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olderthannetfic · 3 years

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I'm a Chinese, nationally and racially. Racial projection seems to be a common practice in western fandom, doesn't it? I find it a bit... weird to witness the drama ignited upon shipping individuals with different races, or the tendency to separate characters into different "colors" even though the world setting doesn't divide races like that. Such practice isn't a thing here. Mind explaining a bit on this phenomenon?

Sure, I can try. But of course, fish aren’t very good at explaining the water they swim in.

Americans aren’t good at detecting our own Americanness, and a lot of what you’re seeing is very much culturally American rather than Western in general. (In much of Europe, “race” is a concept used by racists, or so I’m told, unlike in the US where it’s seen more neutrally.) Majority group members (i.e. me, a white girl) aren’t usually the savviest about minority issues, but I’ll give it a shot.

The big picture is that most US race stuff boils down to our attempts to justify and maintain slavery and that dynamic being applied, awkwardly, to everyone else too, even years after we abolished slavery.

There’s a concept called the “one drop rule” where a person is “black” if they have even one drop of black blood.

We used to outlaw “interracial” marriage until quite recently. (That meant marriage between black people and white people with Asians and Hispanic people and others wedged in awkwardly.) Here’s the Wikipedia article on this, which contains the following map showing when we legalized interracial marriage. The red states are 1967.

That’s within living memory for a ton of people! Yellow is 1948 to 1967. This is just not very long ago at all. (Hell, we only fully banned slavery in 1865, which is also just not that long ago when it comes to human culture.)

Why did we have this bananas-crazy set of laws and this idiotic notion that one remote ancestor defines who you are? It boils down to slavery requiring a constant reaffirming that black people are all the same (and subhuman) while white people are all this completely separate category. The minute you start intermarrying, all of that breaks down. This was particularly important in our history because our system of slavery involved the kids of slaves being slaves and nobody really buying their way out. Globally, historically, there are other systems of slavery where there was more mobility or where enslaved people were debtors with a similar background to owners, and thus the people in power were less threatened by ambiguity in identity.

Post-slavery, this shit hung around because it was in the interests of the people in power to maintain a similar status quo where black people are fundamentally Other.

A lot of our obsession with who counts as what is simply a legacy of our racist past that produced our racist present.

The other big factor in American concepts of identity is that we see ourselves as a nation of immigrants (ignoring our indigenous peoples, as usual). A lot of people’s families arrived here relatively recently, and we often don’t have good records of exactly where they were from, even aside from enslaved people who obviously wouldn’t have those records. Plenty of people still identify with a general nationality (”Italian-American” and such), but the nuance the family might once have had (specific region of Italy, specific hometown) is often lost. Yeah, I know every place has immigrants, and lots of people don’t have good records, but the US is one of those countries where families have on average moved around a lot more and a lot more recently than some, and it affects our concepts of identity. I think some of the willingness to buy into the idea of “races” rather than “ethnicities” has to do with this flattening of identity.

New immigrant groups were often seen as Other and lesser, but over time, the ones who could manage it got added to our concept of “whiteness”, which gave them access to those same social and economic privileges.

Skin color is a big part of this. In a system that is founded on there being two categories, white owners and black slaves, skin color is obviously going to be about that rather than being more of a class marker like it is in a lot of the world.

But it’s not all about skin color since we have plenty of Europeans with somewhat darker skin who are seen as generically white here, while very pale Asians are not. I’m not super familiar with all of the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, but I think this persistent Otherness probably boils down to Western powers trying to justify colonial activities in Asia plus a bunch of religious bullshit about predominantly Christian nations vs. ones that are predominantly Buddhist or some other religion.

In fact, a lot of racist archetypes in English can be traced back to England’s earliest colonial efforts in Ireland. Justifying colonizing Those People because they’re subhuman and/or ignorant and in need of paternalistic rulers or religious conversion is at the bottom of a lot of racist notions. Ironic that we now see Irish people as clearly “white”.

There are a lot of racist porn tropes and racist cultural baggage here around the idea of black people being animalistic. Racist white people think black men want to rape/steal white women from white men. Black women get seen as hypersexual and aggressive. If this sounds like white people projecting in order to justify murder and rape... well, it is.

Similar tropes get applied to a lot of groups, often including Hispanic and Middle Eastern people, though East Asians come in more for creepy fantasies about endlessly submissive and promiscuous women. This nonsense already existed, but it was certainly not helped by WWII servicemen from here and their experiences in Asia. Again, it’s a projection to justify shitty behavior as what the party with less power was “asking for”.

In porn and even romance novels, this tends to turn up as a white character the audience is supposed to identify with paired with an exotic, mysterious Other or an animalistic sexy rapist Other.

A lot of fandoms are based on US media, so all of our racist bullshit does apply to the casting and writing of those, whether or not the fic is by Americans or replicating our racist porn tropes.

(Obviously, things get pretty hilarious and infuriating once Americans get into c-dramas and try to apply the exact same ideas unchanged to mainstream media about the majority group made by a huge and powerful country.)

Politically, within the US, white people have had most of the power most of the time. We also make up a big chunk of the population. (This is starting to change in some areas, which has assholes scared shitless.) This means that other groups tend to band together to accomplish shared political goals. They’re minorities here, so they get lumped together.

A lot of Americans become used to seeing the world in terms of “white people” who are powerful oppressors and “people of color” who are oppressed minorities. They’re trying to be progressive and help people with less power, and that’s good, but it obviously becomes awkward when it’s over-applied to looking at, say, China.

Now... fandom...

I find that fandom, in general, has a bad habit of holding things to double standards: queer things must be Good Representation™ even when they’re not being produced for that purpose. Same for ethnic minorities or any other minority. US-influenced parts of fandom (which includes a lot of English-speaking fandom) tend to not be very good at accepting that things are just fantasy. This has gotten worse in recent years.

As fandom has gotten more mainstream here, general media criticism about better representation (both in terms of number of characters and in terms of how they’re portrayed) has turned into fanfic criticism (not enough fics about ship X, too many about ship Y, problematic tropes that should not be applied to ship X, etc.). I find this extremely misguided considering the smaller reach of fandom but, more importantly, the lack of barriers to entry. If you think my AO3 fic sucks, you can make an account and post other fic that will be just as findable. You don’t need money or industry connections or to pass any particular hurdle to get your work out there too.

People also (understandably) tend to be hypersensitive to anything that looks like a racist porn trope. My feeling is that many of these are general porn tropes and people are reaching. There are specific tropes where black guys are given a huge dick as part of showing that they’re animalistic and hypersexual, but big dicks are really common in porn in general. The latter doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing the former unless there are other elements present. A/B/O or dubcon doesn’t mean it’s this racist trope either, not unless certain cliched elements are present. OTOH, it’s not hard for a/b/o tropes to feel close to “animalistic guy is rapey”, so I can see why it often bothers people.

A huge, huge, huge proportion of wank is “all rape fantasies are bad” crap too, which muddies the waters. I think a lot of people use “it’s racist” as an easy way to force others to agree with their incorrect claims that dubcon, noncon, a/b/o, etc. are fundamentally bad. Many fans, especially white fans, feel like they don’t know enough to refute claims of racism, so they cave to such arguments even when they’re transparently disingenuous.

Not everyone here thinks this way. I know plenty of people offline, particularly a lot of nonwhite people, who think fandom discourse is idiotic and that the people “protecting” people or characters of color are far more racist than the people writing “bad” fic or shipping the wrong thing.

But in general, I’d say that the stuff above is why a lot of us see the world as white people in power vs. everyone else as oppressed victims, interracial relationships as fraught, and porn about them as suspect. Basically, it’s people trying to be more progressive and aware but sometimes causing more harm than good when those attempts go awry.

#Anonymous

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meanautisticenbian · 3 years

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Fuck it, I'm gonna dissect all the bullshit in that one Lilith post bit by bit

TW// Lilith hate, victim blaming, abuse, cult mention, ableism towards Autistic people, sexualization of minors (briefly mentioned)

I'll be putting my text in bold just in case it's hard to distinguish between the pictures and my commentary

Here's the post I'm referring to in case you're curious

Moving on and starting with this bit

People pay attention to Eda all the damn time, she's literally one of the main characters. Funny how you only mention tik tok and nothing else. Is that the only other social media you have? Because fans on different social media platforms act much differently; on IG and Reddit stuff like the sexualization of minors and fucking ODALIA AND ALADOR STANS are normalized, where everywhere else it's pretty much universally agreed that that stuff is bad. I don't know a lot about what toh Tik Tok is like just because I don't usually go on tik tok, but even if it is like this, it's not the same for the rest of the fandom. A lot of the fandom still hates Lilith and blames her for her abuse and not being able to leave

You say that like she's a bad person, she's really not. The curse she placed on Eda wasn't intended to be permanent and probably wasn't even supposed to take the effects that it did. She was most likely scammed. I mean look at how she reacts when Eda transforms for the first time. She also feels guilty enough about it to throw herself into an abusive situation and spend almost her whole life trying to make up for it. Lastly, yes she hurt Luz, but let's not forget that Belos threatened her life upon Eda's capture and Lilith was running out of time and had no other option. Obviously what she did was wrong but she's not the real monster here.

"I do like Lilith" this entire essay says otherwise.

Literally none of us ignore any of the bad shit she's done, stop lying about us.

Yes, Lilith did mock her for her curse, which was messed up, but we don't actually know for sure if the curse is basically canonically a disability in that world, so if that's the case then for now it's technically not ableism until we get confirmation otherwise.

"it was an accident and I forgive Lilith" no you fucking don't. First of all this entire essay is you talking about how evil you think she is and secondly, if it really was as bad as you view it, you wouldn't be that forgiving.

Ah yes the victim blaming, the one thing that almost everyone does to Lilith and barely anyone talks about.

There is literally not a single Lilith stan out there who blames Eda for getting cursed. You're just mad that your victim blaming towards Lilith got called out so you silence us by lying about how we do the same thing to Eda.

No one is making Eda out to be the villain either, the only example I can find of this is a few fanfics where she treats Lilith a lot more harshly than she should, and even then, scenes like that are written in a positive light as if you're supposed to be on Eda's side, so with that in mind, the writers of these fics are clearly not even Lilith stans. In terms of how actual stans treat Eda, the worst they do is make her slightly ignorant of Lilith's trauma, kinda like the fandom, minus the "slightly", until she grows as a character and learns to see the red flags. If that's the problem you're talking about, then breaking news: Eda's not perfect either. She has flaws too just like literally everyone else in the show and people are allowed to write about them

Tell me the truth: are people making playlists for Lilith that include a lot of sad and angry songs because she's not a happy person anyway so there wouldn't be a point in having any happy songs, or are they making "trauma" playlists? There's a difference

I'm sorry, are you trying to tell me that people recognizing Lilith's trauma is victim blaming Eda? That's not how it works sweetycakes

There is far more Eda angst out there than there is for Lilith, where are you finding so much Lilith angst? LILITH is the one who's traumas are being ignored while Eda's gets all the attention. You're acting like one of those white cis gays on twitter who see black people talking about the anti blackness they experience daily and accuse them of being homophobic because "there is so much homophobia in the world and they still manage to make it all about race".

No one is saying that Lilith has worse trauma, we're only saying that her's is also severe and that it definitely exists. Also funny how you're allowed to be mad at us for comparing Lilith and Eda's trauma (once again lying about us), then you go on to do the exact same thing and say that EDA'S trauma is worse. Even if, hypothetically speaking, Eda did have it worse, that doesn't mean Lilith doesn't have the right to be traumatized. Both of them have trauma, both should be recognized. Also, Lilith had far more going on in her life than just the guilt of her actions, she was was implied to have been psychologically and maybe physically abused, and was probably even tortured. Stop ignoring all the red flags and condemn the actual abuser (Belos) before you criticize anything the abused (Lilith) has done.

We're not making everything about Lilith, like shut up.

Please don't say that autistic people "have autism", it implies that it's something that can be removed from us. For example: you don't say "a person with blackness" when referring to black people or "a woman with homosexuality" when referring to Lesbians.

Oh yeah I'm also autistic so here are MY thoughts

Amity and Lilith are not antagonists anymore, hcing them as Autistic is not villainizing autism.

The autistic Lilith headcanon was made by autistic fans, allistics only latched onto it because they either wanted to be supportive or they saw that she actually had a lot of autistic traits

You're not the only autistic person alive, just because you're not like Lilith or Amity doesn't mean none of us are or they're not autistic. I mean, I know I am

You're not fun or funny

"not all Autistic people are like this" remember that line, dear readers

Actually, I prefer the autistic villain trope MUCH more than the grown ass autistic adult that acts like a five year old trope. At least we'd have less stereotypes associated with us.

Autism is not supposed to be portrayed in only fun and happy characters, that is literally the epitome of stereotyping and infantilizing. You literally just said that not all autistic people are the same, doesn't this count as being all the same? Does this mean I don't exist anymore? Am I just not autistic? Are you even aware that a flat affect or monotone voice is literally a very common autistic trait? You can't just say that we're stereotyping autistics and then just go on to stereotype us, like what the fuck are you even on? Is it only ok when you do it?

Amity is not edgy for fuck's sake

Literally no one is headcanoning Lilith or Amity as autistic because they're mean, we headcanon them as autistic because they actually show traits of it

Oh, our harmless headcanons are making you feel uncomfortable because they don't fit into the stereotypes you made up about us? Good to know our plan is working I guess

Last thing I wanna say regarding this post as a whole: why are you acting like liking Lilith and feeling sympathy for her is a bad thing? If you find this then don't say "I don't think that's a bad thing", answer HONESTLY

Well that's all I have for now, thank you for reading, I need to go to bed soon

#im posting this late but i didn't get to be online as much as i wanted #lilith clawthorne #toh #toh lilith #lilith #the owl house #eda clawthorne #edalyn clawthorne #toh eda #toh amity #toh luz

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not-poignant · 3 years

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Do you think many things have changed about you being a writer online since the beginning of the Fae Tales Universe compared to now? Not only writing style, but including how you are online, or how you think about fandom?

Oooooo

*thinks*

Actually yeah, I mean writing style yes, but in terms of how I think about fandom and how I am online, that has changed a lot. (Adding a Read More because oh god this got LONG).

I used to like, try and be 100% kind all the time, since firstly that comes very naturally to me, and secondly because I was so like...happy and thrilled that folks were communicating with me in the beginning.

But then I was taken advantage of, and one person in particular was abusive, and at the time I didn’t see it for what it was. I’ve also been stalked. I’ve had someone turn up on my doorstep uninvited. And over time I think I’ve become no less grateful (if anything I’m more grateful for the amazing readers), but also more wary? Like, I’m more likely to delete troll messages, than I used to. And sometimes I think it will be more obvious if I’m impatient or if I’m asserting a boundary in an ask response.

Radiotherapy to the head/neck for the cancer I have also really altered things there. I realised I could die at any moment, life is really short, my tumours could metastasise at any time (I actually have one that’s growing at the moment, which is alarming) and that I don’t really have the...patience I guess, to spend time constantly saying ‘this isn’t a music rec blog’ or ‘please don’t recommend books to me because most of the time I don’t like them and people tend to resent me for it’ (as an example) year after year after year. Or to deal with bad faith anons, or anons who just enjoy the novelty of getting me to answer incessant questions about space or something else that has nothing to really do with me. I can’t tell you how many asks I’ve gotten about ‘will you ever make Augus and Gwyn dads, could they adopt a baby’ but it’s a lot and I’ve deleted most of them.

So I actually think I’m more realistically human than I used to be, online. Which is a weird thing to say, right? And maybe that pisses people off. I’ve always been very opinionated, probably to my detriment, that’s never really changed. I’m still going to tell antis to go fuck themselves.

I try and stick to a policy now with messages that piss me off, which is ‘take time before you reply to this.’ I don’t always succeed, but I usually like to wait 12-24 hours before I reply to those messages (or delete them), so I can at least give a fair and moderate response. I really hate feeling like I just got angry at someone who’s possibly only 18 years old and doesn’t really know how to articulate themselves well on the internet, and it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between ‘troll’ and ‘someone who really just is nervous and shy and doesn’t know how to phrase their question.’

In terms of fandom, I love replying to comments more than ever, actually. Like I love it. I love kudos even more than I used to. I really am grateful for all reader engagement. But I don’t have as much time and energy as I used to respond to every ask, so I respond to asks less, and I respond to them in a less timely manner. I really hate that, but sometimes it’s like ‘I can’t spend all of today replying to asks, I literally have to write the chapters that people want to read.’ I also get social anxiety around asks, and people can be impatient - like no one sends a second comment on AO3 going ‘heyyyy you haven’t replied to my comment yet’ - but you’d be surprised how much people put pressure on you on Tumblr sometimes, as though I also don’t have social anxiety and things might be really stressing me out. :(

In terms of my priority, it’s always 1. Writing content, 2. Replying to comments / being active on the Discord, 3. Replying on Patreon when necessary, 4. Replying to asks. If I’m behind on writing, everything else gets hit. I think when I first started out, I actually put comments and asks ahead of writing content sometimes, but now I know I will literally spend all my time responding to folks and that’s a me problem, and I’ve worked on that since lmao.

