jillianlope

[violetwolfraven]

Wait wait wait remember that post about how Team Starkid/the Lang brothers are going to be comparable to Shakespeare 500 years from now and it was mostly played for laughs like yeah lol you’ll need a paragraph of footnotes to explain the zefron poster but like

I don’t think that’s actually far off from how Starkid’s place in theatre history might play out and here’s why. Just hear me out

Why is Shakespeare so popular today when he definitely wasn’t the only playwright from that era? When he’s not even the only playwright from that era from England that we have surviving works from?

Two main reasons:

1) Shakespeare’s work is (relatively) universally relatable. The characters do things that are so fundamentally human. They make jokes at their friends’ expense. They complain about being awkward in front of their crush. They have daddy issues. The plot lines of the plays aren’t too complicated. The dick jokes land whether you’re watching in 1611 or 2024, and they probably still will in 2637. Shakespeare’s works are timeless because he didn’t try to outsmart his audience. He wrote about things everyone could relate to rather than trying too hard to peacock his intellect in front of the nobility. This is not true of every playwright.

2) Shakespeare was really popular right around the time England started colonizing everything in sight. Copies of his work got shipped all around the world, translated into dozens of languages, performed probably thousands of times. Setting aside the moral implications of this, the important thing to note is that Shakespeare was about the most easily accessible English playwright during a time of rapid, intense globalization.

Meanwhile, Starkid:

1) Invests hard in meaningful, relatable character arcs instead of spectacle and expensive sets or costumes. Also, lowbrow, immature humor and dick jokes that make A Very Potter Sequel funny and enjoyable regardless of if you’ve ever seen any other Harry Potter media in your life.

2) Posts professional recordings of their musicals to YouTube FOR FREE, making their shows about the easiest, best quality musical theatre you can get pretty much anywhere in the world, regardless of if your area has an active theatre scene. Proshots from other companies are rare and usually not free. Bootlegs are all well and good, but even if the video quality is alright (and that’s a big if) the audio is usually garbage. Starkid has been posting the best quality free recordings they can afford since 2009, shortly after the birth of social media, another time of rapid, intense globalization.

In short, I’m not saying that theatre historians in 500 years won’t remember any our current Broadway faves, but I am saying that in my opinion, Team Starkid is probably going to be more accessible for the general public. If you’re a 26th century English teacher trying to teach your class about narrative structure in 21st century theatre, what are you going to show your students? A bootleg of Hadestown with blurry video and garbage audio? Or the professional recording of Twisted, parts of which they will probably even enjoy, because even long after no one remembers Disney’s Aladdin anymore, your class of 26th century 16-year-olds are still going to laugh at “No One Remembers Achmed.”

[ryuzakemo128]

Konig x Enemy Soldier!Reader

He falls in love with her while she’s torturing him. His team rescues him later on, and he forms an obsession with her based on that one interaction. Years later he’s walking home from a bar shitty little bar, and he hears someone from inside what seems to be a closed restaurant. He draws his gun and enters the building.

He goes into the kitchen, and finds her chopping some dudes hand off.

You can decide which way the story turns. I just want some angst/dark content, please and thank you!😔🙏

DANGER!

Pairing: König x Enemy Soldier!Reader

Content Warnings: Torture, Interrogation, blood, forceful submission, manipulation, kidnapping, shoulder dislocation, executions, obsession.

Words: 2353

Masterlist

Note: I hope you like this. I had added a few more details from the premise you have given me originally. I hope you enjoy.

Credit for dividers: @cafekitsune + @strangergraphics

Summary: “Worry not, little lamb. The time has come for me and my kin to put you in your place.”

Enemy. Opponent. Adversary. Foe.

You are not his Friend. His Ally. His Comrade.

Alas you were neither of those things.

Konig’s memory of the past with you was jumbled up. He doesn’t know what parts were real and what were either conjured, fabricated, or purely invented by your words alone.

His brain had been scanned, examined, X-rayed, and scrutinised. Yet they don’t understand where his obsession with you came from.

He still remembers your voice, how it echoed, reverberated and ricochetted. The soft, angelic voice of yours. Haunting his nightmares even after he is rescued years later.

