!"

"I don't think you want that," Bucky answered wistfully.

"You don't think I can be a hero?" Little Steve's face fell.

"Of course you can!" Bucky inwardly cursed his use of language. He knelt down in front of the boy and laid a hand on his shoulder. "But you know my friend, Sam Wilson? Captain America?"

Little Steve nodded solemnly.

"He's the guy you want to grow up to be. Got that?"

"Yes sir, Mr Bucky."

"But if you ever tell him I said that, you'll never get candy here again. Understood?" Bucky said sternly, dropping his last candy bar into the kid's pumpkin basket.

"I'd better get going or I'll miss out on the good candy. No offense, but you gotta get something better than this."

"Working on it, pal," Bucky smiled as you turned the corner, arms laden with several bags. He unburdened you and emptied the contents of one bag into Little Steve's small hands.

He delighted in the sight of the boy's bright eyes and toothy grin. "Thanks!" he cried, backing away with his sugary horde.

"Don't eat it all at once!" Bucky called after him. 

You stood to the side watching the way Bucky had spoken to the little boy, giving him a smug smile.

"What?" Bucky frowned.

"What was that about?" You pointed between Bucky and the spot where Little Steve had stood.

"Kids these days, no respect. We didn't have the luxury of being given this much sugar when I was a kid."

"Is that why you gave him half of what I just brought back?"

Bucky shrugged.

"Come on, let's go inside. The kids may think that blood is fake, but I know better!" You steered Bucky into the apartment. "And if you're good, you'll get a treat too!"

“Did I mention that dress looks incredible on you?" Bucky smirked, eyeing your rockabilly cap sleeve dress with its sweetheart neck and flared skirt. True to the Halloween spirit, it was covered in a pumpkin and ghost design.

You put your arms around his neck. “There will definitely be treats tonight,” you purred into his ear.

[sky-fire-forever]

To the people who say that Ed never harmed the Kraken Crew:

I am genuinely so confused by this take. First of all: Ed is shown to be violent even if that's not directed at the Kraken Crew specifically. He threw Lucius overboard and thinks he killed him in cold blood and he tortures Izzy by mutilating him. Even IF he never physically harms Jim, Frenchie, Fang, or Ivan directly, he is still behaving violently. He is killing people and taking out his depression on both Izzy and the innocent people (ish, they're still naval officers) that they are raiding.

Even if Izzy (and Lucius, remember) are the only direct victims of his physical abuse... they are still victims of that abuse? No matter what Izzy has done, be it threaten him, verbally lashing out at him, or even abuse of his own if you interpret it that way justifies how Ed physically takes him apart and makes him EAT parts of himself. That is beyond abuse. That is both physical and mental literal torture

And remember, Lucius was entirely innocent. He was actively trying to HELP Ed and that did not stop Ed from behaving violently towards him.

If you say since we see no signs of Ed abusing the Kraken Crew, I will remind you that the way Ed led the Kraken Crew got Ivan killed. Ivan DIED due to decisions made during Ed's time as captain of The Revenge, likely due to the constant raids making them exhausted and weakening their ability to fight.

We don't know enough about Ivan's death for me to really say that for certain, so it's speculation. But if Ivan died during a raid, the responsibility still falls on Ed's shoulders. He is their captain, it is his job to protect and defend his crew and we are explicitly told that he did not bat an eye when Ivan went down. We even see Ed kill a member of his own crew during his suicide attempt. A crew member falls overboard and we see Fang reach for them. This is directly caused by Ed sailing into that storm.

He points a gun at his crewmates and they have NO IDEA if he's going to shoot him. They're clearly afraid that he might. Fang starts crying and they all tense up. Frenchie expects Ed to kill him when he finds out that he's been hiding Izzy. They are afraid of their captain, they believe he does not care about their lives and that he could kill them at any moment.

This is abuse. I genuinely do not care if it is physical towards anyone but Izzy or not, it is abuse plain and simple. Ed behaves in an abusive manner towards his crew. That abuse actively puts their lives in danger. Constantly forcing them to go on raid after raid after raid for no reward (because he makes them dump the treasure that they believe they are earning for themselves, as Frenchie flat out asks Izzy if they're receiving "their cut") and exhausting them in the process makes them more likely to be killed on the field. Fighting while exhausted and demoralized is fucking difficult!

And before anyone says that's just life aboard a pirate ship, isn't Ed supposed to be better? Isn't he supposed to be better than Hornigold? Even Ed remembers having good times on Hornigold's ship with Jack. And the Kraken Crew appear constantly exhausted and terrified, carving out their own moments of joy just like Ed had to while under Hornigold

I have seen posts claiming that Izzy fans have a disconnect between interpretation of a character and their actual actions, but the lengths I have seen (certain, not all) Ed fans go to to completely absolve Ed of his cruelest actions absolutely baffles me. Like... Ed made Fang kill his dog and that's BEFORE he became the Kraken.

Ed is a dark character. He does twisted shit. Is that not INTERESTING to you? Does it not fascinate you that a man perfectly capable of torturing his crew and driving them harder and harder and harder until some of them die fueled by his own desire to make himself irredeemable STILL at his core is a man who wants nothing more than to be loved? Do you not find it somewhat beautiful and that this man with so much blood on his hands is still told "someone will love you. You are not a monster, but a person despite your cruelty"? Do you not think the story of a man so completely consumed by all he has done realizing that he can not erase the damage of what he did isn't a good tale to tell? Do you think there is a fundamental difference between the man who tells Stede not to kill and the man who has killed for himself?

I feel like stripping him of his horror takes away so much of who he is. So much of what makes him interesting. He CHOOSES to leave Stede's crew on an island to die of exposure or starvation. He CHOOSES to basically kidnap Frenchie and Jim. He CHOOSES to hurt those closest to him in horrible ways

And he chooses to come back from that. Chooses to try to do better. To learn. To grow. To love.

I have issues with season two, but if we had more time to watch Ed come back from this, to see him make amends with the crew he so horribly damaged, I would have thought this was the best arc ever. Redemption stories are my favorite because it shows that everyone is capable of both good and evil. Ed is capable of both too. I really wish people would see his growth for what it is: a man so entrenched in violence with a nonlinear recovery that hurts people and still keeps trying anyway. Rather than someone who never hurts anyone at all

[levyfiles]

Do you have a source confirming the variety article was incorrect about watcher’s plan to remove their videos from youtube, rather than that being them changing their minds very quickly? All the official watcher statements I saw still point to a changing of minds imo but maybe there’s something I missed

First of all, the wording before the edit is adamant that they will be removing the videos and I can understand why anyone first reading this would lose their shit. But then

Meredith's reply and what made me feel like something was screwy is Steven's message not long after when he jumped in the chat to get some clarity to the brunt of the backlash.

Not only was he baffled that anyone thought they were doing this in the first place but subsequent answers from fans which informed him what the variety article said seemed to have him racing off to put out even more fires.

Not long after that, the article underwent a quick edit.

The wording is so messy. It both implies that Watcher gave some secret insider gossip but only Ryan Bergara--their original source-- refuted that aspect. Why would the source refute the source? It's so badly worded and people took this and ran with it but the wording is very much like the author misunderstood and used the second bit to cover their ass. There is no mention in the article that they changed their minds either; just a very sloppily-written addition.

Then Meredith who was deep in the trenches trying to give as much info as possible while refuting misinfo was posting below:

When do we imagine they changed their minds last minute? If it was a response to the backlash, then Steven and Meredith's behaviour doesn't make sense considering it was 8am PT, only minutes to less than an hour after the announcement dropped. If it was between the time Variety got their original statement to the launch date, clearly someone got their wires crossed because this section appears to have broadsided the team inasmuch as the accusations that them changing their minds in the first place is a character flaw.

[autistichalsin]

I know I am in the extreme minority, but there hasn't been a single change Larian has made to the game post-release that I have worse than neutral about, and most of them I consider moderate to extreme improvements. There are some added lines I didn't like per se, but I never liked those less than what was (not) there originally. Some examples (most Halsin-focused because those are the ones I pay the most attention to)

Neutral:

Changing Gortash's note

Allowing the Dark Urge to have a flirty line with Gortash (if that has been confirmed)

Changes to certain dismissal lines

Halsin's line if you show him Kagha's letter

Spawn Astarion's response if the player sleeps with Mizora

Some of the new lines for Halsin re: Baldur's Gate, Shadow Druids, etc

Liked:

Additions to the epilogue that let you talk to your (former?) love interest if you went to hell with Avernus, rode dragons with Lae'zel, etc

Other new lines for Halsin re: Baldur's Gate, Shadow Druids, etc

Scenes dealing with Vlaakith path Lae'zel ascending, the implications of this, etc in the end

Loved:

New kisses

Camp idle behaviors

The Halsin-Minthara ultimatum

The epilogue party

Halsin's expanded post-Drow discussion

Halsin's platonic path

The updated lines when spawn Astarion gets burned in the sun

Cuddling cinematic post-Drow foursomes/moresomes

The new bad ending sequence, both in terms of animation, and the fact that now romanced Minthara or Ascended Astarion who encouraged the player to take over are spared by the player (if anything, I feel they could change this bit MORE and give us more of the aftermath of the player thralling their friends and loved ones)

The new note in the epilogue from Archdruid Francesca, mentioning sending Ormn to live with Halsin at his commune

The new Speak With the Dead lines for Halsin if he dies to Orin instead of in the goblin camp

Karlach's ending with Wyll and/or the player in Avernus

The option to tell Halsin you want to join him at his commune

... Etc.

I can think of nothing off the top of my head that I think made the game worse. At worst I might go "strange to add that as it didn't change anything," I.E. Halsin's non-reaction to Kagha's note. I didn't hate it- I just felt it added nothing. (Maybe it's a way of setting flags for the dialogues specific to Halsin knowing about the Shadow Druids in case the player didn't investigate Kagha before finding him?) But I can't think of anything that made the story/my experience worse in any way.

I know people keep complaining that Larian is "listening to some fans over others" and such, but to me, I don't think they have done that? Very few of these seem in any way like they were influenced by fan complaints (and the few that were, were, in my opinion, definite improvements, I.E. the player/Wyll going to Avernus with Karlach, Halsin's additional post-Drow dialogue, etc). And of course, Larian has shown they also have no problem NOT adding things when it goes against their vision- they have repeatedly shut down requests for an expanded evil path, haven't added to Wyll's story despite very loud fan outcry, haven't made Halsin monogamous despite a very vocal group of fans calling for this on the Larian forums and Discord... etc. It clearly isn't number or loudness of the fans influencing 95% of these changes- it's Larian adding things that already fit in their vision.

I guess it is also baffling to me because I'm used to games that are either from series that have been dead for decades or are rushed out just as money grabs (Pokemon) with little attention given after besides minimal bug fixes and content for paid DLCs (cough, Pokemon). To see a game that reflects on their story (or just general experience, like their constantly giving Cazador buffs in tactician mode) and constantly changes what they think should be is, in my opinion, pretty admirable. I truly don't understand all the outrage- to me, it's a sign they care about their story and want it to be the best they can make it, even after people have already paid them for it.

I know i'm in the minority here, but the changes make me respect Larian a lot more than I already did.

[ambelle]

I’ve talked vaguely about white liberals treatment of BW both in real life and in fandom spaces but I feel I should expand on that.

A while back a BW wrote an article about how BM are the white people of the black community. White people were offended and baffled and BM protested. The thing is it's very much true. BM, along with BW are oppressed under a system stacked against us (along with many other demographics), but because BW are women we are also oppressed by BM.

White liberals have the privilege to not have grown up in the hood like I did. So they can claim a world without cops wouldn't turn into open season on BW at the hands of BM. They can say gangs, drive-bys, and drug dealers aren't dangerous and BM shouldn't be prevented from doing it. But when I was little I couldn't use the playgrounds because drug dealers used them as a place to deal and recruit little boys. I couldn't go to the local skating rink because gangs would go there to fight and shoot it up. I had to play in the street with my friends because the MEN in the community were ruining spaces meant for children. Erasing safety in general actually. Not the white president, the men in the community. I can say systematic racism and the BM who did a random drive-by on my house and raped little girls were both oppressing me. Both are true.

But it's not true to the white liberals who have a complete blind spot when it comes to BW because they don't acknowledge we are women. They see us as strong unwavering aggressive machines. We make good allies but they don't need to help us because we are invincible duh. It's the "bw saved the day" shit after every election followed by them going right back to ignoring us the next day.

It's them ignoring all the crazy stats about violence against BW to whitesplain to us how abolishing the police is a great idea. The men harming us will simply stop if they know we don't even have someone we may call for help. Let's abolish the police because they harm BM and BM never do anything they should be arrested for including my rapist. He was simply a victim of white supremacy and I should have hugged him after like the strong mammy I was born to be. No need to talk about black femicide.

Basically, white liberals care about BM (because it's trendy not because they give a shit see ANTIFA), BW care about BM, BM care about BM, and no one gives a shit about BW. That's the reality

But white libs in fandoms are racist in a different way. They like to adopt the struggles of demographics that are oppressed in real life and apply it to white characters. It's why characters like Silco and Jinx are so appealing to them.