I’ve realised over the years that instead of just writing for myself, like I always used to, I also just want to deliver so many of you wonderful people good stories. This has come to matter to me more. The best way, I think, to repay some of the amazing faith and love you’ve all showed me, is to try and give you the best possible writing I can until like, my cancer makes that impossible. And so I’ve become a lot more focused as a writer, and a lot more like ‘this is where I want to be.’

I’ve also realised I care a lot less about traditional publishing, I really love serials! Er, that was a big one, I thought one day I’d transition from writing serials online to publishing books, but now I would like to always be writing serials, and publish books on the side. In a perfect world, I could also publish the serials as books too, so people could own them if they wanted to.

I’ve also seen over the years the rise of antis, and puritanical censorship, and more, and that’s made me angrier, and also much, much stronger re: feeling centred in what I write and what I have written. So I feel like I am much more like...genuinely not bothered by what antis have to say to me, and ironically I get less bothered by antis than ever before, probably because they know that I’m Teflon with claws whenever it comes to any of their rhetoric. I have a media degree that says they have no idea what they’re talking about, and I’m angry on behalf of all the readers who feel ashamed for reading certain content, and who deserve not to feel that way. So that’s like...a thing that’s changed over the years - my anger, and my anger on behalf of readers who might feel guilty or ashamed for liking noncon or incest or underage in fiction. It’s fiction. They’re allowed to engage in that without being afraid of being bullied for it. But that’s not the world we live in.

To be honest, a lot of the changes have been positive! I’ve become more sure and focused, I’ve actually become happier as a writer and a person, and I enjoy the fandom experience more, as well as writing fanfiction and stuff. I wish I had more time to like... chat about AUs and stuff and write Tumblr posts like I used to, but radiotherapy hit me pretty hard with some permanent energy loss and side effects, and so where things have changed in a bad way, it’s almost always because of health and not because I love fandom any less. And where I’ve changed in terms of sometimes being a bit more cynical about anon asks I try and remind myself to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and to just remind myself that I have my boundaries, and I’m safe/okay. I hate that I have to do that nowadays, but it was kind of stupid that I didn’t do it before.

I can’t believe how like... how lucky I am to be here. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to write for you all. Lucky to write stories I love. Lucky to reply to comments and asks like this one. I don’t ever want to lose sight of that or the gratitude.

I think the day I stop being grateful, is the day I need to walk away. It’s humbling, honestly, and I feel that more and more over time, and not less. Even when I’m an opinionated dumbass who writes too much most of the time, lmao.

(I didn’t even get to talking about how my writing style changed I’m sorry anon THIS GOT SO LONG FUCK)

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rayshippouuchiha · 3 years

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Can I be honest?

Ao3 actually kept me from harm BECAUSE it hosted darker content that is well tagged.

Let me explain. I started my fanfiction days pretty young and in ff.net no less. I loved reading and I was curious. First thing I learned before going on the internet was from my father (the internet is not for kids, stay sharp, you going into an adult place, act like it). I was very careful but I was still curious.

So, I started small, but because of the ff.net tag mess I did get burned. A few times. Sudden violence, amputations, sex scenes (god i remember the lemon scale bs, as if i understood it in the first place) (this was before the purge). This was because all the well written fics were mostly in the M rating but had no specific tags so I had no idea if the M was for torture, cursing, or god knows what, I couldn't filter out anything.

Some of those things I still remember, they left a mark in a way, but that wasn't the writer's fault because they couldn't tag and I ignored the author note sections because most of the time it was just rambles of the author talking with the characters self-insert style or about their real life problems, how was I supposed to find a warning in that kind of mess? And that's on me.

In that period I kinda got introduced to sex, a thing that wasn't talked about around me in real life. I was already a bit older, so I read it no problem. Then got introduced to kinks and found them interesting.

That's where Ao3 comes in. I found it when looking at fic recs and saw a new internet address instead of ff.net. For me, it was the holy grail. I was still a young curious teen girl but suddenly had access to a whole library of cool shit. I read a lot of mainstream fics and switched between fandoms like a deck of cards. Then, I saw the E rating. I was interested and clicked. Clicked through the adult content warnings like a true kid lying about their age on the internet.

I saw tags galore! Now, for the first time I was, in a way, safe while exploring dark stuff. Because one fic on the same page was tagged underage (the characters were my age at the time) and was E, while a whole other E fic on the same page was graphic torture case fic and worse. And it was all tagged.

So there I went, looking at fic, going hmmm and deciding: oh that's interesting, ew no, oh that's gross, huh i wonder what that is, this sounds good, oh i love this, uhhhhh hmm should I risk it, OH HELL NO.

And that's the thing! I knew what I was reading! I could experiment with kinks and dark things in a completely safe environment of the fantasy world!

Ao3 in a way saved me from talking about these things with others and accidentaly falling into an actual predator's hands (think student/teacher dynamic, grooming), because my curiosity wasn't going away, I still would have looked sooner or later, and if it wasn't for the no-interaction interface of Ao3 (a story can't kidnap or molest you), I could have been hurt.

Like yeah, no shit, I know I'm lucky that my brain didn't get actual trauma from textual depictions of dark stuff I stumbled on in my early days, but what I did get was more valuable than the risk of trauma (also, you can't get trauma from a tag, but you could from the text that has the tag, so the reader is still the one responsible, they were warned what was inside the box and still opened it).

I got boundaries, squicks, hard no's, absolute limits, whatever people call them these days. I now know what I can deal with and what I can't. I know myself better and could now fight against a person trying to bend or break them. I read dark shit so I know what kind of emotions I get from them and in what circumstances (what I like in text pretty much never carries into real life (even the mild things like biting), surprise).

But purity police would look at my Ao3 history and scream their head off about how I'm a deviant roaming free to attack people like a rabid dog, because obviously I must secretly wish to do that in real life!

And then if they met me they would get the confusion of a lifetime! They would have this image of a sexual deviant/old as fuck creeper/freak and then see me, a 21 year old woman, a well adjusted and social individual who has NEVER and will NEVER hurt a fly, eating chips in bed and reading fucked up shit about fictional characters for entertainment.

Because that's the difference. It's not the average people reading fucked up shit that are dangerous to the public, it's the people who already were fucked in the head before reading anything. No story on this Earth can force you to commit a crime unless you already wanted to do it and were just looking for an excuse.

Case in point, the Dexter inspired murders ("it wasn't me it was the book, I am innocent, it was the evil book, as such I am not to blame, blame the author!") and the NUMEROUS video game related murders (oh no it's not the parent's fault they bought their unstable child a 18+ rated game, it's the game's/creator's fault!"

Fiction and Reality coexist and influence each other in various ways (propaganda, misinformation, stereotypes, false data), but not like this.

And do you guys know why? Because we have an instinctive moral compass, we know right from wrong, and anyone fooling themselves thinking "I would have never done that if this [media] didn't tell/force me to do it" are in fact lying. Again, they would have done it eventually or even wanted to do it already, they just found a viable excuse now, all free to use as a "get out of jail free" card.

Sorry for the long ask and for my English (non-native speaker), you can ignore this, I won't mind. Just got a bit ticked off at people blaming writers for shit they didn't do. So here is my perspective from a long time reader's point of view.

If all these works didn't make me into a monster after all this time reading, then maybe, just maybe, it's not the works' fault.

You bring up absolutely wonderful and important points darling. Thank you for sharing.

And your English is fantastic so don’t worry about it.

#Fandom #Anonymous #RayRambles

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fromtheplanethexagon · 4 years

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the robot problem: a critical look at tobecky, 5 years late

hello wordgirl fandom i am back :) and i have a lot of thoughts that i never got around to expressing before i moved on from the show. so be aware that everything i'm saying is based on my experiences during the 2012-2016 era of the fandom & state of tumblr in general, and i am not familiar with more recent fan content.

it's been over five years since the show ended, and @ifbrd reminded me (along with some great analysis) that while tobecky was super popular since before the show technically started (thanks to the play date shorts), it's pretty unhealthy in a lot of ways that tend to be excused or flat out ignored in fanworks. i'd like to reflect on that a bit (a lot); specifically, how both the show and the fandom approached this enemies-to-lovers ship, and how easily this ship can slip into uncomfortable territory if we're careless about how we interpret the ship and create fan content of it.

i will admit, i'm mostly writing this as a response to past me and my old creations - though i moved on from the show as a whole years ago, i do like taking the time to reflect on old interests once in a while, and reevaluating my thoughts on them. and this ship is probably the biggest one that still lurks in the corners of my mind once in a while, so let's go.

cherish is the word: a short positive note before a much longer negative one

i wanted to start this essay off with some positivity, because i am going to be very negative after this. tobecky was, in some ways, cute. it's obvious from the very beginning that these two characters are on pretty equal ground, even if one of them isn't aware of it. and that's part of the fun - the irony of how unaware tobey is that his nemesis/crush/person that pretty much always wins against him is someone that he completely dismisses as incompetent. i want to point this out because honestly, in general i don't like enemies-to-lovers because a lot of them use a power imbalance within the dynamic, and i hate power imbalances, especially when it comes to actual life-or-death scenarios (at least, as much as cartoons can do that). in most episodes, becky is never actually forced to go along with his wishes. she's not held in a 'date' against her will, nor is she ever really outwitted by him. i bring this up because there is one huge, uncomfortable exception, which i will get to later.

another big plus to the ship is the fact that they just... get along? even when fighting? of course we get brief moments where they just hang out and talk about paintings or whatever, but i'm talking about how much they get each other, even if they don't realize it. like the word banter, for example. been there since day one. becky loves words, and while most other people in her life don't really care (ranging from 'eh, that's cool i guess' to her brother calling it annoying), tobey gives her a chance to show off and thus treats her as a worthy adversary as herself, not because of her more generic superpowers - something that we've seen in canon that she feels self-conscious about (see: her motivation in patch game). one of the less noticed examples, to me, is "it's your party and i'll cry if I want to", because it's just - okay. they both are excluded from a social event, and while it's obvious that tobey deals with it by destroying the city, it's also pretty obvious that becky also deals with her frustration by fighting in that battle. like, yes, realistically it's just objectively bad that he's destroying buildings. but they're also providing each other with a way to work through their frustrations, first by fighting and then by talking things out, and finally by hanging out together instead of dwelling on being excluded from the party.

so it makes a lot of sense to me that many tobecky fans gravitated towards writing far-in-the-future fic, usually by implying that some growth had taken place before starting to write the ship. (there are, as far as i'm aware, 2... maybe 3 exceptions, that take the time to attempt a real redemption for him, at least when i left the fandom.) because if you take away his worst moments, either by reasoning out that he was 10 years old and a mess, or that he was a cartoon character in a cartoon world where everyone's actions are over-the-top, or by just flat-out pretending that certain episodes never happened, there's some pretty solid ground to start a ship on.

go gadget go: we all do not see it, we simply close our eyes (review of canon)

when the show began, i was the same age as the characters. a lot of other people were, too - at least in my cohort of the fandom. i think it's pretty safe to say that many of us have fond memories of the show's earlier seasons, and held on to that interest as we got older, for whatever reasons. so like, not to be all 'as an OG fan...', but i remember seeing the shorts air for the first time in 2006. i have a diary entry in july of 2009 about how i, a 12yo with no concept of the idea of 'shipping', was disappointed in the new tobey episode because i wanted more tobecky interactions. (that was robo-camping, btw, lol.) and so i remember how exciting their rivalry felt, watching them as someone literally their exact same age, and then watching that again as a nostalgic 17yo, and then uh... growing up, to put it frankly, and realizing just how unhealthy most of their interactions were.

okay what i meant to say was, this section is an overview of the relationship's canon portrayal throughout the years.

first, we have early tobecky: this includes the shorts and the first few seasons. this is their classic relationship: he likes her and takes robots on rampages to get her attention, she majorly disapproves and has fun taking him down. we've all seen the show, you know what i'm talking about. his backhanded ways of trying to find out her identity often feature prominently in the episodes, which - sigh, i've mentioned this whole issue before, but it's kind of a grey area in the whole uncomfortable-factor thing, because while trying to find out her identity is VERY invasive, it's something that like... everyone in the show tries to do, even her canon crush (scoops). on the one hand, it's really not a great look, but on the other hand, this is a cartoon meant to parody a genre in which this trope is extremely common. so i just wanna say that i have Issues and Thoughts on this aspect of their relationship, but there are other things i find more important to discuss here.

second, we have late tobecky: this is seasons 7-8. this is... a very strange and huge shift from the previous dynamic, though it's not necessarily obvious. what i mean by that is that for some reason, the show writers made it so that half of tobey’s rampages have nothing to do with his crush on wordgirl, even though that used to be the sole reason for his villainy. seriously. we have the birthday episode, where he's upset because he feels left out; wg vs tobey vs the dentist, where he's mad that he has a cavity; and trustworthy tobey, where his robot goes on a rampage... after becky accidentally makes it malfunction. the two outliers are ‘guess who’s coming to thanksgiving dinner’ and ‘patch game’, but they still differ from previous seasons because 1) his destruction is isolated to a forest far away from the city, and 2) his motive is still to impress wordgirl, but his methods are relatively tame. also he completely gives up on the secret identity thing??? i may have missed some things but i think he straight up tells her 'yeah there's no way you're wordgirl, lol' and the subject is just dropped for the rest of the show.

i also want to include 'the robot problem' here, because it's one of two season 6 tobey episodes, and follows the 'doesn't destroy buildings to get her attention' pattern: in fact, he teams up with her to try and stop someone else from going on a rampage (even if his reasons are selfish, lol).

and finally. the other season 6 episode. we have go gadget go, the bane of my time spent in the fandom. because GGG is the single episode where tobey truly manages to take away her autonomy, and proceeds to abuse that power for an extended period of time, for his own amusement. it's bad. it's Very Bad. put in the context that it's a white boy doing this to an (ambiguously) brown girl, it's REALLY REALLY BAD. and the more i look back on it, tbh, the more weirded out i am that the show not only made it seem like she wasn't affected at all within the episode, it just... forgot about it (which is not unusual for shows and especially children’s shows, but WG does make some efforts to either retain continuity or create canon reasons for why things are forgotten about). it's the kind of thing that you can't excuse and honestly you can't redeem (like at this point, you gotta ask yourself why you're spending so much effort trying to redeem this guy when becky has several other possible ships that are nowhere near this unhealthy - violet, scoops, honestly even victoria if you want another hero/villain ship, my absolute fave rarepair rose, etc).

so if you want to still ship it you have to just pretend that it never happened. (i remember trying for weeks to write something exploring the aftermath of this episode, to try and make myself feel better about it, but the more i wrote the more i realized just how traumatic this event should've been, so i eventually just dropped it.) and i brought up my own timeline of experiences earlier to point out that this episode aired eight whole years after the show started. which means that when i saw it, even though i was a huge stickler for canon at the time, i'd built up my own idea of the show and characters strongly enough to go 'yeah, no, this episode sucks and i am going to pretend that it doesn't exist'. and i think a lot of other people did too, because i really saw like... no one mention it, ever, except for some rogue fanfics over on ff dot net that already liked dynamics like that.

because here's the thing, and i don't know if people nowadays are aware of it? but i'm 80% sure (cannot find a source, so the other 20% is that it was just a rumor) that the show was originally supposed to end after season 6. and even if it's a rumor, it makes a ton of sense, because we get 1) an 'ending' to tobecky, which is a bad one, 2) a permanent wordgirl identity reveal that significantly changes one of the major dynamics in the show, 3) an episode where TJ gets to work with wordgirl and get a nice potential ending for their sibling dynamic, 4) an episode where we see Two-Brains explore life without his henchmen... the list goes on, and idk how many of these are just major stretches. but the point is. if the show had ended there, that would've been a pretty solid ending for many things, including their relationship: aka, it would prove that it was only ever heading somewhere bad, and when tobey finally has his moment of triumph, he is truly evil about it. and this provides us fans who HATE go gadget go with an easy reason to dismiss it - we can say that it was an attempt to conclude things in a way that wouldn't have happened if the writers had known they'd get more time. but despite that... it is still a canon episode.

it is odd to me how dramatically the dynamic shifts after that, though, because we seriously go from 'worst case ever, tobecky is toxic, your ship is dead' to 'no actually they get along and hang out and get ice cream together and tobey isn't even pressuring her into it, she's happy to go along with it :)' like, immediately. i never knew much about the show writers, so i don't know if the writers changed in between these seasons, but i would absolutely not be surprised if they did.

