#i feel like this is mostly me responding to seeing a lot of criticisms of connie as ''too perfect'' in future

[calypsolemon]

I feel like a lot of the fandom assumes Connie during future is studying to an unhealthy extent and is making 0 time for herself but I feel like that's not the case? She literally introduces Steven to 3 new friends in Bismuth Casual, she seems to have free time for fun activities and hanging out. It's just... Steven who she doesn't always have time for, and I'm willing to bet it has just as much to do with her schooling than it does his own crazy busy schedule.

As usual, I think the perspective that Connie is always busy is mostly an effect of the show being told through Steven's perspective. She's always busy in the few moments that Steven has spare time. The thought of her moving far away for school, hanging out with people he doesn't know, moving on from the stressful things they had to do as kids... thats scary for Steven. But I think thats why Connie is more grounded than Steven in future, she's allowing herself to grow past gem stuff, make more friends than she ever had when she was younger, see the world for her own purposes rather than to do missions or save the world. Steven feels like he can't do all that, so he's imagining her as drifting away from him, with school as the culprit.

[ms-demeanor]

i really liked OJST in the mid-2010s but i didn’t stop reading cause of the cuck comic - wasn’t there also a comic erika moen wrote about (functionally) harassing lesbians with her now-husband?

In the mid 2010s closet-keys criticized one of Erika Moen's early diary comics and described Erika Moen as "Reassuring a cishet partner that it’s totally okay to use hate speech towards wlw at Pride" and condoning the harassment and fetishization of lesbians because of a 2007 comic that she had made as part of a webcomic she had written about gender and her interactions with her queerness.

The hate speech in question is the partner asking "are you sure you want to hold my hand with all these dykes around?" while they are pretty clearly at a Dyke Day event during pride, and the reassurance that 'it's totally okay to use hate speech toward wlw' is Erika responding "sweetie, I'm proud to be with you."

The comic is still up with a disclaimer that it was written at a different time, and I know that's probably not going to fly with a lot of people but if you were a bi woman in the early to mid 2000s it was pretty common to use statements like "lol yeah i'm into women my boyfriend is fine with it as long as I take pictures" to diffuse the biphobia from straight people AND to say shit like "I'm not a party bi, I actually love pussy, thanks" to diffuse the biphobia from queer people. (if you were a bi guy in the early to mid 2000s i'm sorry and I'm sorry now because we got LUG but that mostly went away and you *still* have to deal with the "gay in waiting" bullshit).

That comic ends with Erika and her partner looking at a woman and saying "I'd totally do her" while the woman thinks "pigs" and if you think that means that they literally sat on the street and vocally commented about lesbians passing by them or that they condone harassing lesbians (in, I cannot stress this enough, a diary comic written by someone in their early twenties who is realizing they are occasionally interested in some men some of the time after identifying as a lesbian their whole life), then I'm gonna go ahead and recommend signing up for some variety or other of literary analysis class. Do we think that Erika is seriously implying that she is going to make her boyfriend gay if she fucks him in this comic from a year later?

If this comic bothers you and you see it as a straight-passing couple giving the go-ahead to harass lesbians, you do you, I'm not saying you have to read the comic or enjoy Erika Moen.

I am saying it's a bit of a stretch, though, and certainly the least charitable explanation possible, and that we should probably give people some space to say awkward things about their sexuality and to make missteps when discussing it in their early twenties and not call them lesbophobic fifteen years after the fact for a college comic.

Moen also gets called transphobic because she has described trans men as adorable/cute in a way that could be read as patronizing in one comic and because she made a comic about wearing a packer for fun and for sexual gratification with her cis male partner as a cis woman.

Appropriately, all of these things feel very "late twenty teens tumblr callout post."

If it bugs you, you don't have to read the comics but I've talked about Moen before and I've gotten the anons in my inbox calling me lesbophobic for recommending her comic when in 2007 she made a comic about catcalling lesbians and condoning street harassment.

Which is frustrating because Erika Moen writes a comic about sex toys that has incredible body and gender diversity and is interested in making sure that people of all sexualities are having safe, enjoyable sex and talking openly about it. This is Rebecca Sugar condones war crimes level discourse over a creator who makes a genuinely good comic and gets dismissed as cringe by people who hate open discussions of sex and gets dismissed as a bigot (in ways that I think are incredibly unfair given the vast majority of her work) among people who *claim* to love open discussions of sex but who *actually* love witch hunts.

[didyougaming]

Hi, gamers. I know the results of the Sandwich Poll have been gnawing at you. So many people wondering whether they answered correctly, which as a reminder is a very important factor in determining which afterlife you end up in when you die. Please understand that I needed a lot of time to internally process these poll results and also that I've been kinda busy/tired. But the people need to know, so here we go.

In total, we received 372 responses. I also spent a lot of my weekend annoying anyone who would listen to me in person about these questions, but I didn't write those answers down.

Question 1 was fairly non-controversial, as it should be. It is worth noting that 3.2% of respondents chose to write-in an answer, and most of these write-in answers were what scientists would call "bad" and "not really useful." So you can assume a 3.2% margin of error on everything in this survey. That's how statistics works.

Question 2 is where we see a real divide. Most respondents consider a sandwich cut into two separate but equal pieces to be one sandwich. This is a real shame, because it's the wrong answer. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Question 3 considers whether one piece of bread cut in half and used for sandwich-making results in a sandwich, and surprisingly the majority of respondents do consider this to be one sandwich. This is really interesting, because despite ending up with functionally and aesthetically the same result as one of the pieces of the sandwich from question 2, a significant number of respondents believe the results to be inherently different. I wish there was a way to better track how much overlap there was for those two seemingly contradictory answers, but the big Sheets page Google Docs is daunting and I don't feel like figuring out how to parse that data, so we just need to accept that we'll never have that exact number. That's how statistics works.

Question 4 mostly just cements the findings of the previous two questions. I do want to point out the one person who answered "who the fuck does this". Sandwich shops do this. Go to a sandwich shop for once in your life and really watch them do their work. Open your eyes.

Question 5 did not get me a lot of useful data, as it turns out having a question that only allowed for write-in answers was a bad idea. However, there are more or less two camps for people who really took these questions seriously and gave it their all. The first school of thought suggests that intent is the most important factor, and if you deem what you've made to be a sandwich, it's a sandwich. While I appreciate the critical thinking on display here, I believe in the other school of thought, which is that when you put ingredients between two breads that's a sandwich, baby. There is a sub-school of thought here that requires those two pieces to be whole pieces, but that's wrong.

One question that I should have included in the survey I think proves my point. If you order a sandwich platter from a deli and they use a single really long piece of bread (think like a several foot long hero) into multiple sections, you would say that you have sandwiches, plural. If you wanted to grab one, you wouldn't say "I'm going to grab a 64th of a sandwich" because you would sound deranged. Despite being parts of a larger whole, they are still ingredients between pieces of bread, and thus fit the definition of "sandwich."

Anyway, thank you for coming on this non-gaming detour with me. It was extremely important that I prove a friend wrong on this topic, and even though I don't think I did that and I think he's choosing to double down on his incorrect opinions, I'm still choosing to spin this as a personal and moral victory. New actual DidYouGamings will come out as soon as I discover any new facts about video games (right now there's only a couple hundred facts about video games at all and I've basically covered all of them.)

[olderthannetfic]

Nearly 75% of fic on AO3 has less than 5 reader comments. Can we please acknowledge that lack of engagement in a positive fashion is the norm in fandom and that writers are expected to work for nothing in return yet readers are allowed to be entitled?

The source of my number

https://www.tumblr.com/transholmes/738776926733336576/and-even-those-numbers-on-the-lower-end-are

--

Hahahahaha.

Oh, anon.

Okay, first of all, I just posted a bunch of graphs showing exactly this, so not only am I well aware of it, but you also clearly don't read my tumblr much and are just here because some friend of yours is upset that I responded negatively to them about their dumb bookmarking opinions.

Second and more importantly...

No, no one is expected to do anything.

That's crazypants influencer talk where you think your hobbies are jobs that you have no choice about doing.

I suppose I do expect fans to have something at least marginally worthwhile to say—or else I'll block them for being whiny little bitches who make my day dumber as well as less amusing.

But mostly, what I expect is that people will do hobbies because they are fun. If I ever decide that writing fic is too boring, I will stop.

I write because it's fun.

I write original work for money too, and if you want to read that, you're going to have to pay Amazon your cold, hard cash. But I still do it because I enjoy the actual act of writing... at least a lot of the time.

What I see in the bookmark boo-hooing is a bunch of people who haven't noticed the last eighty thousand rounds of this same dumb wank and who not only expect to get the last word but expect that somehow I'm going to signal boost it on my tumblr as that... a tumblr known for contentious debates and nobody ever getting the last word till everyone's exhausted and never wants to hear about paper plates or beans again.

I also see that some of the thinnest-skinned people have fic patreons.

Now, I chose not to bring this up before because it sounds a bit below the belt in that "And thus you're morally impure and thus I can ignore your argument" way... But it's a consistent pattern in these conversations over time, and I do think it's relevant. The biggest sensitive babies are always the ones most afraid of bad reviews but also low engagement, and I think it's because they're caught in some half-pro, half-not limbo where they want the best of both worlds but keep getting the worst of both.

If you behave like a professional who is owed compensation, you can expect a more professional style of response to your work.

And what does the pro world look like? Radio silence. The occasional harsh review. Nobody caring why you wanted to write X or why you couldn't finish Y on time.

If you're here to socialize, you should look for a beta or a couple of good friends who like your blorbos and your style of fic, and then you can squee together about what you've written. It may not come in the form of visible AO3 comments. It may be in private chat.

In some cases, it may just be friends you can talk to about your writing but who aren't actually going to read it. I have plenty of friends who read different things than what I write.

That's what socializing and hobbies look like, dude.

It's fine to point out that many writers do get discouraged by low comment counts and then stop, so if I, as a reader in a fandom, want more, it behooves me to befriend writers and make them feel good.

But at the same time, writers get discouraged or move on to the next fandom all the time for all kinds of reasons. If the critical mass and the zeitgeist aren't there, then they aren't.

Do your hobbies for reasons internal to you.

If the main point is external validation, get into BDSM and find someone excited to indulge your praise kink. It will work a lot better than chasing fame via art.

[tang0soda]

I haven't seen a lot of discussion about RSD when it comes to ADHD discussions, so I thought I would do the honors since it's been affecting me for many years and I'd like people to know more about it!

