#just. generally. they’re all so milquetoast

[padfootastic]

ok not to sound like a terrible human but. why are the tumblr AITAs so damned boring. literally can be summed up as either social anxiety or ignorance. just. where is the spice. the excitement. the nasty. why are people so damned earnest. am i just ruined by reddit n twitter or?

[veinsfullofstars]

for your childhood friends au, do the kids have any favorite foods?

Ooooh, okay okay, so this is something I’ve actually given a fair bit of thought to (maybe too much thought given how long this thing got, haha). I love little details like this in character writing - it makes them feel so much more alive and well-rounded, y'know? The kiddos have preferences as varied as their personalities, and I’m just itching to get into it, so… let’s get into it! (Also, just to be clear, I did pull some of my food headcanons for MK and DDD specifically from source material and the wiki, but most of this kinda just comes right off the dome.)

When it comes to food, Para Dee is probably the most milquetoast of the bunch (though that’s hardly a bad thing). Neither a voracious eater like Dedede nor an avoidant one like Meta, he enjoys food about as much as the average Waddle Dee, more than fine with his three square meals a day (maybe a snack if he’s good). His tastes primarily lean towards savory or bitter flavors, anything from a warm bowl of stew to a nice crisp salad depending on his mood (meaning that, of the four of them, he’s the most likely to eat his veggies... and enjoy them). He’s not the biggest fan of sweets (probably due to that fact that his father is a baker and routinely saturates their home with the heavy scents of vanilla and mixed fruit), but he does have a soft spot floral teas and hot chocolate, especially during the colder seasons. He doesn’t mind sour flavors in small amounts (meaning if someone gets pickles with their meal, you know they’re going onto Para’s plate), but spicy foods? Forget about it. His poor little stomach has no tolerance for spice, to the point where even a little too much pepper has him breaking out in a sweat (something Bow teases him about mercilessly).

If you asked him what his absolute favorite food is, he’d have a hard time choosing... but he'd probably say his father’s caramelized onion soup, a much-beloved dish at their dinner table and a favorite at every community potluck. It’s never quite the same when Para makes it (many years into the future with a family of his own), but it still sparks warm memories of holidays and togetherness with each cheese-laden spoonful.

Then, on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Bow Dee, our tiny terror with a metabolism and appetite to rival those of her bigger buddies. If left alone and unoccupied for too long, she’s been known to sneak into locked pantries or climb high, off-limits shelves looking for any snacks she can get her grubby little mitts on (a habit she probably learned from watching Dedede). That said, she can be rather picky about which foods she’ll scarf down, especially in her youth when she would literally pick through her meals for the bits she liked and ignore the rest (much to her mothers’ chagrin).

If asked about her favorites, she’d say she likes protein-packed foods the most (omelets, jerky, trail mix, whatever will fuel those boundless energy reserves of hers in the saltiest, most flavorful manner possible) but refuses to touch veggies, pickles, and bitter flavors in general (at least in her childhood, growing a little more adventurous about food during their time overstars). She likes sweets as much as the average high-energy kid, partial to citrus fruits and sour candies especially (she likes how it stings a bit when you eat it, almost like it's fighting back). And, beyond all that, Bow loves spicy foods. Full stop. If it ain’t spicy - or spicy enough - she’ll find a way to make it so. Chili flakes, hot sauce, whole peppers, whatever she has on hand - it’s going in there, and Nova help anyone who tries to stop her. A bit ironic given her natural affinity for Water, though maybe that’s what gives her such a high tolerance for capsaicin. Or maybe she’s just that badass (as she likes to brag to her buddies, watching them steam out the ears from a single jalapeño while she’s already chomped down seven). And before you ask, yes, this has landed her in village clinic on more than one occasion. High tolerance or no, she definitely does not have Dedede’s cast-iron stomach… or Meta’s self-restraint. (We don’t talk about the Ghost Pepper Fiasco.)

Speaking of picky eaters, Meta has a… complicated relationship with food. He’s never had much of an appetite, often going (unsettlingly long) stretches of time without feeling the need to eat, only doing so if someone reminds him to (or if he gets too woozy, whichever comes first). He does need to eat, of course… just not nearly as often as everyone else does, it would seem (a byproduct of his peculiar biology, perhaps?). It’s an excuse he’s used often to get away with skipping meals, sometimes substituting in lighter foods like breakfast bars or Energy Drinks to keep his strength up (though this is hardly a long-term solution). He also finds certain textures and tastes difficult to deal with, even turning down entire meals if just one bite feels off. It makes eating with company - already an awkward experience thanks to his introversion - that much more uncomfortable, sitting there with a full plate while everyone else chews and chatters around him, wishing he could disappear as swiftly as his hunger (a habit that still crops up even in adulthood, though he has learned to push through it for the sake of politeness). Honestly, he could write a whole dissertation on how the act of consumption is a burden upon the living and no one should be subjected to it… and then he remembers chocolate exists and takes it all back for a while.

That’s really the one exception to his food trepidation: sweets. Perhaps it comes from living in Dream Land where sugary foods are so plentiful, the forests rich with apples and berries, the scent of pies and pastries wafting from windowsills, even the lands themselves named after foods of all sorts. Or perhaps it stems from his earliest memories, a helping hand and a bar of something indescribably sweet and rich, the first he’d ever tasted… Whatever the case, it’s stuck with him, a livelong love of sweets and sweet-adjacent foods, one that narrows, refines, and changes over time into preferences for chocolate, coffee, and other foods with light but flavorful consistencies. Not that this stops his friends (and later his crewmates) from hounding him into eating more nutritious meals once in a while, too. It's frustrating, but he knows they mean well, and he gets better about listening to their advice with time.

And finally, whipping to the other side of the scale once more, it’s Dedede, the penguin equivalent of a vacuum, willing to eat literally anything you put in front of him (including things you probably should not eat). He wouldn’t say he has many strong preferences - all food is good food in his eyes - though he does appreciate a good bone-in steak or similarly hearty dishes like seafood or pasta, and he could never pass up a nice rich dessert (especially cakes).

More than the taste, though, it’s really the act of eating - a pastime even more beloved than sparring or sleeping - that brings Dedede comfort, whether it’s through cozy communal meals with neighbors, the thrill of food-based competitions with friends (ones that will later inspire Dream Land’s famous Gourmet Races), or just to deal with the boredom (and loneliness) when he’s stuck on his own. It’s possible he gets this behavior from his mama, a little on the heavier side herself and known for her own cast-iron constitution back in her wrestling days (not to mention prone to spoiling her “darlin’ baby bird” and his friends with extra treats all the time). Meanwhile, his papa - a stickler for decency and discipline - is constantly reminding his son to slow down during meal times, wondering if he’s even tasting the food he’s shoving down his gullet (a blunt but well-intentioned criticism given the many, many tummy troubles Dedede suffers in his younger days). He never manages to fully tame his massive appetite (certainly not helped by the more decadent lifestyle he later adopts as a king), but he does at least refine it over time, learning from Para of all people about the joys of savoring meals rather than always inhaling them outright.

Phew, alright, I think that’s about it. Thanks for the question! Hopefully I didn't go too in-depth for such a simple one - I was having fun with it and might've gotten carried away again, haha. Well, at the very least, it'll give you guys some nuggets to chew on in the meantime (pun super not intended).

Sketches started 06/25/24, finished 06/27/24.

[aspd-culture]

Tw use of sociopath/psychopath

On the note of tiktok and misinformation- honestly the biggest offenders are the therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists who use the predatory algorithm to spread misinformation on our disorders. Social media-based abuses and bigotry and harassment is a big thing for the algo over there if you’re not careful and the fact mental health professionals are trying to publicize narc abuse and “5 red flags of a psycho/sociopath” *lists generic personality traits like a milquetoast horoscope you got from a mom magazine they sell at the store* and talking about disorders like they’re some kind of infectious demon disease is a way bigger problem than Katelyn who says her brother is a “sociopath” because he wears socks to bed. Because these people are supposed to be professional and they treat tiktok like a little game to be the most popular therapist and dog piling on cluster b disorders (almost always npd and aspd). I’m gonna be honest, they deserve to have their licenses revoked for putting that shit on tiktok. They should know better. Our diagnoses shouldn’t be the center of a disinformation campaign for their tiktok clout just because they wanna participate in the moral panic(?) of scary disorders.

This, if anything, is pretty much the only genuinely extremely harmful thing happening in the mental health community on tiktok that wasn't happening in any other online community before.

This is a very serious problem, because it's doing two things (as you mentioned in your ask!)

One - it's leading regular people to believe it because the experts are saying it.

Two - it's leading other therapists and psychiatrists to believe this is acceptable to think and say while in the profession.

These used to be thoughts that if a professional agreed with, they avoided letting others know this. They weren't able to be openly ableist most times because most people in their professional life would be horrified (if not about the beliefs themselves, then that they thought it was professional and ok to say it out loud).

The only slight positive is that now we know the worst of the ableist professionals' names since they volunteered that information themselves.

Still, this is horrifying to see as someone with ASPD.

And it makes my earlier post about how vital tiktok and other social media are to the mental health community even more important. These accurate, non-sensationalized real stories from real people with ASPD (and other disorders, especially NPD, in my opinion) are an easy way to help combat the ableism that exists in and outside of the mental health community.

It's starting (finally) to happen with schizophrenia. Seeing actual people with it has made people begin to get rid of the movie tropes' insistence on what that that means.

It is by no means a perfect response, but is there a perfect response to the way we are mistreated and abused by both society and the people we rely on for help? I don't think so.

And yes, in my opinion, any professional spouting bluntly ableist and inaccurate things in any public forum - especially ones that are clearly doing it for popularity - should not be allowed to perform any type of health-related work.

After all, if a guy who mixes paint he had to mix anyway in videos on tiktok can lose his job, so too should the people we are supposed to hold to a higher standard.

[joshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh]

The post I just reblogged made me want to talk more about this so.

I had an incredibly low general opinion of the Sonic movie prior to movie 2 coming out. You can find some of my old posts about it if you want more specifics, but the short version is that so little of that first movie actually feels like it’s about or related to the Sonic series in any way. The green hill scene at the start is great! Sonic’s motions are full of personality and the environment feels alive. And oh shit echidnas are here? That’s a different take on Sonic canon but it’s cool and has implications for this continuity specifically like that’s something to be excited for! And then it all just stops completely. Generic live action setting with a milquetoast police officer human for parents in the audience to relate to while their kids think about Sonic, a Sonic that’s basically himself in name only to begin with. Only thing he really shares with his game self is a tendency towards cracking jokes but even then said jokes have just been turned into pop culture references. Same deal for Eggman who, yeah, is just Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey, we all know this. First movie couldn’t even do the decency of trying to make him look like Eggman either so there’s that. The whole thing was just so lifeless, so afraid of actually being a movie about Sonic the Hedgehog, you know?