His nightmares repeating parts of his torture regardless of how he slept at night. It didn’t matter if he slept on his side or his back. The nightmares came for his mind, again and again.

Sleeping medication only granted him five hours of sleep at a time. Only ever five hours of sweet, blissful, delightful, tranquil sleep.

“Worry not, little lamb. The time has come for me and my kin to put you in your place.” You uttered into his ear. “You were a little naïve for thinking you could…...waltz right in here without any issue? Hmm?”

“Perhaps you were betting on worming your way right inside here.”

“Unlikely.”

“I mean seriously, have you not seen how large you are? Or did you get an ego boost from someone up top?”

“Either bravely stupid or stupidly brave.”

“No matter. It doesn’t concern me which one it is or isn’t. My job is to figure out what you know up inside that head of yours.” You were keen on it. Bargaining on cracking upon that vault of information inside his skull.

A woman in her twenties handed you his medical file, “Looky here…...it says you’ve got severe social anxiety. And they said there wasn’t anything on here I could find useful. It’s a gold mind, my little lamb.”

König’s eyes to wear you were pacing back and forth, back, and forth, his team would rescue him surely, right? They wouldn’t leave him in the hands of the enemy too long, right? A colonel in the hands of the enemy’s interrogator?

Preposterous. Absurd. Ludicrous. Outlandish. Unreasonable. Laughable

It would be a betrayal of the deepest level. Not that it hasn’t been done before. It’s technically not unheard of. Not unheard of to leave a leader inside the clutches of the enemy. A last desperate resort most of the time. But never done unless they had no other choice.

They wouldn’t do that to him, right? Right? They were coming to get him, right? They will come to his rescue, right?

“Worry not. Little lamb, I’m just going to make a few more preparations, and we should be underway shortly. Until then, you will be in the capable hands of nurses.” Before you headed out to get your tools from your lab. You weren’t going to interrogate the guy and cut into him with dirty tools, are you?

No.

It would be against your moral code of conduct.

Hygiene is a must.

Especially when you interrogate someone as important as him.

Can’t have him dying too quickly, can you? All that information locked up inside his head would be gone.

Can’t have it.

Can’t risk it.

Won’t risk it.

König sat there in the dark, cold, dimly lit concrete box of a room. As the nurses fussed around him, setting the surgical lights ready, the pristine cotton white sheets around him, the gurney he would be soon strapped onto sometime later.

The nurses weren’t harsh on the eyes, either. Meaning, you knew, exactly how to cause a man with severe social anxiety to stutter, fall on his own words and flush up like he was under the midday sun.

They took the helmet off. The dark black veil came off afterwards. The smell of disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, the layers of soft white cloth wrapped over his front to keep the dirt and the dried blood from making a mess everywhere else.

Clearly you took your torture seriously. Seriously, enough to make sure he’s alive and aware of the entire process. Making him aware of the kind of terror you were about to unleash onto his skin.

“She would rather not have you look like you crawled from under the ground.” One of the nurses muttered. As if she were scolding HIM for letting HIMSELF get captured. No. He didn’t let himself get captured. He was sold out. Sold out by someone who knew would be there.

A detail remain consistent with the nurses, they look similar to you, acted like you and the same aura as you.

As if even as, you, the person, the real one, the original, wasn’t there in person. You weren’t completely gone from the room. Your influence remained whenever you were physically present or not. What wasn’t to love?

Your influence, physically present or not.

The nurses looking and acting like you.

The whole nine yards to keep him on his toes.

Despite the fact, you were trying to cause him serious amounts of discomfort. Using his severe social anxiety extensively.

Why? In order to prove to your superiors that anything can be tailored to an individual to both torture and interrogate.

Washing the dirt, the layers of black painted onto the eye region. Washed, disinfected, massaged, and made clear enough for your eyes. To etch in the fear clear enough for you to see. Smug, aren’t you? A right smug bitch aren’t you Maus?

All this work for him? You shouldn’t have.

You really shouldn’t. Furthermore, you should have done all that for him.

No one had gone out their way to do those things for him before.

But you’re the enemy, right? It would be wrong to have you as his.

Though given the chance of it ever reserving, would he give you the same treatment as you just did? He can’t say that he would or ever could.

Then again, he would have to contend with having you get rescued, as he would be sometime soon.

He couldn’t have that.

He wouldn’t have that.

Once you walked back into the concrete slathered room, “Aren’t you just a soft lamb. I will get the information from you, regardless of its integrity. Either way, information is just that. Information and information of any kind is worth more than gold from the right kind of person. Don’t you agree? Of course, you do.”

You rolled out your tools upon the surgical tray, the top practically drowning in the dark course material. Each pocket, holding a syringe. “I have a lovely little concoction, the Americans loved to call a ‘truth serum.’ A concoction of a range of psychoactive drugs. Used by Russian Federation and the USSR, United States, and India. Why am I telling you this? Well, can’t have your mind wandering to things that clearly won’t matter.”

God, woman, you talk more than a chipmunk hyped on caffeine. Knowing more about this than I would have expected.

“Hey, hey, hey,” you tapped him on the side of his face to regain his attention on you, as if it ever left it. Your soft fingers on his cheek, sending a small shock of electricity down his spine. I want you to do that again. But I know you won’t.

“Quit zoning out into Lala land and focus on what I’m talking about.” You don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll listen to you no matter how much you touch me.

“Now back onto more important matters, these psychoactive drugs come in the form of at least ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, midazolam, flunitrazepam, sodium thiopental, and amobarbital, among others. Though thoroughly tested, ethical and legal issues were raised. Serious issues, mind you.”

You paused for a few minutes, tightening the foot strap to prevent him from wriggling out from the chair and escaping. Another form of physical contact between the two of you, the cold black, course medical gloves against his skin. Despite them being covered, he just knew how soft your hands must be underneath those gloves.

“Luckily for the both of us today, we’re sticking with Sodium thiopental, also known as Sodium Pentothal.”

Snip. Snip. Snip. There goes half the sleeve of his long-sleeved undershirt. The syringe dug deep into his flesh, into his skin, biting him like a snake injecting its venom into its unsuspecting prey. But he’s suspecting, you told him it was going to happen regardless of how he felt about it.

Not a complete lie, isn’t it?

The cotton ball dabbed onto his inner elbow. The cold liquid combined with your warm hand made for suffocatingly strong mix of desire, uncontested need for more and if he could will it. He would get more of your touch.

Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab. Dab.

The syringe placed on his inner forearm, the gentle touches to ensure he received the right dosage amount. Couldn’t have him dying on you before you go the information you wanted from him, could you?

“Now, don’t move a muscle, or I’ll accidentally give you more than I intend to. Which will end up with you overdosing and dying in that chair.” You warned him. A stern glare in your eyes told him you weren’t kidding on the dying part.

The squeak of the wheels on the chair, clearly you haven’t maintained it on purpose, clearly you intend on leaving that way on purpose.

“Let's start with,” you paused, forcing him to maintain eye contact with you. A sly grin spreads across your face.

“Isn’t that better? Isn’t this much better?”

Your hand gripped his chin, forcing his face up to look at you. Tight enough to remind you what you were capable of doing. Loose enough to allow him to breathe.

You’re lucky I am bound within this chair.

If I wasn’t.

I don’t know what I wouldn’t do to you.

I do know what I would be doing to you.

What I would be willing to do to you.

Don’t think for a second, once I am freed, I wouldn’t find you again and again.

To inflict the same level of pain you have done to me.

Delicious levels of pain.

Misery.

All of it will be mine.

Mine and mine alone.

The layers of interrogation kept going from there, from the truth serum, you received little information. But it certainly wasn’t enough. It would never be enough for your senses. You wanted more. You were keen on getting information, no matter how blood it had to get. No matter how forceful you had to be.

Whatever it happened to be the first time. Whatever it could have been. Whatever it will be in the future.

Once König had been recused. Once he had escaped your clutches.

He couldn’t help but stare as they drove away.

The further away he went, the angrier you became. The sweet tasting anger. Only for him.

He really, really, should have known better than to enter the bar. The foolish man ignored his instinct to run. The closed blinds, the locked windows, the only light turned on was the bar’s kitchen in the back.

The bar was a hole-in-the-wall bar only few people recognised, and even fewer people would have appreciated. It had been years since he last encountered you. The depth, the intensity and power radiating from you since then. It had only increased his want for you.

