#me when i make a self insert on every single media he is

[fuzedatti]

EDIT: why does this have so many notes i thought it would only have like 3😭 anyways thanks for feeding my special interest 💖

This is a life (Every possibility)

Free from destiny (I choose you, and you choose me)

Not only what we sow (Every space and every time)

Not only what we show.

This is a life (Many lives that could've been)

Free from entropy (Entangled for eternity)

Not only hands and toes

Not only what we've known

[waspredteeth]

I’ve noticed that a problem with the “Batman shouldn’t/should kill” debates around here is that a lot of people tend to self-insert themselves into the equation.

It’s always “if killing a violent guy in self defense is bad then I’m a murderer?” or “well, if it were me, I would’ve killed the guy a long time ago.”

Newsflash, you’re not Batman. You’re a real person where consequences can be applied and you need to live with whatever you’ve done.

Batman isn’t real. He’s a character owned by a massive company. In tense situations, you might often have no choice but to commit violence to save yourself. In a tense situation in DC, Batman has writers that can get him out of anything.

DC writers have the ability to write him out a situation where he could kill, with no violence committed and everyone safe. Now, whether or not they’d actually implement this kind of outcome is another issue entirely but the point stands.

Batman is a character with long-established personality, traits, moral code, history. Because he’s a fictional character, writers can’t change every single aspect of his character, they have to keep something otherwise they’re writing someone different. He’s not a real person whose sense of morality or justice can change as he ages and learns - because he can’t age. Rarely, he learns, but this chalks up to comics evolving over time due to the great conflicts/hot buttons of a specific time period when a story is being written.

“But Wasp! Writers self-insert themselves into Batman all the time!” You say. Yeah, they do. And 9 times out of 10, that piece of media turns out horribly wish-fulfilling and severely out of character continuity. Modern writers lost the plot when it comes to making Batman an undefeated god, but regardless he should be a hero.

Therefore, Batman shouldn’t kill because:

DC can always write him out of the necessity to kill.

He’s already been established for a long time to live and die by his own moral code.

He believes strongly in rehabilitative justice

He’s been established to be a symbol for a better Gotham. He kills, even discriminately, and then he’s no better than the hundreds of cops in his universe. Racism, classism, police brutality exist in Gotham. There’s full storylines and series about the GCPD and the role they fill in Gotham when Batman exists.

Batman does their jobs better than they do (usually). He’s supposed to represent justice in a way the police can never be. In a city like Gotham, fictional it may be, distrust and violence comes easy. Murder and assault runs rampant. A vigilante committing themselves to killing would do nothing to change Gotham, nothing to change the GCPD, nothing to project an image of safety, nothing for anyone.

Batman is Batman because he represents hope and compassion in a city without it.

[soullessjack]

I’ve been on TikTok a lot because my FYP has been infiltrated by SPN and most people on there think he has the mental mind of a 3 y/o or a baby. How is this possible to think with his storylines? It doesn’t make sense to me. I wasn’t in the fandom, just an avid show watcher, and I saw him similar to Amara and how she’s an adult that grew up fast except he was just born grown but naive because the world is complex. So how do people get to him having a baby mind? It feels ableist to me but I can’t figure out how to articulate why (like when someone has developmental disabilities and someone says, “They have the mind of a _y/o,” when that person’s needs/skills/etc are more complex) and I was wondering if you could shine some light on why you think this happens. I don’t think people understand why other people have uncomfortable feelings surrounding baby/toddler/kid!Jack but I can’t remove it from accidental ableism. I’ve tried talking to people about it on TikTok but they either double down or say that it’s my opinion. However, I don’t feel like canon supports theirs. Thank you. I love you your posts about Jack and your insight. Good work.

hi, thanks :3

genuinely I don’t know, and I ask myself that every single time I go through spn tiktok lmao. the best I can figure is, for one, TikTok is the app where media literacy and nuance go to die like dogs. there’s no arguing with anybody there unless you get lucky (source: I’ve argued).

two, I think genuinely it comes from the over-saturation of baby!jack content in the fandom, both in and out of tumblr, and the extremely minimal amount of content where he’s actually treated with nuance and complexity. like, it exists, but only in very small circles that the majority of the fandom clearly ignores. from what I’ve seen most of spn-tok is focused on TFW or Dean or Destiel and don’t generally care about Jack that much, so it kinda makes sense that they’d just run with the most prevalent idea of jack and not really think about it in the long run, or when they watch the show.

a lot of the arguments I’ve seen literally boil down to “he wears Velcro sneakers” and “he doesn’t know [insert thing]” or just his general social awkwardness/unawareness (which Cas displayed all the time in the early seasons but never got outright infantilized for). like look at this:

and there’s millions more comments like this, unfortunately. I don’t mean to speak for everyone, but at least for me, the body language and specific mannerisms Alex put into his portrayal of Jack is what resonated the most as an autistic thing, naïveté and poor social skills aside of course. Like, he fidgets/stims constantly—

and none of this is scripted for him to do, either! Alex just decided it worked, and he was right!!

—and to see these very blatant autistic traits be reduced down to “portrayal of a child/toddler” is downright sickening, especially when plenty of other autistic fans have pointed it out and expressed to Alex that they relate to Jack and even asked if he had done it on purpose because it was so well done.

what I’m personally confused on is how many people will double down on jack being a child like it’s driftwood in the ocean. like, going back to my argument, I gave the other person multiple points in the show that make it obvious jack is intended to be an adult. Harper, the beer, any of the trauma he’s endured; the works. and all they had to say to that was “you do you I guess.” and it’s like what do you mean, ‘you do you’? I’m giving you actual examples that happen in the show, and I’m asking you to think ‘hey, maybe if jack flirted with a girl and talked nonstop about what it’s like to fall in love and have sex for an entire episode and had his dad offer to go to a dive bar for bucket-list hookups in the episode after, maybe he isn’t a child.’

but again, this is TikTok, so asking for any kind of self examination is asking for too much.

it just strikes me as odd. it’s odd and confusing and horribly frustrating that people are dying on this hill like it’s some kind of civic duty. like, why does it matter to you so much to see Jack as a child? why is it so important for you to think of him that way, that you just ignore canon evidence and autistic voices to make yourself feel right? what was even weirder was they were autistic themselves, and said they wouldn’t dream of infantilizing him, but here we are. their reasoning was “he’s literally 3 by the end of the show,” and that was it. And of course they weren’t wrong, but if you look at every time Jack or anyone else acknowledges his age:

D: “how old do you think you are?”

J: “3 days, 17 hours and 42 minutes”

Dean shrugs and lets him drink beer.

M: “You should be six months old.”

J: “I am…sort of.”

Mary shrugs and treats Jack like a teenager from there on out

M: “Do you ever hang out? I mean, with kids your own age?”

J: “Well, I’m two…enty. I’m twenty…two. I’m twenty-two.”

