#feel free to add stuff or something cuz i get vague when i write essays

[azathothsdreamgrrl]

you see! the thing is! revolutionary girl utena and the riot grrrl movement actually showed up around the same times, but during the early movement riot grrrl ideology was kind of rocky. it mostly focused on white women and rejecting a general upper/middle class upbringing, plus it has a bad history of excluding trans people and overall sparking a really extremist take on feminism that boils down to replacing the straight white men in power with straight white women that still embody a corrupt system.

the movement has improved itself overtime but the thing is that revolutionary girl utena, for all its flaws that i admit it has, kind of hit the ground running with a take on feminism that was ahead of its time. first of all anthy is a rare instance of a dark skinned character in an anime that isn't drawn like a racist caricature, and also one of the only dark skinned protagonists of that era. (dumb) people can debate that she's a flat character but the truth is that the whole story is for her; it's her life being brought a revolution. no one in rgu is white cuz obviously it takes place in japan, but it still rings true that the story aligns with the complexity of intersectional feminism that benefits to all women today, because what utena thought was empowering to all girls actually harms anthy and so on and so forth; even more so, what utena thinks is empowering her is actually hurting her all the same in the long run, turning her into the man she thinks she's fighting against that want them both crushed under it.

rgu also touched on the fact that putting women in a position of power instead of men wouldn't solve anything, because the system itself is rotten. even more mature of it for its time was that the show had a realistic ending where even after utena dedicated her last moments in the show to trying to free anthy, the coffin still fell away from her reach, and the swords turned on her. to akio this was a failure, and this is how a lot of people see fighting against corrupt systems to end: the system always ultimately wins against the individuals, and people lose hope that change can ever happen. however, utena's beliefs inspired anthy to leave ohtori, and then in the movie you see that the student council is given hope to leave as well. change, revolution, is gradual, but that doesn't make it any less worth it. in a lot of punk media i see this ending where the heroes can alone end the oppression in the movie, but that's just not how it works in real life, but there are moments of victory that inspire others to pick off where they leave off, and a better future is imaginable.

i think finally, in regards to the riot grrrl movement, rgu is way more nuanced with gender. you honestly just have to look at the fans to see that utena's gender expression gave trans people who watched rgu more vocabulary to express themselves. more than that though, i think the show was careful with how it approached both gender and femininity. the prince and the bride are both gendered roles, but masculinity and femininity aren't intrinsically toxic for each other. the show doesn't punish utena for being masc, and likewise even after escaping her role as a rose bride, anthy likes dressing fem. it's the way heteronormativity has made us think of these expressions: that masculinity has to come with aggression, and femininity means subservience. neither is a bad thing for the other, and people should be allowed to present how they want, not how they feel their personality means they have to.

all in all i think revolutionary girl utena is a relic for punks and riot grrrls and it isn't considered as such by a lot of people. the show really was ahead of its time. i hope this was coherent!

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Comparing RWBY and YGO DM: The Handling and Evolution of Themes

Hey! Its been a hot minute since I last posted anything RWBY-related but Im laying in my bed right now and Im sick and bored so I guess we're doing this. Today I will do my best to analyze what I percieve to be the main themes and messages of both of these shows, or more specifically, how theyre handled narratively. Im mostly focusing on that part because, while these series do have similar themes and messaging, they are still a few things in which they are wildly different. And with that, lets start with this essay-post-thing!

1. Theres something we need to adress first

Okay so, before we can really talk about this, theres something I feel the need to clarify here: Neither of these stories was "planned from the beginning".

Now, I dont think a story being planned from the beginning or not nesscessarily makes the story any better or worse by default, however, it is still important to acknowledge because the way the story is planned is going to affect every facet of it. Things are not going to be foreshadowed properly, things are gonna be set up only for nothing to come of it, the story might drastically change directions, characters might act differently, etc, etc.

And, this is bit off-topic but, it's much better to just admit that the story was not planned than trying to pretend that it was. Like, there are a lot of reasons why I tend to be so forgiving towards YGO even though its not very good, but one of them is definitely the fact that, as far as Im aware atleast, the guy who wrote it isnt pretending to have had this big master plan all along and neither is the fandom. With RWBY on the other hand... yeaaaah, its kinda the opposite. From what Ive seen of RWBYs fandom, there seems to be this pretty popular narrative that everything was planned even though it clearly wasnt. Thats pretty bad and honestly lowers my opinion of the writers so much more than if they would just admit to not having a proper plan.