Decapitation of several soldiers leading to the room in the back. Blood seeping into the wood flooring, many of his men were put to death and the screams were getting louder telling him run. To flee.

“What do you know?!” You demanded from the man who would only speak in German.

“I didn’t ask for a prayer. I asked for an answer.”

The amputation of the man’s hand, it was the last act sealed, signed and delivered how much he wanted to keep you for himself. The Damascus machete in your hand, your grasp cutting into the wrist of the man’s arm.

The emotions were brought to the inevitable forefront. Upon seeing your face again. Looking deep into your eyes again.

Snapped something inside of him. Marching into the kitchens. Slamming you against the wall, his grip on your throat tight and his grip on your machete tearing it away from you.

“There is nothing I am not willing to do to you.” He whispered, his hot, warm breath against your neck. It took all your might to resist him.

Konig couldn’t risk you getting away, thus the only way he knew would make you stay with him long enough?

To injure you severely enough to keep you around him. Punishment for touching him so attentively, conscientiously, responsively, and assiduously.

To wound you enough to keep you for himself.

And to turn around to heal you in a twisted act of love and affection.

A most twisted, perverse, dogged, Contrary kind of love.

A darling all for himself.

Determined to force you to feel all of his adoration.

His devotion and tenderness.

With a crack, snap, and pop. Your shoulder dislocated from the combined force of him pinning you against the wooden floor and the force of his hand.

Throwing you over his shoulder like you were a princess from a foreign castle and he was a prince of Austria.

His mother said he loved him.

She always knew what to say.

Dragging you into the van didn’t take much effort. You were too focused on the pain from your dislocated shoulder.

Groaning, moaning in pain.

Your thighs in his grasp like he imagined they would be. Plush, plentiful, sumptuous, abundant.

Wrapped in layers of black clothing he had every intention of ripping off your body once he got the chance to.

The characterless, unremarkable, nondescript black van parked on the side of the road. His team waiting for you to be shoved inside like a fragile porcelain doll.

[darkstarofchaos]

Having seen some frankly irritating opinions from both sides of the aisle, I think some of y'all need to chill about the way the Decepticons were handled in EarthSpark.

Decepticon fans are allowed to be upset that the faction's depth and potential for development was tossed aside in favor of "Decepticons are just evil".

However, depth and potential doesn't mean the Decepticons have to be buddy-buddy with the Autobots. Depth is amoral, you can be a villain who resists "redemption" and still be a well-rounded character.

My issues with S2 vs S1 are as follows:

The lack of good explanation for why the sides are fighting again. I am not upset that the Cons are villains again. They have no reason to like or trust any human or Autobot, and gratitude for having your life saved only goes so far. My issue is that S2 literally opens by saying the Cons started the fight again just because that's what Cons do. Obviously the story is from the perspective of the main cast, and there are hints that they could be intentionally unreliable narrators (Starscream refers to them as oppressors, Breakdown challenges Bumblebee about giving up on Cybertron), but we aren't given enough time with the Cons to draw a solid conclusion about the intentions here.

The way the heroes treat Spitfire, i.e. a literal newborn. She was 100% in the right when she said that she didn't know the moral rules she was being expected to follow. But because she wasn't born with morals and an understanding of mortality preinstalled, the heroes condemned her instead of trying to de-escalate and take responsibility for their part in the situation (granted, Megatron was the only flight-capable adult present and he argued against de-escalation. Which tracks because he's Megatron. But someone should have pushed for a peaceful resolution).

How much depth do individual Decepticons still have? Who knows, Starscream, Shockwave, and Breakdown are the only ones with any focus. The others are only seen fighting, causing trouble for fun, or just standing around growling. Twitch - i.e. one of our main characters - literally spends an entire episode in the Con camp and we still manage to see nothing of Decepticon life when they're just hanging out. And yes, I know that the more characters you have in a scene, the harder it is to show their personalities. You can still show them playing cards or arm-wrestling or something. Anything to show that they're actually people and not just a hive mind that exists to fight.

