#in spite of the bad execution i do think character analysis is possible

[ohithankyou]

there’s a chance that this is a widely held belief but in the case that it isn’t—hear me out. i don’t think buck realized that, during their breakup, tommy had told him he wants forever with him. that tommy didn’t breakup with him because he doesn’t want forever, he broke up with buck because he wants forever. he aches for forever. but his fear has led him to believe that forever isn’t his to have, regardless of his desires. tommy knows that (well. in complicated ways i would argue but i’ll come to this another time), we know that, but i don’t think this is something buck has fully realized. and this isn’t a dig at buck’s competence. not at all.

what buck was ready for that night was (what i’m assuming is) their weekly date-night out. they’d go out, watch a movie, get some dinner, come back to buck’s and spend the night together luxuriating in each other’s presence, as they often did. just a sweet night together that would be made, in buck’s mind, all the sweeter by asking tommy to move in with him and tommy accepting (because i do believe buck thought he’d say yes). and maybe he believed that their date-night out wouldn’t just be their usual date-night out, it would be a celebratory one marking an important milestone in their relationship.

and so, buck went from riding this high of asking tommy to move in with him, of leading this important next step in their relationship — likely believing that the conversation would end in them moving in together — to being told no and being broken up with instead. as in—he got hit and shot down twice. first, with tommy telling him that he couldn’t move in with him. and second, with tommy consequently breaking up with him. the latter (the breakup) being something he didn’t even process until the very end, when he asked tommy for clarification. and this lack of processing, in my opinion, was due to a combination of: buck’s own high expectations of tommy’s potential answer because he wasn’t privy to tommy’s fear (which could be its own discussion) and overall, the very abrupt nature of the breakup itself which carried a ton of emotional whiplash. but once buck did understand that he was broken up with, i think that’s all he was able process.

given all of this, i would care to bet he absolutely didn’t register what was, essentially, tommy’s declaration of love to him during that emotionally hectic moment. i also don’t think that it’s something he’s realized since then. again, not a dig at his competence, but more so the emotions surrounding being broken up with taking precedence in his mind. and this would ultimately explain in someway, why he’s trying not to give into his urges—into his desire to call tommy. and why he’s baking instead.

but also, we know that he wants to reach out and was going to do so when he caught tommy bubbling him (until he was interrupted). so i do trust that he knows tommy likes him, i don’t think he doubts that, but he’s hasn’t realized or processed the full extent of tommy’s feelings. and given that, i’d say that buck’s desire to text tommy (as far as the mid-season finale) is largely fuelled by his own feelings (which is a good thing and in my opinion, shows growth). as, buck knows what he wants and that’s tommy—now and in the future. maybe he’s not able to express it through words but at his core, he knows that everything he expressed to him that night, he did so because he meant it (and plans to mean it). so, if or when buck realizes tommy also wants forever but his fear is keeping him from taking that chance, i do believe buck would immediately reach out and challenge him.

[vaninakan]

Late night thoughts: Volume 2

It's been a hot minute since I had onna these. So I thought I'd go over some recent stuff going on.

Warning, my thoughts will be a messy mix of filtered and unfiltered, tangents about life, personal struggles, current events and probably some pretentious philosophical talk.

.....

....

...

..

.

.

.

.

.

Lifewise, I've been pulling through the best that I can. It's been a bit rough in general with everything going on, both inside and outside my little bubble, especially when I've been on and off trying to get a job with very radio silent results as of now. But I haven't given up just yet and hopefully I'll get one soon enough.

Sad fact about me: I'm actually a very lonely person. Aside from my very close friend/family groups on Discord and the family I see in person, I have no friends to really go and hang out with in person. And my anxieties regarding making new friends is even worse. Making friends isn't something you can do artificially, it takes time, patience, understanding. It should come naturally. I know that if I want to make new friends I gotta push myself out there, but with everything going on right now, the world just feels so much more spiteful these days to the point where I wonder if I should even bother trying to put myself out there at all. Especially with the personal obstacles I have and the identity I hold dear to. The pain of living with general anxiety is that it shows you EVERYTHING that could possibly go wrong. The betrayal, the lying, the "you mess up this one thing and it will cost you greatly!" It's hell.

It's a hell I've lived with eversince Elementary started coming to a close. Yet despite everything, despite the days it wins over me, I fight back.

I'm at the point in my life where I know what I want to do with my life, but at this point in time it's really hard to find the motivation to continue on and finish anything. When it comes to me, I have an issue where I come up with WAY too many ideas I realistically wouldn't be able to execute in a short span of time. I'm not a fast creator. I cannot work like that, I need to take things at my own pace but even that pace varies. I will get an idea for a drawing, sketch it out and then get a brand new idea and sketch that out and rinse and repeat. It's an issue I've struggled with even during my highschool years! I think I may have ADHD alongside plenty of other mental/developmental disorders I've been diagnosed with. I watched Jaiden Animations's video about ADHD a while back and I've heard that taking medication for it can help get your mind to focus more. However, I have very mixed feelings about mental medication as a whole, namely because of personal trauma reasons I wish not to disclose publically. Don't worry, nobody harmed me, it was mainly a man vs self struggle. Still, It's something that I gotta think about considering, even if I don't like the idea of it. The human mind is so complicated.

Apologies if what I say at all in here feels like sympathy baiting, I'm not. I don't use my platform as a means of crying for help and attention, not anymore at least. I just say things just to say it. Get it off my chest. This is a blogging website after all, so I like to use it as such as well as for posting my art ......... when I feel like it ._. '

-----

If you found me through my bad Awakened Hollyberry analysis, I am so very sorry. I'm not really one to speak up much about discourse like that (or discourse in general really) publically, namely cause I know stuff like that is none of my business and the more distant I am from modern community chikanery, the better. The reason I did with that one specifically was because Hollyberry and her story is something I hold very dear to, especially since my love for the franchise had resparked recently. I love how friendly and joyous she is while also having her own share of flaws like any of the other ancients, it's incredibly engaging to see where her character goes as she overcomes her alcohol addiction and her flour war trauma. So of course when stuff began about her awakened form, I'll be honest, I was in a place of desensitized apathy. You know that feeling you get when something bad happens for the billionth time to the point where it feels lowkey normalized in an exhausting manner? The feeling you have when so say things like "what happened this time?" Or "what did they do now?" It was pretty much that. I'm very much used to the horror stories I hear about modern fandom spaces becoming so toxic that they will instantly jump to bombastic conclusions about... well, anything really, and the loud minority of the CR community is no different. And I had thought this was another situation where it was being blown way out of proportion than it needed to be.

But, like many things in life, it's really not all black and white now is it?

My initial analysis was bad. There were a few points in it I still agree with, but for the most part a lot of the points I tried making fell apart fast. It was rushed and not explained more carefully, too many of my arguments leaned more on one side when that wasn't my intention. It just sucked. The one thing I am happy about it is that it sparked analytical discussions on the matter in a way that genuinely helped me a ton. It actually gave me something of a new look into the full complexity of these situations, why stuff like this keeps happening and why things feel like they get so blown out of proportion. Deep down, plenty of these issues happen because people love this game and they know that the devs can and have done better, and when they don't, especially in places that feel personal to people, it hurts a ton. When a character many people saw themselves in gets slimmed down during their peak moment? That's going to be noticed and that's gonna leave an effect no matter how big or small the change was. Do I think it warrants bad faith and harassment campaigns? Obviously not! But these 'scandals' don't happen without reason. Is it annoying how often they happen and how easily driven mad the community can be? Absolutely, and I do wish there was more of a way to have these conversations without the monkey business involved, but that's a whole other conversation to have entirely. I still thank everyone who gave me constructive feedback on my post about it, you all were so respectful and patient with me when I replied back to your reblogs and I'm very grateful for that. Literally I wish more online problems could be solved with as much civility. 💜

If I ever EVER mess up again, don't ever be afraid to let me know, and I will do my best to correct myself.

-----

If you're expecting me to talk about the next big controversy or whatnot after the HB awakening stuff, you've came to the wrong place. I only start discussions on topics I'm genuinely passionate and care about. It doesn't always have to be sunshine and rainbows but it's the stuff I wanna start discussions of. In my last late night thoughts, I talked about how bad the animation meme community has became, a community I've more or less lurked in for a long time. The reason why I did that was because it was a community that used to hold a special place in my heart, and in some aspects it still does. This community is what got me into art and animation in the first place (late 2000's and early 2010's to be specific) because I loved seeing what new and exciting art these individual people were making. So seeing it in the state it's in now is... rough. Very rough.

With how the past few years have been with how many creators have been outed for less than savory things, how many people there are out there that are willing to do horrible things for their own gratification, it can be very difficult opening up to new people not knowing whether or not you can actually trust them. But as someone who struggles with loneliness and GAD (ironic I know), I do believe there are good people that do still exist out there. Not perfect angels mind you, I don't think there's such thing as a perfect person, but there is such things as people who want the best for you, who do have open minds, who want to build healthy relationships with you. You've just gotta look for them. And in general, I think we need to start relearning the concept of sympathy, empathy, having more compassion for one another. It could really help a lot in these trying times. And if you did mess up: please just take the L and admit where you're wrong and apologize, it is NOT THAT HARD.

To cap off tonight's late night thoughts, here is an art piece that took me TWO YEARS to finally finish.

Yeah. This drawing took 2 years for me to gain the courage and motivation to finally finish. Idk why, I guess my inner perfectionist at the time didn't wanna mess it up somehow? Regardless, it's done now and I love how it turned out.

Thank you for putting up with another one of my late night rambles, and until next time:

Take good care of yourself 👋

[stellocchia]

There is one thing I sometimes mention in my rants about c!Dream’s and c!Tommy’s relationship that I never expanded on, which is c!Dream assiging c!Tommy an almost divine value, well, that changes now! 

Turns out I just cannot write short and concise analysis it seems, so I put everything under the cut...

/rp

I’ve talked a few times before about how Dream in his mind gives Tommy added value (again, Tommy has value as a human being already, but Dream most definitely doesn’t see that), but I want to go a bit more in depth about it. 

So, we know by now that Dream has been obsessing over Tommy for quite a while now, though it really worsened with the beginning of season 2. 

It is important to note that, at that point, Tommy himself was back on the idea of there being a friendly rivalry between him and Dream for the disk that was still in Skeppy’s possession, nothing more then that. He most definitely didn’t hate Dream yet (although their relationship has always been complicated) and he shouldn’t have posed much of a threat to Dream, right?

We also all seem to recognise that Dream would not have let up until Tommy was exiled, but I haven’t seen many people discuss the WHY of it. Why was it so important to him? Did he just do it because he hated Tommy? Did he do it because he was bored and wanted chaos? 

Well, I think it’s because Tommy DID pose a threat to Dream. He WAS a threat to Dream because Dream had seen him during Pogtopia. He had seen him rally the troops, he had seen him keep people’s morale high even after Wilbur detonated the tnt and Techno released the withers, he knew what Tommy could do if Dream threatened L’Manburg while he was there, even while not being president (I mean, he still managed to lead a revolution against Schlatt even while never being the official leader). And Dream wanted to get rid of L’Manburg because of what it represented, because L’Manburg represented freedom from him, freedom from his rules. L’Manburg was a HUGE problem, so he needed to take out what kept L’Manburg together and that was Tommy.

But that’s not the only thing. If Dream only wanted Tommy out of the way, he could have just let him unalive himself or he could have killed him himself and pretended it was an accident. Heck, he could even have pushed for an execution in the first place instead of the exile! But he didn’t... and later on, during the Season 2 Finale, he outright refused to kill Tommy even in self defence. So for Tommy to have so much importance that Dream needed to keep a constant eye on him in exile and keep him alive, Dream’s mentality of Tommy being sort of the “key” to power must have already been in place when he formulated the exile plan (perhaps it was there from before then, but we can’t know this for certain). 

I mean, he also ordered a whole prison that could have been meant to hold Tommy from the start (it has been confirmed by Sam out of character that it was made with c!Tommy in mind and the only indication that it wasn’t comes from c!Dream in a converstaion with c!Tommy, which we really shouldn’t trust at all) and a curious thing to notice on that, if that was the case, is that the prison itself is called “Pandora’s Vault”, why calling it “vault”? A vault is something that’s supposed to hold valuable items. It’s supposedly a secure location where you hide away your most precious things. Why calling a prison that? Anyway... that was just an interesting tid-bit I’ve been thinking about. 

Back on the main tangent now! 

So, what does Dream think of Tommy exactly? 

“Listen Tommy, since you joined the server, you’ve been a headache! Okay? You’ve brought war, you brought terrorism, you’ve brought bad everything! But! But! The cause of all the wars, of everything, was attachment, alright? Your attachment to the disks, your attachment to Henry, to pets, to friends, to land, to countries, to items, right? (...) That’s- That’s the one good thing that you’ve done. The one good thing you’ve done is that you brought attachment to the server. So it took me a LONG time to realize how important attachment was, but, when I did, you know? It made me stronger, and I realised that you- you’re- you’re important, right?”

This is a quote directly taken from the season finale. I know it’s a long one, but it’s seriously important. Because Dream, with this quote, just asserted that Tommy is the reason attachments exist at all, even if that isn’t true of course (the whole disk war was kickstarted by Ponk getting mad when Sapnap retaliated to his prank by burning down Ponk’s lemon tree because he was attached to it), but to Dream it is. 

Tommy, a normal human teenager with no “main character powers” (you know, like being a life and death god, or silk-touch hands, or having the brains to create nukes or being able to bring yourself back to life out of spite, basically he has nothing normally considered “special”) is deemed the reason why people are able to care at all. THAT is the added value I’m talking about. Dream doesn’t see Tommy as Tommy, he never did, he sees him as his own idealized version of him. And in Dream’s mind Tommy has so much importnace that, without him, attachments would just stop existing. “How do we know that” you ask? Well, why else would Dream have been so adamant about needing Tommy ALIVE? He already did his thing if bringing attachments was all the value Dream assigned to him. Now attachments exist, surely Dream can get rid of Tommy, right? Well, no. Because, as I said, to Dream Tommy is the embodiment of attachments. 

I mean, he admitted so in that quote, didn’t he? He starts by telling Tommy that HE is the cause of everything: of war, of terrorism, of everything. But then, then he says that those same things are caused by attachments. How can we have both be true at the same time? Easy, make Tommy the concept of attachment personified!

“If I can control the things people are attached to, then I can control the server again!”

All we said before kinda puts this more in perspective. THAT’S why Dream is in constant need of controlling Tommy. If Tommy is the embodiment of attachment in Dream’s mind, then he is the embodiment of control and power as well. Because, if controlling a singular attachment gives you control over one singular person, then controlling the embodiment of everyone’s attachments gives you control over the server right? 