(both trying to kill Zaunites here BTW)

Make no mistake If Silco were black fans would be holding them accountable same with Jinx. But they are white and they are (were) oppressed. That's literally a white liberal dream. They get to ignore the fact that Silco and Jinx are rich and they got rich by oppressing poor people and forcing children into child labor.

(that Zaunite teen boy died not that anyone cares. )

They get to weaponize classism to excuse the violence and murder they commit against other poor people. Who cares how many orphans he creates or how many poor children he tries to murder.

Mind you not only was Silco rich off the backs of poor people and the labor of kids, he used the enforcers to help him not only oppress his own people but also frame Ekko (ironically a BM) and the Firelights for crimes he and Jinx were committing.

Jinx who killed multiple Zaunites on purpose and tried to kill Ekko later on. Jinx who is rich and has no motive for the violence she commits. Jinx who is working for the man she KNOWS killed her father figure and tried to kill her siblings. Jinx who never once takes responsibility for any of the choices she makes. But she's white. It's why the fandom supports her hetero ship with Ekko (who they headcanon as being her emotional crutch). They only care about heteronormativity when there is a black woman they want to erase. No other straight pairing gets called "disgusting", "forced", "shoehorned", "a betrayal", or "immoral". Mel is forceful and aggressive. She's a seductress who manipulates Jayce into her bed and into doing her evil deeds.

(He's clearly not into her at all)

He should be kissing Vik's ass and worshipping the ground he walks on. Speaking of Viktor ...him using tech for his own gains, secretly merging his DNA with the core, getting addicted to shimmer, killing a fellow Zaunite and converting up her death + stealing her notes is something no one will discuss.

Because he's white , was once poor, and is "gay-coded". He's thus entitled to murdering a brown woman and entitled to Jayce's body. They weaponize LGBTQ+ rep in order to justify their racism much like the left does in real life.

Mel who shows no ill will towards Viktor is accused of being ableist and classist because she gave him a look when he was arguing with her. Mel who explains why she wants defensive weapons and has several scenes reiterating her motive is accused of wanting war and genocide.

Mel who has exchanged flirty looks with Jayce every episode before she kisses him is accused of raping him. Mel who isn't at all a part of the Vander/Silco/Jinx shenanigans in ep 1 is blamed for the death of Jinx's family because she "controls the council" (even though they often vote against her and Heimerdinger gets a pass despite being there when the cities were founded). Because she's black and rich. Thus they can weaponize poverty in order to villainize BW.

They shout over the people who are actually oppressed. Over the people who know what it's like to have drug dealers and gangs make your life hell while the government does the same on a less personal scale.

This is what white liberals do. It's not new. I won't even get into the weird ass envy/hatred/lust thing they have for bw. The dehumanizing and hypersexualizing shit they do is a whole other essay.

[river-of-wine]

i agree with ur post abt the RE villians so much… the way people treat the lords is honestly the way people should have treated the bakers 😭😭 who were like actually not even themselves like they were literally being controlled…

donna especially bothers me with how people treat her as a innocent defensless victim that was attacked by ethan when she lured him into her house with a hallucination of his dead wife, OPENED THE DOORS FOR HIM, and then trapped him in there… the end of donnas fight is even more frustrating when ethan was literally forced to stab angie in order to avoid being stabbed to death by a bajillion dolls but people still take it as “ethan chasing her down”

and i 100% agree with ur take on the hcs about karl… there r so many that r taken as fact just to put him in a more sympathetic light which bothers me alot because its clearly not true… u dont have to try and make ur character look better to like them… sometimes u should just accept a villian as a villian! i remember i used to think karl being taken as a child was canon because it was so widely agreed upon and brought up in arguments that i thought it was real 😭😭

and oh brother… dont get me started on the deal… could u imagine how incredibly OOC it would have been for ethan to take that deal? where after fighting tooth and nail and the expense of his own life to keep his baby daughter safe no matter the cost to turn around and be compliant in using said baby daughter as a weapon…?! naw!!! it wasnt on ethan to have to negotiate with karl to make a better deal, especially when ethan turned him down the first time after being rightfully angry at the insinuation of using rose as a weapon. and karl doesnt explain, doesnt negotiate on his side, he kicks his chair down and threatens ethan, he uses fear to try and get ethan to join him

that is not good intentioned!!! and thats ok!!!! hes a villian!!! his ego got bruised when ethan turned him down! so he got mad and kicked him down the propellor hole! thats not on ethan!

i wish people could appreciate the character for who they r… its not karl if u strip away his arrogance and ego 🥲

(sorry for the lomg ask, i really like resident evil and that post u made was so real…)

ALL THIS EXACTLY!! I have been a Resident Evil fan since the year RE7 came out and let me tell you I was baffled when I played RE8 and saw Miss Kill and Maim and Murder and her cocky cowboy brother be treated like the new Jack Baker. He became infected by protecting his daughter from his crazed wife and he doesn’t even hold the events of the game against Eveline when he speaks to Ethan about

The response Donna gets is particularly frustrating because at least with some of the more sympathetic looks at Alcina and Karl, there are HINTS at the fucked up people they actually are. Donna is essentially turned into an entirely different character.

The closest thing I think I can compare Donna’s fanon characterisation to is Eveline, but even that isn’t entirely accurate. Eveline is ten years old and given that fact as well as her upbringing, if that’s what we can call her being raised as a weapon in a lab, I really doubt she understands the gravity of what she has done. She doesn’t understand why people are angry with her and, as we know from both her and Jack, all she wants is a family. But all this in mind, Eveline can still be quite a mean kid. I don’t blame her for this at all, it’s a completely understandable response for her to have as a young child in her situation, but she is controlling the Baker family to be violent murderers, makes Mia attack her own husband and is particularly malicious towards Rose. Eveline has fun with some of her meanness as well. She laughs at Zoe as she runs off to infect her family, she taunts Ethan before he reveals the neurotoxin that he has, she mocks Rose when she tells her the crystal isn’t in House Beneviento. Again, while I don’t really blame Eveline for behaving this way and she was also entirely a victim, Eveline is also not presented as being a naive and palatable villain.

Donna, in canon, is not Eveline. She’s nothing like Eveline. Eveline is a child who can’t comprehend the severity of what she has done to the Baker family. Donna is a grown woman. A mentally ill woman, yes, but we aren’t shown any signs that said unspecified mental illnesses make her into the weak, incapable and naive version of her character that is so spread around the fanbase.

House Beneviento is inaccessible unless Donna lets you in. You cannot get inside if she doesn’t let you, and she intentionally lures Ethan inside with hallucinations of Mia, who he very recently watched get shot multiple times and die. She makes him give her the only thing he has left of her, the photo of Mia and Rose, before he gets inside, and once he’s in there Donna continues to very specifically target fears Ethan has about protecting his family with the hallucinations.

The flowers didn’t just appear around House Beneviento for no reason. Donna doesn’t think Ethan will have fun physically taking a mannequin of his wife apart or hearing her crying voice over the radio. Genuinely, I do not know how people can look at that baby hallucination, a horrifying recreation of Ethan’s dismembered infant daughter chasing him down through narrow hallways and still think Donna had no ill intentions whatsoever.

Donna’s death is jarring and upsetting, it gives a completely new light to what Ethan was doing and just how intense those hallucinations were, but Donna was not just fleeing Ethan unaware of why he was attacking her and Ethan was not just attacking Donna for no reason. Not only is she swarming him with dolls filled with razors and knives, she’s also mocking him through Angie and suggesting that he is a bad, even abusive father.

Donna is the one of the lords who comparatively has the least reason to be attacking Ethan. While I do not think Ethan was unjustified in the slightest, he did trespass on Alcina’s property and kill one of her daughters and he did make Karl mad because he didn’t take his deal. Those are reasons. Donna just kind of fucked with Ethan because??? Like why did she do that??? She’s a fucked up lady that’s why. And that’s what makes her interesting. House Beneviento is insane and scary and watering down the woman responsible for it all is so boring!

Speaking of Karl, I’m not at all surprised he received the response that he did. He’s a conventionally attractive male villain with a cocky demeanour, a fun voice and a backstory with a hint of sympathy. Of course he gets babied and woobified to no end. I completely agree with you about the headcanons surrounding him. For a while I just felt insane and I was convinced that somewhere in my three playthroughs that I had missed something somewhere, like I found his damp cigar but not the document that explains that he was kidnapped as a child by Mother Miranda. There’s nothing that suggests that in his lines or any of the documents about him, and I think people get so blinded by the Heisenberg that they want to exist that the Heisenberg who does exist fades into the background.

AND YEAH! NO WAY ETHAN SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT DEAL! ABSOLUTELY NO WAY! To recap what Heisenberg has done to him at this point, he has:

• brought him to the lords and Mother Miranda where he and Alcina argued over who gets to violently murder him

• put him through his little lycan torture tunnel and almost killed him with that spinning spike cylinder

• forced him through another lycan den where he has to deal with them as well as Urias

• suggested using his six month old baby who has already been dismembered as a weapon to further his own goal

Like fuck no! Get away from me! I’m out of here! Ethan’s primary goal was never to kill Mother Miranda, it was to save Rose, why risk both himself and Rose trusting this man who is not only one of the group of people who have been trying to get him killed this whole time and who has also personally tried to get him killed multiple times before now? Ethan’s main motivation is always to protect his family. It’s why canonically Mia will always be the right choice in RE7, it’s why he ended up in Louisiana in the first place, it’s why he’s here, it’s why he’s kept going even after finding his daughter’s head in a flask on the suggestion that he can save her. He’s not going to use her as a weapon because this guy wants to.

Also SO TRUE ABOUT HEISENBERG JUST NOT EXPLAINING ANYTHING!! I hadn’t thought about that but yeah. Yeah! He didn’t explain a thing clearly, didn’t try to negotiate, just got all mad and threatened Ethan when he said no to his deal.

Karl is a total love to hate character for me. Kind of similarly to Lucas, he’s a mad genius type who likes to taunt Ethan over an intercom while Ethan deals with whatever new horror they’ve made for him to face and just doesn’t shut up, and I wouldn’t have him any other way! His huge ego and over confidence is so fun and it’s what makes him as memorable as he is. Same with Alcina! They’re two total show offs who have done incredibly fucked up shit, Alcina more so, and similarly to Jack while he’s under Eveline’s control it’s this cockiness and extreme nature to their violent actions that make them memorable and entertaining villains.

Donna is scary! She’s really scary! Imagine an adversary you can’t even see, who has complete control over what you see and experience, and is using that to force you through some of your deepest fears. Ethan isn’t her first victim either, and the psychological aspect to what she puts him through is deeply unsettling, taking Donna’s very intentional use of Mia and the fears about Rose being unable to be fixed away from her leaves her with nothing.

Why strip these villains of what makes them fun or scary? It’s a horror game! It’s a Resident Evil game! One of the most memorable Resident Evil characters ever is a very tall man in a trench coat and a funny hat. These games are over the top and campy and it’s also a horror game! There’s going to be fucked up people in it and it’s fine to like them if they’re fucked up! It’s weird that that has to be said!

No need to apologies about the long ask!! Resident Evil 7 and 8 are two of my biggest special interests and I love talking about them, especially about a bunch of very interesting characters who get so watered down and woobified it’s basically not them anymore. Thanks for giving me another excuse to talk about it!

[mimiwrites2000]

Attack On… Podcast!

Archive of Our Own

As the Attack on Titan series comes to an end after ten years, the cast is reunited in hosting a podcast, talking about their times on the set of the filming, their friendships, and all in-between.

And well, shenanigans are inevitable.

Attack on Titan acting AU, as the cast host a podcast, and interview the rest of the cast.

Episode 02

Armin: On that day, mankind received a grim reminder. We lived in fear of the Titan–

Eren: Armin you really don't have to start every episode with that.

Mikasa: Hey, he enjoys it, let him be.

Eren: I shall obey.

Armin laughing: welcome! To the second episode of this podcast! Again here we talk about our time in the show Attack on Titan, and as you already heard her voice, our special surprise guest for today is the one and only, Mikasa! 

Eren cheering: the queen herself has blessed us! 

Mikasa: Well, thank you, I am happy to be here.

Armin: So for you who don't know, since everyone will be asking this in the comments, yes, they are a couple in real life, and yes, they did meet on set, and yes, they are engaged, you could've known all of that if you follow them on Instagram.

Mikasa laughing:  I mean you could've announced it a little bit more cheerful.

Eren: yeah what's up Armin–

Armin: don't even try Eren, and I will be your best man, you really don't have a choice.

Eren laughing: Alright, Mikasa, my beloved, would you do us the honors of reading our first question? 

Mikasa: Of course, so, this is… from Tumblr, oooh you guys have fans on Tumblr.

Armin: if that's not enough indication that we are unhinged then I don't know what is.

Eren laughing so hard: what makes it even stupider is that this is literally only our second episode.