Like, I initially consumed YGO like this: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh (aka Season 0), like, a quarter of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (I still havent finished it)

In all three of these we have the character of Yami Yuugi, or just Yami. Broadly speaking, he is an ancient egyptian gamer spirit who lives in a magical puzzle that has not been solved for 3000 years until this highschooler named Yuugi Mutou comes along and solves it, thus setting him free and allowing him to possess Yuugi and have access to the vague magical powers of the puzzle.

In Duel Monsters he's perfectly fine most of time, morally speaking. There is an instance of him almost murdering a guy and its a bit unclear what exactly happens to those he mindcrushes but overall he's very much a pretty good guy. In Season 0 most of what he does is set up these games for bad people, where they will go insane no matter what they do. From how I understand this whole Shadow Game, Penalty Game stuff, if you lose a Shadow Game, you get violent and intense hallucinations and you will always cuz yknow, gamer spirit. But if you try to cheat, which most of the bad people do in this show, you get violent and intense hallucinations as a punishment.

Since the two anime are generally considered two different continuities, its perfectly fine that Yamis characterization is wildly different in both of them. But in the manga both of these characterizations appear, basically one after the other with no real arc or consequences, for that matter. Why is that? Simply put, someone thought it was a good idea to try to turn an episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror manga into a more traditional, more plot-driven battle shounen. From what Ive heard, it was apparently largely because of network interference or something, but the point is, it changed directions incredibly drastically with little planning and everyone knows this and I can understand that for the most part.

In RWBY we have the character of Blake Belladonna, who, in the first 3 volumes/seasons atleast, was this aloof, more toned down loner-type character with a pretty strong sense of justice. She's an in-universe marginilized racial minority and she clearly cares about racial injustice. The way its initially framed makes it seem like she had a very hard life and no stable support system, which is what eventually pushed her to join a Civil Rights group/Terrorist organization (good god, the Faunus subplot is so awful, I could write a whole essay about it but Im already de-railing rn so I'll just save that for later).

Then, in volumes 4-5 it turns out her father is actually like, the mayor or chief of this island-place called Menagerie and she grew up in this big mansion with multiple guards/servants. Oh and also, apparently "space is a commodity" on there, so theres that. She still retains large parts of her personality but she's kinda like, worse somehow I think. I cant really describe it in a meaningful way but I hope you get what Im saying anyway. Then in Volume 6 she confronted her emotional abuser Adam (sorry for not mentioning him sooner but yeah, he was like, her abusive boyfriend, which is something that a lot of people disagree with but I wont really say anything about it either way because I dont really feel any specific way) with her friend, Yang, and ended up killing him.

After all that, she pretty much lost the rest of her personality, as well as her arc about all the Faunus stuff. She just kinda became the meek, generically nice, recovering abuse victim. Why? Well, the actual reason is that they didnt plan out shit and are just kinda flying by the seat of their oversized clown-pants and if they and the fandom just admitted it, I would have less of an issue. I still wouldnt be as forgiving towards RWBY as I am towards YGO because the crux of the issue, for me, is just that I dont particulary like RWBY but also like. Do you really expect me to take MKEK seriously as writers after admitting to not have a timeline because iT wOuLd CaUsE pLoThOlEs?

However, since they want us to believe that everything was planned out from the beginning, the explaination would be.... Idk, they deliberately butchered one of their main characters?? Because.. they hate her?? Maybe????

So yeah, that was quite a detour however, I would like you to keep this mind going forward.

2. Themes of the Early Series'

First, what do mean by 'Early Series' for both of these shows respectively? Well, for YGO that would have to be Season 0 or if youre reading the manga, everything pre-Duelist Kingdom. Basically, the part of the series thats a episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror series.

For RWBY that would be the first three Volumes, also known as the Poser-Era. Back then it was just kinda an action series that took place at Anime Warrior Academy (also known as Beacon) with some pretty bare minimum worldbuilding, character-driven plots and developments but now its more of an epic high-fantasy story with more of an emphasis on plot as opposed to just action.

The themes and messages in Early YGO are kinda vague, very confusing to me and if you were to follow any of it literally that would be pretty bad. For now Im just gonna say the main themes are Friendship and Identity and mostly focus on the Identity aspect.

Now, it took me a little while to figure out RWBYs deal but I think the main themes for Volumes 1-3 are also Friendship and Heroism. Once again, I'll mostly focus on Heroism and touch on Friendship more briefly later.

I dont have much more to add to YGOs themes right now, so I'll briefly go over Heroism in RWBY.