I have had a diagnosis for ADHD but was never told- instead learning I had autism through therapy but still having some behaviors that I could never explain that just Happened.

I learned I had ADHD over the summer, and with that, severe rejection sensitive dysphoria.

before reading, please keep in mind that this is mostly talking from personal experience and some skimmed research! not experiencing RSD doesn't mean you do/don't have ADHD, and it may not appear like how it appeared for me. I don't only have autism + adhd either, so those may also contribute to any differences! ^^

RSD is the immense emotional pain after being criticized, rejected, or even teased (ignore my misspell in the panel). This rejection can be real or perceived, and we react like this because it hurts.

The pain can manifest as aggression, bringing on symptoms of depression (thoughts of s/h, isolation, demotivation, etc) and anxiety/panic attacks.

it can cause physical aliments like the above. For me, it causes my heartrate to skyrocket, heart palpitations, the feeling of being in a crisis, and extreme shaking to occur along with stomach pain.

(In fact, right now I'm going through it because making a post talking about this, despite having & dealing with it, makes me scared of other's opinions on it.)

RSD can also take the form of avoiding situations, people, or conversations where rejection or criticism is very possible.

Like other types of dysphoria, it is out of our control and hard to manage. It can last from days to weeks to months, all depending on both the trigger* and the individual.

I had a RSD episode that was on-and-off for a little over a year or two; getting more tame and bearable as it slowly drifted and stopped haunting my mind with the incident.

Compared to the other times my RSD was set off, this moment was a rather big moment in my life and ended up permanently changing me moving forward - which can be the reason why it lasted so long.

Despite how unbearable it can get, there are some ways to cope with it & lessen the effect it has.

Communicate - If you need time to process something that's told to you, you should say so (as difficult as it is). Tell the person(s) involved about your RSD, how you need time to digest information like this and take some time to relax. Trying to respond to the information while going through the head of the dysphoria will be very rough and might not be what you truly want to say.

Distract - This is really useful for me personally! Do something that grabs your attention or occupies your mind. One of RSD's main symptoms is rumination, thinking of something over and over again. I usually listen to music, draw, or play a game that won't frustrate me - like minecraft! (i'd say rain world but some of you would call me a maniac /lhj)

Perspective - This may require some communication, but it can really help and connect with others. See what the involved people thought / perceived, explain, talk. This doesn't always have the chance to end in rainbows and rekindling but at least you understand. Sometimes simply hearing the person explain their own side is enough to ease my RSD, being able to have someone explain themselves to me so i can understand them better.

I also wanna point out the "don't take it personally" thing that people try to use to deal with it isn't something i agree with since we're going to take it personally at first regardless. Later on, not really, but you're trying to cope with the symptoms... telling someone (or yourself) that they're too sensitive & over-reacting is the worse thing you could do.

With time, you can even begin to build up your 'armor' and be able to sustain yourself in situations you might get hurt in. Of course, some things may be able to sneak past and hurt you more than you expect, but at the end of the day, you're trying your best to go about it the best you can while taking so many blows. you're doing great.

OK i dont have a lot more to add so if anyone else would like to talk about their experiences, please feel free! Character showcased here was my beloved fursona Shiki! i'm just a little neurodivergent + black artist from new york :]

hope you enjoyed it! sorry for the long post </3

[inchidentally]

replying to asks abt the Drama today so pls skip if you're fully over that salfgjlagf (and bl 'tricky asks' to not see me respond to stuff like this - but I always put under a cut as well!)

oh my god this is a whole epic jfc and I'm p sure I repeat myself a lot I'm sorry <3

and for anyone who sees the walls of text below and is like pls tl;dr it for me bitch: today is one of multiple examples proving that Lando and Oscar are exceptionally able to maintain perspective and genuine consideration of each other given their situations and their ages. and that while they, like all teammates, will have ups and downs that they are FAR from the kinds of teammates to ever let the bad times linger or fester. I'm not going to be participating in flipping out or overreacting to it when it does inevitably happen but that it hasn’t even happened today! so I just don’t see a point in projecting the rare examples of melodramatic teammates onto Lando and Oscar as teammates. esp today when they both could quite easily have sniped at each other a bit even indirectly and yet they didn't! Lando at the team? absolutely! but like for anyone feeling sad or upset in terms of the landoscar of it all, I'm genuinely baffled ?? bc I'm personally out here impressed yet again at how well they've handled this ?? so yea <3

just to say, if you're someone who truly loves the Epic Highs and Lows of Formula One then good on you and continue having fun! some people live for The Drama and obv I'm not addressing or criticizing that at all!

but since I'm out here being regularly openly insane about landoscar and I've gotten these asks and seen people feeling upset, I def feel like it’s fair that I bring reality and reason into my posts as well being stupid akfgsalfg

so I've grown up with F1 passively in the background of my life (as in on the main TV in my house) and I'm still mostly a fake, but I've picked up some things over the years and one of them is that the average set of teammates aren't the melodrama ones. most teammates who enjoy genuine competitive closeness on the track just tick each other off sometimes but mostly like each other and hang out a bit - overall the average dynamic ranges from mildly indifferent to good buddies. 

(brocedes and sebmark are outliers for a reason. and they did NOT just turn bad overnight. that toxic soup was brewing from the very start. but more about that later in this gigantic ass essay)

so once I realized last season that Lando and Oscar genuinely like each other and weren't gonna pop off over everything, my assumption has always been that they would have their tiffs and snipe to the press or avoid each other for periods but then get over it and go back to liking each other again - rinse and repeat! from a driver’s pov it's way more enjoyable and preferable to NOT be fighting w the guy you spend so much time and share a car with.

but !! that didn't happen and hasn't happened! with Lando and Oscar it very quickly went beyond just passively okay w each other - they've made active choices to show respect and fairness and consideration that for me has truly been exceptional.

and while I'm insane about them for narratives and rpf, the not insane part is how these two fit together so beautifully? like, Lando knows and says how his feelings and his brain can just take over sometimes and he struggles - that includes his feelings of anger and resentment. Oscar's primary trait is being calm and being able to be circumspect even under stress. Lando's actually said that he's learned from Oscar remaining calm. then you've got Oscar's 'hearteyes' and genuine admiration of Lando that shows up not in loud PR ways* but in quiet respect and standing back for Lando to shine and giving Lando his full dues. over time, Lando's come to 'hearteyes' right back bc of the respect and ngl genuine affection he feels for Oscar's fairness and respectfulness and his persistence in showing up and being happy for Lando no matter what. like, none of that requires embellishment and it's said by pretty much everyone including each other!

so to me, that means that when they do inevitably have 'moments' at the front of the pack together in future they'll ofc be grumpy w each other or resentful but it'll all be okay once they've cooled off. 

but !! that was not today !! my entire day of reblogging is just a nonstop bam bam bam of them looking out for each other in the face of this drama and taking care to not feed the media who have been dying for them to hate each other since day one. Oscar apologizing and if anything being less celebratory today than he was in Monaco for his second place. keeping the post race short and simple** and not going over the top celebrating after the team photo. Lando repeating in his post races that Oscar deserved the win and that he didn't want the issues with team orders to overshadow that and literally reaching out to Oscar to say 'we're okay' right out of the car <3

so yea in the years they are teammates they will definitely have their off days and probably that'll happen at certain points this season - but genuinely ! it should not be taken for granted how mature and considerate and kind they've remained w each other since basically Austria last year ! that counts for a hell of a lot in terms of not assuming they're "over" every time team strategy screws one or both of them, or that they will become different people and suddenly cultivate melodrama.

and sure, anything can happen etc etc but I don’t see a point in just aimlessly waiting for the absolute worst to happen unless you actively want them to hate each other which seems like a huge waste of time but to each their own ldgfjlagfljsfg

guys… things like "why didn't he spray Oscar with champagne first" and "they had a moment where they weren't smiling" or "the cool down room was awkward" "Oscar didn't thank Lando like Lando did in Miami" “Oscar hasn’t liked such and such on instagram” is not only pointless self-torturing it's also all pretty easy to debunk by someone like me who follows a lot of teams and drivers and sees a ton of different sides to these things every weekend:

- as for the comment likes, Oscar hasn't liked everyone's comments that he should have - I did a quick pass and the standouts are he still hasn’t liked the comment from opeightyone (his own brand company!), still hadn't liked the Australian GP comment last time I checked, or Kym Ilman, literally a fellow Aussie who he talks to at every single race and who left a heartfelt comment. we need to give this poor guy a break and not ignore how much he was laughing and smiling with Lando just bc he’s struggling with the alerts on his phone !! (and as always, we have absolutely no way of knowing anymore when we can say how much the driver is doing vs what their sm team is doing. I saw in a story the other day that Lily had stopped doing her usual emoji replies to his posts for a while (she started up again after quali this weekend) and clearly there's been no issues between them so it's safe to say Oscar's sm officially isn't the true measure of his current relationships!)

- Lando and Oscar were already joking and smiling together before the champagne! so why would Lando then get mad and show it by not spraying him first? (EDIT: as an anon pointed out, when Lando runs over to the McLaren team member Oscar is laughing and follows him! so the plan was to drown the poor guy all along lol.) Lando and Lewis have a special bond from long before Oscar and Lewis and McLaren have had a bond even longer. if I hadn't seen ppl be upset about this I wouldn't have thought twice about Lando running to Lewis after having spend the first half the podium chatting to Oscar!

and just a quick side note, Lando had NO problem showing how mad he was before Oscar came into the cool down room when he threw down that hat and got huffy with Lewis when all Lewis did was say how fast the McLaren is! but every time Lando interacted with Oscar, he made sure to keep it together and be happy for him bc as he strenuously made clear in his interviews, his upset was at the team's directions but he didn't want it overshadowing Oscar's well-earned win. so if anything, view Lando rushing over to Lewis as an apology for somewhat biting his head off over a compliment lfgjflgsalf

- the drivers are exhausted and their default mode after a race is to be not smiling, like not even Lando smiled the entire time following his win. add to today that Lando hasn't been happy with second place for a long time and Oscar isn't an effusive guy and it's weird to think they'd be laughing and smiling nonstop.

- cool down rooms are literally always awkward ?? the drivers hate that there are cameras and conversation is always stilted. it’s where they go to … y'know, cool down, not get hyped lol

- Lando thanked Oscar in Miami bc Oscar showed what the car could do w his overtakes, guys. it was VERY sweet but it wasn't like 'thank you for my life Oscar' or even 'thank you for my win'. but even apart from that, Lando has fully taken on the rightful 'I'm the more established F1 star and the face of McLaren and it's my job to let the new guy know when he's done well' even back before he and Oscar had much of a relationship. but… and I’m about to spin off on this topic now… Lando does very well with this sometimes yes, but remember that the majority of his own feeds are also solely focused on himself like Oscar's and like most driver's are! and that he and Oscar both forget to like McLaren's content most of the time!

but also like……….

please let us please remember Oscar has the same rights to putting himself first as every other driver !! he may be remarkably mature and respectful to Lando and McLaren and exceptionally able to get over being set aside or even screwed over, but he's not a worm!

as far as questioning if him not 'thanking' Lando somehow negates his literally non-stop hearteyes-so-blatant-that-casuals-comment-on-it that he has for Lando every single week... guys.. Lily. like I'm positive he'll make a special post or story with her soon but he only said a quick "hi" to Lily after Ted brought her up and then did a generic thank you to everyone LIKE ?? the guy isn't even effusive about his beloved long time gf !! his love language is not in words* !!

but I also feel the need to bring smth up here bc there is a definite lean happening in some quarters of fandom into fully expecting and taking for granted Oscar's patience and maturity and ability to be happy for Lando no matter how much he's hurting or upset for himself. and I've got to raise everyone who says that the fact that Oscar is allowed to be like every other driver including Lando! he is allowed to feel frustrated or not be a perfect saint! in the earlier part of last year, Lando openly said he was uncomfortable being 'the older guy' and he frequently left Oscar in the lurch not knowing where to go or ignored Oscar to talk to or about his previous teammates. when Oscar hadn't been told the correct time for that major meeting shown in DTS, Lando was not hiding feeling fairly smug after Oscar said "is Lando already here?" and in Australia this year, Lando fully forgot to have anything to do with Oscar in what was literally Oscar’s home town and home country race to the point ! that in the podium drivers conference when a reporter brought up if Oscar was bummed about missing out on a podium, Lando stiffly said that he guessed anyone would want a podium on their home race - but he was far from sympathetic!

now before anyone thinks this is me having a go at Lando, I am not. I'm literally reminding the people who are reading too much into Oscar not saying thank you specifically to Lando in what was a much shorter and less exuberant overall race win celebration and post race video than Lando’s win was: it is not a big deal !! it is not some huge thing that Lando would even notice and that Lando has frequently chosen to not include or show gratitude to Oscar at times when we expected him to and !! it's fine because it really is fine !! 

but when Oscar is seen to not cover every single base of gratitude and inclusion for Lando, for some fans it's A Problem or A Worry. and for some people, a broader thank you to the team and not specifically to Lando** is reason why Lando should despise Oscar forever and even consider leaving McLaren like the comments sections are insaaaane bro

these are two Normal Guys who are each living their Own Careers and while it's wonderful to enjoy the things that bond them and are special about them, they are still going to be Normal! and they will not view these tiny insignificant moments where they didn’t fully acknowledge the other with any magnitude at all! they are not expecting a level of devotion to each other that certain fans are! Oscar didn’t notice or care that Lando didn’t make anything special out of his home race and their pre-race fan stage was funny and sweet! Lando didn’t notice or even assume that Oscar should thank him specifically for team orders when Lando himself didn’t thank Oscar for team orders!

like I just cannot emphasize enough the importance of separating fun rpf narratives from reality. Lando tried to mess up Carlos’ parking job before the race as a joke to get back at him over the sign the day before - and then Carlos very firmly said that Lando absolutely should have given Oscar his place back and he even commented on one of Oscar’s posts despite not following him. this does not mean Carlos and Lando are beefing or that Carlos is being mean by going out of his way for Oscar! will I run with that single comment for carcar fodder absolutely - but that is fiction! nobody's mad at anybody!

and then there's the things that don't exist in Formula 1: "Oscar shouldn't have accepted the orders" "McLaren are out to get Lando" "Lando already gets too much hate"

- Oscar apologized for his pace and complications and he gave a very subdued little speech over the radio which was very big of him (and very wrong of McLaren to put him in that position) but if someone thinks any driver including Lando would even slightly imply "nah give the win to my teammate not me" then they’re categorically living on another plane of stan-ism that I can't comprehend. Lando literally said multiple times after this race how he has been the one to benefit from strategy working in his favor - both by McLaren and other teams. he's many many times made a cheeky face or made a joke when he's gotten away with something that fans of a rival driver or team were rightfully furious about. and if a person thinks it was mean when some ppl criticized the role that serendipity played in Miami then maybe that same person shouldn't start biting chunks out of Oscar about the same thing idk !!

Lando repeatedly said how much Oscar has done for him and if his Oscar-hating stans choose to think he's wrong or lying then idk !! he's being mature and fair so like, live n learn from your idol !

and can I just echo everyone saying 'please stop comparing this to brocedes or sebmark' or honestly even charlos? I'm doing bullet lists apparently so I'll do another one lafgljsafgsa

- brocedes is entirely due to their complicated and abnormally intimate lifelong history together leading up to F1. they were already Not Normal Friends and that made for the tinderbox that was their F1 careers together. literally they were destined to have to rupture that level of intimacy if they weren't going to just like get married to each other. they always needed to turn that relationship into something milder and less intense and it would always have exploded no matter what adult lives they had. F1 just made the explosion more violent and public. there’s truly no comparing them with anyone else.

- Oscar bears no resemblance to Mark and Lando bears no resemblance to Seb. Seb as he was in his heyday was... not shy or bashful about being a madman. sebmark never once looked like landoscar and it wasn't this huge revelation that that relationship would end up where it did !!

- Charles and Carlos have a negligible career/experience gap compared to Lando and Oscar and their temperaments are as much primed for friction as Lando and Oscar's are complimentary to each other. not to like 'they're so continental!' charlos but like, their already passionate natures got thrown into a rolling boil of Italian heritage racing and it's why the whole love/hate being sides of the same coin thing always happens with them. their families are even houses alike in dignity etc etc. it's Pure Drama and Intensity and always has been, both good and bad. they’re as terrible at using PR to smooth things over as landoscar are at not even bothering with PR. when Charles and Carlos are good together they’re passionately all over each other and when they’re mad at each other it’s messy and all over the press like a warring celebrity couple. Lando and Oscar are still delicately pawing at their relationship to know what it is and they still shyly touch as if seeking permission. Lando and Oscar are so not PR friendly that even Netflix gave up on them as a narrative entirely. Charles and Carlos are Shakespeare. Lando and Oscar are Jane Austen. Ferrari is the Capulet/Montague pride before the fall. McLaren is Mrs. Bennett trying to social climb using her daughters as bait.

as someone who follows blogs for multiple diff teams and drivers, trust me I see a lot of "my opinion of him is gone forever after this!!!" about something their own fave driver did even just a few races ago and absolutely will do again. same with "the team is destroying him and favoring his teammate!" like I straight up will see that said by each teammate's fanbase of the same team about the same race. this happens at different times throughout the season in every single team I follow - it even happened w Williams of all teams (tho so far that's just the once).

I'm a fake so obv I'm not going to weigh in myself but my cousins and their friends who watch F1 on the app at my house - and who aren't represented ethnically by any driver or team so they don't have bias - always have a much more calm and nuanced take. they assume every driver is out for themselves and by that very fact alone, teams have to take sides when the gap closes. and !! that millionaires doing an elite sport aren't experiencing mental distress over this sport the way common people experience distress over real life !! they go and bury their "woes" in extravagant luxury and an entire army of hugely biased family, supporters and fanbases all of whom think said driver deserves everything.

and that it takes truly heinous betrayal or outright evil to make these guys hate each other with any serious level of depth bc they all know they're The Selfish Asshole just as easily as the other guy. 

so I personally trust their takes on things and it's probably why I've always assumed Lando and Oscar would be Normal and have their little tiffs like everyone else does. bc it's rule one of making it to this level of the sport that you have to think selfishly. straight up I'm astounded at how quickly they've both been able to shake that 'visors down' mentality that Andrea referenced in the post race video and see the bigger picture and not be The Asshole to each other. 

and overall I don’t mind my dash being a warzone of wild accusations immediately after a race bc everyone usually calms down.

but there are certain things I just do not want on my dash and it's actually not related to what driver a person hates or not....

because while it's silly to see any of these privileged little princes as A Victim and Would Never Do That To Their Teammate (which would honestly get you laughed at by said driver) it's pretty common biased fan behavior. even tho Lando literally kept reminding people that Oscar's swallowed his own pride over things for Lando's benefit many times and that he (Lando) has been on the receiving end of podiums that came from strategies working in his favor (McLaren’s and that of other teams).

and like the idea that Oscar is now some heinous human being bc he's behaving like every other driver including Lando by Lando's own admission is hysterical. the idea that F1 teams are ever in any way benevolent kindly forces or that F1 drivers have anything akin to 'selflessness' over race wins is hysterical.

but where I draw a line is stanning for men in this sport so hard to the point of insane amounts of agonized doomposting and biased venomous rage. sorry but most of us don't want our precious time wasted agonizing over which self-confessed selfish millionaire in a sport founded on and maintained by pure elitism is feeling So Bad and So Sad! that he runs off to be comforted by a beautiful woman/women and adoring family and coddling hangers-on and legions of worshiping, wholly biased fans and millions of dollars on gigantic yachts because the absurdly unnecessary sport he gets to do isn't "looking after him well enough" or "prioritizing his happiness" !!!!?????? 

like fuck I'm a callous bitch ig but I'm not feeling an ounce of genuine upset whenever one of these men experiences a level of "my sport makes me sad". "oh but it's all they've known !! it's all relative !! money and privilege don’t equal happiness and privileged men suffer too !!" oh stfu no it doesn't and no they're not like stockholm syndrom victims and if they're so unhappy then they can put on their big boy boots and take their money and go fucking do something else holy SHITTTTT 

am I not here for allowing any portion of my human empathy to go to a fuuucCKING F1 driver jeeeeeeesusss. all of these men fully have the potential to get metoo’d or exposed about smth bc they're all capable of doing awful things by the time they're in F2 -male pro athletes are NOT objectively safe spaces to hang human morality or to assign automatic grace and good intent - let alone bleed pain or feel sadness for their race results or issues with their teams.

there is no acceptable moral relativity for me and these men and this sport are only of interest to me as a hyperfixation that gives me enjoyment in the form of narratives and a very specific, surface degree of enjoyment.