the earlier episodes are definitely problematic as well (though they pale in comparison to GGG) but i think everyone who ships it is aware considering that tobey is, yknow, a villain. from memory, he destroys buildings to get her attention, lies to her about the level of danger that people are in to trick her into spending more time with him, blackmails her into reading his poetry, and he creates a robot based on her that’s supposed to be devoted to him (but of course, all of these things backfire). not great stuff of course, but like... he’s a villain, that’s the point of his character. and considering that he’s a child these are things that can be redeemed, if done thoughtfully.

anyway, to sum up this section, the show starts off with a pretty standard 'enemies with an unrequited crush' setup, takes a really dark turn for a single episode, and then for the rest of the show takes their dynamic in a direction that makes it much, much easier to ship. as long as you ignore a lot of previous content.

wordbot: where's becky's autonomy in all of this? (misogyny)

we've finally gotten to the fandom. i recognize that a lot of this is going to come across as hypocritical considering how active i used to be re: this ship, but like... i'm a very different person now. anyway. disclaimer i guess - i don't write this to accuse all tobecky shippers of being like this - i know a lot of us aren't/weren't! but boy do i have things to point out, so without further ado:

it is very hard to ship this without allowing some bit of misogyny to slip into it. very, very hard. the entire premise of the ship involves a girl falling in love with a boy that repeatedly pressures her to date him via threats to the safety of herself and people she cares about, which... it's 2020, i shouldn't have to explain why that's terrible & a terrible example to set for children (which is why i am glad they never made it canon, tbh). best-case fan content has tobey stop pressuring her and start working to redeem himself out of an actual change of heart, which leads to becky seeing him in a new light. worst-case fan content treats his incessant pressuring and sometimes outright threats as something romantic - and even worse, romantic to the point where he deserves her attention and love as a reward for not giving up or whatever. i did see this pretty frequently for a while, especially in the earlier 2010s (didn't read much, Not My Thing At All), but i don't feel like going into detail here because of how obviously problematic it is. one medium (but still bad) case is where the fan content makes him start his redemption, but treats her liking him back as a reward for not knocking buildings over anymore. another not great case is where she tries to fix him with her love, which is a very common and very dangerous romantic trope. both are just... so incredibly unfair to her.

in content where she tries to 'fix him'... yeah i feel like it's really obvious how misogynistic that is. girls and women should not feel responsible for the evil actions of men, plain and simple. idk what else to say here i just really hate that trope and hated it back then and it just sucks! so can we not do that anymore, thanks.

in content that treats her like a reward for good behavior, there really isn't much of an explanation for what she sees in him. if she just goes 'oh wow, you're good now, i am going to fall in love with you for it' the whole thing falls flat because it makes NO sense whatsoever. we get to hear so much about tobey and his feelings and why he likes her and how he feels about it, but where is that energy for becky? why does she choose to trust him, to spend time around him, what does she enjoy about his presence? where is her getting over scoops in the process of falling for tobey? where is her telling her friends about this, confiding in them, asking them for advice? where is her choice in the matter?

win a day with wordgirl: do you guys even like becky or do you just like the idea of her (misogyny... 2!)

it was pretty standard for all fandoms the early-mid 2010s, but that's still not a good excuse for why so many tobecky fanfictions centered specifically around tobey's feelings while refusing to give becky the same level of empathy and nuance. it is true that to ship them comfortably you have to redeem him to some degree, which means spending time figuring him out and trying to find ways to pull him to the light without feeling super OOC. but ships take two people??? and there was so much potential for fanfics to explore becky's complex feelings on the matter - because she is! complex! she's heroic and kind but she's petty and has a competitive streak, she easily befriends villains but also doesn't trust them and doesn't believe they can ever really change, she's the savior of an entire planet but has feelings of inadequacy as her civilian identity and struggles with feeling like she can be successful without superpowers, she's great at the straightforward meanings and uses of words and loves reading but struggles to write passages that aren't dry as hell, it can be easily headcannoned that she's neurodivergent (special interests, issues with fitting in with her peers, taking things very literally, etc)... seriously there is SO MUCH to explore about her character, and a lot of it comes into play when you add tobey into the mix (literally ALL of the things i mentioned are explored at some point using tobey as a parallel or foil), but i rarely saw fanfiction that explored her thoughts on things further than 'he's evil but... maybe good?' or 'he's evil but... i kind of like him anyway?'.

if you want her to fall for him while being a villain, explore it!! why does she go against her morals? does she lie to herself about it to feel better? does she feel like she has to 'fix him' as part of her superhero duties to the city, and if so, how does that affect her as she tries and fails to help him? does she fall for him when she believes that he's turning good, only to feel betrayed when he starts acting worse because he feels like he can get away with it? it's such a shame that fanworks spend so little time even considering these questions, and it is absolutely a product of how deeply misogyny is/was baked into how we approach media (especially back then).

tobey goes good: but wait, i thought this show was progressive (a conclusion, i guess)

ifbrd wrote a great meta recently about how the show is a bit misogynist, despite being progressive in several ways. honestly i don't have much to add, but i'd really recommend reading through this; it makes a lot of great observations about the ways that male and female characters are presented differently through the show

i have little to add, so i'd just like to conclude with a reflection on the ship from my current viewpoint. i do think part of the reason so many of us latched onto the ship, despite how obviously problematic it was, is that the show treats a lot of things that would be serious in real life as normal or even comedic - which is fine lol, i'm not going to pretend that it's not a show for little kids, so they have to keep the tone light.

but if we, as teens/adults, decide to engage with this content in a more realistic manner, we have to be prepared to confront how messed up so many of the things going on really are. and if you still want to ship it, there's nothing inherently wrong with that! there's a lot of interesting things to explore in this ship, no matter what stage of enemies-to-friends-to-lovers you write them at, and it can be really helpful to have a space where you can explore a dynamic such as this in fiction. (speaking from experience here tbh, writing some fic for them helped me deal with complicated feelings about some ex-longtime friends.)

so to write this ship at all means that there are canon issues that you need to deal with if you want to have them end up in a healthy relationship in any manner that makes sense (unless you create an AU where none of that is applicable, which, power to you then). and i’m not saying ‘write them with a healthy endgame or you’re Bad’, not at all lol. but at least please, please take a step back once in a while to examine the dynamic that you’re writing, and please be careful about whether you mean to be romanticizing whatever behaviors you end up portraying as good.

#wordgirl #becky botsford #tobey mccallister #tobecky #tobecky critical #has anyone ever used that tag before LMAO #anyway: i may come back and reword the ending because i am not totally happy with it #but wow this is so many words. so many. send help

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ectonurites · 3 years

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Okay, so I kinda wanna know your thoughts about how weird the fandom portrays the bat characters. Canon is ... not my favorite, but it actually offers a lot of nuance to the characters that I think makes them all interesting. Unlikable, but interesting. I noticed fanon tends to boil the batkids all into these superflat caricatures. Like, cereal obsessed manchild Dick Grayson or bad boy who's literal crimes are only because of the lazarus pit Jason Todd. Its not really a major problem, just weird

Oh I have a LOT of thoughts about this. I try so hard not to shit on how other people interact with content because like, it’s comic books! We’re all just here trying to make the best out of a mess of stuff and have fun, but admittedly a lot of fanon stuff drives me fuckin’ nuts as someone who reads a ton of comics.

Like, I like memes, obviously, I draw tons of memes with the batfam (+ yj) characters and make lighthearted jokes etc etc, and honestly if it’s just for jokes then I don’t mind people having whack interpretations of the characters quite as much. The thing that drives me up a wall though is like... when serious works and analysis and discussion are very clearly based on just the fanon interpretations without any bearing on canon aside from what you could skim from a wiki page, and it’s spoken like it’s fact! There’s ‘having fun with jokes that aren’t taking things that seriously’ and then there’s ‘blatantly mischaracterizing based on misinformation’. Way too often I see things fall into that second category.

Now, a lot of people in the batfam fandom don’t... actually read comics (or at least not frequently) and that’s not even a bad thing necessarily, like you’re 100% allowed to enjoy content however you want to! (I don’t wanna be gatekeepey, especially since comics are confusing to get into)

But the problem is that when a lot of people aren’t reading the comics, then the people who do’s opinions have a lot more influence if they’re loud enough. All it takes is one person who read something and interpreted it a specific way that might not even be correct, and then it can echo chamber and suddenly half the fandom thinks it’s 100% canon that way because ‘oh so and so said that and they actually read it’.

I also think that’s a problem with the popularity of out of context panels/blogs, while they are super funny sometimes, when people make assumptions about characters based on just a few things without context... it can lead to problems. If enough people say something enough times people just... start to think it’s true, even if it exists entirely devoid of context which changes the meaning.

Like, for example, according to canon there’s no actual confirmation Tim stalked Batman on foot for an extended period of time! We know from Lonely Place of Dying that he followed him once to get a picture to convince DIck that he still needed a Robin. Otherwise his ‘stalking’ & how he figured out Batman’s identity was more through media appearances (like newspapers and tv). This is wildly different from the common fanon idea that little Timmy was sneaking out regularly to follow Batman & Robin around with his camera.

I primarily blame Geoff Johns for this misconception because of these panels in in tt 2003 (from issue 29)

But like, think about it for a second, literally how would Jason know that? This is one of the first times he’s ever interacting with Tim, and he was dead/catatonic when that would have been happening! He is either making a wild assumption or perhaps Talia told him this when she told him about Tim, whichever of those it was it’s secondhand information not something he witnessed. Taking his word as fact here makes no sense, he was just trying to get under Tim’s skin while fighting him. But seeing those panels out of context if you haven’t actually read Lonely Place of Dying/only read a vague summary of it, and don’t necessarily know the details of the Jason situation, it could absolutely lead you to believe otherwise!

Dick as a cereal manchild is a weird one because like... okay yeah sure he likes cereal, I can think of like two panels I’m too lazy to find right now off the top of my head of him having it, but... that’s not something we see all the time! Its not like Ollie & his chili (which IS a running joke- seriously I have not read that many Green Arrow comics but the amount of times I’ve seen that man bring up chili in just in the few things I have read is wild. there’s even an official recipe. his chili has it’s own dc wiki page). Then, because Dick isn’t quite as emotionally closed off in the same way the rest of the batfam tends to be, people project literally all the pent up feelings onto him, making him this hug-crazy crybaby manchild... again it’s just very clear people who perpetuate those ideas (outside of like, maybe as jokes) haven’t actually fully read that many comics with him. I’d also even blame the Young Justice cartoon version of Dick for some other traits fanon Dick has, bc that version of him is def a bit of a Hot Mess™️ once he’s Nightwing

Jason I understand misconceptions about probably the most because of how wildly inconsistent his writing was before the new 52 and how consistently Not Great it was once Lobdell took over. Jason’s one of the few characters I have read like, 90% of appearances for so I’m speakin’ from experience here. But still... acting like Jason as Red Hood is just a ‘bad boy rebel’ that could have a relatively happy connection with the whole Batfam is fun but unrealistic. You can not blame everything on the lazarus pit... he still has killed people! Lots of people! Willingly! Yes he has reasons and when he’s being written well it’s clear that he’s not just ‘random murder happy’ but rather ‘I kill when I feel they deserve it and that it’s necessary’ which is what keeps him an anti-hero rather than a full fledged villain most of the time, but that still keeps him so at odds with the rest of the Batfamily! Writers in more current continuity have had him compromise by only using rubber bullets in Gotham so they can have him interact with the family, but he’s still killed and will do it when he deems it necessary.

Also like... at the time of Under The Red Hood in the comics... theoretically... he hadn’t even been in the lazarus pit for well over a year. Go read Lost Days (it’s short! And except for the thing with him & Talia towards the end of the last issue it’s pretty good!), he spends a lot of time traveling the world and learning things/training before the events of UtRH. Yes you could interpret there still being some Lazarus influence going on there but I think the movie version of UtRH especially leads people to believe there’s a lot less time between his dunk in the pit and his first actions as Red Hood.

Fanon also has a lot of ideas about pit madness that vary wildly from what we have seen in canon, like yeah it’s been said to be a thing to some extent, but there’s not really the Danny Phantom Glowing Green Eyes™️ or anything like that... it’s fun to explore cool new ideas for sure but I just think it’s important to recognize the distinction between things that are actually canon and things that are popular fanon. (Also there are things that fall somewhere in between, there’s definitely stuff that isn’t 100% confirmed canon but could still be plausible/has been hinted at by some writers/is only canon in some settings)

Other things that drive me nuts are ‘quiet does-no-wrong angel Cass’ and ‘the Normal One™️ Duke’ because those just make literally no sense if you’ve read any comics with either of them... but fan content either does those versions or just completely ignores their existence a lot of the time! So! That’s a whole bigger problem!

In general though, this is fandom it’s not like this... matters that much on the grand scheme of things in life, we’re just people on social media talkin’ about comics. And this kind of misconception/flattening of characters does happen in literally every fandom ever. But it still does suck to see characters that have a lot of nuance and interesting history to play around with get reduced to a few traits that aren’t even actually that relevant to who they are.

#batfam #pls dont kill me for sayin al this again im not telling anyone how to enjoy stuff JUST my thoughts

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zerochanges · 2 years

Text

My 2021 Media Binge Reviews

2021 was a weird year for me personally; full of a lot of downs, and yeah that’s pretty much it, there weren’t really any ups to speak of, just downs, it just kept going down and down–in fact I think it hasn’t stopped yet, I’m still falling, please god, make it stop, things get worse every day. ah-hum Excuse me, ignore that. My year honestly isn’t probably all that different from a lot of others’; it was the same old, same old: work sucked and drained my life, my health declined, a family member died, and covid just kept trucking. To say this year burned me out would be an understatement. I won’t really elaborate too much more than that, it’s all just useless self gratifying prattling anyways, whatever, who cares, but because of how hard my year was it sent me down a couple new rabbit holes and also really kept me from engaging in my usual hobbies.

Usually at the end of every year I list off my favorite video games and anime but damn man, I really didn’t play that many games this year, and shit, I can’t even remember when x anime aired and if it was from y season or even if it was from this year. It all just runs the same and blurs together now in some gelatinous apathetic blob known as time. But I did do stuff this year! I did find comfort in this living hell known as reality. So I thought as an experiment it would be interesting to discuss and go over the media I binged this year instead of just listing and ranking random shit that came out between the months of January and December. If it catches on, maybe I’ll try to do it again next year, I'm not sure, but making a media year-in review seems like it’s popular nowadays. Right? I see a lot of really long, annoying, and impossible to follow threads on social media dedicated to that at least. Well whatever, who even cares anymore.

By the way if you are wondering why all this is happening a week into the new year, my own health declined once again, literally on New Year’s Eve, yup, ended that year just right. Well, being overdramatic, but damn, I got sick during New Years, so I’m a week late.

One Piece

One Piece was my rock this year. It got me through the worst that 2021 brought me and marathoning episodes well into the night just to wake up and watch more episodes in the morning was all I could do in order to keep living. It was nostalgic and comforting since it’s been going since I was a kid, but also all new and exciting since it will never end and there is so much content to digest that there’s always something to discover.

Now, One Piece fans will laugh at me for sticking with the Funimation redub of the series, but I have grown very fond of it over the years and found it best suits my watching habits. I try to just sit down and complete entire story arcs of this behemoth and then take a break from the series when I need a break. It just makes it more digestible and easier to sit through, I cannot even imagine trying to follow it every week anymore. The English dub is still stupid behind but this watch method of mine makes that less of an issue since I still haven’t caught up with the dub anyways.

That might change though in the near future as I progressed a considerable amount this time. I watched over some 220+ episodes this year, picking up at Thriller Bark where I last remembered watching it and going all the way through Punk Hazard, finally getting past the time skip, it felt so good. I plan to pick up Dressrosa now too, since the dub is in Zou and I know I can watch all 100-something episodes of that arc in peace with no fear of waiting for the next volume.

This chunk of One Piece I watched this year was especially fantastic and highly beloved in the fandom, and it’s easy to see why. Impel Down, Marineford, Post War, all these arcs are masterfully done and set in motion such unforgettable moments in the series. And here I was at my lowest pigging out on these episodes nonstop, life was good then. Updating my current personal list of favorite story arcs for One Piece I think it is now:

Arlong Park

Impel Down

Post War

Loguetown

Thriller Bark

Robotech

One of the better things to come out of this year is the end to the long (and at the time) seemingly never ending dispute between Harmony Gold and Macross, and I am hopeful that we will be seeing more Macross in the near future. For now, we have the first ever blu-ray release of Robotech, and I’m a slut so I bought it and began my rewatch of this 80’s classic largely because of that.