Needless to say I was extremely worried for movie 2 as well. Worried that it’d have the same exact problems but now with a Tails and Knuckles that don’t feel like themselves either. But you know what, credit where it’s due, they really did try a lot harder to make it feel like the games. Still don’t love its depiction of Sonic or his character arc here about learning to be a son? And yeah the human inclusions are still barely worth a shit at all. But they gave Eggman a redesign to make him somewhat feel more like his real self even if he’s still just Jim Carrey, Tails is here and they manage to do a decent job with him (plus he’s played by his actual game voice actress!) and they gave Knuckles an actually really great arc capitalising on traits he genuinely does have in the games that these movies are adapting! They expand on their own version of the echidna lore and shit too, bring in the Master Emerald even if it works mechanically different from the games. It’s not perfect but you can tell they’re actually trying to put their own spin on the story now instead of just doing by-the-books safe lame Hollywood shit. And then Super Sonic vs a Death Egg Robot too? Plus the Shadow tease? Like they’re a lot more confident that the Sonic aspects of the Sonic movie can pull people in now, and it’s great to see.

The problem, obviously, is that they’re still just not confident enough. The runtime is still dragged down with movie original human characters, and it’s arguably even worse for that than movie 1 given the wedding scene that, yeah, people can’t stand for a reason! Nobody cares to see this irrelevant side character that’s original to these movie have a “badass” moment where she just does kid-friendly action movie stuff because she’s mad at her fiance or whatever! Why am I watching this in a movie called Sonic the Hedgehog? Or the Uptown Funk dance sequence which like, do I even need to say anything? And the humour’s still just a bunch of lame pop culture references. None of it’s informed by the fact that it’s adapting Sonic the Hedgehog.

And the thing is like, yeah, they’ve kind of already dug their grave. We’re 2 movies in with a Knuckles spinoff show and a third movie on the way. At this point, they can’t ditch the setting. They can’t really ditch the human characters. They’re gonna remain these live action and CG hybrids where the setting is just regular normal United States of America. Maybe the jokes’ll get better! Maybe Sonic’ll start acting more like Sonic! Maybe they’ll make actual soundtracks that fit the series! Maybe we’ll have more game characters come in and be accurate to themselves and we’ll actually start having movies that feel like they’re trying to be Sonic the Hedgehog! But as it stands, the movies kinda just exist in a context so far removed from what I love about the series that it is hard to care.

And yeah I’ll fully admit. Lots of this is in fact informed by my reaction to the Mario movie stuff! Crazy! Thing is the Mario movie’s not even out yet and maybe it will suck and at the very least the voice cast is pretty cringe, primarily fucking Pratt, but you know what, those things aside? That movie’s so unafraid to just be Mario, you know? Everyone looks like they always have, the music sounds like it’s always sounded, the environments are pretty 1:1 with what the Super Mario series looks like to people. Like for all intents and purposes we’re getting exactly what Mario’s always been but just in theatres now. And if anything it’s probably a harder job to do that with Mario since as a series it’s really never been close to as story focused as Sonic games usually are! But they tried their damndest and we’re gonna get a movie where every single second is going to feel like Super Mario on a fundamental level. And I’m upset that Sonic wasn’t able to get that. Animated or not.

[caelumsnuff]

Hi, sorry this is a long ask but I really appreciated your posts! The daemon/demon allegory had been bothering me since that storyline started but I hadn't really been able to articulate why, and it brought a lot of other issues to light for me as well!

(Personally I never finished the freelancer series because the whole bridging/SA allegory really made me angry so I appreciate that someone else also saw the reasons why that decision was... poor to say the least).

And definitely agreed about the over-polarization of characters into good vs. bad!

I feel like a lot of the story decisions are based on the fact that many people are self-inserting, which unfortunately means reducing a lot of the nuance and gray aspects that would be more interesting to explore. Like with Vincent and Lovely- from a self-insert perspective, it's more 'romantic' and comforting to think that your partner would have as limited a power divide between you as possible and would take steps to ensure that, even though narratively it's not as interesting a choice. Which is also why I think the Bright Eyes storyline was axed, and why Love's obsession code was removed, and why I'm afraid that Darlin's story resolution is just going to fade into some milquetoast version of "love fixes everything!" rather than what it could have been- because people are putting themselves in the place of the listeners, it reinforces the idea that to like a character you have to endorse and agree with all their actions, so necessarily any character doing "bad" things or making darker decisions is a "bad person" and people don't want to imagine themself as a "bad person", no matter what that does to the story being told.

Honestly, Sam and Darlin' are my favorite characters which is why it pains me that their story is edging dangerously close to "I got into a relationship and it solved all my problems!" rather than two people with trust issues and unresolved trauma finding a friend when they needed one and that relationship slowly blossoming into something more as both of them come to terms with the things that are haunting them (which I agree would make more sense if Sam had either been turned more recently or if it had been clearly established that the clan is more loose-knit and not in fact a workable support system for him); honestly when the story started and it said slow burn I kind of thought they wouldn't start dating until much later, maybe even after things with Quinn came to a head, and I'm a bit disappointed we only got about 2 audios of them interacting pre-relationship. (Also I have a lot of problems with the way things between Darlin' and the pack were "resolved" in one frankly condescending and empty speech about family but I won't get into it here)

Anyway sorry again for the long message but thank you for your posts!

No need to apologize for the long message, i appreciate them You’re welcome for the posts, im happy to know that some people really enjoy them and that they’re making people think a little. Apparently a handful of people have dropped the Freelancer series because of the choices that were made in it, which is valid. I’m not exactly happy that its so bad that so many of us see issue with it, but i am glad to know im not the only person who feels it was wrong. I’m not neccesarily concerned about people self-inserting into listener characters, that is what they are for, Redacted made all content gender neutral and as inclusive as possible for this exact purpose. I think some of the issues with story-telling and overpolarization with characters does stim from Redacted’s desire to write content as inclusive as possible though. I respect this decision and desire, but i don’t think you can ever please everyone when it comes to the type of content you make without sanitizing a lot of it. Maybe this opinion stims from my general ‘doesn’t give a fuck’ attitude about creation, but he really could have just gone for it and made characters grayer (especially ones the listeners have romantic relationships with), regardless of whether or not it brings in a larger audience and pleases the most amount of people. It would be generally better from a story telling perspective. We already have ASMR content (from other creators) that caters specifically to a certain audience that excludes a lot of people (content that is very gendered, content that is racially specific with blushing and hair, etc etc), I think making content that is gender-neutral with some more complicated and grayer characters is a good middle ground, a niche that Redacted can fill. Maybe with Redacted leaving the discord server, he’ll be seeing a lot less of peoples opinions personally, and will start writing content that better fits his writing style and his characters again. It’s something that i would be really happy to see again, genuinely. Because i love Darlin’ and Sam so much is definitely the reason im concerned about where their story is going. But again, maybe Redacted distancing himself from the fanbase will save some storylines. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ who knows tho Thanks again for the ask 💖

[crimeronan]

Can you explain the appeal of Julian Blackthorn? This is a genuine question because I read the books and came away utterly bored by him and unconvinced of his moral greyness as opposed to like, Adam Parrish’s. He seemed so one dimensional to me but I want to know if I’m Wrong TM considering I tend to be very very biased toward my favourite characters and bored by the rest, and my favourites were Mark and Kieran. So maybe I just didn’t pay him enough attention??

it’s been a while since i wrote any earnest tsc meta but cringe culture is dead and the chance to infodump about my julian thoughts has me vibrating where i’m sitting so.  yes okay.

technical stuff

(aka: things pertaining to How The Story Is Constructed)

cassandra clare’s characterization has become much stronger just in general since she first began writing the series like twenty years ago

perhaps most importantly: the more recent stuff i’ve read from her has involved characters who actually grow, change, and learn from their past mistakes 

rather than repeating the same stupid decisions over and over again

and over and over and over some more

seriously take a shot every time someone in tmi miscommunicates or self-destructs in ways They Have Learned Not To Do for no real reason. u will die of alcohol poisoning

in tda this shines ESPECIALLY with the evolution of mark, kieran, and cristina’s relationship, but that’s a separate post

clare’s trademark is also the angsty traumatized jerkass love interest with a secret heart of gold

the woman is almost singlehandedly responsible for draco in leather pants and the proliferation of this kind of character type in fandom and teen lit. this isn’t a criticism it’s me marveling at how if you commit hard enough to a single trope you truly can change the world.  follow your dreams

sad jackass with a heart of gold isn’t an Inherently Problematic Character Type

but poorly done it can lead to relationship dynamics in which one partner is constantly being hurt by and then forgiving the other despite them making no real effort to change, because they are narratively absolved due to being sad

(there’s a lot of this with earlier jace content.  in some ways i think will was later created specifically to be a same-archetype protagonist who actually does get called on his shit and grow. that’s also another post)

also if all of your sexy male love interests are tortured jackasses with a heart of gold then people start calling you a one-trick pony

enter julian blackthorn!

from the very start everything about him is designed to be the INVERSE of the heart of gold jackass.  which immediately makes him interesting just from a meta perspective

(mark and kieran are also both alternate angles on this time-honored archetype.  mark gets the heart of gold and kieran gets the jackass and then they’re both much more deeply messy than that.  yet another post)

julian is kind, self-sacrificing, empathetic, artistic, emotionally supportive, responsible, and favored by old grannies everywhere

so a completely nonthreatening milquetoast guy, right

immediately forgettable if you’re only here for the dramatic conflicts and shithead antics of clare’s other protags

except that he is A Mess

and that he has structured his priorities very carefully, and they are as selfless as you expect from The Hero (TM) but they are also Not Heroic (TM) and they do not align with the moral framework The Hero (TM) is supposed to use

moral ambiguity in characters always exists in relation to their narratives imo. you mention adam parrish - trc’s narrative already mucks around in different ethical shades of gray, and adam falls on the canon scale about where julian does on his canon scale.  both more willing than the average pov character to do the ruthless thing or make the fucked-up choice if the ends justify the means; both with an intensely strong sense of internal priorities that they adhere to at all costs, both so unbelievably fucking down for murder; etc

i do think there are ways julian’s choices could have been pushed even further, but considering the number of readers who hate his guts already, i can see why clare opted not to go for the most controversial possible conflicts

so we’re flipping the narrative

instead of seeing this angsty bad boy and peeling back the layers of his trauma to find his heart of gold, we’re seeing the put-together selfless family man and peeling back the layers of his Responsibility Mask to expose the rotting husk underneath