Armin: the fangirls be fangirling!

Eren: the tumblr be tumblring!

Mikasa: I had my good Tumblr phase.

Armin: actually you do still have your good Tumblr phase, everyone go follow her at Mikasa_Ackreman, she posts nice sad poetic stuff–

Mikasa: That's not true, anyway so this question here says, oh this is actually a special question for me, me and my boyfriend love you so much, aw thank you I love you too, do you still have that red scarf from set? 

Eren: Oh boy.

Mikasa: I do, actually, there were so many replicas of the scarf, because it kept tearing up because of all the stunts we were doing.

Eren whispering: she's the only one who did all of her stunts.

Mikasa shaking her head: and yeah because of the stunts, we had to have many scarves, which, I have them all. And before Eren starts complaining yes I do have them in our house–

Eren: They are everywhere!

Mikasa: But I am looking into turning them into pillows or something! 

Armin laughing: you have a wedding to plan.

Mikasa: I know! I know! But hear me out, I do, in fact, still have the scarf from that very first episode.

Armin: awwww.

Mikasa: because it means so much to me, it started my whole career, and it made me fall in love with that guy over there.

Eren: didn't take long to charm her! A scarf was all it took.

Armin: genuinely still baffled how she said yes.

Eren laughing: hey what do you know about love? We were meant to be! 

Armin: yes yes, actually, they are the reason why I still believe in love, they have something… that I've never seen before, they are the true embodiment of love and respect.

Eren: Is your goal making me cry?

Armin: no but genuinely sick of third wheeling you both.

Mikasa laughing: we never did that intentionally!

Armin: You literally left me in the movie theater the other day.

Eren: hey–

Armin: and didn't notice I was gone until you got home!

Eren laughing: you realize you're stuck in this forever.

Armin: yeah I cry every night! 

Mikasa: save your tears for the wedding.

Armin: Speaking of your wedding, did you pick a dress?

Mikasa: well…

Eren: Hold on, you chose a dress?

Mikasa: I… might have.

Eren: alright let's end the podcast here– 

Armin laughing: nope! Nope, sorry, I might have caused a couple to fight! I take full responsibility!

Eren: yeah you better do, and read this next question.

Armin: yeah so, again from Tumblr, we got this ask that says… who is your favorite titan? oh the female titan for sure.

Eren: Ok, that was quick.

Mikasa: yeah that was quick.

Armin: I mean, come on, the female titan is the coolest of all titans.

Eren: well my favorite titan is definitely my own titan, because that's the coolest thing of all time, and by the way, I think this photo did it's circulation around the internet already, but my final titan form, the whole head, was not CGI, the set designers actually built that, like the whole titan head, and the inside of it, for the final scene of my character, and it was so cool.

Armin: we had great talents on set, I mean, the set designs and all that, like, despite having all the generated effects in post, so many great locations and in-camera effects were shot on set, and all of it was absolutely mind blowing, they brought back filmmaking techniques from decades ago and merged it with current technology and the result was mind-blowing.

Mikasa: our whole village, in Shiganshina was built in a sound stage, and we cried when they had to ruin it for the third season haha.

Armin: yeah we did, I remember that, it felt like they were destroying our own home, it was ridiculous.

Eren: Mikasa.

Mikasa: yes.

Eren: What's your favorite titan?

Mikasa: well…

Eren: I know your answer.

Mikasa: it's actually the armored titan.

Eren: excuse you-

Mikasa: when we were kids, seeing it in the final movie and all that, for me, at that time, or even now, it was magic.

Eren: You betrayed me.

Mikasa: if you accept my scarves –

Eren: Accepted! 

Armin: Alright alright, so the third and final question we have for today, Eren do us the honors?

Eren: Sure, so, again from Tumblr, what was your first reaction when you read the finale script for the first time? Armin has a good answer for this.

Armin: I do, so, we do read the manga, so we already knew the ending, but having the final script in our hands, in my hand, it was a strange sense of fulfillment. I mean, working on a project for over ten years, by the end of those years, you are excited to be done with this project and try other projects and explore more fields, but it's hard, it's not easy.

Mikasa: I like to think of it as moving away to college, all the fights you have with your parents and you just want to move away and you have this great fantasy of a wild college life, then you are hit with the reality and as the date of moving out comes closer, you want to push it away.

Eren: yeah, yeah, exactly, we are all looking forward to our next projects, and what life holds for us, but a huge part of us is still on that set.

Armin: yeah… you guys will make me cry.

Mikasa: aw, no, hey listen, we are still here, cheers to that?

Eren: cheers to that indeed! Also, by the way, Mikasa and Armin were the only ones to actually go to college and keep up with our crazy shooting schedule.

Mikasa: and we graduated with great grades.

Eren: ok ok you don't have to rub it in my face.

Armin: I'll be the first to sign a petition for Eren to go to college.

Eren: naaaah, that's just not meant for me.

Armin: well, we get to another end of our podcast, and we will meet you next time, with two special guests next time, tune in.

Eren: Mikasa, did you actually pick a dress?

[johnmarstonisawolf]

I love both John and Arthur

“RDR1 Represents John’s Character Growth” Argument… 

I’ve seen people get blocked for disagreeing with the types of posts that complain about “Rdr fans disliking John’s characterization in rdr2”.  I’d rather just agree to disagree but if anyone doesn’t like where this post is going, please feel free to use the block button.

Also, in this post, I am repeating some things I’ve written in past responses/posts. Plus I have read other fans’ posts and opinions about this topic, which will be sprinkled throughout this post. 

Here it goes… Mainly for me, it’s the ret-con. It’s not that John can’t be this man with flaws, but in the first game (rdr1) they hint a lot at John (when he’d been in the gang in the past tense, before the events in rdr2) being this quixotic, well-spoken, “right-hand man of Dutch”, which were traits that were all given to Arthur in rdr2. Even Bill and Abigail hint at this. If you want to hear another rdr fan go more in-depth about this, read here. Plus Rockstar in so many words had explained why they made John a humiliation conga because they didn’t want John to “overshadow” Arthur. 

Yes, Arthur is older and yes, John could’ve been influenced by Arthur (but only by so much, I mean, c’mon John and Arthur are their own person). Yet the fact that Arthur is not even mentioned in rdr1 (yes, rdr2 hadn’t even been created yet. I know.) and they decided to “downgrade” John in rdr2 and give all of these admirable traits (they allude to in rdr1 about John) to Arthur is what baffles me. 

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Arthur’s character. However, it’s the high pedestal that this fandom puts him on, emphasizing his positive traits while continually bashing John in the process, that does me in.

We get it, John wasn’t a good father or a good husband, he treats his wife and kid like crap (he gets better tho), he deserves whatever criticism he gets for those horrible actions of his, but we got to remember this is the Wild West; Abigail nor John had the resources or skills to deal with their own trauma much less even raise a boy in a gang, especially Abigail. But that’s not downplaying the fact that John is a very emotionally-mentally damaged person (as a result of many forms of abuse and being raised by Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur, who aren’t the best examples) while at the same time, Abigail is a very emotionally-mentally damaged person (as a result of many forms of abuse and being raised and working in a brothel) who’s had to carry a kid for 9 months and march on through with barely having much help, aside from some individuals in the gang who helped her—I’m not gonna go with the narrative that not a single person in the gang helped. 

Listen, it’s not that we can’t handle seeing John being this pathetic version of himself that the devs chose to portray him as in rdr2 (so he wouldn’t overshadow Arthur and lazy writing) or that we can’t watch him grow from this immature and flawed human being to a man who loves his wife and child and would do anything for them… but it’s how it was done and how rockstar did it. 

They also did Johnny boy’s physical character design very poorly in the epilogue; in the epilogue (1907) he barely showcases any of the traits we see in (1911) rdr1 (a four-year difference, timeline-wise, which really isn’t that long). Although NPC John and Epilogue John might look different from each other, their personalities aren’t much different. So there’s not much of a change in my opinion.

Also, I just want to clarify that this post isn’t about the fandom preferring Arthur over John but more so about how John’s characterization was done in rdr2 compared to rdr1, which can’t merely be attributed to “character growth” rather than lazy writing.  Understandably, many people prefer Arthur over John. Hence compared to the first game, rdr2 has better accessibility, players get to go more into the protagonist’s mind, and many game mechanics have improved/developed since rdr1 was released. But rdr1 was an acclaimed game when it came out with many fans that still remain in this fandom, in spite of rdr2’s wider exposure. 

And if I was going to mention anything that the games were kind of consistent with when it came to John’s characterization, is that he has a dry and cynical personality that reflects the protagonists of old spaghetti westerns, and the unforgiving world that makes up the Wild West.

Personally, while I do like his character in both games (he’s my fave) I still feel like there’s a bit more they could’ve done with his character in rdr2, in regards to missions and stuff, I would even say the devs had put more effort into some supporting characters compared to John, but that’s just my opinion. And I was really hoping for a rdr1 remaster but more so in a Yakuza Kiwami way (amped-up gameplay, fixed plot holes, better character detail, quality improvements, etc…)

[jinxthejubilee]

Random Thoughts ❤️‍🩹

A dynamic that's been hinted at and should be expanded upon in the game, for Today's Topic: Mammon and Michael's Relationship

Warning: Spoilers for Obey Me, mentions of unseen characters, neglect? (Kind of)

-------------------------------------------------------

It's a bit baffling to me that the devs haven't addressed this, but the fans surely have! For better or for worse (mostly worse for Michael tho).

But really, the concept of the brother's previous relationships and what they mean to them now that they're demons, is really fascinating.

We get bits and pieces from Simeon and how he deals with his complicated emotions towards the demons he once called brothers, but that's a topic for another day.

So let's break down what we know about Michael the Archangel:

Michael is the leader of the Celestial Realm's legion of angels.

He was described as Lucifer's "twin," having been very close to one another.

During his early life in the Celestial Realm, Mammon was once the little brother of Michael.

According to Asmodeus in Lesson 27-19, Michael couldn't handle/didn't know how to deal with Mammon, and as such, Lucifer had taken Mammon under his care.

Michael himself has been described as "too upfront about his desires," and places unreasonable responsibilities and tasks upon the people who work under him.

However, many of those same angels respect him and see him as a good person.

Both Mammon and Raphael view him as "weird" and "socially inept."

Many of Luke and Simeon's tasks to Michael, according to the chats, are to find and bring him sweets. He apparently has pretty lavish tastes.

Luke has stated repeatedly that Michael is one of his mentors and reports directly to him.

And according to Simeon, Michael is "calm, yet stern" when he is angry, and he prefers to talk things out as opposed to physical discipline.

Now, as fun as it would be for Michael to be this extremely cold, two-faced perfectionist that tormented Mammon during his younger days in the Celestial Realm, bringing this moral dilemma about how angels are not always the "pure and virtuous" beings we all see them as, I'm sad to say that that's not what we got here (rip fanfic writers).

But really, game Michael is far different than the absolute bastard people write him as. And that in and of itself, intrigues me.

So how did Michael treat Mammon during their time together?

Now, seeing as Michael has a tendency to thrust work onto other people, you would think that would serve as an aspect as to why Mammon was removed from him. But I don't think that was the case.

Think about it, despite how he might complain, Mammon DOES enjoy working. Whether that be physically: finding jobs to pay off his debt, to help someone, or to buy MC something as a gift, or mentally: keeping tabs on his family's emotional states; Mammon can and will get stuff done when he puts his mind to it.

And Mammon most definitely will learn and help all that he can when it comes to the people closest to him, so what was the issue?

Well, according to Mammon himself:

Not exactly the most respectful image Michael nor Raphael had of Mammon, right?

I'm sure that we all can picture Mammon as a rambunctious little tyke who the elder angels had trouble "controlling."

With that in mind, Michael most likely didn't have much faith in Mammon's ability to help him either. As a brother, nor a protégé.

So I'm willing to bet that Michael wouldn't let Mammon do much, or try to distract him with menial tasks that Mammon knew were not important.

Imagine how insulting that would be for Mammon. The guy who pushes work on other people, won't trust you with helping him out. Willingly. Ouch...

This would only spur Mammon on even further to misbehave and get into trouble, possibly for attention.

Which is an interesting contrast to Lucifer.

Because despite how reckless and irresponsible Mammon admittedly is, Lucifer trusts him the most out of all of their brothers to help him.

Yes, Lucifer is the guy who insists on doing everything by himself most of the time, but even he can't do everything.

And I think that was a part of why Mammon accepted Lucifer instead of Michael, aside from admiration that is: Trust.

As Mammon said, Lucifer saw the potential in Mammon, brought him up to be one of the greatest warriors and/or angels in the ENTIRE Celestial Realm. So much so, that Mammon even became Lucifer's official assistant.

That, and the fact that Mammon witnessed Michael push most of his responsibilities onto other people, would draw Mammon towards the ever-reliant Lucifer.

Lucifer inspired and trusted Mammon far more than Michael ever could. Michael only saw him as a troublemaker, and Mammon recognizes and appreciates Lucifer for seeing that there was more to him than that.

Now, as for Mammon's feelings about Michael, I don't believe that Mammon holds any ill-will towards him, but he's not exactly thrilled about talking about him either.

When Michael is brought up by either Luke or MC, Mammon becomes slightly uncomfortable. I mean, who can blame him?

As much as the idea of Michael being an all around bad guy is very far-fetched, I can imagine Michael hurting Mammon in a few ways. It wouldn't be on purpose, but it would add a bit more motivation for Mammon to favor Lucifer over Michael.

Aside from Michael not trusting Mammon, either physically, emotionally, or both, I can imagine a scenario in which Mammon had overheard his then-older brother venting to Raphael or Lucifer about him.

We all know how emotional Mammon can get, and I'm sure his younger, angelic self was no exception.

Can you imagine how devastating that would be for a young child to hear their older brother complain to his friends about him? That would be soul crushing!

This would play into the two-faced concept of Michael that the fans are attached to. Sure, Michael can be a fairly good person, but he IS the type to bad mouth the people he doesn't like or has problems with, in private.

This in contrast to Lucifer, Mammon, and quite frankly, all of the brothers, who are very blunt and upfront about how they feel about someone.

Thus, would end Mammon's ability to rely on Michael and their brotherhood.

HOWEVER! That doesn't mean that Michael doesn't still care about Mammon!

Luke has mentioned to MC before that Michael does, in fact, miss Mammon, Lucifer, and the others. To the point where he has collected all of their past belongings, including but not limited to, Lucifer's ring.

Once again, a topic for another day, but Michael's feelings over what happened could prove to be interesting.

Simeon himself reminisces over losing his family, and Michael has proven to be the same in his own way.

The situation over Lilith's ordered execution and the battles that followed suit was conflicting on both sides.

Michael, Simeon, Raphael, and the other angels may have won the war, but they lost a lot.

But I do remain adamant that Michael and Raphael overcompensate that guilt by establishing to the angels at the time that the rules are the rules. And by winning the war, it was seen as their proof that violating those rules would have dire consequences.

Which could play into yet another reason Mammon didn't get along with Michael at the time: Michael could never see the bigger picture.

Michael never fought for anything other than the order for the Celestial Realm. Yes, Lucifer was similar in that regard, but he would never turn his back on something he believed was wrong or right. Especially for family.

You could do so much with these ideas! The stories, character development, and histories are endless!

Sadly though, I'm not confident that the writers of Obey Me would give Mammon the space to talk about his experience with Michael or his younger years as an angel anytime soon. But I guess we'll just have to see about Michael when he gets here, won't we?

Author's Note: Hopefully, I did a decent job at explaining my thoughts here! If I add any more details to this, don't be surprised. As you can see, I was very passionate about this topic.

I do wonder what Michael will look and act like in the game. I know that he's probably going to be a love interest, but I honestly hope he isn't. I know Obey Me is an otome game, but we can at least have a few characters that aren't romancable.

Reading fanfics about Mammon and Michael is really interesting! Almost all of them paint Michael as this abusive authority figure to Mammon, and how this abuse seems to continue into present-day with Lucifer and all of his over the top punishments. Again, I've only scratched the surface on this topic. Many people have different views on Michael already, and we haven't even physically met the guy! Sorry Michael! :(

With all of that being said, thank you all for reading, have a lovely night or day, and I'll see you later! Byeee! 💗

[justporo]

I have multiple Astarion hot takes but I will mention two here.

I don't think he wants child because he is not a responsible person. I think either him and Tav/Durge will worry the risk of giving birth or not good in take care of child. However, adopting child is sweet to them.

The other is about few people prefer Astarion in mlm relationship than hetero relationship. I don't see the actual post but I heard they dislike hetero relationship fanart with Astarion. Most of the fans are cool but it is too unhinged to me especially Neil explicitly mentioned he is pansexual. Both relationships are good for me but fans insult the other for preferred sexuality is so baffling to me.

Hey Anon! Thanks for dropping in!

I'll say this upfront: both of these aren't even hot takes to me personally! (I know others would disagree vwbjnboew)

I've said that before: I also - personally - don't vibe too much with Astarion being a dad. Not that I'm saying that I can't see it at all and also: people hating on others who like to headcanon Dadstarion should respectfully shut their godsdamned piehole. I, personally, agree that Astarion would probably want to just live life to the fullest without the responsibility of a child - I'm not at all saying that you can't enjoy life when you have a kid but it is definitely different and raising children is a commitment. And I don't see Astarion making this type of commitment. Personally, I'd like him to just vibe, explore who he is and what he wants, indulge himself. And please also: this man needs to do some healing first in any case, imho.

Yea, I've also seen this fly around quite a lot and I have repeatedly posted about the fact that Astarion is pan. I will die on this fucking hill. (Might be because this character also helped me come to terms with my own pansexuality) Yes, in game we hear him talk a lot more about relationships with men, but he is - and might I repeat CANONICALLY - pansexual. Maybe he does have an inclination towards one side but that doesn't erase the fact. It's sad and potentially hurtful to see people willingly erase this fact because identities like e.g. pan/bi/ace are already having a hard time to justify themselves existing sometimes. You don't need to make it harder, hm 'kay?

So about all that once more: Think before you post?! This character is fictional but the people you hate on are real and so is the potential impact of hate or insults.

Personally, I see it like this: writers, artists, probably every fan has their own version of Astarion in their mind - that's fine and also cool to explore. Creatively building on a character or story essentially means you take it and make a bit of your own, right? That's legit and cool, but it is not the only version, others have different ones that are legitimate too, just as your own. You don't need to like another one's version, ideas or headcanons - but you should respect it!

That being said there are things imho, like in this case Astarion's sexual identity, that should not be glossed over or changed because it might be problematically impact stuff beyond the fictional realm.

Basically: live and let live. But keep in mind behind characters and blogs are real people.

Alright, this was a bit of a ramble - sowwy!

[gillianthecat]

Gonna end my semi-intensive campaign for the best kiss bracket here. I can see the writing on the wall: I've looked at the number of voters in each poll, and not only is this round decided, I can already tell who will win the semi-finals and the finals.

I was having a lot of fun campaigning and analyzing and updating my posts. But it stopped being fun. The one I don't want to win is going to win it all, and in the next round campaigning for OFC over PatPran is going to feel unnecessarily divisive.

I went into it as a fun way to talk about BL kisses, but my hater's heart has emerged a little to strongly, which isn't fun for me.

At some point I may write about my thoughts and feelings about Kinnporsche. Both the show itself, and also the fandom around it; which fascinates and baffles me, and sometimes annoys me, and is pushing me to face the fact that in some ways I can't help but be a contrarian. Seeing something get super popular that I have mixed feelings about, or think is only ok, usually pushes me to the other direction and dislike the thing and see its flaws.

In general I also tend to get tired even of shows I love if I'm overexposed to them. So I have filters even for things I really liked, like The Eclipse, Bad Buddy and Big Dragon because I was reaching saturation point and didn't want to stop liking them.

None of this is self-knowledge that's new to me; I've been thinking about it vaguely all along, but this poll is pushing it to the forefront. Even though I assumed from the beginning KP would win, my feelings about seeing it beating out other shows are stronger than expected.

And on an intellectual level, I am just so fascinated by why it is THE show out of all BL shows that has developed such an enormous fandom. My impression is that most fans of BL are fans of the genre as a whole, or at least multiple shows, but that there are large numbers KP fans who are fans of only that. (I don't know if that's accurate though. I've drafted a poll to try and get some of the demographics of that, though I suspect my reach isn't big enough to get a enough responses to get any real answers about it.)

Don't get me wrong, I was completely absorbed when I binged the first half of the series in late June. And also went a little crazy over vegaspete when I binged the second half after the whole show was out. It was the show that got me talking on tumblr, and in that way was the first show that made me part of a "fandom." So I can see why people get obsessed with it. Just not sure why there are so many more than for other good BL shows.

Is it because iQIYI did such heavy advertising? I actually heard of the show several months before I even heard of BL, and then watched it mainly because iQIYI kept reminding me about it. For me, it became a gateway to BL more generally, but perhaps there are a lot of fans who just stopped with that?

Is there also a large group of people who were watching BL casually but weren't particularly BL fans, and then watched KP and thought it better than anything other BL? I've seen scattered comments with those opinions, but not sure how broad-spread it is. (I suppose if I'm feeling very curious and very brave I could go into the comments and reviews on KP's MDL page, which might give me some idea of numbers.)

With how my ADHD manifests, I don't have the attention span to become devoted to one show at the exclusion of all others, and so I can't really understand the mindset of fans who do fandom like that. (For any show, be it Star Wars or Marvel or The Untamed.) But I guess there are many people who do participate in fandoms that way? And KP is one of the shows that many of that style of fan found?

Is it the mafia plot? (there have been other mafia plots.) Is it how glossy and expensive it all looked, and the truly excellent cinematography? Is it how high heat the sex scenes were? (Were they significantly higher heat than anything previous though? Could be.)

Is there something about Kinn and Porsche as a couple that is particularly compelling to people? (I don't personally think so, certainly not compared to other BL couples. For me their story kinda petered out once they got together. And I found Mile's acting serviceable, but not that compelling, but I do see that he has lots of fans so perhaps it's just me.)

If so, what is unique about them? Enemies to lovers, boss-employee, torn between duty and love—I guess that combo is somewhat unique? I can't think of other shows off the top of my head now at least.

Is it the darkness and danger and plottiness of the mafia story? I know that sort of thing tends to engender obsessive fandoms. Are there other shows that have that too? I can see why if that's your thing, you wouldn't be into more slice of life BL like Old Fashion Cupcake or Semantic Error, or the youthful high jinx of most HS or Uni set shows.

Some combination of all of that? Some luck of timing? Did the advertising have a significantly bigger reach than for any other BL? With KP being my entry point into BL, I'm not able to compare with what the fandom was like before it came out.

Anyway, not sure if this is coherent, and absolutely NOT trying to start discourse. But if you do have theories you feel like sharing about how KP ended up with the fandom it has, I'd love to hear them. Or do you think I'm wrong and its fandom actually isn't unique for BL?

For context, the ten most popular BL shows on MDL are

The Untamed (2019) - 83,572

2Gether (2020) - 60,952

TharnType (2019) - 57,444

Until We Meet Again (2019) - 55,451

KinnPorsche (2022) - 52,838

Where Your Eyes Linger (2020) - 50,310

Semantic Error (2022) - 50,309

Theory of Love (2019) - 49,263

Bad Buddy (2021) - 48,411

Love By Chance (2018) - 46,652

I'm measuring "popularity" by the number of MDL users who list the show as watched. The show on MDL with the most watchers of everything is Goblin (aka Guardian: The Lonely and Great God) with 199,983.

The Untamed I would say has it's own fandom, overlapping with but distinct from BL fans. In some ways (other than heat levels) I can see it as a model of what might make KP so uniquely popular as well - complex plot, violent danger, and angst, and lovers kept apart by circumstance.

Most of the other shows on the list are popular Thai BL from three to four years ago, so it makes sense to me why they've accumulated lots of watchers. Where Your Eyes Linger, at number 6, surprised me, I don't hear much about it on tumblr these days and would have guessed it was much further down. KinnPorsche and Semantic Error are the newest shows on the list, coming out around the same time last year. But although I hear a lot of love for SE, I don't see it having an obsessive one-show fandom like KP does. I do see a lot of very devoted Bad Buddy fans, but again, most of them seem to also be general BL fans.

Addendum: (For the record, my assumption/prediction is that KP and PatPran will win their respective semifinals, and KP will win it all, by at least a 20 percentage point difference.)

[anamazingangie]

Is every fandom this petty or just this one? My god. This is the second time someone has implied I've plagiarized the majority of my fics and i'm just...sick of it.

Both times this has come from the HEAD MODS of the daemyra, helaemond, and rhaegon discords and it makes me really sad that they might treat other people like this too.

Can I prove these tweets are about me? No. But the dates line up with when my fics were published, the accusations are very similar to ones I received from their friend. Come to your own conclusion.

I don't have a twitter so I'm posting this here:

I HAVE READ TWO OF YOUR FICS. TWO.

I didn't know about your work until I had written hundreds of thousands of words for the Daemyra fandom (which you haven't written any content for, btw).

I liked them! But I'm just baffled how it could extrapolated that they inspired all my fics. The only remotely similar fic is my OT3 fic which also features pet names and BDSM.

But where yours is an extremely abusive/unhealthy/dub-con dynamic mine is a soft consensual agreement with different characters.

Like:

and

I'm not hating. I really enjoyed your fic. It's just gross to ownership over an entire lifestyle and multitude of kinks within a fandom because you feature some aspects of it in one fic. And then use that to claim you inspired *all* of an authors work.

It's really frustrating as an author not to mention highly inaccurate (let me reiterate, I've read two of her fics).

Before this I was a reader and I can't tell you how many BDSM Reylo or Darklina fics I read. Was this pettiness happening behind the scenes? Or is it JUST this fandom where big fish act entitled over common tropes?