Robotech is controversial because of the terrible things Harmony Gold has done but now with this hopefully behind us we can appreciate it a bit more. For many it was a landmark experience and a gateway into anime and a damn fine attempt at localizing material that never had any chance over in these necks of the woods. Robotech is legitimately fairly fascinating and well crafted for what it was. The writing is sharp, and even the voice acting holds up surprisingly well–and it is some of the earliest known roles for a bunch of now prolific voice actors in the anime dubbing community like Wendee Lee and Tony Oliver who seems even more famous and beloved now than back in his heyday of the early 2000s. I remember hearing him in so many dubs then and he never seemed to get much attention so it’s funny how much the American Lupin fandom has claimed him the definitive English Lupin. Getting off track there, my bad, just been thinking about how much people’s perception for celebrities (do anime voice actors count?) change the longer you live.

Super Dimension Century Orguss

This is a show I wanted to watch for a very long time. For about 6 years to be exact. When Discotek originally released Orguss on DVD back in 2015 I was beyond excited to get it but one thing led to another and I just sort of lost track of time. It didn’t help that this DVD set in particular never really seemed to go on sale that much and was on the more expensive end. Because of that I decided to wait for an eventual BD release from them since it is a fairly common business tactic from Discotek. When they finally got around to rereleasing the series on blu-ray this year I was all in!

I got to tell you guys, Orguss is weird. Like really, really weird! I never experienced a show like this before, it’s honestly really hard to even explain it! I don’t even know where to start with this thing! The main character is a complete asshole and total pervert. Somebody like Kei would never be in a TV show today, especially as the main protagonist. At best maybe a funny side character but not the main guy. Kei is a total horndog, he cheats on girls, he can’t keep it in his pants, his main fling in the show is with a girl who has a fiancé already, and did I mention he caused the end of the world?

The show starts with my dude for whatever reason breaking military order and deciding “Screw it! I’ll detonate this extremely complicated and very dangerous weapon of mass destruction that needs exact calculations to work” and causes a calamity that implodes like every Alternate Reality into one. I don’t know, does this count as an isekai? To Kei this is like being flung into some parallel universe but it is actually his own Earth! Just that every other parallel universe Earth is also now conjoined in it. Honestly it sounds like some DC crisis superhero comic cross-over event instead of an anime. I have no goddamn idea how Big West thought this should be the follow-up to the highly acclaimed and profitable Macross and I can totally see why it was considered a flop during its time for falling to live up to Macross. It’s like going from Star Wars straight into David Lynch’s Dune. We are firmly in psycho weird ass anime territory with this one, and goddamn I freaking love it. Orguss is wonderful. Also, the opening theme song is iconic.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

I only ever watched Eva once, back when I was in High School. Back then I remember thinking it was okay but also that it just kind of really bummed me out and it probably wasn’t for me. I more or less kind of wrote it off as overrated as very intelligent and worldly teenagers often do and moved on with my life. Over the years I became more interested in the series that served as major inspirations to Eva, this was not because of Eva though and I often didn’t realize they even were its inspirations until much later after people brought it up. For me that meant having to defend the likes of Devilman and Space Runaway Ideon from Eva fans that saw them as only stepping stones of Evangelion. To this day, I find this debate annoying and honestly detrimental to the enjoyment of some series–but honestly my biggest regret is that I never went back to revisit Eva because of it.

As an adult, I definitely ‘get’ Eva much more now. Shinji chanting “I mustn’t run away, I mustn’t run away” is me every morning in my parked car sitting outside of work on the verge of a mental breakdown as I force myself to go inside and pray to whatever god in the universe that might listen that I won’t die of covid today in this hellscape I unfortunately have to call my home. Shinji as a protagonist is something I can relate to a lot more in my mid-30s than I ever could have as a teenager. The series honestly feels less like a head trip to adult me and more like a deep dive into somebody’s depressive episode and how to cope with a world that is constantly collapsing around you. In this regard it’s one of Anno’s sharpest works which is another thing I respect. Despite my prior disinterest in Eva I always found Anno to be extremely talented and loved many of his works, from Shin Godzilla to Kare Kano to Gunbuster, all seminal works with great direction, atmosphere, and writing–and now as an adult revisiting Eva I can say the same of it as well.

I love how Shinji as a character has a pretty classic tired-and-true character arc throughout most of the TV series as he grows, socializes more, and comes out of his shell–only to be abused so badly at the eleventh hour by his father forcing him to almost kill a friend and regressing back into an even worse state than he started the series in. It’s poignant, my boy was shot down the second he was starting to fly again, that’s toxic people for you. Shinji’s rage, paranoia, and sense of betrayal upon having to fight Kaworu is honestly the high point of the entire series to me. “You betrayed me! Just like my Father!” It’s at this point the young man has completely lost his marbles, and I love it.

The final two episodes of the series are rough, and for many leave a lot to be desired but I think it’s my preferred ending. The End of Evangelion films are fine, and I like some parts of them better, it certainly gives Asuka closure and not to mention way more to do! But overall, I actually think the original TV series ending as-is was thematically more poignant and just more interesting.

Coming back full circle to where I started, it seems like I don’t need to come up to bat for Devilman anymore; it having its own resurgence with Masaaki Yuasa’s very excellent Devilman Crybaby reaching new generations. I still think I’m more of an Ideon guy though at the end of the day. Ideon’s tenuous relationship to Eva really has brought it nothing but hardships honestly. So many people expect a show like Eva when they watch Ideon but Ideon is far more cut from the same cloth of the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam than it is of Neon Genesis Evangelion. The front half especially of Ideon is far more inline with the episodic early portions of Gundam granted on a cosmic scale and with some mysticism thrown in but it’s the back half of Ideon where it gets downright Lovecraftian. Sadly most Eva fans never get that far. Also Ideon can kick Unit 1’s ass any day of the week, fight me. Ideon destroyed entire planets, and eventually galaxies, and maybe even the universe itself. The ideon wins every time!

I ended up spending some stupid money on this because of the classic dub being taken hostage in a special edition set, but I don’t regret it. This was how I wanted to watch Eva again and goddammit I had a great time watching it again. I definitely can see why a modernized dub was needed, and I definitely see the merit and quality put into it, but I just couldn’t accept the large amount of recasting despite the new actors all being incredible talent that I love in other works. To me, recasting Spike Spencer is like recasting Sean Schemmel as Goku, it’s just not something you should do. Apparently somebody else out there agreed since he has reprised the role again post redub.

Twin Peaks

Oh boy! Here we go again! This was my biggest obsession of the year! Twin Peaks! A few years back I tried to get into Twin Peaks and I am pretty sure I got somewhere in the middle of season 2, before the murder was solved (I never had that spoiled for me thank god) but just didn’t finish it. This year, I finally came back, I just had to really cross this one off my list. It felt great! This is such a remarkably quirky and iconic series and it had such a huge influence on Japanese nerd culture, and hell after reading a lot of essays and watching the show Twin Peaks probably even changed the landscape of American television forever. But the Japanese nerd end is definitely where my interest lies. Watching the show I had glimpses of Suda and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and of course survival horror games, Silent Hill and Deadly Premonition being the biggest most obvious instances. It was almost like Twin Peaks was some primordial ooze that birthed all these great and wonderful things that I grew up with and obsess over so finally coming full circle to Twin Peaks, I obsessed over it all the more.

At its core is just such a wonderful and fun show and the main character Dale Cooper easily is at the heart of it giving great sage wisdom that I find myself now trying to live by and just having a general quirky zest for life that feels refreshing and wonderful. Coop is just a joy, and I wish more modern TV shows would ape this too, we need protagonists that are just wonderful people that are excellent to everyone. When you start the series you have no idea what this guy is about, he seems cool but there isn’t really anything to go on, hell back when it originally aired in 1990 there were even some people who were initially confused at who the main character was supposed to be after the pilot aired. But then a couple episodes in, Coop is talking about Tibet, solving crimes by playing baseball, and having strange cryptic dreams that he believes whole heartily will solve the mystery. It’s a wonderful progression as you slowly learn more about Cooper and slowly become more entrenched and in love with this small town and the many people that live here.

For me the original first two seasons are peak Twin Peaks, it’s the show at its best. I know a lot of people think the second season starts to go downhill a bit after the creators were forced to solve the murder of Laura Palmer, something that David Lynch was adamant about never wanting to do since it was a plot device to steer the entire show. And I agree that at first the second season can be a bit rocky, post Laura Palmer murder, but it picks up and gets great again if you ask me. It’s everything after Season 2 that falls off a bit.

To me, the film Fire Walk With Me, is both a masterpiece and the worst entry in the series. It’s beautifully shot, has some incredible lore, great moments, lines I quote constantly, but not the right tone. The darker subject material, that being a prequel that gives you an in-depth look at the rape and murder of Laura Palmer, is … how to say it lightly, a downer. This movie made me downright depressed when I watched it. It’s wonderful but this is one that hurts. It hurts a lot to sit through. There’s no levity in the whole film once it starts covering Laura’s last week alive, and there is no quirkiness the series had. It’s violent, upsetting, and beautiful. I can see why the film was initially misunderstood and hated when it came out.

The Return (aka Season 3) almost feels like a combination of the two, it is a darker, harsher, more cruel Twin Peaks, some 25 years later, but it is still Twin Peaks. The humor and tone return to level out the violence and harder to watch aspects that the series gained with Fire Walk With Me. It’s a strange season but it is great to see a series become un-canceled even after 25 years. This season initially was hard for me to follow and I wasn’t into it as much as the first two seasons, and still now I think those are my favorite, but The Return is something that grows on me, especially more as I analyze it and try to understand the deeper meta narrative behind it. I wasn’t sure if I would ever … return to The Return but I think in future rewatches I will. As a finale it’s not exactly what people want, the unconventional ending can easily leave you feeling confused, and maybe upset. But the more you examine it, the more you look at it outside of the context presented in the show, the more you can see what it is doing is something special.

Overall, there is nothing really like Twin Peaks (except Deadly Premonition, that nails it) and it’s something that needs to be experienced. It was one of the best TV experiences I have had in a really long time, and obsessing over it, and later the works of David Lynch, have kept me going long after I finished the final episode. That said, my God, I don’t think I will ever forget some scenes from the show. To not spoil anything, let's just say “It is Happening Again” is forever a scene that will stay with me. It was quite possibly the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced in television.

On another note, the blu-ray set I bought had these wonderful menus that played clips of the show, all curated around themes or commonly used motifs in the show and I absolutely adored the amount of effort that went into giving each disc its own. When I reached The Return I was gutted to find that these discs did not do that. This isn’t uncommon, I’m no stranger to companies reprinting older discs with just a different label on top of them so I am sure they simply grabbed already authored discs for logistical reasons and used them but losing those wonderful menus made the transition to The Return all the more jarring. Man, those original discs had so much personality and were made with so much love for the show, and The Return discs are so bare bones, and so depressing. Don’t get obsessed and over analyze media kids, or else you become a 30-something that talks about DVD menus.

David Lynch films

I am going to start off by saying I know David Lynch directed more films, I don't have them all, but I have give-or-take almost all of his feature films on blu-ray that are easily purchasable. I know Inland Empire is long OOP and DVD only in the US, and I don’t want to mess around with importing European BDs and there’s a few other oddities like that, but so far, what I got this year, I am happy with. I haven’t seen every film here yet too, but burning through Lynch’s filmography is something I am enjoying at my own pace and I just wanted to mention that I am doing that.

Obviously, like I said above, my love for Twin Peaks was so much that it made me branch out into all other David Lynch material. I have grown rather fond of the man, he is a true artist and I greatly respect him. I enjoy his work, his outlook on life, and just listening to him. My YouTube history at one point was just video after video of interviews and keynote speeches from Lynch on movies, art, meditation, and just anything else. Lynch is such a fascinating individual, he makes some of the hardest, most violent, thought provoking horror I have ever seen but in real life is the kindest, most gentlest, charismatic, charming little old man. He’s too adorable in a lot of ways. You can truly tell every work of Lynch is 100% sincere, he puts himself into everything and wears it all out on his sleeve to create something beautiful. There’s no corporate world BS or just doing a job because you need a job, the man is an auteur, you can identify David in every one of his movies. That’s him. That’s so him. His work is himself.

Out of everything I have seen so far, I think my favorite of his films are probably Blue Velvet and Lost Highway. For Blue Velvet it’s easy to see, it is almost in many ways prototype to Twin Peaks, maybe that’s my dumb Twin Peaks fan way of interpreting the film but I can’t unsee it. It’s a fascinating movie and probably the most conventional and easy to digest film from Lynch. You can’t help but get a certain Twin Peaks vibes in how the film presents a good vs evil dichotomy, and Dennis Hopper is hopping mad in the film as Frank Booth, which is legit just Killer Bob from Twin Peaks. Lost Highway I love for the elements of identity and how people aren’t who they seem to be. The mystery is unsettling, and the villain, if you can call him that, once again steals the movie as a truly haunting performance from Robert Blake, who turned out to be an actual murderer in real life too, so yeah, go figure. Lost Highway is a real head trip though about reality and what we think is reality, and how we all shape our own identities, sometimes to even hide ourselves from none other than us.

#New Years #David Lynch #neon genesis evangelion #One Piece #Robotech #Super Dimension Century Orguss #Twin Peaks

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hopeymchope · 4 years

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If you like Danganronpa, you might like...

I’ve discovered quite a few games/animes I’ve loved and even new fandoms by using recommendation engines/following online message board recommendations for people who already like the Danganronopa games or anime or manga, and I thought I’d give a quick rundown of how these things have worked out for me.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, honestly... it’s just time-consuming to write it all up, y’know?

Today, I’ll focus primarily on the video game side. If I put “Danganronpa” (any entry) into a recommendation engine, these are the results that I see spit back at me the most... and now that I’ve tried all the most common results, here are my findings.

Persona

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: The storylines have teenagers in Japan having to investigate dark goings-on while counterbalancing that with scenes of daily life that are lighter and more humorous. There are also “social link” scenes with the other characters that could easily be compared to the “Free Time Events” in DR, wherein you learn more about the lives of your compatriots via some one-on-one time.

What I Played: Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden on my Vita, then Persona Q on my 3DS. And I watched the main anime adaptions for 3 and 4...

Did It Work for Me? Will it Work for Others? Persona 3 and 4 absolutely worked for me. Q didn’t so much; the Etrian Odyssey-style map-your-own-first-person-dungeon gameplay was a turnoff. Regardless, it’s hard to pin down exactly why there is SO DAMN MUCH crossover between Persona and Danganronpa fans - probably more than anything else I’ve got listed here - because they’re actually very different. These are RPGs with turn-based combat and fantastical story elements involving magic and mystical beings and other worlds. And yet... I do feel the tonal similarity, and the characters feel like they could be at home in a DR game or vice-versa. And I deeply loved 3 and 4. (The stories are individualized to each numbered entry with the exception of the two “Persona 2″ games, so you can jump in on any numbered entry without any problem). I am excited to one day play 5 (although it is so much easier for me to play portables so I really, really, really wish there was some portable version of 5 in existence). Also note that the “social links” didn’t exist UNTIL Persona 3, so you can’t really go back and find that aspect in the first few titles. I can’t say these will work for everyone, but the massive amount of fan overlap says something, so if you’re game for a turn-based RPG AND you like Danganronpa... have I got a soup here for you.

Zero Escape Series (”9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors” + “Virtue’s Last Reward” + “Zero Time Dilemma”)

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: Dark, complex storyline filled with twists, memorable characters trapped in killing game, a mysterious mastermind, visual novel-style presentation, off-kilter humor interjected at surprising times.

What I Played: All three games on the Vita (the first two are collected as “The Nonary Games”).

Did It Work for Me? Will it Work for Others? Yes and yes. Aside from maybe Zanki Zero (see below), this is probably the most obvious thing to recommend to Danganronpa fans, and I’m kind of surprised there isn’t even more of a fandom to it. I can see why it doesn’t have as big of a following as DR - I mean, the humor isn’t quite as widespread and the characters are a bit less quirkily odd - but it’s hard not to get sucked in and fall in love with these stories. The big point of separation for DR fans is that instead of “Trials” where you use logic to solve puzzles, you have to constantly do “escape rooms” and use logic to find your way out of those rooms by doing point-and-click style hunting for items and solving puzzles in those rooms. Just like in DR, however, you’ll find that the more you fail, the more the game gives you increasingly blatant hints as to what you’re supposed to be doing, so it’s not like anything should get you stuck for too long. There’s also the somewhat obtuse nature of how to progress at times, but if you use the branching storyline map whenever you get stuck to look for updated items, you’ll probably be just fine (I hear the DS version of the first game doesn’t have such a map - or even voice acting - so you may need to beware of that being the most obtuse version out there). I loved these games, even if my rankings for them are probably out of sync with how most of the fandom seems to feel.

Phoenix Wright

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: Visual novel-style plot and investigation scenes, murder trials with logic puzzles where you need to point out flaws in testimony/falsehoods using evidence, plenty of humor.

What I Played: All of the first game (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) on the DS

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? Well... this is a little unfair, because I played the first one of these before I ever played Danganronpa, but... I didn’t like it. The humor was... lame for me? and I found the trials excruciatingly difficult because MY version of how the logic was flawed was never exactly how they wanted me to approach it. It was a matter of me attacking the wrong parts of sentences over the same general facts but... yeah... I didn’t get into this. Maybe I’m dumb, or was dumb, but it didn’t click for me and I only got through the first game using a guide and expending a lot of patience. I later tried out the anime because I heard it had a good rep (and this was after getting into DR and anime in general), and I didn’t care for that either. So I don’t know about this one.. it wasn’t up my alley. Will it work for other people? Well, clearly it DOES work for other people or this wouldn’t be considered a similar recommendation that comes up so often, typically in the top three of “if you like DR games” results! I do think the humor is FAR different than that of Danganronpa’s, and the characters lack the same kind of nuanced depth you see in DR (but again, that’s just from me playing the first game). But it’s easy to see from the “Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d” that there are elements that would definitely appeal to DR players. Give it a try for yourself if you aren’t already a fan, I’d say. My experience feels... esoteric to what most people think. I may need to try one again. These are on tons of platforms nowadays, many with demos, and often at discounted prices.

Zanki Zero: Last Beginning

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: It’s made by largely the same team using the same art style and presentation stlye and is an extremely dark story full of unique personalities and LOADS of weird off-kilter humor with zany mascots somehow overseeing apocalyptic circumstances and the characters look and act like they could easily be in DR and...

What I Played: The whole lone game from start to finish on my PS4.

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? HELL YES. Everyone who likes DR should really give this a chance. It gives off so much of a similar vibe despite being a “survival”-style game with navigation puzzles rather than logic puzzles, and you can turn off the survival/combat aspects entirely if that’s not your thing! And the story is excellent and the characters are excellent and really just please play this. Underrated game of 2019, and most underrated game that needs a fandom that I’ve ever played.

Fire Emblem

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: The bonding sequences you get when your units stand next to each other could be compared to FTEs. It’s got an anime design aesthetic, and the story can go pretty dark. Characters may suffer permadeath (even if other characters won’t react to this fact), so I guess there’s that...

What I Played: Awakening and Fates on the 3DS in their entirety (Yes, I did all three routes on Fates).

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? I can’t say I fully “get” this one. Fire Emblem is a turn-based strategy game that takes place in a medieval setting, so why is it always turning up in recommendations for people who play Danganronpa? Yes, I did enjoy it quite a bit. I became a newly minted fan of Fire Emblem. Success! And yet... I don’t know that the crossover is obvious to me, nor do I expect it would be a clear-cut case for most DR fans. I don’t even know that all of the traits Iisted under “Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d” actually apply to the whole series. I suppose that any game series that has a balance of darkness and humor plus a “character bonding” scene mechanic might just fall into the “if you like Danganronpa... “ pit, regardless of how incredibly different EVERYTHING ELSE is. But perhaps there’s a deeper connection here than I realize. Care to theorize?

#fire emblem #phoenix wright #danganronpa #danganronpa fandom #zero escape #zero escape series #persona #zanki zero #zanki zero: last beginning #video games

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flying-elliska · 4 years

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Skam France Season 6 Review

It’s that time, I guess. My feelings are, like many, mixed. I think I enjoyed the season more than most people here, but the ending was a massive let down. Overall it boils down to this : Skam France is great at moments and very bad at structure. A lot of my issues with the season is what is not in it. I saw so much potential that never quite materialized, and it left me frustrated. At the same time, Lola is a really cool character, her arc is really interesting, her relationship with her sister is one of the best things they’ve ever done, and the actors killed it. Loved La Mif, discovering other sides of Eliott, the urbex backgrounds, and Maya. A lot of fascinating character moments. This is definitely my second favorite season after s3 - at times I even thought it would equal it. Sadly, though, Skam France will remain a bit of a one hit wonder for me. Because they are so good at bringing up problems in a nuanced layering way - be it addiction, grief, eating disorders, internalized ableism, racist microagressions - but when it comes to resolving what they brought up, they default towards a ‘let’s all be nice to each other, hug or kiss, love saves the day yay !’ story. Which is, when you claim to deal with real world issues, simplistic, immature, and at times quite offensive. It works for s3, which is at its core a tale of self-discovery, self-acceptance and romance. But niceness doesn’t solve racism, and family problems aren’t solved with a hug, and addiction recovery doesn’t hinge on having someone to kiss, and the series came dangerously close to implying that at times.

All in all, this is a show that often manages to be both brilliant and terrible at the same time. At least it’s not dull.

Positives/Negatives/Meh breakdown :

Positives :

- Sisterly love : My favorite thing without a doubt is the relationship between Lola and Daphné. Flavie and Lula killed it. Almost all the clips that made me cry were the ones with the both of them in it. At the beginning their rivalry is so relatable to me : the responsible sibling who takes on too much burdens and is too controlling and parentified vs. the problem sibling who acts out to express the issues the rest of the family are repressing - i have been in both of those spots. you can see how they slowly realize that the gap between them didn’t need to be there, that it wasn’t their fault, that it was the result of their parent’s bullshit and even shittier circumstances. seeing them make little gestures to recognize each other’s pain, to nurture each other, to give each other support, but also to tell each other some unpleasant truths, was so incredibly powerful. Relationships between sisters can be just so...complex, and loving, and petty, and jealous, and supportive, and feral, and annoying, and understanding, and ugh, they made me feel all of that and more. I have a sister, and I have a relationship like that with her, and this season gave me some very important perspectives. Really, relationships between women aren’t explored enough, and this season really did this one thing excellently and if only for that, it deserves to be watched. That moment where Lola talks to Daphné about her self destructive tendencies...so important. I am so happy that Daphné was the one finding Lola in her tower of solitude, and the moment where she says ‘you pay too much attention to what other people think, Lola’ was the emotional turning point of the season for me, because it was Daphné recognizing Lola really cared behind her mask of coldness, but also that she was hurt by that and that she needed to love herself regardless of the love her parents didn’t give her ; and also that she heard Lola saying it to her and that it inspired her too, so there is this amazing reciprocity. It was so powerful, I’m still reeling from it. And it was a beautiful full circle from the beginning of the season.

- Family of outsiders : the urbex gang was such a wonderful new group this season. It was bound to be tricky getting us to like this new generation, and I think they did a pretty good job. Even tho I wish we got to know them a bit more, they were all intriguing and interesting on their own, and the vibes of Lamif as a whole were just so fun and lovely. Loved the neuroatypical vibes I got from Sekou and Jo. Love that they introduced a trans guy character. Loved Maya as group mom. And seeing them warm up to Lola was really sweet. The social media of them hanging out was more or less the only good social media we got this season lmao. The urbex thing was a great symbol for Lola finding a home with the outcasts, a bit on the fringe of society, and the start of acceptance, of bringing her in from the cold. Maya and Lola’s relationship fit in that really nicely, especially the bits about them talking about their shared experiences of grief, and my favorite scenes with them is showing Lola that her scars can be beautiful and that her rough experiences are part of who she is. The way she didn’t take Lola’s bullshit was great, and even tho I think their relationship was rushed, overall they really fit well together. Love Maya’s character as a concept in general, this funky purple haired lesbian environmentalist with amazing sense of style, and I really hope we see her again in upcoming seasons. And finally, I also really liked Eliott and Lola’s friendship (except for the ending) - the fact that they understand this darkness that they share, but that Eliott has succeded in climbing over it, and so he can give Lola support, understanding, guidance. I loved that we got to hear a bit more of his perspective on mental illness, the good and the bad times, that we saw his passion for movies become more real. I loved the fact that they bonded over creative things and photography, too, and that she found a safe space in the video store. And even tho it wasn’t resolved properly, the scene where he comes to get her and punches Aymeric really made me cry. Also, BASILE. Best bro in law ever. Their scenes together were so homey and warm and sweet. They will have such a good relationship in time. Overall, I really like how central friendship was in this season, shown as so powerful and important. They could have done more with it but I love a lot of what we got. I am just a sucker for found family, man.

- Lola herself : I know she was a controversial character right from the start. She’s been called manipulative, selfish, out of control, toxic. And honestly at times...maybe she was a bit. I still love her. She is just so interesting to me. The lack of compassion towards her in the fandom was seriously depressing at times, and often felt like a symptom of something I’ve seen in a lot of different fandoms, ie the capacity to only tolerate moral ambiguity when it’s attached to attractive white male characters - and to only tolerate mental illness symptoms when they can be romanticized. In the end, she’s a struggling teen from a deeply dysfunctional family who’s had a very rough life, of course she’s not going to be well adjusted. All in all, I think she’s so brave, and she is a fighter. I adored her feral energies in the trailer. I also really liked her blunt honesty at times, even if it was sometimes hurtful and excessive. I think because I have the opposite tendency to be afraid to speak my mind, I really dig a character who isn’t afraid to speak the ugly truth. Even though, again, ‘the truth’ isn’t always cut and clear, and what Lola is often doing instead is listening to ‘depression voice’ who tells her to believe the worst in people. I find that fascinating, because in my experience, yes, depression comes with this terrible lucidity that makes you see through a lot of bullshit but at the same time, is distorting your perspective because of fear and shame, and kicking that, and disentangling your perception from that fatalism, is very complicated. I loved how genuine she was, how mature too sometimes through the pain, more mature than she should have been. It was rough watching her relapse, but I think the portrayal of addiction was pretty very well done overall, not romanticized and explained in a very coherent way. I wish the show had given her a bit more of a clearer view of her inner thoughts towards the end and let her apologize a bit more. And a clearer realisation that her parent’s lack of well expressed love didn’t doom her. But...yeah Following her really made me question my own - more hidden - self destructive impulses, linked to family shit, that pushes me to sabotage and isolate myself. Like Eliott said to her - it’s really a lifelong struggle. I think overall her arc was pretty satisfying, learning to step away from the edge, letting people in, seeing that she isn’t alone, accepting she deserves better and that her failures don’t doom her. That it is about getting up and trying again. Love her using her mother’s camera and wanting to get a phoenix tattoo, a perfect symbol for her. Also Flavie was amazing, she’s got a bright future ahead.

Negatives :

- No follow up to the assault storyline : The thing that I am, without any single doubt, most mad about, is the fact they didn’t bring up the sexual assault again. Along with Charles’ rape apologism, this creates a very dubious pattern of trivializing the issue ‘as long as it’s not real rape’. The fact that the morning after immediately turns to Elu drama is what sort of started my disconnect from the season, and the fact that they don’t bring it up afterwards even once made me angry. I think Lola, before going back to the hospital, should have told someone about the abuse she endured there, and should have told someone about Aymeric, even if only to acknowledge she wants to be done with that part of her life. Aymeric is like...Lola’s biggest villain, in a sense, he is a horrible predator but he also somehow represents her worst impulses, that part of herself that tells her she doesn’t deserve better, and I think that as a character, he was interesting, and he should have been adressed/exorcised better. If Lola was a real person, of course, she would probably have to deal with this in therapy, down the line, later, but as a story, never adressing this again left it unfinished. And this is really the kind of event you NEED catharsis and resolution for. Otherwise, it’s irresponsible.

- A generally overstuffed and disjointed structure : My biggest problems with this season are about what isn’t and what isn’t it. I liked most of the clips, I don’t have an issue with them going dark, strangely enough, but the way they were put together was just...messy. Like many people have said, too much stuff not properly adressed. Palm of most annoyingly useless subplot, the whole Tiff thing. Yes, it was cool comparing her clique to Lamifex and Lola realizing she wants nothing to do with those shallow fake bitches. Sekou hacking her account to replace it with pigeons, amazing. After that though, it should have been DONE, and in general, it should have taken a lot less time and attention. Comparing Tiff’s social media addiction to Lola’s issues felt like some trivializing bullshit. The whole thing was just so annoying. It would have been good if it had led to some discussion of social inequality but like...not this shit. Char, equally useless (although, cool actress, cool style). Another MASSIVE problem is the lack of follow through on big clips. A great thing about SKAM, usually, is that it shows you the aftermath of big moments - characters lying in bed, cuddling, talk to their friends, crying in the shower, etc. It allows the viewer to breathe and really get into the character’s perspective, to be comforted and process drama, and for the emotions to resonate better, to have space to develop richly. Here...we had Lola brush off her assault, we saw nothing after Daphné got her back from the tower thinking she could have killed herself, we learned that they had money problems and the father didn’t go to work and then that was never adressed again and the light was turned back on by magic (????), we saw Eliott go on a major bender and didn’t really see how he got better, etc. Big lack of introspective clips in the latter part of the season took me out of Lola’s head. It was all stressful and breathless, all intensity and no pause like one grating high pitch note instead of music, it felt oppressive, with poor contrast, and very badly paced. It made everything blur together and feel less relevant. The problem with that is it really takes you out of the story ; it’s hard to care when you know whatever is happening might not have a resolution, and it doesn’t put you in the shoes of the character. This was compounded by how mediocre the social media was, when it is usually used to bridge in the gaps. And then to finish : the structure was so uneven, especially in the second part of the season. Towards the middle we had some very short episodes with very underwhelming endings, and Vendredis that felt like non events, and there wasn’t a lot happening - and then, bam, ep 9, drama overload, almost like misery p*rn, and then a super rushed resolution in ep 10. Like they cared more about twists and giving the opposite of what was expected instead of solid coherent narrative and rhythm. The romantic back and forth felt repetitive as hell too. All in all, it made for a very unsatisfying live watching experience, pretty sure anyone who didn’t watch live would like it a lot more.

- The last two episodes : Really, I could have overlooked all the problems with the season if they had given us a good ending, but...they really really didn’t. And contrasted with last season, where my problems were focused on the middle, for me the ending is really the worst part of this season. I didn’t dislike the controversial club clips, I liked having the insight into Eliott’s insecurities, but they should never have brought those up if they weren’t going to let him adress them properly. Having everything go to shit in Lola’s life at once felt like overkill - they really should have solved those problems earlier, and then dealt with a few ones properly, showed us Lola freaking out on her own, and taken out the bullshit at the high school. Thierry slapping her was also too much, he could just have said these clumsy things. She could have distanced herself from Maya instead of pushing her away again. Also, they really should have had this happen in episode 8 again, and given us a proper resolution. While the tower sequence was incredibly powerful, I pretty much liked nothing after that. It was so annoying that Eliott brushed off Lola’s apology because while he wasn’t wrong that he decided to get drunk himself, she still needed to apologize and actually state that she wanted to get better so she didn’t hurt her friends, so as a resolution it was very mediocre. Thierry recognizing they should have given Lola the choice to go the hospital was a step but really not enough. And the moments with Maya were cute sure but mostly cheesy and unearned. Same for the ending clip. Mostly it’s such an unsatisfying farewell to the old generation, and it really feels like they wanted us to force to move on - didn’t want to properly recognize the end of an era, gave us almost nothing about their BAC or their future plans, etc etc. Also, letting Charles talk and having Arthur and Alexia kiss again ? SO BAD. UGH. I will be forever disappointed they didn’t give us a Multi POV or at least sth better on social media. And not having Eliott’s POV or at least a real Elu conversation (pretty much all season...) so frustrating I will never not be bitter about that. So yeah. The season started so powerfully but went out with a whimper instead of a bang. That whole ‘romantic love solves everything!!!’ shtick...very undercooked tbh.

Meh :

- Mayla’s development : I wanted to stan them SO BAD. Like, wlw in skam (that doesn’t turn into a panphobic mess?) YES, all the way yes. Maya and Lola had great chemistry, great dynamic. I loved their first few clips, the kind of confrontational flirting, the boldness, it was like...damn girls ! we love a non useless lesbian ! But...somewhere along the way, their relationship really suffered from the wacky plot structure. They should have shown us more bonding before we got to the angsting (esp during first urbex night). Also, their first kiss was sweet but I hated the ‘you’re my addiction’ line and that kind of put a damper on it. I liked the scenes where they open up about difficult things, the love Maya showed to Lola’s scars, the dandelion symbolism was lovely, but it wasn’t balanced enough with other stuff, and I felt Maya was way too stoic at times. And I really, really didn’t like the ending, honestly. They kept a good balance all season showing Lola wasn’t relying entirely on romantic love, that her family and friends were also important - but saying ‘i’m okay as long as you’re here’ at the end...honestly that sounds unhealthy and codependent as fuck. I really wish they’d done a more subtle, taking it slow ending for them.

- The financial issues : Again a storyline with much potential that wasn’t dealt with properly. It’s really good that we got a main that wasn’t from an economically priviledged background. Especially it felt very relevant to Daphné’s storyline, with the shame she felt at her friends seeing her place, the pressure to make it work, tying into her ED, etc etc. But cutting off the power, the father not working going nowhere...it’s like the plotline meandered and then vanished into thin air. Instead of that, they could have given us a scene of Daphné freaking out over the bills like in OG w Vilde, keeping the focus on her for that plot because she’s the most affected ; and then in the end of the season the father taking them over from her and telling her he’s found another job and that those things shouldn’t be her responsibility. That would have been relevant, instead of just...a loose end.

- Family issues : The Lecomte family dynamic seemed fascinating to me at the start. The mom being this shadowy complicated figure. The inability of the father to deal with anything. Daphné being parentified, Lola becoming the symptom child. They could have done a lot with this, but in the end, it felt like it was brushed aside too easily by saying the mom sent letters so she wasn’t too bad and Thierry is making breakfast so he’s trying. Not enough. I wanted them to let Lola acknowledge she deserved better and that their parent’s crap wasn’t on her. That her mom should have looked for help and the other two shouldn’t have pretended everything was okay. In general, there is way too much pressure to overlook toxic parent behavior and I wish they’d been clearer about this.

- Mental health portrayal : Some parts of it were really good. Showing Daphné’s ED, letting Eliott talk about his episodes and relapses, showing some of the dark sides of depression and addiction. They just needed to show more of the recovery, because that is often the representation that they lacked the most. I don’t blame them for showing the bad sides of the mental healhcare system (which is terribly outdated and dysfunctional in France, I’m speaking from experience) but they should have shown the good too. Like do they find recovery boring or something ? Because as a person w MI, that’s actually what I’m dying to see, and they’ve been a real letdown in that department. I also think they should have acknowledged that the Lecomte family has mental issues as a whole, that the mother should have gotten help, and the father probably needs it too (still think they should have gone to therapy as a group lol).

- Elu and Eliott’s development : Honestly, not a big fan of how they wrote Lucas in s5&s6, in a lot of clips he was the angry guy with a temper, I miss s4 Lucas who was so compassionate and showed real growth and emotional intelligence. Here it just felt like they were fitting his character to plot needs, and it’s so sad for a character who had such an amazing story development. Now, I loved the glimpses of domestic Elu we got, how Axel and Maxence really showed the intimacy that had grown between them, they really felt married with all the nonverbal conversations and touches, that was sweet. But it’s so annoying that they hinted at Lucas’s insecurities and Eliott’s lack of communications and just brushed it away with ‘oh they love each other they will be okay’ sure bitch but then show us how ? that’s the interesting stuff ? it really feels sometimes like the writer(s) didn’t like how strongly the fans focused on the romance when they wanted to be talking about MATURE dark stuff not that frilly fluffy romance shit *eyeroll* male writers who think they’re above that stuff is so annoying as is the conflating of dark and mature - anyway. Again I liked seeing Eliott in his element this season, he is really thriving, with his movie and the video store, and that made me very happy. I don’t think it’s unrealistic he didn’t make a lot of friends in uni - French university can be so isolating, there isn’t a campus or a vibrant social life like in the US, it’s a very common experience to feel lost and isolated for newbies and it was also my case - but ? Sofiane ? Idriss ??? They could have found a better excuse to implicate Lamifex in the movie making tbh, like Jo egging him on about her passion for directing or whatever, and Sofiane could have been there chilling with them it would have been so cool. I just wish Eliott would have had more of an arc like Daphné did. It wouldn’t have taken much, and since he is my favorite character, I will never not be disappointed at all the wasted potential.

Yeah so in the end i think this was a very good story they didn’t entirely give themselves the right storytelling tools to tell. Like there is something in the way they prioritize certain moments over others that...I just find very frustrating and weird. So...flawed, but still very interesting overall.

#skam france #skamfr s6 #lola lecomte #mayla

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regrettablewritings · 3 years

Text

My Bad Batch Season 1 Finale Thoughts That Nobody Asked For

Spoilers aside from the obvious alert: I actually didn’t mind it

Now, admittedly, this is probably because I’m not a Crosshair stan. If I’m being honest, I actually don’t mind Crosshair as much as I probably should. But my stance on him is more towards neutral-to-appreciating-him-as-a-character.

That being said, most of what I’m gonna blab about is gonna surround the ongoing Crosshair situation (in no particular order) because that’s what we’ve been left with and what most of the fandom is currently up in arms about.

Unrelated, but because I am a fake fan, I never knew Kamino could ever really be sunny and calm. In a weird way, it was a beautiful juxtaposition against something so . . . sad. Like, they finally reach the Marauder at daybreak and after everything they’ve gone through, the storm is gone. It’s calm. Which makes all they’re about to do all the more deafening in a sense.

As stated before, I actually didn’t mind the finale. Was it anything crazy? Not really. My heart rate definitely picked up constantly, but it was admittedly coming from how hyped up the feeling of “anyone could die” was. When I realized at the end that nobody was going to die (yet), I started calming down.

But in-between all that, my emotions were in constant combat with me understanding (or trying to reason out) everyone’s arguments going on.

I see people upset with Wrecker for victim-blaming Crosshair, and I get that -- to a point. Yes, Wrecker knows how the chip works and should be one of the ones most empathetic to Crosshair’s supposed lack of control. However, this only stands to a point. Remember, if Crosshair’s telling the truth (which . . . we’ll get to later), then that means that he was really not responsible for his actions at first. If the chip really had been removed a while back, then his actions up to that point were something he could be held accountable for. I think those parts were the actions Wrecker was referring to, not the whole damn thing.

In a way, I do like how Tech approaches the matter. It’s admittedly stiff and could easily come off as hurtful if used by the wrong person, but it suits how Tech’s mind works and frankly reminds me a lot of myself in how I approach certain, more emotional matters. Admittedly, this is because I read Tech as autism-coded, so maybe that’s why I’m more ready to accept his stance?

. . . Actually, you know what? No: I like Tech’s stance because it’s clear cut and just plain facts. Tech knows his brothers more than what he’s probably given credit for, and his point is correct: You needn’t agree with someone you care for just because you can understand their points. There’s a ton of scenarios that are ethically questionable at best that I can understand the reasoning behind while also recognizing them as potentially morally reprehensible. Black and white are only reached through a spectrum, and it’s not an easy spectrum to traverse. That being said . . .

The other common argument I’m seeing is about how the fighting amongst the original four Batchers (specifically Hunter and Crosshair) seems to go against their whole brotherhood thing. And I’m just gonna throw my two pennies into the ring and weakly say . . . not quite. I’m gonna admit that I may be splitting hairs and trying to make a bundle but I feel like in such a high-intensity situation, it makes sense for neither side to be yielding.

Both sides are hurt: Crosshair is dealing with abandonment and feeling like his brothers “just aren’t getting it”, and as far as his brothers are aware, he’s either been trying to kill them or has been trying to willingly go against what they thought they stood for. Is it the most sensible situation? Not really. But emotional things rarely ever are.

That being said, nobody in the Batch is really all that emotionally mature or aware, though. And I think it’s very easy to forget that sometimes. I don’t know if it’s got to do with the fact that they’re soldiers, that they were rapidly aged and thus didn’t have time nor the environment to healthily explore such issues, the social isolation they more or less experienced due to being different from reds, or what, but it ought to be remembered that Omega is the most emotionally stable of the bunch. Everyone else is sort of just stumbling and trying to reel in what they’re feeling and how to express it without necessarily having the proper tools or experience to do so.

Also, let’s be real: You’re not as pristine as you think. If you were in a similar situation where your loved one seemingly betrayed you, tried to kill you multiple times, then brought you back home to convince you to join the very people who tried to hurt you guys in the first place, only to reveal that they’ve been intentionally working for them for a good while, you’d be hurt at the very least. And when you’re hurt, emotions fly around like a bat stuck indoors: It’s lost, confused, afraid, and in unfamiliar territory so it flails around, aimlessly looking for a way out even when those around it are trying to help it.

Let’s talk about this chip before I forget what I wanna say. I’m disappointed they didn’t bring it up. I need answers just like every other bitch in this fandom because . . . I dunno, I just don’t believe what he says. Something doesn’t quite add up. Or maybe it’s just because deep down, I want to believe he’s good; just difficult. Most likely so wrapped up in his purpose that the thought of being without and having his life all been seemingly for nothing admittedly frightens him. That’s something actually pretty interesting for a guy like Crosshair, considering he wears whatever heart he has beneath at least three fishing cable knit sweaters.

I just would’ve liked some acknowledgement of it -- even if confirmation that the chip was really gone the entire time would’ve hurt me. Like, Omega couldn’t give a knowing glance when sitting in the dark of the Batch’s barracks and say something like, “You know, it’s not too late”. Or, if it was gone, Hunter outright telling him that he knows he’s lying. (Because, like, given Hunter’s abilities, he arguably could be like a human lie detector a la Matt Murdock.)

Granted, it could be something explored in season 2. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, though, in the event Filoni and crew decide once more to paint me up like a pretty clown and parade me through the square. But in all seriousness, if the chip’s presence or absence confirmation is meant to be an actual point of discussion, I don’t think it’d necessarily be a bad thing for it to come up later. I mean, people were theorizing for ages that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond. And we still stayed watching SU and pretended to be surprised when it got confirmed.

I do think how the group parted ways could’ve been more, as it was emotional but in all the wrong ways. But my constant need to compensate and make excuses for things also flared up. Should the Batch have been more reluctant to leave Crosshair once more? Probably. But they were also probably just done with all this and really took that revelation about the chip to heart, realizing that all they can really do is let him choose. And since he chose the Empire, there’s really only so much energy they could keep exerting. Reminder, these guys are kinda like children and dealing with a very personal situation that they kinda just lack the emotional awareness for.

Am I disappointed in Crosshair’s decision? Of course I am. But I’m not surprised and I understand why he, as a character, would do it. I understand why everyone does what they do, and this just aligns with how stubborn Cross is and what he’s already made clear to his brothers: By serving the Empire, he could still have a purpose.

. . . Or can he?

Okay, maybe I do care about Crosshair more than I think I do. Because we know he’s going to get off Kamino somehow, and it’s most likely going to be through the Empire, yeah? Immediately, my thought was, “But . . . they might kill him. Or at least attempt to.” After all, he let the Batch go. Even if he lies about it for their sake, the Empire will eventually learn the truth. Hell, just the fact that he seemingly let things get out of control before the decimation of Tipoca City could get him a one-way ticket to an execution. Though . . . Crosshair, beyond his skill set, is still a profound soldier: He’s still a competent fighter. Who knows? Maybe this opens up a possible escape scene involving stealing a blaster? Who knows! I love a good fight scene regardless of my feelings on a character!

Though, given his expressions, there’s honestly a good chance that even though he’s willing to lay in the bed he’s made, it doesn’t mean he won’t miss the others. You can make a decision for yourself and stick with it while recognizing the accompanying sorrow.

Though who knows? You could even argue that he may feel in too deep and is just sticking to his guns (no pun intended) because of it. Like he’s clinging to the concept of purpose even at the cost of losing one thing he knows (his brothers) because he feels stuck on the other thing he knows (being of use to a higher power). There’s frankly a lot that could be discussed here but don’t get me started.

But I digress. I get why the Batch left. I get why Crosshair wanted to stay behind. Yes, it could’ve and probably should’ve been a bit more emotional regardless of how tired everyone probably was of everything because this is their brother. Whom they’re parting ways with once again, and there’s no telling when they’ll see him next and if that next time, they’ll be his targets once more.

(But I think that may be giving too much credit . . . One of the other complaints going around that I firmly agree with is how not enough characterization for Tech, Echo, and Wrecker was given for most of the season. They were more or less boiled down to their specialties for gimmicks than given much to say or do besides when thrust into action scenes. This is honestly probably why I really liked Tech voicing his own personal stance on Crosshair: It’s the closest thing we’ve gotten all season to how he feels. The closest we got from Wrecker was him admitting to missing Cross, and Echo never really says anything on the matter at all to my recollection. [Admittedly, Echo is the newest member and thus doesn’t have the years the other three do under his belt, but surely by now he’s formed some sort of opinion on the guy he’s done at least eleven missions with!])

It hurts regardless of how you feel or whose side you’re on because you know something about this isn’t right, whether it’s because you know they do care for one another but have to part ways, or because they both made decisions that you just didn’t want them to make. It sucks but things like this (and by “this”, I do mean something more along the lines of familial or even platonic conflict, not having your home blasted to kingdom come in a whole imperial plot your brother was somewhat tied to) are never cut and dry. If they were, things would be so much simpler. But if they weren’t, we wouldn’t have as many stories, painful as they are.

I’m not a big supporter at all of creators taking advice or story ideas and cues from their fans via Twitter and other social media. But what I do hope is that Filoni and crew do a bit of a stronger job at approaching these very emotionally-driven subjects next season, rather than just letting them fall to the wayside until it becomes convenient. Not saying that filler episodes or breathers are a bad thing, they just seemed to take up a lot of this season. Though who knows, maybe they’ll come back into play specifically because of what the Batch did. (You know, in this particular show. I already know some of these guys appeared in other SW shows . . .)

Overall, I think I’d rate this episode 6.5/10. Nothing crazy, but nothing terrible. I probably could’ve just waited until normal people hours to watch it instead of setting an alarm for 3am, but I’ve definitely spent my witching hours in worse ways. If anything, though, it left me melancholic. But, hey, there’s a season 2 on the way. I know the saying is that there are no happy endings in Star Wars but . . . hey, if people can believe in Crosshair, I’m allowed to believe in a happyish ending. I suppose, in a way, it’s kind of like a sunny, stormless day on Kamino: Never thought they existed, but they can eventually happen after much strife.

#i'm writing this at 4am can ya tell #the bad batch spoilers #bad batch spoilers #bad batch #the bad batch #I sure do have a lot of opinions on a clone who ain't even my favorite . . .#aw well #long post #i probably have other thoughts but i need to be cut off before i go on tangents #tbb spoilers

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wanderingcas · 3 years

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hey so I saw you post a couple things about not wanting negative comments on your fics and I feel rly bad bc I think if you were vagueposting it may have been in response to the comment I left on your most recent chapter of ascend (I’ve since deleted it, though if it’s still in your inbox I’m sorry I can’t remove that as well). I did read it through before I hit submit, but after seeing what you said I went back, and can see how it could have been interpreted that way; I can tell my tone was just way off, especially for the platform. I’m autistic and have done a lot of work to improve my communication skills and convey appropriate tone, but I still bungle it up sometimes, and I’m sorry about that.

Things get messy on the internet for a variety of reasons, basic miscommunication being one, blurring of boundaries another, mismatch of expectations, etc etc; my intention was to be conversational, like wondering about a plot point not touched on, sandwiched between things I really liked about it. In retrospect I am seeing that even if that tone had been appropriately conveyed, that’s still a boundary you would prefer not to be crossed, particularly not in that setting uninvited.

Tumblr can add a layer of complexity bc of how friendly and informal and blunt so much of it is, and I think perhaps because I’ve read so much of your work and follow you here, it skewed the relationship baseline I was aiming from. For example, if I were talking to a friend about their work, I believe that tone would be less likely to cause hurt or offense, if that makes sense, or at least that has been my experience...though now that I’m thinking about it, still maybe not on a public comment platform! So again I am realizing the layers of my error here.

I’m not explaining to minimize your feelings or absolve myself of blame, but because by describing it this way I better understand what I did, where I went wrong, and how to improve going forward. I would rather be embarrassed and work through it than experience this social faux pas and be too ashamed to leave comments at all in the future. I can understand the position you have taken about not wanting negative comments, and I definitely get that you and all fic authors and other fanwork creators put in the time and effort and make yourselves vulnerable by sharing that effort for free, only hoping for some positive feedback in response.

Although I’ve definitely had good interactions with some authors over the years via comments and included some not-exclusively-positive feedback without issue, it’s wrong to assume that that is everyone’s stance. It’s absolutely every author’s prerogative to decide what types of comments to accept, and I mean that without judgment. As a non-neurotypical person (who often needs explicit statements of acceptable social behavior to adequately modulate my communication), this has reminded me that it is safer and kinder to assume that someone wants positive-only until otherwise demonstrated.

I apologize for any hurt caused by my inappropriate and badly phrased comment. Thank you for sharing your work, and for enforcing your boundary about what type of comment you’d prefer to accept.

hi, anon! just to clarify - are you the commenter that made a post about wanting more of Jack in the epilogue? Because i want to absolve you of some blame right now - I actually wasn't vagueposting toward you at all. I got really bad anon hate yesterday? two days ago? toward my fic (I deleted it, blocked the anon, and never posted it), as well as anons in the past - and I've also been seeing fellow writer friends go through some of the same issues. My post was less of a vague post necessarily and more of a general "let's review fandom etiquette" lol. Know that my post about that, and the subsequent discourse with that anon, was absolutely not directed at you.

When I got your comment I will admit it made me a little uncomfy - mostly because when I've gotten those comments in the past, they're layered with an added "this is what I wanted and you didn't do it so I'm angry and telling you about it", but that's not what you did in your comment - I understood where you were coming from, even if it did make me pause a bit. So i just want to let you know that you shouldn't feel shame or awkward or anything like that. I agree that tone and intention can get lost over the internet, and the relationship between reader and author can be tricky sometimes - particularly if you want to offer an opinion that might not be taken as completely positive? But it sounds like you are aware of that, and I do appreciate you taking the time to self-reflect.