In RWBYs setting there are these man-eating monsters called Grimm that have basically infected the planet. In order to deal with that, they have people called huntsmen and huntresses that kill them and protect people. Theyre trained at special academies like Beacon and go on missions there and stuff like that. Our four main characters, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang, are training to become huntresses and one day they go on this mission to clean up a grimm infested city block with one of their teachers. Obviously, that takes a long time so they have to camp out in one of the empty houses. Weiss, Blake and Yang cant sleep because theyve been thinking about this question that their teacher asked them when they were fighting grimm: "Why do you want to become a huntress?"

They have a heart to heart and we find out about their motivations; Weiss wants to bring honour back to her family, Blake want to distance herself from the White Fang (that terrorist organization I mentioned earlier) and as an extension from Adam, Yang wants to have a life of adventure. They also talk about why Ruby wants to be a huntress and it turns out that she judt wants to help people. Unlike the others, she has no motivation besides that. We're meant to listen to that and look at her as a sort-of personification of Heroism: kind, but not naive, strong and most of all, selfless. The others on her team are not portayed as bad for not being like Ruby by any means but we are clearly meant to admire her the most out of all of them.

Okay, now comes the part Ive been looking forward to the most:

3. How did these themes evolve in the Modern Series'?

Alright, before we can really delve into the way they evolved in YGO I'll have to give you a brief summary of the character progression. At the start of DM, during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yami Yuugi is just that; A darker Yuugi. Hes more confident, bolder, his voice is deeper, hes somehow taller, more ruthless, all that good stuff. Notably, he doesnt actually seem more skilled than Yuugi even at the start of this story, but he's still dependent on Yami. Yami on the other hand, has no identity of his own or even hints at one at this point. He's just The Other Yuugi.

Then during the Battle City arc, they find out that Yami was actually a pharao prior to being sealed in the puzzle, he just didnt know because of amnesia, I guess. So now they need to find out his real name and then send him to the afterlife because hes meant to be dead, but not before saving the world from being swallowed by darkness, which is also a thing they have to do now.

Then we finally get to the Memory World arc, where Yami, Yuugi and the rest of the gang astralproject to ancient egypt via puzzle magic. Yami is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and who all these familiar people are, while Yuugi & Co are trying their best to help him. Then some weird shit happens and it turns out that all of that is not just Yamis sealed away memories, but also a giant D&D Shadow Game that will destroy the world if Yami loses. So now theres Pharao!Yami who is still clueless on the metaphorical and literal playing field and Player!Yami, who is kinda controlling himself now? I guess?? Yamis opponent, The Spirit of The Ring, has something similar to that going on where hes both controlling and properly participating in the game. So Player!Yami is now fighting against Player!TSoTR, Pharao!Yami is now fighting against Thief King Bakura (who is like, the human, ancient egyptian version of the Ring Spirit) and Yuugi is now fighting against Yami Bakura (who is like, the human, modern japanese version of the Ring Spirit). Yuugi gets Yamis real name, he and the gang go over to Pharao!Yami and tell him his name, meanwhile Player!Yami is also somehow helping as well and they defeat the Ring Spirit, thus saving the world. Then they travel to modern Egypt, the Ceremonial Duel happens and Yuugi wins, sending Yami to the Afterlife where he can finally rest and that was the series!

I originally wanted to recount the stuff that was going on with the Ring Spirit and his host as well because they parallel eachother, but this summary is already far too long and I think youll get the point without me needing to explain any more.

My point here is, that the story went from being vaguely about Identity, maybe? to being very clearly about Self-Discovery and Learning to Be Independent. I think this is a very good way to evolve the messaging of your story. How does RWBY track on that?

Well, uh... its not great. I will acknowledge that they have tried to introduce new themes and ideas since, even though I wont really be talking about them in this post. But yeah, the whole Heroism thing really regressed.

Like, I didnt explicitly say it when I was explaining grimm earlier, but theyre not going away. The grimm have always been there and people who sign up to become huntsmen and huntresses are effectively signing up for a job that will never truly be done, no matter what they do. Characters like Ruby and even more minor ones like Phyrrah have shown us that that doesnt matter when youre a hero. No life isnt worth saving, no grimm isnt worth killing, no criminal isnt worth arresting. Then, in volume 6 they find out about Salem. Salem is the Big Bad of the show, shes immortal, controls the grimm and is supposed to be very powerful.

What do our heroes do? They give up. Sike! They were just mindcontrolled by monsters or some shit, of course they didnt give up their mission (which is to bring an Important Macguffin to a city called Atlas, sorry I didnt mention it)!