“Look, it’s not fair! But Tommy listen: I need you, okay? I need you to keep bringing attachemnt to the server, because without you people weren’t really attached to things, but then you came and you brought ‘friendship’ and ‘countries’ and ‘things’ people can be attached to, right? And you brought that! And you’re- you’re the KEY, right? You’re the key to unlock the full potential of the server and power and everything”

Can’t get much more obvious then this... Dream literally described Tommy as “the key to everything”, that’s A LOT of extra value put on a random 16 yo. It would be a lot of value for ANYONE to have. In case it wasn’t clear, what Dream is saying is that controlling Tommy basically makes you a God. And, if it wasn’t clear enough yet, let me grab a quote from Tommy’s 3rd canon death stream:

“Tommy your life is literally IN MY HANDS, does that piss you off? Does that make you mad? Does it make you soo mad that I- you can’t kill me... I MIGHT AS WELL BE A GOD TOMMY! You can’t kill me and I can kill you!”

So, here’s the thing: killing Tommy is not that hard. A LOT of people on the server are stronger then him, even with the same equipment. At the same time killing Dream IS very hard. He’s literally one of the 2 best pvp-ers on the server. So why would this situation make Dream a “God”? Well, that’s because, based on his own philosophy, having Control over Tommy is what makes someone a God (it’s what gives you power over everything after all) and he here is fully in control. Not only because phisycally he is the stronger one, but also because Tommy admitted himself that he can’t kill Dream (Dream may wrongly assume that that’s because Tommy still has some attachment to him, which gives him another layer of control, truth is he’s just not much for killing people, the kid got too much empathy), which means he’s in control of Tommy’s mind and emotions as well to a certain degree. 

And here’s the thing: wouldn’t Tommy need to be somewhat godly himself to be the ONE THING that can grant people the ability to become a God? Dream, by now, has elevated Tommy to a point where Tommy himself might as well be God. That’s why Dream was so eager to become immortals together, to study the powers that make Dream now think even more that he is a God, together, because, in his mind, they’re already on the same level, albeit in a very skewed way (and I say a “skewed way” because Dream still doesn’t see Tommy as a person, he still sees him as a tool, only he is a tool that grants people godlyhood apparently). 

My theory on why c!Dream has this kind of perception of c!Tommy is because Tommy is his only remaining attachment. Dream got rid of all his attachments in order to gain absolute power, so he has to somehow justify to himself why this one particular attachment still doesn’t make him weak. Why still hanging onto Tommy (albeit in the most scewed up way possible) actually makes him stronger. He needs Tommy to be something more then a random 16 yo he once picked a fight with.

@ladycatland pretty sure you’d be interested

[lostgirlrewatch]

1x11 - Faetal Justice (gettin real tired of your puns, Michelle, jk I never will)

Written by: Peter Mohan

Directed by: Robert Lieberman

Original Air Date: November 28, 2010

Oops. I missed a week. Sorry :( I’m back with episode 1x11.

Dyson gets framed for murdering some Dark Fae, and the gang has to prove him innocent.

Hey, remember the club, guys? Remember what that was like? Also Vex is back. Yay.

I wish my kitchen looked that fancy. I can’t keep vegetables that fresh. Their setup only looks like it will produce tasty food, though, because apparently they can’t cook for shit.

I am excited enough to see Hale that I took this screenshot for no reason.

But anyway, Bo and Kenzi are of course investigating the crime, as they do, while Dyson invokes sanctuary back at the Dal. Which basically means that Trick clears the whole bar out and lets Dyson hang out there for some amount of time where the Dark Fae can’t immediately come after him for killing one of their own.

They end up back at the club that Dyson woke up next to, which is Vex’s club. They start to suspect Vex may have something to do with framing Dyson for the murder. I can’t imagine why.

Vex makes a comment about how “another killer in the room (Bo) adds to the excitement,” to which Kenzi fiercely replies that Bo isn’t a killer. Vex is skeptical, considering how many people she has killed over the years, and suggests that he and Bo compare “scores.”

That hit below the belt.

Evony arrives at the Dal to pick up Dyson, in spite of sanctuary, because she has decided that the rules don’t apply to her. “Just think of me as a VIP,” she says. “I do.”

What a queen. Listen, is she wrong? Do the rules apply to Evony? Need they?

She has such queen energy that I love every time she shows up, even if she does absolutely nothing except make snarky comments. You have to appreciate the dominating energy of the woman in charge of the entire darker half of the supernatural underworld. She eventually backs off though.

Meanwhile, to Bo’s surprise, Lauren shows up at the precinct to discuss the case with her and Hale. (Hale invited her, and didn’t think to tell either of them that the other would be there, because he has no idea what’s going on between them.)

Bo is still pissed as fuck. I didn’t bother getting a screenshot, but the glare she gives Lauren is just as withering as it was last time.

So Lauren does...science-y stuff, I guess. I don’t really listen to what she’s saying when she talks about her science shit. I think Lauren is suggesting that Dyson turn himself in to the Dark Fae, though? So they can compare bite marks or something? Okay, I just rewatched the scene. Lauren suggests that Dyson turn himself in and wait while they go through a whole forensics analysis of the scene to determine his innocence (not acknowledging the possibility that evidence against Dyson may have been planted). Bo is like, “fuck no.” Lauren claims that in spite of the fact that she and Dyson “haven’t always been on the best of terms,” she is “actually trying to help here.”

It doesn’t end well. It’s awkward.

Hmm...*narrows eyes* Wait.

Stick around, Lauren fans. You’ll love this. I’m analyzing Lauren.

Lauren’s solutions to problems are always very...clinical. They’re clinical without fail, often to the point of being...not good solutions.

Lauren’s solution to Dyson’s problem--being accused of murder--is to have him turn himself in so that they can run tests and have the evidence prove him innocent. This is such a clearly half-assed idea, I don’t even really know why she suggested it. This idea is like if you could not care less about Dyson or this entire situation at all but you were dragged into being a part of the brainstorming session and you were forced to contribute something. It scans as laziness. Like either Lauren’s brain is too exhausted to put any energy whatsoever into trying to help Dyson, or she actually doesn’t care about him at all and is only there out of obligation and because of Bo. Hm.

Lauren’s solutions to problems don’t just rely on science, I get she’s a scientist and those are the skills she brings to the table. She goes a step farther. Her solutions are always devoid of emotion. Think about why that is.

I mean, turning Dyson in to the Dark Fae is objectively a terrible idea, first of all because they would one hundred percent immediately string him up and torture him for information. (Which is exactly what they do later in the episode!) Lauren is not stupid. She’s a smart gal. She should know this. If she knows that Dyson would be tortured, why would she suggest he turn himself in unless she has absolutely no emotional investment in his physical or mental wellbeing whatsoever? Again, it’s a clinical solution that treats the people involved as though they are pieces in a puzzle.

Second of all, Lauren suggests they run a bunch of tests and rely on forensic evidence to determine whether or not Dyson is innocent. She says, “Hopefully [the animal hairs on the body] won’t match Dyson’s DNA, and hopefully we’ll get [the results] on time.” 

“That’s way too many ‘hopefully’s,” Bo snaps back.

Lauren doesn’t seem that concerned with whether the hairs do or don’t match Dyson’s DNA. I mean, “hopefully” they won’t, but she is content to take the risk, let the situation play out, and let the evidence speak.

But she is also completely ignoring the possibility that even if the evidence incriminates Dyson, it might have been planted there by whoever is trying to frame him. What then? There would be no way to prove that it was planted in time--the Dark Fae would instantly execute him, and no one could stop them because he’d be in their custody. Even a cursory review of Lauren’s half-assed, not-thought-out plan reveals that it’s past risky and more in the realm of stupid.

So you tell me. I’m more interested in hearing what anyone else has to say about her than writing what I think. What is the deal with Lauren? Why is she like this? Is she so cold and unfeeling that she doesn’t have any concern for the physical and emotional wellbeing of others? Does she just not give a fuck about Dyson specifically? Or is she so burnt out and exhausted by the mental strain of her job and her enslavement that she can’t summon any emotional energy whatsoever, and has to completely rely on cold logic to offer anything at all?

I said Lauren fans would like this because I was analyzing her, but I neglected to mention that I would also be dunking on her. Sorry if you were duped. I feel like I offered her a way out at the end there, though. Give me all your pro-Lauren arguments if you feel so inclined.

Anyway, Bo and Hale have a nice little mini-conversation afterwards. Hale confesses that he once thought Bo might be bad for Dyson, that she’d break his heart or he’d destroy himself for her.

He tells her he was wrong, and that she’s “the real deal.” How sweet.

The only witness to the crime is apparently this human girl named Porscha, who reminds Kenzi a lot of herself. Porscha is also young, on the streets, and a runaway from a bad home situation. 

I don’t really care about her or like her as a character, but I do appreciate that her presence prompts Kenzi to drop a few more tidbits of information about her past here and there. For instance, she mentions that she’s been on her own since she was 15, which seems like a long time but is actually only like four years because Kenzi is 19 and therefore a literal baby. 

More interesting is this exchange. Porscha comments that it must be nice that Kenzi and Bo have each other. Kenzi responds a little awkwardly. She agrees that it is nice, but then she says that she’s still getting used to it. She’s still getting used to “being noticed.” Because when she was at home, she says, it was always better to not be noticed. “That’s when things got ugly.”

Yeah. So as if we didn’t already know, Kenzi comes from an abusive home. A home that was so awful that it was better to run away and be on the streets at 15. Then she was completely alone for four years, and homeless for that entire time. 

Think about it. Living with Bo like this must feel so odd. Kenzi has never lived in a house with another person before where it actually felt like a home and she actually felt safe. The way she sort of averts her eyes, tenses a little bit when she says she’s still getting used to it (Ksenia is fantastic as always by the way) is such a realistic portrayal of a response to recovery from trauma.

The way I like to think of it is this. Going from being in a long-term traumatic situation to being in a safe and loving situation is kind of like putting a frostbitten hand in warm water. Warming it up is good, it’s healing, but when your hand is so used to being cold, warming it up is going to hurt like hell. Recovering from trauma is kind of like that. Good things can hurt, especially when you’re not used to them.

But it doesn’t hurt quite so bad for Kenzi that she’s ready to flee and go back to being alone the streets, which is what is familiar to her. It just seems like it’s mildly uncomfortable. And that’s good. Because it means she can get used to being loved and having a family.

Jesus, why am I writing these things every week, they’re so long. LMAO help

So the episode ends with the reveal that it was the bartender all along! GASP! Side note: the whole reason this episode happened is because this bartender, who is clearly an adult man (physically in his 20s or 30s but actually much older since I assume he’s Fae?) was apparently “in love” with the human girl Porscha, who, based on her conversations with Kenzi, is definitely supposed to be a teenager. And also based on her conversations with Kenzi, Porscha has even “stayed over a few times” at his place. Can you say creepy? Adult man taking advantage of a young girl on the street who has no family and nowhere else to go? Grooming her? Just saying.

In a moment that I find somewhat disturbing and rather cold, the main gang all walk out and leave the bartender to be (most likely) brutally tortured and murdered by Vex and the Morrigan. That’s him up there. I mean, I know the Dark Fae are a practically untouchable political powerhouse, and there’s not really anything Bo and the others could do, but still. They totally just left this guy to his death.

But significantly, the episode ends with Bo and Dyson sharing a kiss, as they reaffirm their feelings for one another, and seemingly enter an official romantic relationship.

Oh boy! How cute. :) I wonder what’s next for these two.

Surely not heartbreak and suffering?

Big plot developments of the episode: Bo and Dyson are (it’s implied) officially an item now. This is Bo’s first legit committed relationship in the series. #dybo #neverforgetwhereitallbegan #rip #F and respect to the two people and a potato chip who like this ship #will this actually tag this post

[thecrenellations]

Thick as Thieves Undead-Blog, Part One | when your liveblog falls in a well then climbs out covered in flour | my notes from reading the book for the first time, Spring 2017

Expect yelling, lines that stuck out to me, and references that might only make sense in my head! Do not expect any meaningful analysis; I was simply reading this book, losing my mind, and feeling like I was falling in love. (Context provided in italics.)

Part Two

Chapters 1-5:

Ch. 1 - Kamet meets Costis and finds out about Nahuseresh’s “death” 

1. similar start to KoA and ACoK? and Thief?? feeling stupid

2. smashed bottle of remchik (amphora motif?)

RUSTICATE

oh no Nahuseresh why you’re married!

3. a new character! (Laela)

5. u look like a pomegranate

6. how old is Kamet?

8. “crooked men assume others are crooked as well” like thieves and philanderers...

10. Laela thinks Attolia is doomed?

ORNON????

“nature of world” is that what you really think?

trained as a child

11. poor eyesight

PAH COSTIS IS BACK i’m emotional

A VERY LARGE ATTOLIAN

12. THANK THE ETERNAL GODS HE WAS A CHATTY ATTOLIAN THAT’S WHAT YOU THINK

13. everyone is smart

a deep well of spite, low cunning

14. physical description of Costis?!?

he says he has so much power but he ... hides in alcoves? behind urns?

15. backward Attolia

a match made in hell (Kamet’s assessment of Gen and Irene)

K’s backstory

what does he like? does he WANT wealth and power?

16. *****“There is freedom and power” ***** (this quote was featured in some of the promotion before publication, I think, so it stuck out to me as especially important, though it probably would have anyway because it says a whole lot about Kamet’s perspective!)

oh no well there goes my wish for insight into Nahuseresh RIP (I didn’t LIKE Nahuseresh and particularly want to get to know him better, but I did go into this book hoping we’d get a more nuanced view of some of the Mede court ... turns out we absolutely DID get some serious insight into Nahuseresh despite him not appearing in person ... oof. I do still hope that RotT gives us even more Mede characters or fleshes out the other ambassadors - Akretenesh and Melheret (though we we just see them through the eyes of people like Sophos who vehemently oppose them) still seem less unique/complex/human compared to other antagonist-types like Ambiades, Sejanus, reader’s choice of baron.)

17. tears ... not for him though

 21. Shesmegah = Philia?

22. Rabbit and Lion!!!

23. Bear ... thx mwt <3 plz don’t be foreshadowing (Gen compares himself to a dancing bear ... so “there had been a white bear once, a gift from the Braelings in the north, but it had died in the heat” is pretty ominous, especially considering the animal allusions to another character on the previous page!)

24. he’s leaving the gates an enemy of king!

Ch. 2 - Kamet bumps into Immakuk and then Costis, the Anet’s Dream burns

28. how do they know who’s a slave?

clothes, chain

it’s Odin (listen. Odin and Immakuk both have one eye and show up a lot! I was totally on the right track. Shoutout to The Saga of the Volsungs ;) )

Enforcers of Imperial Peace give me a break! (i mean, in the US police are often officially called “peace officers” so, fair)

is he a god? srsly

32. the first of my many lies (“you said after noon”)

is this post-annuxing? no?

We went to the theater

34. I am a good judge of men

35. “i could evade the attolian far more easily than the palace guard” he is a palace guard <3

36. HIS ACCENT IS STILL HORRIBLE also your god’s favor

37. uhhh omg

38. omg OMG OMGOMG OMG (this was me generally losing it at Kamet’s assessment of Costis and at “he told me his name, as if he expected me to use it” I still cannot get over that line)

that’s one way to get Ornon out of your hair

39. Has C picked up the mind-reading habit

“take a seat” ... parallel to first KoA scene with Costis and Gen?

40. so certain of my place in the world

DIVESTED himself of his shirt

41. soooooooo bad bad institution (Kamet is thinking about the other slaves being executed)

42. Mercy buds (Kamet and Costis/Shesmegah and Philia)

44. more retrospect/depth in narration than Sophos, even (“I should have had more respect for his quick thinking” etc)

"i wanted to believe i steered the course of my future” no it’s Gen aka the gods

47. Story time!

friends

53. Ziggurat vs tower?

54. Costis is good in a crisis

55. what is this (Kamet’s swimming struggles)

“cooped up”

Ch. 3 - Kamet and Costis stay in Sherguz, then leave by caravan

62. making excuses to hang w Costis 4eva

who set the boat on fire?

who was the merchant on it?

68. know my secret??

wtf Costis you put a rock in your breastplate?

73. holy shit “eloquent”

lol this scene! (Costis negotiating with Roamanj)

“you are asking this because i look like your generous old uncle” his uncle is NOT generous tho

75. what is palm grease? :o 

does C really not know N is dead? what if he isn’t ....? (lol don’t give me too much credit for this thought, I quickly dismissed it)

76. sign of the idiot!

78. Aris! <3 Wish I hadn’t been spoiled for this! (by the character list absolutely crammed full of spoilers in all the new paperbacks)

79. Are these like the large caravans Eddis took?

85. around the fire interesting education vibes + romance?

I’m so proud of Costis!

Ch. 4 - Contains lions and backstory

89. Yes! (Namreen attack. I don’t know what in particular I was excited about. Possibly Costis’s comment that the guy who stabbed Kamet didn’t have his guard up? Or just everything.)

90. Wow! When u get over it, compare to Costis w/ Gen hurt!

93. “why namreen” OMG Kamet tell him!!! it’s important!

94. no one knows what my king knows

95. a herd of cats!

damn yeah issues

A LION!!! wtf 

I would LOVE to hear Costis hiss

OMG COSTIS NO

96. prayers ouch ... oxe harbrea?

98. oh my god

101. Costis is kind

105. Costis is accustomed to passing the day in silence - but he fills the silence here w/ Kamet w/ horrible jokes!

god what was K’s childhood

106. OMG sand in food

107. OMG so cute (Costis telling stories about Gen)

108. So so so! :)

110. I am aghast I continue to be aghast I’m surprised This Incident wasn’t common knowledge tho (How did you come to Ianna-Ir? I punched the king in the face.)

112. well that was a long and slightly weird story (abt Costis’s story of the above. I was channelling something Martin says in the Cabin Pressure episode “Fitton” about the sauce?)

116. Attolian slang omg

literally the main suspense/climax is when is Kamet going to call Costis by his name?!?!!!

117. [doodle of caggi conversation, see photo at top of post]

126. omg they were both in Attolia but not together

if Kamet was in the kitchen then does he know Sandy? (LJ fandom name for Brinna before we knew who she was)

127. OMG nutcakes vs Irene (“She was as beautiful as the Queen of the Night, but the Attolian nutcakes ... were even more beautiful -- and they wouldn’t kill you.”)

looks like a nutcake is actually a nutcake

looks like a nutcake could actually kill u? (I THINK ABOUT THIS CONCEPT A LOT. someday I will make a post about it)

Ch. 5 - Road trip continues, Ne Malia/Koadester

131. So proud of Costis’s acting! (losing money to sell the chain)

136. the truth? (Kamet’s backstory)

we’re just getting more (as readers)

140. IT’S ODIN (onion farmer)

143. fastener?

144. wooo (thoughts about “new authority as a free man”)

151. crack in china cup returns

153. Costis you’re sharing your king’s confidence!

154. Eugenides here to break up your empire!

lol Melheret Gen why

156. “squabbles” wars all reduced to reliable trade route!

apparently I became too engrossed to take notes as their pursuers caught up to them, because that’s all for this chapter! The journey will continue when I’ve typed up more ... let me know if anything is incomprehensible. Thanks for reading!

[gemraldkid]

Analysis and speculation on Bête Noire

Spoilers for Undertale and Glitchtale. Undertale by Toby Fox and Glitchtale by @camilaart​

You thought I was joking? Nope. Here it is: a mix of canon, headcanon, and speculation.

Of all the characters that people are obsessing over right now (Ronan, Jessica, Gaster, Rave, the prequel wizards), I choose to put all of my energy into making some sense of the one character that continuously reminds us that we should hate them. I could be thinking about the struggles of anyone else. I could be worried for Chara or Asriel or Asgore (he’s not dead until he starts turning to dust), but nooooo. This is what occupies my thoughts about this series.

This is basically most of my headcanon relating to Betty. I wanted to put these thoughts out there before the new episode since... well, anything could happen. 

Betty’s probably gonna mostly die from hate and stuff.

Imagine if we were actually supposed to end up feeling bad for this character? Right...

You shouldn’t take everything I say here as facts.’m pretty sure I made it clear enough which parts are speculation with the amazing power of verb tenses.

I’m open to corrections about currently available facts that I got wrong.

Glitchtale is a series that I’ve greatly enjoyed watching. I believe that it is one of the finest things to come out of the Undertale fandom. It is a testament to how good a fanfiction can be.

One thing that I find particularly praiseworthy is the way OCs are handled. They manage expand on the world without hogging the spotlight for too long. There’s a good balance between introducing new elements without ever forgetting about the old ones.

Of course, among many of the new characters, one in particular stands out: the current antagonist of Season 2, Bête Noire or “Betty”.

Betty is the character I have been the most fascinated with so far. She’s been a mystery to many ever since the punch to the gut that was the ending of “Dust”.

What follows is a look into the way that I perceive Bête Noire. I am not necessarily dead-set on a single possibility. While my views are backed up by certain facts, I acknowledge that they are also based on and influenced by my personal wishes for this character. Therefore, my words should be taken with a healthy amount of salt.

Betty was first introduced to us as an innocent 13 year-old girl, barely a year older than Frisk, physically. She was a shy, happy-go-lucky kid who became friends with Frisk after the latter saved her life from a fast-moving car.

Unfortunately, things were not as they seemed. The girl never was in any real danger as the car was an illusion created by powers. The scenario was merely a set-up to get her closer to Frisk and their family of monsters.

Illusions are likely a power granted to her by her trait: fear. With it, she is able to see the memories of others simply by looking them in the eyes. This grants her knowledge of their personality and, most importantly, their emotional weaknesses. Using that knowledge, she can create illusions to throw off her enemies. These illusions can serve a variety purposes even if they don’t directly involve fear. Examples include the aforementioned car and the illusion that caused Undyne to kill Alphys.

Bête Noire originally woke up when the barrier was broken, a month before the events of “My Sunshine”. This means that she spent a month doing “something” before starting her plan. She likely spent days and nights observing the humans and monsters. Through her observations and memory-reading abilities, she judged whether the monsters were truly as dangerous for human kind as she believed. This wasn’t all she observed, however. Betty also learned the ways and customs of this new time period. After all, the only memories in her possession belonged to someone who lived over 800 years ago...

-

Agate Lightvale was best known as the wizard of bravery who helped seal the monsters underground. She lived in a medieval time. While she was born into a common family , she didn’t live a common life. Her twin brother, Copper, was lucky enough to be born with a soul of determination, a trait so rare that only one person can possess it at a time. It elevated the Lightvale family to a noble status.

Growing up, Agate acted like a big sister to Copper even though they were the same age. However, this changed  as they grew older and trained to become wizards. Copper became more independent while his sister started to develop a few insecurities. 

Agate spent most of her time training in combat. She was always looking to improve, to get stronger, to surpass her limits. Unfortunately for her, being the twin of the soul of determination meant she was often overshadowed. 

Her brother was essentially a “chosen one” of sorts. As a result, he got most of the attention. Agate would execute a spell flawlessly while Copper stumbled at the same task. Yet, he would be the only one to receive praise.

In addition to being the rarest trait, determination is also the strongest. Agate was confronted with the reality that, no matter how hard she trained, she could never surpass her brother.

Still, it didn’t stop Agate from being a kind and respected individual. True to her trait, she was know for her bravery in the face of danger and resistance to physical pain. In addition, she and Copper both stayed strong for their younger sister, Amber, who’s birth resulted in the death of their mother. Agate and her siblings were extremely close.

After the war between humans and monsters ended, she, her brother, and five other wizards created the barrier, trapping the monsters underground.

After a certain amount of time, Copper proposed the idea of releasing the monsters from captivity. He believed that humans and monsters could still live together. Agate opted against this. She believed it would be better for both races if they lived separately. The discussion got extremely agitated to the point where Agate spontaneously challenged Copper to a duel that would decide the future.

-

If I may break the flow of information a little, this part seems a tad off to me. I find it notable, at the very least. In the official depiction of this moment, Agate looks smug, as if she knows she is going to win. Isn’t that odd considering what we know? I believe there was more riding on this duel than the fate of two races.

Recall that Agate had a bit of an inferiority complex with her brother. Isn’t it possible that she also challenged him to prove she was stronger, to finally break out of his shadow by defeating him in front of the entire kingdom? If this is the case, I believe that the “confidence” she showed might not have been entirely sincere. Surely, a part of her knew that she couldn’t win. Yet, she still instigated a fight.

I think it’s possible that challenging Copper was not an act of hubris on Agate’s part; it was an act of desperation made in the heat of the moment.

-

Ultimately,  she lost. Her brother was victorious. Agate was overwhelmed by her loss. While she had an abundance of physical bravery, she lacked it emotionally. Due to these factors, she lost her trait then and there. Completely humiliated, she fled to parts unknown. Still under the intensity of the battle, Copper didn’t think to go after her.

During this period of her life, Agate made many poor life choices. She searched for a way to break her limits more than ever before. She came across at least two forbidden spells. She used one of them to reverse her souls trait from the orange of bravery to the dark orange of fear. The process completely eradicated the last shred of sanity she had. After being absent for an unknown amount of time, Agate rejoined her family, who welcomed her back in spite of the changes she had gone through. 

Driven by her obsession for victory, Agate furiously demanded a rematch from Copper. He refused, knowing it wouldn’t bring about anything good. Seeing that he wouldn’t move on the issue, Agate threatened the life of Amber, her own sister. Copper attempted to protect her, but was ultimately forced to watch as Agate stabbed her through the chest. This horrible sight caused him to lose his trait, allowing Agate to easily finish him in the same manner. She relished the victory as all life left his eyes.

Unfortunately, she would soon be forced to join her siblings. Inverting one’s trait is immensely stressful on the soul. With her time running out, Agate performed another forbidden spell to ensure that her will lived on: the Bête Noire spell.

The Bête Noire spell consists of creating a powerful, nearly lifelike golem called a “bête noire”. While the golem itself is powerful, a bête noire’s true strength lies in its longevity and ability to form complex thoughts. 

Most spells typically act in very basic ways. For example, a simple fire spell will simply follow a chosen path or pattern before disappearing regardless of whether it hit its target or not.

Bêtes noires, on the other hand, can not only accomplish much more complicated tasks, but also think about how they will go about doing so. They are even be able to improvise if things don’t go their way. In addition, they can exist for several weeks before fading. However, if they have a way to replenish their magic (such as harvesting it from souls), they become virtually immortal. A bête noire is essentially a living spell. 

Of course, to craft such a being, the cost is extremely high. It requires the caster to use their own soul for the conjuring. Then, they must also have a vessel other than their own body that can be merged with the soul to create the golem.

Agate was willing to sacrifice the life she wouldn’t have for much longer and she had two perfectly good vessels. Still spiteful towards her brother, the wizard chose Amber’s body over Copper’s. Her soul turned pink as it absorbed Amber’s body. With the deed done, Agate lifeless body fell to the floor.

The soul remained sealed and hidden for over 800 years until the barrier was broken. At that moment, it awoke, transformed into the being that would be know as Bête Noire.

-

Bête Noire knew her purpose from the very start as she possessed some of Agate’s memories as she possessed some of Agate’s memories. Unfortunately, the goal her “mother” left her with was no longer as good-natured as it once was. In Agate’s twisted mental state, it had gone from “Keep humans and monsters separate for both their safeties.” to something akin to “Kill all monsters so that they will never live in peace with humans. Do so by any means necessary, even if it means killing humans who oppose you or using the power of hate.”

-

Gathering hate is stated to be the universal purpose of a bête noire. It’s fitting when considering the name. “Bête noire” is a french term that literally translates to “black beast”. Black is the color (or lack there of) of hate. In addition, the term “bête noire” is used to indicate a person or object that someone particularly dislikes.

I originally found it ironic that Bête struggled to keep her hate under control, but the solution is simple. She likely only struggled to keep it under control because she wasn’t in her complete form at the time.

Nonetheless, I can’t help thinking that maybe bêtes noires are supposed to succumb to the hate they collect. Perhaps they are meant to serve as vessels for the stuff. After all, Betty still requires a large surplus of magic to keep it at bay. One would think a creature made to collect hate would do more than just resist it a little better than others. 

Yet, if bêtes noires are supposed to succumb to hate, why has this one been shown fear it? Perhaps because, as a creature made purely of magic, it would be akin to death, something that she fears because fear is built into her nature.

-

In order to accomplish her mission, Bête had to gather information on both her enemies and the era she was in. She separated herself into two beings in order to hide her monstrous appearance and blend in with the humans. She dubbed the part she separated from herself “Akumu”, the Japanese word for “Nightmare”. Under the nickname “Betty”, she spent a month observing and planning. 

It should be noted that she must have done so 24/7. Bêtes noires don’t need to sleep. It could also be for this reason that she is so unfamiliar with the concept. Agate’s knowledge about sleep was mostly omitted because it had little relevance to the mission.

As previously stated, Betty used her power of fear to look into the memories of the monsters. From the information she gathered, she judged that monsters were in fact deserving of death. This may seem strange to many since, as seen in Undertale, most monsters are innocent and kind-hearted people. How could she possibly think so poorly of them even after seeing their past? Is she blind?

I believe so. Betty may, in fact, be blind to certain degree.

Any normal person would most likely have seen that monsters didn’t deserve what was coming to them. Why didn’t Betty? Because she isn’t a normal person. Highly advanced or not, Bête Noire remains a spell, and spells exist to carry out the will of their caster. They are tools.

If magic bullets could miss because they took pity on the opponent, few people  would use them.

Keep in mind that Betty isn’t just a bullet that uses up 0.001% of the caster’s magic. She’s a bête noire. People had to die for her creation. If a person poured all of their life force into a spell that would carry on their will, they would be pretty upset to learn that they failed because the spell didn’t want to do the one thing it was created for. 

All this to say that I believe that Betty is unable to go rogue either physically or mentally. She has no choice but to believe she is in the right. After all, if she realized that her only purpose for existing was objectively wrong, it could make her a less effective weapon.

When she looked into the souls of the monsters, it is likely that she was never going to come to any other conclusion than “They are dangerous.” 

She did see some of the good in them, but most of what she retained were parts that would prove her right. These included Asgore killing the 6 humans (even though it was the only way to save his kingdom), the horrors Asriel committed as Flowey (even though he was soulless at the time), and Frisk’s many resets (even though they aren’t even a monster). These actions were obviously horrible, but there were nuances that made them more understandable. Context was important.

Betty, who I believe was unable to pick up on such nuances, may have simply taken the most basic message from this. “These monsters did bad things, therefore they are evil and the same must apply to all of monsterkind.” She is blind to anything that doesn’t fit into the way she is supposed to see the world.

(Of course, this doesn’t mean she is unaware of Papyrus or Undyne’s heroic and selfless acts. It just means that can’t see them as proof that monsters are good people.)

As such, Bête may not be wholly responsible for her actions. Some of her malicious acts can be blamed on her creator. After all, her contradictory objective of killing humans to protect humanity was given to her by Agate, who’s mind was far from clear at the time.

However, other aspects are harder to justify. The pleasure she seems to take in her victims’ emotional suffering could have come from Agate as the wizard displayed something similar shortly before casting the spell.

The fact that Bête wouldn’t care if the world ended as long as it was by her hand definitely makes her seem incredibly hypocritical (which she is) and entitled, not to mention evil. I suppose that by annihilating everything she would technically accomplish her goal of killing all monsters. With her one purpose in life fulfilled, she would have no more reason to live. The idea of ruling humanity afterward is likely more of a bonus. Assuming this is the case, it’s a testament to how much important the mission is to her.

Finally, I would like to bring up the debate of whether Betty and Agate are the same person or not because, if they are, most of what has been written here will be completely pointless. There are two ways to look at this.

This post tells us that Agate is technically Betty, but it may only refer to them in the physical sense. Betty’s body is physically Agate’s soul. The debate is about whether they are mentally the same.

This comic is likely the largest piece of evidence to support this. To my knowledge, it is still canon. In it, Bête finds the remains of Agate’s body. Her reaction is quite interesting because she acts and talks as if the body was once hers. She also has to reassure herself that she “can’t die now”, implying that she was once mortal. She also mentions ensuring “our race’s survival” in reference to humanity. For that sentence, she includes herself with the human race. This implies that she was at least human at one point.

This evidence certainly appears conclusive, and it very well might be. However, it directly contradicts this conversation which, to my knowledge, is also still canon. Here, she refers to Agate as “mom”, indicating that she thinks her as a separate being. Why is this? Is one of these sources outdated? Possibly, but I have another proposal.

Betty’s mind appears to be all over the place. One moment, she laments the fact that she is meant to be hated and, at another, she takes joy in torturing her victims. She doesn’t want to die, yet she wouldn’t mind if the world ended at her own hand. She is hypocrite.  Sometimes, she believes she is Agate’s creation; at other times, she acts like she is Agate herself.

Bête Noire’s first memories came from Agate. Surely, It isn’t too far-fetched to say that her mind was likely derived from her creator’s. If that is indeed the case, the solution is clear; Betty might be insane just like Agate was before casting the spell. Agate’s insanity could have rubbed off on her creation. Thus, it’s possible that Bête’s thoughts are meant to be hypocritical and contradictory.

In the end, is Betty Agate? She may not even know herself. I believe she is more of an imperfect copy or a “simulacrum”. The things that make her “Agate” are the incomplete memories of the wizard’s life and the similar way of thinking. In my opinion, these don’t make an entirely different person, but they also aren’t enough for her to be considered Agate. She is merely a being in possession of her creator’s memories.

-

Also, these hints might still be relevant today.

“Steven Universe logic”? You mean the show where almost every problem is solved by talking and all the villains end up becoming good? Sure, that could just be referencing Sans and Asriel getting talked out their states, but you never know. Maybe Betty’ll regret her actions too before dying. Eh? EH?!

“Never assume things”? No kidding. Words to watch by.

[raeynbowboi]

Top 10 Disney Villains

10. King Candy Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Although he’s newer to the villain roster, King Candy was a well-written villain who served as a perfect blend of humorous and genuinely threatening. He also tied very nicely into the themes of the film, which makes him stand out in my memory as a good villain, because I take more than just personality and actions into account when judging characters, but also role in the narrative, and how they support the themes and ideas of the story. King Candy is the perfect villain for a story like this, which is why I consider him good enough to be on this list, even if as a villain himself, he might not be the most memorable among the Disney canon.

9. Gaston Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Perhaps the Disney villain we’re most likely to meet in real life, Gaston is the perfect example of toxic masculinity on full display. He’s a great anthithesis to the Beast, though I never saw him all that handsome, which sort of detracts just a little bit from the story. But in a story about how looks don’t matter, but actions do, he’s a great foil to the love interest. He’s a selfish hateful man who is handed everything he wants, and when he doesn’t get his way, he strongarms people until they meet his demands. Yet, despite his personality, he retains a legion of followers who are more-so admirers than actual friends. He never once considers anyone to be his equal or of sufficient worth unless it was helpful in his own endeavors. And anyone who has ever had a friend who basically used them and then ditched them at the soonest convenience can probably recognize that kind of so-called “friend” in Gaston. He’s a great villain to dissect as an analysis of our current culture, but I don’t want to write a five page essay on Gaston for a top 10 list. 

8. Yzma Emperor’s New Groove (2000)

Inarguably Disney’s best comedic villain (not counting her henchman Kronk), Yzma is a brilliantly funny character whose exaggurated appearance and over-the-top personality blend well with the fast-paced slapstick comedy that fills the movie. Yet, despite being a funny villainess, she avoids a major pitfall of many comedic villains by also being legitimately threatening and dangerous to our heroes. That, combined with the excellent writing in the movie makes Yzma so memorable and likable.

7. Mother Gothel Tangled (2010)

Although her actual villainous actions in the movie are surprsingly few and far between, I genuinely love Mother Gothel as a villainess. Her motivations are well-established, and she’s the sole reason the story has any plot at all. Comparisons have been made to the living conditions of both Quasimodo and Rapunzel, and I would genuinely agree that Mother Gothel is akin to a diet version of Frollo without all the genocide and religious superiority. She has to be more discreet and pretend to be kind in order to keep her little flower content to remain obedient locked away from the outside world. It makes total sense the way she treats Rapunzel, and her entire character, personality, and role all fit together to enhance the narrative of the story.

6. Long John Silver Treasure Planet (2002)

Arguably one of the most human villains from Disney, Silver is a beautiful complexity as he juggles the duality of being a father-figure to the impressionable young Jim, while also betraying Jim’s trust. Since Jim’s father left when he was a child, Jim closes himself off from people and seems adrift in the world. Silver, who has no need to trick the boy for his mutiny to succeed, still takes the time to take Jim under his wing, nurture the boy’s abilities, and form a bond. Heck, with how relatively apathetic Jim was, he could have manipulated Jim into hating being on the ship, and thus have him be happy when the mutiny sets him free. But instead, he chose to teach the boy and boost his confidence. In the end, Silver is a compelling Anti-Villain where it’s hard to really define him as a good or wicked person. That is honestly more interesting than just being a straight deceitful villain.

5. Bill Sykes Oliver & Company (1988)

Perhaps the most surprising choice on my list, Sykes was a villain from Oliver & Company, a retelling of Oliver Twist with stray dogs and a kitten. However, despite Disney’s family friendly brand, Sykes is a surprisingly menacing character. A loan shark and a cut-throat business man, he spends most of the movie threatening to kill Fagin which is far darker than Disney tends to get. While many Disney villains want to kill people, those desires were driven by personal grievances with that person or people. With Sykes, it’s cold, ruthless business. He doesn’t care about Fagin’s life. All he cares about is getting his money, and Fagin’s life just happens to be the collateral. It’s the purest form of cold-blooded murder, and that’s not a common thing among Disney villains.

4. Ursula The Little Mermaid (1989)

There’s a good reason Ursula is one of the flagship villains of this franchise. She has a strong personality, is a great antagonist, and directly plays off the protagonist’s weaknesses to win. Second only to Scar, and possibly Jafar, Ursula is the classic hand-drawn animated Disney villain to get closest to winning. The fact that she’s based on a drag queen is kind of perfect, since the fairytale was written by Hans Christian Andersen to express his love for Edvard Collin discreetly. He intended to give it to Edvard as a wedding gift, but Edvard and his wife purposefully “forgot” to tell him when the wedding was out of fear that he’d make a scene or announce his love for Edvard in front of everyone. Thus, the mermaid’s taboo love of someone she shouldn’t who comes from an entirely different way of living is a direct parallel to Hans’ feelings for the young Gentleman, and the mermaid being unable to speak and suffering greatly to be near her love is a clear metaphor for Hans’ own feelings of torture. So the inclusion of a drag queen in a movie adaptation of a covert metaphorical gay romantic tragedy is just deliciously fitting. 

3. The Horned King The Black Cauldron (1984)

Sykes got a place on this list for being genuinely intimidating, but this villain is living nightmare fuel. One of the best things a genuinely threatening villain can do is successfully scare you, and this villain scared the living daylights out of me as a child. In fact, he was the only Disney villain to truly and completely scare me as a child. The rest of the villains were pretty much just bad characters, but the Horned King was far more terrifying than anything else I’d seen as a kid. Though his movie bombed and the story itself was a bit lacking, the Horned King was a genuinely horrifying presence, and to this day, I can’t think Disney Villains without this guy clawing his way into my mind. Maybe as a villain himself, he’s a bit flat, but he’s a horrific undead murderous monster trying to snuff out all life. He doesn’t need to be that complex for what he is, and that works with the type of villain that he was created to be.

2. Claude Frollo The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1996)

If Sykes made it to number 5 for the cold-blooded attempt at murder on one person, Frollo strolls into 2nd place for his cold-blooded successful mass racial/ethnic genocide of multiple people over a long reign of tyranny. Although we don’t see his treats on-screen, he very verbally implies that he has been executing people one by one for at least twenty years as he crushes ants. We even see him barricade a family with children inside of their house and then proceed to burn it down. This man is not messing around, and I love it. When it coems to dark, twisted, and messed up villains, Frollo takes the cake. He is hands down one of the greatest and most horrible villains out there. And the fact that he does this all in the name of God is a hauntingly dark reminder of the true cruelty of the medieval Christian church. Frollo was written in the original book to be a deliberate critique of the Catholic church, and I for one am grateful that Disney decided to be faithful to Frollo’s horrible nature when adapting to film. 

1. Maleficent Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Finally, we reach the leader of the Disney Villains. How could I not put her at the top of this list? She literally fights with all the powers of Hell. But what I like most about her is what you can piece together from the narrative. Out of all the fairies, only Fauna thinks that Maleficent could be reasoned with, and she feels sad at the idea that Maleficent may not even grasp the concept of happiness, or what it feels like to be loved. This opens Maleficent up to being a product of abuse, abandonment, and bitterness. Her hatred for the world and her actions of spite and envy come into a new light with the idea that it’s kindled from neglect and exclusion from others. It offers the question of what would happen if someone did try to just talk to her, and offers a possibly sympathetic reading of her character. But, the true crux of what Maleficent stands for is that she’s evil, and she takes great pleasure in her evil ways. She cursed a baby because she wasn’t invited to a party. When it comes to pure, unfiltered evil, Maleficent has that in spades. So, Maleficent is a perfect character no matter which type you prefer as a villain: the tormented outcast lashing out, or the heartless monster lighting the world on fire for fun. No matter what kind of villain you prefer, there’s a way of reading her narrative to satisfy you.

[phantomchick]

I’ve spent months ignoring the existence of batman: white knight for my own sanity and for that of my followers and yet the universe has conspired against me.

And so, I’ve been forced to acknowledge that it does in fact exist and sold relatively well and now I keep remembering even MORE details about it that made it a bad bad bad comic in spite of its decent aesthetic. 

So this is me working out some personal frustration.  

Through an analysis that involves very little actual plot arc by plot arc or panel by panel analysis because by Hera who, WHO? Has the energy or the emotional wherewithal to put that much effort into a post about this comic. I mean maybe if it was the only way to fully exorcise the bad content but I’ve managed to not let it hook too deeply to my poor soul yet so just this should be fine. Right? right.

So because of that this is mostly just some of my personal feelings on it. 

It is a rant that no one should read and was made with the only purpose being personal catharsis of negative emotions.

I send this forth, into the abyss. 

In the hopes that I won’t have to think about this comic ever again once it is done.

It’s like a never ending onion, the more I think about it the more LAYERS of mistakes and horrible characterisation are revealed. Layers and layers of just slightly off and annoying things that really feed into deeper misconceptions about what the heroes and villains in Gotham really stand for and how they interact with each other so it turns out that actually even the little annoying things are just contributing to the BIG narrative problems that this comic has. I LITERALLY KEEP COMING UP WITH REASONS WHY IT’S THE WORST. I CAN’T STOP. HELP ME. 

What’s worse is I can tell that the writer was definitely trying to do something cool and psuedo deep and say something (no clue what it was) about heroes and villains and the joker as a character, like really explore it, he just did in the worst possible way. Holding up a mirror to Gotham and reversing things so that the Joker’s Heroic and Batman’s Criminal in their approaches isn’t a particularly new or original idea but the writer really went for it or seemed to be trying to which is why I tried it in the first place. BUT NO. It’s bad, it’s full of bad takes. This writer has bad Batman opinions and it shows. 

IT’S A MULTI-FACETED MONSTER, THERE ARE MULTIPLE FACETS TO THE BAD WRITING. 

