#i have no respect for that guy as an individual or as a creator/critic

[virginstoner666]

can you forgive corey taylor for that nostalgia critic review of the wall?

you know what's wild is for the version of the story i heard, (which at the moment i can't recall exactly where i heard this, but please, take this with a grain of salt)

the reason corey taylor wound up in the terribad nostalgia critic the wall review was because his son was a big fan of the nostalgia critic.

and in truth, i can only feel bad for the guy, agreeing to a cameo performance in an internet video to make your son happy, only for the video to go onto becoming an internet-spanning wide meme to dunk on- with your face/likeness now perminently intertwinded. even for a celebrity/someone used to being in the public eye like corey taylor, i can only imagine how surreal and awful that's gotta feel :(

[spaceorphan18]

The Lady Whistledown Papers : 1x01 - A Diamond of the First Water (Part 1)

An Introduction

Dearest Gentle Reader... ;)

Well, okay, looks like there a good handful of you for this idea! Yay!

I did want to preface this with a couple of notes first, though if you want to skip to the show meta, head straight for the 'read more' below...

My intention with this project is to explore the individual stories as well as the romantic relationship between Penelope Featherington (who is my favorite character on the show) and Colin Bridgerton. So, I'll be looking at every episode of the entire show and kind of go through their character arcs with a fine tooth comb. The first two seasons I plan on batching scenes together while Season 3 might end up almost scene by scene because it is so rich and dense with story.

The whole point is that I enjoy meta and media analysis and breaking down stories and looking at stories from every angle possible. I am usually pretty positive, but that doesn't mean even my favorites are not exempt from a critical eye from time to time. And I'm not hesitant to explore character, story, and production flaws when discussing things. I do, however, try to remain respectful.

While this is primarily Pen and Colin focused, I'll probably still end up opinioning on other things I like as well (and do have respect for other characters and ships on the show).

The only book I've read is The Duke and I. I don't plan on doing any book to tv analysis, but I do hope to get through Romancing Mister Bridgerton before I get to Season 3 so I can point out Easter Eggs.

I'm also no historical scholar. So, probably won't be doing any kind of historical analysis either. Sorry.

I'm a multi-fandom blog, and have lots of projects I'm working on, so I plan on rotating through them. Plus, I have a full time job and family and friends, which means please be patient as I work on the project. It's a labor of love! But maybe a slower one. <3

Not here to discuss the actors', creators', crew, etc's personal lives. While I may put in a tiny BTS tidbit I've picked up, I have no intention or desire to talk about anything but the story.

I always enjoy talking with you guys about things, my meta is only one interpretation of what's going on, and I'm always open to discussions! However, I block or ignore any kind of wank, so please be civil. :)

Tag : the lady whistledown papers (in case you want to follow along or black list it away)

Okay, let's dig into some meta!!

Episode 1 : A Diamond of the First Water (Part 1)

So, it may be something that's easily forgotten or overlooked, but the very first thing we hear when we open the show is Lady Whistledown's voice -- which of course, is really Penelope. Since it's the delightful Julie Andrews doing the voice, it doesn't really feel like it's an 18yo girl's commentary about life in the rich part of London society in the early 1800s, but here we are. It's all done to build a bit of mystery around Lady Whistledown.

But what I think is more fascinating is the fact that the show opens -- not with the Bridgertons but the Featheringtons. They are our starting point. They are our dysfunctional family unit that we may closer resemble in our own lives that we get to peek in on before heading over to the esteemed, charming, and seemingly perfect Bridgertons.

The Bridgertons might be the protagonists of the show -- but Lady Whistledown and (by extension) Penelope Featherington is our framing device. She sets up the world, gives us the expository layout of the land and gives us an insight into the world. So it makes sense that we're starting in Penelope's home -- the person, like the audience, who gets to look into the Bridgerton home, but not actually be a part of it (yet).

When we open, we get a great introduction to the Featheringtons, and in a quick few shots - learn a lot about of them.

First of all, the narration -- while I'm not going to take note of every single narration throughout the whole show, it is important to remember that it's Penelope who is ultimately speaking. And when we open the show -- the first thing she does is blast her own family.

Why? Because it's her only way to push back. Look at what's happening in this scene? Prudence is being forced into the tightest corset ever imaginable as Penelope (and Phillipa) look on in horror. Penelope is still young (she is 18yo) and is being thrust into the market earlier than she wants so that her mother can have all of her daughters out in society at the same time.

Unlike what we'll find over at the Bridgerton family household, the Featheringtons are ruled by a seemingly iron fisted mother who only wants her daughters to marry rich so she can retain her lifestyle and place in society while her father is uninterested in anything other than himself.

Later in season 3, she'll mention that this particular issue is her first issue. So, it's no surprise that she starts writing just as she's coming into society. It's her way of coping and her way of expressing herself. But, I'll also remind everyone, while she is incredibly savvy at her craft, she's also still so young, and not entirely aware of the power she's going to wield.

As for Pen herself -- she's genuinely concerned about her older sister. We don't get a sense of their dynamic yet, but at least we get to see Penelope's kind hearted nature. Prudence looks like she's being down right tortured by her 'tasteless, tactless' mama. And nothing about this is appealing to Penelope.

(As an aside -- this also sets up a couple of things for the show -- for one, throwing us into the historical nature of the show, as well as adding a slight bit of comedy to the over-the-topness of Portia's insistence. The show is telling us that, yeah, there are crude and unpleasant things going on, but we're not taking ourselves too seriously, so neither should you.)

Next, we shift over to the Bridgerton household, but I want to point out something first... Notice how the Featherington door knocker from earlier was much more adorned and intricate? The Featheringtons are more concerned with status and money and appearing as if they're better off than they really are, while the Bridgertons don't need nor want to show off in the same way. It's a neat little detail.

Also, the bee imagery for the Bridgertons always is amusing. Symbol of death there ;) In case you were wondering - the Featherington symbol is the butterfly.

So, it's important to note that the Featheringtons are the next door neighbors of the Bridgertons, and it's of no surprise that Penelope would, after disparaging her own family, turn her attention to the family that has captivated her most of her life.

Okay, I kind of love these paintings as an introduction to the Bridgertons. (Are there ones for Gregory and Hyacinth?) I think it's a fun touch to the whole historical setting of the show. And it makes them look as if they're these frozen, idyllic pictures and who are not exactly real. Which is great when combined with the Lady Whistledown dialogue going on how wonderfully attractive they are - because it sets us just slightly apart from them.

Like I said above - Penelope is on the outside, and as we move in, so are we, but we get to finally move in to see real people behind the paintings. (Also - omg, the look on Eloise's face is priceless and I love it)

Also. A+ casting, guys. I really believe they're all related. ;)

I also love the juxtaposition that when we first hear the Bridgertons talking, unlike their perfect, picture-esque counterparts in the paintings, we get Eloise complaining. (Look, I love Eloise a lot -- and she's the third in this crazy triangle, so we'll be talking a bit about her, too.) We also get a bit of chaos as the camera descends the stairs, with Gregory running around them and the banter between the sisters.

It's all great, quick character set up as each of the Bridgerton siblings gets a little beat in this sequence.

And... we get our first glimpse at Colin!

And here's the thing about Colin. He's the third son. Anthony may not be around at the very moment, but he's very much a father figure to a lot of them and is in a different place being the oldest and actual Lord of the Estate. His role is much different. And then there's Benedict - who is that second in command while Anthony is away. Benedict, though is the artsy one and the experimental one and is a bit more aloof in nature. Which brings us to Colin... Who doesn't have the same set in stone sense of purpose Anthony does nor the happiness of just floating through life the way Benedict does.

And so, this scene has a couple of tidbits to kind of illustrate his place in this huge household. He's says he'll go get Daphne (who is currently hiding out in her room, and whom everyone has been arguing about). Colin does like having purpose, and does like to help whenever he can.

And then there's his banter with Benedict about how he's better liked by Daphne than him. It's a great little moment, not only the show again allowing to us to know that we should not be taking this historical show too seriously, not only showing us the beloved sibling antics (which -- i really love all the sibling dynamics in this show), but also showing that Colin has a bit of a cheeky side, and isn't afraid to bring a bit a levity to the situation when he can.

Also, a tiny tidbit in relation to the book, Colin and Daphne (being close in age) are rather close in the book. We don't necessarily see it in the show due to the nature of wanting to highlight Anthony more, but I feel like these lines are a little nod to that, too.

Of course, then, Eloise screams at the top of her lungs, which is a moment I still laugh at. I love that while Benedict's jaw is dropped, Colin is entirely amused by her, as I'm sure she livens the entire household up.

We get both households coming out of their houses, and we get this sweet little moment where we see that, not only are they neighbors, but Penelope and Eloise know each other and are friends.

I love that Penelope is so overjoyed to be looking over to the Bridgertons that she kind of freezes in excitement and has to be ushered along.

Also as the camera pulls back, we see Eloise reading a Lady Whistledown pamphlet! The first time we see someone do so!

You guys remember Disney's Sleeping Beauty? There's a moment when they enter the castle the three good fairies are announced. The dude who announces the Featherington sisters reminds me of that -- introducing Flora, Fauna, and Merriweather! (Don't even come at me, it's my favorite Disney movie)

Anyway... we get LW's narration that this is a pivotal moment for London society at the time -- when the girls are presented to the Queen and enter the marriage mart. Basically, it's a coming of age for young women. And while Prudence might have the most embarrassing moment by fainting (I mean - who's to blame her, really) Penelope looks so awkward going out there -- before her time, really not emotionally ready, and just not graceful in the way that the other girls, including even her sisters, just are.

Okay, so it's not really our first Polin moment, but there is a pseudo moment buried in here.

But first - I want to acknowledge that Penelope, feeling out of place, and at ill-ease with her surroundings, throws a glance over to Eloise. I love Eloise's truly perplexed look as she watches her friend go through something that neither of them really want -- as if trying to grapple how any of this is real. Penelope and Eloise's bond is incredibly important to both their characters and the show (and is something I enjoy as much as I love all the Polin).

As for Colin standing over there in the corner... No, there's not really anything to pull out here. But! There is going to be a moment in season 3, when Colin is writing in his journal, where it's clear that he's thinking about this moment, and describing watching her as she heads towards the queen. It's a cute callback to this moment, and even if we don't really see it -- it's still there. He's still noticing her, even if it's very, very subtly.

LW continues her narration about how important the Queen's opinion is of the ladies of society, and how important it is to make a good impression. But fascinatingly, Penelope is too busy looking at the ceilings and being in awe of her surroundings to really take notice of what the Queen is doing. She's a bit, understandably, shocked. (and another great comedic moment as Portia kind of knocks her back into focusing.)

It's great for setting the atmosphere of the show, but also allowing us, through Penelope, to take in our surroundings and be in awe of what we're witnessing.

It's also, I'll add, to be an awkward contrast to when Daphne comes in and is completely flawless in her entrance. Penelope is our side character. She's not our main character. And main characters are supposed to have a level of perfection to them. (Or so we're been accustomed to believe.) I think one thing I'm happy to see on the show is that, while we're still going to get a lot of romance story tropes, the show does try to dismantle a few of the stereotypes as we go along.

Also, two quick smaller notes... we don't really get to see Colin's reaction to Daphne -- Anthony and the sister are too in the way, and he doesn't have much of a discernable reaction when we do see him. And, the narration makes note that Daphne is going to burn quickly, which honestly made me laugh a little.

And.... that takes us up to the credits! Which is where I'll be stopping for now. Since this is the first episode and an introduction to the world, there's actually lot of both Penelope and Colin in it, so there's a lot to go through... stay tuned ;)

[nerdraging4point0]

Fic Trailer

Disclaimer/Announcement: I promised or rather teased you all with a new series. While this fic may feature real people, both from Bad Omens, Motionless in White, and other band's across our metal-verse. In no way does any of the following story reflect them, their behavior, their actions, or anything that makes them the individual and very real people they are. For the sake of the story their names and likeness such as face, body (within reason), and mannerisms have been adopted. The following is a work of Fiction and should be considered as such. I want to say thank you to @synthetic-wasp-570 and @tearfallpixie for helping me brainstorm the idea. I love you guys!!

Noah is a partner at Samuri Tech, a tech company that provides research and development for new and wide range of technologies. Coming from nothing and building his way up in the company, he is well respected amongst his friends and colleagues, except for Bryce. Company partner who believes that Noah's attitude about work is careless and unprofessional. Noah does not do well as the suit and tie type of guy, often preferring to work from home instead of going into the office.

Callie works for Samuri Tech as a software analyst while she has been there for nearly a year, she has kept her head down with little interest in anyone around her. One day while rummaging through projects that had been either discarded or otherwise not proposed, she ends up finding her way into a system labeled 'Project Spiderweb' a program that is designed to attract black market criminals via the web and trap their servers immediately reporting them to the authorities.

She doesn't delete the program, thinking it to important, she emails the original creator proposing that they continue their work. Originally, Noah is furious that she got hold of one of his old projects-as he is very critical of his work and as he says, 'it was in the trash for a reason', but one night while out at the bar, Callie is harassed by some men and Noah steps in to help. He only intends to give her a ride home, but the way she is holding onto his waist on his bike and how he can't help but rub her knee and calf while he rides leads to a lot more than that.

Steamy emails, secret dates, and nights of crazy sex. Noah finds a passion in him that he'd thought died a long time ago. When their perfect arrangement is threatened, Noah must use all the intelligence and passion he has to make sure his world doesn't come crashing down.

[bloodpen-to-paper]

Movie Review Blurbs: The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Highlights

-The brothers were the most endearing part for me, they had a wonderful dynamic that not only made me like them as a duo, but as individuals (from the Mario media I know, there wasn't much focus on their personality so it was nice watching something that gave them more character)

-Jack Black got to sing his silly songs and honestly that's all that matters

-The movie making fun of the egregious Italian accents in the beginning was a good gag, especially considering the two are still Italian in the movie and are given more accurate accents (also I love that they're canonically from Brooklyn lmao)

-Mario was a fucking crack head before the isekai and I enjoy that fact very much

-Yoshi avengers end credit scene

-Surprisingly decent voice acting, they all delivered (especially Charlie Day and Jack Black)

-The penguins, the Dry Bones, SHY GUYS

-Toad is a fucking criminal apparently who helps outsiders break into the castle and goes outside the Mushroom Kingdom to do god knows what

-Off the top of my head, my favorite part of the movie was Luigi running from the Dry Bones and ending up in Luigi's Mansion; great horror scene for a very PG movie

-Whatever the fuck was going on between Kamek and Bowser

-SHY GUYS SHY GUYS SHY GUYS SHY GUYS SHY GUYS-

-Mario and DK's frienenemy relationship was great, especially with how they butt heads but also understand (daddy issues) and respect each other (they're a good ship ngl)

-I liked Cranky Kong as a character, I feel like he was a character made to appeal more to an older crowd now that I think about it

-The implications? Of Bowser's entire fucking ship coming to the human realm? And totaling the city? Magic is real? What's gonna happen there is the U.S. government gonna try and harness the power of the magic realm and capitalize on it like there is so much left unanswered

-simp bowser lmao (many dudebros were mad about this one which automatically makes it the best plotline in my book)

-Mario and Peach weren't shown to have romantic feelings for each other, giving them time to actually get to know each other first

Criticisms

-Ok so let's address the main issue; the pacing. The movie severely lacked transition, bridging and buildup, and it felt less like a movie and more like a bunch of individual scenes thrown together (cause it kinda was). It was frustrating cause the movie was genuinely very engaging, and there was some real lost potential with how rushed it was. It definitely needed to be longer; I think the people working on it were on a time constraint, and it showed

-Pigging-backing off the previous note, a lack of build up to big moments made those moments feel like they came out of nowhere. it also lacked an after math period for those big moments, which makes them feel unsubstantial

-Ok rant time: I saw people having this concern for Peach being a dull #girlboss character that lacked substance, and... yeah, it happened. I think the issue of female characters being sidelined and not given any character depth is being acknowledged, but in a way that still doesn't give them depth. Basically, male creators have realized they've been making female characters useless love interests in the background, so they're fixing this by making said characters hyper-competent, and in the forefront of the fight. However, its had this adverse effect where these hyper-competent characters are now just serving as plot devices to push the narrative rather than being given their own character narrative. They are at the forefront, and fight, but are still lacking in depth and development (what's worse is they still just serve as aides to male leads most of the time, just now in a repackaged way that usually would be held by a side male character). The Mario movie was rushed so none of the characters got much development, but Peach in particular was not given any character development, only plot development (she got isekai'd and is wondering where she's from, but we don't see how this idea effects her emotionally or drives her because... it really doesn't. She's just kinda like "oh hey I'm from another universe... ok cool! Anyway-"). So yeah, that needs work. Male creators need to humanize their female characters like they do the male ones, and actually give them flaws and struggles (Peach literally has a gag about being so perfect she mastered the super hard parkour course they practice on in one go, while we see Mario work on it and improve over time; its lazy ass writing cmon now). Hence why I like consuming media that's actually by female creators, and I encourage all of you to do the same

-Mario and DK were great but again needed more fleshing out, they had this whole bonding moment about their daddy issue but it happened so fast that you couldn't really stew in it much

-Mario/DK's daddy issues were not handled the best, they only got their father's approval when they did something cool and not for actually being themselves; didn't like the messaging there very much

-Though I mentioned Mario x Peach didn't happen, the movie still very intrusively pushes the idea in your face by having side characters comment on it; I imagine this is what homophobes think they're experiencing when queer character exist in media, except this movie didn't even try to be subtle with the push

-Why did Toad just decide to help Mario find Luigi? Why did Peach decide to train Mario so she could take him with her to Donkey Kong Island? Just cause he's a fellow human? And why did she just decide to take Toad along too? Again, pacing

-Rainbow Road being a "secret path" that was literally out in the open and Bowser found it almost immediately lmao (it was also never narratively explained how Bowser found the path if I'm remembering correctly)

-The Luma gag was overdone imo, but the "finally, mercy" part was very funny

-no bowuigi sex scene -∞/10

Final Thoughts

Overall, the movie was very fun, but the time constraint really did bring it down from being a better ranked movie. Its frustrating because the movie had so much to offer, I wanted more from it, and that's why the pacing is something I'm hammering on so much. And for anyone saying "its a kid's movie, who cares?"... sorry I want kid's to have good movies? And not just the kind of drool that comes from Minions-type productions? Movies are art, and art should have the people behind it putting the best into their work that they can, kid's movie or not, so if something is bringing down that art (a time constraint for example) it should be criticized in my opinion. Plus lets face it, a lot of the people going in to see the movie were teens/adults who grew up on Mario.

Despite all this though, I genuinely enjoyed it, and my low expectations for what is an Illumination movie were pleasantly subverted. There was clearly a lot of love put into this film, and I can't wait to see if there will be a sequel. Thanks for reading!

[solarfeylix]

These two shows have my whole heart, mind and soul.

Random review I typed (might not make sense) if you wanna read below

Scavengers Reign is definitely a solid 10/10, which is rare because I hate EVERYTHING. I know i'm no famous reviewer, but i do spend a lot of my free time viewing a lot of cartoons and movies; i guess i'm a buff about this sort of thing.

Scavengers Reign is very deep with story telling. Most of what we know is literally right in our face; we see the cycle of life in this alien planet and we see the way the life works without humans-and with.

In a way, this show is like Primal. Primal doesn't carry much dialogue; but in terms of aesthetic and animation similarities, and how it displays both worlds, are very similar.

Scavengers Reign and Primal both set up their individual episodes as if it were almost as, if for whatever reason that episode was the last, it would somewhat fit perfectly and allow the viewer to make up what they felt like happened based on what we knew from previous episodes, or the short encounters experienced in the hypothetical final episode itself.

Something I noticed about both shows, was that the episodes didn't feel like full cliff hangers. If the show ended right when Ursula saw the ship, and that was it, I could assume everything that happened between that episode and the current final one happened as it did or similar, maybe not the fungal human space monks, though; but everything else was totally plausible and then some.

Primal is similar, but different. Primal doesn't rely on dialogue story telling or very many flashbacks. Iirc, Primal has very few flashback scenes except when it is moments of critical standing or a side character/antagonist. Even the T-Rex has ptsd to some extent, but not a single word is uttered to tell you this. Instead, situations are introduced (similar to Scavengers reign) and we, the viewer, are tasked with puzzling the story together without dialogue and with only the rapid action and daily life of a Caveman and T-rex (for the most part).

Because of my love for Primal, Scavengers Reign really itches what I wanted primal to be, minus the Sci fi future stuff. There was dialogue, a connection to characters, and much more. While Primal had that minus dialogue, Scavengers Reign had it in a much more relatable and connective way; almost like you knew these characters before they got to where they are.

I urge you, if you enjoy Scavengers Reign and love prehistoric Era fiction, Primal is a show you should watch if Scavengers Reign goes on a hiatus until their next season (if they have one, I hope they do!). If you don't mind gore, fighting, and animated violence, I highly recommend Primal to give you the fix you desire until new episodes of Scavengers Reign drops after season 1 ends (if it hasn't already, I'm unsure if episode 12 is the end).

The creators of both shows definitely put a lot of work, effort, and love into their shows. I love each one with an unconditional amount of respect and amazement. I hope you guys decide to give Primal a try; and hope I explained things to the best of my ability here.

I love both of these shows, and hope more people start talking about how great Scavengers Reign is; I'm so happy people are developing a fandom on this site for the cartoon!

Thank you for reading this random blurb, lol

[phantom-of-the-ruckus]

Hello puppets theories #2: Why I can't see the handeemen as related

1/?

Special thanks to my discord sister (whose actually my best friend) and co-creator of the theories: @dolly-royal for hearing me rambling about evil puppets and cults, helping so much finding out my points, and bringing up points I did not notice.

This will be a jungle of many reasons why I don't see the handemen as related. There is a change individual posts will be created furthering these points.

And who from now on will be part of my tag list for my theories and observations

(If you want to be part of the list or wish to part take in discussions feel free to DM!!)

special thanks to @dreamland-creations for hearing my rambles and seeing my constant screenshots (ily little meow meow/planotic/affectionate)

Before reading this, please read my previous lore for more dept:

(I am linking the one with the reblog because Andrew replied to that tweet I shared, and explain to me the connection but sorta confirmed that Owen and Mortimer are indeed Gods)

As a quick recap. I came out with the theory that Riley believed Mortimer was her "Father" at first as she tried to explain logically (avoiding the supernatural aspects) until she accepted that Owen created her and just sees Mortimer as a leader. She just refers o him as her "true father" out of respect.

I am adding here some things that I forgot to mention:

I am very well aware of the first Nick Nack tape, however I will say this: The tape is originally around in the early years of the take-over. I have a theory in-process regarding the timeline. So that means during that tape Riley was refusing Owen as her creator.

Going also back to the same point. Daisy canonically has said and it's implied she doesn't really care what the others do as long as they're nice to her. She hasn't shown any evidence based on the puppet interactions that she sees them as a family. So no, I don't think she sees Mortimer or Owen as her fathers.

Nick Nack is the only handeemen that doesn't address Mortimer as father or has shown to see him as such + Not to mention he doesn't treat the others as family or has any indications that he sees them as such as evidently with Riley and Daisy.

So, with those things out of the way. I'll start with a post I wanted to make for a long time and it's about my arguments of why I strongly disagree with the view the puppets are related.

Disclaimer: I am not calling out or criticizing those who believe it. Although this is my personal opinion, yours is just as valid as mine and you have every right to disagree with me. Until we have an actual response, we only have speculation

So, I'll divide this into several points that I am working alongside with Amber (Dolly-Royal) to address our POV.

Part 1: The talks about Gods: Owen is not actually viewed as a father.

This is mostly about the cannon fact that Owen is a puppet God. It is established several points in the game as well as in the tapes itself. This is a straight-up fact that was actually brought in the first hello puppets game when Scout and host find Owen's dead body turned into a puppet-like human and Scout saying the following:

"Shit! That's Owen, that's the guy that made us ...(proceeds to explain Owen creating them and how he regrets it now)... it is weird to met your god" (Scout, Hello Puppets!)

This probably seems like some sort of irrelevant, or simply a weird comment off made from the first game, but actually...this is shown and implied several times in the actual gameplay of the midnight show itself.

The first example that I can actually think it was implicitly implied that Owen was a sort of God to the puppets was during the second phase of Riley's level where Owen calls her "Atheist" after she denied that he created her and believed that the puppets evolved.

I can see people taking this as Owen commenting in the whole evolution reflects Atheist beliefs, but that wouldn't exactly fit within the conversation Owen and Riley were having. Owen could simply remark that he was her father instead of calling her an Atheist if it was actually the case that he was her father as in terms of family and not Father as "Father of creation", which she sorta implies during off the conversation in one of the tapes.

"We are just reflections of our creator. A river and a tributary." (Daisy Danger loyalty tapes #7)

This goes pretty much goes along with the whole "Owen is a puppet God" narrative in the Midnight show as a whole. I did mention before that as someone who grew up in a religious environment, I was not stranger to see people referring to God as "Father" (in terms of Father of creation)

So, I wouldn't be rare for the puppets to refer to Owen as their father of creation, while Riley wouldn't due to not believing in God (hence why she was a puppet Atheist) which does goes along with this phrase she says during our first encounter with her in the MS.

"The others may call you that; but as far as I am concerned, Mortimer is our father, and you are just a Lab Rat" (Riley Ruckus first level, Hello Puppets!: The midnight show)

I believe that Riley was making clear she wouldn't call Owen her father because he was not the one who breathe life into her as it was Mortimer who did so, and therefore should receive the title of "Father" according to her mindset.

I did briefly mention a theory of mine involving Riley perspective of Mortimer at the end of my first long post focused on the lore and talk more about the cult theory:

It would make sense for Riley to call Owen a simple nobody who is no use to her other than some testing subject. Why would she care about a God she doesn't believe in? After all, Owen is not a puppet but just a human, a cattle for them.

Anyways, outside Riley referring to Owen as "The creator" there are other instances in the tapes and the actual gameplay where Owen is implied or is referred to be a God. There are the mentions of religion of the game by Daisy, but I'll divulge into later. Strangely enough, Mortimer is the one who constantly has made a lot of religious comments and these implications, Riley appears to be the second one. Daisy and Nick don't really mention much.

Anyways, I'll start with the minor implications towards Owen being confirmed in the game to be a good.

"For the love of Owen!" (Mortimer, Nick loyalty tapes #1 I believe. Hello puppet Midnight show)

This one is the most straight forward. This is clearly a reference to the phrase "For the love of God!", except that God was replaced by Owen because Owen is the creator, and therefore the actual God figure of the puppets.

Second one is more of an implication

"You'd rat out Owen himself if it got you a pat on the head" (Mortimer, Daisy loyalty tapes #7, Hello Puppets: Midnight Show)

Although some might argue that they would say that Nick would rat out their "Father", I actually argue that Mortimer comment about Nick ratting out Owen is actually about Nick ratting God himself just to get the benefits

Which does go along with Mortimer calling Nick a "Judas" who according to the New Testament in the bible betrayed Jesus (who was also referred to as God himself) for some benefits, or what Mortimer implies "A pat on the head"

This is actually into Mortimer's character, but that would be part of another segment.

Anyways, the most important reference Mortimer directly makes into the game in this cut scene:

Based on the context, and implications of Owen being a creator of the game, it's pretty clear Mortimer is referring to his situation with Owen himself as it's a conversation they have during that cutscene.

I am still trying to figure out what did the creators themselves particularly meant during that cutscene, but my best take is that Mortimer is referring to his plans to force Owen into submitting to the puppets.

The puppets have dark plans to survive and according to Scout take over the world, but well that might be just an exaggeration or an actual plan, but nothing of the sort was explained in the game prequel. We know that Owen tried to stop the puppets multiple times, and they would not be able to thrive because Owen did intend to undo the spell and at the end of the game it is implied that he wants to destroy them.

I would also love to mention something else Mortimer mentions "Owen's presence haunting the Handeemen." I think this has to do with the poetic parallel Andrew Allen mentions in this tweet:

I do believe Andrew confirmed that Owen and Mortimer are considered Gods among the puppets themselves (which could explain why Riley refers as Owen was an impostor), but as the religion suggest, Mortimer would be always lesser than Owen himself, and even though he tries to give what the puppets need (A shaman, a guide) he would always be overshadowed by the greater God that created them all.

This actually reminds of the whole Satan and God complex in many religions. According to some beliefs (not mine) Satan wanted to be like a God, but he is always lesser to Jehovah/God/Jesus. Which ironically both are represented as the Evil (Satan) and Good (God) of the world.

Which would not be shocking if the creators got some inspiration by the major ruling religions of the world like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (ironically, the later two taking inspirations from Judaism, and Islam from Christianity as well. Hence, why they are similar in some aspects)

Part 2: The Handeemen: It appears to be a cult

Heavy trigger warning for cult talks and cult characteristics.

For this section, I'll focus more into the character of Riley herself as she appears to have the most prominent behavior that I think might be hints it's not a "Family" but rather a cult

As my dear friend Stich pointed out in one of our conversations, we believe that the puppets are in, as she puts it, "A patriarchal cult" with Mortimer as their leader and the puppets as the twisted "Family" based on some strange behaviors the puppets exhibit throughout the game.

More notably:

"Mortimer should not be defied"

Throughout later in the tapes from the puppets and the game itself, you can see that Mortimer is being quite a respected individual and who the puppets will side with no matter what (more or less) it is clear that they follow him out of fear and also respect as he was the one who brought them to life and the one that they ought their loyalty towards him.

Still...they refused to go against Mortimer no matter what he does or what even Owen says.

I am well aware of the whole puppet rebellion but I actually have an interested take and I think I mentioned before in my headcannons, but I'll say it again:

Riley was visibly unsure when it came to "overthrow" Mortimer.

If you look closely at her conversation with Daisy in tape #12 (Riley's tapes) Riley has a peculiar way of sinking into the idea of betraying Mortimer:

"....That would be treason..."

If you listen to the tape closely, you can actually hear Riley is rather muttering with a slight hint of horror in her voice. Not to mention she takes a pause before saying more loudly

"If Mortimer knew..."

Wish is obviously referring to Mortimer getting upset about the idea but she's unable to bring herself to finish the sentence as she knows what Mortimer would do, which Daisy does explain that Mortimer would pretty much make Riley's life a living hell as Daisy suggest Riley should become the new leader.

Surprisingly, the first thing Riley says is a direct "No" as she starts to have a hard time explaining why she disagrees if you focus on the way her VA (Jannel Bierch) delivers this line.

"No. This...This is not a rational plan."

What I find interesting, besides Riley having issues with Mortimer's leadership over the puppets, Riley is quick to refuse the idea of throwing "A'coup", and it's actually Daisy that convinces her to carry on with the plan but rather tackles on one of Riley's ego to convince her to carry out the plan as if you noticed, Riley seems to be a character that adores admiration and to prove herself constantly as a character and be always right.

Still, even though she carries out with her plan, she still makes clear she doesn't want to do this and has no choice according to her last tape: Riley's loyalty tape #15

"Mortimer. Our true father. Our leader. It gives me no pleasure to say, that we have assembled here to dispose you today.....I will always revere the name Mortimer Handee; but your leadership has become unsteady, and it's time for someone else to lead the puppets to glory."

What I find curious is how Riley still remains respectful towards Mortimer even after she announces that she's trying to overthrow him. She even makes clear that this is something that could potentially pain her, but stills holds respect to Mortimer Handee as a character.

Why am I bringing this up? I'm bringing this up because I believe might have the mentality of a cultist in regard to her leader that are common within cults. I've been trying to reach articles in regard to the subject, but I would divulge more into the whole what makes them a cult than explaining the whole "family aspect", so decided to pull out some small characteristics of this small article.

More specifically, I want to bring these particular points out.

One of the biggest things that made me curious about why the Handeemen particularly remained loyal to Mortimer besides his treatment of them and how tired they are of him. I think this particular characters goes well with the whole

"Not defying Mortimer" and the portions I show of Riley's dialogue, that are proof that she's still loyal to Mortimer regardless of what he did to her. Before any of you tell me "Phantom, he manipulated Riley to stay with her with Rosco"

I do agree, but if you look closely at these subtitles and the way Riley thanks Mortimer then it does become clear Riley easily fell into her devotion with Mortimer:

This was one of the biggest hints that the Handeemen were a cult was the way Riley behaved around and some of the things she said. One of the other hints that she gives is in her personal dialogue in tapes and outside tapes:

Riley almost never talks about herself in a singular way when it comes to the handeemen. It is almost always the Handemeen as a whole. She does occasionally refer to herself, but when it comes to the Handemen it is always "We" as a whole.

Even she addresses when she complains about Mortimer, she briefly mentions "Yeah, he constantly gets upset over me because he forgets what he ordered me" but her biggest complaint is how "Mortimer is going to bring down the puppets"

Once again going with the whole "Us" mentality, and I think this portion of the article might be the reason why:

When you think more about this, that would make much sense into why Riley would be more concern about the Handeemen than for example let's say Owen or any of the hosts, and event Scout herself.

I have another reason why she acts the way with Owen and the other humans, but let's focus on Scout for a moment.

In the first game Riley mentions that she doesn't consider Scout "A Handeemen" in other words, she is not one of their kind. I've always wondered about why Riley despises Scouts so much and I think it is not exactly about her [Scout] being created to destroy the handeemen (which I highly doubt Riley is aware) but rather this:

Scout can arguably be considered as an outsider to the Handeemen group since she's not a handeemen (which furthers down my point)

I am mentioning this because I want to elaborate into a possible meaning of "Family" in the sense of the cult based on these two observations.

Outside like one or three mentions of the usage "Father" Mortimer is referred by his first same and is talked more about as a leader than a "Father." (there is no evidence proving he ordered not to be called a father)

What Riley considers her "family" just goes into the three Handemeen, however, she treats them more as colleagues/and a leader rather than a family + she referred to them as a family in just two "occasions" but gave no indication she sees them as such.

As I established before, Riley is nonetheless a loyal follower to Mortimer's cult. As from my previous point, I believe that Mortimer has more the association of a God than a father (another hint that is a cult) and I believe that everyone may probably have misinterpreted the whole "puppet Children"in the literal sense rather than creations considering Mortimer thinks of them more as subjects than a family (which I strongly believe he was using to guilt-trip the handeemen into submission)

(This is from Superhorrorbro tapes video. This is tape #15)

I think the whole "family" and "children of Mortimer" has a lot to do to what my good friend Stich herself said as she believes "The Handeemen are in a Patriarchal cult as a twisted "Family". "(implying she agrees they are not related)

Like I mentioned before, the usage of family can have a different connotation when it comes to religious subjects, and it is not strange for cults to use the terminology of "Family" to refer to the group inside the cult (which was confirmed by an ex-cultist.) E.I Charles' Manson's cult was referred to as a "family" even though the members were not related to each other at all.

This most likely tackles into one of the aspects cults tend to do with the followers as a form of abuse and control (taken from this Article this would be used a bit more into part 3)

I did mention before that I believe the puppets have needs of their own. According to Marlow's hierarchy, there is a need for love and belonging which correlates to something the cults prey upon to gather new followers, and I believe this is where the whole "family" thing becomes strong.

Family for the puppets is not about being an actual family. They are in a closeted group, an elite group (according to the previous "cult characteristics article" for a better explanation)

(I'll argue that instead of humanity, is referring to the well-being of their kind)

The usage of family to them is more about being part of something and belong. This can be a parallel to the religious aspects of cults. Although it's not prominent, the references to religion and Gods is no stranger in the game and is another aspect of the cult. This goes along with the "how to stuff article" mentions briefly in one of the things cults seek out for leaders that I mentioned later.

The best example of what I mean with the "family" usage of things would be from a work of Stephen King himself "Children of the Corn." For a quick summary, here's what google summarizes the movie to be:

I hardly doubt that all the children may be related (some might be) but I can see a parallel of them as just as the Handemmen being the loyal subjects who serve a higher figure and leader: Mortimer Handee.

This also goes along with Mortimer being referred almost always as the Handeemen leader, which even Riley does. Outside tape 1, Mortimer is simply referred by his name which I found strange.

He's always refer as Mortimer and "Sir" but not father. Like I said before, there is no indication that he demanded not to be referred as, but this might be because of the whole cult structure and calling Mortimer their leader and refer to his name is a sign from the puppets that they respect him.

Mortimer constantly refers to himself as a person of higher standing, which Andrew did confirm (think) that the puppets are in a sort of hierarchy where Mortimer comes first. He does imply it with this:

The game itself also treats Mortimer as the ultimate power of the puppets, which goes along with what I am saying.

There are also many points I want to bring about the cult theory, but that will divulge less into the subject of "Not being related" into this series of analytical posts, so that would be another thing for another set of posts.

I'll eventually released the other posts and make a master posts combining all of them into one place as Tumblr will not allow me to post pictures.

[yentran1403]

TOP 5 THINGS I LEARNED IN WRI227!!!

Welcome to my second post talking about interesting things that I have learned from my course WRI227. Today I will be discussing the lecture materials that I found particularly fascinating from Class 6 - Online Voice & Rhetoric. Enjoy your reading📖!

1. Rhetoric is the Art of Persuasion🗣️

Rhetoric is an important subset of communication studies. This term basically refers to the art of speaking or writing effectively. Rhetoric can be deployed in services of commercialism like selling things and selling ideas. Some examples of rhetoric are when a lawyer convinces the jury of whether the defendant is guilty or not, advertisers create slogans, politicians inspire people to act, and so on. If you want to be a content creator, using rhetoric can help convince the viewers to not only look at your online content but also to engage with it. This leads to more followers and attention from advertisers. Additionally, all of these factors lead to monetizing your content 💴. In short, rhetoric is a useful tool that helps you get your point across.

2. Emojis Can Initiate Engagement🤓

Emojis are essential to communicate emotion and convey messages (Ge & Gretzel, 2018). Additionally, emojis can lighten up statements as well. Emojis may look silly, but they are actually quite effective when it comes to getting the audience’s attention. You guys have probably noticed that content creators often use A LOT of emojis in their content to initiate engagement and draw attention to a particular product (Ge & Gretzel, 2018). Also fun fact, the gesture emoji is statistically proven to be the most used. I found this statistic to be very surprising because I always thought that the heart emoji❤️ or the laughing emoji😂 would be the ones that the audience uses the most. In general, we can also say that some emojis have far more flexibility in use compared to language depending on the situation.

3. Luck is NOT Always On Your Side☘️

Unfortunately, being an online content creator or an influencer sometimes is not as fun and easy as it may sound😰. There are tons of challenges that you have to face and this job does not always work out for everyone. Sometimes you have to rely on luck on your road to success and not just your hard work alone (Trusolino, 2023). I am sure you guys have moments of meeting people in your life where the conversation would start with “You are so lucky. How did you become this successful? I have better qualifications but I am not as successful as you”. You would probably receive a very vague answer from them. A study has proven that the most talented individuals are rarely the most successful individuals in life. Most of the time, people who are mediocre but lucky have a greater chance of becoming much more successful (Trusolino, 2023). Indeed a frustrating statement to make but it is what it is😔.

4. Do Not Take Business Criticism (1-Star Review) Personally🌟

This is one aspect that I have learned when reading the article "Diagramming the Story of a 1-Star Review" by Miriam Ellis. If one takes business criticism personally, both the owner and the consumer won't be able to reach a peaceful resolution. To make both sides feel satisfied, we need responsible communication (Ellis, 2016). The owner's job is to own up to his/her mistakes, accept responsibility, and not to correct the customer or justify himself/herself (Ellis, 2016). Customers, on the other hand, should have respect to another human's being livelihood, no matter how disappointed and angry they are with the business (Ellis, 2016). After all, insulting people will definitely lead you to nowhere.

5. Adding numbers in the Subject Line is an Effective Email Marketing Best Practice📨

I was very surprised when I read the article "37 Email Marketing Tips for Messages that Get Opened, Read, and Clicked" by Henneke and realized that adding numbers to an email subject line can have a higher chance of attracting attention from people. Subject lines with numbers may pique one's curiosity and urge them to open the email. It may also demonstrate a straightforward message if you are sending them an offer, and set the right expectations.

[fozmeadows]

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

[artbyblastweave]

BLASTWEAVE what does steven universe have in common with watchmen?

Both Steven Universe and Watchmen are groundbreaking entries in their respective genres that demonstrate a deep understanding of the appeal of the genre they’re working in, and engage with their ideas on a previously unheard-of level for the medium. That breaks ground and clears the way for what other works in the genre can get away with. 

Steven Universe showed that, well, first of all that you can make a cartoon that’s fundamentally ideologically queer beyond a few side characters, but also that you can have an emotionally intelligent and mature children's cartoon where the character nuance and depth and development are all taken very seriously. Watchmen showed that you could write serious and interesting narratives about superheroes if you were willing to roll with the crazy. (Neither of them was the first to do the things I’m ascribing to them, but I do think that they’re what made it stick for their respective fields.)

In doing so, though, both works create/created a catch 22 for all future works in their genre. Part of what made both of them so good is that they were willing to critically unpack and air out the ugly implications of their format that usually get chalked up to suspension of disbelief, and now that that’s out in the open it becomes very difficult not to think about how any other given work is or isn’t addressing those issues- even if they aren’t equipped to address those issues in the scope of the story they’re trying to tell. Watchmen asked questions about who sanctions superheroes, what qualifies you to do that work, where the line is between heroism and fascism or if there even is one, whether the agency to act means you have a right or a duty to act, whether anyone who seriously bought into the superhero thing could possibly be doing it for good reasons, and, if they somehow were, how long you can care with the intensity necessary to be an effective hero without suffering burnout (not long.) I literally can’t think of a single superhero thing worth reading that isn’t in some way in conversation with Watchmen - you now kind of have to answer those questions, explicitly or implicitly, even if your books thesis is “Alan Moore sucks eggs and being a superhero is very sustainable and fantastic.” If you just leave the question of whether your superheroes are justified completely unaddressed, there’s an uncomfortable discordance there, because we’ve seen the extreme end of that sliding scale in the form of the Comedian and if the narrative doesn’t engage with what makes the protagonist not Edward Blake, it can feel worrisome. If they try and then botch it it can feel alarming.

Steven Universe has a similar thing going on, at least for me. It’s the only unironic, non-parodic children’s series that’s really, seriously unpacked how fucked up and traumatic it would be to grow up as the archetypical All-loving Spirited Saturday Morning Cartoon Protagonist, how warped and dysfunctional a household that enabled that lifestyle could be at its worst, and what the future looks like when your whole childhood was centered on a now-ended conflict. ( a lot of cartoons flirt with that last one but don’t commit.) I’ve seen jokes and intended-as-cracky fan theories about this for years, surrounding lots of other cartoons (Ben 10, Pokemon, Powerpuff Girls) but almost never with the assumption that the creators are on the same page as them. I’ve seen stories that are post-modern reimaginings using the same general archetypes or whatever (Venture Brothers) but that’s not this! SU told an entertaining story earnestly, and then engaged with the emotional fallout of the story it told, with an unheard-of breadth and depth. A whole season of unpacking! No other show has ever been allowed to sink that much effort into closure. That’s usually what Fanfic is for.

I think it’s great, and that shows like Infinity Train and The Owl House are able to go as hard as they do largely because of Steven Universe’s precedent- but no matter how good a cartoon is, I can’t watch them without having this voice in the back of my head going “Oh, these children are going to grow up to be broken wrecks, bar an extensive and harsh healing process that kinda hurts to watch, huh.”

The issue is that not every cartoon can be Steven Universe, where the project was to thoughtfully and sensitively unpack this stuff. It’s a fair bet that we’ll probably never see a show with that exact project again (not least because of the loss of novelty value.) You’ve got your own stories you wanna tell that’ll run their own course, mostly aimed at children, there objectively isn’t narrative or financial room for most stories to unpack these assumptions if that wasn’t the goal going in. For example, Gravity Falls had pretty tight storytelling and a narrative that absolutely had room for a post-script "where-do-we-go-from-here” plot- it sped-run the “oh no, childhood’s ending” thing- and it’s pretty telling that the aftermath, healing process, interpersonal relationships and so forth are one of the things that that fandom heavily fixates on. The narrative had such a clean ending that it made people go looking for the mess. That’s not bad! It’s how most storytelling works! But now I look at any cartoon with kid heroes that’s meant to be taken even marginally seriously and go, Oh. Win the battle, lose the war. Then I feel sad. The contrast, of course, is that most superhero works actually can be, and in fact benefit from trying to be like Watchmen, because all the questions Watchmen raises about the ethics of power are also just.... like.... the most interesting storytelling hooks if you want to write a cape thing with real themes. They’re the kind of stories we’d have gotten years prior naturally if not for the CCA boondoggle. Admittedly it kinda creates a different problem where most “good” cape media is inescapably self-referential and draws on picking apart the conventions of a 60-70-year old canon that hasn’t been in wide circulation in years. But! I also think there’s a stronger obligation there to keep superhero fans in check- if your superhero thing isn’t making the reader question the ethics of violence and individual heroism in the face of systemic injustice, you wind up with people who unironically think Frank Castle is a role model to be emulated. We all know that guy. Children’s media doesn’t really produce that guy the same way, although it can draw them in from other corners. Superhero media often needs to be self-critical in a way children’s cartoons don’t always have to be.

[blind-rats]

The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself. 

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement. 

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.

[blackradandmad]

why blippi is rotting yr children's brains

preface: i literally expect no one to read this. it is an essay length, strong opinion piece critiquing a niche youtube-based children's show that i don't expect most of y'all to even have knowledge of lol. but like, i promise that even if you know nothing about what i'm talking about, in my incredibly, super humble opinion, it's a good piece of writing and interesting nonetheless. anyway if you read this whole thing for some reason yr really hot and we should kiss.

i thoroughly vet everything my child watches before he watches it, episode by episode. and we rarely watch youtube for entertainment; we usually just look up educational videos when he has a question about something and wants more detail than i can provide him. and that's mainly because children's content on youtube is so fucking troubling and distressing. i don't judge parents who give their children a tablet at a restaurant at all bc i've been there and sometimes it's easier on everyone to just put on a video and avoid a giant scene, but i do judge parents who just leave their children alone with youtube kids on autoplay.

take stevin john, a literal millionaire who got famous from dressing up as a silly character called blippi and going on tours of places like aquariums, zoos, construction sites, etc and posting it on youtube. this has branched into a whole empire of blippi videos, hulu shows and specials, live shows and tours (that he outsources to another character actor), merchandise and so on. this 30-something year old man cites his main influence as being mr. rogers, but i question if he's ever even seen an episode of that program.

mr. rogers had no background in early childhood development or media production, but he revolutionized the world of children's media, because he respected his audience and didn't shy away from real world situations, all while creating a show with an enormous heart. mr. rogers begins his episodes by inviting the viewer in, literally changing his attire to be more comfortable, and talking about/doing things he genuinely cares about. whereas mr. rogers calmly and maturely addresses the viewer, blippi puts on a high pitched, contrived voice, interjecting every other sentence with a forced exclamation such as, "teehee! we're having so much fun!"

i don't find it a coincidence that john (blippi) is a veteran, either. his videos are completely devoid of the absurd, abstract, childlike thinking that makes children's media fun, creative, and entertaining. his thinking and process is methodical, devoid of emotion, and very superficial. this line of thinking clearly shows the kind of creative sterilization and emphasis on sameness and conformity instilled in the military. blippi simply observes things and interacts with them in a stale, matter-of-fact way. "this ball is purple! this ball is pink! anyway... what's over there? teehee! a car! vroom, vroom!" objects are colors, toy cars don't do anything but drive, curiosity is simply not encouraged.

he uses the "it's educational!" excuse to hide the fact that his show lacks everything that makes media a valuable resource for children to consume in the first place. further than identifying colors, numbers, and the occasional letter or shape, there is just this total lack of children's need for social and emotional development. when mr. rogers breaks the fourth wall to address the viewer and let them know they're special, it feels authentic and natural, because we've spent the last half hour building whole worlds with diverse characters and unique stories in a pretend neighborhood, learning about and enjoying different musical instruments, being exposed to and making friends with (even if parasocially, it is still a real bond to children when done properly) children who are similar to us in character regardless of physical or environmental differences, feeding the fish, making art together, and so on. when blippi tells the viewer, "you are very special, and i enjoy spending time with you!" it falls completely flat and feels unearned, because the last half hour was spent running around a soft play center pointing at bright, colorful objects, visiting interesting locations like farms or fruit production factories while failing to acknowledge the humanity of the humans actually working there (everything is machine or product focused; the human workers are simply an extension of the machine), learning "fun facts" about elephants that just list attributes of elephants, not taking the opportunity to inform the viewers of elephants' intelligence, or diet, or matriarchal society. it is a loud, sensory overwhelming display of a man so disconnected from the social and emotional needs and desires of children that he assumes they're stupid, easily entertained idiots who only need some silly dances and fast-moving cartoon graphics to give their attention (meaning time and desire to purchase products meaning $$$). john clearly views his audience as a means to gaming the algorithm and ultimately a paycheck by the hollow way he addresses them.

the show is so narcissistic, so focused on all the fun blippi is supposedly having, but he lacks any of the character traits that make individual children's show hosts memorable, so much so that he was able to have someone else who doesn't even vaguely resemble him dress as blippi and impersonate him and host the show or appear at live shows, and it went unnoticed by most of his toddler and child audience. the show is so formulaic and the character of blippi is so unmemorable that instead of taking the blue's clues route of developing a story of the host leaving for college and his brother now stepping in, or making some sort of believable excuse for the change in actors, they can simply swap him out with some random guy and not acknowledge it at all. although a comedy show for older children, the amanda show in no way could or would try to replicate the show with the same name but swapping out amanda bynes with a random teenage girl who is clearly not amanda bynes. it's weird and nonsensical and shows that his character is so much of a farce put on for a paycheck that not even his dedicated audience is affected or even cares when he is replaced by a random, unknown person.

this is completely garbage content made by an opportunist with no experience with children who saw his nephew watching children's youtube content, took it at complete surface level and still hasn't realized that while children's content only looks and feels so easy, entertaining, and enriching because it is so hard to do well. even with outsourcing his music, that aspect of the show still sucks. famous and successful children's musician, raffi, is known for his song describing the life of a little white whale, called "baby beluga." it opens with a calm strumming of his guitar, followed by the lyrics, "baby beluga in the deep blue sea/swim so wild and you swim so free/heaven above/sea below/and a little white whale on the go." is it silly and kind of pointless? yes, but the point is that he is captivating children and showing them the fun of listening to music, dancing, singing, and appreciating art. the "excavator song" featured in an episode of blippi about construction vehicles opens with what sounds like a default garageband loop and the flatly sung lyrics, "i'm an excavator/i'm an excavator/hey dirt, see you later/i'm an excavator." i don't feel i have to meticulously analyze the aforementioned lyrics; the stark contrast should speak for itself.

i have a million more criticisms about both blippi specifically and youtube children's content as a whole, but this is already so long and i doubt many people will get this far anyway. it's an issue i was completely apathetic towards until i had my own child and had to wean him off these kinds of junk food shows because i realized the fast-paced visuals and bright colors and repetitive songs/lyrics were putting him in this spaced-out, fugue state, and he thought he could demand this show or that show whenever he wanted. the moment he started regularly yelling things like, "watch! cars!" or "no! click it!" i knew i had to be a lot more invested in the things he watched even if just for entertainment or as a soothing message. i showed him an episode of mr. rogers yesterday and feared it would be too slow to hold his attention, but he was mesmerized, greeting and interacting with mr. rogers verbally, asking me, "what's that?" to different objects on the screen. since purging this low-brow children's entertainment, he has had a noticeable increase in attention span and concentration, can focus on a task for longer amounts of times, is more likely to "read"/look through books without me initiating it, and doesn't throw a fit when the tv/my laptop is off.

i just know that for me, growing up with so much unsupervised internet access definitely led me to real-world pain and consequences, and it seems like now children are born with an iphone as an extension of their arm. if my child is going to be consuming videos, i'm definitely supervising every second and am going to be highly critical of the videos and the credentials (or lack thereof) of the creators and team behind it. but i also know, from pure observation admittedly, that parents letting youtube kids autoplay parent their children for hours at a time is not an uncommon occurrence. and it worries me that a generation of children are being raised on videos that rely on being as loud and bright and superficially enjoyable as possible. what's the use of a child knowing their colors and alphabet if they don't know how to treat people with kindness and empathy and respect? there is something wrong for a children's show host to plug the spelling of his name at the end of his videos ("well, that's the end of this video. but if you wanna watch more of my videos, just type in my name! can you spell my name with me? b-l-i-p-p-i!") after essentially rotting his audiences' brains for a half hour. there's something so insidious about the prioritization of naming different parts of construction vehicles over honest depictions of and conversations about dealing with feelings, or why someone with autism may act differently than you, or what to do when you feel lonely, or ways to make art and express yrself creatively. also, not to mention the blatant police propaganda and outright worship is seriously jarring; as a black mother to a visibly non-white child, i cannot sit there and watch blippi show kids how to be a bootlicker for the shittiest profession on earth, but that could be a whole essay in and of itself.

anyway, thanks for reading, if yr looking for quality children's content, i recommend, in no specific order: mr. rogers, sesame street, the electric company, molly of denali, daniel tiger, bluey!, blue's clues, the odd squad, word party, trash truck, puffin rock, uhh... that's definitely not an extensive list but that's just off the dome!!! ok bye y'all <333

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet. 

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators. 

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained. 

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

[littleabriel-blog]

My Problem with Loki

Loki is a character beloved by many people. He has been for a decade now, although some people who read comics before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing were fans of him long before the first Thor came out. Over the years since his appearance in that movie the character has gone through a lot of changes, evolving from a villain to an anti-hero both in the MCU and in the comics, the latter even killing off his original incarnation to reincarnate him in a younger body resembling Tom Hiddleston in the hopes that the comics could capitalize on his popularity in order to sell more books. That move, unfortunately, did not bear fruit, with Loki’s solo series being canceled after only five issues. However, Loki remained popular in the movies, so much so that when he was killed off in Infinity War, people were pissed.

As a result of his enduring popularity, Kevin Feige and company decided to give Loki his own solo series on Disney+ when the decision was made to create a string of MCU tie-in shows to supplement the movies, and boost subscription numbers to Disney’s new streaming service. Fans of the character rejoiced. Finally, our favorite character was going to be in the spotlight, and not be merely a supporting character for Thor and hopefully not a butt monkey for the Avengers like he was in the third act of the movie of the same name. WandaVision and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier had previously had well-received and successful debuts on that same platform, and it was hoped that Loki would do the same. Loki turned out to be the most successful of the Disney+ MCU shows that have come out so far, scoring highest in the ratings. As of this writing, it holds a 93% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 8.5 on IMDb.

Those numbers, however, don’t reflect the entire audience and there were a lot of people who were not altogether happy with the product we received. Many people who had been hardcore fans of Loki since Tom Hiddleston first put on the horned helmet were not pleased, myself included.  

The show wasn’t all bad. It did set up the multiverse, introduced Kang, introduced Mobius. The special effects were outstanding, a lot of the gags were hilarious, and we did get some character development from Loki before the spotlight fell away from him and he became all about panting after the real main character...more on that in a few.  

So many things, however, were wrong.  

If you liked the show, thought it was perfect, and were a fan of the romance, that’s perfectly fine. There is no such thing as a wrong opinion on a work of fiction. Everyone has their interpretations, everyone has their likes and dislikes, and there is nothing wrong with liking the show. There is also nothing wrong with not liking the show. This is a concept that people on both sides of the debate fail to understand, and I have witnessed flame wars, harassment from individuals on both sides, harassment of creators on social media from both sides, and various bits of biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other assorted types of phobias on display. I have seen people accuse people who have different opinions on the show than them of “not being a true Loki fan” and stating that people who have certain interpretations of the character don’t “truly know Loki”.

I’m not here to do that, and I assure you, if you liked the show, that’s fine. You’re allowed to. I’m allowed to not like it, and I’m allowed to explained why I didn’t like it just as you’re allowed to explain why you did. As long as both of us are being respectful, expressing an opinion is good. There is expressing an opinion and offering constructive criticism, however, and then there is namecalling, trolling, and having a tantrum and accusing someone of being “aggressive” when they don’t share the same opinion you do.

There is a huge difference between saying “I find the character of Sylvie to be problematic, and here is why” and “I think fans of Sylvie are sick and need therapy”, and people need to learn the difference between the two. Unfortunately, you have people who have become very protective of their favorite characters and tend to take any criticism leveled at said characters personally. It’s basically “You don’t like them? Well then you don’t like me, and since you don’t like me, I don’t like you.” Which is, frankly, a dangerous mentality to have. We are talking about fictional characters, not real people, and there is no need to jump to the defense of someone who does not exist. It is those people who tend to demonstrate that they have unstable personalities and immaturity, and they are the ones I have started blocking on Twitter because, being an adult woman, I don’t have the patience to deal with immature nonsense like that.

So, if you read this and then decide you want to hunt me down to give me a piece of your mind, tell me that I’m not a “true” fan of Loki, and accuse me of whatever, don’t bother. This piece isn’t here for that. It’s here because I wanted to compile my thoughts and feelings in a way that would better for me to articulate. It’s more or less a venting mechanism, purely for my benefit. If someone else gets something out of it, fine. If the creators of the show happen to see it, which is very unlikely because A) I’m not exactly going to push it onto them on their social media to get them to read it and B) they already get bombarded with tons of opinions on the show on a daily basis and aren’t going to care about one more voice added to the mix, even one who has basically compiled a novel, then alright.

And it is a novel, because I have a lot to say about Loki. I have been a huge fan of the character since long before Tom Hiddleston began playing him. My first encounter with Marvel’s Loki came in the form of the X-Men comics, specifically The Asgardian Wars run. It’s available in trade, and you should check it out. I read that run when I was around 10 years old, and I enjoyed Loki as the bad guy in the two stories that make up the collection. The first has him creating a special wish fountain that has a monkey’s paw effect in that it imbues mortals with special gifts and powers, and has the potential to make Earth a better place, but at the cost of killing every magical person and being on Earth. The X-Men and Alpha Flight find out about this after a plane piloted by the wife of one of the X-Men happens to crash in the general location the fountain is located. The two teams go to investigate, Shaman and Snowbird who are both magical beings begin dying, it’s discovered Loki created the fountain in order to score brownie points with The Ones Who Sit Above In Shadow (a pantheon of deities who are basically the Gods to the Asgardians), and after a lengthy battle Loki is defeated, he shuts down the fountain under pressure from The Ones, and slinks back to Asgard with tail between his legs.

In the second story, set after the heroes of Earth had helped Asgard defeat Surtur, Loki’s attention is caught by Storm, who at the time was depowered. He kidnaps her and brings her to Asgard intending to use her to replace Thor as the Goddess of the Storm, and use her as a pawn to, what else, conquer Asgard and seize the throne.  

I really enjoyed Loki then, and felt sorry that he never appeared in any other X-Men story, not even in an issue of the New Mutants, and that team boasted an actual Valkyrie (Danielle Moonstar) as one of its members. I was a kid at the time and read pretty much exclusively X-Men since those were the books my father purchased for me. I never felt right about asking him for other books since we were a family with money struggles and I didn’t want to be more of a burden by requesting Thor or Avengers comics--that, and I just didn’t find Thor or the Avengers all that interesting at the time, a sentiment shared by a lot of people until the first Iron Man made us actually care about Tony Stark. I wouldn’t have an opportunity to start reading more comics featuring Loki until I was an adult and able to visit comic book stores on my own. I read several runs that featured him as a character, including Ragnarok, the Broxton, OK run where Loki first appeared as a woman, Dark Reign, and finally Siege. I also went back and read Walt Simonson’s legendary run on The Mighty Thor, which I highly recommend.  

Suffice it to say, I’ve been a fan of the character for a long time, and in fact when Tom Hiddleston was cast in the role for Thor, I remember thinking that he was too young. But then I figured it was Hollywood, of course they’re going to deage Loki so that he appears closer in age to his adopted brother in contrast to the comics pre-Siege where Loki was often drawn to look like he was as old as Odin and therefore could be Thor’s uncle or even father as opposed to brother.  

Over the years I grew to enjoy the MCU’s version of the character, enjoy Tom Hiddleston in the role, and like most other people was greatly saddened by his death in Infinity War. Like other fans, I looked forward to his solo series and had high hopes for it. Hopes that were, unfortunately, dashed.

It Was Rushed

In the MCU, it took Loki years to go from troubled young god, to villain, to ambivalent ally, to anti-hero, to hero. Literally, years. Months had passed between the end of Thor and the beginning of Avengers during which Loki endured who-knows-what at the hands of Thanos. We don’t know exactly what still. The Loki series didn’t answer that, I guess because they didn’t want to devote precious screentime to an interesting backstory for what was supposed to be the main character when they could focus on something else instead. That something else will be elaborated on.

In Episode 1, Loki is still the villain from Avengers, something he would have remained as into The Dark World. It would take him being in Asgard’s prisons for a year and then him accidentally getting his adopted mother Frigga killed in order for him to begin to do a heel-face turn. From this, we can clearly see that a transition from ax-crazy bad guy to anti-hero is not going to happen overnight. For this person I shall call Ragnarok Loki, it was a process that took time. He suffered a complete mental breakdown while in Asgard’s prison, a fragile emotional state that was compounded by the anger and massive guilt he felt at Frigga’s death.  

Even after that, he still hadn’t completely abandoned his villainous ways. At the end of The Dark World we find out that after faking his supposed death earlier in the movie, Loki has assumed Odin’s form and taken his place on Asgard’s throne. In Ragnarok, Loki is still sitting on the throne in Odin’s form, and shows no indication at all that he feels any remorse for giving his adopted father amnesia, stripping away his magic, and abandoning him on Earth to whatever fate he might meet. Loki remains a selfish bastard throughout Ragnarok until the third act, after Thor had treated him to a taste of his own medicine by sticking a taser on him and then giving him a speech about becoming predictable and complacent.  

Loki’s arc was one that spanned four movies and six years, since in-universe there were a couple of years between The Dark World and Ragnarok. That meant that his character development took actual time and was realistic. It was one of the things that drew people to the character, the fact that he had a very relatable and believable redemption arc.

Compare that to Episode 1. In less than a day he goes from being the Loki that we saw in Avengers, batshit crazy, selfish, callous, and untrusting, to making personal confessions to a man he had just met only a couple hours previously and agreeing to help the organization that had arrested, stripped, imprisoned, tried, and almost executed him.

What?

I will give the show this: In Episode 2, he shows that he’s still up to his old tricks when he feeds Mobius and the agents all that horsecrap about how a Loki works in the Ren Faire tent, and then revealing that he plans to take over the TVA when he confronts his variant in the futuristic Wal-Mart. The weeping confession to Mobius, that I can’t really get over. How do you go from haughty, arrogant, and “trust is for children and dogs”, to “I don’t enjoy hurting people” in just a couple of hours? The show never indicated that it was a manipulation tactic on Loki’s part. Instead, we were basically told to believe that they became friends just that fast. That emotionally stunted and closed-off Loki made a connection with another person in a matter of hours. Makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, I like Mobius and feel he makes a good foil for Loki. I hope to see more of him in the future. I just have a tough time finding their friendship all that believable.

This would not be the only relationship in the show that happened too fast that we were forced to just buy, which leads me to Sylvie.

She’s the variant that the TVA had been hunting, that Mobius recruited Loki to help capture. And while I normally hate it when people ascribe a certain label onto a new female character because reasons (ones that are usually misogynistic), I think it fits rather well in Sylvie’s case.

Enter The Mary Sue

Mary Sue is a term that gets thrown around a lot. To sum up the meaning in very simple terms, it refers to a character who is too perfect to be believable. Mary Sues are often author-self inserts in fiction, they’re usually the love interest for at least one male hero and it’s usually the male hero the author will admit to having a crush on, their scenes usually are presented much more descriptively than those of the other characters, the story will revolve around them often at the expense of the development and plots for the other characters of the story, and they’re presented as beautiful, powerful, intelligent, beautiful, special, strong, beautiful, and desirable. Yes, beautiful is on the list more than once, and it’s deliberate.

The term comes from an old Star Trek parody fanfic, and while it is usually applied to original characters in fan fiction, the term has been used to describe characters in canon media as well. Some examples of characters who have been described as Mary Sues would include Bella from the Twilight books, Felicity from the show Arrow, Jaenelle Angelline from Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewel novels, Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood, Rey from the last Star Wars trilogy, and Jean Grey from the X-Men comics. Note I do not necessarily agree that those characters are Mary Sues, I have merely heard these characters referred to as Mary Sues, and when I look at them objectively I can kind of see where the accusations come from. Some other terms that can apply are Creator’s Pet and of course Author Self-Insert. Not all Mary Sues are Author Self-Inserts, but a lot of them are. Also, not all characters who can be labeled Mary Sues are female, though they often are. The male version of a Mary Sue is called a Marty Stu, and a couple of characters I’ve seen get ascribed that label include Harry Potter, Daemon Sadi from Anne Bishop’s The Black Jewel novels, Edward from Twilight, and Red Hulk from Marvel Comics. Even Batman and Wolverine haven’t been immune from the Marty Stu stamp, although you can argue that it does apply in their cases especially depending on who’s writing them. Sometimes it is painfully obvious they are author self-inserts...the aforementioned Bella is a good example. Others, you can only speculate on. And while there are theories going around that Sylvie is someone’s self-insert, we don’t have definitive proof of that.

There are good arguments, however, for her being labeled a Mary Sue and Creator’s Pet.

First are her powers. In the show we are told that Sylvie taught herself magic, especially her ability to “enchant”, the power to get into the minds of others and manipulate them. The fact that she taught herself would indicate that her education and skill in using magic should be lacking, right? She should not be as good as, say, someone who learned magic from his foster mother who herself was taught by Asgardian witches?

Yet in the show, Sylvie not only runs circles around Loki magically wise, she even teaches him a few tricks. This is startlingly in contrast to the comics. Loki’s Sylvie is partially based on the character Sylvie Lushton from the Young Avengers, a bad guy who was once a normal girl whom Loki imbued with powers before his death at the hands of the Sentry during the events of 2010’s Siege storyline. In the comics, Loki not only gave Sylvie her powers, but he was the one who taught her how to use them. Now, of course things in the MCU are not going to follow the way things are in the comics. MCU Loki is nowhere near as old as comics Loki and has so far not demonstrated the ability to give other beings powers. And MCU Sylvie is a composite of Sylvie Lushton and Lady Loki, which is also problematic, but we’ll get to that.

But the point is that Sylvie had no training. Her magic is some improvised slapped-together stuff that at best she picked up here and there and at worst she just pulled out of her ass. Now, knowing that, we’re supposed to buy that she can mop the floor magically wise with someone who was formally trained by a sorceress? And that furthermore, she can school him as well?

To make up for her lack of experience and knowledge, Loki is nerfed. Power wise and intellectually wise, he is nerfed. In Thor and Avengers Loki is smart, well-spoken, and a master manipulator. At one point he is able to turn all of the Avengers against one another, and while his magic has never been anywhere near the level it was at in the comics pre-Siege (after his resurrection, he was powered down and is currently nowhere near the powerhouse he had been prior to 2011) he was able to pull off some impressive displays of skill nonetheless. Shape shifting, illusion casting, it was a good repertoire.  

In Episode 3, however...well, he does use teleportation to some impressive affect during his fight with Sylvie, but he still doesn’t get the upperhand. And he should. Loki is a better trained fighter, better trained in sorcery, and realistically should have at the least managed to incapacitate his variant. He doesn’t however, because the moment he meets Sylvie his IQ drops about 20 points. He falls easily for her tricks, makes laughable plans, gets drunk and draws too much attention when he knows that is a bad idea, and manages to get them both stuck on a moon that will soon be dust courtesy of the rogue planet about to crash into it. Loki has made some blunders in the various MCU movies he’s been in, mostly due to his own arrogance and tendency to underestimate his foes, but he’s not that stupid. In fact, in The Dark World he screams at Thor and calls him an idiot for drawing attention to themselves by hijacking an elven ship and crashing into every column and statue within a fifty-foot radius.

Where exactly is that smart, calculating, more careful Loki we know from the films? He’s been transformed and dumbed down, in an attempt to prop Sylvie up. It’s a tired trope, making the male character a dumbass in order to make the female character look good. Well, I should say male-presenting and female-presenting characters in this case, but their supposed gender fluidity really is not represented well and it’s completely contradicted later on, but we’ll get to that.

Anyway, making the male character stupid in order to make the female character look better by comparison is not empowering. It’s insulting. It implies that women are not smart or capable enough to meet men on equal footing, that the only way we can shine is not by virtue of our own strengths, but merely by making us look better than the men.

She doesn’t just outshine Loki intellectually and power wise, she outshines him period. The show from Episode 3 on becomes about Sylvie. She is the show’s main focus, and Loki? He’s relegated to the role of supporting character in the series that’s named after him. Supporting character, and love interest. From Episode 3 on, the show might as well be called Sylvie.

Now, some people will say that since Sylvie is a Loki, the show was indeed focusing on Loki. The problem is, the show is very inconsistent as to whether or not Sylvie really is a Loki or a different person entirely. I will explain more later, but the writers seem to change Sylvie’s identity to suit whatever narrative they want to present to the audience, including the pre-Pixar Disney romance they foist upon us.

The Romance, and why some find it gross

One major characteristic of the Mary Sue is that she always draws the romantic and sexual interest of the main male character, who may or may not be a Marty Stu himself. Oftentimes he’s not, and Loki does not fit the criteria of a Marty Stu by any stretch of the imagination. These romances always happen fast with little to no buildup. There is no what writers of romance call “slow burn”, it’s just throw Mary at the male character, hook them up, and get the audience to buy it. Basically, it’s reminiscent of the romance stories in the Classical Era Disney animated films. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella all fall madly in love with their princes within minutes of meeting them. There’s no getting to know each other, there is no preamble, there is no slow courtship, no real drama to speak of. It’s basically Love At First Sight or True Love. This trend continues even into the Disney Renaissance. In The Little Mermaid, Ariel is willing to make a deal with a witch to give up her fins for a prince she hasn’t even spoken to yet. He doesn’t even know she exists, and she leaves her home and family behind, gives up her voice, all for a mere shot at hooking up with him.

That’s not love, that’s lust. That’s hormones overruling your brain, and it’s an insulting trope, one that feminists have railed against for years. Disney has made a little progress. The movie Frozen took the mickey out of the Love At First Sight/True Love trope with the song “Love Is An Open Door” and the prince Anna wanting to marry turning out to be a major sleazebag who just wants to use her, but we still only have three Disney princesses (Elsa, Moana, and Merida) who have never had love interests and two (Anna and Rapunzel) whose love stories come close to being slow burns, out of 12 official Princesses. There’s still a long way to go, and boy is there a major step backwards in Loki.  

In Episode 3, Loki fights Sylvie and they end up on Lamentis 1. Sylvie spends a good portion of the time insulting and trying to kill Loki, and Loki finds himself having to defend himself from her. That changes once they get on the train going to the Arc. After sneaking aboard the train using a disguise and a flimsy story, the two Lokis sit in a booth, where Loki proceeds to drink champagne. It is then that, out of nowhere, the conversation shifts from how Sylvie learned her powers to the topic of love.

Why? Why would you bring that up in conversation with someone who was doing her best to kill you a couple hours prior?

Then Loki makes things worse by asking Sylvie if she has a beau waiting for her. Why? It doesn’t make sense. The two of you are at each other’s throats, she’s done her best to kill you, neither of you trusts the other, and, completely out of left field, you decide to basically ask “So...are you single?”

Now, enemies to lovers is a trope that can work when done right. Typically, it’s a very subtle, slow progression that the audience witnesses over time in a novel, movie or television series. Weeks and even months will go by in the narrative during which the two people go from wanting each other dead to developing feelings for one another. There’s usually a “will they, won’t they period” that lasts for some time that’s full of teases and flirting before the couple does hook up and gives the audience the resolution. Done in this way, enemies to lovers can work.

This...this is not the right way to do enemies to lovers. Within a couple of hours Loki and Sylvie go from hatred and doing their damnedest to stabbing one another in the backs, to having a connection that causes a nexus event?

By the way, that nexus event makes no sense. In Episode 2, it is established that it is impossible to create a nexus event in an apocalypse. It is why Sylvie was able to avoid capture by the TVA for so long. In fact, just minutes prior to the two of them almost dying in Episode 4, Sylvie flat-out says that she figured out that she needed to hide in apocalypses because she discovered she didn’t create a nexus event when she hid in them.

Now the two of them are able to create a nexus event in the midst of an apocalypse? Why? Their “connection” isn’t going to lead to any consequences...they were about to die. No one else need never have known about the “moment” the two of them shared. It’s very confusing and the only purpose it really serves is to paint Loki and Sylvie as soulmates, which doesn’t make sense in the context of the show. The concept of soulmates is that for every person, there is someone out there they are predestined to be with. Loki is a show that, at the core of it, is about rejecting predestination and embracing free will. In that context, the idea of soulmates is ludicrous and contradictory to the message that we make our own destiny. This is why True Love is unrealistic, and I hate to break it to you romantics out there, but Love At First sight does not exist.

Infatuation At First Sight exists, but that is not Love, no matter what your hormones are telling you. Love takes time to evolve, and it takes work to maintain. It sure as hell doesn’t happen after less than 12 hours of knowing each other, during which a huge chunk of time was devoted to trying to manipulate, outsmart, and murder the person you’re supposedly in love with. No one falls in love in less than 12 hours, period, unless it’s a Classical Era Disney animated movie. They basically turned Loki into a big Disney Romance trope. I have a very hard time buying that Loki, who we have established is emotionally stunted and closed off, would form a love connection in just a few hours, especially with someone who was doing her best to murder him in that timespan.

That is not the only reason this relationship is problematic. The term “Selfcest” has been thrown around, and a lot of defenders of this particular ship claim that the term was very recently made up in social media for the sole purpose of badmouthing this particular romance. That is not the case. Selfcest is a term that has existed among fiction writers for years, it’s just that more people have recently become aware of it thanks to this show. The trope has been used and referred to in various works of fiction, especially in fantasy and science fiction where cloning, alternative universes, and magic occur. A lot of the insults I get from people who can’t stand that I don’t like the romance basically go along the lines of saying selfcest doesn’t exist. No, it doesn’t...in reality. But this isn’t reality, is it? It’s fiction. It’s a fictional world where such a thing could be possible, and even in works where it’s not possible it’s often alluded to.

In A Song Of Ice And Fire, we have the infamous twincest relationship going on between Cersei and Jamie Lannister, and it is heavily implied that sleeping with her brother is the closest that Cersei can get to banging herself and that is why she does it. Jamie is basically everything she feels she should have been and was denied due to being born a woman. In fact, in later books when he reunites with her after having been away from King’s Landing for over a year, during which time he’s grown a beard and shaved his head, Cersei no longer finds him as attractive since they no longer look as much alike.

And with advances in cloning, selfcest might be possible in the future. We already have sex robots, and people with money are capable of making those robots look like themselves. There is nothing stopping them from doing it.

Knowing all of this, the argument of “selfcest doesn’t exist!” falls flat. And it especially falls flat when you’re referring to a fictional universe where a large purple man once killed off half the population of said universe with a snap of his fingers, where scientists turn into giant green monsters, the Norse gods not only exist but regularly interact with people on Earth, and there’s such a thing as a Sorcerer Supreme.

As I have said, the show has been rather inconsistent in stating what exactly Sylvie’s identity is. One moment, we are told Sylvie is a Loki and that she and Loki are the same person. Mobius says it, Kang says it multiple times, Judge Renslayer says it, the director and the writers state it in interviews. But then in the next breath, they contradict it by saying that she’s not a Loki, she’s Sylvie and a different person.  

You can’t have it both ways. Which is it? Either she’s a Loki, or she’s not. The narrative is very confusing and it changes depending on how they want us to see Sylvie, especially in relation to her romance with Loki. It’s so much easier to avoid the selfcest/incest accusations when you can say they are different people. But then they say they’re the same person. Make up your minds!

Since the show first established that Sylvie is a Loki, I’m going with that. Especially since we saw a bit of her backstory. She grew up in Asgard as a member of the royal family, which means she had Odin as a father, Frigga as mother, and Thor as brother. She may or may not have the same DNA as Loki. We never got confirmation either way, and there are people who argue that they don’t to which I have to ask: How do you know? The show never tells us! “Oh, well, there’s Alligator Loki, are you going to say he has the same DNA as well?” Well, we are never told how exactly Alligator Loki came to be. Is he actually an alligator, or is he Loki who somehow got permanently stuck when he shapeshifted? People tend to forget that he can do that. Ragnarok established that he can turn into a snake, and a deleted scene actually had the childhood story go that Loki turned into a rug to cover a hole in the ground and then dumped Thor into it. There is the scene where Doctor Strange drops Loki through a portal, and Thor is left poking at a business card, and it is clear that for a moment he thinks that Loki turned into that. We know Loki can shapeshift, so Alligator Loki can very well have the same DNA. We just don’t know, because the show never explains it for the same reason the show cut out the scenes with Throg fighting Loki...to devote more screentime to Sylki.

Even if they don’t have the same DNA, it’s still established that they are the same person, they have the same family, they’re both the God/dess of Mischief, and even Sylvie herself acknowledges that she is a Loki despite the fact that she changed her name. So selfcest very much applies here, and a good argument can be made that selfcest is the ultimate in incest...after all, there isn’t anyone else you’re more related to than yourself. It is very understandable, therefore, that a lot of people would be very, very uncomfortable with such a relationship. Having the same DNA would merely be the icing on the very gross cake.

Furthermore, just because selfcest does not exist in reality does not mean someone can’t find the concept distasteful. “It’s not real!” “It’s just fiction!” Yes, and people are allowed to have their own feelings and opinions on fiction. If they find the idea of selfcest hard to stomach, that’s their prerogative and you really have no right to tell them they are wrong for feeling that way. They should not have to justify to anyone why they feel that way either. No one owes you an explanation for why they find real world incest or cannibalism distasteful, so they don’t owe you an explanation for this.

“Well, of course Loki would fall for himself...he’s a narcissist!” Is he though? Is he really? Having dealt with my fair share of narcissists in my life, I have to wonder if the fans who say that, along with the writers, know what a narcissist really is.

Is Loki a narcissist?

Bringing up Cersei Lannister again, the novels she appears in establishes that she is an extreme narcissist. She sleeps with her twin brother because it’s the closest she can come to sleeping with herself, and she desires to do that because she is a narcissist. A narcissist is someone whose personality is defined by an inflated sense of self-importance, troubled relationships, lack of empathy for others, and an excessive deep-seated need for attention and admiration. It’s a very simplistic definition, and there are plenty of YouTube videos devoted to delving into narcissists into more depth, as well as videos on how to cope with the aftermath of abuse at the hands of narcissists. Narcissists are so devoted to themselves that they ignore the needs and the feelings of those in their lives, which often results in abusive behavior. There are entire support groups that exist for victims of narcissists.

At first glance, one can see why some might consider Loki a narcissist. He does engage in some pretty selfish behavior, he goes to great lengths to get attention, his relationships to his family are indeed fraught with drama, and he seems to have a pretty overinflated ego. He even goes so far as to write a play featuring himself as the central character, and build a giant golden statue of himself after taking over Asgard in the guise of Odin. But really, is his ego truly that big? Or he is overcompensating for his self-hatred and self-disgust?

Loki suffered quite the emotional blow when he found out his true heritage, a revelation that shook him to his very core. Of course, his relationship with his father suffered as a result...the man lied to him for his entire life. Their relationship really was not that great even before that since Odin found it easier to relate to Thor, who was more like him in personality, than to Loki, who was more cerebral and quieter. Loki’s relationship to Frigga fared much better. He’s quick to forgive her involvement in covering up the truth about his parentage, and it is obvious that they are close. Even his relationship with Thor prior to the events of the movie is not all that bad, the two brothers are affectionate and playful, and when Loki interrupts Thor’s coronation, it’s not just for the sake of creating trouble, but to postpone Thor taking the crown for another little while because he is not fit to rule. At the time Thor had yet to go through his character development arc on Earth and he was still an overly arrogant, bloodthirsty, elitist douchebag, so Loki really had a good point.

A true narcissist would have done what Loki did just for the sake of making life difficult for Thor. Also, he would have done it because he wanted the throne. Loki states repeatedly that he never wanted to rule. A true narcissist would have been all smiles about taking the throne instead of being reluctant about it as Loki was when Frigga handed him Gungnir.

Throughout the films, and in the first episode of the series, we see that Loki does indeed love his family and is capable of feeling guilt over the things that he does to them, intentionally or not. Narcissists typically don’t feel remorse. As far as they are concerned, they are perfect and can do no wrong, so they have nothing to feel bad about. If they hurt you, it’s because you deserved it. You shouldn’t have provoked their ire.

Loki feels bad for getting Frigga killed, and then later on Odin. Then he is in tears when Odin dies, and later at the mere thought of never seeing Thor again when the two brothers talk in an elevator on Sakaar. Those are not the actions of someone who is incapable of loving anyone but himself, as I’ve seen so many people claim about him. And the fact that he sacrificed himself to save his brother also kind of kills the whole “narcissist” narrative.

In Episode 1, Loki breaks down and confesses to Mobius that he doesn’t like hurting people. He does it because it’s part of the façade, and admits that he sees himself as weak. A few episodes later, he admits to a memory illusion Sif that he craves attention “because I’m a narcissist” and admits to being afraid of being alone. That is far more self-reflection than a typical narcissist is capable of in my experience. As I said, narcissists tend to think they are perfect. A true narcissist would never admit to having any flaws, and sure as hell would never admit that they are a narcissist. As far as the true narcissist is concerned, if you find them flawed in any way, that’s on you. The narcissist has no need for self-reflection because they honestly see nothing wrong with themselves, and believe that they don’t need to change...it’s everyone else who does.

A good real-life example from my past is a former friend I’ll call D. D was a self-proclaimed brat who was quite proud of the fact that she could be difficult to be in a relationship with and tended to go through men like tissue paper. She was demanding, self-centered, extremely jealous, manipulative, and prone to wild mood swings. She could and did go from zero to insane at the drop of a hat. In the time I knew her, she left a string of burnt guys behind, and according to her it was because they just weren’t man enough to handle her. She also left behind a string of broken former friends, to the point where there really needed to be a support group for former friends of D who suddenly had her turn them into Public Enemy Number 1 when they either started taking attention away from D, or...well, that was it really. As I said, she was a very jealous person and had a chronic need to be the center of attention, especially if there were men around. Anyway, instead of working on herself to become less self-involved, self-absorbed, and more empathetic, she double downed on her abrasiveness and constant need for attention until she finally wore the poor man down and he either ghosted her or outright dumped her. She never broke up with them, preferring to keep them around for as long as they were willing in order to toy with them as a cat does with a mouse.  I tried to talk to her about her horrible behavior, but instead of taking my constructive criticism and maybe using it to make some needed changes, she completely turned on me and did her best to make my life hell until I finally cut her out of it. I learned two things: Narcissists don’t want help because they don’t feel they need it and they are never going to change as a result, and never, ever try to confront a narcissist. It’ll only end badly.  

A more famous example? Former US President Donald Trump. I won’t get into that, because really all you need to do is perform a quick Google search to see what all he’s done and witness his narcissism on full display. But really, place him side by side with Loki. Do you see any similarities at all? Maybe on the surface, but when you go deeper...no. Loki is not a narcissist. He’s capable of deep self-reflection, owns his faults, is capable of loving others, and feels remorse. I would argue that anyone who says he is a narcissist, either does not know the character, or hasn’t ever actually dealt with a narcissist in real life, to which I can only say: Lucky you.  

I honestly would argue that calling Loki a narcissist is actually doing a disservice to victims of abuse from actual narcissists.

What about Sylvie? Well, in contrast to Loki who does show remorse while Mobius is playing that “This Is Your Life” reel for him, Sylvie shows no remorse or regret. She knows that the TVA agents she kills are as much victims as she is. They are innocent variants who were kidnapped from Earth and forced to work for the TVA after having their memories wiped. She knows this, yet the first time we see her she burns a bunch of TVA agents alive, and she just stands there watching as they scream in agony. In the next episode she says right out that she’s “having some fun” while possessing the body of C-90 and murdering more agents. She is not at all sorry about doing what she did, and we’re supposed to be understanding since she was kidnapped as a child. Okay, but the entire TVA didn’t do that. The agents she kills didn’t personally kidnap her. The only one we see who was directly involved in that is Renslayer. Sylvie “did what she had to do”, fine. But she doesn’t feel bad about it, at all. The flashback to her as a child takes great pains to try to show us what a good person she is when she cries out “Help him!” as another prisoner is being beaten, but I guess she grew out of it.

We don’t know if Sylvie has any other narcissistic traits besides lack of remorse because, well, the show really doesn’t do much to show her personality. Other than killing people, trying to kill Loki, and then flirting with Loki, we just don’t really see much to her. It’s another trait of a Mary Sue. Mary Sues often have bland, one-dimensional personalities. After all, their only purpose is usually to serve as love interests for one or more male characters. Mary Sues break the “show, don’t tell” rule by having the other characters verbally inform us about their traits, usually while singing their praises, but we don’t actually see those traits in the Mary Sue herself.

Loki calls Sylvie “amazing”, but how amazing is she, really? She kills people she knows are victims, she endangers the timeline just to sneak into the TVA, and then she kills Kang despite knowing that there is a very good chance that doing so could unleash something far, far worse than him. Then again, it doesn’t have to make sense when you’re pushing an unwanted and unasked for romance on an audience who was expecting a scifi show, not a romance.

I have spoken in a few places about this. Romance is fine, but in a show that blatantly places itself in the scifi genre, it really should only be the background, not center stage. When I expressed this opinion, I got accused of being dismissive of an essential part of the human experience. Well, first of all, congratulations: You just invalidated the existence of people on the asexual and aromantic spectrums, not to mention people who are celibate by choice. Second, that is why we have the romance genre. To tell stories centered around romance. I like romance, I read romance novels, and I sometimes write romantic fiction. But there are some places where it just is not appropriate.

There are people who say that adding romance makes things more interesting. Nope, in those cases it’s just a smokescreen, something used to hide plot holes and distract us from just how empty the story really is. Writers like to say that if you need a romance to make things more interesting, then you really don’t have much of a story in the first place. And sadly, Loki does have some plot holes. The nexus event on Lamentis is a good example, and the romance is definitely used to distract us from that. People were so focused on “oh wow, they’re having a moment, they’re soulmates!” that they didn’t think “waitaminute...didn’t they say that nexus events can’t occur in apocalypses?”

We really did not need a romance in Loki. Period. It was unnecessary, it was distracting, a lot of people found it disturbing, and it actively hurt a marginalized group.

Loki Is A Queer Icon!...maybe

I am not going to say that the relationship between Loki and Sylvie is not a bisexual one. A bisexual relationship is a bisexual relationship regardless of whether or not the person the bisexual person is with is the opposite sex. Saying otherwise is biphobic. Biphobic people in both the straight and the queer communities have been excluding bisexual people who happen to be in opposite sex relationships for years because apparently one stops being bisexual once they get into a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. This is horseshit. I’ve been in relationships with CIS men, did I stop being attracted to other men, women, nonbinary, genderfluid, agender, and other genderqueer people? No. No, I didn’t, because while I was entangled, I was not dead. Heterosexual people don’t stop being attracted to other members of the opposite sex when they are in relationships, it’s no different with queer people.

So, stop saying that Loki and Sylvie are not a bisexual relationship. You’re not doing us any favors at all, and in fact you’re only helping the biphobes who want to kick us out of Pride and other queer spaces for daring to date members of the opposite sex.

I will address the “Bit of both” line however. In Episode 3, Loki has that response to Sylvie’s questioning about whether there had been any would-be princesses or princes in his life. Again, a conversation that comes out of nowhere. She stated outright that she didn’t trust him, clearly wanted him dead, and now she’s asking if he’s single. Whatever.

Anyway, people went nuts when Loki answered “A bit of both”. It was confirmation that Loki was bisexual, it was celebrated on social media...and it is really biphobic and Kate Herron, who is bisexual herself, really should have known better.

Biphobic people have long tried to sow division between the bi and trans communities (unsurprisingly, biphobia and transphobia tend to go hand-in-hand) by saying that the concept of being bisexual is transphobic. “Bi” means two, ergo bisexual people are only attracted to two genders, specifically CIS men and CIS women. It never occurs to anyone that the “two genders” a bisexual person could be attracted to could be, say, women (and yes, I include trans women in that, since they are in fact women, get over it) and non-binary people, or agender and gender-fluid people, it’s always CIS men and CIS women. This despite the fact that the definition of bisexual has been “attraction to more than one gender” since long before the Bisexual Manifesto was put out in 1990.

Some people have tried to remedy this by adopting the moniker of “pansexual” instead, which A) is basically reinforcing what biphobes are saying about bisexuals and creating even more division and B) doesn’t just mean “attraction to trans people as well, I’m not transphobic, I promise!” “Pansexual” is not interchangeable with “bisexual”. Pansexual is attraction to all genders. Bisexual means attraction to more than one gender, but not necessarily to all genders. You can have a bisexual person, for instance, who is attracted to all genders except for men. If you are attracted to more than one gender, but not to all genders, you are bisexual, and labeling yourself pansexual is lying and basically caving in to the biphobes.

I’m not trying to police what people call themselves...if you want to use the two terms interchangeably, if you want to call yourself bisexual, or pansexual, it’s fine. But just evaluate the reasons why. Are you calling yourself pansexual because you really think you can be, or are you just calling yourself that out of fear of being labeled transphobic? The latter, in my opinion, is not a really good reason, and it only helps deliver the biphobic message that bisexual people are transphobic.

So, by saying “a bit of both”, Loki is really helping to reinforce that biphobic assertion that bisexual people are attracted just to CIS men and CIS women. It’s disappointing, but it is Disney so I suppose that is the best we can expect for now. It just shows that Disney really has a long way to go.

What’s more problematic is the supposed genderfluid representation. Now, I am a CIS woman. As such, I feel unqualified to really say that the representation is shitty and fluidphobic. However, if I’m not qualified to say that it is, then Kate Herron and the writers are unqualified to say that it isn’t. Rule of thumb: If members of a marginalized group are telling you that you did a poor job of representing them and that you are being transphobic or fluidphobic, instead of ignoring and dismissing their concerns like a good portion of the population already does, it’s a really good idea to listen to what they are saying and learn how you can do better.

There have been some genderfluid and trans people who expressed that they liked the show, and good for them. But I have seen a lot of very valid criticisms and concerns from genderfluid and trans people about the representation on the show, and I think they really should be listened to. Kate, you and I are queer, but we are still CIS women. Ergo, we have no say in whether or not the way you attempted to present Loki’s gender fluidity is transphobic. If genderfluid people say it’s fluidphobic or trans people say it’s transphobic, then it is indeed fluidphobic/transphobic. To say otherwise is gaslighting a marginalized community who already faces gaslighting on a daily basis.

I will touch on a couple of things.

First, in Episode 5, Loki asks a bunch of his variants if they have ever encountered a female version of themselves, a question that is met with varying levels of incredulousness and even disgust. If Loki was truly genderfluid, this question wouldn’t have been asked. Genderfluid means the person shifts genders along the spectrum. Loki does this in the comics. Comicbook Loki switches between masculine and feminine presenting on the drop of a dime, especially in his current incarnation. Loki in the MCU we are told is also genderfluid, and should also be able to hop along the gender spectrum on a whim. There should not be a “female variant” therefore, since they are all the same gender. There could be a female presenting variant, but that is not the same thing. They would still be all genderfluid in that case. Also, Sylvie’s nexus event would not have been “being born the Goddess of Mischief”. Okay, the show never actually says that is the nexus event that led to her being arrested, but it heavily implies it. If Sylvie is a Loki, and as a Loki is genderfluid, her being the “Goddess” of Mischief should never have been an issue since they can change genders anyway.

Second, making Lady Loki a separate person is problematic. A lot of genderfluid people felt that this move invalidated their identity by basically showing that the same person cannot indeed be different genders along the spectrum. I don’t feel I’m totally qualified to really get into this. I will just say that if you’re going to write a genderfluid character, maybe at least get an actual genderfluid person to advise in the writing room.

Third, there is a transphobic movement called trans exclusionary radical feminism. You might have heard of it. Unfortunately, it is a very widespread movement that has done a lot of harm to the trans community, successfully blocking funding to organizations that help trans people, blocking laws that would benefit trans people, and the movement includes celebrities like Graham Linehan and JK Rowling.

One of the weapons they like to use against trans women is the concept of “autogynephilia”. It is basically the sexual fetish of becoming aroused from thinking of oneself as a woman.  Many, many of these transphobic “feminists” love to say that trans women are merely men who have this particular sexual fetish.

It’s bullshit of course. Maybe there is a small segment of the male population that has that fetish, but trans women are not included in that. For trans women, things like dressing as women, changing their names, having state and federal issued IDs that say they are female, and being able to use the restrooms and change rooms that match the gender they actually are as opposed to the one they were assigned at birth is not a matter of sexual arousal. It’s a matter of making their external realities match their internal ones. It’s a matter of validation of their identities as women. Sexual gratification has nothing to do with it.

Now, Loki is not trans, but genderfluid people do tend to fall under the trans umbrella. We have Loki, a supposedly genderfluid individual and masculine presenting, falling head over heels in love with a feminine presenting version of himself. Maybe it’s just me, but it just seems like a form of autogynephilia to me.

Way to go, Kate...you just gave the TERFs more ammo.

One more note: At one point, Kate tweeted a list of the different Loki emojis, and “jokingly” included #FiretruckLoki with an emoji of a firetruck. Kate, you do realize that a “joke” transphobes love to harp on is that they can identify as an attack helicopter, right?

It’s his way of learning self-love!

That is not how you learn self-love.

First, the people who are making this argument often contradict themselves by then saying that Sylvie is a different person. Again, make up your minds. Either Sylvie is the same person as Loki, or she’s not. You can’t have it both ways, and you can’t continue to change the narrative to fit whatever it is you want to shove down the audience’s throats.

Second, romantic love and self-love are two different things entirely. Loki isn’t feeling self-love with Sylvie, he’s feeling romantic love. That’s not learning self-love. That's narcissism, and it’s character regression in his case. He’s supposed to be evolving past being a self-centered, egotistical shitweasel, and falling in love with a variant of himself makes him, as Mobius put it, “a seismic narcissist”. It’s not character development.  

Third, this argument tends to come in the same breath as saying that Loki is a narcissist so of course he would fall for a variant of himself. If Loki is a narcissist though, why would he need to learn self-love? Narcissists already love themselves, that is the very definition of the word. If Loki needs to learn self-love, that would imply that he actually hates himself, which is the opposite of narcissism. Again, the writers and the fans who make these arguments when they feel the need to defend this relationship need to make up their minds. Either he’s a narcissist and therefore already loves himself too much, or he hates himself and needs to learn to love himself. It’s once again changing the narrative to fill a plothole.  

Fourth, the whole learning self-love and trust narrative is completely thrown out the window in Episode 6 when Sylvie decides to toy with Loki’s emotions, using his feelings for her against him by kissing him as a distraction so she could grab Kang’s temp pad and toss Loki back to the TVA. To Sylvie, her revenge was more important than the bond she had with him. The move basically set Loki’s progress back several steps. What little progress he made anyway.

TL:DR, is there hope for Season 2?

Whew, this went on for a while, didn’t it? Told you I had a lot to say.

As I have said, if you liked the first season of Loki and think I am completely full of shit, that’s fine and it’s your prerogative. More power to you.  

But, and this is a huge but, that does not give you the right to harass and bully people who did not like it.

I have witnessed horrible things from both sides of the now split Loki fandom on social media. Harassment and even death threats towards the creators. Telling people who don’t like the Loki and Sylvie relationship that they need to drink bleach. Homophobic attacks. Gatekeeping.  

There’s constructive criticism and sharing your opinions, and then there is...this.

Both sides need to chill.

Anyway.

Even though Kate Herron has left the show, Michael Waldron is still the showrunner and as such I am not altogether optimistic for Season 2. I would like to see more emphasis on Loki himself for that season. Yes, it’s a novel thought, wanting a show that is called Loki to actually be about Loki, but here we are.

I would like to see actual character development in Loki rather than the old “true love transforms bad boy and conquers all” trope. There is a reason Disney has started to abandon that trope in their animated movies. They’ve been getting dragged about it for decades.

If Sylvie must return, there needs to be some actual consistency surrounding her character. The show needs to decide if she is a Loki or not and stick with whichever one they decide. And seriously, no more romance. Frankly, after what she pulled in Episode 6, I will be severely disappointed if the writers have Loki crawling back to her. That would make him pathetic, and Loki deserves better.