Starscream. Specifically the last 20 minutes of the S2 finale, because everything else in his characterization fit S1 until that point. He literally calls the Autobots oppressors, so of course he's going to fight them. He wants Aftermath kept out of the way (that's a child, so that's perfectly reasonable) and he's frankly patient with Twitch-as-Spitfire, in spite of Skywarp's incredulity that he lets her "get away" with causing trouble (again, that is a child. Patience is the correct response). He even seems to like Spitfire after meeting the real her. The only issue I had with Starscream leading up to the second half of the finale was that his motivations didn't seem to be much deeper than "I want power" (I could be misremembering that point - there may have been an "Earth is going to be our home, let's make it better to live on" when he and Shockwave discussed Cybertron). And then the last 20 minutes happened and I can't see any logical extrapolation from S1 to that. It was just a generic "Starscream goes mad with power", and it came completely out of left field. Not even any remorse about what he "needed" to do or any attempt to justify himself, it was just, "Yeah, I'm worse than the people I called out for being oppressors, isn't it great?"

If there is some big plot twist where it turns out the heroes were unreliable narrators all along, some of my issues will actually be fixed. However, I find that extremely unlikely, for one major reason: all of the non-Decepticon characters who disagree with the heroes are either villains or they "come around". The Quintessons felt betrayed by Quintus? Nah, Quintus was a great guy, you can tell because he tortured a kid for wishing she had never been chosen by him. Prowl doesn't like the Autobots' reliance on children? Silly Prowl, those kids are special, we want them to fight. The narrative never, at any point, entertains the idea that those dissenting voices might have a point. Which means we're probably meant to take the heroes at face value on most, if not all things.

TL;DR: the Decepticons being villains makes perfect sense, even with the context of S1; it's the heroes acting like they're only fighting for power after we had several episodes about second chances and not all Decepticons being the same that makes it feel like a cop-out. And Decepticon fans are allowed to be upset that some of their favorite characters had interesting stuff going on only to be functionally relegated to Voiceless Grunt Number 3 (and yes, several Autobots have also been relegated to Voiceless Grunts. If one of your favorite characters has fallen victim to this affliction, regardless of faction, you have my sympathies).

[cherrybomb107]

I see people saying that Silco ultimately had Zaun’s best interests at heart, but I disagree. I think HE definitely thinks that, but at the end of the day, actions speak louder than words. Silco didn’t act like a revolutionary. He acted like a wannabe Piltie who disguised his rhetoric with vague plans of rebellion and monologues 😭😭😭

Disclaimer: I love Silco! He’s one of my favorite characters in Arcane and I think he was a fabulous villain. Not quite THE big bad(that title is reserved for the institution of Piltover and its apathy and downright callousness towards the Undercity) but he was definitely a villain at the end of the day. No amount of “nuance” or “character complexity” is gonna erase that

Let’s start with the obvious: the fact that he fully planned on killing Powder before she launched herself into his arms and he realized how similar they were. I’m sorry, but in my mind, no one who’s willing to kill children is a revolutionary. Sorry. 🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️🤷🏾‍♀️Only reason why he didn’t is because he saw himself in her. If he truly believed in revolution, he could’ve done youth outreach programs to get young people involved in protests, and given them classes on what to do/how to prepare for when the enforcers show up to shut them down. That’s a real thing that’s been done before btw. I know Arcane is fiction, but it deals with politics that mirror our real world struggles. If Silco actually backed up his claims of wanting freedom for Zaun, he’d do things like this.

To continue this, the creation of Shimmer. Silco claims it’s needed in order to give Zaunites the strength they need to fight back against Piltover. Which, again, I’m sure he believes that, but come on. Creating a monopoly on a highly addictive drug that permanently disfigures its users when they take too much is not the way to go about it. Modeling the capitalist system of Piltover is ultimately not going to help. Shimmer does make people feel empowered, yes. But that empowered feeling doesn’t last long, and when you come down from your high, all you want is more, more, more. So where does that leave you?

It leads you to living out on the streets, willing to do anything for your next hit. That’s what happened to Huck, and we don’t even know how many others. Silco never once expressed concern for the wellbeing of the addicts that he created! What kind of revolutionary would toss his own people to the side when they’re no longer useful to him?