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

THAT IS FUN AS FUCK

then when julian DOES lash out in hurtful, uncontrolled ways, he has significantly more narrative justification for it than most of clare’s protagonists (will elaborate in characterization thoughts)

julian is also interesting as fuck because of how his struggles allow for a more in-depth look at the failings of shadowhunter society, something that’s also sorely lacking in clare’s earlier work

his apparent amorality is simply the result of him making pragmatic and impossible choices because he has been faced with fucked-up ethical dilemmas since age 12 Because Society Has Failed Him

which opens the door for narrative exploration of how and why he’s been failed so badly & what needs to change

i also love that he has such a coldly calculated way of analyzing situations and allowing harm to occur when need be, bc a lot of clare’s early protagonists have such a bad case of Rush In And Get Myself Killed Because I’ve Got Feelings About Impulsive Heroism syndrome that i wanna push them in front of a truck

probably there’s other meta narrative stuff i could say but i’m stopping myself and moving on to character analysis

characterization stuff

(aka: reasons why i’m also attached to him in a vacuum)

i don’t read him as one-dimensional at all tbh

u may feel the narrative pushes “ruthless julian blackthorn” too much without delivering enough actual ruthless julian But i don’t think that’s the same as having only one dimension

from the get-go, the big question centered on julian is always “how far are you willing to go?” and the narrative pushes the stakes slowly higher and higher to continuously test julian’s “the price is always justified” mindset

he has a far more layered and realistic response to trauma than clare’s early protagonists - trauma affects every single aspect of his personality and how he conducts himself, and the effects vary depending on the circumstances

his conviction that he has to be the perfect parent to his siblings because they will fall apart if they see him show weakness??  rooted in how he feels like he’s fallen apart since losing the stable adult support he once relied upon

his willingness to hurt semi-innocent people, commit coldblooded murder, manipulate people using political leverage, allow harm to befall any stranger if it protects his family??  rooted in how he has already had to ask himself how much he’s willing to sacrifice, and how his family is his only source of stability when the world has never done Shit for him

his conviction that he has a darker heart than anyone else because he killed his possessed father, even though intellectually he knows he was saving his brother’s life??  rooted in having no means of processing this trauma and being unable to voice his feelings for fear of backlash from a deeply non-understanding society

the way he represses every single negative emotion he ever has, to the point where emma - his actual literal magic soulmate who can feel his emotions - is startled to find him hurting or angry??  once again all about how he has to be the perfect father or he’s failed completely

the way his anger is so totally disproportionate to different situations and the way his negative emotions can only come out in completely uncontrolled breaks??  all that repression baybey.  this kid has not processed a single bad feeling in five years.  every single real grievance and petty annoyance has been festering indefinitely inside him like a slowly spreading infection

julian’s arc involves him needing to get thru being his worst self to actually start to heal

as in, he has to actually learn to acknowledge his feelings, take care of himself, lean on his family, and let other people take some responsibility

he also has to learn that in his quest to be the perfect emotionally controlled authority figure, he has not actually learned how to control or deal with his emotions. like. At Fucking All. good god

the narrative setup is also about asking “how far are you willing to go?” until the answer is finally “not this far.  not this far”

and once he reaches that point, he has to reevaluate everything about how he weighs his priorities and morals and plans, etc

(i also like that emma has a perpendicular arc in which she’s always the one tempering julian and telling him “no we can’t go that far” until she’s willing to do something horrific that he absolutely won’t and HE has to stop HER. very sexy)

it’s also just really nice to have a character who’s learned to relate so well to literally every single member of his family while still having a very detached ruthless interior consciousness. i have similar feelings about how adam teaches himself to love people, but with julian it’s spelled out more explicitly in canon & it’s a more central character theme

i’m sure i’m also forgetting stuff here but this post is long enough so i’m gonna say good enough

and like i said in the tags on my other post, there are things i’d personally write differently if it were my story - plot points i’d shift, character contrasts i’d up, themes i’d explore differently, pacing i’d adjust, etc.  i have plenty of ways i could be nitpicky and editorial about the effectiveness of julian’s arc.  but i also don’t feel like writing them out at the moment & none of my critiques on effectiveness have an impact on the core appeal of his character 2 me.  he’s so fucking good

[rabidtownie]

Character Prompts! Pt. 1

I’m still pretty new to Simblr (and Tumblr in general), but something I’ve noticed throughout my one or two months in the community is how prevalent story-based gameplay is. I see accounts with soap opera-esque series and beautifully rendered screenshots that look like stills straight from a CW drama. Some people have entire pages dedicated to their characters, with fleshed-out descriptions and long backstories. It’s so cool to see how creative everyone is with their gameplay; since I spend most of my time working on builds or making CC, I feel like I’m living vicariously through each of the legacy accounts I follow.

Anyways, since my attention span is too unreliable for me to commit to doing a gameplay series myself, I decided to try and contribute in some way to the community by posting relatively general, basic backstories that can be used and modified by anyone.

The way it works is simple: I post a short, milquetoast backstory for Simmers to use if they’re in need of character development. I’ll try and include a small logline/description of the Sim, some traits I recommend for them, their flaws and charming qualities, and anything else I feel like including. If you decide to use this backstory, there is no need to give me credit (though I would like to see if anyone actually uses my prompts!), and you can modify the details however you want. The names that I use, for example, are just placeholders, and can be replaced by the name of your character. In all honesty, this is just an indirect way for me to practice my writing and kill time, so feel free to do what you like with the stories I post!

Now, without further ado, here is my first character backstory!

Name: Toni

Age: Young Adult

Identifies as: Female

Basic Description:

Raised by two loving parents in an upper-class neighborhood, Toni is far from prepared for life as an adult. Despite being 18, she possesses the naivite and cartoonish optimism that can only be a result of her pampered upbringing. So when she’s thrust out into the world of the working class, Toni must try and adapt to her fast-paced worklife and socially-savvy new friends who seem to know so much more about the facts of life than she could ever hope to learn. Will Toni be able to shed her sheltered tendencies and blossom, or is she destined for a life of petty-bourgeois monotony?

Recommended traits for this Sim:

Note - These are optional! You can pick and choose which traits you want to use, or don’t use them at all! I just chose the ones that I think are most compatible with this Sim’s personality/backstory.

Snob

Good

Family-Oriented

Cheerful

Perfectionist

Recommended Aspirations for this Sim:

Fabulously Wealthy - This Sim wants to get rich and have a successful career!

Renaissance Sim - This Sim wants to be good at many things at once!

Friend of the World - This Sim wants to make and keep as many friends as they can!

Positive Characteristics for this Sim:

Toni is very motivated. While she may not know much about life beyond her gated community, she’ll do whatever it takes to reach success.

Optimism is another great aspect of Toni’s personality! Other Sims often see her as the clueless rich girl, but this doesn’t hinder her determination.

While she may be unbearably uptight at times, Toni will do anything for her loved ones. She’s incredibly loyal, and is the first to offer support when one of her friends is going through it.

Negative Characteristics for this Sim:

As a result of her luxurious childhood, Toni is oblivious to many struggles that her working-class peers face. This often alienates her from the crowd, as she can come off as tone-deaf or naive to those around her. While she is ultimately more sweet than she may initially appear, Toni needs to work on stifling her snobbishness.

Being born into an upper-class family, the idea of financial instability was (and still is) foreign to Toni. As much as she may try to convince herself of her independence, she still counts on her parents to pay a large portion of her living expenses. Because of this, Toni can be overly dependent on others to carry the weight of her problems for her. Hopefully, once she steps out into the real world, she’ll realize that she needs to start helping herself.

That’s it for Toni! I might add some other details to my future backstories, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know! I appreciate those who took the time to read this, or even those who skimmed a few sentences and then moved on out of boredom. I’ll try and post another backstory soon, but until then, happy Simming!

- Rabid Townie

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

13 Keys to the White House

Since 1984, historian Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted the outcome of every single presidential election (with 2000 being the only hiccup). His methodology takes into account 13 true or false statements to judge the performance of the incumbent party as a whole, and retroactively accounts for every single presidential election since the current two-party system was established in 1860. When 8 or more of the statements are true, the incumbent party is predicted to win re-election, but if 6 or more are false then the challenging party is predicted to win. He was one of he few pundits who called it for Donald Trump in the summer of 2016, back when everybody assumed it was Hillary Clinton's election to lose.

For 2020, the keys fell like so:

Midterm gains: the incumbent party has more seats in the House following the midterms. FALSE

No primary contest: there's a clear frontrunner for the incumbent party nomination (>66% of delegates are the convention). TRUE

Incumbent seeking re-election: the incumbent nominee is the sitting president. TRUE

No third party: there is no significant (>5%) third party candidate. TRUE

Strong short-term economy: the economy is not in recession. FALSE

Strong long-term economy: real per capita growth for this term is greater than or equal to the average growth of the previous two terms. FALSE

Major policy change: the incumbent administration pushes through major (and unique) change to national policy. TRUE

No social unrest: there is no widespread and sustained social unrest during the term. FALSE

No scandal: the incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. FALSE

No foreign/military failure: the incumbent administration suffers no significant foreign/military failure. TRUE

Foreign/military success: the incumbent administration achieves a significant foreign/military success. FALSE

Charismatic incumbent: the incumbent candidate is charismatic or a national hero. FALSE

Uncharismatic challenger: the challenging candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. TRUE

6 true, 7 false, the incumbent party was predicted to lose: Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump and received more votes than any candidate in American history

But that doesn't mean Joe Biden is doing a good job as president. Looking forward to 2024, some of the keys are too close to call, but we can make assumptions for the rest that paint a daunting picture for the Democratic establishment moving forward.

Midterm gains: FALSE, The Democrats are going to lose the House, quite possibly by a wide margin due to partisan gerrymandering by Republican controlled state legislatures.

No primary contest: tentatively true, no major Democrats have come out to challenge Biden for the nomination, and it's likely none will

Incumbent seeking re-election: tentatively true, Joe Biden plans on running for re-election even though he'll be 82 at the time. If common sense prevails and he bows out, it'll almost certainly go to Kamala Harris, which would tip this false and threaten to tip number 2 as the race would technically be open to anyone (though the establishment would tank any campaigns they didn't approve of, as they did to Bernie in 2016 and 2020)

No third party: too soon to tell, over the last century it has happened about every 2 or 3 election cycles, most recently in 2016, so there's no telling what 2024 could be like

Strong short-term economy: too soon to tell, nobody could have predicted the COVID recession in 2019, so there's no way of knowing what horrors await us in 2024.