But then they arrive in Atlas (which is llike, a city thats floating over another city called Mantle) and yknow, they do some plot stuff thats not really important right now until the city gets invaded by Salem and this big grimm army she has.

What do our heroes do? Well, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and some side characters are chilling, drinking tea in a mansion and Yang and the B Team were actually trying to do something, but even those efforts seem incredibly minimal.

Oh wait, I also forgot to mention that Ironwood (a fairly minor, vaguely antagonistic character up until now) wanted to lift Atlas even higher to save Atleasian civilians from danger while leaving Mantle vulnerable to Salems invasion.

What would be the most heroic thing to do?

A) Let Ironwood lift Atlas, get as much support as they can down to Mantle and save as many Mantle civilians as they can from the invasion

B) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas but then split up in order to protect both Atlas and Mantle civilians

C) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas and then dont do anything else

Congrats! If you choose C, you think exactly like the writers!

And I just

This is so mindboggling to me, I feel like I shouldnt even have explain how this is bad. And like, it wouldve been so easy to actually make them seem herokc through their actions, to make it seem like they did try but no.

I have never seen a central theme be this botched, how in the world did they do that? Why did they think it was a good idea for Ruby "The Embodiment of Heroism" Rose to sit in a mansion doing nothing, no planning, no organizing just ..... God, how are they this bad? Like, this doesnt even have anything to do with it being planned in any way, this is just straight up incompetence

4. Very briefly touching on friendship

The friendship is awful and its not solely because they all have the same opinions. They barely interact with eachother outside their designated pairs which leads to it all feeling incredibly hollow. Theyre also practically indistingushable from one another now, which is a shame because it wasnt always like that. Like, I dont think the characters were that well-developed in earlier volumes but they were very well-characterized. But now we've gotten to a point where you can literally copy and paste one characters dialogue onto another and literally nothing changes, it really sucks.

5. Some closing words

Damn, this took way longer than I thought it would and now Im pretty exhausted. I have no idea how yall always write these but props to you! I feel like this ended up a bit rambly but overall, Im pretty proud.

Please let me know what you think of the points I brought up! Id also really appreciate some tips on how to get better at these longer posts because I am planning on writing more in the future (not the near future, probably but yknow).

Thats all I have to say for now, thanks for reading!

[jjbablocklistcallouts]

The Blocklist: A essay (this is very long)

I know everyones sick of it at this point but I got shit to say so feel free to not read this absolute unit of a poorly written essay. The jjbablocklist divided their list into two different list now. One for creators and one for consumers/rebloggers and I cannot stress enough about how dumb that is since it shouldve been done since the beggining. Also, following alot of these artist and “consumers” of these medias, I noticed some of them are falsely accused, others while being minors. here’s why:

1. A lot of teens and young adults in the community like ships like GioMis, FuMis, NaraGio, MisTrish and plenty more and I know your singular shared braincell cannot handle the idea of 2-3 year age gaps not being pedophilia, but uh, newsflash for ya, THEY AINT. Legally, it is not a crime and that in america where the age of consent is 18, not in Italy where its 15 and not in Japan where its even less. Under the general United States Law, which is where I assume the list makers/defenders are mostly from, these ships are not classified as pedophilia or should be problematic and the ages of consent change to lower ages depending on state. The only way you can add these shippers for their “crimes” is if they promoted or created the interactions of these characters in a sexual or intimate manner whether they are aged up or not, which is still wack if their age is above that of the age of consent in writing/art and the fact that minors, in this case teenagers with the VA cast, are allowed to express themselves with people of their own age group in a sexual manner, real life kids do it all the time amongst themselves so why shouldnt people be able to create it, the whole ordeal is ridiculous imo BUT I can see how it makes a lot of people uncomfortable, a lot of it makes me uncomfortable too so we gotta make compromises somehow so absolutely no lewding the mafia lolis/ jojo lolis in general and if you do, tag it properly so it doesnt spread onto the basic hastags of characters and the show. If you dont you on the list.

2. Claim genderswapping/r63 is transphobic all you want but until I see clear and definitive proof of it being purposely made for that purpose then it’s absolutely ok. If someone makes it to offend someone then its wrong and they should be called out for it (which has never been the case in this fanbase as far as I cant tell) It’s creative, it allows people create new desings for characters or adjust current ones for cosplayers or other artist. Im sure one of your mods can relate, since the do the exact same thing as we do while not addressing a certaint character properly by their canon pronouns. Genderbending does not promote the attack or harrasement of the trans community and that is a fact unless its done by actual problematic artist like Sh*dbase and others, which is still a stretch because I dont think they’ve done it to target people or make fun of them but they are the popular problem icons. So get the actual transphobes on the list, aka those who created the content specifically to harras a specific person, or remove the catergory entirely. Its unnecessary and hypocritical.