it’s fine if Lando or Oscar feel their feelings of frustration or anger etc but no way in hell am I going to feel remotely sad for them ??? they’re fine ?? there are genuinely sad things in my life and in the world and millionaires wanting trophies and points isn’t among them !! I’m not entwining my day-to-day happiness in any way with what they get up to and I’ll take what I can enjoy from them and ignore everything else.

and to wrap up this epic which I’m only indulging in bc I do feel like my blog sometimes seems like I’m pushing my own silly narratives on others and genuinely I’m not intending to - most of the reason I actually got drawn to landoscar and wanted to engage in fandom about them is precisely because their real life non-rpf dynamic is so unusually mature and considerate and not toxic or like, at all even overtly masculine. yea I originally got drawn into f1blr for the usual bromance rpf types like carland0 and dand0 etc but I didn’t rly care enough to engage in any way. 

but I think this is why I know that the ppl wanting Lando and Oscar to become this insane toxic mess are going to keep raging with disappointment - kind of like how I knew Lando and Max would be perfect again after just a few days while so many ppl hoped it was the start of some battle royale to last years that would end their close friendship. and why I knew Logan and Alex would end up with a genuine, heartfelt friendship when so many ppl assumed Alex would see Logan as one foot out the door and just wait to bond with a more worthy teammate. now we’ve got Alex saying how he and Lily casually talk about Logan for no reason at all and their friendship surviving Alex being given Logan’s car <3

I genuinely don’t bullshit myself into enjoying dynamics unless they feel real - so whatever friction I ever sense between Lando and Oscar as a result of them pushing each other to be the best they can be and helping to bring McLaren from the back of the field to WCC contender, isn’t at odds with them being gentle and unusually private and earnestly aware of each other. bromances were always Lando’s PR insurance with his other two teammates - a nice bandaid to cover moments where cracks showed or Lando didn’t hide his emotions enough. it’s something a lot of teammates use for the same purpose. but Lando and Oscar deciding to forgo that and have their little privacy door to shut out everyone else but each other from their drivers rooms, and how they will be doing interviews and then get distracted talking to each other over things that only interest them, and traveling and hanging out together without giving McLaren PR any material to use… like that’s a lovely, tender little unpretentious narrative to enjoy. watching them tiptoe so cautiously around an almighty cockup on McLaren’s pitwall side and Lando trying to pull himself up out of murky defeat for Oscar and Oscar deciding to celebrate so modestly because what a mess that ending was for them both. 

like I just don’t see a need for trying to invent ways to be unhappy or miserable or fabricate a doomed anything when they’re both still so sweet <3 <3 (and honestly it’s the same old tune of McLaren’s strategy needing a swift smack around the head)

tysm babe and I hope this one helped as well <3<3

[ponett]

I have now finally seen the Mario movie. It was Pretty Good. Here are my wordy thoughts on it. (I am going to spoil the entire movie. Duh.)

In many ways, the Mario movie does what I wish the first Sonic movie had done. They just took the characters and the premise and the world from the games, and made it a straightforward animated adventure movie. It's bright and colorful and remixes things JUST enough to include fun elements from multiple games, and it doesn't make Mario get adopted by James Marsden or whatever. It even has the music!

That's all you really need, right? Right...?

I'll get this out of the way up front. Chris Pratt was fine. He's fine

If anything, it really feels like they did the movie a disservice by letting us hear so little of the Mario voice in the previews. It took one scene for Pratt to disappear into the role for me. It was totally fine. If anything, I found Charlie Day's normal voice coming out of Luigi WAY more distracting, even if I did like him in the role.

Everyone else was pretty good, for the most part. Jack Black was obviously very good as Bowser, but I'm biased. Seth Rogen does the Seth Rogen laughs as Donkey Kong, but I thought DK was fun, too. (I liked his little rivalry with Mario where he was just constantly giving him shit.) The only casting choice I truly hated was Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong. I hated every line that came out of his mouth. He sounds atrocious. Just the worst. I swear to fucking god if they do a DKC movie and we have to hear him for 90 minutes

I did think Peach was lacking, but that was on the script, not Anya Taylor-Joy's performance. It's cool to see Peach fight, but it's one of those all too common instances where the writers put so much effort into making the main girl kick ass and be an effortlessly confident girlboss that they forgot to give her an actual personality. Not that I'd point to Super Princess Peach and its mood swing superpowers as positive representation or anything, but there's a happy middle ground, surely. Shrek was 22 years ago, just having the princess do flying kung fu kicks isn't enough.

Okay. With the voices out of the way, let's talk about the big picture:

It's way better than the words "Illumination Mario movie" implied, and I mostly enjoyed my time with it. The spirit of Mario is there 100%. But I'd also describe it as "ruthlessly efficient."

This was perhaps the main complaint critics had, and they were absolutely right. People have responded to these totally average reviews with "Well, what did you expect? Shakespeare?! It's MARIO!!" Like, yes, I would prefer it if the movie I paid to see had writing that was good instead of bad. What a shocker. My issue isn't that it's not "high-brow" enough. The problem is that it feels mercenary. It feels like an editor went through and deleted almost every line of dialogue that isn't some form of exposition, at the expense of the pacing. Any scene that's not a montage or some sort of action is kept as short as they could make it, with barely any room for embellishment, character interaction, or anything other than the bare minimum word count to hit all the typical Save the Cat Hollywood screenwriting 101 story beats to the letter. There aren't even as many jokes as you might think (and the ones that are there are extremely hit or miss, including a lot of the slapstick with Mario himself).

Mario and Peach's little arc together in the front half of the film is probably the worst example of this pacing. Even having read reviews that complained about how fast Peach goes from meeting Mario (by her admission the first other human she's ever met) to deciding to train him as the new savior of the Mushroom Kingdom, I was SHOCKED at how fast it was. They don't even lampshade it.

Peach takes Mario straight into the big training sequence where he learns how to use mushrooms and jump over platforming obstacles. Peach is apparently already a hypercompetent platforming pro and a great fighter, so there's no clear reason why she's taking the time to train this random guy to be half as good as her when the world is in danger. Then they set off on their adventure, Toad joins them, and we get a VERY brief travel montage. It's about thirty seconds total - just long enough to give Peach a line about how she wants to protect this beautiful world of hers to try and give her some stakes. We get the genre-mandated nighttime campfire heart to heart, which is exactly long enough to have Mario say he misses Luigi and to have Peach give the two sentence summary of her origin story and not a second longer. Then they reach the Kongs, and their big journey is complete. (They barely interact for the rest of the movie.) So much of the movie is like this - always ready to get on to the next scene as soon as a new one starts.

I'm not criticizing the script because I expect The Super Mario Bros. Movie to be a prestige drama - although there are certainly halfhearted attempts at a dramatic arc. The stuff with Mario's family was a fun enough idea, but again, ruthless efficiency. We get one quick scene with them at the start to give Mario some pathos, because I guess Save the Cat said he's gotta have some pathos. And then Mario gets his dad's approval amidst the action of the final battle in Brooklyn to resolve his arc, just so the movie can end as quickly as possible once Bowser is defeated. (Despite now having the approval of their family and their community back in Brooklyn, Mario and Luigi move to the Mushroom Kingdom off-screen without a single word dedicated to this decision, because that's where they live in the games.)

Look. I am not comparing it to The Godfather. Don't give me that shit. I am not asking for an extra half hour to explore Mario and Luigi's childhood trauma. I am not asking for the complex inner workings of the Mushroom Kingdom monarchy. I know this is gonna be a basic Hero's Journey adventure for kids. It just feels like it's turning down so many opportunities to have a little fun with the characters, to let them interact and play off of each other, to let there be some adventure on this adventure. This is the first time we've gotten to see these characters interact with fully voiced dialogue in a very, very long time! "Yeah, it's not High Art, but it's FUN!" Stories are fun! Character interactions are fun! The script could be having so much more fun!! It is adamantly against making the Story parts of this story-driven movie any more Fun than they functionally need to be!!!

Mario, Peach, and Toad's journey to find the Kongs is shorter than the training montage that precedes it. After the opening, Bowser mostly just sits in his castle and waits for the third act to start. Luigi's there, too, but he only gets one scene with Bowser and then the movie mostly forgets he exists until the climax. He doesn't even get to try and sneak out of Bowser's castle and get up to hijinx. He's just there to be a motivation for Mario, so he sits in a cage for half the movie. It's the bare outline of a script with action scenes added in.

Aside from the fact that it's Jack Black singing as Bowser, I feel like this overly-efficient script might be part of the reason why the "Peaches" scene stands out so much. It's a moment that didn't strictly need to be there to keep the plot moving or to provide an action setpiece. It's not even a reference to another Mario thing. It's just a fun and memorable little character moment that's there for its own sake. That's what the movie needed more of. To stop and smell the roses more often. To play in the space.

To be clear, this isn't a unique problem with this movie. Critics have been noting for years that second acts are disappearing from big Hollywood movies in favor of the Act I plot setup and the Act III action, even though Act II is supposed to be where you get to explore your actual premise. And lots of animated movies give me this exact same vibe of being too "screenwriterly," or feeling like they had an executive breathing down their necks and demanding changes based on focus testing. But these common issues are why I come away mostly feeling like the movie is on the better end of "average," rather than totally blowing my mind. You have seen this movie many times before, just not with Mario in it.

And, of course, there's the music. The score by Brian Tyler based on various classic Mario and Donkey Kong tunes (frustratingly all attributed to Koji Kondo) is absolutely beautiful, but it's unfortunately frequently overshadowed by the licensed music. Everyone already complained about things like the use of Take On Me in place of a lovingly arranged DKC medley, but it feels illustrative of the tug of war the movie is caught in the middle of, between wanting to be a lavishly faithful Mario movie and wanting to be a generic tentpole animated adventure movie. Every single licensed song used is the most obvious, overused song they could have picked for the scene. It reeks of cynical executive meddling and it took me out of the movie every time.

But there really was a lot of care and love put into this movie - more than probably any other video game movie ever made, not that that's a high bar. I don't want to underplay that too much amidst all my complaints spurred by the absolutely insane response to the reviews.

Aside from the countless background references that people will be picking apart for years, touches like the Captain Toad tune playing in the background of Toad's introduction or the Mario Kart 8 menu music playing in the kart garage really help bring it to another level of authenticity. I also enjoyed seeing some more obscure Mario enemies that felt like they were picked more for being fun to animate than for being nostalgic and marketable. No matter how many times I sarcastically pointed to the screen and deadpanned "reference. reference." I am not immune to noticing these things and smiling. I am not immune to the DK Rap. These alone don't make the movie good, but it's nice to have a video game movie that feels like it was made by people who like video games.