Strong long-term economy: tentatively true, Obama's second term was steady, Trump's term was abysmal, so they average out to zero net gain (actually, scratch that, it would be a net loss; Trump's put us deeper in the red than Obama put us in the green). The bar is so low, Biden would have to fail spectacularly to make things worse. I have little respect for the man, but I would hope he has more sense than George W. Bush and Donald Trump; since WWII, Democrats have consistently performed better than Republicans.

Major policy change: almost certainly FALSE, the Democrats' control over congress is eroding, they're barely getting anything done right now, and once the Republicans take back control they'll accomplish even less! Biden has achieved none of his campaign promises; no Supreme Court reform, no voting reform, no statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, no police reform, no immigration reform, JACK SHIT! This is a Democratic filler term in a long line of Democratic filler terms punctuated by Republican downward trends. The country is in shambles because Republicans fuck it up and Democrats stay the course.

No scandal: too soon to tell, though I'd say probably true because the pressure is so high. We've never had this much political engagement, gone are the days of the background presidency, all eyes are on the Oval Office. Trump made sure that all future president will be under constant scrutiny. Again, Democrats are consistently less corrupt than Republicans, though that doesn't mean they don't do anything wrong, just that they're better at hiding it and making the public think it's okay.

No social unrest: too soon to tell, though probably true because this key is very hard to flip. The George Floyd protests were once in a generation; Rodney King in 92 was too regional, only effecting Los Angeles, so this key hadn't truly flipped since 1968.

No foreign/military failure: too soon to tell, though looking false. As soon as we're out of Afghanistan, the Taliban will retake control and the last 20 years will have been a complete waste of time. This is our generations Vietnam, and it's going to fall any day now.

Foreign/military success: too soon to tell, depends on whether or not the media frames the withdrawal from Afghanistan as a success. I don't see Biden accomplishing much else overseas; Korea is a nonstarter, and China is kicking our asses economically (if they invade Taiwan, which they probably won't do, Biden wouldn't send troops to push them back out of fear of starting WWIII, so that would decidedly flip number 10 false)

Charismatic incumbent: FALSE, Biden is milquetoast, white bread, plain vanilla, BORING, and Kamala Harris is one of the least popular VPs since the 1970s, so neither are particularly thrilling candidates. He's an old and moderate, she's young and moderate, they both pretend to be progressive, nobody really likes them, they were just the lesser of two evils compared to Trump/Pence.

Uncharismatic challenger: TRUE, whether it's Trump again or Florida governor Ron DeSantis, neither are popular outside the Republican Party. None of the small fish Republicans make the cut either, so Biden/Harris can rest easy knowing they're not substantially less popular than the competition (major achievement?)

So that's 4 true, 2 on the fence true, 3 tossups, 1 on the fence false, and 3 false.

Democrats need 8 true to win, Republicans need 6 false to win, so the tossups will decide everything. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a repeat of 2000/2016 where the Democrats win the popular vote, but the Republicans win the electoral college. That's their new MO; they realize they don't need a majority to win, they just need to game the system, which is easy when they can strip voting rights in swing states. I would hope there'd be anarchy in then streets if this happened AGAIN, the third time in 25 years, only the sixth time in 250. But there won't be. Democrats won't riot or storm the capital or send pipe bombs to Republicans; they'll bitch and moan about it and do nothing to stop it and shift further to the right to try and appease the authoritarian party that wants them dead anyway.

Same shit as always.

We need better leaders.

[musicfren]

They’ve got a bad reputation (they’ll get a standing ovation) part 2

HI HAVE I, TOLD YOU, THAT, @nottesilhouette IS THE MOST FRIGGEN AMAZING WRITER IN THE WHOLE WORLD? God...why do we do this to ourselves, friggen 3400 word story in the span of 2 days...this is entirely exclusively my fault pay no mind  Read part 1 here. Happy @felinettenovember y’all, time for slep!

...oh, dear gods, why is Felix here? The spotlight burns into his face like shame, regret bubbling up in his stomach. He doesn’t remember challenging Marinette but he has, apparently, and now everyone’s watching and he has to-- he has to-- fight. Defend himself. 

Or breathe, if he can manage it.

One seems easier than the other. Well, here goes nothing. Felix steps forward and calls engarde. 

“Ophelia did nothing but obey the men in her life!” He cries, stepping forward, gesticulating wildly. The crowd gasps, and Felix doesn’t understand why until he realizes he's still holding the sword prop, white-knuckled grip around its hilt. Marinette’s eyes go wide with surprise and Felix nearly blurts out an apology right there. But then a glint of something sharper flashes in her gaze, burning with determination and suddenly Felix isn’t feeling quite so confident. It’s too late to quail now. He steps forward and matches her, still talking. “She’s hardly enough of an independent person to qualify as a character.” 

“What would she be, then?” Marinette’s voice is steady, calm, and Felix is wildly, irrationally envious of it. He can’t work out how to make his statements come out smooth, suave like she’s managed, so he goes for the next best weapon: rage.

“She’s little more than a symbol, a prop,” he spits, and the crowd reacts appropriately. Something in his chest loosens at the idea that he’s performed correctly. Something in his heart wrenches.

Marinette sends him a snide look. “You would know. You’re a model mannequin.” 

They’re circling each other now: Felix is brash, forceful, cutting broad slashes through the air with each sweeping generalization he makes. Marinette is steady, precise, pulling apart the stitches of his defense with needle-fine precision. His pulse quickens; a glance at the audience shows she’s winning their favor. This isn’t the clever riposte and quick banter they expected, and Felix is coming across as dim-witted at best. 

“Well, what is she then? You have so many judgements, it’s time you raised an opinion of your own-- or do you have no policy but to raze mine?” Felix pushes her back, scrambling for repost. He needs to be interesting, he needs to be clever, he needs to-- turn it back onto Marinette before the crowd realizes he’s faking, that he doesn’t want to be here, that he’s… scared. 

His tongue sours at the words, and he hates himself for saying them. Marinette shoots him a glare full of challenge, and for an instant he considers conceding right there. Marinette believes so strongly in her cause, and Felix is desperate to apologize, to reconcile, to just acknowledge the points she’s making. But he’s trapped now, caught in the reputation he’s built for this audience and his own pride, and he has nowhere to go but forward. 

Or backwards, apparently, because with each point Marinette makes, crisp and concise and clear, Felix finds himself frantically retreating further and further.

“Ophelia is the only person in the play who recognizes that Hamlet needs help.” 

“That’s not true--”

She cuts him off with a slice.  “She’s the only person who notices and tries to stop him, who cares enough to call him out on his actions, to hold him accountable to the promises he made before his mad plan, to who he used to be.” 

“The entire argument is milquetoast--” He stabs desperately.

“They speak of beauty and reputation, of expectations and the way one’s actions will never outweigh the image others have of them.” 

“They speak of madness and prostitution!”

They’ve become locked in combat now, their blades darting in the scant space their words leave behind. The crowd presses forward, squeezes the stage almost to bursting. Nino presses his face to the camera lense, not wanting to miss an instant.

“The argument is framed against women but its themes are centered on Hamlet’s own realization of the position he’s found himself in. It breaks the adrenaline rush long enough to show him, in all his grief and desperation, the reality he’s constructed for himself. They speak of agency!” 

“Ophelia has none!”

“Ophelia reminds him that he does!” Marinette’s voice finally raises. “Ophelia reminds Hamlet who he is, what he has, if only for a moment. Ophelia grieves for him, for his loss: of his father, of his sanity and dignity and agency. She acknowledges that he is a liar, but remembers the man he used to be, the person he put work into being.” 

“She laments the loss of his attention, nothing more.”

“To write her statements off as such discounts the tone and the manner with which they are intended; she is returning his madman’s accusations with compassion and reason, she is the only person who has done so, who will ever do so.” 

“Why should I take her seriously when no one else does?!” It’s a mad, desperate response as he finds himself teetering at the edge of the stage, and he’s unbalanced. He swings again, unhinged. 

“None of the men in her life-- not her father, not her brother, not god himself-- take her seriously until she dies.”

“She trips into a river.” Finally, Felix is in charge of this conversation; this, Marinette cannot deny. It is his strongest point, and the only point that matters. He steadies himself, holds his sword like a shield to defend his statement. 

“Her death is not an accident. Her death is the culmination of the climax. Her death is the reason anyone stops long enough to notice how far gone Hamlet is! Her death tethers Hamlet to the person he used to be, who loved her once, who remembered what it felt like to choose what he did and who he was.” 

“That makes her nothing more than the physical manifestation and harbinger of Hamlet's descent into madness,” and Felix puts on a smirk because he knows he should. 

Felix wishes he was being honest, passionate the way Marinette is being. Felix wishes her voice didn’t seem so far away, calling from a world he remembers existing in but can’t find his way back to anymore. Felix wishes he was talking to her in a realm even close to reality instead of the mirage he’s operating in, desperate not to fall through. 

Instead, he steps forward from the edge of the stage and keeps his sword aloft. “She’s trapped in the societal confines of traditional womanhood. She’s nothing more than a woman in a world where that doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right.” 

Marinette stops moving forward to meet him, drops her arm. Felix is thrilled, and sick and confused, doubly so when he notices the ferocity in her expression. It is not one of someone who has given up. It is one of someone who is about to pounce.

“You’re right, she is nothing more than a woman in a world where that doesn’t matter. No one cares what she has to say. So she makes it matter. She dies, and she is finally heard. You’re right, and she’s a genius for the way she wields it like a weapon.” Marinette smirks, matching his smugness with self-assured pride, and taps his wrist with her sword. His own slips easily out of his grasp, and he trembles; with what emotion, he cannot place. “Being able to do the work of all these men in 58 lines doesn’t make her less of a character, Felix. It makes her more of one, and more power to her for what she’s able to notice that no one else will. It’s not her fault men can’t manage it.”

 Felix finally snaps. “My sense is not less than yours!”

Marinette pauses, and very very slowly, grins. It’s terrifying, predatorial. She rakes her gaze down his body, and he shivers. “I had thought to agree but this battle of wits has proven very much so the opposite. When she blows him a kiss and winks, Felix collapses where he stands. 