While the show acknowledges Jack’s actual age, it’s arguably on the same level of acknowledgment of Cas being literally older than time, because what people strangely fail to remember is that Jack is not completely human and doesn’t have the natural aging or developmental process that humans do. He’s three in the same way Vision is three, and Vision is already married with children. Beyond that, there are plenty of times when Jack is referred to as a teenager or treated like one, like Dean’s “he’s a millennial” joke in Last Holiday (wrongly termed but the intent is still there). Hell, even in the scripts they’ll directly say things like:

“Jack is spiraling out, a teenage powder keg,” (13x06 Tombstone, deleted writer’s draft)

“Kelly can’t help but smile, so impressed by the man he’s become, but not about to let him out of her sight,” (14x08 Byzantium, prod. draft)

that make it pretty clear Jack is functionally an adult despite his unnatural age, just like Cas or Amara or even Emma (also the added bonus that Jack explicitly hates being called a child or treated like one, but people literally reacted to that like “oh silly baby wants to be in charge like a grownup” so, like, I don’t even know what to do with that) (and banking off of that, every other time Jack is explicitly put into an adult situation, like flirting with Harper and literally asking Dean how to have sex, sooo many notes on that gif set were the same parroted “nooo baby boy don’t corrupt your innocent mind!! dean is such a bad influence 😂😂😂😂”, so the obtuseness is very intentional). I try not to be accusatory when I talk about the way Jack is treated in the fandom, as a general for online discussion and because I know it’s largely unintentional, but I really do think Destiel (and Sastiel) have some hand in it.

If you look at the majority of Baby!Jack content, it all centers around how domestic either ship is with baby!jack, how good Dean is with kids (baby jack) and how much of a sweet older sister Claire would be, etc. It’s all for the sake of domesticity. It’s the white picket fence family dream that canon TFW2.0 doesn’t really quite have. It’s to make Dean and Cas and Sam and Cas and Claire and Rowena and whoever else, a softer version of themselves. It’s never actually about Jack. He’s just the cannon fodder; the prop; the dress setting; the accessory. He’s there to make everyone else look better and to fuel them forward. No matter how much people want to argue that it’s “giving Jack the childhood he should’ve had,” we both know it’s not actually about him, because canon coming in with the steel chair again: Jack literally chose to be an adult. He hates being considered a child and has never expressed anything more than wanting to be a regular teenager. And like I said, people on spn-tok are naturally Destiel centered, so it’s honestly not very surprising that they just can’t let go of this content cow because it’s just too cute and wholesome and precious of course, despite it being rampant ableism and just generally annoying to people who actually do care about Jack in a deeper sense. Gag me. So maybe that explains the doubling down, but then what gets even more confusing to me is, like, you can have a domestic family AU that doesn’t rely on erasing a character to fit a specific image. You can have a domestic family AU without being ableist about it. You don’t have to do any of the things you keep consistently doing. You even fucking already it in the show! Canon TFW2.0 is dysfunctional on various levels, but so was TFW, and so were just Sam and Dean. It’s simply their dynamic, and it’s what adds to their family bond being what it is to begin with. Nothing you’re doing is something you need to.

I wanna stop before this gets longer than it has to be, but for one final thought I think the general lack of care for autistic people in any space is part of it, too. It’s why half of our representation is painfully inaccurate or egregiously offensive; it’s why fandoms of media with autistic/autistic-coded characters almost always rampantly infantilize them (cough cough SheRa). And like with Alex’s mannerism choices, it’s the distinct yet subconscious connection between autistic behaviors and childlike behaviors, because autistic people are so largely treated as incapable innocent children and cannon fodder for their autism warrior parents; both of which reflect like direct sunlight in Baby!Jack tropes. And it’s why people just don’t care enough to do anything about it, to heed any criticisms about the harm they’re doing, because to them it’s not harmful. It’s not a problem that’s doing any perceivably “real” damage because they haven’t been personally hurt by it (except when it comes to unfair Dean criticism or Sam or Cas criticism, because that’s clearly more important than ableist rhetoric and representation erasure), and probably because they already hold those views to autistic people in the real world.

The world at large does not care for autistic people, or disabled people in general. Nothing that hurts us is considered anything serious. Nothing that matters to us is considered valuable or worth respecting. And because of that, we already struggle in the real world day by day, so we turn to online spaces for connection and sharing our interests safely. We turn here for community, only to be met with the same indifference and rejection as the real world, because the same people we’re trying to avoid are here too, and then we have nowhere else.

•••

**im probably going to make this a separate post but I also want to talk about the weird cognitive dissonance that the fandom has with babyjack and how it’s pretty much considered “acceptable infantilization,” and how so many people in the fandom have said they want more complex jack but still engage with content that actively erases Jack’s complexity and relies on that erasure to make him what he is).

***edit: tags 4 reach, absolutely feel free to ask for removal! ik it’s out of the blue but you guys have had some of the better takes on jack lol @angelsdean @hauntedpearl @uh-ohspaghettio @queermania

[spaceumbredoggos]

There has been a criminal absence of recent Yandere Bill Cipher x Reader headcanons, so I made some. Also, the tumblr folks eat this shit up. It’s hilarious. No one cares about my Kenz fic that I pour my heart and soul into, but when it comes to Yandere Bill, you thirst for the man. I am currently only taking headcanon requests (will elaborate later) because art takes forever to make.

All these HC’s also apply to Bill’s Relationship with my self insert OC. Just if they didn’t exist, like tumblr thinks they don’t. Please give So Much for Stardust the love it deserves. I’ll appreciate it.

Bill is very touchy feely to a criminal degree. (That’s as far as I’m gonna go because I don’t wanna have to put a content warning, and I don’t wanna come across as triggering. In my mind, it’s in line with Bill’s character to be that free candy van uncle.)

Does Bill possess Y/N? Does grass grow? Does a bear shit in the woods? That’s one of his favorite things to do. And he’s really good at covering his tracks. You bet your ass Y/N will wake up fucking wounded and sore from frequent possessions.

If Y/N dies, which would be pretty rare given Bill’s obsession, they’re gonna end up as a sinner in hell with their soul owned by Bill. Bill is higher than god himself on the hierarchy of my headcanoned Hellaverse if he did exist (which would be fucking hilarious, but given how much I hate Vivzie for various reasons, I doubt Hirsch would accept a collab since Vivzie has a heinous track record. My recent hyperfixation of the Hellaverse is clearly showing.) Bill would act almost like an overlord this way, and it’ll be sorta like a Val and Angel Dust relationship that’s written better. (I’m skirting around the most taboo parts of this to avoid triggering people including myself.)

Odds are, Y/N wouldn’t die. Bill has plans for them after all. So good luck avoiding his agenda of building a portal. Also, he’ll probably leave Alex Hirsch alone a lot, which may or may not lead to a drought in his Gravity Falls content. Bill’s likely to start a cult at this point to hunt Y/N down, specifically out of all those down bad fankids who’d let him do unspeakable things to them.

Bill will resort to all sorts of psychological torture. Maybe even projecting himself into your video games and other media that you delve into, with various alternate versions of himself (I’m glaring at you, Volo from Pokemon Legends Arceus.)

With every single fandom you hold dear tainted (and he’s gonna do a lot of unspeakable things to fandoms), you will be molded into serving him. If his interpretation from character AI taught me anything (which I no longer support) it’s that he needs total obedience from a slave and would stop at nothing to have that.

Good luck going off the grid to avoid him, because that’s when shit gets 100 times worse. With no contact with those you care about, he’d start driving you crazy. And if you managed the injuries he did to your body when he possessed it successfully, you won’t be able to manage any further injury that happens from your eventual insanity.

Bill has a blood kink times 11. He’ll do anything to make you bleed, but not bleed out. Blood and pain is what he feeds on.

He’s going to be speaking in Y/N’s head all the fucking time. He’ll be mixing his voice directly into Y/N’s own thoughts, taking over their entire fantasies, and quite possibly drive them to the point of dissociating in a psych ward for any sort of relief if they don’t build a portal for him to cross over.

This isn’t a scenario where Y/N is blind to all the red flags, and if it were, there’d still be nothing they could really do. Y/N is powerless, riddled with fear, and trying to flee and fight at any turn. Bill truly has them trapped from the moment he laid his possessive eye on them.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi Ms Raven! I just wanted to ask what're your thoughts on the new twst manga chapter?? Personally, I'm not the biggest fan, but give credit where credit is due; the art is gorgeous and I love the Leona's characterization. I still have gripe with the MC change and I still feel it was unnecessary, I feel Yuuken would've been the same in the role if he wasn't replaced by Yuuka. I can't help but think that the MC change was for self insert purposes than anything else 💀

I believe I went over my initial impression of the Episode of Savanaclaw’s first chapter in this post. To summarize: pretty art (especially the eyelashes) and nice visual storytelling that expands on what the visual novel format of the game laid out as groundwork. (However, if I had one minor qualm with the artwork, it’s that I don’t believe the mangaka’s style necessarily suits TWST in all scenarios; for example, sometimes the characters make expressions that, while beautiful, make them appear like completely different characters for like a single panel.) Overall, I thought the chapter was pretty good, if not a tad bit long due to all of the exposition and recap we had to go through again.

One element that I didn’t really discuss in that reaction post was our new Yuu, Yuuka Hirasaka. This is largely because I personally don’t have an vested interest in the Yuus 💦 and quite honestly, the introduction of another one (which replaces a previous one) made me equal parts excited and disappointed. I don’t have anything against a new character, but I’m disappointed that no manga!Yuu will ever receive a fully realized character arc; each one will (assumedly) be cut short to make way for a new Yuu, which means I can never see myself getting invested in one of them (since I know they’ll just go away at the end of the episode). It just doesn’t feel satisfying to me, and I’m moderately concerned about how reintroducing the Yuu and the episodes leading up to the current point in the plot will work for future episodes which get continuously lengthier, more complex, and build on the relationships established in previous episodes.

Yuuka is also just at a point where it’s too early for me to judge whether I like her or not (though I know many are excited at the prospect of a Yuu that is a “strong independent woman that takes no one’s shit”; this seems to be the popular fandom interpretation of her). I’ll reserve my judgment for now; I want to see more of how she interacts with the characters and the world first.

I understand that everyone may have their own reservations about Yuuka (and it’s totally fine if you find yourself not enjoying her), but let’s be careful not to point fingers about it 😅 For all we know, the changing of Yuus per episode could be a very deliberate and story-driven move (a la the popular “time loop” theory). We can’t make assumptions about the intent behind it, especially when we don’t yet have the context of the entire main story being completed.

Additionally, while it may be validating for the (largely) female fanbase that self inserts to have its representation in a female Yuu in official TWST media, I don’t think the change was just to appease a demographic. It may be such that it opens up interesting avenues for engagement with Leona (who, canonically, “respects women”). As I’ve stated in a previous post though, I don’t think the change will be that big, but it could expand more on Leona’s character by demonstrating how exactly he interacts with women whom he supposedly “respects”. We’ve only really had vague information and fandom speculation on this point, and I, for one, welcome any and all new lore 😌

Yuuka offers a slightly different perspective than Yuuken because of little details like this, and that is one advantage of changing the lenses through which we view the story every episode. Again, not everyone will be happy with the direction of the manga, but let’s try to look at the positives ^^ Lots of Yuus also means lots of possibilities, yeah?

[dearheart42regenerated]

What is "Vega"?

"I told him there's no way you'd be foolish enough to believe in a myth like Vega...looks like I was wrong."

so I was rewatching a few scenes and that line from Kane in the 2-part finale suddenly got my brain going brrrr about WORLDBUILDING!!! because if "Vega" was a thing completely made up by Kane, why would he talk as if the idea was an already-existing myth?? the implications are delicious to me, sooo. here's my own personal overly-elaborate theory/headcanon... *insert drumroll here*

Vega = "Anonymous"

by that I mean Vega is basically this universe's version of the hacker group...albeit much more focused and serious than ours. they're trying to save the world, after all.

there are many rumors, myths and conspiracy theories about what and where Vega is - "a spy organization in Cleveland" is just one of the bigger ones (for whatever reason lmao.) most of these stories have been planted by the members of Vega themselves, to make it all the more impossible to find them or prove their existence. they do their work quietly and thoroughly, without any announcement or warning, and any traces left of who they might be are either scrubbed or quickly swallowed up by all the tinfoil-hat "evidence" circulating around.

Vega is anywhere and anyone. they exist as a sprawling collective of spies, hacktivists, pirates, coders, digital archivists AND, perhaps most crucially...guerilla data cablers. any person with these skills is welcome to be part of the group, so long as they commit to The Priority.

"The Priority" is Vega's single unifying mission: to restore open, unrestricted internet to all corners of the post-apocalyptic world, and reconnect every pocket of civilization scattered around Earth. they believe achieving "complete connection" again is the key to saving humanity from total extinction.

are they gonna save the world with wifi? yes. yes they are.

there is no chain of command, no counsel, no head "in charge" of Vega handing out missions or telling everyone what to do...which means internal dissent happens a lot. but generally as long as the members all agree to dedicate their efforts to The Priority and work in good faith with each other, almost anything goes idea-wise...and yes, sometimes that does include taking direct action against fascist dictators. ;)

there are also four basic rules every member must follow while working in the group:

1 - "VEGA IS A MYTH." Vega will continue to "not exist" in the public eye until a two-thirds majority of the members agree that officially revealing themselves to the world is both necessary and unavoidable. they do this to make it harder for bad actors to weaponize their work or use their name for self-serving political gain.

2 - "SECRECY IS MANDATORY." YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB talking about Vega to outsiders is forbidden, unless inviting someone to join the cause. members revealing their identities to each other is also forbidden. anyone who publicly claims credit for something in Vega's name has either eventually been exposed as a fake, or thoroughly framed as a fake by the other members if one goes rogue.

3 - "CENSORSHIP IS THE ENEMY." having open access to the world's knowledge is absolutely sacred to Vega - it is THE "why" behind the "what" of their mission! so while members are free to act on their own, attacking libraries, journalists or the media is both forbidden and unforgivable. the only exception is when they find a media network/organization with censors or restrictions placed on it - in which case, they will only act to lift those restrictions, so people have the ability to find all the information for themselves.

4 - "CONNECTION IS THE PRIORITY." whatever the members do, their plans must be in service of Vega's mission in some way...whether it's restoring or preserving an ancient website, breaking into a new location to install or repair data cables, or hacking a corrupt politician's computer system.

there's a delicious irony in Kane using the "myth" of Vega to capture Mike. at some point in the future, the true Vega will play a key role in helping the Burners free the people of Deluxe from Kane's clutches once and for all...and finally, reconnecting all of Detroit with the outside world.

(also VEGA INVITES CHUCK AND JULIE TO JOIN THEM AND THEY GET TO DO COOL HEROIC SUPER-SECRET HACKER/SPY STUFF TO SAVE THE DAY AND IT'S FUCKIGN AWESOME)

[synthmusic91]

quick thoughts on past lives (2023) dir. celine song

the movie is very. sparse. what was there was okay, not poorly executed, but nothing was really new. it felt like the movie wanted to send a certain message and pushed the characters through that rather than 1. letting the characters breathe and finding the message that way or 2. finding the characterization that would land them at the intended (and well-thought-out, right? right???) conclusion. sadly this didn't happen. the themes were quite muddled. past lives is a movie that seeks to be more than what it is and thus only succeeds in being dogmatic.

i know hae sung and na young were each other's childhood friends and first loves, but there's an entire life beyond childhood. why didn't they get over each other*? admittedly there might be a bit of a culture difference here, because I've never really understood the thing with childhood best friends that pops up so much in Korean and Japanese media, but. people grow up. hae sung's first love stopped existing when na young emigrated. for a movie that prides itself on pragmatism, it ignores that simple fact that should've been evident a quarter of the way in: na young is gone.

that's pretty sad, but then why was there twenty-four years of grief on hae sung's part, when he's never had to feel the ache of leaving his homeland? was his childhood really the crowning moment in his life, for na young to be the source of so many of his ideals? in that case, this should be a different kind of movie because this poor man's life must be bleak as hell.

also, this is in contrast to nora, who has every reason to mourn her past life IN KOREA. that's what this is really about, isn't it? she only looks him up as a joke (*so my bad, I guess she really did get over him). throughout the movie, the reason for her grief has little to do with hae sung specifically and everything to do with the pull she feels between the US and Korea.

then arthur. we don't see much of him but he poses a lot of interesting questions during that bedtime conversation that nora doesn't give any satisfactory answers to. like, how DOES he make her world bigger? nora's responses either 1. dodge the question or 2. sound like she's lying (because it's out of character given her behavior so far).

those last two paragraphs really solidify it for me: adult nora is a callous person. i don't know if this has anything to do with emigrating, but it really doesn't matter---what matters is that we know 1. she has grief and 2. she clearly hasn't processed it ("[re: being a crybaby] I realized no one really cared, so I stopped."). she's hiding from it!! she's been hiding from it for the entire fucking movie!!!

this is what irks me about a lot of relationships between white men and asian women in general (and in case someone crawls up my ass for this, i don't mean all of them, love is love, or so i'm told)---there's a lot of hiding on both sides. working to bridge the culture gap can function as a distraction from one's own issues. and there's an escapist and cowardly comfort in knowing that the other party doesn't understand how mundane and mortifying they really feel like they are. that's what I feel like happened between arthur and nora. to nora, arthur is evidence that she belongs in the US, and to arthur, nora is someone exotic and unreachable, and as long as they remain like that they can avoid thinking about how mundane their lives really are. arthur challenges this avoidance during the bedtime talk, but nora doesn't let it get anywhere. she is HIDING FROM HERSELF!!

unfortunately, since nora is a self insert, the writer/director doesn't notice ANY OF THIS!! and that's the thing about real life, and one's own experiences. these things don't fit into narratives!!! it's not as easy as recreating a single experience (in this case, her childhood sweetheart and her husband together at a bar)!!! that happenstance was the shell of an effect of a million different factors, not just a boy's tepid and half-formed feelings for a callous little girl. this entire movie is grounded in the ghost of an effect of something that might've touched me but didn't actually.

lastly, making her self insert always get the best grades in her class and also having that guy (who is kind and normal and NOT the deranged stalker that realistically would be the only kind of person hung up on her for 24 fucking years) be hung up on her for 24 fucking years all while she barely acknowledges his existence...is extremely fucking cringe

[inchidentally]

babe they're probably going to interact a the 2024 drivers photo today, as well as hanging out like they always do throughout the season? and even aside from that, car|ando is literally the biggest PR bromance for F1, Netflix, official social media accs, sports media, anything golf/F1 related, fan accs etc etc. there's going to be plenty of them being put together as always!

and unless you're going the car|ando truther route, nothing abt their relationship has changed over the years apart from Lando getting older and more confident? otherwise...

(since as uszh I've got variations on this ask and I already repeat myself so much, I'm going to throw the usual 'here's why you shouldn't rpf truth yourself into actual emotional instability' below - ignore if you've read it a million times)

listen I cut my teeth on rpf enjoying ships out from bromances but not once did I think any of the dudes were using 'hiding in plain sight' to have DL relationships or fucking bc well… actual closeted men are terrified of being outed and even more terrified of their bros thinking they're actually into them. closeted men go through any amount of hoops to keep their actual hookups or DL relationships private. fangirls are literally never going to even accidentally be allowed into that world. (I also have zero time for every single girlfriend being accused of being a "beard" or PR - like damn why doesn't that ever happen for ugly male celebrities I wonder why is it only ever hot guys in the closet kdgfjahgflasj)

the bigger and louder the bromance the more heterosexual it is. straight men in particular need excuses and certain codes like bromances and ferda to express physical affection and emotional vulnerability w each other. so think of it like when girl friends express platonic physical and emotional intimacy except with massive toxic insecurity involved. I slip slide on my gender on an exhausting basis but it's so easy to divide being platonically affectionate w someone vs the people I actually want or am sleeping with. (and not to go all elgeebeeteeplus here but if someone were making guesses about me then it would be the girls I was too anxious to physically touch or get too comfortable around who are the ones I clearly want)

so that's why I'm like, sure for fun ship Carlos Daniel and Lando with the millions of guys they have these bromances with why not - I do! but you'll end up missing their actual really quite sweet friendships if you constantly choose to selectively ignore them referring to each other as 'brothers', or how men's protective almost fatherly sides come out around Lando, or how Lando's introversion and anxiety finds comfort in big, loud self-assured guys who fill in the silence Lando has said he hates sometimes.

that is actually so meaningful and real compared to turning Lando into the feminized/childlike self-insert steak that is genuinely believed to be tossed around by other driver's teeth. I cannot relate to someone choosing to constantly rewrite a conspiracy theory every time these men choose to be with women and choose to not even speak for weeks or months and also openly having far more intimate and important friendships with other guys. that sounds utterly exhausting and all for nothing.

just give up on thinking Lando is "really" fucking any of these F1 guys and enjoy the rpf for what it is and also get to appreciate their friendships for what they are. your life will have so much less self-inflicted pain.

.

.

.

.like, thank god that so far no one in the landoscar ship is in denial that Lily is Oscar's gf and they're solid and that Lando is loving his global slut era. nobody's in hysterics whenever Lily or a possible hookup of Lando's appears. (and none of us are spreading hatred for Lando's other male friends)

[miss-atena]

Creepypasta au post? (without the Self Insert par of them, because I will make a separate post for it lol)

Okay so, apparently there are at least 2 or 3 of you that????? really want to know bout my creepypasta aus???? so I guess this is like, me rambling bout them now lol if you don't mind long rambles, it is all below the cut

I have my main creepypasta "kinda canon compliant?". It is in quotations cuz like, it is a slender mansion au, but I also tried to make the characters as believable of being killers since their teens as I could and just incorporated all my headcanons into it. Imma call it Slender Manor Au. So, basically slender is... a cryptid older than life on Earth or maybe even Earth itself! He is from a species called by humans "operators" (every slender brother I include is one. I don't include the nasty one ofc cuz I hate his guts teehee) And each subspecies of them seems to be capable of living by draining life energy and by consuming some form of emotions from the beings around them. In Slender's case, it's fear and other variations of it. So, no one really knows his intentions, they just know he chooses to appear to the broken and insane to make "deals" with them in return for work. That is how every CRP met him, he appears to them or in some cases, he talked with them through BEN, and made deals with them. The catch, since he is such a malicious creature? he dictates when they did enough work to get their part of the deal. Which... no one alive did yet! So basically he manipulates them. If they break any rules, he also is not afraid of doing any form of torture to get them "in line". He is very strict with his rules, but besides that, he really doesn't care about the pastas, so they fend for themselves by gaining a bit of money Slender steals from his brothers. They just can't kill anyone in the manor, but hurting, bullying, etc. is nothing to Slender. He is evil, like really evil. The manor is in its own little pocket dimension controlled by slender, which can be teleported at will to any woods that are part of his domains, which are the Americas. The Manor has non euclidean properties, like rooms that are in the same place as other rooms, but they don't connect in any way, just like being capable of creating new rooms depending on who Slender makes a deal. Example: When X Virus made his deal with Slenderman, a laboratory appeared in the Manor.

You think I'm done after that? YOU FOOL I HAVE OTHER AUS MUAHAHAHAHA

I have a Cyberpunk AU too! The basics of it are: In the year 10023, humanity lives in a new Pangea, where humanity is scattered across some walled-up metropolises. Due to the rotting process of the Earth, thanks to pollution, supernatural beings had to flee their homes and are trying to invade the metropolises. The government can't let the media find out about this, so what do they do? They make a contract with the mysterious leader of an underground organization who specializes in taking down these supernatural beings, and now the Creepypasta organization works alongside the government as much as they can continue their old methods of killing innocents if needed for their purposes. I am working on a Google doc, which includes: the basic world-building (what I just said but bigger and with more details), a hierarchy, areas of specialization, and a bit about all the characters I include in my CRP universes.

The next AU I have is a Post-Apocalyptic AU. In this AU, due to humans being little bastards that have to mess with every single species they come in contact with (and maybe a bit inspired by Shadow of the Colossus), humanity woke up just a very dangerous and maleficent species that is the fallen angels on earth (aka Slendy and his operator pals). So slowly, in a matter of a decade, maybe, most humans are dead, and the ones that aren't have to scavenge, hunt and kill to survive, some even falling into cannibalism! Fun! Joking aside, in this AU the CRP people are survivors in certain factions, some having been mutated by being in contact with these fallen angels. Also working on a Google doc of it, and it will include a little explanation of each faction, and the characters too. I have changed some of the characters so they can be part of the universe, since it wouldn't make sense to have, for example, Sally as a ghost from a long period of time ago.

The last one I can talk about is pretty self-explanatory, so I may just delve into the character change choices for it too, but it is a Furry AU. It's literally just CRP but the characters are Furries (or more like Anthros but whatever). The characters I have designed are Jeff, Nina, Jane, Slenderman, BEN, EJ, LJ, Toby, Sally, Lost Silver, and Cody (X Virus), though I do have ideas for Jason the Toymaker and Liu. Jeff is a Sphynx cat cuz haha, burned man is the bald cat. Nina is a Spanish Moth, mostly cuz of the colors fit her being a scene queen. Toby is a Racoon cuz... He already looks like a raccoon. Sally is a Cub of a Brown Bear, which is due to Mr Death, her plushie, which btw i turned into a little human plushie. EJ is a vampire bat. Bats are nocturnal and have evolved to know where they are without seeing. also the vampire part is cuz... he eats people. it fits lol. BEN is a Sand Gazelle, cuz they live a long time without water and that is fitting. Jane is generally a black and white moth, i don't have the name of the species yet. Slenderman is a Praying Mantis cuz it looks fucking cool, i don't accept any critique of that, imagine a 10 ft tall praying mantis? so fucking terrifying. Lost Silver is a Black and White Banded California King Snake. I thought it would be funny for the character with no limbs to be a snake, i'm so sorry. Cody is a Deathstalker scorpion, because it stings. and it is venomous. it fits. LJ was a ride to make a choice but i love it, he is a Red Macaw,, because of Rainbow Jack. The red macaw has a lot of color variations in it, and since it follows canon lore for LJ, LJ turned black and white later, so it works. The others i had an idea to were Jason, which would be a peacock, and Liu which would be a Savannah cat to match Jeff, in a certain way. I have more "aus" kinda, but they are Self Insert and Shipping focused, and one of them is my Fanfic au, which ofc i can't talk about due to being spoilers for it, but if you are interested in being "part" of the Slender Manor AU in a special way, follow @curse-you-slenderman , my fanfic blog, and read Curse You, Slender Man! On AO3!

[marshmallowprotection]

Heya, Kait! Been a while, huh? A lot has happened honestly. I started to post some of my art here, even though I'm not that motivated to do digital art much-

I don't want to make this too long but I've actually gotten way more comfortable with self-shipping with the second character I told you about! I'd like to tell you a bit about him, too. His name is Yatora Yaguchi, he is from Blue Period!

Recently I've actually gotten a bit more better at my art and even a bit more confident all thanks to this media and especially Yatora. His experiences with art made me feel seen because I relate so much to how he feels and the way he learns more about art had opened my eyes in so much stuff about art as well. I'd love to ramble about how much Yatora means to me but it's gonna be extremely long, honestly.

He is a very emotional and insecure guy deep inside and he tries his best with art and even to have good relationships with the people around him, even if he doesn't fully agree with them. He is friendly and I love his appearance a lot. The fact he cries easily and blushes very easily makes me appreciate him even more, he's so cool istg- I find how hard he works very admirable and so much stuff about him.

I still tend to focus on Saeyoung as well sometimes but my main focus is Yatora for now. Although, I do want to focus more on the redhead, Saeyoung has also helped me through a lot in my life and I feel grateful for both him and Yatora.

I tried redoing Saeyoung's route once more and I still feel myself loving this precious redhead. I just wish I could focus on the both of them equally. Even if I could do a crossover between the two, I'm not really sure about it so I just imagine two different versions of myself in their worlds.

But I am kinda sad there's not a lot of fics, fanart (ngl it's mostly ship art even though there's.. no romance in the actual series) and other stuff of Yatora. At least we have an anime of this series and a lot of manga panels of this boy, even official merch and more but I can always write self-inserts or even random prompts I find online. Even though the manga is still ongoing, I'm thinking of not doing many self-inserts with Yatora yet. I do wanna see the whole story fully before inserting myself into it. Though I know it's gonna take months, even years.

Other stuff.. I'm at my grandma's! I'm still kinda sad I can't use a bike because it has some problems, we still have cats, chickens, actual ground outside I can walk for a while and even going to the beach by my uncle's car. And I won't lie, it feels.. lonely a lot here? I don't do much during the day, sure I draw here and there but that's it mostly.

The people that used to come out to play with balls and even ride their bikes aren't really here anymore. They grew up and stopped coming. So I'm just trying to get through the days as much as I can.

And one thing that actually happened recently.. remember when I named you after a Snow Wraith, Kait? Sadly, the game shut down a while ago. And the thing is that it actually shut down the exact same day I came at my grandma's. I don't mind that I wasn't on at the last moments of this game but man, it's still something.

It's insane how all my dragons must be at the hidden world by now. I actually started that account when I was here at my grandma's. So the game ending the same day I finally came at my grandma's makes me feel some type of way.

I actually used to play that game for at least 7+ years and then settled on working on one account, no matter how long it took, which was this one. I actually had most dragons but them making everything free at the end which allowed me to get everything and get them to the max instantly felt kinda.. off.

So for 2-3 days. I flew around with every single one of my dragons, fed them fully and took off their saddles before saying goodbye. I took screenshots of every single one of them, too. It feels weird but this game was really fun sometimes.

I think I'll end my rambling here, I'd love to send asks about Yatora and Saeyoung and ramble about them. Yatora gets really flustered just like our redhead Saeyoung and it's making me smile a lot. Although at Yatora's side, he isn't exactly a dude who teases someone else or flirts. I love how even though Yatora and Saeyoung have some similarities, they are still different.

I hope you have been well, Kait. I miss sending asks, haha. Please let me know how you are, I'd love to know and catch up with you!

Hello, hello! I'm happy to hear that you're doing better. I'm sorry that your favorite dragon game shut down its servers. I've had two games do that this year and it really bites. It definitely makes me wish there was a way to get tangible offline versions of our favorite games so it would never be lost, but that's a tough bargain in our society. All that leaves us with is the memories, and that's not too bad, because we'll always have those.

I don't know anything about Blue Period but I've seen the art before and it looks pretty! I think it's great when you find a character who's capable of reaching you and showing you something that you didn't know about yourself until you dove into the story. Like, it's important to have those experiences with characters, regardless of if we love it or not.

Sometimes, you need a hard mirror to look at instead of a soft way. I feel that way about some characters. As much as I love growth from tenderness, damn, sometimes we need a smack in the face to see a new angle we never imagined before, you know what I mean? I get it from the strangest places! So, yeah. It's not weird.

When it comes to tying to your different loves together, there is no right or wrong way. I definitely enjoy crossovers where I can find the best way to see myself with all my favorite characters, or at least, two of them because I love world-building and seeing where that goes...

I am just that kind of person, though! I can't tell you how interesting it is to have my brain debate the best way to tie together Obey Me and Mystic Messenger or Mystic Messenger and Tears of Themis or what have you!

I'd love to hear you babble about your new love whenever you get the chance to! I've got a lot of free time and I love talking to my buddies online about everything, not just MM.

So, if you get the urge out of the blue, just send me an ask!

If you're doubtful of that working out, though, don't worry about trying to tie them all together, friend. You don't need to tie those universes together if it's hard or you're getting comfort in different ways from each character. Not everything has to unite, sometimes you just need to have things pushed apart!

I'm doing alright these days. Some days are tough, some days are easier, and some are in the middle. Pain flares have been more often these days, though. It makes it hard to write so I'm not putting out as much as I want, but hey, health comes first and that's just how it is. I can't nudge myself into exhaustion. Saeran wouldn't like that and it's that fact that keeps me taking care of myself. Cheesy, but it works, I think that's a good thing.

Right now, I'm working on some self-care. I want to put out another installment in my self-insert series with Ray... I've got the plot set up and I'm so close to getting things where I want them to be.

[maryellencarter]

so apparently having a new lupin thing i am distinctly enjoying (lupin zero) is what it took to get me around to watching the lupin thing i had not seen yet that i really hadn't heard anything positive about (part 6, not counting "the times" which i have already seen and loved the hell out of, but have not managed to watch since july because... you know)

thoughts so far, as of finishing episode 7 (i'm watching the subs then the dub for each episode, which helps me follow details better but definitely takes longer):

* wow. so you know how i like to say about part 5 that, love it or hate it, that is a piece of media that knew exactly what it wanted to do and went for it? this is the opposite. the only episode so far that seemed to have an actual goal in mind is the one where the goal was "i am going to retell an ernest hemingway story, and also insert into the dialogue the titles of every other hemingway story in the same collection", which sure did do what it set out to do, but was it a thing worth setting out to do?

...well, given that i am told the guest writers for each non-main-plot episode in the first half were all instructed "you must base your episode on a specific piece of crime fiction", i have to admit that playing the world's most pretentious version of the game where you try to write a paragraph without any E's in it was... probably the most Mamoru Oshii possible way of complying with a stupid requirement, and definitely hewed closer to the spirit of the rule than the one where NPCs with names relevant to Ellery Queen did fuck-all of importance.

episode by episode:

* "enter sherlock holmes". in which sherlock holmes looks a great deal like somebody tried to make a 2D version of first!jigen and failed to grasp why first!jigen is sexy. also in the english version all the brits are dubbed by american-sounding americans, which is the most auditorily disorienting version of sherlock holmes i have heard (although i must admit i never did get around to watching the veggietales version, but if there's one thing the veggietales guys have demonstrated their commitment to doing from day one, it's accents... and now I'm humming "oh no, what we gonna do")

where the fuck was i? right. so albert gets worfed to demonstrate that holmes is a badass. why on earth albert would be doing spy work personally in a country where he *doesn't* have millions i've strings to pull, i have no fucking idea. also him going straight to "shoot myself in the head with my last bullet" as an exit strategy compares really badly to the bit in part 5 which... either it was supposed to mirror this, or somebody just failed to do their research, but that moment near the end of part 5 where jigen's on the run alone, down to his last bullet, there are multiple guys about to come around the corner and capture or kill him, and then albert rescues him.

and yeah, that's a moment where you have to wonder if it crossed jigen's mind to use his last bullet for himself instead of going down fighting a hopeless fight, but jigen has never been someone who -- i can't recall a single moment in 53 years that we've seen him actively ready to die. he does plenty of self-destructive shit, but even when a fight can't logically be won, he keeps fighting, even if all he can do is run his mouth. having albert jump straight to suicide in a scene that *has* to be a callback... it doesn't feel right thematically and it doesn't speak to a great understanding of albert as a character (such as he's been so far).

oh yeah, also there was the intial setup for the antagonist secret society "the raven", whose mysterious hooded executioner blew up a guy in protective custody in scotland yard. they weren't terribly impressive. even though i haven't actually seen twcfm, only read spoilers, i feel like a creepy bird-themed secret society is maybe something you're not gonna beat that show on using well?

* "detective and crook". in which jigen and goemon also get worfed to further prove that holmes is a badass. jeez, guys, just give him purple eyes and lavender hair already, huh? lupin also continues his mary-poppins-esque habit of never explaining anything. we do get jigen riding on the back of fujiko's motorcycle, which is a rarity (and keeping his hands where they belong, as opposed to Lupin). fujiko sticks a scroll of paper down her cleavage a la first contact, so that the camera can zoom in on it for maximum jiggle physics opportunity. and lupin blows up a whole-ass demolition site full of cops including zenigata and yata -- none of whom get hurt, but *wow*, that's a life choice.

* "adventure along the (replica) transcontinental railroad". in which lupin wears the biggest turban you ever saw, npcs with ellery queen names do nothing much, fujiko gets whole-ass tied to railroad tracks dudley do-right style and nearly beheaded, jigen and goemon ride a bicycle built for two and also pretend to be cosplaying as themselves in order to throw zenigata off the scent (in the dub, goemon suggests that zenigata page lupin to the front desk like a lost child, which is delightfully goemon), and jigen gets to do some fancy trick shooting that i still don't understand after seeing it twice in order to flip a railway switch and send the runaway train onto a siding. he shot a streetlight and something flew out and somehow that made the switch do the thing?

* "the killers in the diner". in which mamoru oshii plays silly buggers with hemingway titles, lupin and jigen in disguise are voiced by other actors until they're revealed (which has barely ever happened... in the english dub at least, i can think of *one* time a disguised lupin was voiced by lex lang for a scene, that's it), fujiko appears to be disguised as an extremely depressed pippi longstocking for reasons that are never explained, and a bunch of japanese people get to take a fairly reasonable stab at pronouncing "dulles". also it's established that fujiko is bad at cooking, which i think might have been fanon previously but i can't think of anywhere else it was actually established.

* "the imperial city dreams of thieves". a two-parter in which lupin gets dropped into a world based on the works of japanese mystery author edogawa ranpo (this was a pen name based on the name "edgar allan poe"). it's pretty solidly paced for the most part, which is not something you can really count on part 6 for so far, but it's also... well.

so. it's a story set in the late 1920s, about a giant mysterious golden clock/orrery from mongolia, guarded by the heirs of genghis khan, one of whom decides that entrusting it to a young female japanese "explorer" (visually coded very much like the white egyptologists of the era, similarly dedicated to bringing back other cultures' precious artifacts for display, and treated as an unquestionably virtuous character) is obviously the wise and correct choice to keep it out of harm's way -- the youthful guardian of the device accompanying the explorer back to japan as a bodyguard and servant, as well as continuing to guard the clock.

the japanese imperial army, who (the episode does not explain) are most of the reason there's all this war and unrest on the mainland that make the clock's guardian decide it's better off in civilized japan (okay the episode *all but* says the civilized part out loud)... where was i? right. the japanese imperial army, who are busy conquering mainland countries in the whole pan-asian empire thing they did in the run-up to world war ii (christ, it's been forever since i studied that part of history... if i recall, their selling point was "asia for the asiatics", as in they wanted white people out, but in practice they wanted to rule all of asia themselves, so it was more like "asia for the japanese empire") -- the japanese imperial army want the clock in order to give it to a puppet dictator they'll install in mongolia. our young explorer, who is the daughter of a powerful... department store conglomerate?... look, i'm sure it packs some kind of an emotional punch in japanese, but now i'm just cracking myself up imagining the heiress of like woolworth's or sears roebuck facing off against the fbi.

anyway. as i was saying. our young heroine declines to give away the clock, as having it on display at her family's department store is clearly the best place for the cultural artifact that determines rulership of mongolia. (i'm being sarcastic. the episode isn't.) kidnapping and shenanigans ensue.

also, as you would expect from an alternate universe story, there are characters who look exactly like the lupin crew. lupin is put into the role of "golden mask", a phantom thief edogawa ranpo created based on that most popular of phantom thieves, arsène lupin (the first). fujiko becomes "black lizard", a femme fatale originally working with the villain and face of the japanese army -- i think the villain's name is daidouji, but i think leia also picked that out for one of jigen's aliases in one of our stories, so either she has something she could explain to me or that's a very confusing coincidence.

goemon, it will turn out, is also his real-world self along with lupin -- i'll get there in a minute. zenigata is a fictional (secondary-fictional) police inspector with a slightly different name and an almost identical hat. and jigen... jigen is one of the factors that make this episode what you might call, on the internet, Problematic.

so. the villain is a very large japanese army guy named colonel daidouji. his ever-present shadow and sidekick is a very, very familiar-looking major whose name is not initially given, and who very nearly manages to put a bullet in lupin on first meeting him.

now, jigen's au version being evil, y'know, it's a hard sell, it's not impossible that i'd buy it if it was done right, but the thing is that you never have to buy it. tv shows have this need to make au versions of the heroes always still have some kind of heroic core. the really steep issue comes with what kind of a hero he turns out to be.

the character who looks like jigen is eventually revealed to be a character named major yoshiaki hongo from the works of a writer named minetaro yamanaka (whose first google result for me is, uh, the wikipedia article on antisemitism in japan, that's... probably not irrelevant to my point here?). major hongo, at least as described in the episode, is a badass soldier who goes undercover to root out corruption, which is all very well and good... except for the part where his little speech about who he is and what he's doing here, in both languages, leads with "fighting for the liberation of asia". aka, as we discussed, conquering it for the japanese empire.

which, together with the whole misappropriating cultural treasures with the enthusiastic cooperation and servitude of their native owners arc... really, really makes one wonder about many choices that were made.

(oh yeah, it turns out the whole thing is a virtual reality mindfuck, major hongo's badassful hero reveal moment is basically the last thing that happens before everybody explodes into pixels except lupin and goemon, it turns out somebody was trying to get a passcode to lupin's hideout, which they failed at because he was just that smart, but also a couple of shots at the end of the episode imply that everything did actually happen for real somehow. that part is confusing and rushed. the loving morals about cultural artifacts and the liberation of asia from non-japanese rule take precedence.)

(okay, major hongo had a faceoff with goemon who cut a notch in his cap brim so you could see one of his eyes, that was a *very* cool bit of visual design that you could never do with proper jigen because he would murder you for slicing his hat. and then goemon toppled dramatically off a bridge because he is the biggest drama queen in the entire cast and we're talking *including lupin iii*.)

like. i grew up on (western) fiction from this era and earlier. the part where i notice or mind the imperialism is aftermarket. i can, if i try, shut it off and enjoy the show. but, like writing an episode composed largely of ernest hemingway references... is that a goal worth having? especially in a worldwide political climate like this where it's very beneficial to notice the overton window shifting before it slams shut on your damn fingers.

* "an untold tale". in which zenigata is summarily slandered by both lupin and the writers. lupin deduces that the zenigata he's working with is actually sherlock holmes in disguise based on the premise that zenigata is not someone who does things like... run headlong into danger? selflessly protect innocent bystanders? kick ass? stick to a trail?... and is instead someone who, while having a solid idea of lupin's next destination, goes and gets blackout drunk and passes out in a bar instead of staking it out or at least yelling "LUPIN" a lot in the general vicinity.

i guess there's also plot, supposedly. this consists of lupin explaining his movements at a certain time, clearly and in order, over a flashback that agrees with his description. No unreliable narrator in sight. No evading every question like it's "give Jigen rubber bullets and practice dodging" day at the hideout. Just reading pages of boring exposition while being ineffectually shot at by a Colonel Sebastian Moran wielding one of the clunkiest air-guns I've ever seen the man burdened with.

(I haven't gotten around to watching the dub of this last-named episode yet, but I hear that somebody majorly failed at googling, overcommitted to "all R's in the Japanese must become L's in English", and created the character of Colonel Sebastian *Molan*. I'm not sure I'm gonna have spoons for that one for a bit.)

[callsignbaphomet]

I have been watching SO FREAKING MUCH Elden Ring lore videos that it's just inspired me to finally sit down and write down info of my own content. I'm in the word vomit stage where just every bit of info gets written down out of order and with little structure but it makes sense to ME so putting it in an orderly fashion in a structured document later won't be an issue but it's super funny to see that mess. I've had a lot of challenges throughout the years when it comes to world building. Like obviously shaping up Oracle to be as cohesive as possible, shaping the mythology, biology, whatever-logy of my werewolves, the rules and structures of the arcane and so on. Don't even get me started on Jelani's original self origins and how to fit an entire creation origion complete with deities and pantheons and justifying it in a way that can be easily digested. That was an undertaking that has been developed for over 10 years. Don't get me wrong, Jelani's original self story is really solid as it stands now and I poured so much of myself into it without really realizing it till recently. It was arduous work and I scrapped and changed so much that even characters involved in it were discarded due to how I was evolving the story. Don't know if any of y'all remember Jet but she's gone. She's been gone for long years now as I myself came into realizing my own self and discovering things about me. Jet just outlived my own perception of me which allowed Angelus to evolve and change as I did too.

However, shaping an entire people and a culture has been so much work and so much research. It's been equal parts fun and a pain in the ass. I like taking inspiration from real world things and adding a twisting shape to it. Long ago when Oracle was taking shape I wanted to represent not just myself in it but the rest of the world too. I wanted to add those who go under represented or if at all in it. To be honest the hardest but most rewarding part is doing it respectfully, I've had to peel away so many layers of negative and bigoted stereotypes we see everyday in media. 14-year-old me could have NEVER ever created a good character of color that wasn't from the same background as me because I had no access to the internet as I do now much less was privy to all the knowledge that I've come across. I'm not saying I'm perfect now but I know to sit back and analyze before creating a character for Oracle. I know that what is okay for certain people to be shown as is not okay for others. I have to give myself crash courses in history lessons to double check that I haven't given a character of color a trait that's seen as racist or any type of phobic. It's hard but there is NOTHING better than seeing people voice their concerns about a movie or game with a poc that's portrayed in a bigoted way and seeing people list off racist and harmful stereotypes to avoid in (insert culture/ethnicity) people and I managed to avoid each and every single one because I did my research and listened to people's concerns. That alone is amazing and I'm just one guy with the only tool available to him being Google cuz he's broke and can't pay people for information. I can't believe literal companies with millions in budget still can't get that right. It just boggles me.

But back to the point, the second biggest challenge has been forming the culture and history of the Nyota tribe. You know, it's far easier to readily find all kinds of information about Vikings than it is to find information on medieval Africa and I'm not talking about Egypt, I'm talking everything aside from Egypt. I can easily trust Google Translate to give me a near perfect translation of a short sentence in Norwegian, Finnish, German, Spanish, French or Italian. Hell, Latin which is a very dead language is easy to Google for translations! But finding translations--good translations--for Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu or much of the thousands of thousands of languages spoken in Africa is challenging. Gee, I wonder why that could be.

I'd love nothing more than to have a non-English name for Starheart which is THE HOLIEST of all holy relics to the Nyota. A tribe that came together from different cultures (Maasai, Bantu, Swahili, Kikuyu and more) and in just those there are a ton of different languages but translations are hard to find. At least in MY experience anyway. Need to learn to search better. I'm currently working on a zodiac with roots tied to the phases of the moon and I wanna use the actual languages spoken in the area where the tribe is located. Gonna be honest it might take a while. Plus I admit when it comes to things I really take a liking to I’m a perfectionist, it has to be JUST right. There’s so much I wanna write down about the Nyota because biases aside I believe them to be a really interesting bunch and the most rooted in fantasy, which is my favorite of the genres. True, I do refer to Oracle Corp as weird espionage but whatever, it has a lot of stuff just thrown in. I have all this floating around in my head and I’d love nothing more than to neatly put it together to show off because I’m super proud of it, it’s been one of the most fun subjects to work with and the culture is base on some of my own thoughts too. Slow going but I’ll get there, besides, I’m constantly making changes to things and updating character profiles to meet better quality so I can always go back and change as I get better information. I just wish it was a bit easier sometimes.

[autumn-foxfire]

Sorry I'm laughing but the second you mentioned harems I got violently yeeted to the era of "Ash betrayed fics where he returns as an edgy trainer and collects a harem of main and single episode females" it really is just a universal experience when a series mains a male protag lol. Do they do this in LoZ? I'm surprised to hear Lumine is more popular, but that checks out too. I have no idea what it is that makes the girl or boy more popular in any given series, but it always gets simplified to "waifu" and "blorbo" in Pokemon its just *hand-waves* too many different spin-offs and creators with their own stances that makes it confusing I think. It's difficult to see if there's meant to be some kind of gender balance or if the creators are trying to say something there on what they feel is/should be canon-leaning. It conflicts with previously released material because there's all this collaboration between the different creators + with how different the media feels each time, you end up wondering which is "for fan entertainment" and which is "secretly the intended game canon" that gets enforced when more canon material takes one side over the other. I think fans are always going to struggle with a lack of gender equality. Sometimes the girls are just too dang popular, and characters like Lucas, Victor, and Nate are the "Ken" of the Barbie/Pokemon franchise. It's joked about too, by TPC and fans. Sometimes everything leans towards the boys and the girls are stuck as the sidekick. But you know everyone has their own attachment to each generation, so something like alternating the protagonist every episode or second series like in the Special Animations - while nice imo - doesn't happen in other spin-offs like Masters. It'll never feel balanced to anyone because the balance comes using all the Gens as pieces of a whole, rather than a balance within the generation itself. Game canon is never addressed, until they drop the "hiding the protagonists face behind a Pidgey because ambiguity ~" and start writing actual Storylines for NPC Players. Hence: fandom canon protag conflict. People are naturally always going to look towards the majority evidence despite Pokemon's former ambiguous nature if most of any given material shows preference in any way. And we already have little to nothing to work with. It doesn't help that spin-off canons have proven to influence each other, so what message comes across in them matters a lot to fans. They don't feel like TPC just throwing a dart for diversity, but rather as deliberate choices.

OH MY GOD YOU JUST GAVE ME FLASHBACKS. I remember those days of exploring Pokemon fanfics and encountering so many Ash is betrayed so he becomes the master of the Pokemon Universe and is the leader of a harem who love him so much T-T

I really don't get the popularity to be honest, I feel like the same ones who did that with Ash are the ones who are doing it with Aether (or are the same breed of people).

Genshin does something similar with the twin protagonists too, they will release content for Lumine (such as when they do birthday art for the playable characters and the protagonist twin that you use will be in the art too if you go to the event) however when it comes to their actual promotion of the game, she's forgotten in favor of her brother.

What's interesting about the creators of Genshin is that they have another game where you choose between a male and female protag but according to friends who play that game, it's the female protag who is favored by the company in promotional art. Seems to be like Pokemon media in that sense.

I know why they give you a choice, it's for players to choice to play as themselves if they want (well mostly as you're only giving two genders T-T). The characters, despite media attempting to give them a personality in some instances, they're blank enough to be self-inserts too.

With Pokemon I don't mind this fact as much as the character you play as don't have major lore behind them but it causes an issue in genshin where they can't pick between wanting the protag to be a self-insert of the player or their own character who is supposed to contribute to the story with their lore and personality.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

IOTA Reviews: Rocketear

The Rocketeer is a 1991 Disney movie set in 1930's America where a test pilot gets a jetpack and uses it to fight Nazis and— Wait, what? “Rocketear”? Oh, damn it!

Let's get into the eleventh (chronologically the seventeenth) episode of Miraculous Ladybug's fourth season: Rocketear.

We start off with Carapace and Cat Noir struggling to hold back some T-Rexes brought back to life by a scientist Jurassic Park style. Seriously, they reference the movie in the same scene.

Why wasn't this the plot of the episode again?

After managing to tame the dinosaurs with a whistle of all things, Ladybug notices something's wrong with Nino after he gives the Turtle Miraculous back to her. Apparently, he's wondering why Rena Rouge (who he knows is Alya) wasn't recruited with him today. Ladybug tells him that he was the only help she needed today. In reality, it's because Alya has adjusted to her new role of supporting Ladybug behind the scenes in her new form, Rena Furtive.

And I'm not a fan of the new form. I get the camo, but it doesn't really help her blend in when her suit is bright blue. I think it's based off the arctic fox, but that animal is able to camouflage itself because it's fur matches the snowy environment. I'm sure a bright blue jumpsuit won't stand out when she tries to blend in at all. Also, the fact that Alya can just change her hero form gives even less excuses as to why Ladybug's new form is only when she uses her Lucky Charm.

Alya is struggling to keep this a secret from Nino because they don't have a lot of secrets in their relationship. