#just got into ff fandom

[socialism-or-barbarism-canada]

Clerith deniers dominating FFVII fandom and trying to force Cloti down everyone’s throats are toxic as hell. Just because your ship can be perceived as “endgame” thanks to certain plot points and interpretations popularized by the Compilation dosen’t give you the right to unironically bully everyone into submission!

Not to mention denying the existence of a “love triangle” and downplaying every single indication that Aerith might have wanted to love the real Cloud but couldn’t because of her death in favor of a “two people in love, one woman projects her dead ex onto one of the people in love, thankfully she dies” and trying to force this view on the fandom robs the story and the gaming industry of one of it’s greatest tragedies.

The story was always up for interpretation but outright denying parts of the FFVII story that flow stronger when viewed as a “love that could mever be….destroyed by a hatred that always was” weakens parts of the narrative and admittly dosen’t even mesh with Cloud’s guilt post gaining his memories back

[shivasdarknight]

Time for your regularly scheduled, "Killjoy Hour with Enya" because we're being a killjoy about Dawntrail (:

So first and foremost: fuck Square and the XIV team for taking this angle. We could've gone any direction and we're going with Colonizer The Adventure. They looked at what we did on the Steppe with Hien and went "let's do it again! :D"

Mandatory CW for racism as it pertains to the indigenous peoples of North America, Mesoamerica and South America, and discussion of the genocide enacted by Spain against Mesoamerica and South America.

(Sections and the first letter of each sentence have been bolded for ease of reading)

But to explain further: Square has a really awful track record with their take on Tural, the "New World", especially in their handling of the Mamoolj'aa that are in Eorzea. This has been an issue since ARR and has been frequently criticized due to their extremely anti-indigenous writing. The way they handle the Eorzean tribes (which have been known as "beast tribes" and "beastmen" for a good part of the past decade that XIV has been around, I Should Not have to explain to you why that's deeply problematic) is an issue in its own right, but I'll only touch on what we've seen of Tural in the game itself and why this doesn't bode well for Dawntrail.

Let's get the obvious one out of the way first, this fucking shit:

For those unaware, this is the New World set. It's a craftable gear set from Heavensward that players can wear as a goddamned costume. I shouldn't have to be saying this in 2023, but this set has caused a great deal of controversy because it's a bastardization of plains tribe regalia. Square never should have added it to the game, but here it is and players constantly wear it in further offensive glams.

The only instance of this set being used with NPCs is in the Blue Mage quests and what we see of the Whalaqee. Again, to those unaware: the ARR Blue Mage quests are an extremely racist storyline that plays into white savior narratives and more offensive caricatures. The only representatives that we get to interact with of the Whalaqee are a little boy in this outfit (who's also extremely pale), and two Mamoolj'aa who are the lackeys of Martyn, the job trainer for Blue Mage - a white man! Further, the magic is notably not from Eorzea and is instead a cultural practice of the Whalaqee that Martyn took and turned into profit, and he's who you're supposed to work for. You are - yet again - considered a master of the practice, and this is written in mind with a default white man in mind considering Meteor being the stand in for everything. There is in-game appropriation of cultural practices, clothing, and tools but it gets worse the further you go into them.

The main plot of the ARR quests is that the Whalaqee are dying from a plague brought toTural by Martyn and other researchers with the Arcanist's guild 🙃 There were two trips: one to study Blue Magic, and one where people from the first trip went back because they found ceruleum in the sacred lands of the Whalaqee and began drilling for it. But remember: you only get to meet the Whalaqee through the two Mamoolj'aa and the Whalaqee child. The fate of the tribe rests in an Eorzean's hands because they put the medicine behind a bet for the further profit of Ul'dah. Win the carnival and make the owner a bunch of money and you get the medicine; lose, and they go raid the place for ceruleum and wipe out the tribe. It's a deeply offensive storyline that turns past and ongoing horrors that indigenous peoples - especially those of North America and Mesoamerica - have faced and are still facing into some trivial goal for a questline for a joke job that's solved through the white savior trope.

Then, of course, there's how the Mamoolj'aa are generally treated. Like the other ARR tribes and anyone the game doesn't consider civilized, their dialogue is written in broken speech patterns to reflect "lower intelligence." They're one of the only ARR tribes (next to the Qiqirn, who only got that somewhat through the SHB Qitari quests) that haven't gotten any kind of humanizing that the others have seen over the years (and even then, that's only been recently). Throughout ARR-HVW storylines, they're portrayed as extremely aggressive, are often throwaway mercs for hire around La Noscea, and they have them use this "cultural dance" of theirs that's described as extremely suggestive and is frequently used to sexually harass the white women of Eorzea. They're also seen in the Wanderer's Palace (Hard) as "aggressive barbarian" types who enslaved the Tonberries, which were originally the Spoken of Nym (so y'know, predominantly white society that became malformed and gangrenous tonberries). And your job as the Warrior of Light is, naturally, to exterminate them. There's other stuff like the naming of abilities they use (frequent use of barbarian/barbaric, which in it of itself is problematic), the totems and standards that you're actively encouraged to destroy, the shaman stuff + the fact that again: they're the only ARR tribe that never got the same kind of humanizing lens that tribes like the Sylphs got early on, or like the Amalj'aa got only recently.

Dawntrail looks to be as if it might be that humanizing effort that began in Stormblood and was most prominent in 5.X (ARR-SHB tribe side quests don't count as it's side content, not MSQ), but of course there comes the problem: beyond them never treating the Mamoolj'aa with any respect in the content we already have, they've already framed 7.0 as you meddling in the rite of succession for this new area. An area that is ruled by a two-headed Mamoolj'aa that we have to help overthrow (which is not new, as a two-headed Mamoolj'aa was already shown in The Wanderer's Palace (Hard) - but that one was portrayed as brutish, unintelligent, and played into inbred stuff as...the final boss of the dungeon who gets a special end dungeon cutscene to showcase the Tonberries brutalizing his corpse). And again, this plot thread isn't new! We already helped Hien do that to the Steppe back in Stormblood! This is yet another instance of the game treating imperialism and colonization as a fun thing for you to get in on, especially since they're using the setting and the getting to the setting as a summer vacation.

The fact that they are framing Dawntrail as summer vacation-like is insidious. You are a party of fantasy Europeans sailing to fantasy Mesoamerica/South America to meddle in their governing process.

And let's quickly go over that: the fact Tural is the "New World" as you search for "a city of gold."

These names are rooted heavily in European colonization. The idea that Europe is the "civilized Old World" and that the Americas were the "uncivilized, waiting-to-be-conquered New World" is what drove the colonization of the region, especially in Mesoamerica and South America. The term "New World" is inseparable from white supremacist narratives about the colonizers that engaged with the peoples of the Americas. It's bad enough that XIV introduced Tural as "the New World" to begin with and populated it with a fantasy race that's characterized by violence, a lack of intelligence, and sexual harassment + a gross caricature of North American plains nations, but they have now made it into the destination for the Scions' "summer vacation adventure"? So that you can go do an imperialism there, too? They even framed it as some tropical paradise as if that's not an extension of how colonization of these regions is perpetuated today through the tourism industry.

The other term - city of gold - was a myth that was used as the excuse to ransack Mesoamerica and South America. You've definitely seen it, as that was the entire plot of Road to El Dorado. It was under this pretense that Spanish colonizers decimated indigenous populations in the search of glory and gold. The search for the "city of gold" in the "New World" was a mass genocide - enabled through widespread massacre, and a vicious plague that wiped out 80% of just the population in Mexico alone.

In Mexico, the pestilence reached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, before its fall in 1521. Pathogens also reached Peru, inciting a civil war among the Incas. Both of these situations were extremely favorable for Spain. The plague—cocoliztli—was the most devastating post-conquest epidemic in large parts of Mexico, wiping out somewhere around 80 percent of the native population.

(from "How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics" by Richard Herzog on JSTOR)

This is not a subject to touch upon lightly in any respect. And for XIV to use it for their "fun adventure in a foreign land" is deeply inappropriate and frankly disgusting. But is anyone surprised? This is the same company that ignored the demands of the Saami council to remove the offensive Far Northern attire from the store.