Let me say again: THIS IS A MOD OF THE BIGGEST FANDOM SERVERS.

Like fuck, how many writers are you discouraging and turning away from the fandom with this? Because you feel possessive over tropes that have tens of thousands of results on A03. Just be better.

edit:

I guess I do have an only fans inspired fic too but I wrote it before I knew theirs existed. You don't have to believe me, but it was published back in December.

Here is me finding out their username in February. At this point I hadn't read ANY fics for the HotD fandom outside of Daemyra (which as of now I still don't think they've written for?) so I didn't know who they were until they talked about expanding the AU to include Daemyra.

I guess i'll ALSO say that T accused me of stealing my idea for Gauche from Cor because it was published the same day as a discussion about Cor writing a petwife Daemyra fic...which is true.

But T brought this up as a response to MY idea for a fic with this concept.

Also for the record, in my fic, she is a magical human that can literally turn into a cat so I don't see the cause for comparison to begin with but OK.

edit 2: still bitter, adding more.

So I originally left the Daemyra discord because of the main mod, T.

I was part of a discussion about a prompt someone else had submitted to the prompt thread in march. Several people seemed enthused about the idea of a tattoo AU and the topic was on my mind since I just got one.

I wrote the fic using the major plot points I came up with in the conversation.

I credited the convo as inspiring me because we were all brainstorming, right? I guess not. About six people accused me of copying all her ideas and shared screen shots of my fic alongside her "plot points" which were like..."the existence of gloves", despite this being against the rules.

This was all instigated by T who publicly called me out for it. I was originally confused, and then apologetic because I thought it was a conversation and I used the ideas *i* contributed as well as the original prompt that she was not the author of.

Not to mention "Tattoo AU" is a trope with 10k+ fics on A03. It isn't an original idea.

During this pile on she:

-Said I had done this many times before, mentioning the kitten!fic by name and implying there were others.

-Mocked me for not having a life/writing quickly before other people could use ideas.

-Claimed I didn't *really* get a tattoo or have the idea because I hadn't mentioned it before....on a HotD discord?

(is this proof enough? i didn't think i needed a fucking alibi)

Anyway. It all got deleted so I have no evidence, but you can see her tweets about it.

The other day, I gather another author was bullied off the server. And this is how they responded. THE IRONY.

"This type of attitude is what drives active and creative members of our community away."

Since when is that your concern??

"I want you all to read t’s message and really reflect on it."

I want T to read and reflect on it!!

Again: These are the head mods and creators of the community servers for these ships. Maybe practice what you fucking preach?

....

adding this is an edit so there is no link back to them;

They claim the tweets aren't about me. Maybe I’m wrong and this isn’t about me. But from my perspective: 

This was tweeted by Cor the day her friend (T) accused me of copying her plot line and idea for a fic, as well as doing this ‘many times before’ including with Cor’s pet wife AU.

Cor made a tweet accusing people of stealing ideas the same day as I reposted my fic that was, according to T, copied from Cor. 

To be clear, Cor NEVER said she felt this way to me. But given her lack of participation in the conversation where I was directly accused, and support of her friend after the fact, I thought It was implied.

So given the date of this tweet and that, I assumed this was about me.

Cor's tweet implying an author stole all their ideas from her was posted the same day as my bdsm AU. Given the context and date, it kind of seemed like that could be about me too?

Cor sent me 32 messages this morning. In them she (among other things) insisted they were about someone who was line-by-line copying her fics. Despite the many messages, no proof of that was shown. 

Maybe it is a big fucking coincidence but it sure felt targeted to me, which is why I made the post in the first place.

edit: I said she could send me screen shots of the plagiarism since she mentioned many times that she had them, and she blocked me so. Idk man.

Most of the messages were her calling me names and accusing me of outing her for writing a kink fic by mentioning it in the same post as her twitter.

For the record the account that fic is on was linked in her twitter bio while she was making those claims. The account has multiple fics co-authored by her other account that also has her full name.

The only thing that wasn't public was the discord convo which had no identifying information.

I didn't tag anyone in this post. I didn't want to start a witch hunt. I would LOVE for these tweets not to be about me.

But I thought they were (based on other experiences where they *confirmed* were about me) and wanted to share my side of things.

I now know multiple people who have had really bad experiences while writing for this fandom and it fucking sucks to be bullied out it.

[stanwixbuster]

A Narrative Designer Dissects Generation Loss

(And Further Thoughts on Dollhouse-like Streams)

I keep saying how Jerma's ushered in an entirely new narrative medium and no-one's believed me.

This has been stewing in my mind for months. Ever since watching The Dollhouse Stream while going through a bout of just-got-my-second-covid-shot fever, one thought has carved itself on the inside of my skull. It is something I truly believe, and am baffled that more people aren't talking about.

Livestreams are evolving into an interactive narrative artform.

Generation Loss has only cemented this for me.

This is something I will keep yelling from the rooftops until my throat is sore, and this essay is my desperate attempt to get other people to start paying attention to interactive livestreams.

Livestreams as a Medium

By definition, a livestream is anything broadcast over the internet to a live audience. Over time this has generally fallen into a standard format thanks to the community of livestreaming centred around Twitch, of a livestreamer playing a video game with a live chat engaging in the experience in some capacity. This is to the point that someone who describes themselves as a "streamer" will come with the assumption that they play games for a live audience.

However, this is a flexible format, and doing out-of-the-box livestreams is nothing new. Stream team Radio TV Solutions are infamous for putting on weird, absurdist, and even genre-bending takes on playing games for audience entertainment. Some of their streams can be likened more to a live broadcast show, rather than a simple "gaming stream".

But, what we're focusing on here are interactive livestreams, and not just streamers taking an interesting spin on the format. Such examples are the likes of Charborg, presenting his chat with a question, with individual members voting on a response, to then be dragged at random into a literal court of opinion to debate the reason for their choice. He puts his audience directly in control of the stream and its direction, with both streamer and chatter having to "roleplay" into the experience.

Interactive livestreams even extend beyond Twitch's roots of gaming content. Alistair Aitcheson is known for his interactive art streams, where he creates paintings with direct input from the audience watching. Here, the audience decides what Alistair should do and how he should do it, whether that be drawing a black cat, only being allowed to paint with his elbows, or using mayonnaise as a pigment.

But, by far, the most famous player in this space is streamer and former TF2 creator (of which, as someone who's been a fan of his since 2012, am shocked that more people don't know) Jerma985. Over time, Jerma has become known for his "big streams", where he will do anything from broadcasting a fake family dinner where everyone but Jerma is an actor that have never met each other, to digging up rocks in the Nevada desert in collaboration with a local science institution, to organising an entire baseball game of half actors and half actual athletes, complete with a full live commentary.

In 2019, Jerma broadcast "The Carnival Stream", a defining work for interactive livestreams. Jerma played the role of a ringmaster, bringing his chat around various carnival games that could be played with Twitch chat-powered robots. Almost immediately it became a sensation, and put Jerma down as one of the most innovative livestreamers to date. It was something Twitch had never seen before. Truly, no-one was doing it like Jerma.

At this point, livestreams are a medium that are going through radical innovations. People are doing interesting things with the concept, experimenting with what you can and can't do, and pushing them into new and fascinating directions of entertainment.

How do you turn entertainment into an artform?

The Impact of the Dollhouse Stream

During my undergraduate, my professor told me one thing I've held dear to my ethos ever since. Discussing the ways narratives are woven into video games, he said:

"The difference between a toy and art, is that art is able to tell a story."

It's a measurement that's never failed me. Everytime I've looked at something, and wondered if I could call it art, I remember this. Art is made through narrative. And one thing I'm always fascinated by, is if a medium can tell a narrative uniquely compared to others. I develop games fulltime, and both my studio and solo projects are focused on how to most effectively tell a story through whatever means it finds itself in. Interactive narrative experiences are something I hold very dear.

When Jerma announced "The Dollhouse Stream" to broadcast in 2021, the hype was electric. By now Jerma's big streams had become an internet sensation, even to the point of being affectionately dubbed "The Superbowl for the gays". With the only information on the stream being something influenced by The Sims, taking place over three individual broadcasts, tens and thousands of viewers tuned in to watch.

What we saw was, I truly believe, the beginning of livestreaming turning into an artform.

The Dollhouse Stream took interactive livestreams in ways that have never been seen before, and it's an absolute marvel that it exists at all. It was brilliant, hilarious, and absolutely groundbreaking.

And, there was a plot.

It was a loose plot, and just served as a way to funnel more shenanigans on screen, but it existed and fulfilled the exact purpose it was set out to do. There were defined beats, a set way it was going to end, and the interactive elements were giving a unique experience on how we'd get there.

This is where I felt my fixation latch. This could be a new narrative medium.

I prayed, and hoped, this was just the beginning of streams like this.

An Analysis of Generation Loss as an Interactive Narrative

(And Other Parts that Caught my Attention)

Disclaimer: Any critiques in this section are given entirely in good faith, and have no bearing on the immense amounts of work by those who worked on Generation Loss. This comes from me believing with my whole heart that interactive livestreams could, and should, be judged as an artform, and thus subject to the same level of critical analysis.

My prayers for more were answered when Generation Loss was announced as a "live interactive horror show". I decided to go into the stream blind, for better or worse, only knowing that the stream was based around horror, and almost certainly would be set in its own self-contained narrative. There was supplementary media around it to hype the stream up and flesh out the story around it, but I wanted to see how well this could stand on its own, and if interactive livestreams really could be the new narrative medium I was hoping they were.

Episode One

was absolutely not what I was expecting.

The tonal whiplash I felt on realising this was being played as a comedy is not something I'm quite able to describe. 

This doesn't make it bad; far from it. In retrospect it's a perfect intro to the slow descent from light-hearted comedy romp that's almost self-aware into a serious psychological horror.

Being familiar with The Dollhouse Stream, the structure is almost identical, with an audience presented with a choice, going to a timed vote, and having the choice with the highest percentage play out in whatever ways it might. Between beats of the audience picking a choice and seeing its consequences, the downtime is filled with the streamers reacting to the choices, shooting the shit, or guiding the stream through scripted plot beats.

But Generation Loss takes it in a slightly different direction. The Dollhouse Stream is based on life simulation games, with the audience trying to keep Jerma alive (or, most of the time, deliberately starving or exhausting him to see what would happen), earning money to buy furniture, upgrading the house, and sitting back to watch the chaos they've inspired. 

Generation Loss, however, commits to the theme of an adventure game.  Ranboo wakes up in a cabin, realises they're stuck in there, and we're presented with the first choice of picking somewhere to investigate, and later learning that we have an inventory. There's no objective, beyond a vague semblance of knowing we need to get out, and having to explore to find out what we're supposed to do. As the audience we have direct control over his actions, and decide where Ranboo should search next, guide him through various puzzles, and help him out of precarious situations.

Once I settled into what I was watching, the stream was great. It kept up the pace, everyone was hilarious, played into its cheese, and was a solid take on an interactive livestream. 

But, the one thing I was hoping for wasn't there, with interactivity that was played with in interesting manners. It was fairly obvious that every choice would lead us to the same, if not a similar outcome. With The Dollhouse Stream, Jerma choosing to flirt with someone rather than simply talking to them could have huge impacts on where the day-to-day plot would go, and how everyone else responded to it in turn.

After some thought, I settled on this being episode one. Something new could be coming in the future, and there was no way the advertising banked this hard into horror to just be a simple comedy setup. This episode was a great start, made good use of interactive livestreams as a medium, and made me cautiously optimistic for the rest of the series.

Episode Two

Starting episode two, it took me all of three seconds to recognise the Saw inspiration and know exactly who would be behind it.

For those who haven't been following Jerma for long enough to cause permanent damage to your psyche, Jerma has an ongoing joke of putting on an audio filter and speaking like Jigsaw, running through bizarre or entirely mundane takes on Saw traps. This all stemmed from one House Flipper stream, which quickly spirals into an insistence that the Saw movies have an obsession with neurotoxins and nerve agents, which chat is very quick to disprove, and the legend of GYAS is born.

So as a Jerma fan, witnessing the culmination of a years-long bit, this was fucking hilarious.

But as someone looking to this series as a new narrative direction for interactive livestreams, I started to get a little concerned. It seemed to be hitting much the same points as The Dollhouse Stream, without really pushing into new fields on the narrative side. Perhaps "horror" was mislabeled, and "comedy horror" might have been a more apt description. Critically, maybe the angle I'd like interactive livestreams to be taken in wasn't the intent of this series. It was definitely enjoyable, but maybe I was looking for something that wasn't put there in the first place.

The moment that turned it around was this:

This is when Generation Loss became what I was looking for.

Everything about this moment works spectacularly. Charlie's almost immediate transition from silly jokes about toy racing cars to guttural screaming; the delayed, almost confused reaction from Ranboo; the cut straight back to the jokes, leaving the audience to digest what just happened, alone, with no-one on screen to help us through it.

This simple 10 seconds made the entire episode work. We now have a frame story. What we're seeing isn't reality (and as we later learn, is a literal show), and occasionally we see through the gaps in the curtain. Suddenly, the goofiness can be leant into. We can lean into it as hard as we want; there's no bearing on what's actually happening. Then you're sat there, laughing at streamer shenanigans and jokes, with a subdued sort of horror that you'll never know when the curtain will be pulled back again.

My main wish for this episode was that the curtain was pulled more effectively. Each streamer more than adds to the comedic side to the stream, then when it was pulled (or at least, when I assume it was), I don't think it landed as well as the operating table. 

Some examples are the deaths. Ethan's stands out to me, as one that gives me some of the most mixed emotions. Just as itself, watching Ethan die off-screen, only hearing his voice, while Ranboo and Sneeg stand and barely react to it in stark contrast to Austin's panic, works extremely well if you look at it as a scene out of context.

The problem is, I think it breaks an established rule. The rule being, as far as I can tell, that while the show is running everything is seemingly inconsequential. Once Ranboo wakes up, and both of us learn of the show masking everything, we're free to see the reality under it, making us more similar to each other than he'd like.

On the operating table, we're given a precedent for what green slime actually is. Now, any time we see it, it's in a very different light, and entirely recontextualises the first episode.

But now when Ethan dies, we... do see blood? I was under the assumption that blood was censored on the show in some capacity, and the glitches are the show breaking down and getting a brief slice of the reality of the situation. If it isn't, what happened with Charlie? Did this one death in particular make it through the censors, for some reason? Did it have something to do with the setting adjusted on Ranboo's mask before this room was hit? If so, it seems like a bizarre choice, both in-universe and for the narrative impact it had.

We return to some of these spots in the next episode. It feels like a missed opportunity to not play off these moments as a fake-out on the show-side, and then discovering they were actual deaths when the reveal's made. Instead we have people dying in gruesome manners, to then reveal they're... still dead. It's an alright reveal in the context of the line between reality and fiction being blurred, but one that could be much stronger.

All of this isn't to say that every death needed a moment where the line between show and reality is crossed. Vinny's death is a perfect example. It's a full Looney Tunes bit of being (literally) ragdolled across a room, with cartoonish fanfare, and then met with a hilarious demise of being hit in the head with an anvil. The reality of this... I like that being left to  our imagination. It's a good one.

The death I felt was the weakest was the combined deaths of Austin and Sneeg, getting crushed by a moving wall cutout Ranboo manages to fit through, of which, through many ways that are immediately obvious, could fit several people through with some amount of problem solving.

Was this... funny? Absurd? Are we supposed to laugh? It's played in a goofy manner, definitely, but this was just after Ethan's death. We already know these people are dying by this point, or at the very least grievously harmed, so having two people die in succession to then be immediately swept under the rug was odd. After Niki's death, which accomplished a shock death that's moved on from almost immediately very nicely, it felt like a backtracking in tone and redoing a beat we've already seen. 

On top of that, Austin reacted to Ethan's death, and then to the continued lack of reaction Sneeg and Ranboo have. I took this as Austin no longer being controlled in some capacity, so it doesn't make that much sense for Austin to die in a way that has a logical way out. Sneeg's does make sense, having been fully put under again. And going back to the point of the green slime, wouldn't it be much more effective if Ethan died in a way that isn't seen, perhaps only briefly and then cut off, to then see Austin freaking out over "nothing"?

I felt a bit of dissonance. Maybe this was the intent, but I don't think it landed in the right way. Instead of thinking if I should be concerned if that was a real death or not, like Niki's, I was more wondering if I was supposed to be thinking that. I was confused rather than horrified.

To give my fair dues, the moment with Sneeg realising where he was, and his attempted escape, was really good. It's a subtle moment at first, only shown by a glitch and Sneeg snapping out of an apparent fugue, to try to find his way out while pretending he's still under it. Our next curtain pull is Sneeg being dragged back into the show to be reset again while everyone's frozen, which I only fully caught on a rewatch as a literal pause of the show.

Another part of this episode that weakened it was something I didn't even realise would be an issue with interactive livestreams. With The Dollhouse Stream, if someone went on a bit of a joke tangent before moving onto the next part, it was fine. You're here to laugh and it only played into the strengths of the whole thing being a comedy setup. You're going from one thing to laugh at, to another thing to laugh at, and now you're on a detour for something else to laugh at that wasn't fully planned. The beats feed into each other.

But with Generation Loss, I was wanting everyone to move on so we could see the next horror beat. I wanted to be on the edge of my seat wondering what's going to happen next, and instead I was waiting for this line of jokes to wrap up. It was funny, because these people are full-time entertainers, but I didn't want to laugh right now.

Even with that said, I'm honestly not sure where that line should be. One part of me thinks this episode would be much for the better with some tighter pacing, but another couldn't bear to not have my heartstrings pulled by fulltime gay Austin's four children. Not even mentioning his one wive.

And wrapping up what I thought would be a small tangent before I get to the reason this essay exists in the first place, even with some tonal inconsistency and downtime between beats, I adore the details in this episode you only catch on a rewatch. For example, this tiny moment in the second to last room, where Ranboo is tapping out a morse code SOS signal with one hand, to then stop himself with the other.

Now that's sick.

Right; let's talk about why I'm here.

I was delighted to see that in this episode we got some neat interactivity that did have some narrative knock-ons. I was, finally, seeing what I came here for! Thrilling! 

The critical moment of interactivity is the carousel, at least for the narrative, of which we get to choose two people to save and bring with us for the rest of the episode.

Yes, of course, our choice to save Niki gets her killed, but isn't it nice to play a part?

 If we chose someone else, we could have got some pretty different improv sections or possibly new plot beats entirely. It's a good way to add some narrative branching while still progressing through a defined story with one ending.

The other interactive portions of the stream lean into one of my favourite parts of narrative design, of tying game mechanics to the story you're telling. Where the first episode takes on the style of an adventure game, the second is more akin to a gameshow. "Show" is the key word here, and the crux of the whole frame story this episode introduces. We're watching a silly little show, with some silly little entertainers, playing some silly little games that have absolutely no bearing on any possible reality. At all.

And since we're entertaining ourselves with something so mindless, not really caring about what's happening behind it, some equally mindless and pointless games would be a perfect supplement for this show. At first I wasn't a fan of these game sections, until I started to think about why they'd be put there. It's padding. A distraction. It literally covers the entire screen, demands your full attention by not allowing the story to continue until it's done, all to take your mind off what you're looking at and any discrepancies you might have seen before. It's not obvious, initially causes some friction, and really elevates the medium it's in once you start thinking about it a little deeper.

This is what I'm here for; this is the potential I saw.

With a very nice ending to round it off, and a full reveal promising the horror to run deeper as we continue on, my cautious optimism on how this would be wrapped up persisted.

Episode Three

Episode three is the tonal peak of the series, and by far the strongest episode. It strikes the perfect balance between humour and horror, and really shows the strengths of interactive livestreams as a narrative medium.

It starts almost immediately where we left off from the previous episode, tilting further away from comedy, and then sets us on a slow descent into absolute horror. This progression is done wonderfully. There's even a few sporadic jokes that land during the shift, before committing to it entirely by the ending.

My worry was the overarching story would not land. That there would be one huge lore dump explaining every detail of this corporation behind everything we just had to know. Instead, it's kept pleasantly vague with enough details for us to fill in the blanks from the previous episodes, and add some fantastic context that makes the whole series' worldbuilding stronger.

And a genuine question, did Charlie get acting lessons at some point? His swaps between goofs and terror are stunningly natural and lad's got some pipes on him that fully convinced me he was scared for his life.

Subtlety is the last thing I expected to be impressed by during this. Instead of having its messages laid out explicitly by one character going on a years-long monologue, they're told through environment, character reactions, and from details we've caught previously. Instead of spelling out a message on how streamer personalities are seen by others, you can show us a literal commodification of going live from derelict storefronts.

Cross-stream invasions will never get old. Ever.

This episode is where the series starts to make a fantastic use of every part of the medium it's in. Namely, as a filmed medium, between excellent shots of the live portions, especially during the chase scenes, to some near-seamless cuts to the prerecorded cinematics.

This is the first livestream I've ever said: "Wow, the cinematography's fantastic."

And hilariously, for the episode that ended up being my favourite, is the one with the least amount of actual interactivity. There's only two choices the audience makes, and both are extremely well-placed and well-done. It shows so well how it's not how much interactivity you shove into a medium that enhances it, but when and why you use it.

The first one is a subversion. Everyone loves subversions. We make a choice, but Ranboo now ignores us entirely. By doing so, and revelling in his newfound freedom, Ranboo condemns himself with the wrong choice.

Is it better for us to be in control of Ranboo? Should we be?

There's even subtle storytelling that doesn't come from an interactive moment directly. One happens during the final cinematic before the last choice. This one tiny moment, that I didn't even realise was there until seeing brief mentions of it in chat.

There's an exit sign that Ranboo misses.

And, critically, there were people in the audience who didn't.

Consider us, as we were controlling Ranboo before. There very well may have been moments Ranboo would have missed entirely if not for our choices to bring them there. If we were still in control, could we have sent them that way? Would we have been able to? Would it even be considered a freedom, if he didn't make the choice to reach it?

We're now forced to watch him head to one inevitable fate, just as he watched everyone before him.

The second, and final choice, is the climax of the entire series. Ranboo's final send off, after the show's had its run with him, is up to the audience to decide if he should live or die. Even after managing to be free of audience control, to the point of actively rejecting it, Ranboo is still beheld by it to the very end.

There's even a narrative element to seeing the decision shift in real time, told entirely by the audience watching. Chat immediately floods with attempts to save Ranboo, the knee-jerk reaction on being faced with the option to kill them. Then, as the announcer details the actual fate of being left alive, with Ranboo's slow realisation that they'd consider it worse than death, the bar slowly creeps over to the right, flicking back and forth over the 50/50 mark.

And then, as the choice times out, deciding to give Ranboo an apparent mercy, chat is immediately flooded with laments on if it was the right call as the credits roll.

Absolutely stellar.

This is, for all intents and purposes, the first ever narrative-heavy interactive livestream. It's the best one because it's the only one. There's wanes and waxes, with parts that didn't land, some that very much did, and an experience that I still enjoyed immensely, if not mostly on the novelty of the medium, and the obvious heart that was put into every part of it. Quoting myself to a friend minutes after the stream ended:

"i feel like i just watched the second movie ever made"

 And, should Ranboo, Jerma, or literally anyone else pursue narrative-heavy interactive livestreams further, there's so much that could be learnt from and expounded on into something incredible.

That excites me. That really excites me.

Interactive Livestreams as a Narrative Medium

This begs the question: where do we go from here?

I'm pulling away from Generation Loss specifically, and now asking to the question of narratives in interactive livestreams in general. Could we consider interactive livestreams a new narrative medium? Or is it a subgenre of another type of storytelling, with much the same considerations and impacts?

What we're really asking, is this: how does an interactive livestream tell a story through audience interaction? One of the best ways we can do this, is to start making comparisons between interactive livestreams and other mediums, and seeing what lessons we can and can't learn from them.

So, with this in mind, what medium is one of the most famous and wide-spread types of interactive media? What medium is an intersection of many others, and is able to use their strengths and limitations as a story demands? What medium has decades of experience in narrative agency and responding to the choices of someone engaging with it?

Video games.

The Narratives of Interactive Livestreams

Let's analyse The Dollhouse Stream as we would a piece of interactive fiction. It already has many terms describing narrative structures and systems, and the progression of The Dollhouse Stream fits quite nicely into them.

We're going to jump to the first choice made in the house itself in episode one, where the "game" begins proper. There's intricacies happening right up to that point, but we'll discuss what they are in more detail shortly.

The audience's first choice, between working out, going outside, and using the toilet, is exactly the one you think it is. Ignoring the innate comedy of piss, a choice is made, some amount of content happens, and then the stream continues on until the next choice.

This is what's known as a "bottleneck", where a choice branches out, and then collapses back down to a main branch. This main branch, typically dubbed "the golden path" (GP), is the path with the most content, the path a designer tries to guide the player down for narrative satisfaction, the "win condition", or other similar denotation. How the GP is defined exactly depends on the type of story being constructed.

So here's a question: what's the GP of an interactive livestream?

This is where analysing interactive livestreams in this way can only take us so far. The thing is, this idea of branching out and bottlenecking, implies that after the bottleneck, the stream would progress the exact same no matter which choice was made. This is decidedly not true, for many apparent reasons that I'm sure you can see. In an alternate vote where, shockingly, chat decides to not make Jerma piss, he would have had to make very different jokes.

Also, looking at this diagram might imply that the entire stream is put on hold when a vote takes place, like in interactive fiction when a choice is presented and the game effectively pauses until the player picks one. Audience choices are actually running asynchronously to the stream, and the streamers can fill the gap with improv until a choice is decided. Things can even happen mid-decision that has an impact on how the audience votes. Screaming "Please let me die", perhaps.

Instead, the narrative of interactive livestreams put us on an entirely different kind of story.