And just as a quick note - in the past, there have been fics I've asked to get feedback on from readers - like La Hantise, for example, which I since deleted to rework as an original fic. I really wanted readers to point out what parts worked for them, and what parts didn't, and I specifically stated that in the author's notes on every chapter. Looking back, that may have been why our signals crossed got crossed, if you've been following my fics before. And usually I am pretty open to opinions in comments? But "ascend" in particularly has gotten some really entitled, really awful comments (again, not putting yours in that category!) so I've had to guard myself a bit with that fic. Maybe it's because it's a fix it fic, and everyone wants different things out of the finale to be fixed. Maybe it's because tensions are high. I dunno. Either way, i've had to build some walls around myself so i don't want to stop posting supernatural fic altogether lol.

So yeah, this is a messy way of saying - thank you for coming to apologize in case you needed to, but know the post wasn't about you. It was a general vent about the unwanted criticism and vitriol that some writers have been receiving lately on their fics. Like, really mean-spirited stuff lol. It wasn't my intention to make anyone paranoid, especially because comments on fics are great and lovely and I'm not about to drag anyone through the mud even if a comment made me a little sad, but I can tell their intentions are good. Usually in that case I just disengage and think about how to process it on my own end. <3

That all being said, i really really appreciate you taking the time to come to my inbox and say all this. You're one of the good ones, you really are. And people like you make me want to keep posting fic. Truly.

#anon ask #answered ask #there's a definite difference between a comment that makes me sigh a little and go 'hmm okay wish they hadn't said that but shrug'#and a comment that makes me go 'oh no that person is MEAN'#it's a huge gap between the two and it's easy to tell the difference usually!#so yeah not referring to comments like yours <3 #i was actually gearing up a reply to yours this morning when i realized you had deleted it #because you also did say some really lovely stuff <3

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gilded-green · 3 years

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In celebration of the 10th anniversary, I’ll probably reread GG and send updates/highlight areas and as for commentary. Probably XD

But first. What aspect of Gilded Green was your favorite? What was something you put in a lot of world building for but never got to show either in fic or on tumblr. Who is your favorite character and why, what makes them special in your eyes? Which character has turned into a completely different one as soon as you started writing them? Which part of the fic did you like most when you finished it, do you still like it? Similarly, which part do you dislike most?

Lasty, anything about gg2’s story you want to share/talk about/rant?

-love, the dai li fangirl

Haha, no pressure! But at the same time yes if you do feel free to send me passages for commentary here! <3

What aspect was my favorite? Hmmm. *thinking face* I think, when I first came up with it, I was just thrilled to have these two small things - minor character Lu Ten, overlooked villain organization Dai Li - that I was able to combine into something so big. That was pretty nifty!

As I started developing the story, I think what really caught my attention was the fact that “Wow, all these characters are awful people!” Like. The Dai Li aren’t good.The Fire Nation aren’t good. Lu Ten is a victim but also an oppressor. All off these people have extremely different beliefs and worldviews - Fire supremacist, police state enforcers, classist academic gatekeepers - and all of them think THEY’RE in the right here and none of them are. I think Tien and Hoang might be the only people with a decent, non-oppressive worldview in the story so far. XD I was growing out of the storytelling trope of black-and-white morality at the time, so it was really fun to start experimenting with writing awful people as enjoyable, sympathetic characters.

World building? Hmm. I was just learning how to use my worldbuilding muscles back then. I seem to remember reading up a lot on how brainwashing actually works in the real world and going “I don’t think this is compatible with what we have in ATLA” and just kinda tossing that whole thing out. XD I also recall looking up a lot of stuff for the bits about Jouin, some of which - kalua pig! - has since shown up again in WFFD. I also recall someone on FFdotnet at the time saying “All this chapter did was tell us more about a dead character than the living one” and I was just kinda like -_- yes because he is DEAD and this is your chance to feel sorry about that, we’ll get plenty more of the living one later on account of him still being, y’know, alive. XD

Oh, and Shirong’s personal side projects. I finally got into that a bit in A Meeting of Minds, but the dude DOES have his own stuff going on, which Delun so rudely interrupted to drag him off to see Long Feng about brainwashing a Firebender.

I also did a bunch of research for the birthday party interlude, I think. Mostly appropriate alcohol for such an occasion? And....okay, this’ll sound funny, but.....food containers. I wanted Fen to pack up leftovers for Suyin and Shirong. That’s what my Italian family does after get-togethers, and I assumed that a Chinese family/friend group would do the same! But I also had, like, zero exposure to everyday Chinese life, let alone everyday Chinese life in the 1800s, and I just didn’t have the...idk, cultural osmosis? to figure it out. Like, if you asked me how Victorians would transfer food I’d probably come up with “Idk, wrap it in cloth and stuff it in a basket?” and I assumed people living in modern China would also be able to explain what their people did for food storage/transport 150 years ago but I didn’t have that cultural background, now, did I??? Also this was 10-12 years ago I was looking this up, mind you, the internet was still very different, there was plenty of information on Chinese historical events but not on everyday life objects, CDramas weren’t easy to find if they were translated at all and I certainly didn’t know they existed, and no one was posting beautiful aesthetic videos of life in a rural Chinese mountain village to youtube yet. Eventually I learned that bamboo baskets were a thing, but there wasn’t much info on THOSE either and I wasn’t sure how to describe them, so I just tentatively typed “basket” and called it a day. XD

YOU CANNOT ASK ME TO CHOOSE MY FAVORITE CHARACTER THAT’S LIKE ASKING ME TO CHOOSE BETWEEN MY CHILDREN!!! *shoves Yong off a cliff*

I’m very fond of the Dai family, along with the Trungs and Sais. I’m very proud of how Tuan turned out. I adore Yuan, who you’ve barely met, and Xun, who you haven’t. Huang and Wu Sheng are also definite faves and I can’t wait for y’all to get to know them better.

Characters do usually behave for me in terms of personality development. They surprise me, but they never really turn out to be the complete OPPOSITE of what I was expecting? They just kinda develop organically. Huang and Wu Sheng surprised me, tho, those boys got deep. I knew they had the potential, but developing their backstory actually caused Stingrae and I to develop Ba Sing Se’s socio-political backstory and Long Feng’s rise to power, all because of an inkling I had. That was a very satisfying few years of worldbuilding and story development.

Um, favorite part of the fic....idk, I’m very fond of the final scene, with Azula and her wall chunk from Lu Ten. I’m doubly fond of it because of how it always resonates with readers. Heck, during Azula week last year, I used that chunk of rock as an ongoing theme in Sandstone, and someone commented like “I DIDN’T REALIZE YOU’RE THE ONE WHO WROTE GILDED GREEN” and that made me really happy!

Lu Ten’s time stuck underground - I used the seven stages of grief to get through that one and it was very helpful in structuring that part of the story, and I figured it was deep or something because PSYCHOLOGY.

I’m also proud of myself for getting through the dark brainwashing scenes. So, like, FYI, fanfiction could get...very dark, back in the 00s. People love to play purity police these days and complain about how nasty people get can, but listen. Listen. Do you have any idea how dark FFdotnet got back in the day? Legolas And Aragorn Get Captured By Orcs And Brutally Tortured was an entire genre. I feel like torture fic was actually a lot more common back then, and darkfic in general - I’m sure someone could write a whole thesis on why it’s not so prevalent anymore, I’m gonna guess the fact that fandom is less-insulated and more public now could be part of it, maybe also the fact that the internet is more social media/influencer culture based so people care about their image, and also the purity police which is its own kettle of worms, but I also think that the Bush Administration had something to do with it? You have all these kids who were pre-teens when 9/11 happened, growing up during the Iraq War with an awful presidential administration while everyone was scared and conservative Christianity started to realize that their control over the nation’s “morality” might be slipping and reacted accordingly......yeah there was a lot of darkfic back then.

And I read a lot of darkfic too, but, uh....well, statistically speaking, a lot of writing is bad, okay? A lot of those fics were just weird; you could see where the writer had this idea, and also where they failed to execute it in a way that resonated or made sense. And whatever, writers were young and just wanted to pound out some catharsis, it’s cool, but it still just felt narratively awkward when you could tell how the writer was more focused on LET’S MAKE THIS AS DARK AS POSSIBLE instead of “Let’s tell this as well as possible.”

So the first several attempts at writing the brainwashing scenes, I was nervous because I didn’t want to get TOO dark, and when I finally decided “eff it” and said to Stingrae “I think I need to let this be as dark as it needs to be” I was still nervous because I didn’t want it to end up WEIRD. Idk if that makes sense, but anyway I seem to have done a decent job at it!

As for parts I dislike the most, uhhhhh Iroh’s retreat (I didn’t care, I just wanted to get it over with), Enlai might’ve been promoted too fast? idk, the fact that I came up with Nanyue AFTER I finished publishing GG so I couldn’t work that into the Quy bits, the fact that I was young and innocent and didn’t understand sexual slang or innuendo and randomly chose Dong as the name of the court physician which could lead to some awful puns except no one ever seemed to pick up on that and maybe I’ll regret pointing it out but the man IS going to appear again so I might as well get the first shot in myself. XD

I might have GG2 stuff to talk about but not sure, if I do I’ll make another post on that!

#GG tumblr escapades #GG 10th anniversary

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ellanainthetardis · 4 years

Text

Alright, this will be my review for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes so obviously spoilers under the cut.

Also obviously, this is my opinion, I force no one to share it and I’m happy to discuss the book with anyone who wants to.

First off, I won’t go into all the deep themes in the books. It seems obvious to me there’s a very clever allegory for a contrat social at work here but since I am not very much interested in that, I will leave it aside. It’s well done, I think, but I am more a character driven sort of reader than theme driven and the debate over “are we the product of our environment or is man a beast at heart” is a bit null here. Surely enough, as one of the quotes at the beginning implies, the whole book more or less struggles to show Dr Gaul somehow turns Coryo into a monster to her Frankenstein… Sure, he seems to hesitate between right and wrong, the nature of the two etc etc. But, really, I have troubles relating to a character questioning the nature of man when that character is so plainly a psychopath himself.

I’m sorry. I said it.

Did I love Snow in this book? Sure. Even when he was being bad, I loved him. What’s not to love? He’s completely over-dramatic. All the time. He’s a complex character with Draco Malfoy vibes and who tries to do well by his family. But he is also sick in the head and that predates Dr Gaul’s little mind games. Can we argue it’s because of his traumatic childhood? Maybe. It doesn’t change the fact he equals love with possession, does not seem to experience remorse nor guilt – or at least not very long and he’s very quick to rationalize it – and has a natural ability to mimic or force himself to act as is expected in any given situation. He doesn’t react to things, you will notice, he behaves the way he thinks people expects him to.

So, he is sick. And since he is sick, the whole debate through his head about the nature of violence, men being beasts without laws, freedom versus enforcement, right and wrong, etc seems void.

Let’s leave that aside for now.

The question you will probably ask me is: did you like the book? And the answer I will give is yes I did. I did enjoy the book. At least the first two third of it.

It’s fast paced, it’s engaging, it’s easy to read…

What I like most is the worldbuilding. What a difference a 3rd pov makes… I mean we finally got all the world building we deserved. And the names. Actually, there were so many names in there I’m pretty sure she threw them as a joke. But, yeah. Everything I reproach Thg was fixed here: we have a more consistent idea of how the Games work out of the arena, we know the currency used is dollars (which we didn’t up until now), we have a better idea of how the Capitol works as a society, about the working of Peacekeepers and Districts… I quite enjoyed learning more about the 1st war and the post war world too.

I also enjoyed the Capitol families Cameos – and I was very wary about them if you read some of my posts pre-released. They were nice nods, it wasn’t too on the nose… I am relieved beyond measure not to have seen a mention of an Abernathy or a Trinket – or an Everdeen or a Mellark, I guess – mostly because that means we are still free to stick to our own hcs. (it’s not that important but still).

The cast of characters were all great – with two notable exceptions but I will come back to that.

I loved Snow’s family. What a surprise to find out Tigris is a Snow? But what joy she is. I really enjoyed her character but I have to say I’m a bit disappointed we didn’t get to see (or at least were told in the epilogue) how they grow apart or how she comes to have whiskers. The Grandma’am was an awesome addition too. Lucy Gray, the Coveys, the Peacekeepers, Sejanus, the other mentors… They were great.

I will argue that maybe Lucy Gray, as a main character (second main character? She’s the yin to his yang in this book) could have been more fleshed out because when it comes down to it, she seems to float around in the story only in relation to Snow. This being said and the pov being mostly Snow’s, it’s coherent with his egocentric view of the world. And I’m sure a lot of people will argue the case that her only purpose being to die so he can get over love is a bit problematic better than I could.

The two characters that I think were disappointing were the “villains” of the tale: Dr Gaul and Highbottom. They were actually so disappointing that I spent a good portion of the book convinced that here was some kind of secret plot, that there would be a conspiracy or something. But no, they were just that… flat.

Highbottom first: the creator of the Hunger Games who, obviously, didn’t mean to and ends up doctoring himself with morphling to forget. And seems to hate Coryo (yes that’s Snow’s nickname) for no obvious reason. I was sure there must be some twist but no, it just turned out he hates Snow because his father stole his Hunger Games idea to pitch it to Gaul for a grade and now he’s responsible for the death of kids. Which, I mean, is valid. But since it’s only here to bring into contrast the “is Snow really bad or have the circumstances make him bad” when, really, he’s a psycho, it ends up being very disappointing on discovery – never mind as the final reveal of the epilogue.

As for Gaul. Is she terrifying? I mean, for a young adult book, sure, I guess. She’s too obviously mean and crazy scientist for me though. I like my villains a little more subtle. She spent her times torturing her pet rabbit and various animals ffs. All she needed was a mustache to twirl. She’s cliché and, again, I’m sure it was like that for rhetoric purposes but… She’s Frankenstein and Snow is her creature, we get it. Why though? She takes a shine to him and proceeds to groom him so he can deliver the world she wants? So he’s her legacy? Because she’s a psycho too and she needs an apprentice? I thought that part was a little fishy because, at the end of the day… I don’t know, it seems a bit random.

But, I suppose, yet again, everything has to revolve around Snow in the book and in Panem.

And we’re touching to the part that annoyed me to death, that really really angered me and that, right now as we speak, I am a little disgusted by.

A short word first about the fan service. And there was plenty of that to go around. All the little wink wink, nudge nudge made me smile at first (like the grandma saying it only takes a spark for fire to catch, that sort of things), it was subtle so it worked. But as the book goes on, all the references built to the point I was sort of terrified Katniss would end up being related to Snow. And while she is not, I am fairly convinced she’s descended from the Coveys, it makes a lot of sense.

Ok… Where to start with that part and be coherent…

The less offensive (yes, I am using that word because it was offending to me) thing was Snow’s recurring reflection about the mockingjays. On hindsight, of course, it has so much more meaning than what is going on on paper, so it made sense and while it was a bit sold too thick, it was also interesting. That’s something I’m willing to grant was good.

I also liked the “it’s not over until the Mockingjay sings” saying. To be honest, I was 100% confident the epilogue would be a flashforward to the end of MJ and that quote would somehow come back into play but apparently not, that’s for us to fanfic instead.

Now, as for the rest… I am going to speak as someone who loves Haymitch Abernathy an unhealthy amount, and while I speak as someone who loves Haymitch, I also feel it is only minorly about Haymitch and a lot about Katniss, Peeta and the rest of the victors. But Haymitch is my favorite character in the series, Haymitch is a big part of why I have dedicated so much time writing fanfics and contributing to the fandom, I am very protective of Haymitch. And, on his behalf, I am so deeply, deeply offended.

In this book, Suzanne Collins makes Snow a victor.

We can argue the semantics. Naturally, he didn’t actually win the Hunger Games.

Or does he?

Because there are no winners, only survivors and by that very definition Coriolanus Snow is a victor.

Coriolanus Snow walked into an arena, was forced into the arena.

Coriolanus Snow fought in the arena.

Coriolanus Snow killed someone in the arena.

Coriolanus Snow walked back out of the arena.

He survived.

It makes him a de facto victor. He is actually literally called that a couple of times throughout the book. It’s reinforced by the idea that mentor and tribute are a team, even.

And this very idea that Snow is a victor, has been a victor all along, is so deeply, deeply upsetting to me. The bond between victors, it’s something very special, I feel. Victors share something nobody else can understand – my very favorite part of the whole series is in Catching Fire when they hold hands, it is such a strong emotional moment, it always moves me, always. And Snow being a part of that defiles it. Worse, that means a victor was actually the one imposing such horrors on other victors all along.