It’s over. The tension the assembled students have been holding in their collective lungs for the last five minutes erupts into cheers and thunderous applause.

“Bravo, bravo.” says Nino, pushing through the crowd, most of whom are still frantically scribbling in their notebooks. Felix can scarcely bring himself to look up, his face burning with humiliation. The room around him is rapidly becoming a confusing blur of angry lights and prying eyes.

“You guys were amazing, I’ve never seen anything like that before! Honestly I should turn this in just like that.” Nino moves around to get a few more shots of their faces, lit up under the harsh theatre lights.

“No way!” shouts someone from the crowd, “I’m turning it in first!” “--can’t believe how easily Marinette just eviscerated Felix! I thought he was good at literature but--” “--she’s so clever, he could barely keep up--”  “--he’s not very good at this, is he--”

Someone else laughs and soon the whole crowd is bickering, arguing over who will lay claim to Marinette’s mental prowess and Felix’s mortification. 

“Enough, ALL of you! That was completely uncalled for. This wasn’t for you to take advantage of. None of you-- none of you-- bothered to state your own position, your own opinion. All you did was encourage my attacks, which were honestly in poor form.” Marinette hardly stops to breathe. “And anyways, I’m only more coherent because I’ve done weeks of research on this character. Felix kept up to someone who wasn’t just thinking on her feet, and his points still had credibility-- do you know how many literary analyses I’ve read on his position just to try and work out how to defend mine?” Marinette leans over and offers Felix a gentle smile and an outstretched hand. He gratefully accepts.

Felix takes her hand and pulls himself up with it, and stands shoulder to shoulder with her, looking out at the sea of chastised faces. “And now you think you can turn in our work-- her work, really-- and our performance as your own as if you have any claim to it-- it’s disgusting. Marinette poured herself into caring about this, and… and I should’ve listened to her, but I don’t get to take credit for the work she’s done to be this person. I need to do the work myself. You’re manipulators and thieves if you think you deserve any part of what she’s done.” 

“Hey, everyone is manipulated by something. Hamlet, Claudius, Horaito… you would know, right?” Marinette looks at him again, soft and shy and concerned through her lashes.

Felix swallows hard, glances at the cameras still rolling. Yeah, he would know.

“Thank you.” He says, stumbling and trying to hide the way his legs are shaking. “I, um… I guess I’d better put these swords away before someone stabs themselves.”

Nino slaps a hand on his shoulder so hard he nearly falls back down again. “Felix, my man! Get that grumpy black uniform off you!”

“Um… what?” Felix turns in confusion, head still spinning.

“You, my friend, are stage-hand no more! We’re still missing a Hamlet, and I know I’ve found the perfect one right here!”

“...WHAT?!?” 

As the world around him starts to blur, Marinette slips her hand into his and squeezes, shooting him a fond, amused grin. “You’re going to do great, Felix. I’ll see you on stage.” She presses her lips to his cheek, soft, warm, and… the scene fades to black to the sound of cheering.

[noassallclass]

So what do you think of FJ? Please be a little mean lol I like your thoughts on CR stuff✌

Oooh i am glad I have piqued your interest!

For me Fjorester at best is stale, boring, no flavor, zero chemistry. Like inoffensively milquetoast and I literally cannot grasp the concept of people actually enjoying the ship and finding it engaging.

Like I was never interested in FJ but I mean Travis describing Fjords feelings towards Jester as "being worn down" really solidifies it as a bad ship...

Because how exactly did Jester wear you down Fjord? Like what steps did Jester take to make you fall for her basically against all your reservations? Because where I am standing Jester really hasn't shown any interest in Fjord since the mid 40 episodes, which was about 60 episodes before the Playlist came out.

And that’s where Fjorester comes at worse, a complete reversal of at the very least Jester’s character growth. Because From episode 40 to episode 99 Jester has taken steps away from being romantically interested in Fjord and also finding self worth within herself and not having to find value in how a guy she had a crush on saw her. Especially since he’s kind of a goober that I feel like Jester questioned what she saw of him in the first place.

Like to me, Fjord and Jester consciously uncoupled throughout the series. I feel like there were times where Jester would try and test the waters again with Fjord to see if there were any romantic feelings still there and it seemed like the interactions always came up short for Jester.

The most prominent example I can think of right now is Jester asking Fjord if she could workout with him and everything went horribly wrong. Like yes some of that had to do with the poor rolls that Travis was rolling, but Fjord acted so poorly about it and acted like his masculinity was injured, even if he was trying to be comedic, and Jester was just like “Ok yikes dude nevermind”

At that point I think Jester thought Fjord ain’t shit anyway and that seemed like a big old nail in the coffin. Because before that we had moments where Jester couldn’t be less interested in Fjord, like when Beau knocked him down for touching her fresh tattoo and he whined to Jester who just told him to “Stay Down”. I mean she also kicked him when he was drowning and told him to “just get up man”

I mean even recently Jester told Fjord to shut the fuck up because he was mumbling to himself about how he was hoarding his money. Like as much as Fjord has grown out of his machismo phase and has just become a more open, vulnerable person. With Jester I still see the old Fjord who has to defend his masculinity in front of Jester and just be a general asshat and Jester at the very least didn’t find it charming. That is until the Hiatus attacked.

“You wore me down” is such a bad, unappealing way of describing how you feel about someone romantically, especially when there was really no effort or attempt on Jester’s part to pursue any type of relationship with Fjord for the majority of their in canon time together. Like not “I got to know you as you are and I’ve grown fond of you” or “We’ve grown so much and I admired you for who you have become”. Ya know...things that would make sense narratively and character development wise. like 3 months of Jester having crush did nothing for you Fjord but 9 months of radio silence is what wore you down?

No, what really wore Fjord down was the rest of the friend group, especially Nott/Veth poking and prodding both him and Jester to get together because for some reason the party doesn’t think Jester has the ability for growing out of a highschool crush that wasn’t really based on reality in the first place? And that is one of the worse parts of Fjorester is everyone keeps putting their own ideas of who Jester is and what she wants above who Jester actually is. It’s like their extreme makeover home edition but instead of making the kid’s bedroom all about one thing the kid likes its the mighty nein making Jester’s romance all about Fjord because she liked him that one time.

It’s honestly like highschool friend group relationship drama shit where your friends won’t give up the fact one friend has a crush on another friend until it either becomes so awkward it ruins their friendship or they date each other even though it would never end good from the start. Like Veth wriggling her eyebrows when Jester and Fjord had dinner together, but it was so uneventful they just skipped it but of course Veth had to make a big deal about it.

Not to mention that Fjord is one of the worse culprits in fundamentally not understanding Jester At All. Like he doesn’t infantilize Jester but he greatly underestimates her complexity, like he looks like a deer in headlights when Jester talks about anything more complicated than liking cupcakes. He also condescends and negs her a lot. Like he thinks Jester is an incurable fibber and just straight up doesn’t believe her when she does things she is capable of.

like not even thinking Jester could dupe the Hag into lifting the curse on Nott and Jester rightfully called him out because his pattern of condescension is irritating AF. And he pulled the exact shit again when Jester said she talked to a tree. Like he fully gets on board with Caduceus talking to plants and stuff but for Jester it must be all make believe. I’d have less of an issue if he didn’t believe everything Jester says if he didn’t always do it in a snotty, passive aggressive way of like “oooh suuuure Jester ooooof coooourse”

like sir, with that attitude you should get nothing, you lose, Jester is better off without you! 

with all of the above you would expect “oh yeah it doesn’t seem too likely, even if Fjord has feelings for Jester now” because like it isn’t great, and Jester up until the Hiatus gave him Nothing. But Now! Now they are pushing it, like it is 1 of the 2 main ships steering the show and the cast thinks we should be gobbling it up as much as they are.

Like why should we be rooting for a couple that 1) don’t understand each other 2) don’t necessarily enjoy each others company and 3) are completely adversarial to each other I think at any moment they’re ready to throw down

Is it because “oh they make each other better because they call each other out on their shit”? because it would be better if they didn’t do it through gritted teeth like they are thinking of which layer of hell they will be sent to after they kill the other person

Is it because the majority of straight couple in media have the two people in a couple hate each others guts until they kiss? I don’t think we should be setting our standards for het romances that low.

Because Jester showed interest in Fjord once and can no longer have feelings for any other person?

Or is it because now that Fjord has caught feelings it doesn’t matter what development Jester has made that has pushed her narrative away from being about romancing men that ain’t shit for her?

like CR is tripping over themselves and destroying any compelling romance to give us the blandest, low budget, hallmark hetero romance story that literally nobody asked for.

[jenniferisacommonname]

Bonus Level Unlocked

This week marks the release of Jason Schreier’s Press Reset, an incredibly well-researched book on catastrophic business failure in the gaming industry. Jason’s a good dude, and there’s an excerpt here if you want to check it out. Sadly, game companies going belly-up is such a common occurrence that he couldn’t possibly include them all, and one of the stories left out due to space constraints is one that I happen to be personally familiar with. So, I figured I’d tell it here.

I began working at Acclaim Studios Austin as a sound designer in January of 2000. It was a tumultuous period for the company, including a recent rebranding from their former studio name, “Iguana Entertainment,” and a related, ongoing lawsuit from the ex-founder of Iguana. There were a fair number of ghosts hanging around—the creative director’s license plate read IGUANA, which he never changed, and one of the meeting rooms held a large, empty terrarium—but the studio had actually been owned on paper by Acclaim since 1995, and I didn’t notice any conflicting loyalties. Everyone acted as if we always had been, and always would be, Acclaim employees.

Over the next few years I worked on a respectable array of triple-A titles, including Quarterback Club 2002, Turok: Evolution, and All-Star Baseball 2002 through 2005. (Should it be “All-Stars Baseball,” like attorneys general? Or perhaps a term of venery, like “a zodiac of All-Star Baseball.”) At any rate, it was a fun place to work, and a platformer of hijinks ensued.

But let’s skip to the cutscene. The truth is that none of us in the trenches suspected the end was near until it was absolutely imminent. Yes, Turok: Evolution and Vexx had underperformed, especially when stacked against the cost of development, but games flop in the retail market all the time. And, yes, Showdown: Legends of Wrestling had been hustled out the door before it was ready for reasons no one would explain, and the New York studio’s release of a BMX game featuring unlockable live-action stripper footage had been an incredibly weird marketing ploy for what should have been a straightforward racing title. (Other desperate gimmicks around this time included a £6,000 prize for UK parents who would name their baby “Turok,” an offer to pay off speeding tickets to promote Burnout 2 that quickly proved illegal, and an attempt to buy advertising space on actual tombstones for a Shadow Man sequel.)

But the baseball franchise was an annual moneymaker, and our studio had teams well into development on two major new licenses, 100 Bullets and The Red Star. Enthusiasm was on the upswing. Perhaps I should have paid closer attention when voice actors started calling me to complain that they hadn’t been paid, but at the time it seemed more like a bureaucratic failure than an actual money shortage—and frankly, it was a little naïve of them to expect net-30 in the first place. Industry standard was, like, net-90 at best. So I was told.

Then one Friday afternoon, a few department managers got word that we’d kind of maybe been skipping out on the building lease for let’s-not-admit-how-many months. By Monday morning, everyone’s key cards had been deactivated.

It's a little odd to arrive at work and find a hundred-plus people milling around outside—even odder, I suppose, if your company is not the one being evicted. Acclaim folks mostly just rolled their eyes and debated whether to cut our losses and head to lunch now, while employees of other companies would look dumbfounded and fearful before being encouraged to push their way through the crowd and demonstrate their still-valid key card to the security guard. Finally, the General Manager (hired only a few months earlier, and with a hefty relocation bonus to accommodate his houseboat) announced that we should go home for the day and await news. Several of our coworkers were veterans of the layoff process—like I said, game companies go under a lot—and one of them had already created a Yahoo group to communicate with each other on the assumption that we’d lose access to our work email. A whisper of “get on the VPN and download while you can” rippled through the crowd.

But the real shift in tone came after someone asked about a quick trip inside for personal items, and the answer was a hard, universal “no.” We may have been too busy or ignorant to glance up at any wall-writing, but the building management had not been: they were anticipating a full bankruptcy of the entire company. In that situation, all creditors have equal standing to divide up a company's assets in lengthy court battles, and most get a fraction of what they’re owed. But if the landlords had seized our office contents in lieu of rent before the bankruptcy was declared, they reasoned, then a judge might rule that they had gotten to the treasure chest first, and could lay claim to everything inside as separate from the upcoming asset liquidation.

Ultimately, their gambit failed, but the ruling took a month to settle. In the meantime, knick knacks gathered dust, delivered packages piled up, food rotted on desks, and fish tanks became graveyards. Despite raucous protest from every angle—the office pets alone generated numerous threats of animal cruelty charges—only one employee managed to get in during this time, and only under police escort. He was a British citizen on a work visa, and his paperwork happened to be sitting on his desk, due to expire. Without it, he was facing literal deportation. Fortunately, a uniformed officer took his side (or perhaps just pre-responded to what was clearly a misdemeanor assault in ovo,) and after some tense discussion, the building manager relented, on the condition that the employee touch absolutely nothing beyond the paperwork in question. The forms could go, but the photos of his children would remain.

It’s also a little odd, by the way, to arrive at the unemployment office and find every plastic chair occupied by someone you know. Even odder, I suppose, if you’re actually a former employee of Acclaim Studios Salt Lake, which had shut down only a month or two earlier, and you just uprooted your wife and kids to a whole new city on the assurance that you were one of the lucky ones who got to stay employed. Some of them hadn’t even finished unpacking.

Eventually, we were allowed to enter the old office building one at a time and box up our things under the watchful eye of a court appointee, but by then our list of grievances made the landlords’ ploy seem almost quaint by comparison (except for the animals, which remains un-fucking-forgivable.) We had learned, for example, that in the weeks prior to the bankruptcy, our primary lender had made an offer of $15 million—enough to keep us solvent through our next batch of releases, two of which had already exited playtesting and were ready to be burned and shipped. The only catch was that the head of the board, company founder Greg Fischbach, would have to step down. This was apparently too much of an insult for him to stomach, and he decided that he'd rather see everything burn to the ground. The loan was refused.

Other “way worse than we thought” details included gratuitous self-dealing to vendors owned by board members, the disappearance of expensive art from the New York offices just before closure, and the theft of our last two paychecks. For UK employees, it was even more appalling: Acclaim had, for who knows how long, been withdrawing money from UK paychecks for their government-required pension funds, but never actually putting the money into the retirement accounts. They had stolen tens of thousands of dollars directly from each worker.

Though I generally reside somewhere between mellow and complete doormat on the emotional spectrum, I did get riled enough to send out one bitter email—not to anyone in corporate, but to the creators of a popular webcomic called Penny Arcade, who, in the wake of Acclaim’s bankruptcy announcement, published a milquetoast jibe about Midway’s upcoming Area 51. I told Jerry (a.k.a. “Tycho”) that I was frankly disappointed in their lack of cruelty, and aired as much dirty laundry as I was privy to at the time.

“Surely you can find a comedic gem hidden somewhere in all of this!” I wrote. “Our inevitable mocking on PA has been a small light at the end of a very dark, very long tunnel. Please at least allow us the dignity of having a smile on our faces while we wait in line for food stamps.”

Two days later, a suitably grim comic did appear, implying the existence of a new release from Acclaim whose objective was to run your game company into the ground. In the accompanying news post, Tycho wrote:

“We couldn’t let the Acclaim bankruptcy go without comment, though we initially let it slide thinking about the ordinary gamers who lost their jobs there. They don’t have anything to do with Acclaim’s malevolent Public Relations mongrels, and it wasn’t they who hatched the Titty Bike genre either. Then, we remembered that we have absolutely zero social conscience and love to say mean things.”

Another odd experience, by the way, is digging up a 16-year-old complaint to a webcomic creator for nostalgic reference when you offer that same creator a promotional copy of the gaming memoir you just co-wrote with Sid Meier. Even odder, I suppose, to realize that the original non-Acclaim comic had been about Area 51, which you actually were hired to work on yourself soon after the Acclaim debacle.*

As is often the case in complex bankruptcies, the asset liquidation took another six years to fully stagger its way through court—but in 2010, we did, surprisingly, get the ancient paychecks we were owed, plus an extra $1,700-ish for the company’s apparent violation of the WARN Act. By then, I had two kids and a very different life, for which the money was admittedly helpful. Sadly, Acclaim’s implosion probably isn’t even the most egregious one on record. Our sins were, to my knowledge, all money-related, and at least no one was ever sexually assaulted in our office building. Again, to my knowledge. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure we remain the only historical incident of corporate pet murder. The iguana got out just in time.

*Area 51’s main character was voiced by David Duchovny, and he actually got paid—which was lucky for him, because three years later, Midway also declared bankruptcy.

[carol-effing-danvers]

Hello my dear, I'm back with another analytical/meta thought (pending thesis/essay), that is basically: I think limited LGBT+ relationship representation in mainstream visual media has accidentally become a blessing in disguise (at least reflecting on, say, the last decade? 5-7 years?)...this is a sort of long ask, sorry!

Now I know this could be a bold unfounded claim, and I have a handful of examples but thought your wealth of knowledge (and opinions 🤍) may be able to speak to this.

As succinctly as I can explain it, the main premise of my argument uses the knowledge that 'sex sells' is a common approach to film and TV. (When I say "TV" of course this extends to include streaming service originals as well as standard networks). With that in mind, shows that want to rate will often have hetero relationships that might be written well but will almost always have a sexual element woven in. Should a showrunner/story producer decide that they want to include an LGBT+ relationship (note I say "relationship" and not "character" because those are two different conversations), they generally cannot rely on the 'sex sells' principle to get audiences "invested" in these relationships/shows. By the time that relationship is coming to/leaving the writer's room, whatever individuals have pushed for it have likely already experienced pushback, so now not only have they had to prove that relationship's worth to get it on the page, they now need to prove it to casting directors, director/s (when not already attached to the project), cast, and then convince networks and by extension audiences - that this relationship is worth watching.

And to do that? They have to write good, authentic, strong or realistic relationships.

Now, I could be totally talking out of my ass here, or it could be a really close-minded take. Do you have any thoughts/opinions on this? Am I going straight to the gulag for putting this in your asks?

Nerdily (nervously), T. x

How dare you accuse me of possessing knowledge 

Okay I have an opinion on this (shocking, I know). And I’m not convinced that this is true. No, that’s not it- I’m only convinced that this is partially true. ‘Sex sells’ has certainly been a tactic of tv, film, music, and advertising for as long as any of these things have been in visual mediums. But I would also argue that this hasn’t been quite the high-selling commodity in the last 5-7 years as it was in say...the 80′s and 90′s. 

But the main reason that the LGBT+ community hasn’t used this isn’t really because they have to resort to good story to actually be able to get their stories off the cutting room floor - although this is completely true, I can’t argue that at all, a queer story needs to be twice as good as a decent hetero romance if it ever hopes to make it to the silver screen. But I think the reason that queer romance doesn’t use the ‘sex sells’ method is more related to the reason that I see the ‘no BDSM at pride’ hand-wringing every single year - because the industry at whole doesn’t wanna gross out the heterosexuals. This impulse not to spook heteros is also why the majority of these romances feature two white people - just like the majority of straight romances. 

As many strides as the community has taken for their own rights, in the greater world (the ‘mainstream media’), if they want their stories told, it requires watering down those elements of carnal passion and filing down the sexual experiences of queer people to chaste hand-holding and maybe a kiss or two. 

I’m sure other people have discussed this, at length, in much more intelligent terms than I have, but there’s another element to this that I don’t think I’ve actually seen pointed out before. 

My oldest friend (who is aware that I have an addiction to fanfiction) once asked why most of the pairings I liked the most were gay ships. It forced me to examine and then articulate what I found most appealing in my favorite ships. Often, my favorite pairings were almost always best friends in canon and I realized: I don’t think I love these the most because this pairing is two hot men (although that doesn’t hurt, won’t lie). I love these the most because there are no - or very few - well written and complex female characters within the canons that I watched. 

If your cast is majority male to begin with, and then you lavish all of your time and attention in the writing for the main male lead and his buddy and kind of make a throwaway girlfriend for him...you can’t honestly be surprised when all of your fans are more interested in various permutations of the male cast instead of engaging with your token female character.

This isn’t just anecdotal, either. Check the top ships for all the most popular fandoms on AO3. 90% of the time, you will see either A) canon hetero ships, B) m/m enemies, or C) queer best friends. Fans DO want queer ships, but they also want GOOD ships, and if the canon won’t give that to them, they will give it to themselves. 

Writers and showrunners need to either have the guts to make the queer romance happen and lean into what they’re already writing, or get off their asses and actually give the female intended in their heterosexual relationship the complexity and spirit they shower on the male lead and his best friend. This situation is just a perfect storm of reluctance to display anything more controversial than just-off-white milquetoast relationships and that good old-fashioned sexism we all know and love.