What I'm disappointed the most about, however, is the number of fans chomping at the bit with angles about a tropical tourist destination, taking the summer vacation angle the devs are actively encouraging, and even stuff with pirates (do not get me started on how white pirates contributed to colonization of the Americas). As a friend put it very aptly: how do you see "new world," "city of gold," and a fleet of European ships sailing towards fantasy Mesoamerica and not get skeeved out at the prospect? This isn't something you should be excited about because they're having us role play imperialism Yet Again. But this time, it's all to the tune of "tropical summer vacation in a foreign land". And y'all are excited to join in?

I don't want the expansion to turn out this way. We barely have any information on this, I understand. But what I've laid out here is what the game has already done with regards to Tural's pre-7.0 depictions and what they've shown they want to continue perpetuating. If Dawntrail turns out to be somewhat decent (and it better be better handled than Thavnair and feature fewer white people populating the countries that are inspired by black and brown cultures), then fine. But as it stands, Square has not given us any reason to trust them in how they've handled their indigenous stories leading up to 7.0. This entire concept is rife with the potential to be extremely offensive and extremely racist, and the main takeaway most fans seem to have from this isn't that this is a gross depiction of indigenous cultures, but instead a fun summer vacation with the Scions?

Really?

[professional-termite]

alr so i tried to turn the hm 2023 hhg designs into modern human dudes bc i need them for my mall cop au but OMG I CANT TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY WHO DECIDED THEY WOULD LOOK LIKE THAT!!! apologies if these designs are garbage, i tried 😭😭😭

(i do not consider these guys the same characters as the ones from the rides, the comics, or the 2003 movies btw, theyre too different in shape/facial language to be the same guys, end of discussion)

anyways yeahh uh in my au these sillies live together in the same apartment complex as bruce, ben, constance, the mariner, and some other haunts that im gonna turn into human designs later. they play d&d with kent sometimes and their car keeps breaking down (hence the whole hitchhiking thing)

-phineas probably does business or finance or something that makes him need to travel a lot (he still lives w ezra and gus because living alone in your mid 50s/60s is lonely, and honestly good for him)

-this ezra looks like a fashion guy or smthn, idk he fancy ill figure it out later. he doesnt look like spamton in this movie and it makes me sad

-gus is their roommate who has been to prison multiple times and cant hold down a job. they keep him around because they love him and he "mysteriously conjures" free tickets to local plays a lot

(i will give phineas and ezra their hats + phineas his coat back i promise but i needed a ref of their hair/casual attire, so no hats/coats just yet)

heres the ref i used btw (i brightened it in app im too lazy to export it tho)

[wrencatte]

also, there's a bunch of final fantasy 14 references in this dark and lonely place because I spent...*four years* playing that game and then promptly got into a fandom that was more sci-fi than fantasy (batman), so you bet your ass now that I'm in a more fantasy inclined sci-fi setting I am referencing the HELL out of ff14

[nerdish-nostalgia-revived]

Poirot - Three Act Tragedy.

Martin Shaw as Sir Charles Cartwright with his glorious 'tie knife' (as named by jenksel)

the moment where my heart shattered into a million pieces.

[atlasdoe]

how about we stop treating fanpages as if they're celebrities

[mysaldate]

One thing that never fails to puzzle me are people having stupidly exaggerated headcanons and then getting pissy that the canon "treats X poorly." My brother in Christ, that issue was never IN canon to begin with.

Vil is not canon transfem, him changing his personal pronoun isn't transphobic.

Azul does not have an eating disorder, him watching what he eats so that he doesn't get fat is not ableist.

Kalim, Floyd, Jade, Idia, etc. are not canon autistic (though I can see the arguments being made in one case but this is about canon), them being "annoying" or not to your personal taste is not ableist.

Headcanons are fine, great even, but you're imposing your headcanons on canon and then getting your panties in a twist when the canon doesn't pander to you. That's the issue here.