And that’s… I mean, probably in terms of themes and the story as an independent object, it’s all very ironic and dark and full of great meaning about man and it’s condition. But for someone who loves Haymitch, it is very deeply offending to learn the man who has taken everything from him went through the same experience he did, that they share that bond, that they have so many similarities.

Too many similarities actually. And here we are going to branch out on TBOSAS in relation to Katniss more specifically.

That’s another thing I am not sure I liked: how similar Snow’s conditions were to our beloved characters. The starvation, the very similar experience they had growing up.

At first, I didn’t mind it. I thought, even, that it was quite fitting. But the problem came when so much of Katniss’ story was being… stolen, turned around. It started feeling like this book was subverting the powerful story in THG, not just the main plot, but everlark, and the character building. So, of course, here again, it’s probably a matter of questioning if, stemming from the same conditions, you become a hero or a villain. Nature or nurture. That sort of things. And, again, it depends if you look at the big picture and analyze it calmly or if you react with your guts as a fan, I guess. Yeah, no surprise, I’m going the fan route.

So there were a lot of parallels to Katniss.

The starvation. The strong sense of family. Lucy and the singing…

And it wasn’t limited to Katniss, it touched to everlark too.

The star-crossed lovers thing comes to mind obviously (and I want to talk about the ship too but after). Then, there was the bread thing that was both Snow’s and Lucy’s favorite and the fact that Snow brings her food all the time. The poison in the arena we can land at snow’s door since it’s his weapon of choice, but still poison in the arena, my mind goes straight to the berries… (I will tackle the hanging tree song after)

At this point (before she goes in the arena), I was still mostly okay with it because I thought it would somehow have a reason later. Like either Katniss would turn out to be related to Lucy or it would remain light enough to turn out to be foreshadowing for THG.

Then came part 3. And that’s where the book mostly lost me.

There are eleven other Districts in Panem. So why Twelve? And if it had to be Twelve why pollute everything Katniss loves? How are we supposed to see those things the same way again when we know what we now know?

The meadow? The meadow where the toastbabies are dancing and running? Where so many people are laid to rest? Snow has been there, kissed his girl there. And let me tell you, as a Haymitch fan, knowing that Haymitch never gets to reunite with his girl in the meadow because of Snow, it’s a special kind of pain to read Coryo frolicking there in the grass “with his girl”.

And then, of course, I don’t know what is worse… The lake or the song?

Let’s start with the lake. Where do I begin? The lake that is so special to Katniss? The little shack where she stocks everything? The lake that features into so many fanfictions and that, if some people feel the same way I do, can never be used again the same way? So, that lake was where Snow murdered (possibly) his “love”. The lake, thus, becomes a part of Snow’s narrative.

It’s stolen away from Katniss.

And to better stress that point? The scene with the Mockingjays taking up the hanging tree when Lucy is about to get murdered. (let’s make a digression to say oh boy how fun it must have been for Snow during mj, I’m very tempted to fanfic THAT). It’s all very full of symbolism, of course, but with the hindsight? It’s another great important moment stolen away from Katniss. Highjacked. Not unlike a mutt, actually. This book is a mutt XD

Which brings me to what really, really made me angry: the hanging tree song.

That song is so symbolic of MJ and everlark. I mean, there’s one thing I will give MJ the movie and that’s this scene with the song. The people attacking the dam and getting butchered while humming that song? Iconic. But more prosaically, book based, that song is such such a powerful moment. It’s special. And not only because of all the thing with everlark and the tree and midnight.

And suuuuure there might be a lot of symbolism in that song being not strictly about but still intimately related to Snow. Sure. But you know? It’s also another thing that now is about Snow. So even as Katniss was singing that song, getting the Districts to rebel, showing Peeta that District 12 was gone, letting the Mockingjays by the lake take up the chorus… It isn’t just about hope or freedom anymore. Now, it’s about Snow and about how terribly ironic it is this particular song comes to be his demise, how it’s fate or karma or whatever you want to call it. Because now, we can’t unread this book, we can’t unknown what we know.

And I hate that.

Because Katniss’ journey in THG? It’s now so deeply linked to Snow’s story that if you take a step back and think, it’s more all about Snow than it is about her, or her sister or the Districts. Snow lands on top, right?

And you know what really irks me?

The book is actually good as a character study book (not really so much as dystopia because in terms of actual plot, I feel there was really little) but it didn’t have to taint so many elements of THG the way it does.

Let’s say for a moment Snow isn’t Snow. Let’s say he is a wealthy Capitol fallen from grace and that character who is not going to be the President of Panem has the same journey Coryo does. Let’s say at the end of the story, he moves on to become a famous Head Gamemaker or a close advisor to the President?

Well, the themes explored then remained the same, the conclusions remained the same. We lose the visceral signification of his connection to the mockingjays but is that really important? The Hanging Tree now has a resonance for another character in that world, the meadow has probably seen countless lovers reunions and someone killed someone else at the lake, those things happen. The problem is they happen to Coriolanus Snow.

And baring that, let’s say we keep Snow as a main, why did it have to be Twelve? Again, there are eleven other Districts in Panem. He could have come to the very same conclusions in any other place.

Twelve is only relevant in relation to what happens in THG, to Katniss, to Peeta, to Haymitch.

Lucy and the Covey could have ended up stuck in any other Districts. It didn’t have to be Twelve. It didn’t have to spoil the Meadow, or the lake or even the Hanging Tree song.

Is that why Snow hates Twelve so much? Is that why he kills Haymitch’s family even if it’s completely stupid and leaves him without a leash around a Quell’s victor’s neck? Is that why he bombs the Districts into complete oblivion ? Not to punish its victors but because he so intimately hates the place? Because he walked in their very shoes? Because, for a brief time, from his Frankenstein’s experiment, he played in the mud?

For that matter, is that why he has this weird relationship with Katniss? Because she reminds him of Lucy? The similarities are there if you look… Is Katniss a sort of ghost to him? Come back to haunt him after all those decades? Is that why it feels so personal between them?

I will say a quick word about the ship: I was into it at first. Then there was this scene at the zoo after the snake attack on Clemmie and I felt everything started going downhill from there. The ship is rushed. They go from attraction to love in ten seconds FLAT. I know it’s YA and concessions have to be made (although I will argue I read plenty of YA and some ships don’t seem this juvenile), I made them on account of the fact they’re both young and prone to being drama queens.

(I’m making a brief parenthesis because, rereading this, I realized I did say when the book announcement came out and we all very obviously predicted the romance, that as a hayffie fan I hated the thought Snow would have a Capitol/District romance, but on that account, I have to say after reading I don’t even care because it felt so immature and so not actual love, that I don’t feel it really counts? But at the same time, it’s definitely something I have to think upon in terms of hayffie and Snow because would his own experience play in the way he sees them/manipulates/threatens them?)

All in all, though, that ship didn’t convince me. I couldn’t believe it was real. On either part. On Snow’s part because I’m not certain he’s capable of love. He equals love with possession, “his” girl, she “belongs” to him, he liked her better locked in the zoo because he knew where to find her, he constantly questions Lucy’s loyalties… Every time she sings something, he’s like “is it about me? Is it about me? It’s not about me? Who is it about? I hate her. She’s dead to me. Oh but now she’s singing she’s over him. So I love her again”. Being in his head is a journey, let me tell you.

As for Lucy, it’s frustrating. But with Collins, I learned long ago to be frustrated (hey, hayffie fan here XD. You know the two characters you need to build your own hc about if you want to use them with some depths). You can feel there’s this whole backstory about her but we never get to really touch that and so we’re treated to this very strange scene with the ex-lover but we don’t really care because there is no passion, nowhere… In fact, as a character, outside of her singing, her being a show girl, and her little discourse about how man should be free, live and let live yada yada yada, Lucy’s character is very flat in the third part of the book. She’s here only to allow Coryo’s character development.

I would argue that Sejanus actually makes more of an impact on Snow and the general plot than she does in part 3 – or, if you think about it, in the book in general. Lucy is the trigger that gets Coryo’s reflection starting about the hunger games but it’s really Sejanus that challenges it and keeps it going. Sejanus is, in fact, the District character since Snow keeps telling himself the Covey aren’t really Twelve.

I also want to say, on a completely unrelated note, that the constant mansplaying of songs by Snow was unbearable. And that’s not his fault. So, Mrs Collins, I know how to interpret a text thank you. And I’m sure everyone else does to. It broke the pace and the emotion so much for me when he started randomly explaining. The Lucy Gray ballad was the worst. “she’s dead.” NO KIDDING SHERLOCK.

And while we’re in that Lucy Gray thing: very subtle foreshadowing here, btw. Didn’t see it coming at all.

Ah and also something that made me cringe and that I felt was very out of place: the livestock cars and the cages at the zoo. Not to go all social justice warrior but when I read, it immediately hit home and not in the right way. It felt like a prop to stress how inhumane and racist the Capitol was being, they were easy references to loaded terrible horrifying history events and I truly, truly thought it was borderline because, like I said, it was used as a prop.

To conclude.

Is this book great? Yes and No.

I think if you take it independently of THG, it’s a very good book. It’s interesting, the characters are compelling, there is a moral for you to reflect on… It’s not the best dystopian book I’ve read in recent years, it’s not the best young adult book I’ve read in this lockdown (Hi, do yourself a facor, check out the Shadow of the Fox trilogy and then come shout at me in my ask box) but it was still a good read. And I forgot to say but the first half of the novel is actual crack. It was hillarious. Might not have been the intent but come on. It was funny. (and I’m satly they sent him in the arena but they sent him with a can of pepper spray and that will make me laugh forever) I had a good time and, at the end of the day, that’s what you ask of novels.

However, in the general context of the series, loving thg as much as I do, it tainted some of the iconic things, twisted them, insulted some of my most favorites characters, and that really dampened my joy and made me angry. So as a fan… I’m not sure I can say it was great, no.

It certainly didn’t let me indifferent though and that’s already something.

And, I mean, it is so much better than the cursed child I feel I cannot complain too much.

It also does leave the door rather open to a sequel, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another announcement soon.

#tbosas spoilers #tbosas #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #the ballad of songbirds and snakes spoilers #balladspoilers #spoilers #i read stuff #namely abosas #abosas spoilers #book review #I did my best to correct spelling errors and such #but i've spent the whole day reading and my eyes are killing me

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atalana · 4 years

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I understand that your only source of representation is through Jughead, so how do you feel about people who ship him with other characters? Would you want them to stop?

i mean in an ideal world? absolutely yes

that said, i'm well aware i can't control much about the world outside of my own personal bubble, and people who ship jughead with other characters but stick to their own space aren't the biggest problem here? i'm not gonna go on a crusade to tear down any sectors of the archie and/or riverdale fandom with jughead ships, because honestly that sounds way too tiring and like, i'm sure i have things that i like to think and write about that other people would find infuriating, i don't wanna be a hypocrite and insist my way of doing fandom is the only way to do fandom

and the same goes for other fictional characters that are strongly implied to be aro/ace but 95% of the fandom has ships with them in, it gets on my nerves, but it isn't majorly harmful

the biggest problem, honestly, when it comes to jughead specifically, is riverdale, for bringing archie comics back into the public consciousness and pretending to be supportive of lgbt+ rights, and then at the same time erasing jughead's canon sexuality. like, this has been less of a problem in recent years bc from what i've seen the show has made a fool of itself in lots of other ways? but for people who do still watch it, just remember, no matter how many gay characters they include, they do not support this community. they include gay characters because it's become socially acceptable to include one or two and pretend like you're a paragon of representation. they're not. they're cowards who do not care about us

but when it comes to fandom, here's what is a problem when dealing with aro/ace representation, and things i'd like all fandoms to work on:

stop assuming that everyone needs sex or romance to be complete, stop assuming that any kind of positive relationship between two non-related characters must be romantic. like please. im so tired. people exist in this world who would be actively worse off in any romantic/sexual relationship, even a loving one, than they would be on their own. acknowledge these people exist, and maybe, just maybe, consider them in your sexuality headcanoning. (do you know how much it hurts to see someone make a sexuality headcanon page of a fandom with like 20+ characters and all of them are gay bi or pan? like representation for all of those are great as well, you should include them, but don't do so at the cost of excluding us. if your only reasoning behind headcanoning a character as bi is "they have Bi Vibes and I Want To", why is it so hard to make one or two of them ace or aro or both?)

people who have no interest in the opposite gender are both gay and aro/ace coded. it's something i've found constantly, whenever even a hint of aro/ace representation shows up, there's gonna be a very loud section of the fandom who insists they can't be aro/ace because they're gay coded, and making them aro/ace would deny representation. these people's only argument? they showed no interest in the opposite (binary) gender. guess what guys! that can be both! and insisting it's only gay is honestly aphobic as fuck and you will instantly lose my respect

same goes for characters who in canon show no interest in anyone at all. you'd think this would be a stronger argument for them being aro/ace than for them being gay, but not for these people! and like, this isn't me saying gay people can't relate to characters, of course do what makes you feel better, but i'm just asking for you to make space for us and acknowledge we're here. let the people with aro/ace headcanons feel just as acknowledged and validated as the people with gay headcanons, instead of shunned and like no one wants them around

(i still lose followers any time i make an aro/ace positive post. which honestly only makes me more incentivised to keep doing it. i'm here i'm queer and i'm not going anywhere, the hill i've chosen to die on is protecting younger aro/ace people and fighting for their rights and good luck knocking me down)

this does include the archie fandom, by the way. i'm assuming you sent this because you saw my post from 3-4 years ago about jughead being canonically aro/ace? well, there are plenty of people who angrily told me that jughead, a character explicitly said in the text to be aro/ace, was gay coded and i was being homophobic. like fucking stop it.

if you're genuinely interested in being a good ally to aro/ace people, and i really do appreciate that you've asked this!! here's a few things you (and the fandom at large) can do:

make space for aro/ace people in your headcanons, even if you're not aro/ace yourself. honestly, while this is a personal opinion, i don't even mind if your understanding of what being aro/ace is is slightly wrong? i mean if you wanna explore that in depth, doing research is better than not doing research (my ask box is always open), but i'm just happy to see anyone be inclusive, those people are the good people in my book

make space for aro/ace people in your jokes and memes. we like to have fun too! i'm still never really gonna get over the gay alignment chart meme, like... they had two separate squares for gay and lesbian, one for bi/pan, and none for aro or ace. that pretty much sums up everything wrong with representation at the moment. if you had to stick to three for the sake of the meme template, gay/lesbian, bi/pan, and aro/ace would have been much fairer. and yeah it's just a meme but like... we shouldn't only be on people's minds when things are serious

stop making all your aro/ace headcanons jokes. don't headcanon horrible real life people as aro/ace. be careful that your aro/ace headcanons aren't entirely children or robots. like, you can headcanon those characters as aro/ace, but if you're exclusively doing that, you're not really seeing us as people

(i have... complicated thoughts about spongebob apparently being canonically aro/ace. but i wouldn't hold that up as the pinnacle of representation)

(also despite many assholes' insistence to the contrary, being aro/ace isn't an 18+ identity. if a 12 year old can be gay a 12 year old can be aroace. they may not have discovered the sexual part yet but they can still know the romantic part. every sexuality goes through this same persecution why are even gay people still passing it down)

aro/ace people can be happy, well adjusted, non traumatised adults! many of us are! go make some headcanons of that!

while just aro or just ace people definitely do exist, and you can headcanon characters as such, some of us don't split those labels (i just use aroace for myself bc it's one thing, like how bisexual and biromantic people just go by bi). make sure you have some aro/ace people in the mix there, and you're not falling into the pitfall of using our identities only to make Gay Lite(TM)

don't let people walk all over us. we had a really thriving community back in 2013, and then the exclusionists came in and completely wiped it out. i saw it happen. they've faded into the background but only because 90% of aro/ace people are now scared to speak up on their own behalf. encourage aro/ace people to share their experiences if they want to, encourage aro/ace headcanons where you see them, make sure your fandom is a space where aro/ace people want to be. and if you see people being exclusionists (laughing at aro/ace people like they're cringy, pretending like aro/ace people are stealing non existent resources from gay people, or calling aro/ace people homophobic for existing are big weapons of the exclusionists), don't pretend it's just an argument or "discourse", let them know they don't belong. we can only fight so hard on our own behalf, we're a community for a reason. we're in this together

research, read, and most importantly, have fun with it. that's what fandom's for. if the only way you get enjoyment out of characters is by putting them in ships, try exploring a different, non romantic angle, and see what happens. encourage different forms of relationships. encourage aro/ace characters who are happy and secure in their own identity. encourage aro/ace characters having the same emotions as everyone else, just without the being attracted to people part. we're cool people! and ultimately, ship what you want. but just remember we're here, we're desperately in need of representation, and we can't make that happen on our own

#asexuality #asexual #aromantic #jughead jones #archie comics #representation #words #ask

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