One type of narrative system is known as "attribute-based stories", sometimes called "quality-based stories". Where a block of narrative content is reached, and based on the choices made during it, an attribute is applied and carried through the rest of the story. These could range from obtaining an item, getting level experience, sating a survival need, changing relationships with other characters, or a literally limitless list of others.

How attributes are used, and when they're applied, is down to the designer. Imagine you go to a pub with the attribute "had a bad day at work". You enter, make some choices, and leave with the attribute "got into a bar fight". Once you return home, you could mention the attributes you gained during the day with your roommate, with some special content playing out based on it. Perhaps "put on your favourite shirt this morning" and "got beer spilled down your shirt". This is an admittedly crude explanation of attributes, and doesn't even begin to look at the narrative complexities it allows, but hopefully gives you a good idea of how they work.

Generation Loss, likely from its initial influence from adventure games (of which, structurally, is almost one in the same as interactive fiction), and later game shows, doesn't stray too far from a branch and bottleneck format. But, this doesn't stop attributes being used effectively, both by streamers playing off improv and making some minor changes to the narrative, even with the ending being predetermined.

Conversely, attributes make up almost all of The Dollhouse Stream's narrative. Every choice, furniture, interaction with other characters, and even audience reactions can be thought of in terms of attributes. One of the most well-known moments of the series comes from something developed almost entirely on attributes:

Jerma and Emilia.

This thread starts once the audience decides to call for "sexy maid service." We're given what was sure to be a brief joke, and are greeted at the door by a maid played by Ludwig, later finding out he's playing the character of non-binary maid Emilia. 

The audience is immediately smitten. They love them. A choice is made to flirt with Emilia, and the rest is history.

Their relationship continues with a date invitation, Jerma sleeping through it, awkward interactions, development with the rest of the cast. And, in a culmination of all of this, Jerma cheats on Emilia with Death, with one of the most infamous scenes in the series bringing up every attribute this relationship's gained up to this point. Jerma calling Emilia a "stupid maid" out of context, the missed dates, every insane occurrence that's happened in this house, all comes out in this one moment, and it's just as impressive as it is the funniest shit I've ever seen on Twitch.

You don't know how high they can fly.

Emilia was intended to be a small gag. Instead, through audience popularity, and building a whole story on nothing but attributes, they became a critical character of the series. By playing into each other, the audience and streamers have, very effectively, created an entirely new plot thread for the stream to follow, which has had sweeping effects on the entire narrative.

This is a level of interactivity that games could only dream of. Sure, you can always comment on the player picking up the green sword instead of the red, but can you comment on their emotional response to that decision? Their thoughts on not taking the red? If we become fixated on it, are we then able to reference it as a cute nod or critical plotpoint, and change the future of the game based on it? If the audience doesn't care, can you drop it entirely, and bring in something else you have prepared?

That level of narrative fidelity is nigh-impossible to hit in a video game. There's a reason games that get even slightly close to emulating this, like Disco Elysium, are revered as technical marvels.

Let's consider how this could be applied to another technique used by games to deliver as much interactivity as possible, while cutting back on the amount of assets needing to be created. Rather than scripting entirely new locations and environments for every choice made, choices are instead put back on the characters. The same general series of events take place, and what changes is how the characters react to them. They can change the narrative based on if they're the one to perform an action, if they do an action at all, how their relationship with other characters pans out, and, if the story calls for it, if a specific character survives.

In interactive livestreams, these characters are no longer AI reacting to scripted events you meticulously plan out to land. These are real, actual actors who can respond, adjust, and create new content on the fly based on previous attributes, with the only real limit being their skill as an actor. Most importantly, they can improv their way out of something going entirely off-rails, and possibly make something even better than the original plan. 

This was starting to sound familiar to me. What other medium have stories created through a two-way relationship between separate parties? What other medium requires everyone involved to be fully playing in the headspace of the story, and be willing to bend, and possibly break it?

TTRPGs.

An interactive livestream manages to create the hyper-personalised story of a TTRPG, with choice mechanics of video games, combined with the visual spectacle of theatre and film.

And that's thrilling.

Structuring the Narrative of an Interactive Livestream

Let's temper our excitement for a minute, and bring our attention back to the concept of a GP. A GP, as we saw earlier, isn't really a structure we can apply to interactive livestreams. Even if we meticulously plan out everything to the minute detail, one improv'd line could throw the entire thing off. And if we do want to make something to that end, we could just, you know, make a scripted show. It doesn't exactly fit the spirit of an interactive livestream and what it could do.

So as much as interactive livestreams can lean into being a live medium and using improv to carry it, they still need to tell a story, especially if it wants to lean heavier into the narrative side over improv comedy. 

I'm proposing a term of "golden nodes" for interactive livestreams. This takes the idea of a golden path, but shifts it to better fit how interactive livestreams come to be. A golden node is a piece of content that must be hit at some point. Either because they are the ending state of the stream, enough preparation has gone into them that it would be a catastrophic waste of money to not show it, or has critical plot beats that forwards the story being told. How we get there (in terms of making a complete story, and less so on how good it will be) is irrelevant, and where something entirely unplanned can crop up.

We could try running through The Dollhouse Stream and categorising golden nodes, but this is something you can't really define with something so heavily reliant on improv. What we might think was a golden node might have been improvised on the day, and something we think might have been made on the spot had weeks of planning. Sometimes it's obvious, like organising a bear attack complete with a bear costume, or having a whole lighting setup for a party, but when so much is made up on the spot, it becomes much harder to define which is which. And often, it's a bit of a pointless exercise, and more of a fun fact you hear in the BTS.

On the other hand, as you would expect from something much more focused on telling a pre-planned story, Generation Loss is much heavier with its golden nodes compared to The Dollhouse Stream, and much easier to guess which were planned and take stabs at what was improvised live. I actually wanted to take a stab at mapping the whole series out, complete with attributes gained, used, and estimating which nodes were golden, but...

I've spent far too long on this already.

A few notes I did make on the deaths in episode two, for the curious:

Niki was voted by the audience as the first choice to be saved. If the any-person voted was the one to trigger this, Austin, Ethan, or Niki could have died first.

Vinny's death is a cinematic dependency. Unless multiple videos were shot for it, Vinny had to die at that point.

Ethan's death could have been anyone

I'm personally convinced Sneeg was railroaded to survive until the end, given how well his reset state plays off Ranboo's new emotionless performance.

Keep in mind, this is entirely from my own perspective as someone watching from the outside, and approaching it from the perspective of a narrative designer trying to maximise unique outcomes. I've had to make several assumptions here and I could be entirely off-base.

Despite my crashing out, mapping the livestream out like this shows how rail-roaded episode three is, to the point you can actually draw a solid GP for it. It also shows that, even with many golden nodes to hit, episode two manages to have quite a few moments that could have gone differently based on audience choice. At least, if my assumptions are correct.

So, this leaves me with a proposed set of terms for discussing interactive livestream. Interactive livestream are built around "nodes"; chunks of content that have been explicitly planned out and prepared for before the stream begins. Some of these are golden nodes. Golden nodes could be anything, but are things that must be hit before the stream is over. Other nodes may be optionally hit, and entirely unplanned and improvised content can happen between any nodes. During unplanned segments and nodes alike, everyone (and, really, everything), can gain attributes, which can be brought up at any time to the story's discretion.

Maybe these terms are useful. Maybe they aren't. We'll have to wait and see.

The Limitations of Interactive Livestreams

As much as it's fun to speculate what could be, we, unfortunately, live in a real world with restrictions and limits of what we can do.

One of the most obvious ones is budget, and with the amount of moving parts an interactive livestream has, budget becomes a vital topic to remember. But budget isn't just a matter of money. Consider, if you had unlimited money, and were writing a novel by yourself, how fast could you work? Let's say you write a solid 2,000 words a day, and to you, a novel is complete at 80,000. In this example, you're going to live to 80 before peacefully dying of old age, and start your novelist career at the ripe age of 20.

Even if you had no worries about having a roof over your head, feeding yourself, never getting sick, never taking holidays, and sacrificing every day of your life to writing novels, not even accounting for slowing down as you grew older, or editing, publishing, and the entire escapade on getting your work noticed by others, you would be able to produce 547 in your lifetime, with half a manuscript left over. 

Now consider this when you do have a limited amount to spend and a deadline to hit, and now you're writing something that could have five novels worth of storylines, involves visuals, audio, music, technical implementation, and now considering interactive livestreams specifically, set design, filming requirements, human needs of catering, sanitation, and shelter for your cast and crew. 

Suddenly, two novels of content compared to five looks much more appealing. Interactive narratives not having limitless branches isn't a matter of not wanting to put everything you've got into a project. It's a matter of production realism.

Time is a resource, and one you need to spend just as wisely as money.

This is something very important to remember for interactive livestreams. It's also something to consider for ways we could cut out the expensive parts of one. Could we create one that doesn't have a fancy camera setup? Do we need camera visuals at all, making something akin to a live narrative podcast? Do all interactive livestreams need to last several hours, or can we reduce the scope of time? It wouldn't have the exact same spectacle as a several-hour live filmed show would, sure, but that doesn't mean we can't make impactful narratives with it. Do you know how many eggs we've cracked with 5 minute twine games?

Limitations are also not just a matter of production. We need to think about limitations of a medium itself. A novel, with just text, doesn't have the liberty of showing you something in a visual format, and has to rely entirely on words to communicate the same information. Of course, you can bend and break the rules a little and include pictures in your book, but that starts to cross the line into other formats. Now we're not just a written medium, and have other considerations to make as well. And, generally, writing a paragraph of description is quicker than drawing a picture. The real challenge is making a paragraph just as impactful as a picture in the same spot.

For interactive livestreams, its limitations are a bit tricker to define, being an intersection of so many types of media right off the bat. I'm woefully undereducated of the limitations of filming and live shows, and unfortunately cannot speak to how they would shape how a story is developed. But, what I can do is talk about possible limitations in narrative interactivity. There are a few that jump to mind immediately.

As much as we can talk about audience choice in interactive livestreams, this begs an interesting question, of what happens to the choices the audience doesn't pick. In a game, this is pretty simple. That choice is blocked off, it may have consequences, and the player lives with the choice they did make.

However, games are not performances. They're pieces of media that can be replayed on-demand. If you want a different experience, or want to see what that choice you didn't make actually did, all you have to do is start again.

An interactive livestream does not have this liberty. Once the livestream is over, it cannot be replayed by the audience for a different outcome. Every choice is final, the narrative responds to it, and whatever outcome the then-live audience chooses is the one that's the final outcome for everyone else watching the vod.

In a game, there's often a discussion about how much it should branch around a choice, especially if that choice leads you on an entirely different path with unique content. Someone might not be interested in another run, and unless you really put replayability forward as a selling point, or make it a central mechanic of the game, it's a high gamble that a lot of the content you put a dear amount of effort into will never be seen.

For an interactive livestream, that isn't a matter of content that won't be seen on one run. That's content that won't be seen, period, and is effectively discarded after the stream ends. If we have a story with two immediate branching paths, that's two interactive livestreams worth of budget, for only half the content being delivered.

Looking at this diagram, we can see what content someone sees on one run of a typical branching game. There's a lot they saw, but much more that they didn't. Imagine that this is now the planned content branch for an interactive livestream. Imagine that each one of those nodes is the equivalent to a room in episode two of Generation Loss, and how many uncoloured nodes there are in comparison to red.

Are linear bottlenecked choices the only outcomes for narratives of interactive livestream if we're not depending on improv? Is there an upper limit to how much "true" branching you can prepare before you start hitting the limits of your budget? Can there be an interactive livestream that manages to give several ending options based on the path taken, or will it always have to collapse back down to one alone, or an ending with one diverging choice in the final moment? Does this strip some audience agency, knowing that in spite of their choices or "playing along", they will never be able to change where the story is going, or only making one difference right at the end?

Equally, however, the audience will never know. With a game, an inconsequential choice can always be scrutinised on a replay. Finding out that if you choose to shoot someone, you always miss, and gives you the exact same outcome as letting them live. In an interactive livestream, to the audience, that other choice is permanently gone as soon as we decide to let them live. We will never know what shooting them would have done. It's a kind of choice funneling that games could only dream of.

Compare this diagram, showing a heavily bottle-necked story in a game with multiple runs:

To this one. The same story, now adapted for an interactive livestream:

Interactive livestream are already making use of this. Consider the first choice in episode three of Generation Loss. The scripted event is the audience picking one code, and Ranboo picking any other to forward the plot. The "true" code is chosen when the audience picks it, and Ranboo picks a different one to trigger the security lockdown.

In a game, the first time we play this would have much the same narrative impact, but not so on the second. If we pick a code, enter it, and find out on the first run it's wrong, we remember this on the next. We can try to cheat a little and pick the code we know is correct from the previous run, only to find that no matter what, whatever we pick is the incorrect one. Replay value is a little cheapened.

In an interactive livestream, however, as far as the narrative goes, we will never know anything different. Our first choice is the only choice. The yellow code is always incorrect.