Most importantly, the animation is great throughout. It's leaps and bounds ahead of other Illumination work, and it's the best the Mario cast has ever looked. They even made Donkey Kong handsome, somehow. They're all so squishy and expressive, and they move so fluidly - especially in the action scenes. I particularly liked the more kinetic ones like the aerial Banzai Bill chase and the Mario Kart sequence. Truly, the Mad Max-inspired car battle on Rainbow Road where Mario literally does the speedrun shortcut is this movie firing on all cylinders.

Other, more hand-to-hand fights nail the Popeye-esque vibe Mario should be going for. He's an underdog who gets the shit kicked out of him by bigger, stronger opponents until he gets his signature powerup and turns the tables on them. My favorite animation of all probably came from the use of Cat Mario to turn the tide in the DK fight. They had so much fun making Mario move like a cat. Again, it feels like a choice made because it'd be fun to animate rather than just a nostalgia move.

It's that animation and that attention to detail that carry the film, really. They elevate it from mediocrity into being a fun watch for a fan like me, albeit one I couldn't help but pick apart with Anthony as we watched it at home. I'm glad I saw it, but there's a lot of room to improve with the inevitable sequel. I hope they do. I can't deny that I had fun with the movie, but I hope next time that fun is partially because of the script instead of in spite of it.

Stray thoughts:

Overall, I would say I enjoyed the movie a lot more than Sonic 1, but probably not as much as Sonic 2. Not that these movies need to be pitted against each other.

I hated the Luma. I hated how hilarious they clearly thought the Luma was. They have the fucking Luma break the fourth wall to end the movie and start the credits. This is going to be a deep cut for fans of bad animated films, but the whole time I was just thinking of the little fish from Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss who's just the director's kid saying random nonsense. You know I'm right

I rolled my eyes at the "our princess is in another castle" joke and several other jokes that would have been dated in a gamer webcomic 20 years ago but I guess they had to be there

How much of Brooklyn did Bowser's giant floating castle take out? We know 9/11 happened in this universe because the Freedom Tower is there, hasn't New York been through enough

I can't believe there's a Diskun easter egg

The dog is the most Illumination character design in the movie. It felt like it wandered on set from The Secret Life of Pets

Mario being a gamer and playing Kid Icarus of all things just made me remember this tweet:

Yes Anthony did get mad at me for being thirsty for Bowser

[writebackatya]

Do you think there should be justice for Alistair Boorswan?

#ReleaseTheBoorswanCut #ReleaseTheDeweyDuckCut

Oh Boorswan, I do legitimately feel bad for him but at the same time I find his situation hilarious. I loved him as a one-time character but he was someone who I would have loved to see return. Mainly because Edgar Wright (director of some of my favorite action comedies) was casted as him which for another layer of funny, was almost the director of Ant-Man but left the project since Disney didn’t want to make the movie he wanted to make. I always looked at this role and the whole episode as a giant middle finger to Disney for the way they treat their creative people

But back to Boorswan because I find him to be a fascinating character in his own right. Something that didn’t really occur to me till like my second or third time watching the episode is that Boorswan himself, is a Darkwing Duck fan and does have an understanding of the character

Mind you, my first watchthrough of the episode I had not watch a single episode of Darkwing Duck prior, it wasn’t till after I finished DuckTales 2017 I started to watch DT87 and DWD. (So if anyone tells you that people only like the Darkwing Duck episodes cause of nostalgia, tell those dummies they are wrong! Both episodes are phenomenal and don’t rely on nostalgia to carry their episodes)

Anyway, Boorswan’s take on Darkwing Duck as a sorta anti-hero while a bit edgy (he’s definitely a riff on Christopher Nolan but I also love to think there’s a bit of Zack Snyder in him too, he’s so pretentious!) isn’t too far off. In the original show, Darkwing Duck isn’t a beloved superhero at all. He has his fans for sure, but he’s mostly seen as a nuisance by the average St. Canard citizen.

But of course Darkwing Duck means well for the most part. He can be very egotistical in pretty much every episode. He has a lot of flaws. And honestly I have an understanding where Boorswan was coming from with his take

Something I would love to see explore if he were to return would be his relationship with Drake Mallard. Clearly Drake was not a fan of Boorswan’s vision and Alistair obviously saw something in Drake to cast him as the titular character in his overbudget movie.

It just makes me wonder how often Drake spoke up about some of Boorswan’s creative decisions as well as how Alistair responded to his star’s criticisms. Creating any form of art with multiple people can be difficult, heads are gonna butt since everyone has their own creative vision

I think it would be funny if Alistair Boorswan does not recognize Drake Mallard when he’s Darkwing Duck in St. Canard because that Darkwing Duck is nothing like the one he imagined for his movie

Also I love to think Alistair Boorswan blames Dewey and solely Dewey for his project getting cancelled. Just because I think it’d be funny if there was yet another adult that has beef with a preteen duck. Honestly, I think Alistair should be a sorta anti-hero to reflect his art. He lives in his own world and has a creative vision he wants to share and will do whatever it takes to make it happen. He’s kinda like Dewey when you think about it.

But the short answer, yes I do think he deserves some sort of justice. In fact, I’m working on a fic that I really need to continue working on right now where basically no one except him (and a few others) wants the Darkwing Duck movie to be made so instead he reworks his script into a Gizmoduck Movie

Someday I will finish it. Someday.

[palms-upturned]

PSA

Hello friends, I’m sorry for being mostly offline for a little while, I’ve been struggling a bit. Please rest assured that I’m going to try to get everything running again ASAP, but here’s a short version of what’s going on.

At the moment, I’m unemployed due to my disability and trying to get a lot of things sorted out in the bursts of time when I feel well enough. I am fairly certain that my pain and fatigue is being caused by sciatic endometriosis that was made worse by a covid infection, but it’s going to take me a while to get diagnosed and (hopefully) treated. In the meantime, my pain flareups are unfortunately getting worse and more frequent. What this means is that unfortunately I have stretches of time where I have a hard time talking to people or even thinking straight. Some of the medicines I take for my pain also make me drowsy which makes things even harder on top of it all.

I’m going to continue promoting fundraisers, but I feel very bad that these periods of time are becoming longer and more frequent because every day of fundraising is critically important. So what I’d like to ask is whether any of my friends/mutuals here would be interested in helping me run @vetted-gaza-funds so that even when I’m not well, at least that blog can stay up to date. There are currently over 100 fundraisers posted there, and as more get added, the more time it takes me to update the master list, update urls for users who were forced to remake their blogs, and work through the inbox for new campaigns. Trying to push through on days when I don’t feel well has already resulted in some really stupid mistakes like accidentally deleting the original master list post, and I really don’t want to do something like that again.

One friend of mine has already volunteered to help, which I’m very thankful for, but if I could find maybe five more people, then that would mean one mod for every day of the week, which would hopefully mean that it wouldn’t be too large a commitment for anyone. The more the merrier, basically.

So to break things down, here’s what I would be doing:

Creating a discord server for the blog mods

Looking through the inbox each day for new campaigns to add

Cross referencing those campaigns on master lists/spreadsheets to see which ones are already verified and can be shared

Adding the campaign links, usernames, and other relevant information to a cryptpad document for people to plug into a post/add to the master list

Here’s what I would need help doing:

Making the actual posts on the blog (there is a template in the drafts that I use to make them)

Updating the fund amounts/progress in the master list, ideally every day

If comfortable, briefly answering direct messages to let people know when their campaigns have been added to the blog

Also, so far the blog has just been full of fundraisers for people who have contacted me directly, but if anyone helping with the blog has verified fundraisers that they themselves would like to add, of course that would be great as well!

If you’re interested in helping me out, please dm me or reply to this post! (I’d prefer not to talk via asks because when I answer asks privately I don’t have any record of our conversation and I can be forgetful 😅)

Thank you all 🙏 today I’m unfortunately still not feeling well so I may be slow to respond but I will try to answer messages and get everything set up asap!

[bengiyo]

I am curious for your perspective on the way the OF creators are interacting with fans and have even admitted to editing the show based on fan reactions. It strikes me as an unusual level of interaction and capitulation, though of course TV is a live medium that is nearly always responsive to reactions to some extent. My preference is for a lot less of this kind of thing, but I know you have experience with direct interaction with media creators and have found it enhances your experience sometimes. What do you make of how these dynamics are showing up in OF and the effect it’s having on the show?

TV and Critic Background

So, I am actually the worst person to talk to if you think the creators should be quiet about their work, because I really enjoy talking to directors, producers, actors, cinematographers, and especially editors about their work. I often go to film festivals just to talk to the creators about their processes.

I've also been in the TV space a really long time, and I am used to this kind of behavior. I don't think a lot of folks who are in BL are used to being in the process of TV itself, and I think a lot of people have let the Netflix binge model inform the way they view TV. TV is not like movies. When you get a movie, you are seeing the end product of filming, editing, test screenings, re-edits, etc. TV is usually only an episode or two ahead of the viewers.

It's extremely normal for a show to respond to feedback when characters test well. The 100 did this with Jasper. He was supposed to die in the pilot when that spear entered his chest, but he tested well with audiences so they revived him.

Fun Fact: This is why Kiseki: Dear to Me didn't just move their release schedule up when episode 8 was leaked early. They probably weren't finished assembling episode 9.

I followed Sense8 through its entire development process all the way from rumors and then J. Michael Stracynski's posts about it, to the things Lana and Lily said about it, to the commentary from the cast.

I have a special hatred for Rick Behrman over Star Trek.

I absolutely hate Russel T. Davies because of Cucumber.

I bailed on Supernatural because of the way the writers condescended to us at comicon after killing Kevin.

I know some fans are upset about the idea that scenes they wanted to see got cut, but I was there for Noah Galvin opening his fucking mouth to talk shit about other actors at ABC who were playing beloved gay characters and that subsequently getting The Real O'Neals canceled. The show had a very short second season and I feel forever salty about that.

What does this mean for Jojo and Ninew and Den?

I actually think Jojo, Den, and Ninew are fine. I don't think they usually poopoo on valid reads from what I've seen, and mostly they're having fun with the fans, too. I just don't think people are used to the creators being so honest about how feedback affects the editing process.