I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty but symbolically and spiritually it’s the anti-thesis of a good batman comic, it tries to be hard boiled and shocking but mostly it just heaps on bad things, it tries to do dark knight level cynicism but just misses the point entirely even as it assures you that people just aren’t ready to face the truth about how things are and it’s never clear on what that truth is. 

The cynicism is kind of like the injustice comic but it’s not balanced out by the fact that at least some of the characters are genuinely good people and will continue to be no matter how bad things get. It’s not balanced at all. 

It’s like how with the Suicide Squad movie the trailers promised supervillain breakfast club but then in the movie didn’t really provide a strong emotionally resonant reason for the characters to band together, besides ‘just coz’. It sold itself as misfits finally finding a place to belong when it was just: cool looking lady tries to control a pack of supervillains while swindling the money for tax money and everything that can go wrong does go wrong. But at least suicide squad had aspects that WERE entertaining, like the character designs and the comedy and the hints of deeper character motivations that were never really followed up on. 

Batman: White Knight on the other hand is just a slog of a batman comic that thinks it’s good when it isn’t. The only good point is the aesthetic and that gets old fast when combined with THESE characters. 

Where Suicide Squad promised quirky well written found family dynamics. Batman: WK promises game changing character exploration and imbalances of power between the GCPD and The Batman when really? It’s just a re-hash of the worst of the pessimism DC’s more odious writers have worked into the Batman mythos over the years. 

“Vigilantes being genuinely good people and not getting too big for their britches? That’s just not realistic.” I can hear the writer say. “We’ll do police brutality. But with Vigilantes!” I can hear him thinking, believing mistakenly that he has hit on a not boring idea. 

WELL NEWS FLASH JERKFACE! BATMAN AND THE ENTIRE GENRE OF SUPERHERO COMICS ARE WISH FULFILMENT POWER FANTASIES YOU ABSOLUTE CRETIN. 

The idea that batman can only make a difference because he’s a bad person who doesn’t hold himself accountable is so tired.  The idea that regular good cops like Jim Gordon would have conflicting feelings about relying on Batman isn’t a bad topic to explore but the guy presents it way too one-sidedly, like is a regular police department supposed to be able to deal with Poison Ivy or Mr. Freeze level meta humans just on their regular budget? No. So it makes sense for other supers to step in to fill that gap. (See: post singularity superhero stories like the BNHA manga) Which is why we have regulation debate style stories like marvel’s Civil War but the REASON dc doesn’t do that is that they made the very much conscious choice to keep one foot of their fictional world firmly in the fantastical whereas marvel has more of a real world slant. This writer missed that memo and what he came up with for his real world-ish batman critique was not good.

It’s like those people who don’t think Robin is a realistic character and so go too far down the child soldier route, which of course automatically makes Batman read worse as a person and I’m like it’s a wish fulfillment fantasy because kids want to have agency and help people. How do you not get this comic writer man? I just... if you don’t get Robin then why are you writing Batman and Robin at all. Seriously this story is just....

IT’S LIKE A STINK BOMB MADE ALL THE STINKIER BY THE UNIQUE COMBINATIONS OF THE TERRIBLE SCENTS AS WELL AS THE INDIVIDUAL BAD THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN PUT IN.

And look none of this is me saying that hero deconstruction stories can’t be good and interesting or that DC can’t do them but this is not a good deconstruction story, it is not well made nor is it well executed. It is a steaming mess. But fucking hell is it groundlessly confident in itself despite this basic fact.

[ascension-soliloquy]

First time read of Mistborn book 1: The Final Empire

This is my first time doing something like this. I’m not sure how interesting it will be for anyone else. Usually when I read it’s more, well...I don’t know if passively is the right word, but I don’t normally take notes or write my thoughts down. I’m not doing a recap, I’m expecting you to have read the book and be familiar with it. I’m not doing in depth analysis on every chapter or every little plot point, I’m just writing down things whenever I think of them. 

 •So far I’m on chapter 17 and right now I only have one prediction. Reen will show up again at some point in the series, he will have power, either Misting or Mistborn, and there will be a confrontation between him and Vin. Either that or between both of them and their father. Or just between Vin and her father. I’m probably wrong. Haha

 •Also, I’m guessing the blurbs at the beginning of each chapter are from the book Sazed is translating.

 •Chapter 28.

“The Deepness must be destroyed... Many do not realize that it is sentient, but I have sensed its mind...the few times I have confronted it directly. It is a thing of destruction, madness, and corruption. It would destroy this world not out of spite or out of animosity, but simply because that is what it does.”

My guess is that rather than destroy the Deepness, he was possessed by it.

 •From the start Vin reminded me of a combination of Min and Egwene from the Wheel of Time. I only know about BS from him finishing the WOT series, so I suppose comparisons are inevitable for me. When we first meet Vin she has short hair and wears boy clothes, so that’s like Min, and she is ambitious about learning magic, so that’s like Egwene. All three characters seem to be in the habit of doing what they want, rather than what they are told to do. I always liked Egwene and Min, but so far I think I might actually like Vin better. Maybe because she has a lot of POV in this book, whereas we had to wait a while to get POV from the other two in WOT.

 [The next paragraph sort of contains spoilers for the last three books in the Wheel of Time]

 I hope Elend doesn’t turn out to be the Gawyn of this story. When she was telling him about how skaa are intelligent, I was thinking, “no Vin! I don’t like the questions he’s asking you. Don’t trust him!” Then when he defended her to his friends, I was like, maybe he’s okay. Oh, but now he’s going to have her followed. Going behind her back, kinda getting Gawyn vibes. (I’m talking about what Gawyn did in the last three WOT books, so if you haven’t gotten that far, spoilers, so I won’t get into it here.)

 •”Be careful, Mistress —become too fond of reading, and you may just turn into a scholar.”

Vin shook her head. “Not if all the books I read are going to end like this one!”

Rather meta, isn’t it?

 •Chapter 30

F***

“And so the house war starts, Vin thought. Didn’t think I’d be the one to officially begin it.”

Indeed.

Maybe Vin is the Gawyn in this situation. Hahaha

It is pretty badass that she was able to defeat another Mistborn on her own, but I can imagine this will come back to bite her.

 •”You’re no skaa—you’re just noblemen without titles.”

Dang, she told him. That whole speech was astounding.

“He stood, dumbfounded, feeling a surprising flush of ashamed guilt. And, for once, found himself without anything to say.”

 •chapter 32

 “Marsh said he’d leave a light burning if the other obligators were gone.”

I don’t like it. Ever since Marsh got the face tattoos I’ve had a bad feeling about him. I think he’s going to turn on Kell.

 Oh...Or the Inquisitors will turn on Marsh. I wasn’t expecting that. Never mind. Though, who knows what information they got out of him before they killed him.

Then again, how do we know for certain that is Marsh’s body? It could be a ploy to make them think Marsh is dead. It could be anyone and they would never know. They couldn’t exactly get a DNA test done, and his skin has been ripped off, so a positive ID is difficult.

 •Chapter 34 [LOTR, WOT, and Harry Potter spoilers—don’t want to assume everyone has read those]

 So Kell is the Gandalf/Moiraine of this story. One difference is he left behind a body, unlike those other two, so not sure if there will be any coming back for him. I suppose Dumbledore didn’t come back (at least physically), so it wouldn’t be the first time.

 •Chapter 36

In which Vin gets herself captured. Of course. In WOT it seemed like in just about every book someone was getting captured. It was one of my least favorite tropes of the series. Sometimes it was handled in an interesting way, but other times it was just annoying. I hope Vin is able to escape on her own rather than have to be rescued, and I hope this doesn’t become a recurring theme in this series.

 I made the mistake of looking at someone’s cosplay photo in the Mistborn sub-reddit, and it was an alternate reality version of Vin where she had been made into a Steel Inquisitor. When the Inquisitor was holding something, hit Vin, and it faded to black, I was terrified she was going to wake up with spikes through her eyes. I guess I won’t be clicking on anything else in that sub for the time being. It’s funny, for the most part I avoided reading anything online about WOT while I was reading that series, but for some reason I’m being more daring with this one. Of course, I didn’t have a reddit account at the time, so this is all new to me.

 Vin meets her father. Such a joyous family reunion. Aw, that didn’t last long. That wasn’t the confrontation I was expecting; more like a confrontation between him and the Inquisitors. There’s still time for a confrontation between Vin and Reen, I suppose.

 The Lord Ruler orders her execution, but the Inquisitor convinces him to let them use her for a while longer. There’s no way possible that plan will backfire and allow her to escape or be rescued.

 [The next paragraph contains spoilers for Wheel of Time book #2 The Great Hunt]

 As much as I would prefer Vin to escape, I have a feeling Elend is going to be the one to rescue her. Then again, [WOT spoilers] Rand didn’t rescue Egwene from the Seanchan, it was Nynaeve, Elayne, and Min, something that set that scene apart from the typical damsel in distress sequence. That said, I wish there were more major female characters in this book. A Nynaeve, Elayne, and/or* Aviendha to Vin’s Egwene/Min. So who else is there besides Elend? Maybe one of the other Mistings, I suppose, but it seems like they might be busy with the rebellion at the moment. Sazed already rescued her once, so I don’t see that happening again so soon.

(*and/or...Andor haha WOT jokes, I crack myself up. Sorry, I’ll see myself out.)

 •I’ve seen complaints about BS’s humor, but I’ve laughed at few things in this book, so maybe his sense of humor is similar to my own.

 •Chapter 37

“Valette...she went into the palace a few hours back. I’m sorry lad. She’s probably in the Lord Ruler’s dungeons right now—assuming she’s even still alive.”

I can see my suspicions about where this is going coming true already. Elend to the rescue! Oh well, at least she rescued him once already, even though he wasn’t aware of it.

Reen is dead, unless the Inquisitor is lying. So much for my predicted confrontation. I did say I was probably wrong. He died protecting her. Some part of him must have cared about her.

For a minute there I thought Sazed was going to need to be rescued as well, but looks like he might be the rescuer after all. And now Vin gets to protect Sazed. Out of the available outcomes, this was probably the most satisfying. And here comes Elend. So he has his part to play. But Vin gets to save them all, so once again, best possible outcome.

 •Chapter 38

“The Inquisitors would no longer bow before the dictates of inferior men.”

I wonder if the Inquisitors are the Terrismen the Lord Ruler was in contact with during his journey to the Eye of the World Well of Ascension. Some of them seemed to think they were superior to other men.

“A command of Allomancy...”

I guess not, since Terrismen don’t use Allomancy.

 •Turns out that wasn’t Marsh’s body. Marsh the Inquisitor. Rather disturbing. At least he’s still on the side of the good guys.

 •Ba’alzamon the Lord Ruler is defeated, but the Dark One Deepness is still left to threaten the world. For all this snark comparing it to WOT, this ending was satisfying.

 •The Lord Ruler turned out to not be the person who wrote the journal, but one of the Terrismen. I still wonder if he was possessed by the Deepness? The Lord Ruler used both Allomancy and Feruchemy, so maybe it is possible at least some of the Inquisitors were Terrismen. I guess that remains to be seen.

 •Vin came to the same realization about Reen that I did. That’s sweet.

 •Earlier I compared Vin to Egwene and Min, but obviously there is an aspect of her that is like Rand as well, seeing as how she is the main character, and she is the one who defeats the Lord Ruler.

This has been fun, at least for me. On to the next book.

[oh-no-an-opinion-blog]

I really liked Lanque’s Route in Friendsim, especially the “problematic” endings

Discourse and Spoilers, don’t read if you’re just looking for rage fuel. Or do. You control your own actions, and as long as you take responsibility for them everything will be Gucci. We good? We good.

Fight me if you want, but I’m putting it out there. I am happy to have a character who is trans, but who also has other elements to their personality even if they aren’t innocent. Yeah he’s got flaws, so does everyone else. Alternia is an alien planet with a culture is clearly different from ours, and that needs to be taken into account when considering what’s “problematic”. We’re talking about a planet of kids being raised by animals or by themselves on the streets into a classist society where they are allowed to murder each other for a physical trait that they can’t control somehow permissible but as soon as someone acts like an ass and tries to get some serious action it all goes to the fan? There’s a lot more “problematic” behavior we could be worrying about but we only hyper-focus it on Lanque because he’s canonically trans. Not every trans person is a good person, and characters who are trans shouldn’t be sheltered from some more tricky personalities to handle.

Idk man, I fuckin loved how V straight-up went out and said that you had to own up to looking at the problematic material. They called out the discourse, and after writing a route like the one they did for Marvus none of us should be surprised. The idea of it being Hussie is one I personally like, but even if it’s not I think it’s great that they don't hold back just because of what some fans think. They deal with characters like they’re actual people, meaning that some will be what others think is problematic. 

I’ve seen a lot of people upset at the fact that Lanque called out Lynera, and don't get me wrong that was hella uncalled for, but have y’all considered that maybe since we haven’t known Lynera for the last 2.43 sweeps (which is what, about 5 years? As long as a middle or high school career?) we don't know the kind of shit she’s been talking? It’s a bit unfair to judge yet, really. He doesn’t take her feelings into account, but then again was she taking his when she was saying shit?

Lanque is selfish, but dare I present the fact that he’s gotta sacrifice himself to the caverns when he goes off-planet? Maybe he’s projecting a bit when he is so crude calling out Lynera, holding on to the little bit of freedom he can still take before the trials. I dunno, food for thought.

If the issue is the sexual nature of this route I would like to remind people that the MC still has the ability to make choices for themselves, shown when they refuse the drugs even after Lanque tries to coerce them into it (good job protag I love you) and aren’t being forced to do it in a fashion similar to how Ardata controls them early on in the game. That, and after being denied Lanque doesn’t force the MC to do anything. Yeah he pokes fun, but he still stops. As for dancing, it's sexual, and the MC even states that they know what he wants and it might be more than they’re willing to give, but they go with it because it “feels good”. That’s kinda why people do things like this in the first place, isn’t it? And in the bedroom scene, again, the MC doesn’t say no because you as the player consented at the start to seeing the kind of material that the mature content warning covered such as sexual situations, language, and coercion. The decisions of the MC are executed based on the presumption that you followed the rules Ardata set when you first agreed to play through this version of the route(aka being of legal age to see mature content, being aware of the specific mature content contained, and knowing yourself well enough to know whether or not you could handle possibly problematic content). If you looked at the warnings and thought “I can’t handle some of these aspects” and yet continued on anyway, that’s on you. If you did it just to fuel your rage against Lanque, same deal. You could have played it safe, and even if you didn’t whether the MC and Lanque “pail” is up to you. You either consent by keeping your mouth shut like Lanque tells you too or you don’t by calling Bronya in to take care of the situation, which you get rewarded for by getting the good end. Even the Hiveswap team knows that there’ s only so far they can go reasonably, literally labeling the option as “Call in his mom. This has gotten problematic enough.” 