— The rest of these are just things that bother a lot of people in the community so if you only cared about minors being on the list then you dont have to continue reading. —

Tumblr is infamously known to be a shitshow of a site where all you can find is problematic content. If you dont like this kind of content, why the hell are you here in the first place? There’s a lot of safer websites to use where like instagram, twitter, amino, facebook, and more. They have actual filters unlike tumblr and finding content you dont like is a lot harder unless you are purposefully looking for it, and even then it could be a challenge due to shadow bans or privatized accounts. Tumblr has none of that, everyone knows it, all of those who dont like it try to stay away from it or use it very scarcely. Why do you think that most of these “problematic” artist/creators/consumers are here? Tumblr has always been its own weird realm, trying to make it anything else goes against what it stand for.

You’re crimes make are literal nonsense sometimes because you include such obvious personal attacks like “Made a literal essay defending GioMis” and “All kinds of awful stuff” as crimes. You added a few account because they message you about how ridiculous the whole ordeal is and you take to findind the slightest bit of “evidence” that can aid you into making them look bad. You know thats not a good reason right?? Even if it were, yall are even more guilty for committing acts of Liable and Defamation and you are choosing to for those you incorrectly put on the list, invluding the minors! Let alone hypocrisy but yall are tired of hearing that one.

Dont add other fandoms into this mess. The Hetalia fandom has been dead for more than 5 years and it aint none of your buisness. It has nothing to do with Jojo. Unless you plan on making more blocklist for ALL fandoms then, goodluck, though make em better.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a wonderful and yet problematic series, guess who’s fault it is... its Araki’s. Created a hilarious nazi character, nah its the fanbases fault for roleplaying such a funny character. Pedophilia and rape represented in Jojo and not treated seriously, nah its the fandoms fault for romanticizing it. Homophobia as character traits and degradation of women in Jojo, pfft nah f a n d o m s f a u l t for painting such “false” representations of the characters. Ah, but yall wont drop Jojo cuz that kid your trying to control media for wont drop it either. It is not your responsibility to create a childproof community when the show already has heavy themes. Its their caretakers/parents or the childs own responsibility.

I despise the argument “well Jojo is a 17+ only show so no kids allowed!” you might be right, but has that really ever stopped kids from doing anything?? It does the opposite, it creates a sense of overwhelming curiosity which leads to venturing unkown territory which they may or may not end up enjoying. The problem lies wether young teens are mature enough to watch it or not and judging by this whole fiasco, alot of the people, teens and adults, involved are not.

YOU ARE NOT JUDGE JURY AND EXECUTIONER AND YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO POLICE A MEDIA YOU DO NOT OWN OR TAKE RESPONSIBILITY INTO DOING IT FOR SOMEONE ELSE

I will give you this guys this, theres a few artist and creators that do belong there, very few as far as I could see and read into and some are missing since they are mostly on twitter instead of tumblr. But hey, I managed to find like 12 accounts that I probably wouldn’t like seeing the content of, and I found a lot of good accounts too. A hell of a lot more.

I know Im harsh and a total loser but y’all really gotta do some damage control and think ahead. Merely ignoring the fact that your movement cause a floodwave of hatred, deaththreats and suicide baiting is disgusting, adress it properly, dont condone it. Cuz Im yall wouldnt like 200+ messages of “Kill yourself you of lowlife degenerate. I dont like your the disgusting trash you like so I hope you rot in hell for the rest of your life” It isnt fun, a lot of people have received these, some are even worse and a lot dont even deserve it.

Run the list correctly, its a good idea, it could’ve been handled way better than this and you guys know it. This would’ve been great for 14 year old me not stumbling onto a lot of problematic ships when I first looked up Jojo and it can help many children in the community in the future, but you are ruiling out a majority of the fanbase with such vague and pointless rules as regular shipping and creative freedom. You are demonizing people who like basic shipping and different character desings, and that’ll scare them because they dont want tobe hated for something they like. Because a few biased opinions decided to rule out that what the kids liked is morally wrong and irredeemable. Cuz thats all I can see on the list with the exception of maybe a 12 people on the list. Thats all the rest of the JJBA community sees.