Will audiences wise up to these moments and start to tire of it? Will we get good enough at disguising them and striking a balance between actual interactivity and putting the audience on rails? Who knows. We have to do it and find out.

Here's another thing I've been wondering in terms of limitations, of the kind of narrative setups you can and can't do with interactive livestreams. I mention this, because currently the two story-heavy interactive livestreams we have are based around the concept of an audience directly controlling a streamer, who (and in the case of Generation Loss, not at all times) is aware that they're being controlled and broadcast live.

The Dollhouse Stream takes it in a comedic direction. The entire inspiration of the stream is based on The Sims, with Jerma directly taking mannerisms and inside jokes from the games. Jerma is fully aware of the chat controlling him, and at times openly antagonistic of choices made or not made, but always plays into the character and follows whatever decisions the audience makes.

Generation Loss, as discussed, is the horror inversion of this. Ranboo starts blissfully unaware of the audience controlling them, and the fact this is even being broadcast, and plays into it much like they were making the choices themself. Soon after he learns the truth, he's terrified and defiant of the audience previously controlling him, which marks a point in the narrative of things turning south.

It's pretty interesting to me that both of these are built on the audience being in direct control of a streamer as an extant character to itself, and the streamer fully aware it exists, at least in different capacities. It's like we're already having some meta commentary on the whole medium before it's even fully hit its stride.

I'm certain there's ways to create interactive livestream that don't immediately jump to this as how the audience interacts (the first thought takes a similar thread of video games, where the audience "is" the person they're "controlling", and as a character they and the audience are one in the same), but I also posit this. Does the audience need to control a person? Could they control the environment a streamer is in, and possibly the stream itself? Could the audience be an additional character to themselves, not in direct control of others present? Could we hotswap control between different people on the fly? There's room to explore what the audience actually controls and why.

This is also said with an understanding that both The Dollhouse Stream and Generation Loss are, in varying capacities, commentaries on livestreaming and impacts it has on both streamer and audience. This is excellent, and I'm certainly not calling it a dead-end for interactive livestreams, but I am saying that this medium has potential outside it.

And something else I do wonder about, is the tone of narratives in future interactive livestreams. They, obviously, have their roots in streamer culture and the personalities that have come from it. Each of these personalities, being comedic entertainers, always bring their own jokes and riffs and are predisposed to making people laugh from observational humour. It begs the question, will every interactive livestream have some kind of jokes and tangents to it, and all have some form of improv comedy? Will there be ones that manage to break away from this entirely?

But then I think of some criticisms of video games, of saying that things are too "game-like". Which, to me, is similar to walking into an Italian restaurant and complaining about the amount of pasta. Maybe this is similar. I think we simply don't have enough interactive livestreams to call it.

We need to see more.

We're on the Frontier of a New Way to Tell Stories

This is the point where I fully convinced myself of something I'd been suspecting from the first ten minutes of The Dollhouse Stream. By trying to analyse interactive livestreams as interactive fiction, I was met with caveats and exceptions. As a TTRPG, more caveats. As a standard video game, more. This wasn't a simple matter of treating it as one medium, and keeping in mind one adjustment to make it work. There were sweeping knock-on effects that didn't match with any existing interactive media, and forced me to rethink how to approach it from the ground up.

This is how, I believe, interactive livestreams sets themselves apart from other forms of interactive narratives, and into their own category entirely. They are simply something unto themselves. There's many questions here, and they can only be answered by those who will strike out to try them, and I eagerly await those who do.

We are currently seeing, in real time, a new form of interactive media being developed right in front of us. And one I believe, with the right hands and direction, could easily ascend to a point of being considered art through narrative.

I see nothing but potential. There are so many ways to take this medium and I am begging more people to put their hat into the ring to see what the true limits of it are beyond theory and speculation.

But, it needs that direction. It needs people who understand choice in media, and for the love of god, it needs narrative designers at the helm. My obvious bias as a fulltime game designer and solo narrative dev come through here, but there's no other medium that's produced talent better equipped to tackle this.

I'm right here. Someone hire me.

To which my question is: if you're in the games industry, and not instantly smitten by interactive livestreams as a new medium for storytelling experiences, what the hell are you doing?

And if you're not, and read this for whatever reason you did, I hope you can see what I see, and are as excited as I am.

[itsclydebitches]

It's honestly so baffling to me that in the same volume that Hazel (who killed Mistral huntsmen with Tyrian, staged a coup against Haven, brutalised Oscar - a literal child) gets a redemptive sacrifice and paternal relationship with Emerald, but Ironwood (with a similar dynamic with Winter) is left to die with Atlas because the writers wanted to make him a cartoon villain. It's just so why.

You know, if I thought RT was doing this deliberately--in the sense of carefully planning out their work to achieve a specific and subtle goal--I'd be impressed by how often characters' worst actions happen off screen, or are otherwise ignored by the story until they're (almost) forgotten.

So, Hazel. We know he killed all those huntsmen; countless murders that caused a ripple effect decimating an entire kingdom's defenses. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the casual RWBY fan went, "Huh?" if I brought up that point. Because Qrow searching desperately for his colleagues occurred three volumes ago, Hazel's actions were revealed in an incredibly short conversation, and absolutely nothing has ever come of this heinous crime. For us his guilt is a significant factor in judging how the narrative treats him because we discuss the show as a community and, in doing so, frequently highlight and analyze aspects of the story RWBY has left behind. But for other fans, Hazel is "just" the antagonist who fell for Salem's manipulation. RWBY emphasizes his anger towards Ozpin--an anger the story never explicitly says isn't justified--and in doing so sets up a sympathetic response to his brutalization of a child. Hazel never would have done that if Salem hadn't gotten to him! Or if Oscar wasn't conflated with evil Ozpin! So it's "fine" that Hazel did all this because he was just on his journey of redemption. Hmm? He also indiscriminately murdered countless innocents off screen? Oh yeah, I forgot that... eh, who cares. The story certainly doesn't.

Same with Emerald. Post-Volume 3 the focus is entirely on her emotional state, painting her as someone easy to sympathize with and, therefore, more of a victim than villain: her talk with Mercury, trailing after Cinder for attention, fiercely defending her, and eventually the horrible, 'Don't lose now that I'm a good guy' speech that, again, serves to make Emerald likable and downplay her actions in one fell swoop. Anyone who's defended their disappointment in her arc has likely had a, "You do remember that she decimated Beacon, orchestrated Penny's death, and was absolutely out to murder our heroes, right?" moment.

Now, compare all this to Ironwood whose villainy is emphasized over his humanity. We see clear as day his murder, his torture threats, his random and absurd bomb plan--nothing is shuffled off screen and the sympathetic aspects of his emotional state are severely downplayed, especially after Volume 7. In a reversal, RWDE fans are reminding others about the good stuff: him saving Weiss, leaning heavily against the wall, Yang's arm, turning his weapon away from Qrow, trusting the group immediately, basic consequences of PTSD, etc.--things that the narrative did not carry through his fall. We don't get any moments where the group remembers and fights for Ironwood's 6+ season humanity in the way that, say, Oscar vouches for Emerald's, backed up by Ren seeing her in a pretty color. Indeed, both these characters have moments with Ironwood too, but Oscar condemns an impossible choice as equal to Salem's villainy and Ren cares only for the presumed logic of Ironwood's plan, not the fact that he's an ally they're choosing to oppose rather than compromise. (I will maintain until the END OF TIME that they could have just let Atlas go and focused on fighting Salem/getting the rest out via another evacuation plan. Team RWBY slashed holes in the small number of life boats when they could have let them set sail and then turned their sights on building a raft/fixing the hole in the ship ANYWAY). No one is using a semblance on Ironwood to go, 'He does care! I can see it! We just need to find a way to nurture that' and, you know, trusting that there's an inherent Goodness there that's worth fighting for. That Goodness apparently exists in the villains who have been trying to kill them since day one, but not the established ally who is Absolutely Going Through It.

This 'I believe in him' role that should have gone to Winter if, again, the story didn't kick all those aspects under the curtain and pretend they never existed. His status as her instructor, potential father figure, the devotion, even her choice to take on the Maiden powers at his request, all of it is overshadowed by Weiss' nonsensical implications that Winter has been groomed and her eventual, inevitable turn back to the good side. Winter went from being devoted to Ironwood, to indifferently watching him kill a man, to screaming that everything bad that's happened is his fault and she's going to do her best to kill him now. Most fans tend to remember only what the show is currently highlighting and boy, does the show work hard to highlight only the actions that serve a character's final destination. Putting aside the fandom trend of rewriting good actions to fit our conclusion ('Well, since Ironwood was a bad guy he must have been manipulating Yang by sending her that arm') I don't think a good portion of the fandom remembers, or really thinks about the canonical scenes that RWBY later wants to pretend never happened. Things like Hazel's murders, Emerald's "It's almost sad," Winter starting an actual fight to defend Ironwood/Atlas' honor, and Ironwood dropping to his knees to welcome Ozpin are all treated as small potatoes compared to, well, where we've ended up with. And when the show works that hard to say, "Pay no attention to the war crimes behind the curtain. Behold! The Great and Powerful Redemption Arc!" it's no surprise that so many would nod along, reassured that this is the one, correct way of interpreting the show.

So... yeah. Same, anon. To me it's baffling that characters with these similarities would be treated so differently. Or, rather, that one character whose villainy lasted all of a couple hours would be treated as so undeserving of redemption compared to the years long villain who was never a hero in the first place. Either way, to me and to you it makes no sense, but I think that's in part because we're looking at the whole of RWBY and spotting those similarities in the first place. For so many others it's just random pieces that they think create a complete puzzle: 'You mean the DICTATOR and the guy who SACRIFICED himself?? Uh yeah, they're totally the same /s.' Sure, when put like that it sounds absurd, but that's because you're ignoring half the actual puzzle. You've jammed two pieces together that don't quite fit and proclaimed the end result is a flower. We're on the floor picking up the discarded pieces that have been gathering dust and going, "Huh, actually with these it look more like a very dense and complicated forest."

[sneezemonster15]

So this person @tiesthatbindel @neolavender @neolilac @itunisaaa @neosprivateacc who champions Sakura and holds that Naruto is straight (they said he wasn't gay, didn't say he was bi either, and didn't seem to question his sexuality at all),

who holds Kishi is heteronormative and homophobic (🤦), has been harassing me on my private message and askbox. Here as well. They are using multiple accounts to do so.

Sorry guys, I had to shut off my ask box because this person is just refusing to leave me alone, all because I wrote lol to their comment. I was polite to them, and slightly dismissive perhaps, but this person is making it a mission to gather their followers to block me and hate on me. But seems their only followers are their own alt accounts. Heheh.

I think they feel slighted because I won't take them seriously. They really went from calling my content stellar, and God tier, to harassing me and trying to report me because I wrote a post over a year ago where I talked about my community being on the receiving end of systemic ethnic and religious discrimination in my country.

And a lot more but I blocked them. They are not only badmouthing me but denegrating other SNS fans that I happily interact with. And I am baffled. They simply won't stop.

To prove their point, they also gathered screenshots from a Hinata stan called 'chhote-pandit' who harassed me and several other SNS fans last year, someone who threatened to feed our intestines to their cats for shipping 'brothers', and called SNSers horny fujoshis and dirty lesbians. That person was banned by Tumblr. This person's account also seems to be partially banned. Why are SS and NH stans like this? Bah. Like it's some type of neurosis.

They think Sasuke shinden is canon. Lol. Thing is they went personal, and petty. While I put effort to link them to my content for their benefit, they skipped all of that and started to harass me on my message boards. When I saw that they were spamming my posts, I blocked them. Like I would with any other person. And THAT was their undoing.

Ah. Now one would think I am affected. And I do feel bad, both for myself and them because I didn't deserve this much craziness for saying fanfic writers should dig deeper and presented a research based and well reasoned perspective. And they chose to take offense and take it to a personal level, getting petty, verbally abusing me.

Meanwhile they don't know anything about my ethnicity, my background, my struggles. And if I told them, I can promise they will take it all back. Heh. It can be grounds for even suing them. Yeah, it's that significant. I come from a very interesting (and rare) socio politico cultural intersection. But I value my privacy and anonymity. One other SNSer asked me about it politely and as a response, I left some reading material with them as answer. It explains it much better than I can.

I also am not really bothered as of now because I think I hurt their ego real bad. Just by not taking them seriously. Because I said lol to their comments. They have bigger problems than my dismissal of them.

Anyway, I understand fandoms can be challenging and a lot of people with strong voices get dragged for it on Tumblr. Especially in Naruto fandom. Heh. But the simplest way for them to deal with it was to actually talk storytelling and characters with me, like I did, by sharing links to my content. Instead they got personal while not really doing any of that.

The reason I am here is the story, my boys, Kishi and I find it a lot of fun interacting with other SNSers here. I am grateful that people even make time to read my long winding, seriously long ass posts. Hehehe.

So if you see some stuff somewhere where people are talking about blocking me or talking shit, that's what it's about.

Cheerios. :)