Yes, opting out of it does get you some grief, but it’s a reflection of the general crowd that wanted to see a “safe” character in a world that really doesn’t have them (not to mention the nicely added piece in there about bi erasure, especially since trolls have a default bi/pan sexuality but as soon as same-sex attraction is seen that concept is thrown out the window). They gave some people what they said they wanted, but not without a clear jab to say that they’re not doing it necessarily because they want to. And don’t worry folks! Us sinners who decided to go all the way and then get tossed aside got dunked on too (but hey alien coochie amirite). So teasing for both sides! Equality! Yay!

The team honestly had the right to pull this. We couldn’t even behave when we first learned his damn pronouns. TWO LETTERS threw everyone into an uproar. Let’s not forget that this is considered THE SECOND ROUND OF DISCOURSE and there will probably be more when he reappears in Hiveswap Act 2. They were damned either way they tried to go, so they did both. It’s a spiteful move, but the Homestuck fandom is one of the few places where that can be done thanks to the unique relationship between us as players and readers and community creators, and them as canon creators and the facilitators for the whole thing. 

I’m sick of flop/problematic/discourse culture. I’m sick of overused exclamation points!!! being used!!! to try and make a point more valid!!!! and right!!!! I’m sick of wig-snatching, tea-sipping, uwu-ing, social justice phrased-as-if-you’re-above-all-of-this bullshit being perpetuated as legitimate discussion. Yeah, I sound like a dick here and I’m being petty, and that’s the point. This isn’t so much satire as it is how I close I can get to posting something related to discourse. I’m not putting out a twenty-page analysis on how “bad” Lanque really is or isn’t until my hand is forced to give my evidence over and explain how I as someone who is over 18 with reasonably neutral views sees him not being that problematic compared to a lot of other content I’ve seen with similar themes and actions. I’ve played Dramatical Murder and Boyfriend to Death, and if you want problematic I dare you go play one of those games.

TL;DR Ardata warned you, everyone complaining about how problematic her party was is playing right into the hands of the team, and the only ones to blame here for the drama are ourselves.

If you get owned, fucking own it. And boy, we sure as hell did.

[wendynerdwrites]

Im glad that u also like archer. Ive been rewatching it (im on s2) and i feel guilty as a feminist for liking it so much :( i know a lot of the jokes are supposed to be ironic but i still feel bad for laughing, and my bf has made comments abt "how can u laugh at that as a feminist" (he isnt one, hes using it as a gotcha). How do u feel about this? Any advice for separating myself from toxic fandom to just be able to enjoy something problematic? Love ur blog btw happy friday 💋💋

Thanks, and don’t worry, anon: You’re not a bad feminist. 

It’s funny you ask this, but I used to have an entire essay series on this exact topic, and on Archer, particularly!

My philosophy is: don’t ignore the problematic, examine it. Use it as a springboard for analysis so you can learn more about the issue conveyed. Use your problematic responsibly! Because, let’s be honest, there ARE no unproblematic pieces of media. So just use it to educate yourself instead. For instance: my love of West Side Story (starring Natalie Wood as the Puerto Rican Maria) got me to learn more about the issues of white-washing.

Being a feminist is not about being perfect, it’s about learning and being open to examination and learning. Use your fandom for good!

Laughter is the balm for the soul. And listening to your boyfriend telling you how to be a feminist… less so. Kind of the opposite. 

My old articles are lost, for the most part, but under the cut, I’ve pasted them for reference and included a great video on satire that also very easily applies to this discussion (just substitute feminism with the Holocaust)

Our Faves Are Problematic (And So Can You!)

Nothing and no one is perfect, so isnt it about time we learn how to call out the things we love?

We are all familiar with guilty pleasures: those things we like in spite of ourselves, that we are ashamed to admit we enjoy. Usually the term is applied to something we enjoy despite a perceived “lameness”, or because we’re not the right demographic for something. For instance, I still have a deep, abiding affection for Sailor Moon: that colorful, stock-footage-laced Japanese phenomenon that still gets me shouting “MOON PRISM POWER!” when I’m in the right mood. Yes, childhood is over, and yes, the show’s American dub did give me incest panic as a child, but I can’t help but love it.

But then there is the more difficult brand of guilty pleasures guilty pleasures that involve actual guilt instead of “mild embarrassment”. I’m talking about problematic faves the stuff that we love despite it containing clearly objectionable material.

willing18

(Image copyright Vertigo Comics)

…This is a panel from Bill Willingham’s Fables. The character there is Bigby Wolf, one of the main (anti) heroes of the story and the character the writer identifies with most. The person Bigby is waxing poetically on pro-Zionism to is someone literally called “The Adversary”.

Fables also happens to be one of my favorite comic book series on the planet.

Safe to say the issues surrounding Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East are a bit more complicated than that. And my own feelings on the matter are far more complicated. But this glorification of Israeli military policy is… um… in very tame terms… uncomfortable. After reading this, I resolved to only check Fables out of the library: a way for me to enjoy these comics in a legal way without financially supporting these ideas, however indirectly.

There are other problems with Fables: a lack of ethnic diversity, some murky racial and class commentary, and instances of some objectionable tropes, but there is a lot to recommend of these books as well. The stories are fantastic, the art brilliant, the characters well-fleshed out, and there is a definite progressive take on issues like gender and sexuality. But as much as I love this series, there is no getting around the fact that these stories have issues.

No excuses.

But it’s not just Fables that has disappointed me in the past. I am now and forever a Trekker, yet despite how horribly sexist episodes like “The Turnabout Intruder” are, or the very troubling anti-Semitic coding of the Ferengi. The Star Wars prequels famously had racist caricatures with the Trade Federation and the infamous Jar Jar Binks.

In the world of media, there’s no shortage of problematic content. From the novels of Robert Heinlein containing pro-fascist commentary, to HBO’s Game of Thrones misogynistic adaptation decisions, there’s nothing that is quite free of some messed up messages, subtle and blatant alike.

Now, when we talk about such media, we don’t merely mean triggering factors (i.e. the presentation, portrayal, or discussion of potentially traumatizing issues like domestic abuse, racism, hate crimes, substance abuse, or sexual assault), but rather how these matters are portrayed. A piece of media, such as Marvel and Netflix’s excellent Jessica Jones series, can portray certain issues (such as sexual assault, domestic violence, and mental illness) in a respectful, progressive, and sensitive light. Thus, while the content of the show can be triggering, the skill with which they portray these matters keeps it from being problematic.

In contrast, something like Game of Thrones, which portrays sexual assault in a thoroughly insensitive, exploitative, and misogynistic manner, is highly problematic.

Unfortunately, progress has been a slow-moving process, with many issues such as race, gender, sexual identity, mental illness, substance abuse, and violence only being examined in a more nuanced way fairly recently. As a result, almost all media is problematic in one way or another. Especially since even today, the majority of executives crafting, publishing, and greenlighting books, shows, comics, movies, and other forms of media are in fact cisgendered, heterosexual white men.

So what do we do?

Good news: here at Fandom Following, we don’t believe in dropping something you like just because it’s problematic. Why?

Because knowing, examining, and yes, even appreciating problematic content can be incredibly important. While certain content can be damaging, it can also teach us a great deal. Not only about current issues, but also about how to go about discussing these matters, and constructing narratives in general.

The racial issues in things like Star Wars and Star Trek can teach us much about how coding works, and how to avoid reinforcing stereotypes. The exploitation of women and rape on Game of Thrones can open up a dialogue of how to portray these things properly and improperly.

There are three tricks to enjoying problematic media: 1) Recognizing that there is an issue, 2) Being ready for a dialogue, and 3) Not ignoring or silencing the complaints about said issues.

Well, we here at Fandom Following have decided to tackle this issue head on with a series called “Our Faves Are Problematic (And So Can You!)”, where we will be exploring specific media franchises, creators, and works and, specifically, the problematic content they contain. In this series, we’ll be examining the issues, talking about why they’re important, discussing what this piece of media did wrong, how to approach the issue in a more progressive way, and the best ways to go about discussing the issue itself. Various writers will be contributing to this project, and we’re excited to present this feature to you!

So let’s get down and dirty, people. We all have our problematic faves. Let’s talk about them.

My Face is Problematic: Archer

Honestly, doing a post like this on Archer, a show which is deliberate in its dark humor, is a bit hard for me. Not because I like the show, but because I think there’s true validity in the argument that humor and narratives about really messed up, problematic stuff has its place. The show exists to be as outlandish and absurd as possible. The extremes and the awfulness of the characters’ personalities and their actions is the point.

I VUZ BORN IN DUSSELDORF AND THAT IS VY THEY CALL ME ROLF!

Joking about awful things, awful circumstances, and awful people is hardly new ground for comedy to cover, nor does it send a poor message, necessarily. Mel Brooks wrote a movie in which one of the characters was a Nazi, who wrote an overblown pro-Nazi musical produced by men deliberately trying to make a flop. Springtime For Hitler, as it exists in our universe, is not problematic. The Nazis are the butt of the joke, in which any pro-Nazi sentiment can only function if it is wildly fabricated and over-the-top, and even then, it will still be taken for satire. Because Nazis are utterly terrible, they built their movement on total bullshit that they dressed up in shiny boots and Hugo Boss uniforms and German exceptionalism and “glory”. This song-and-dance number about “Don’t be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the Nazi party” only ever deserves to be a joke, as the Jew who wrote it can tell you. Nazis fucking suck and it’s hilarious that anyone would ever suggest otherwise.

There’s justice in reducing Nazis to self-parody, and doubling down on that by making a joke about them being reduced to self-parody. Especially when said self-parody and depiction of it is crafted by the very people Hitler tried to destroy. No one enjoys or masters mocking Nazis like the Jews. Plain and simple.

Joking about awful things and how terrible they are can be a good way to process things and not allow them to hurt you anymore. Comedy, at its core, is a defense mechanism against horror and pain. There’s a reason slapstick is a classic subgenre of comedy that people have built entire careers around. Laugh at terror and pain to make it go away. Unfortunately, some of the things we manage to find humor in can really make you wonder if were all just terrible and have no limits.

Angela’s Ashes is a memoir by Frank McCourt about his impoverished, abusive, dangerous childhood in Ireland. In it, he chronicles his own starvation, life-threatening illness, abuse, and suffering at the hands of alcoholism and brutality from adult authority figures. He was a child laborer who went days without food while his father drank away the family’s money and abused the rest of the family, who often came down with horrifying illnesses as a result of the terrible conditions he lived in, and spent his formative years suffering along with all the people he loved. Three of his infant siblings die within the space of a chapter. We get a glimpse of the time when his father, overjoyed at the birth of his daughter, finds the will to stop drinking, stop mistreating his family, go to work, provide for his family, and just generally be a better person so that his children don’t have to suffer. For a short period, the McCourts have food, heat, and happiness. Then the baby promptly dies and Frank’s father is back in the pubs, once again squandering any pay he manages to acquire on alcohol and returning home at three am to scream at and beat his wife while his remaining children try to cover their ears and sleep on the cold ground.

Along with being praised for it being a both an unflinchingly brutal depiction of poverty and a testament to the triumph of the human spirit, the book is also praised for its humor.

Remember: Angela’s Ashes is a true story written by the very man who suffered through all of these horrible things. And it’s considered a pretty funny book. And the author who, once again, is the person who actually suffered all of these horrible things, actually did intentionally try to make people laugh as they read about that time he was in the hospital with Typhoid Fever and enjoyed it because it was the first time he’d been in a place where he was fed regularly and got to sleep in a warm bed.

Hilarious.

That being said, there’s satire and dark humor, and there’s just gratuitous, shock-jock bullshit. There are jokes that are terrible simply because of what they’re about and how they’re handled. George Carlin said that anything can be made funny, even rape, if you imagine Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig.

If we can build entire films and musicals about how any pro-Hitler sentiment can only ever be taken as satire, isn’t that proof that you can joke about anything?

Yes, you can, but that doesn’t mean you should try, that the joke is funny, or that it’s alright, necessarily. Maybe Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and Springtime for Hitler prove that anything can be made funny and that’s okay. But if that’s true (and no, I’m not saying that it is), that still doesn’t mean every attempt at making something funny is either acceptable or funny.

Springtime for Hitler is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for any attempt to make a terrible subject the object of humor. Standards need to exist.

Unfortunately, the line between good or acceptable dark humor and simply gratuitous, insensitive, inherently problematic jokes can blur. The excuse of humor can only go so far. Yes, make light of Nazis. But there’s still a point where “humor” is used an excuse for people to act like assholes. And it’s an excuse that is used all too often. Radio Shock Jocks have been using that excuse to help reinforce racism and rape culture for quite a while. Whether certain dudebros like it or not, there’s a point where it stops being gross-out and just starts being gross.

Which brings me to Archer, the animated spy comedy on FX that premiered in 2011. Like many comedy series like Seinfeld or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a major part of the premise is that certain characters are, quite simply, terrible people. These characters and their abhorrent behavior is the joke. And, as the show is about spies, these terrible people are often put into highly dangerous, outlandish, and traumatizing situations.

So, the main characters, by virtue of their profession, spend a lot of time killing people in cold blood. Or trying to seduce or manipulate enemies. Or engaging in clandestine operations of sabotage that harm a lot of people. Horrible, violent things are going to happen, things violent enough to serve as narratives on their own. But most of the characters are as awful as the situations they encounter, so the horror is amplified. And it’s a comedy.

Indeed, in the first episode of the fifth season, we get the whole main ensemble recounting all of their actions and experiences working for the spy agency ISIS that we’d witnessed over the course of the show’s run at that point. Drag racing with the Yakuza, knee-capping the Irish mob, encountering human traffickers, 30 year affairs with the head of the KGB that only ended when the guy was blown up because one of the ISIS members had choke sex with the victim’s cyborg replacement, actual piracy, paying homeless people to fight for spectators, defling a corpse, defiling a different corpse, sexual assault, kidnapping the pope, blowing up oil pipelines, “smuggling Mexicans”

Yeah.

There are comedic arcs about cancer, illegal immigration, kinky S&M bondage murders, cocaine addiction… a lot of stuff, basically.

Now, take those situations, and add in characters who get aroused by things like homeless people, being choked, sex with food, and the thought of their mother dying. Who spend their weekends starting fires, making hybrid pig-people, rubbing sand into the eyes of their employees, competing in underground Chinese Fighting Fish tournaments, and calling in bomb threats so that they can get a table at a fancy restaurant. You get the idea.

And it’s all totally awesome and hilarious and god damn it I kind of love these characters.

This show has a season-long sub-arc about one of the main characters getting so aggressively addicted to cocaine that she not only consumes (literally) half a ton of it in the space of a few months, but almost gets her head chopped off for buying amphetamines from the Yakuza with counterfeit money. It’s one of the most incredible things the show has done.

Pictured: An absurdly self-centered man feeling genuine dismay and concern over his friend risking her life to achieve an unrealistic standard of beauty.

The title character has a butler named Woodhouse who practically raised him. One of the first interactions we witness between them is Archer not only threatening to rub sand into Woodhouse’s “dead little eyes”, but making him go out and buy the sand himself and check if they grade it, because he wants the sand to be coarse. He’s also done things like make the man eat a bowl of spiderwebs and deliberately keep him in the dark about his brother’s death and funeral.

Another character is a mad scientist and possible clone of Adolf Hitler who kills a young intern by giving him a drug designed to turn him gay. That’s one of the less disturbing things Dr. Krieger has done.

Frequent gags on this show include one guy repeatedly getting shot, another character repeatedly getting paralyzed (it’s complicated), people trying to remember the inappropriate puns that they wanted say as one-liners, the horrific abuse and neglect Sterling Archer has received from his mother his entire life, and basically everyone being a sex-maniac.

There are plots revolving around mind-control, drugging people, and hypnotism. You can imagine the paths some of those episodes go down. Yes, there is a character that has tried to sexually assault one of her sleeping co-workers. And later deposited two unconscious, naked coworkers in a bathroom stall with an octopus, in an episode that has already made tentacle hentai jokes. Yes, the openly gay character on the show is often the target of jokes about him being gay or a woman from his coworkers. Yes, the female lead, a black woman, is referred to as a “quadroon” at one point by one of the characters.

Yes, the following exchange of dialogue does take place in an early episode:

“Oh my god, you killed a hooker!”

“Call-girl!”

“No, Cyril, when they’re dead, they’re just hookers!”

And yet… Oh my god. How it manages to play around with stuff in an amazing fashion. For one thing, it is amazing how often this show skewers micro-aggressions and fucks around with stereotypes. And, despite how unabashedly messed up it is, the writing in it actually manages to be oddly pro-social progress in ways that most modern media doesn’t even seem to be aware of.

I take pride in my sex work and I will not put up with your bullshit!

For instance the “hooker” referred to in that exchange? (spoiler alert: she wasn’t really dead) She’s Trinette, and she an unbelievably refreshing and strangely progressive depiction of a sex worker. While she’s a minor character, every time she shows up, it’s awesome. Trinette is a sex worker who is unashamed of her job, a woman who truly does take pride in and enjoy her work, who does not put up with poor behavior from her clients, and is just generally awesome. She call people out and makes them pay for any mistreatment she receives, from calling out micro-aggressions by insisting on her preferred terminology for her profession (“Call-girl, you puke!”), shaming men for their sexual misdeeds (“How can you cheat on Lana bare-back?!”), demanding restitution for any injuries or threats she’s suffered (Threatening Archer into giving her his car after he fakes her death and stuffs her in a rug to fool Cyril into thinking he killed her), and determining her work and clients (“What about Trinette? She said that? Damn it!”). When she has a baby, she gives it her last name along with his father’s (“Magoon-Archer”) and she unapologetically proud of her Irish heritage. She’s easily one of the most functional characters in the show, and every one of her appearances on the show manage to defy at least one whore-phobic trope a minute. She’s the best.

Then there’s the show’s handling of race, which is mixed. While arguably the most important female character in the series (the show, despite its name, is very, very much an ensemble, especially as the series progresses. But in the early episodes when they focussed on fewer characters, she was the one who got the most screentime) is Lana Kane, a highly-competent (for ISIS) African American woman who is really, really well-developed, there is also the fact that she’s the only POC in the main cast. Granted, part of that IS the point. One of the earliest episodes is “Diversity Hire”, where, aside from Lana, the spy agency is so overwhelmingly white that they hire a “diversity double-whammy!” Conway Stern, a black Jew.

“Sammy Gay-vis Junior!”

Now, granted, that doesn’t sound great the way I describe it, but there are so many great moments in this episode alone. For instance, when Mallory Archer, terrible woman and owner of the spy agency mentions their lack of diversity, Cyril, the tragically white accountant and “nice guy” puts his hands on Lana’s shoulder and says he thinks they’re pretty diverse, a statement Lana finds hilarious. Cue Sterling Archer, other horrible person, telling Lana she’s “black-ish”, then responding to her offense at this with “Well, you freaked out when I said quadroon!”. The framing of this entire discourse is that Cyril and Archer are fucking idiots and Lana is of course taking offense because, duh, she should. The episode proceeds with a lot of references and discussion about racism, highlighting casual racism in a nuanced, funny, and organic way. For instance, Archer’s relief that Conway didn’t sleep with his mother. While Archer freaks out about anyone sleeping with his mother, regardless of race, Conway believes it’s racism on Archer’s fault. And in no way does the narrative act like he’s overly-sensitive or irrational for thinking that. Because the stereotype about black men seducing white women and fear from white men about this is still a very real, pervasive thing that has somehow managed to survive in our “enlightened” times. Of course Conway encountering a guy who displays a downright violent fixation on whether or not his new black coworker is sleeping with his mother will assume it’s a race thing. Because why would anyone be so preoccupied with such an idea? In that situation, it’s almost certainly based on the long-standing paranoia white men have about black men’s sexuality “conquering their women.” It’s one of the most common varieties of anti-blackness in existence.

Of course, since it’s Archer, who has kidnapped a LOT of people under the suspicion that they were having sex with his mom, we know this is the one case that it isn’t racism. It’s Archer’s disturbing, Oedipal relationship with his mother. He even kidnapped and threatened his role model, Burt Reynolds, for dating his mother. When he says “Not in a racist way” to Conway in this episode, it’s actually true. He’s just honestly that screwed up where his mother is concerned.

Conway’s conclusions on this, regardless, are still framed as a totally understandable. To the point where the episodes suggests that it would make no sense for Conway to think otherwise. Part of the joke is that no, Archer isn’t a horrible racist at all. He’s way too screwed up for his actions to be motivated by racism.

And before anyone asks, no, this wasn’t the “episode that acknowledges that racism is a thing.” You know the ones… The episodes that talk about race and why racism is bad to prove to the audience that they’re not racist, then proceed with the rest of the show, which never acknowledges race and racism again. There are frequent instances of highlighting racism, from violent outright bigotry to common micro-aggressions to clueless white people demanding how the thing they just did/said could POSSIBLY be considered racist! They’re not racist! How is THAT racist?! Cue Lana face-palming.

I just really, really like this. It doesn’t just end there, either. Racism is called out pretty frequently on this show, and not in a cliche, strawman way. Nor is it treated like something that only exists in the form of aggressively bigoted bad people shouting slurs and holding cross burnings. Nope. The “heroes” of this show just say shit that you could easily imagine someone saying in real life, shortly before getting defensive about any racism on their part. It’s treated as a common, pervasive thing that Lana and other PoC have to deal with every day, and the offense they take at it is treated as nothing short of sympathetic or justified (even in the cases of misunderstandings, like with Conway). This includes Mallory telling Lana to “put [the race card] back in the deck!” as reminder of how much of an unapologetic douche Mallory is.

It’s made clear: people say and do some super racist shit on a regular basis with realizing it or meaning to, and regardless, it’s still uncool and people have every right to get upset and call you out on it. See: Ray’s bionic hand at the end of season six.

Lana’s reactions and how they’re framed is usually pretty awesome. Mostly they come in the form of small, reasonable confrontations, which are never framed as an overreaction on her part. The fact that she “freaked out” when Archer called her a quadroon is framed as “well, duh, of course, she should.” Then there are instances like when she, Archer, and their child visit a high-end nursery school where they encounter a pretty obvious racist. The guy ignores and dismisses Lana at first, then expresses surprise at the fact that she’s the mother of the child (despite the baby being black), remarking about the “times we live in” and telling Lana “good for you!” when she informs him that yes, she is the mother, not the nanny or the maid.

Not all of the racism stuff stems from Lana being back, either. They skewer bigotry against Latinos on a pretty regular basis. When an Irish mobster rants about Latinos (he doesn’t refer to them by that name) “taking American jobs!”, Archer immediately calls bullshit, recalling actual history of the Irish being accused of that exact same thing during the mass immigration of the Irish to America during the potato famine, and it’s just as shitty and bigoted to say such things about immigrants now as it was in 1842. He is extremely irate about a mission ISIS is assigned to do on behalf of border patrol to  arrest people who just want to get a job, and he ends up siding with and befriending the Mexican illegal immigrants he encounters. All of this while aspects of certain Latinx cultures are often highlighted, often very favorably (“Ramone is Latino, so he’s not afraid to express affection.”)

That being said, there are still a lot of issues in the show. The lack of diversity is definitely an albatross around this show’s neck. Especially so many seasons after the “Diversity Hire” episode. While I do praise Archer for not treating racism as a thing that is rare and only needs to be addressed in one twenty-minute block of time, it is telling that the lack of diversity at ISIS is never addressed again.

Then there’s the approach to sexuality. The show loves gross-out sex humor, especially regarding Krieger. And the depiction of sexuality is actually pretty mixed. On one hand, the openly gay character in the show adheres to a lot of stereotypes about gay men: he mocks Lana about her “knock-off Fiacci drawers”, his go-to alias is “Carl Channing”, his free time is spent at raves, and he loves to make effeminate poses. He’s also a frequent target of homophobic jokes and remarks. His outrage at this is treated as being every bit as valid as Lana’s, but it doesn’t change the fact that their main gay character is basically ALL of the stereotypes, as are a number of the other gay characters.

“Alright! Were off to get our scrotums waxed!”

Then there is the sexual assault. Which, once again, is called out for being what it is, in defiance of many common biases (such as the idea that female-on-male sexual assault isn’t a thing). But this show is way too flippant about this.

While I consider Archer to be very sex-positive, allowing every character, regardless of sex, age, or orientation, to be comfortable and expressive about their sexuality without judgment (a lot of jokes, yes, but not any that come off as particularly shaming). Almost every character, male or female spends a fair amount of time naked or scantily clad. We see Archer stripped down just as often as Lana. And the fan service isn’t relegated to just women who adhere to the typical youth and weight obsessed eurocentric standards we all know and hate.

Pam, who is a big woman (and often the target of fat jokes, which the show always treats as nothing short of detestable) is a total sex goddess who grows to be utterly confident in herself as a woman to the point where she’s giving Mallory (one of the most desired women on the show) advice. When she reveals that she keep ingesting cocaine because it’s made her thin with big boobs, Archer is utterly dismayed, telling her she was way better off the way she was, acting horrified that she’d risk her life to be “hot”, and just generally freaking out about Pam’s desire to be thin. It manages to avoid being cliche or empty given that Archer considered Pam the best sex he ever had before she got thin, to the point of blowing off assignments just to have sex with her, because she’s just that awesome. After she gains the weight back in season six, she’s still sexy, making Archer’s jaw drop in the episode “Edie’s Wedding.” She’s also unapologetically pansexual, which is awesome.

Mallory, meanwhile, is still actively sexual and treated as desirable. While sex and sexuality are always sources of gags and jokes on Archer, never do the jokes about Mallory’s sexuality ever come across as ageist. Sure, some characters make ageist comments on the show, but it’s never treated as valid. Mallory is still treated as being extremely sexy and confident about it. While Mallory is generally a horrible person, her enthusiastic sexual agency is never once treated as a flaw or something disturbing or gross. What’s disturbing, gross, and worthy of ridicule is her son being so preoccupied  and reactionary about his mother having a sex life. It’s clear: if you have a problem with Mallory having a lot of sex and enjoying it, you’re the one with issues.

Even the one young, thin, white woman in the main cast gets to be unapologetic about her kinks. It’s really only a problem when her desire for choke-sex motivates her to lead a KGB cyborg to the ISIS safehouse. Or when she coerces Cyril into sex. And generally acts like a violent, awful person.

Essentially, there’s no tolerance for shaming women for being sexual. All of it, regardless of preference, age, size, or race, is nothing but fun and should be enthusiastically represented. “Can’t talk, got a pussy to break!”

Being a predator is shameful. Having belly rolls is not.

Who on Earth finds this funny?

But, then there’s the flippancy about sexual assault. There ARE gags about Pam and Ray dropping their pants when encountering an unconscious Cyril. And sorry, but the framing of it is all manner of screwed up. There’s tons of sexual coersion as well. Another one of the most problematic instances comes in an episode of season two, where Archer is repeatedly sexually assaulted by a sixteen-year-old German socialite. The show goes out of its way to make it clear that Archer explicitly refuses consent, that he’s being violated, yet the show treats this as funny.

While I get that this is a comedy show and that in-depth exploration of the trauma of sexual abuse isn’t going to be something they can spend a lot of time on, the option they should have gone with is, you know, not base an episode around a german schoolgirl raping the main character. It’s not funny, guys. It’s not necessary. It’s actually just uncomfortable and off-putting.

The show mentions things like alternative gender identities, emotional triggers, and sexual exploration in ways that treat these things as totally valid, which is good. It also frequently portrays poor people as jokes in and of themselves, which is a lot less good. While materialism is lampooned frequently, it’s not treated as a joke in and of itself the way poverty is.

The way the show often portray legitimate abuse for laughs also often goes overboard. While the show does a good job of exploring and following through on all the ways Mallory’s abuse screwed up Archer, there’s a point where the volume of “abuse humor” gets to just be downright gross. Dark humor is one thing, not being able to go an episode without a “Haha, ten-year-old archer was abandoned in a train station at Christmas!” joke is, uh… Not great.

Archer is an awesome, immensely watchable show. But it’s not one I always feel clean watching. It’s a show that celebrates extremes, yes, but there’s a point where certain lines are crossed and it’s just problematic rather than gallows humor.

Archer is one of those series that really makes me struggle to distinguish the gallows humor from the simple tastelessness. To give pause to the idea of problematic content being the “point.”

The line blurs with Archer. A lot. It often manages to distinguish itself with the things it gets right, especially since they often do well on things that most shows, movies, and books are often terrible at. And that’s enough to buy it some goodwill for when they screw up.

But seriously, guys, please stop treating sexual coercion and child abuse as bottomless gag wells. I would have really preferred to have Pam and her awesome sexuality without her sexually assaulting Cyril and Ray. It’s not funny or clever or edgy. It’s just gross.

[existentialspiral]

Classpect Analysis: Sylph of Mind

DEFINITION: The aspect of Mind is fairly straightforward, being associated principally with thought, logic, decisions, memory, planning, information, reasoning, judgement, and consequences, with a possible (but not certain) association with the senses. It has a reasonably deduced opposing aspect, Heart, and a few strong displays of its use and its users. First and foremost of these is Terezi Pyrope, Seer of Mind, whose deeds through her aspect begin long before entering the Medium, beginning with the mind games and manipulations used against her FLARP opponents, allowing her to tear through enemy teams without even needing to fight. Other uses include, but are not limited to: the exile of multiple Agents, the death of an alternate John Egbert, the killing of Vriska Serket, physically seeing Brain Ghost Dirk (in spite of being literally blind at the time), using John to manipulate both the timeline and herself into significantly more favorable conditions, and even arranging a chalk outline of her own corpse, accounting for her limbs post-mortem flailing. Other users are the pre- and post-Scratch incarnations of Neophyte Redglare, Latula Pyrope (Knight of Mind). While Latula herself was a generally failed hero, much like the majority of her group, her post-Scratch incarnation was able to, with little effort, exploit the poor decisions and logic of the famed Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, allowing Redglare to capture the renowned pirate with little difficulty or effort (albeit before making the fatal mistake of holding a public trial, filled with psychically-defenseless lowbloods, in the presence of a powerful telepath). Sylphs are a rather difficult to parse class, one with only one real source of information on, with the majority of Sylphs having exhibited little-to-nothing in the way of class abilities. Indeed, were it not for the one source, then understanding a Sylph of any aspect would be nothing more than hopeless guesswork and speculation. However, we do have a source, possible the best source within Homestuck itself: Aranea Serket, the Sylph of Light herself. Aranea lists her role as that of a healer, that she restores and aids others in her role as Sylph, and this certainly is exhibited. Aranea uses her own “insight” to help Terezi to find some measure of psychological peace, as well as later physically restoring her sight; that is, healing her ability to detect Light. As well, Aranea would later use her powers to forcibly heal the psychological trauma of Jake English, a fortuitous turn of events for Aranea, and could even be said to be exercising her role as Sylph upon us, the readers, by “enlightening” us and “healing” us of our ignorance. As well, the role of healer is also shown, albeit to a far lesser degree, by the other main Sylph, Kanaya Maryam (Sylph of Space), who was able to heal her entire species by ensuring their reproductive possibility (Space being associated with both physical space and with genesis and reproduction). As such, through these examples, one may define a Sylph as, “One who heals their aspect, or heals through their aspect.” I give you the Sylph of Mind, “One who heals, or heals through, plans, memories, judgements, logic, reasoning, and thoughts.” Most Mind players recognize their aspect as a system, something to manipulate, to exploit, or even to break apart. The Sylph of Mind uses it for more constructive purposes. Sanity, strategy, reasoning, these are all systems which can break down, and the consequences of such a break can be dire. The Sylph of Mind exists to repair these systems, to work out the flaws that caused them to break apart in the first place. There are others who exist to dream the world, to invent great things, to construct elaborate plans, and to push themselves beyond the fit of sanity; the Sylph of Mind is here to make sure these things work. Glory, fame, the accolades and honours of heroism, these things aren’t for her; one doesn’t need to shine on the front line, not when you have a pair of eagles on your shoulders. ABILITIES: The Sylph of Mind isn’t your traditional healer; Mind isn’t a very good aspect for repairing bodily damage, and, “mind over matter,” may only take you so far. No, the Sylph of Mind isn’t here to patch up your wounds, she’s here to solve problems. The demons in your head are nothing she can’t help with, and the puzzles of a session melt before her. More still, are the other problems she can solve: politics, strategy, negotiations, all things where she can excel, healing any poor solutions and ideas into a working form. While it would be up to the players themselves to find a reason to follow her, it would be difficult to find many better leaders of a session. As well, while it is far from a certainty, it is also entirely possible for a Sylph of Mind to heal more than just the immaterial; if art is the fruit of the soul, then it seems only fitting that technology is the fruits of Mind, and these fruits often need quite a bit of healing. Upon entering the game, the Sylph of Mind will be at a fair advantage to most other players, likely lacking anything outside the ordinary in the way of combat but very well equipped to handle the mental challenges of her Land; as Vriska said, there’s more than one way to make your way up the Echeladder, and noncombat EXP is still EXP. That said, the combat challenges still remain, and one can’t simply talk or think the imps to death. As far as Strife goes, there are plenty of options available for the Sylph of Mind, but it is rather unlikely that she’ll have anything of an inherent combat-grade available. Upon reaching God Tier, the Sylph of Mind begins to stretch her wings, albeit smaller wings than other classpects might bare. Low-level physical healing, mind-over-matter effects, psychological surgery, all of these are possible, and very practical. While she might not have the raw damage of other classpects, the practical applications of her abilities, such as eidetic memory (what is forgetfulness than “wounded memories,” after all?) or perfect judgement (imperfect judgement being healed to perfection), would allow her to glide through the mental challenges of the game. The Black Queen might find her a less-certain threat than most Mind players, but make no mistake: sit not easy on that throne. At the highest reaches of power, the Sylph of Mind is, to all intents and purposes, a being of perfected thought and judgement. Plans, strategies, logic, thought, every possible flaw in these has been excised and healed to perfection. Their plans account for everything they know, and everything they can’t know. Their judgements are made on all possible consequences. Their decisions are made by means of perfect logic, uncompromised and sharpened. At this stage, having the Sylph actually engage in combat is worse than a waste of potential, not when her skills outside of fighting are worth more than gold. However, the Sylph of Mind suffers for her status if she is ever forced into a role of direct opposition. Hers are the powers of a support class, and even turned upon herself may only elevate her to the highest level of mental ability; even if she were to abuse mind-over-matter and eliminate things like pain and muscular restraint, the Sylph of Mind is still limited to the abilities of herself as a human and herself as a Sylph. As well, while her abilities do make her an amazing psychologist, it is worth remembering that emotions are under the control of the Heart aspect, not Mind, and are beyond her touch to heal; while she may council another player and allow them to function as normal, she cannot actually undo the emotional damage that caused the problems to begin with. Lastly, it needs be said that, as a Sylph, the Sylph of Mind is a healer, and her abilities are merely extensions of that, with destruction and manipulation being only available to the extent of benefit, such as erasing traumatic memories or manipulating a person into wanting what’s best for them. QUEST: As I’ve said before, the Mind aspect has little information regarding its Lands, with the Sylph class being equally obscured. Anything said is speculation, but speculate I shall. A likely Quest for a Sylph of Mind would be one of pure mentality, one which forces the growth of their powers, yes, but which also attacks them where their powers are useless. As the Sylph of Mind is best at improving and healing mental issues, and is worst at handling anything to do with the heart or soul, it is likely that her Quest would be composed of these two things. An entire Quest of Lovecraft would be more appropriate than many might realize, her challenge to use the power of thought to overcome the uncaring horror that erodes it being a perfect mirror of Lovecraft’s work, with a hopefully happier ending. The Lands for a Sylph of Mind would most likely have something to do with the Mind aspect, such as Thought, Logic, Karma, Decisions, Plans, or even Games. The other half of the name would likely have something to do with the personality of the Sylph in question, her specific Quest, the counter-aspect to Mind, specifically Heart, or even something seemingly unrelated to her or her quest, at least until later diagnosed. Examples might include the Land of Nerves and Terror, the Land of Amygdalas and Judges, or the Land of Scalples and Knowledge. VERDICT: While certainly not a bad Classpect, the Sylph of Mind lacks agency. She is very much specialized as a support character, requiring her teammates to handle the greater challenges of combat and physical ability. Certainly, it would be easy for her to create a plan to wipe out the Black King and his forces, but executing that plan is another matter for her. That said, while working with the team to the point of dependence might be her own little cross, it’s also her greatest benefit, acting as a force multiplier with her strategic ability and being a better medic than most non-Sylph classes, while also helping to keep the team thinking straight (a matter of some difficulty considering that the team is, technically speaking, guilty of unintended genocide against their own species). If nothing else, the Sylph of Mind is one of the most loyal classpects, one that provides significant benefit to the group, has little reason to leave the group, and any attempts to fly solo will likely be self-correcting in the later portion of a session. Having a team with a Sylph of Mind is fairly easy, with her actually being one of the best, if not the best, classpects for handling the riskier possible teammates. The Sylph of Mind doesn’t require any specific leaders or counters, and actually enables a team of risky propositions to function cohesively. Even in the unlikely event that you find a Sylph of Mind so deeply in rejection of her role that she decides to destroy the group, hers is a classpect that may be dealt with fairly easily by most any combat classpect, with rather little power required to overcome her might. As for synergies, well, the sky’s the limit; dangerous and self-destructive combinations like the Page of Rage, Seer of Time, Seer of Void, Knight of Rage, Knight of Void, Prince of Hope, Prince of Life, Prince of Heart, Bard of Blood, Seer of Doom, Witch of Doom, and more, all of these can be tamed by the Sylph of Mind, almost to the point of guaranteed safety. At every level the Sylph of Mind is one of the safer choices for a teammate, providing great utility to the team with little risk, and even neutralizing problems long before they can cause harm. While not shining as brightly as other, more direct, classpects might, the Sylph of Mind is a character that can become utterly indispensable on a team with some of the more dangerous classpects as allies, to the point of being a requirement if enough of them are on a team.

[irarelypostanything]

Game of Thrones - WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL THAT?

We live in an interesting time...most people don’t read the most popular book or watch the most popular play and then wait for a few months so that philosophers or English professors can analyze it.  Instead, whenever the latest movie or TV show drops, we wait about eight hours for popular YouTube channels to do their work.  They highlight symbolism, memorable quotes, possible meanings.  It’s a very quick and difficult thing that these critics do, but it almost has to be rushed.

Screen Rant’s Pitch Meeting, which is now famous for parodying things at an extremely fast rate (they paradied a trailer roughly two hours after it aired), criticizes the series finale of Game of Thrones for being rushed.  Reddit criticizes the finale for being rushed.  Wisecrack, I think, offers the best analysis.  Instead of polluting its content with constant bashing, Wisecrack tries to be fair to the genre, to the influences at play, and to the work as a whole.

Then, after waffling about what the last season of Game of Thrones was trying to say or why it was executed this way, Wisecrack joins the herd and bashes the finale like everyone else.

Critics don’t have very much time to criticize.  If Wisecrack took any longer to release their analysis of Game of Thrones, everyone probably would have lost interest.  But I’m not wisecrack.  I can write whatever I want, whenever I want about this show and I don’t have to worry if everyone or no one reads it.

*Spoilers*

Game of Thrones has always been a show with political elements, and it addresses this genre rather brilliantly.  In the worst movies I know, the villains aren’t fleshed out at all--they exist solely to give the plot some sort of structure, and to give the heroes of the story something to struggle against.  In a lot of bad stories, but even in some stories I admit are well-written like Harry Potter and most superhero movies, the villains do little more than “mustache-twirling”:  They lay out their plans, they elicit fear, and then that’s all they do.  Maybe there’s backstory, maybe there’s not.  But once put on the throne, the dark lord is just dark.

But in Game of Thrones, the whole concept of a villain is subverted and then made awesome.  It shows a war from every point of view.  Right off the bat we’re introduced to Eddard, who first distrusts and then outwardly fights against members of a different house, and all along we’re introduced to Tyrion, who is a sympathetic character but who belongs to the other house.  We don’t get to have Theon as a POV character until the second book, and we don’t get to have Jamie as a POV character until the third.  We don’t just catch a glimpse of the so-called villains, we get to experience the world through their eyes.  We get to read their thoughts.  We get to know them.

It’s already been ten minutes, so let me see if I can now run through some of the series’ major themes, touch on how I feel about the ending, and then try to decide what I think the show was trying to say.

*****

So on one hand, we have the political.  House struggles against house.  Every victory makes two future defeats, every act of murder results in more enemies.  It’s awesome.  Everyone struggles.  Eddard dies, not in spite of his honor, but because his honor gets him killed.

On and on it continues.  Robb puts love above all else, and he dies.  Joffrey puts power above knowledge and love and honor, and he dies in the exact episode in which he uses a sword to cut a history book in half and then indulges in his own parody of history.  Really cruel people die.  Really great people die.  It, like real-world history, seems random but makes sense the deeper you go.

But on the other hand, the show has always been about the mythical, the magic.  Does the Red Woman really carry out the will of the one true God, or is she simply a sorcerer who burns one child too many and has trouble redeeming herself for it?  Are the northerners empowered by their relationship to the many gods, or is that religion just their way of grappling with the mysteries of children of the forest and ice zombies?  It’s not clear which religion is correct, if any of them, but it’s very clear that the magic and the mythical is real.

(17 minutes.  Gosh, I really need to speed this up)

So in my mind, Dani was always a representation of the mythical.  Here’s this woman who was essentially a sex slave sold against her will for power, and she just triumphs at every turn.  I loved this about the show.  Married off to a supposed savage, she finds kindness.  Having lost everything, including the one person she really loves, she goes into a fire and is then shielded by dragons that emerge from eggs.  For the first few seasons, every time the shit really hit the fan Dani would emerge as the one likable character who triumphed.  Eddard is beheaded?  Sure, but at least Dani rises.  Blackwater is devastating?  Okay, but check out how Dani reclaims her right.  All your favorite characters just died in a freaking wedding?  Okay, but Dani just took a city.

Some have argued that she was always meant to go insane, as a character, but I’m still having trouble accepting it.  I thought her signs of “madness” were meant to ultimately reveal that her justice would triumph, and weren’t given as hints as to what she would become.  Are the Targaryens just crazy?  I would argue that the Targaryens were a representation of the mythical.  If they were really embodiments of madness, then what about her brother?  Why was there a shocking reveal about her brother actually being someone who died for love?  Why put such emphasis on how her brother was talented but also humble, how her brother was an obvious indication that her family wasn’t just madness and fire?

22 minutes.  Let me wrap this up with the political.

In the end, we’re left with the resolution that monarchy will be replaced by oligarchy, and Bran will rule over all.  I think this might make sense, but we don’t really know why.  Bran seems detached, something more than human, but someone who doesn’t seem like the ruler of all these humans.  Wisecrack points out that Tyrion tries to arrange the chairs of his small council, and they quickly undo his work.  Wisecrack points out that you get a final cutaway, and you see that on the map on the ground Westeros is cracked.

But I think the line about stories being the unifying force in their world was meant to be something like the point of the show.  I think that their burning the throne in dragon fire was meant to be some triumph.  I think that we were supposed to feel liberated, Jon and Arya having freedom, Tyrion having freedom, the land being free.  I think we were supposed to feel good.  Optimistic.

But I’m not.  I still can’t get over how significant the mythical theme was throughout the series, and how quickly they wrapped up the Night King as disappearing with a single blow, and Dani simply being “the mad queen all along.”

26 minutes.  If anything was rushed, it was this post.