Speaking of the drugs, why does he have children working in his factories? Now, child labor is a very complex issue. I’m from the States, so we’re generally (or we claim to be anyway) against child labor. In other countries however, children not only work, but they protest and fight for their right to work. They take pride in their work. So I don’t want to debate the morality of child labor. I wanted to bring it up for the sake of the argument. Let’s say that child labor is a cultural norm in the Undercity. That brings me back to my original question: why does Silco have kids working in his factories? Child labor isn’t the issue; it’s the kind of labor they’re doing and the level of danger they could be in. What kinds of things are the kids that work in Silco’s factories responsible for? Do they get equal pay to their adult counterparts? Worker’s comp if something happens/they get injured on the job? Are there even protections in place so that there are little to no injuries? These are questions which we can’t even begin to answer, because Silco never brings it up!

He never talks about the ways in which he sets out to improve not just the lives of child laborers in Zaun, their adult counterparts, or people in Zaun, period! He only ever talks about “the nation of Zaun” in the abstract. Never once does he sit down and ask himself if this is the best way to go about it. I’m pro revolution. I absolutely believe that the people of Zaun have the right to fight back against their oppressors. But, with the way Silco was acting, he functionally became another oppressor.

Let’s say he was able to make a deal with Jayce and secure the Undercity’s freedom without having to sacrifice Jinx. What would that even look like? What does Silco know about running a government? How would he address the population of Shimmer addicts he manufactured? You can’t just get rid of/stop the production of Shimmer and leave those people without support! It’s true that the air was cleaner under Silco’s reign. But “cleaner” is the operative word. Doesn’t mean it was completely clean. And if people in Zaun didn’t even have clean air, who’s to say they had access to clean water and good food? Did Silco ever do anything to address those issues or did he, along with the rest of the chembarons, acquire enough capital to tell working class and underprivileged Zaunites “fuck you, I got mine”?

To summarize, Silco SAYS he wants freedom from Piltover’s oppression. He SAYS he wants to give his people the power to fight back. But actions speak louder than words. I can’t think of a single action that Silco took that benefited anyone outside of him and those closest to him. Realistically speaking he would have been a terrible leader for Zaun, and it all would’ve fallen apart when he died/was killed for his lack of leadership skills. It was only a matter of time imo.

Did he ever truly want to remove the boot from the Undercity’s neck? Or did he just want to be the one wearing it? I’m leaning towards the latter. But maybe that’s just me.

[dykedvonte]

why do you hate Joshua Graham or Honest Hearts so much?

This DLC and character represents a bigger issue with fandom spaces I have but particularly fallout fandom in general.

Fallout tends to tackle a lot of topics controversial and not. The first two games it’s heavy cause they are the most satirical and direct with how anti-war, nationalism and etc… they are. 3 loses this as it’s very clear once you play or learn about all the games that Todd and a bunch of guys at Bethesda just liked the 50s post apocalyptic aesthetic and refuse to actually critique the ideals of the time period like the earlier titles.

New Vegas is the game that really gets back into it a degree it almost seems like it’s taking too much on. There are things done exceedingly well while other things are done horribly wrong . I’ve made posts about it before and plan to make a big series of posts (it’s a lot of writing) but my biggest gripe is with Honest Hearts and all the gross and white savior esque depictions it has of indigenous peoples. The entirety if FNV does not do the injustices faced by indigenous people correctly on any count. My two biggest complaints are with the Khans and the tribes in Zion but I’ll talk about the former on a different post.

Both characters of Daniel and Joshua are the most accurate depiction of white saviors I’ve seen and I hate how the DLC tries to justify and defend them. The DLC treats Joshua like this man who has repented for his past actions when he is just retracing his steps after his cruelty bit him in the ass. He was one of the worst parts of the Legion and it is all but explicitly stated that if you don’t force him to be non-violent he will turn the tribes of Zion into the legion 2.0. The Dead Horses and the Sorrows are horribly infantilized by both Daniel and Joshua who both use them for self serving purposes guised by religious duty. The White Legs are the horrible stereotype of violent and savage indigenous and I personally think a lot of their interlinking with Ulysses, his hair and Ulysses character in general are distasteful and very telling of how BIPOC or POC where involved.

But outside of the game it’s the weird obsession people have with these characters ideologies and trying to make them seem more interesting/philosophical than they are. Tumblr is an echo chamber and many fans of Fallout are not the people on this site. Many people are not educated in the issues these characters convey and how poorly they do or used these characters as a poor introduction for their takes. Contrary to what a lot of people believe in, fallout has a prediomeny white cis male fanbase. More importantly a large portion of the fanbase is white.