[girlyliondragon]

I DID NOT JUST SEE LIZBERT X FILBO SHIP SHIT ON AO3.....

I THOUGHT WE STOPPED THESE PEOPLE HOLY SHIT

They made her CHEAT with EGGABELL too?? What the FUCK and why is that here????!

[euphorial-docx]

“people only got into regulus because of timothee chalamet”

yes and?

[stellarstarryyy]

Man it sure would be cool if rp accounts would stop spamming in fandom tags! It would be so fun if they didn't bury all new content under like 20 posts about their oc going through the horrors!! It really would be cool if tumblr let me block people who spam in fandom tags without breaking the tag itself!!!

[cringefailfagcat]

co-parenting ≠ romance

🔫^-^

[toolazytodecide]

Damn, I forgot what it was like posting in a popular Fandom

[certified-queer-disaster]

Ever look back and think damn I was an idiotic bitch? That's me with ml salt. I got so swept away in everything, god the number of salt fics I read, and the number of times I made it a far bigger deal than it had to be. Like I look back and wonder why tf was I so invested??? They were CHILDREN I was watching a CHILDREN'S show I shouldn't expect it to have perfect characterization, it's meant to be bright colours and laughter and beating superheroes. My best guess is that I was clinging to being a child cause I was almost an adult and didn't want to be and that ruined my experience. Feel much better now that I just forgive the characters. Finally feel like I can breathe

[evilwickedme]

Do you ever read a fic that makes you really sad but not in a “wow that story was heartbreaking” way but in a “wow this person hates the character I relate to on a personal level” way because that just happened to me and now I’m sad lol

The short answer is: oh yeah

Long answer is I've been reading fic since the era of character bashing. I feel like this has mostly gone out of fashion as a standardized thing that warrants a warning or a tag, but back in my Harry Potter fic days esp back on ff net you would be scrolling through your selected tag and a fic would be like, more preoccupied with shitting on a character you love (usually the canon love interest) than actually dealing with the ship you want to be reading. I have a pretty good theory as to why it was happening at the time - shipping and fic as a whole wasn't nearly as accepted, and so if you were to deviate from canon, ESPECIALLY if you were writing something that isn't heterosexual, you need to bash the canon love interest to "excuse" your non canon ship.

The place I personally still see this the most is in marvel comics fic for some reason? Although it no longer is limited to shitting on canon love interests, and often takes shots at other popular ships. Like I'll be reading a spideypool fic and they'll either be shitting on Cable as an abusive ex, or I'll be reading a spideydevil fic and Johnny Storm will be a clingy mess causing problems for both of them, and meanwhile mattfoggy fics will often bash Elektra or (in fic for the show specifically) Marci, etc etc. The difference is this will no longer get tagged as character bashing, because the practice has fallen out of popularity, which is unfortunate because you can't prepare yourself for it. I personally tagged my recent spideybpool tag warning that this fic wasn't nice about Harry Osborn because I wanted to use him as the Green Goblin for the dramatic twist, but I feel like I'm the exception for plotty fics nowadays.

The thing is while this is a perfectly sound explanation for some character bashing, I also have to admit that sometimes people just... Don't like a character and let that influence their work. There's historically a lot of sexism and racism in fandom, so that's often a factor, but also people have personal preferences and that's okay! The main problem is just that people no longer feel obligated to tag for it. They'll write a character as an abusive because that's their genuine reading of the text, but they won't think to warn audiences that that's the kind of content they're walking into. And the thing is except for bashing, we have high expectations of trigger and content warnings nowadays! Whereas on ff.net you'd click on a fic and essentially have no idea what you were going to end up reading, nowadays most ao3 fics will have extremely thorough content warnings in the tags and if they forget something the comments will literally tell the author to add that warning (I have no idea what wattpad is like don't ask or tell me). I wish that character bashing tags or at least freeform tags warning for a certain character being more villainous than in canon would come back into fashion, but unfortunately it's not and we just have to deal with it, which sucks.

Anyway, like I said above, in short: yep.

[avataroftheglowcloud]

I am having THOUGHTS about the new BBC Ghosts trailer.

[murasakiirohana]

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