Really, Loki does not need a romance, period. He’s too emotionally immature, he has a lot of character growth to go through, and a romance would do nothing but be a distraction and an impediment to that growth. Anyone who got married too young can confirm that it is important to learn more about yourself and figure yourself out before you even think of getting involved with another person, who should not be your whole world. The Loki and Sylvie romance was reminding me of Classic Disney in another not-good way in that the two of them, especially on Loki’s side, were starting to revolve around one another and that does not make for a healthy relationship. Again, turning Loki into a Disney Prince (or, seeing as how he’s supposed to be genderfluid, Princess). Stop it.

Again, the romance was a smokescreen. It was a distraction from just how thin the plot was. Please, for the love of G-d, give more focus to the actual plot.

Do some research and talk to some psychologists for healthy ways Loki can “learn self-love" and develop as a character. If Ragnarok Loki can do it without relying on a romance with a variant with himself, then surely TVA Loki can pull it off.

Speaking of talking to people, listen to the concerns of the trans and genderfluid fans. Listen, talk to them, maybe get a couple in the writer’s room. CIS people should not write genderfluid people, and this season is a good example of why.

Please remember that Loki is not an idiot. Yes, he has pulled some fast ones and hasn’t been the greatest planner, but he is not downright stupid like he was in season 1.

And...really that’s all I have. As I have said, this thesis really wasn’t about making suggestions to the creators because I seriously doubt they will ever even see this. This was more less me screaming into the void, venting because I was that upset about what I saw as character assassination happening to one of my favorite characters. Keeping all of this in was proving to be bad for my blood pressure.  

I am attached to the character, have been for years. Loki is just one character in the MCU who I love, who I want to see done right. I had been looking forward to his solo series for a very long time, and the disappointment I felt was something that I just couldn’t keep in. I kept my mouth shut when they killed off Tony Stark for no reason other than that Ronnie Downey, Jr. didn't want to renew his contract. I didn’t say anything at the Russo Brothers’ “happy ending” for Steve Rogers, even though I feel it made no sense and is a massive plot hole.  

What they did to Loki, however...I couldn’t keep silent.

[jyndor]

(Imperialism etc anon) Ok I get where you're coming from! Thank you for being understanding. While Zutara is obviously not inherently racist or anything there are zutara interpretations that *are* racist (example: fire lady katara which I can get into) and it does need to be acknowledged that Zuko's status as fire nation royalty does create a power imbalance between him and Katara. Now, this is a conversation that has a lot of nuance to it but it seems like the people harassing you are (1/2)

(2/2) just repeating some genuine critique they saw without understanding what it means just to say that they're right, harassing people in the process. I did not have that context when sending that first ask and I apologize, since anons harassing you and others are clearly doing it out of bad faith. I just didn't like the leveraging of concepts that really matter in real life (colonialism, etc), ykwim? But I get what you were trying to do.

hey anon I’m finally getting to you after 84 years XD

so first off, I want to be careful about how I approach this because I understand that as a white person (even if my ancestors experienced imperialism) in the US I absolutely benefit from imperialism and don’t want to like, idk, whitesplain XD so if anyone gets annoyed with any way I say anything, just lmk and I’ll rework it. and I also do understand that these are real world issues that are far more consequential than messaging in media (although I do think it’s very important that we challenge messages in media because of media’s influence on our thinking and politics).

but before I talk about zuko and his relationship to fire nation imperialism, and then later fire lady katara and why it isn’t INHERENTLY racist but definitely can be, I want to talk about the atla fandom and how we got here. like, why I assume that most anons who come at zutara shippers are asshats acting in bad faith. if you already know fandom history, skip this section.

1. atla and the fandom has always been kind of shitty and racist

so IDK if everyone is familiar with the history of the ship war in atla fandom, but it’s regarded as one of the nastiest ship wars in fandom history which I agree lol. atla’s creators were some of the first to interact with the fandom the way they did - back then it wasn’t all that common for creators to get into twitter feuds with fans and boundaries were respected more than they are now imo. but for better or worse, and it is a mixed bag, bryke interacted with fandom a lot. certainly at cons but also on social media.

but honestly things really got extra mean in fan spaces when bryke made a “joke” atla season 4 slideshow out of fan art (some of which was really sexual in nature and totally inappropriate) that mocked fans’ creations, but especially zutara fanart and zutara itself. it was pretty tasteless especially considering how most zutara fans were teen girls, and featured some art of sokka saying that if you think zuko and katara would be good together, you’re doomed to have failed relationships. that’s where the whole “dark and mysterious” bs came from, which does describe some zutara fic but not even most of it lol. I actually do respect bryke a lot despite my criticism of them, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over that shit. like even if you hate zutara, even if it’s a joke, we were kids. and they were adults, and the whole thing was nasty.

however, the ship war was chaotic and messy, but it does feel worse now. maybe it’s because back then the fandom was MOSTLY teens and kids, and I don’t think that’s true now. we were all trying to prove our ship was best with like, content from the show and theories and all that, and now it’s like... whose ship is ~problematic lol it’s a show by white us americans appropriating from various cultures impacted negatively by us/british imperialism that they then profited off of, of course it’s racist. that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about that, and in fact many poc have been saying this shit for years - that atla is racist and colorist at many times (guru pathik anyone?) and no one really listened.

if fans are complaining only about zutara, then I’m automatically writing them off as being insincere or ignorant. and since most of these people are anonymous, I have no idea if they are having substantive discourse about colorism in avatar or cultural appropriation (even if it is mostly appreciative). if you are on anon, I have no context about what you actually think except for what you give me. and that definitely is how I view anons in general but especially within the atla fandom because for all 13-ish years I’ve been in it, it’s been messy. that’s why zutara fans have isolated ourselves from the rest of fandom, because the rest of fandom has been really nasty to us. like did we give back some nastiness? absolutely.

but I would hazard a guess that most anti-zutara shippers don’t know about the conversations we have had in this community to make it safer for people of color, conversations that centered poc and woc especially. hey, that’s okay - not to compare zutara to r*ylo because eurgh but like, idk what discourse the r*ylos have about their community. no idea, I don’t go looking for it. and I don’t go to the tags and harass r*ylos - even though they harass the fuck out of everyone else.

2. so zuko and his privilege

undoubtedly zuko as fire lord is in a fairly privileged position LMFAO. but during the show zuko is very clearly exiled - he holds very little political power in the fire nation EXCEPT for during the first season when he is in command of a ship that ozai gave him on a punishment quest lol like yeah he does terrible things and he of all people would not excuse his actions even if he was a traumatized kid, that’s the point of his arc - that he got some exposure to the rest of the world and worked to be better. and the only reason he was exiled at all was because he cares about people - he didn’t question fire nation supremacy at 13, but he sure did question the morality of his people being lead to slaughter.

but after zuko and iroh defect from the fire nation and stop hunting aang, he has next to no power, in any kind of way. like the guy is a political refugee. and yes, he goes back to the fire nation for like five minutes before realizing that he hates everything about fire nation hegemony and that he wants to end his father’s reign of terror, like that isn’t exactly someone who is going to be well esteemed by the powerful elites when he returns and takes the throne.

and I disregard the comics because they suck lol but zuko does have power as the fire lord, but he limits his power. like compared to ozai, phoenix asshole? azula? for the rest of the world, zuko is kind of an ideal leader for a former colonizing/imperialistic nation to have - someone who worked to end that tyranny, who is anti-imperialist, who believes in justice and equality, who wants to make things right for the peoples who his family oppressed.

I do think it is important to talk about power dynamics and imbalances in relationships - for instance, one could argue that mai is at a significant disadvantage in her relationship with zuko. sure she is from a powerful family but not as powerful as zuko’s. sokka? hah forget it. he’s just as disadvantaged as katara is politically speaking. toph? well, she’s definitely not as powerful politically as zuko - her family tried to silence her for years because of her disability. and oh, she’s disabled so it might be ableist for zuko to strike up a relationship with her when they’re both adults. forgetting of course that toph and sokka and katara and suki and mai are not going to be shy about their wants and needs, that these relationships are not likely to be coercive by nature of the show they’re in and the characters they involve. this is not bill clinton with monica creepiness. like, you’d have to write the relationship that way.

the only person who arguably has more political power than zuko is aang. I guess zuko can’t ever be in a relationship with anyone other than aang. and zuko’s family massacred aang’s people so I guess we can’t ship zukaang. now I know you’re not saying that, context matters. power dynamics are important. but you can’t take away the agency of characters - katara, who is essentially a princess, has agency and can choose who she wants to be with. strictly speaking, aang is more powerful than anyone in terms of political power - he’s the avatar - and of course the dynamic is different by nature of aang not being from a line of oppressors, but there still is a power imbalance in their relationship. and I don’t know how many k/ataang shippers have discourse~ on that. not that I really feel like they NEED to, um idk what they talk about lol I’m not in those circles.

3. fire lady katara is in the eye of the beholder

so fire lady katara is not inherently bad or racist, it’s essentially like saying michelle obama shouldn’t have been first lady of the us (now I get that like the obamas being in power didn’t mean black people are not marginalized lol). you can have conversations about whether or not individual versions of fire lady katara are fucked up, and I’m superrrr open to that because I’ve seen it be kinda shitty before. i’m just gonna leave this link to @shewhotellsstories and her post on this.

but often times katara as fire lady is very dominant in global/fire nation/water tribe politics, she’s a game changer ambassador (that is probably the most popular headcanon I see), she holds on to her culture (and many fans have designed her being in her wt colors, zuko is respectful af to her, she and zuko spend extended periods in the swt, etc. like... it just depends on the way it’s written.

also leaving this response by @avatarnerdkiller to the idea of katara being a prize figurehead.

anyway, thanks for your patience anon and I am curious to see if you see this or even feel like responding after all this time XD

[dissecting-bollywood]

Bollywood & Biopics

DISSECT DEEPER #004

From Mary Kom to The Legend of Bhagat Singh, biopics have always been a quintessential part of Bollywood. Almost always guaranteeing a big box-office number, these movies attract the public eyes to untold stories. The actors playing the pivotal roles gain stardom for their capability and the directors gain certification of a good director from the public. Over the years, there have been many masterpieces in this genre (like Chak De! India and Shahid) and some... well... not masterpieces (like Azhar and Haseena Parkar) but regardless, they gain a fair amount of media coverage and love from the audiences. However, I’ve recently noticed a large number of biopics going on production (mostly the ones on the picture before but other ones include 83, Prithviraj, an unnamed Saina Nehwal movie, and Gunjan Saxena) and I just cannot help but ask; why are there so many biopics under production now? What started the trend and why is it still so prevalent? 

Looking At The Numbers

Firstly, let’s look at things from a producer’s standpoint: to both earn money and provide an unforgettable movie-going experience, they need to invest in a project that has previously proved its engagement with audiences. Other than the holy trinity of genres I call RAD (romance, action, drama), a very prevalent and successful genre is a biopic. Take the last decade as an example; it started out with the promising Dirty Picture and  Paan Singh Tomar. After a row of impressive biopics back-to-back, Dangal hit the theatres in 2016 and became the highest-grossing Bollywood (Hindi) movie ever with a whopping ₹2,024 crores worldwide. This groundbreaking movie signifies the marketability of a biopic and how much it attracts the public. Even more so, in later years other movies like Sanju and Padmaavat have gained a considerable amount of revenue, further backing up this argument. So long story short, over the last decade, biopics have continuously proven that they are highly marketable and can gain a lot of money. Like, a lot.

Gaining Credibility

Other than the numbers, another thing biopics are known for is giving actors acting credibility (and by credibility I mean the gaining respect an actor gets from critics, audiences, and other individuals in the industry, not from the money the movie gains). An actor who exactly embodies what I am trying to convey is Rajkummar Rao. After his debut in Love, Sex Aur Dhoka, his later roles were either supporting characters in successes or main characters in flops. Although many critics praised his performance in these movies, he was still unable to gain respect as a leading man in Bollywood. That was until Shahid rolled around the corner. The movie was about a Muslim lawyer named Shahid Azmi and although it was a flop, Rao was immensely praised for his performance. He later received the Filmfare Award for Best Actor and National Award for Best Actor along with Suraj Venjaramoodu. After that, Rao was finally regarded as a serious actor and delivered other memorable performances in movies like Queen, Bareily Ki Barfi, and Newton. It’s not just the actors who gain credibility from biopics; the directors do too. Meghna Gulzar is a prime example of that. Before she made the critically acclaimed Talvar about the 2008 Noida double murder case, she made movies like Filhaal..., Just Married, and Dus Kahanniyan. According to the IMDB ratings, the movies weren’t that great, having an average of 5.6/10. But when you look at the IMDB rating of Talvar (8.2/10), it’s almost hard to believe it is from the same director.

Endorsing That Guy

Another sad and unfortunate reason as to why biopics are popular nowadays (albeit quite small) is because of endorsing or enlightening a famous figure’s public image. A few I can think of off the top of my head are PM Narendra Modi, Azhar, and Sanju. In all of these cases, the creative decision is to focus on other aspects of the person’s life, like in Azhar, the creators focused on the cricketer’s personal life rather than the match-fixing scandal which banned him from the ICC and BCCI for life. Another trend I see is them bending certain facts of their history to make them appear helpless. To avoid being political, in Sanju it was shown that Dutt first started using drugs on the set of his first movie Rocky with the fictional character of Zubin when in reality, he started using them in high school with his friends. Although a few of these alterations can be easily looked over, it falters the delivery of the movie's final message and not to mention distracts the audience members from the otherwise engaging aspects of the movie. It just feels like the movie has a hidden agenda, which pulls us out of the movie immediately.

Outro

In my opinion, biopic movies are a blessing from whatever is above. It shows us how there are hidden gems amongst the generally depressing world and how inspiration can be found anywhere. The delivery of their message is also much more effective than that of a fictional story because it is marketed to be real. However, sometimes overdoing it can lose the magic behind a biopic and the formula of the story soon becomes stale and overdone. I do think Bollywood is heading that way with their next row of biopics, but I’m still excited to watch many of these movies. Hopefully, these movies will prove me wrong and the formula isn’t stale and dry. Also, let me know what you guys think of biopics. Do you generally like most of them or do you think there are way too many to keep track of? Thank you so much for making it this far into the post. Wash your hands and practice social distancing :)

[gamingbrace492]

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