I hope I didn’t stomp all over your essay idea and maybe gave you some interest things to bounce off of! 

[maiselous]

Observations and love notes from my Avatar re-watch:

Katara is the glue. I’m not gonna list off everything she does for people bc that would take forever but she is the reason everyone arrives anywhere (North Pole, Ba Sing Se) in one piece. She’s also the reason why. She got the boy out of the iceberg. She was Aang’s impetus. 

That being said, something I love about Kataang is that just because Katara is maternal and Aang is a goofball doesn’t mean she has to actively take care of him. He’s not like “lol I’m so inept what would I do without you”. They’re functional humans is all I mean.

This is not to take anything away from Sokka. He is my favorite person who is not Aang and those memes about how the story would be like 1/10 the length if Sokka had more power are TRU. That being said, he can’t sew.

“You have to master the four elements to defeat Firelord Ozai. And when you do, I hope you think like a mad genius!” -Bumi in s01.05 Me, has seen Aang energybend: UGHHHHHH

The older I get the more I discover the levels of almost Tolkien-esque attention to detail. This applies to the lore to the world-building with very specific real-world inspirations to the music. Y’all heard the Cave of Two Lovers theme sewn into that last tune before Aang and Katara kissed? Taiko drums used in cultural motifs partly inspired by pre-Meiji Japan? Oh yeah.

Fucking Jet. What a charmer. What a troubled child. I love him. I love the Freedom Fighters. I love their little Lord of the Flies society and their ends-justify-the-means ideology. They’re a microcosm of a world ravaged by war and hate and the fact that these are basically child soldiers and gangs??? I mean, thanks Nickelodeon??

Yeah you know what? Disney would never, and that’s why all they’re shows and movies are milquetoast as fuck.

Why the hell do people dislike the Cave of Two Lovers. It’s literally one of the funniest episodes on the season and the story of Oma and Shu is gorgeous???? Even if you’re not into Kataang this episode is lovely dammit.

I also appreciate how earthbending, the roughest toughest element, was started by a romance.

I like Toph a lot more now than I used to... what was wrong with me back then? (I sound like Katara.)

It’s actually really really interesting to me that most people refer to Aang’s people as the Air Nation while Aang, who is one of them, calls them Air Nomads. Yes it speaks to the general perception of Air Nomads, but “nation” and “nomads” are basically contradictory and is an extremely reductive way to look at them.

Iroh was clearly never meant to be Firelord because there’s not “z” in his name lol

Hector Elizondo as Wan Shi Tong. That is all.

Notice how Azula always fights dishonorably. For all of Zuko’s obsession with honor and integrity, Azula has no problem with it. She literally didn’t hesitate to kill the Avatar from behind while in the Avatar State, and purposefully tried to kill a bystander during an agni kai.

Book 2 is the best. Book 3 was great and the final 4 eps elevates the show to literal god-tier but the first half was kinda meandering until Black Sun.

This fandom resurgence is fucking fascinating. I’m looking at returning fans as well as newcomers and it seems like Zuko is the fave. It’s absolutely for good reason, but I can’t help but wonder if part of it is because so many of us see ourselves in him? I dunno. Zuko--at the beginning--is angry, lost, and desperate. I can connect with that on some level. I’m just curious why it’s almost unanimous (right now at least). Let me know, honestly.

If this show is about balance, then it’s explored through all kinds and all levels of friction: - individual vs. community will (i.e. Katara vs. Northern Water Tribe) - subtle friction between Buddhist and Confucian ideals (”you must learn to let her go” vs “power and perfection are overrated”) - Pacifism vs. Justice-by-any-means (This is a tough one to unravel. Like, I’m definitely not qualified to get into these philosophical weeds but you guys have met Jet and seen Book 3 so you know what I mean.) - This all speaks to the overall friction between Aang’s identity as the Avatar and his identity as The Last Airbender. It’s gorgeous. (God I have a lot to say here, more to come.)

I think a big part of what makes this show satisfying is the fact that all the plants have reasonable payoffs. Everything in the finale feels like a culmination of everything we’ve seen leading up to it. Nothing feels out-of-left-field; Azula’s descent, Aang and Katara’s relationship, Zuko’s rise. Even the energybending. (more on that too, later) Other showrunners and writers take notes.

[floatingcatacombs]

Evaluting Gatchaman Crowds Through Rui’s Outfits

12 Days of Aniblogging 2020, Day 1

Oh, I’m fashionably late to this one. Gatchaman Crowds is a 2013 superhero anime that serves as a soft reboot of the old tokusatsu franchise, only now with 21st century shitty anime tropes. From this painfully generic setup emerges a surprisingly layered evaluation of technological disruption in the smartphone era. For this reason, Crowds is a favorite amongst anime bloggers as a superhero work that’s actually trying to do something interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t care about any of these guys

But it’s also a favorite amongst all sorts of weirdos because of the character Rui Ninomiya. A horrifying amalgamation of the technolibertarian CEO and trans femme hacker archetypes, Rui is by far the most interesting character in the show, because they’re a surprisingly prescient look at how the tech industry will function throughout the 2010s. But they’re also a ‘boy’ who never leaves their house without dressing in the most girly clothes imaginable. Predictably, this is catnip for me. But the funniest part of the whole situation is that nobody ever addresses it. Rui never provides an explanation for their outfits and the rest of the cast just uses she/her until they properly get acquainted and switch to he/him.

I could tell you that Rui’s obviously trans and wrap up the post right there, but that’s honestly not the most interesting angle of attack here. So I’m just going to use whatever pronouns I feel like in the moment for them and focus on what really matters: fashion! Rui has a surprisingly large wardrobe throughout the show, so I’ll be doing the heavy lifting of ranking each of her outfits. Oh, and also maybe a little analysis of what she represents. Spoilers for the whole show, of course.

7. The Yellow Dress

Let me lay out Rui’s ideology before I lay into their fashion disaster. You see, they’re a tech disruptor who believes that governments and bureaucracies are too slow to achieve the monumental (yet unspecified) change that society needs. So, they preside over a smartphone app called GALAX that successfully predicts Pokemon Go’s geosocial AR gimmick three years early. GALAX is a technolibertarian’s wet dream – crowdsourced emergency response, interest-based meetups, and matchmaking for people who need specific help and the people who can help them, all deeply gamified.

Their outfit here is about as messy as their politics, but at the same time, what a look. She’s got blue-and-white-striped programming thigh highs on under her combat boots, which are both such trans iconography, you know? While they may just be a reflection of early-2010s 4chan crossdressing culture, it’s also totally possible that Rui directly influenced or reinforced trans girl fashion, like the accelerationist she is. What a prescient show, in all sorts of weird ways.

6. Lace-up Dress with Bunny Ears

It wouldn’t be an anime girl cosplay without some bunny ears, now would it? Rui spends 5 minutes in an early episode just wandering around the city in this outfit, listening to people’s conversations and feelings on GALAX. There’s something very funny about how nobody even notices them, like they’re completely invisible despite their ridiculous outfit. This actually factors back into the tech stuff! Like pretty much every tech company, Rui’s app and vision are both sleek and shiny but rely on tremendous amounts of dirty labor kept as hidden as possible. From Amazon’s inhumane warehouse conditions to Facebook’s trauma-inducing moderator farms to Apple’s child labor-tainted supply chains, there’s always suffering humans behind the too-good-to-be-true magic of tech companies. Rui’s lie by omission is failing to mention that the app relies on invisible extradimensional beings called CROWDS that are manually controlled by underpaid workers to assist its users. One of the workers comes to Rui challenging their vision and arguing that they should be sharing this tech with the movers and shakers of the world, not trying to keep it invisible. He threatens a collective walkout and Rui fires him. At this point, we’re not even operating on metaphors.

5. Green Business Casual

Sure, most tech companies have cruel labor underbellies, but there’s also the separate risk of moral rot. It’s what causes Microsoft to take on ICE contracts and Google to develop censored versions of their search engine at the whims of authoritarians. Many tech companies start off with an altruistic message, but without a serious ethical core, they will start doing a whole lot of evil as they bend to financial and other pressures. Rui’s version of this is extremely literal: she made a deal with the devil to gain the ability to use the CROWDS and launch her app. Except this devil is also a butch gender-noncomforming alien (there is a Lot of other gender going on in this show that I don’t even have time for) and the two of them seem to have an extremely fucked-up relationship. Like any good Faustian bargain or any bad attempt at raising more venture capital without a viable business model, eventually the whole thing comes tumbling down and now you’re doing something terribly fucked up. Rui looks good in a dress shirt, at least!

4. Whatever your abusive partner puts on when she body-snatches you

Of course the center won’t hold, GALAX is subject to a hostile takeover, and to nobody’s surprise, an app with the flimsy promise to change the world for the better can actually be way better at ripping it all apart. I guess the prescient social media parallel here is Facebook being used to propagate Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing, or really anything related to Twitter for the last 5 years. FuckedUpAlienMimic!Rui sure does have cute fangs and a way more refined fashion sense though. I don’t feel like looking into that one.

3. Business....Futch?

I know I’m not done outlining Rui’s arc, but I’m going to skip ahead for a moment to say that Gatchaman Crowds also has a second season! I’m largely ignoring it here because Rui is pretty much stripped of all plot relevance and most of her outfits are less exciting, but I had to include this one. For two episodes, she puts on bright yellow stirrup leggings and an oversized polo shirt, with a cute ponytail to boot. It’s a ridiculous look, but still feels really evocative to me. Sometimes a girl just has to put together completely uncoordinated outfits and see what happens.

Unlike the disruption-focused first season, Gatchaman Crowds season two, which aired in 2015, is about how unfettered technolibertarianism can easily descend into fascism. Goddammit.

2. The Bunny Ears Outfit Again Oh God Who Hurt Her

The weight of the world comes crashing down in Rui’s hands, she’s bruised and beaten in a surprisingly sadistic manner by her alien ex-business partner/girlfriend, and she’s locked out of her own company which is very quickly causing society to fall apart. So what does she do? She puts the bunny dress back on, and wanders the streets again until she has to call upon the powers that be to fix her own mess. It’s silly that the powers that be in this world are superheroes, but I bet you forgot that this was technically a superhero show at this point. Anyways, my extended metaphor is quickly drifting off course, but I guess this is the part where Rui gets grilled by Congress and slapped with an antitrust case.