I think this is the first time we've had a big show in a while where the creator was fairly active on socials about the show. Aof and Au are usually pretty quiet when their shows are airing, and only give small tidbits while they show is airing. Jojo is silly and likes to play with fans. Den is feisty and has a gay agenda to pursue.

Truly, I don't think Jojo and friends are that bad about anything with this show, because they're mostly just laughing and stating things that are obvious to people who pay attention to how the sausage is made.

Shipping

That being said, the biggest struggle OF is having is shipping. The FK girlies are so loud and their heavy breathing has likely influenced the way Jojo and friends decided to write Ray. The FB girlies are so into them that it's made Jojo and them dial back some of their Top content because the audience hates him so much. Only Boston and Nick feel like they've made it through the shipping gamut intact because Neo and Mark aren't bringing a bunch of preexisting shippers to the table.

Coming off of episode 10, you can see this plainly with the nasty4nasty dynamic with Boston and Nick. The emotional core of their dynamic feels true, even down to the way their moments in the store mirror their first interactions again. Boston came in for service about his phone and intentionally showed Nick something on it.

I don't think Jojo has ever had to work with multiple acting pairs that were big branded pairs prior to this, and this is only his second time really dealing with that. With Never Let Me Go, Pond and Phuwin weren't that big yet, and he wasn't threatening their ship with anything complicated. OF is challenging for people who just watch BL as fap material and have to deal with their faves not being easy people to parse.

As usual, we go back to that post that goes around all the time, thought I think the OP deleted it:

"Never ever be normal about fictional characters but please GOD be normal about the people who play them, I am begging you" -tumblr user mantorokk-writes

[tocomplainfriend]

Responding to your post about fiction affecting reality: very well-written post and that’s something I agree with wholeheartedly!

Full disclosure: I am a Vivz supporter and don’t really interact with the critique community because of negative past experience (hence the anon), but I really liked your post as it was well-researched and brought up a lot of points that I did agree on. Mostly that, as you evidenced, “it’s just fiction” isn’t a great argument for poorly portraying a serious concept when there can be tangible consequences for that portrayal. And you gave some really striking examples.

In terms of Hazbin, it is not that I believe that Val’s portrayal as an abuser (and consequently Angel’s as a victim) lacks any impact, but instead that it adds a positive one. This isn’t something I’ve researched so the evidence I have of this is personal experience, but as you said in your post that media can affect real life I felt inspired to add to that conversation with how it personally affected me.

So I was aware rationally that a common result of abuse/SA is hypersexuality, like I’d seen that on psychology blogs and such but never really understood it. I’m ashamed to say I thought it was a little weird and very rare. Hazbin was what finally challenged that notion with me. Being able to see how abuse looks and attribute those events to Angel’s actions step-by-step made something click in my head. I even remember that shortly after seeing that episode, I apologized to one of my friends (a survivor themselves) over some judgmental comments I’d recently made over hypersexuality. Said friend also watched Hazbin with me and it’s the reason they talk more openly to me now and we’re a lot closer. Val’s “stupid” behavior in the show and mentioned in Vivz’s comments did not lessen the impact that episode had on me, or make it unbelievable to me that Val could be manipulative. If anything I understand more now that abusers don’t always appear as psychopathic masterminds. And I know my friend finds comments like the Mean Girls one funny and they tell me it’s empowering to make fun of Val’s incompetence.

That’s not the only positive influence Hazbin’s had on me, but the most relevant to your post, I believe. It’s the reason I’m often a skeptic on most criticisms, because my lived experience tends to go against them. You said the negative impact of Val was that people are drawing fetish art of him, but the only time I ever see that art is within critic’s posts. It never shows up in my regular feed, so it looks to me like he’s equally as fetishized as every other character; the unfortunate inevitability of the internet. I can’t say I’ve seen anyone post about stories like mine about learning to understand survivors, but I have heard positive stories from survivors themselves in person and online which lead me to believe that the positive impact outweighs the negative.

Fiction has real impact, very true. But consider that might be a good thing in this case.

Thanks for being respectful!

TW: Rape, SA

I'm a victim of SA myself and that's why I wrote all of this post. If you got something positive out of this piece of media, that's great. Same with victims that saw potion and were okay with it- that valid as much as the people that didn't like it at all. I recommend watching many others shows yourself (or movies, books, whatever) will help you out with sorts of topics in bigger ways. I understand you feel like you got something good out if (and I'm glad) but I do need to say, this is minimal in comparison to other media you could consume regarding the topic!

I personally suffer with Hypersexuality, and the treatment in the show (and merch and otherwise) I found completely wrong. Even if you got to a good understatement of the topic, please put research into it (also outside Tumblr for that matter! There are better places to find stuff about!). Thank you also for admitting your faults over your treatment of hypersexuality and apologizing for it. Many people will never let themselves grasp this concept, so thank you.

If you took Valentino's comparison to Mean Girls or Powerpuff Girl as a way of making fun of him, that's you. I found it, personally, terrible. Specially cause many comments regarding that (that I put on the post) were people actively disregarding the topic at hand. Saying that Valentino is just a karen, or He is Bubbles coded, feels so out of the realm of everything (the last one didn't feel like making fun of him). I don't like the comparison of an active sexual predator to a mean high school girl or a kinder garden girl that's regarded as bubblely or dumb. Feel like you should reach into his actions over It feels diminishing to me and other people (who also complained about this themselves).

People should be extremely careful of what they portray about this topic in media. Other stuff written in Hazbin or Helluva Boss regarding R-pe jokes also is extremely disgusting to me. Never forget that if you think this portrayal is ok, one episode apart it's a gang r-pe jokes towards Sir Pen... and an r-pe joke towards Moxxie in Spring Brakers. Which I find extremely disrespectful to do and adds to r-pe culture as much as any other r-pe jokes (general or towards men) in media. Especially when they want to portray it in a serious way with Angel, where was that energy then? (Don't say Viv didn't write that, she liked a tweet about the Sir pen joke, and the spring braker is written by Viv and Brandon.)

Also, about manipulation:

The tweet right below says that "He isn't manipulating them" because he is too stupid to do so. Responding "The Vees are just meangirls" it's crazy to me.

About "You said the negative impact of Val was that people are drawing fetish art of him, but the only time I ever see that art is within critic’s posts. It never shows up in my regular feed"

Val has being fetishized by the crew itself! The person (who is not an SA/r-pe victim said by themselves, who has being open of shipping ValxAngel and being into r-pe porn) is the one that produce the whole poison part of the episode (also based on his previously non canon ValxAngel comic). You could also go throught the people Viv's responds and likes and it's mutuals with, and they also do the same thing as this crew-member (Raph). Congrats that it doesn't appear in your timeline, tho. If this art appears in a critic post, it is because it's being criticized or brought up to make a point.

[It's not on my blog yet, but I don't like receiving double ask in the inbox, specially of anons! Sorry. I don't know if it's the same person or not, and I don't want to end up receiving 5 asks in my inbox again.]

[taylorswiftstylequestions]

Hi Sarah! I'm sorry to be leaving something so negative in your inbox—it's unfair and I apologize, I just trust you to engage with it in a thoughtful way that'll broaden my perspective (if you choose to engage at all!)

I'm let down by TTPD, for a lot of reasons, but mostly I think it's just how unsympathetic Taylor is on this one? I recognize it was the point, but it doesn't work like it did on other self-critical songs like "Dear Reader" or even songs like "Getaway Car" or "Ivy." It just lacks in self-awareness—writing a song calling fans pearl-clutching "vipers" for not supporting the awful things MH did, taking shots at decades-old enemies and bringing their kids into it, responding to (some very fair!) criticisms on "Who's Afraid..." by blaming everyone else for "making her this way" and then doubling down, the jabs at OR... it's just an incredibly difficult album to empathize with. I know she said it was meant to capture what it feels like to be in that space, but you can do so without lashing out unnecessarily at very founded critique and/or people who had nothing to do with it. The highlights, IMO, are the songs where she balances gray morality or chaos with the self-reflection she's always been known for, i.e. "I Can Fix Him...", "Guilty as Sin?", "Florida!", or songs like "Clara Bow" and "The Smallest Man..." which aren't punching down. Idk. I've been reading fan takes and hoping it'll grow on me!

Hi! A note that this is from around release week, just had it floating in my drafts for a bit as I thought of ways to respond.

First off, I so appreciate you coming into this space in good faith and in the hopes that I'll be able to engage with your thoughts in a way that can perhaps, as you noted, broaden your perspectives and thus having the impact of changing your mind.

As a disclaimer, if you don't like certain songs or find certain things hit too close to home or are sensitive or they make you uncomfortable - that is okay! That is your right to feel that way. You're not obligated to like all or any of Taylor's art. It isn't imperative that you like this. At all!

That said, I'd say Taylor is making her art as brash and honest and uncomfortable on purpose because she's a complicated person. We as humans aren't always palatable all the time. We can be ugly and complicated and unflattering. I understand the desire to, but we also can't dictate her art. We can't ask her art to expose her pain — but with caveats.

Be vulnerable, but don't make me uncomfortable. Cry, but don't ruin your makeup.

To me, this album is ugly and it's ugly on purpose. And not to be annoyingly cliché but I really do think that's beautiful.

I can certainly share my thoughts, but it isn’t my intent (nor is it my job / goal) to change your mind or “make” you like it. I promise you can continue to have a weird / squiggly / not okay / uncomfy / dislike relationship with this art if that's where you're sitting!

In case it does matter, I don't think "But Daddy" is swiping back at people for not liking / not approving the person she was dating. We can critique and have opinions about her choices, but the song is not about wanting your approval - it's the opposite! It's saying that she doesn't care about your opinion and as a grown woman she has the right to make whatever decisions she wants to without a nameless mass of people thinking they are in a position where they can dictate those choices. If she's going to make a mistake, she is going to make it.

Imo, Taylor can bring up 2016 as many times as she wants to. I'd even make the case she hasn't talked about it nearly enough. As she continues to unpack and deal with that time in her life, she's allowed to realize things anew about how those situations had a long-tail impact on who she is as a person now. We even see that in a completely different way on "The Manuscript". Given Kim has recently shared content of her and her children dancing to Taylor songs I don't think the implication was out of pocket. It was Taylor saying I hope that in the small ways in your daily life like going out for a walk or making your kids lunch or sitting at a stop light that you're inescapably reminded of my legacy. And that kind of annoying jab is the I-hope-you-stub-your-toe-everyday petty remark feels very Taylor to me and not malicious or implicating her kids in a derogatory way.