You can joke how FNV made you trans or see the numbers on post/fics or diverse headcanons but these are kiddy numbers compared to the millions that consume the franchise and aren’t in those more aware spaces or don’t engage in the spaces the same way someone like me does/has to. Their views shape a lot more than people realize and it’s exhausting to be in a space where people don’t correct the more subtle yet toxic aspects of it but also adopt them into some weird quirky view point on the characters or issues. Some people don’t realize and some people don’t care.

My main issue is just the idolizing of these sort of thing in this fandom space and people try to acts like a game like fallout whose tagline is “War never changes” and has never had a game not revolve around political or militaristic factions issues isn’t that deep or doesn’t relate to real issues. I think it’s mainly caused by how over powered you can become and how you can strong arm your way past these learning moments as majority of people who play this game do play it as a power fantasy where they can do so as they please (which of course, go ahead it’s fun) but never take in parallels or lessons in the story as if it was just another first person shooter.

Also like another personal gripe is Cazadores spawn like hell whenever I’m there and I have not found a mod that works to mod them out so I have to play Indigenous Racism the DLC while getting jumped by giant wasps WHILE helping Mormons. Like I cannot catch a break.

[rmbunnie]

Red Hood Characterization

This is really long so I'm putting a cut here, I've been thinking about Jason Todd's character motivations and the question of whether or not his actions are based in a Moral Code (I don't think so, not to say he's without any morality) and I talk about that in more depth here.

I saw someone say on here that Titans: Beast World: Gotham City was some of the best Jason Todd internal writing they'd seen in a while, and I've been a Red Hood fan for 8 years or so now? pretty much since I read comics for the first time, so I went and checked out and I thought it was good! The way the person I saw talking about it as if it was rare and unusual made me wonder though, because as well-written as i thought his stances on crime were, there wasn't really anything in it that went against the way I conceptualize Jason?

This kinda plays into a larger question I've been thinking about for a while with Jason though, which is that, do people think that the killing is part of a fundamental worldview that motivates him a la batman, and that worldview is the reason he does the things he does?? Because 8 years ago i was a middle schooler engaging with fiction on the level that a middle schooler does, so I simply did not put much thought into it beyond "poor guy :(" but ever since I actually started trying to understand consistent characterization, I don't really see Jason as someone who's motivated by a moral code in his actions the way batman or superman is!

tbh my personal read is that he's a very socially-motivated guy, his actions from resurrection to his Joker-Batman ultimatum in utrh always seemed to me like every choice made leading up to his identity reveal was either a. to give him the leverage and skill necessary to pull off his identity reveal successfully, or b. to twist the knife that little bit more when he does let Bruce find out who he is. Like iirc there's a Judd Winick tweet like "yeah tldr he chose Red Hood as his identity because it's the lowest blow he could think of." And I think that's awesome, I think character motivations rooted so deeply in character's relationships and emotions are really fun to read! I also think it's where the stagnation/flatness of his character comes from in certain comics, because if his main motivation is one event in one relationship that passes, and he is not particularly attached to anything in his life or the world by the time that comes to pass, it's a little harder to come up with a direction to go with the character after that, because there isn't much of a direction that aligns with something the character would reasonably want? But I do think solving this by saying "all of the morally-off emotionally driven cruelty he did on his way to spite Batman was actually reflective of his own version of Batman's stance that's exactly the same except he thinks it's GOOD to kill people" isn't ideal. To be fully honest, it seems to me like he never particularly cared one way or the other about killing people to "clean Gotham of crime," he just did everything he could to get the power necessary to pull off his personal plans, and took out any particularly heinous people he encountered along the way (like in Lost Days.) Not to say I think the fact he killed people keeps him up at night anymore than everything else in his life events, I just never really thought he was out there wholeheartedly kneecapping some dude selling weed or random guy robbing a tv store for justice.