1. Every Trans Girl Stereotype Rolled Into One

I’ve been incredibly harsh on Rui throughout this writeup, because I’m harsh on the industry she represents, but I’ll make it up with this section. Look at what she’s wearing! A choker, the gothiest Hot Topic dress imaginable, arm warmers, no less than three asymmetric garters not even holding up anything, and the tallest black boots she could find. It’s incredible! If the first outfit on this list was hinting at her relationship to stereotypical trans fashion, then this outfit just screams it. It’s the perfect goth femme hacker look, a style commitment I have no choice but to respect.

Gatchaman is a weird show. After spending most of its runtime thoroughly dunking on tech disruptors for being too optimistic and uncritical, it takes a last-minute turn into Lockean state of nature arguments. It settles on “the masses are inherently good enough that empowering people through technology shouldn’t ever be a problem”, ignoring all the suffering that happened due to Rui’s unwillingness to curate their own technology. I’d give Gatchaman Crowds an average rating, but it’s one of those interesting average ratings where instead of being milquetoast, they tried something and failed and wrote themselves into a corner. But hey, at least there’s an interestingly gendered character!

[rametarin]

To reiterate.

The virus is real, masking kinda helps, the vaccines are real, effective and fine.

The issue I have is not that the vaccines “don’t work,” or.. have “magnetic whatever” in them (they don’t.) That’s hooey. The reality is, yes, COVID19 is real, the vaccines are real. In fact, mRNA vaccines, once the bugs are worked out, will enable RAPID response to the onset of actually very bad plagues or bio-weapons in a very short time, and have the potential to render a virus toothless out to ten billion generations of natural mutation from the source, given enough development. the mRNA vaccines or conventional COVID19 vaccines are not there to sterilize you, give you learning disabilities or autism, or TURN THE FREAKIN’ FROGS GAY.

The real problem is that this virus didn’t need to exist, and it is beyond disbelief to imagine that a corona virus with characteristics of multiple different corona virus families, many of which from species with no hereditary function to apply or infect human beings, would just fly out of the ether. COVID19 was without precedent and was shown to have characteristics identical to other corona viruses not of its hereditary lineage, but cousin species. However this discourse has gotten awfully quiiet, for some reason. It wasn’t just a Pangolin virus that gained the ability to negatively interact with human lungs. That did not happen by natural mutation in the wild.

Considering the fact it verywell and probably was a weapon that just so happened to escape from the literal god damned Chinese military COVID biolab in Wuhan, funded by Fauci’s little group, where they were STUDYING THIS EXACT BULLSHIT, that may be a reason of international diplomatic relations and national security. Despite being rather obvious to anyone that thinks about it for two god damned minutes.

So we have an American-Chinese team where they study gain-of-function in corona viruses in a Chinese military bio-lab, a virus with grab bag characteristics that IT CANNOT GAIN THROUGH NATURAL EVOLUTION ARBITRARILY (no two mutations are EVER the same. You don’t get the same fucking spike through convergent mutation, that shit was spliced and inherited) and surprise surprise it escaped and made its way across the globe because the Chinese corrupted and manipulated the WHO and international bodies into keeping quiet and not asking questions on threat of nuclear war (look it up. The US tried to probe, China threatened.)

And ultimately, what is the damage of the virus? Actually rather little. It was never going to exterminate more than 1-2% of the human species before we all gained natural immunity to it, or it thinned the herd enough for allow natural immunity at the great expense. Same as corona viruses from everywhere else on earth humans have dealt with since antiquity. It’s just another virus that can kill you and will more than likely kill the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions.

So then, why release a milquetoast virus as a doomsday weapon? And there’s the rub.

COVID19 was not created to cleanse the world like a conventional bio-nuke. It was created to be the backdrop for a greater discussion and practical argument for socialism. After using the bureaucracy to negate alternatives and other options, inertia in the system designed to prevent functioning and solving this problem in any logical of reasonable fashion, they want to have a “discussion” about how to fix this.

The real discussions they want to have are about the poor and the exposed, about how there’s now a need to prevent people from being homeless regardless of their ability to pay for a shelter, or work for pay. A reason to declare it to be wrong to hold church masses, but turn a blind eye to other people having maskless close-quarters gatherings. A reason to demand a kind of “practical conformity” in the form of masks, whether or not they actually do anything to eliminate virus transmission outside of a clinical setting or from lack of switching them out enough.

The virus was created to be a prop and a natural hazard as people argue for the “necessity” of their ideological bullshit. It was a weapon designed to punish inaction and the lack of addressing infection vectors. It was created specifically to argue that, “nobody, despite their age or level of infirmity, should be accepted to just die from natural greater exposure,” since they disagree that just because you’re old, you should be more vulnerable to illness.

So they’ve argued and used a virus as a weapon to demand everybody tighten their belts and we stop accepting that just because someone is morbidly obese and with other co-morbidities and age related weakness, that a wave of flu that for the rest of humanity is unfortunate and inconvenient but survivable, takes out people 80+. COVID19 is simply a weaponized prop for this “turning point” discussion.

But it’s not JUST a weapon designed to make those conversations about, “social change,” more real, it’s a weapon designed to make healthcare a bigger part of government and policy making as a whole. Creating a necessity via healthcare necessities, such as through viruses released into the wild to mutate and change. Or, if not naturally mutate and change, occasionally refresh the antagonist pool by dropping new and more virulent strains artificially created and cultured. Y’know, as a treat.

This is why so many like Faucci are in on it. What on earth would the medical establishment have to gain from colaboration with the Chinese military? A fast tracking towards vaccine technology that otherwise may’ve taken decades to fully realize, but due to practical and pragmatic reasons, can now be argued to get “needed” funds and necessitate rapid approval and development. Undercutting miles of red tape and time gated meetings, approvals, commitees, deliberations and refinements and trials, due to it basically being, “wartime emergency.”

And it isn’t even about gaining billions, conceivably trillions of dollars in profit. Just greed, there are better avenues for that then this haphazard cloak&dagger mess. It’s this entire performance is about engineering, “social change” and turning the world into a theater.

This method to “have convuhsayshuns uwu” and flex a bit of authoritarian moralist muscle is the epitome of everything that is wrong with, “social justice”, as defined by these fucks. Manufacture a problem and then use social manipulation techniques and set the house on fire to distract and force priority of discussion, only converse in the way and topic of what and how you want to converse, and disallow conversation that might take the outcome away from the target. It’s cold blooded, it’s manipulative, it’s machivallian, it’s fucking psychotic. And oh so familiarly, it’s in the interests of somebody’s, “greater good.”

Every complaint the supposed “left” has about hawk&dove war mongering against tangible other people and governments, the need for civil rights and diplomacy, the need for privacy from government, goes out the window when it comes to something like a virus or plague. They’ll very happily use the wartime economy and social schism to impose their own moralist versions of jingoism. And a virus is the perfect thing to weaponize to get what they want. Just rather than fight an unwinnable war against drugs or islamoimperialism, they seek to turn the wartime economy towards and war on illness. Replacing the military with the medical establishment.

And when the curtain finally falls and people point out this has all been smoke and mirrors, a massive play to dismantle churches, reshape the social sphere, make the New Normal not accepting seasonal viruses wiping out the elderly and infirm just because you can’t stop seasonal viruses, they’re going to ask, “But what did we really lose, though? :^)”

[crossdressingdeath]

I think I understood the main reason JC super-fans are always so defensive compared to others, and it’s because they like JC despite his characterization in the story instead of the opposite. Like XY stans love him because he’s so unrepentantly, gleefully murderous or JGY stans love, idk, his moral complexity or shrewdness, but in any case, they wouldn’t want him to stop his social climbing or murdering people. Same for WWX or LWJ stans; there is no big disconnect between the main actions of1/6

those characters in the story and what people like about them. But to listen to JC stans, they like a sad, soft, underappreciated, lovable underdog (but who is also extremely strong for some reason) who loves everyone but is always left behind alone while there are no scenes at all in the story where he appears in that light. If any random neutral party was asked to list the main salient point about JC after reading MDZS, it would be his angry, unstable temper, his jealousy and2/6

self-centeredness, him sacrificing himself once before stabbing WWX in the back while washing his hands of the genocide of people who saved him, and his position of extreme power and privilege as the Jiang heir. There is nothing in common between both lists, so that’s why JC fans get confrontational in a way that no other characters’ fans do as soon as you bring up canon events, and that most of JC meta is about negating or navigating around anything that ever happened in the story (he3/6  

didn’t kill WWX by pushing him down a cliff! He couldn’t help the Wens at all because [insert handwavy reason]! He’s not cruel and bitter! He didn’t torture people!) rather than analyzing scenes that took place in canon and what they show about JC. Fanon JC is born and forged in a perpetual fight against canon. I don’t think that his fans even like anything that he has done in canon or the way he acted in most situations (unless it’s the leading the Wens away scene, of which we hear so4/6

much about), so this accounts for the weird trend to never actually discuss canon scenes where he appears but to abundantly analyze headcanons about them (the 1001 reasons why JC could never ever have done anything for the Wen refugees, not the real reason that he just didn't want to) or to have a “but sad JC uwu” reading ready for every scene where JC is actively hurting someone else. And it’s sad because in fiction, I live for relationships where people stab their relatives in the back or5/6

any other place, I’m not picky; the tension, the drama, the exploration of familial trauma! And angry characters ready to burn the place down and realpolitik and not living up to your own or society ideals! But instead we get the fanon of a milquetoast tsundere who just luv his family so much, which is a generic character type we see in so many stories. MDZS cast’s characterization is so distinctive; it’s a pity to reduce it to common archetypes which weren’t even there in the first place!6/6

This is very well put, anon. With the other characters in MDZS, their fans acknowledge their flaws and weak point and love them along with their flaws (or take great joy in coming up with situations where they don’t get all murdery, for the villains, but still with the acknowledgement that they aren’t their canon selves). With JC stans, though, it’s like they decided his personality before reading the book and actively refuse to acknowledge that they got it wrong. Of course they get confrontational when JC’s canon personality and actions are brought up, because they can’t actually argue the point; they have to talk about how sad he was, try to make people feel guilty for disagreeing with their “poor soft baby” interpretation, insult people who disagree, actively misinterpret their opponents’ arguments and so on because they know they can’t win any actual debate. Fanon JC and canon JC are almost unrecognizable as the same character; I just wish they’d accept that they’re working with fanon JC and canon JC isn’t like that. It’s not having an entirely fanon interpretation of a character that bugs me, it’s their refusal to acknowledge that that isn’t canon.