All in all I really do hear you about wanting desperately to find something softer and more empathetic and pleasing about this album so that it doesn't feel like you're stretching uncomfortably to like it. But I'd just say that (and I really do mean this with sincerity) you don't have to! You can dislike it! You can critique it and find the things she's saying not oaky by you or that you disagree with how she's characterizing herself and situations. The thing is that she's writing from her POV and how things felt for her. And what's hard is that she doesn't have to be objective or fair about her own storytelling. She can put herself in the best light if she wants to - even if she's wrong! And it's so so so okay for you to not like that and to say, well ... no!

Again, I love and appreciate you feeling like TSS/Q was the safe space for you to come to to talk about this and try to find a new level or something to unlock and perhaps feel things over. Or, in the very least, just to share the difficult spot you're finding yourself in listening to this album. I'm grateful you wanted to share that in this space of all spaces.

[syeollock]

Intro?

New writer here!! I plan to write a mix of fluff and smut depending on the mood that I'm in and the criticisms. It's probably all going to be a male reader insert with some stories having some male ocs. I haven't written anything fxf so idk how I'd do that but I guess I'm open to it?

Rules:

1 - There will be 18+ works so minors dni (do not interact.)

2 - Absolutely no underage idols in smut works. I might write about some underage idols but in pure fluff stories only but they probably will be really close to being 18.

3 - Ask ahead, I'll answer anything (not really) but I will try to respond to a lot of things (even though there's not a single soul that will see this yet.)

Update? :

I have some ideas right now on what to write but I haven't properly written a whole story. I also don't know how tumblr works so I may miss some things that are helpful for me and the readers (none.. yet?). I am quite the perfectionist so sometimes it takes me awhile to write again since I can't think of ideas that the readers would like, but I am also quite lazy so that doesn't really add up but that's me. I should get a story up here after a month maybe two if I get super inspired but I should put up more after the first month.

If anyone were to see this, I can answer asks and stuff like that. I can also do requests if it sounds interesting enough.

I'll probably mostly write about LE SSERAFIM, ITZY, NewJeans, IVE, Twice, (G)I-DLE, aespa, fromis_9, ARTMS, and some solo artists. I am exploring some ideas on other groups so it isn't limited to the ones I just listed. I just think that I should know the idol or the group that I'm writing about.

See you in a month? Unless someone asks something and/or I feel like randomly posting some stuff.

[qqueenofhades]

thank you for your post i’m doing my best to stay informed on the conflict and i’m very young. i feel guilty being quiet as i understand to uplift voices helps prevent their silencing but this has lead me to not critically think about what i’m spreading

it’s been a long month. i’m only a kid and watching the world go to shit like this has been awful, I always wondered how millennials who lived through post nine eleven imperialism coped and god i’m still not sure how.

I am as a white gentile in a position of privilege and mostly my own person is unaffected by the uptick in violence and evil in the world right now. But my friends who i see every day are in more danger due to this conflict and i feel awful that i cannot ever fully understand or fix the deaths of people.

Right now I’m being a bit too reactionary. I’m doing my best but in the end I am not immune to fearmongering and propoganda, especially in these last couple sleepless weeks.

So thank you and everyone who is keeping level heads and desconstructing what’s happening. I’m sorry and i strive to be better. Thank you.

To anyone living in fear right now i’m so sorry. I will listen when you speak.

Once again I just want to say that I am a busy and uninformed student, and I wish that i had more teachers and authority figures that had objective facts to tell me. It’s suffocating to have fake news everywhere but feel powerless if you don’t know anything

it’s ok if you don’t respond to this

Thank you for your post

Thanks for this message and for taking the time to put it into words and to reflect on your own actions and rhetoric. It takes a lot of courage and self-awareness to admit that you were wrong and that you want to do better, and I'm not going to rip into you or blame you or otherwise shame you for it. So I hope this gives you the confidence to read on without feeling like you'll be raked over the coals for it, and open you to hear some ideas for doing things differently.

First, I do have a ton of sympathy for you as a young person who feels overwhelmed and exhausted by all the evil in the world, and is wondering how to get through it, react to it, or otherwise make some kind of moral response in the face of this soul-crushing trauma. I will say here that I am a little bit older than your average Tumblr user (the majority of this site is in their early-mid twenties), I do personally remember 9/11 and its aftermath when a lot of people here weren't even born yet, and I am an academic historian with a doctorate. That does not mean I am better or smarter or More Perfect or whatever at what I say, but it means that I do have a considerable amount of institutional, formal, and professional practice at analyzing a lot of complex information, putting it into words, breaking it down for less-specialist audiences, pointing out logical fallacies, and so forth.

That is not a skill that everyone has, and in the face of nonstop 24-hour news-cycle social media information overload, it can be incredibly difficult to parse it or understand how you're supposed to respond to it or what your moral obligation in response to this knowledge might be. I wrote this ask the other day in response to someone else asking how to improve their critical thinking skills and be more discerning about what they understood, shared, and analyzed. I strongly encourage you to read it, as it addresses a lot of what you're saying about feeling negative, depressed, panicked, angry, and all the other emotions that are naturally evoked in you from reading this stuff nonstop and feeling like the only thing you can (or should) do is immerse your brain in it at all times. In short, that is absolutely the worst environment to do actual substantial analysis or critical thinking, and it is designed so on purpose.

It has been said before, but it bears repeating: the human brain simply is not designed to be constantly aware of all the atrocities in the world and thus (thanks to social media) feeling as if the only way they can do anything about it is to then post the Correct Opinions on social media (regardless of whether these are informed or relevant or otherwise useful). Especially now, the rush to demonstrate Correct Thinking has warped a lot of otherwise well-meaning young people into becoming eager disinformation mouthpieces. There are a TON of explicitly bad-faith actors and far-right fascists who are posting pro-Palestine content (factual or uh, otherwise) because they know that's an instant way to get an audience of said young left-leaning people who will then be suckered into and exposed to their far more dangerous content and mindset, because that is how radicalization works. Even in the support of an obviously worthy cause, you and everyone else ARE NOT IMMUNE to fearmongering, disinformation, and virulently anti-Semitic propaganda, especially when it's being eagerly and constantly offered in a deliberate attempt to radicalize you further into violence and conspiracy theories, turn you against other vulnerable groups and people, and explicitly disengage you from the electoral/political process, which will harm the Democrats and other liberal establishment parties in favor of more far-right radical fascist theocrats and otherwise make everything, everywhere, many orders of magnitude worse.

I know the feeling that you need to do something, and since you're a long way from the conflict, it seems as if posting on social media is the best and/or the only way to go about it. In that environment, and especially right now, you will make mistakes. I know it is difficult in an online environment where popularity or acceptance by your peers often rests on never being wrong about anything (i.e. saying the same thing everyone else is saying), but it always helps to think about what you're doing, what you're saying, and if you actually need the approval of people who are conditioning you, implicitly or explicitly, into negative and violent ideological nihilism.

The hardest thing to understand is that yes, there is a lot of terrible shit going on in the world; no, you cannot personally fix it and you have to accept that as a limitation; yes, there are many multiple and complex causes and reasons for its existence and there is almost never a black-and-white simplistic moral solution that just hasn't been magically implemented yet; yes, it is always worth it to take the time to inform yourself and consider what you're saying, where it comes from, who it helps and who it hurts, and why you feel the need to say it in the first place. Of course you want to help. Of course you want to stop the needless suffering and death that has gone on in the world for millennia and unfortunately, as long as humans are humans, will continue to do so. But even so, take it away Gandalf:

[trans-androgyne]

i think as an intersex trans person who has felt really left put of the conversations around tme/tma and transandrophobia, I think my problem with transandro stuff is how much of it is just transphobia, and how often it genuinely ends up being a shield from transmisogyny. If the term tma was expanded to include everyone who feels it applies to them, that wouldn't change any of the points made about the transmisogyny problem of the wider trans community. Any validity transandrophobia has is kinda drowned out by the obvious resentment towards transfems a lot of people posting have. The way systematic issues faced by transfems will be responded to by anecdotal examples of bad things happened to transmascs sometimes. And despite the fact the transandrophobia people (or people who dislike tma/tme more broadly) often being up intersex people while still not especially caring about us and it's frustrating. tme/tma would bug me less if people could agree if it were camab exclusive or not, because as much as they say it is at least one semi popular transfem tma sex worker isn't and nobody seems to care so the inconsistency would be nice to get clarity on, and transandrophobia people would just have to use their term while still getting called out on transmisogyny and not pulling out their shield of "while actually transandro-" Because that's what feels so mraish to me. idk long rambley mess from an intersex person who's been mad at the wider trans community for a while. (for the record though, I hate the idea that being tme/tma reveals your asab anymore then calling yourself transfem or transmasc does. both are really frustrating binaries for intersex trans people, but only one is criticized commonly. It seems like interssx excluding binaries are fine sometimes)

I appreciate you wanting to share your perspectives but this was frustrating to read. You don’t seem to have enough familiarity with the broader transandrophobia conversation to comment on it like this, because I have been checking the tags daily for months and have yet to see one singular example of a transmasc shielding themself from transmisogyny accusations by pointing out the existence of transandrophobia. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’m saying it isn’t a pervasive issue like you’re making it out to be. This reads like someone who has mostly seen the conversation through screenshots of the worst actors. Meanwhile, we get called transmisogynistic for using the word itself and obviously defend ourselves; I do not doubt these are the conversations you’re seeing. If you think calling it “just transphobia” is acceptable, again, you should not be speaking on this. Is most of the transmisogyny tag “just transphobia” as well or does it matter that it’s directed at transfems?

“Any validity transandrophobia has is kinda drowned out by the obvious resentment towards transfems a lot of people posting have.” No, it isn’t. Does transmisogyny become less real because some transfems are transandrophobic? If there is open transmisogyny going on that doesn’t get addressed, that’s one thing. But how could you expect zero transmascs to hold any resentment towards transandrophobic transfems who tell us we don’t deserve to talk about the way they’re transphobic to us? It’s not a good situation but it’s the reality—you don’t seem to be free of resentment towards any part of the trans community yourself. Tensions are high in the community right now. Are transfems also not allowed to talk about transmisogyny until they clear all resentment towards transmascs? Because half the transmisogyny tag would have to go away if so. It is abundantly clear that transmisogyny being a more established term is biasing your viewpoint here and I hope you’ll work to overcome that before trying to reflect on the conversation further.