Looping wayyy back to my question, Is this (^) contradictory to the way he's written/the overall average perception of the character? Because like I enjoyed his writing in Beast World i have zero significant issue with anything there, I just didn't believe it would be a hot take, like yeah, that is Jason. It's been a while since I've read utrh and lost days, but I don't think my takeaway directly contradicts either of those too bad iirc. Idk all this to say I think Jason killing and being alright with killing is an obvious and objective fact, but i guess i've always seen it as more of a practical tactic than a moral belief, and I think taking the actions made during the lowest points of a character's life where he is obsessively focused on this ONEEEE thing and trying to apply it as a Motivating Stance to everything he's done after that, doesn't really follow logically for me.

[lord-squiggletits]

Part of why I hate this fandom's take on Autobots vs Decepticons is ppl (mainly 'con fans honestly) who can't have any nuance of the situation whatsoever and love to write plots like "oh the humans are racist and abusive towards Cybertronians so this is how Megatron is right" no actually I don't think colonialism/imperialism and racism are justified so long as you can point the finger and say "they were the aggressors first" or "their hands are no cleaner than ours bc their society sucks too" sorry. Please come up with better sociopolitical narratives in your war story.

[curufiin]

if i have to see one more mention of celegorm and luthien i am going to actually kill everyone

[timeisacephalopod]

The type of Christian who asks atheists how they don't like, murder people on the reg are so funny to me because they seem to think their religion makes them the Peak of Morality when statements like "if you don't believe in God how comes you don't do X thing" all but outright state they have no idea why shit like murder and rape is bad except that God doesn't like it lmao. Like way to admit you have no intrinsic sense of morality and need to be afraid of a higher power to be a decent person, but I promise if you're not a piece of shit it's actually very natural not to want to do heinous evil shit all the time potential punishment from a higher power or not 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

[purpurussy]

side eyeing phannieconfessions for stating multiple times they don't want to publish overly mean-spirited anons and then deciding to publish obvious poly-phobic bait. i know it's like what was i doing at the devil's sacrament i know. but can this website go 1 day without saying something really mean about poly folks please like... just 1 day

[agnesandhilda]

a cartoon about a boy growing up in a hyperfundamentalist protestant town and his abusive father who shoots him and gets away with it because of that same culture of silence/of men having control over women and children is something that can be so lingua ignota-coded

[llycaons]

the shower pee tags are extremely divisive btw

[noodle-shenaniganery]

can we stop trying to bully people into advocacy, please?

can we stop making people feel personally responsible for issues they only just heard of and may not even understand?

can we stop yelling and berating people who aren’t putting all of their (probably limited) energy into researching something that has almost nothing to do with them and which may stress them out?

can we stop pressuring people who are already struggling to survive to limit their options on how they can live, what they can eat?

please?

please

can we stop

[thenegativitypit]

Not putting it in the tags of that post because it's only tangentially related but the notes of the moral panic post made me FINALLY realize why exactly it always feels wrong when people go, "You either disown Harry Potter OR you're a transphobe".

Like imagine if it was the satanic panic. "You either quit being a Christian OR you're personally responsible for this shit."

The Muslim panic (which is still going on btw)? "You either renounce your American (or British!) citizenship OR you're an Islamophobe."

Gay panic? Watch out, citizens of basically every country prior to just a few years ago and members of most religions even now. You're obligated to give it up.

Now far be it from me to say a piece of media is as important as a religion or citizenship, but... if you can see the problem with the extreme examples, you can hopefully see what's troublesome about the idea in general.

"This thing is tainted and therefore you must NEVER touch, lest you be BAD," is just... it's practically the definition of purity culture, isn't it? "Some vocal Christians are horribly homophobic, therefore Christianity ITSELF is evil." Like we can understand and express why it doesn't work like that, right?

So in the same way, we can see that, "The author who wrote this very popular book series became a horrible TERF years after the books were complete, therefore you have to renounce the series in its entirety even if it was incredibly formative for you," is... messed up. It's not good.

We shouldn't create moral panic or police people like this. If we do, we're no better than the people who are creating moral panic about and policing us.

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

i feel like this site leaning heavily into the "pedophilia and incest and rape kinks are good" angle lately can be attributed to the mass expulsion of sex workers and black ppl on here ngl

[thebitchbehindtheslaughter]

Day 2,569,364 of being called evil for liking Dottore, and having my favourite character be slandered because some are too big of pussies to just say “I don’t like the character” like normal people