[ntaras]

Bi-Han Analysis

Though the primary focus of this analysis is Bi-Han, I also do analyze Kuai Liang a bit. This analysis is also mostly for me to put my general thoughts together, so the formatting is a bit hard to read and messy. 

This analysis is not written with the datamined dlc story in mind, so for the love of god do not bring that up if you want to respond to this post. I also hate the way the brothers and the Sub-Zero vs. Scorpion rivalry was presented, but I’m writing this analysis with an attempt at avoiding placing criticism in the center (because I do have a lot of criticism that does conflict with this analysis.) 

Also, this is not meant to prove Bi-Han as “not evil”, because no, he isn’t, but he’s still an antagonist who’s making very bad choices. Also I talk about my own speculation regarding Bi-Han’s relationship with his father, and I want to make clear that I’m not trying to paint their father in a bad light because he is not canonically presented as abusive or evil. It comes off like that, but that’s not my intention. I’m too lazy to rewrite that portion of the analysis so this is just a heads up. 

Bi-Han is a walking self-sabotaging tragedy, and with Kuai Liang as Scorpion, they were doomed from the start for their relationship to shatter. You have the eldest brother: Sub-Zero, who feels forced into submission and forced to conceal his “true worth”. You have the younger brother: Scorpion, who watches his older brother be consumed by his desperation to be something, and stands unsure of how to help him. 

Bi-Han’s desire for power is the highlight of his character. His and the Lin Kuei’s role as Earthrealm’s defenders isn’t something that satisfies him- it isn’t something that shows his worth. He thinks he’s worth more than simply hiding in the shadows, waiting, and waiting for threats to emerge. Defending Earthrealm brings him no value, but perhaps taking part in ruling it would give him value (Sub-Zero: “You wield the power I aspire to be” Sindel: “Too bad you’re unfit for it, Sub-Zero.”) He wants to bring the Lin Kuei to the light, show that his clan is deserving of power. (From his bio: “Under his leadership, the Lin Kuei will come out of the shadows and fight for its place as one of Earthrealm’s great nations.”) 

I’m really emphasizing the word “shadow”. It’s an obvious reference to Noob Saibot, and it seems like the story is going for the route that Bi-Han is already someone in the dark, yet he doesn’t view himself to be in the dark. (Scorpion: “A shadow’s fallen on your soul.” Sub-Zero: “No, brother. I’ve seen the light.”) As the darkness envelops Bi-Han, he can only see that darkness as the light. 

Bi-Han refuses to see himself in the wrong, and even says his ambition is confused for evil. (Ashrah: “There are many in the Netherrealm just like you.” Sub-Zero: “You conflate ambition with evil, Ashrah.”) That dialogue also implies that Bi-Han does not believe he will end up in the Netherrealm for his actions, because he doesn’t view himself or his actions as “evil”. Everything he’s done has been for the better- has been for the good of the Lin Kuei. 

I wondered why Bi-Han was so loyal to the Lin Kuei in this timeline, as in previous timelines Bi-Han’s loyalty to his clan was because he was kidnapped by that clan, and conditioned to be their warrior (but still agreed to help Raiden and save Earthrealm.) So why is Bi-Han so loyal to the Lin Kuei in this timeline? 

This is more speculation than an analysis I can support with hard evidence, but if you’re asking what I personally think, I’d like the case to be that there was something deeper going on. That somehow, his father put so much pressure on Bi-Han (not intentional pressure) as the future Grandmaster and a protector of Earthrealm, Bi-Han ending up warping that role as “protector of Earthrealm” into his own desire for the Lin Kuei to show all their true ability is to not defend Earthrealm- but govern Earthrealm. Why must their efforts go unrecognized if their role is so important? Also this plays into his role as the first born son, the eldest child who ends up being the one responsible for their younger siblings. As the eldest, he knows what is best for his siblings. As Grandmaster, he knows what is best for the Lin Kuei. 

All the dialogue regarding their father paints him in a good light- even dialogue from Bi-Han. Bi-Han never once accuses his father as being abusive in some manner, but only as weak and lacking vision. So, there is no denying that he was a good man, but he’s still a man of mistakes, such as being the man indirectly responsible for the murder of Tomas’s family. The fact that that murder happened in the first place does raise a lot of questions about the inner workings of the Lin Kuei and how their father led the Lin Kuei.  

It does feel like their father’s death is still not fully revealed. His death is only referred to as an “accident” and not delved into further besides Bi-Han allowing him to die. (Scorpion: “I want to see the moment my father died.” Geras: “You are not ready to receive that knowledge.”) That could mean that there is more to his death, Kuai Liang isn’t ready to see that moment because he’d get all raged up, or it could mean nothing because that’s how a lot of dialogue is. 

The way their father led the Lin Kuei- and how the Lin Kuei has always been in this new era, was by teaching them to be submissive (to follow rather than lead.) And in Bi-Han’s eyes: weak. 

The fact that Bi-Han didn’t kill his father, but instead let him die, is fascinating. We can also compare that act, to how Bi-Han is submissive to Liu Kang until he’s away from Liu Kang and listens to Shang Tsung. ALSO, it’s interesting how Bi-Han doesn’t listen to Shang Tsung’s offer until he is in chains. Even if he let his father die, Bi-Han still was loyal to Liu Kang nor did he change the Lin Kuei in any way (we also do not know how recently their father died, so he may have not even had the time yet to drastically change the Lin Kuei on his own, but I think that’s besides the point). He aches for the right moment to “step up”- to separate himself from what he believes binds him. 

We see Liu Kang keep Bi-Han from being “too antagonistic”. After Liu Kang calls Bi-Han and Kuai Liang over in chapter 1, we see Bi-Han get hostile towards Kung Lao and try to advance towards him, but is stopped by Liu Kang. He glances at Liu Kang, wanting to bark back, but keeps quiet. In chapter 2, Liu Kang looks at Bi-Han when he yells “enough!” and Bi-Han quickly bows in apology. 

He keeps that loyalty to Liu Kang, until he is physically in chains, until he is physically shackled. He does not want to be prisoner to that loyalty of submission anymore. 

His submission to his father’s ruling of the Lin Kuei and Liu Kang’s Godhood is something he doesn’t want, because he feels like he is worth more than submission. He doesn’t want to be treated “so lowly".” He wants recognition for his skills- he’s eager to show himself off and prove that yes, he is a warrior.

If Liu Kang had chosen Bi-Han to be champion, then mayhaps this desire for power and self-sabotage Bi-Han participates in would have been avoided. However, it’s understandable why Liu Kang didn’t choose Bi-Han to be champion despite clearly having the talent to be one: Bi-Han always dies at a tournament. He didn’t want to risk Bi-Han’s death, and then the resurrection of Noob Saibot (or a falling out between Kuai Liang- Scorpion- and Bi-Han that resulted in Kuai Liang killing Bi-Han). But, it seems Bi-Han set himself down that dark path anyways. 

Now, onto Kuai Liang and a brief look into the relationship between the three brothers. 

The story fails at showing us that the three brothers do care about each other, but it’s just barely there. 

In Kuai Liang’s bio, it states two things: “...though he took pride in knowing that his brother, Sub-Zero, would succeed their father as the Lin Kuei's Grandmaster.” and “...he fears that may one day have to battle his brother for control of the Lin Kuei’s legacy.” He views Bi-Han as Grandmaster with pride, and is scared of having to fight him- scared of choosing duty over his brother. 

Kuai Liang verbally tells Bi-Han multiple times to “watch himself”- reminding Bi-Han of his duty (honoring their father) and questioning Bi-Han’s roughness with Johnny Cage. You do see Kuai Liang keeping an eye out on Bi-Han (as he states later in the game, he was aware of Bi-Han’s frustrations). Kuai Liang doesn’t even mind Bi-Han’s ambitions, as evident in the scene where they enter the treasure chamber. “There will be spoils in this war,” says Bi-Han as Kuai Liang does not chastise him for wanting those “spoils”, but responds with “let us win it first, brother.” 

If I’m being honest, I don’t even think Bi-Han was referring to the actual treasure as “spoils”, but rather the glory that treasure holds. Bi-Han doesn’t really have a desire for treasure, especially a bunch of coins, so I couldn’t really view him as having an actual desire for some coins and gems. And I think Kuai Liang’s response was him answering Bi-Han’s hidden desires- that Bi-Han can achieve his desire to “shine” after they finish their job. For Bi-Han to achieve his ambitions, he must earn it first. 

Up until the reveal of Bi-Han letting their father die, Kuai Liang is incredibly patient with Bi-Han. 

Regarding Tomas and Bi-Han’s relationship: Bi-Han doesn’t hate Tomas! Their relationship is complex with Tomas being the youngest brother and being adopted into the family, but it’s not wrong to say Bi-Han does care about him (as clearly evident by the “You are both unharmed?” comment).

I really do think Bi-Han being the eldest sibling is important to his character. It’s a role that brings him frustration as he cannot get his younger siblings to listen to him (them “abandoning” him and the LIn Kuei), and loses control over them. His anger is harsh towards Tomas, as is “what he gets” for being the younger brother, yet Tomas still cares for Bi-Han despite Bi-Han stating Tomas is not Lin Kuei. 

Bi-Han, in all his cruelness and frustration, cares about his brothers. And they care about Bi-Han. It’s evident in the fact that the brothers are so adamant on being the ones to kill/capture the other, not allowing anyone else “the privilege”. They are deeply hurt by the others' betrayal, and any hatred that comes from them is out of a broken heart. 

Kuai Liang did try to kill Bi-Han. After Bi-Han reveals that he allowed their father to die, Kuai Liang loses it, and knocks Bi-Han down, and you see him raise his chains ready to kill Bi-Han. Kuai Liang would have regretted it. He was in a moment of seering, blind rage, allowing his emotions to fully take over him. You know he would have regretted it, because in their confrontation outside the temple, Kuai Liang doesn’t kill Bi-Han. And if I’m being honest, I don’t even think that Kuai Liang knew he almost killed Bi-Han. 

“You are my Grandmaster no longer.” Not, “you are my brother no longer.” Kuai Liang disowns Bi-Han as his leader, but not as his brother. Even if Bi-Han shed his own brother’s blood, Kuai Liang cannot truly renounce his own blood. It’s their bond and their curse as brothers- as Sub-Zero and Scorpion: they are forever connected by rivalry and siblinghood. 

Their love is deep, but their hatred is even deeper. But is it not the same when it comes to siblings? Is that cruelty not the same as a loving embrace?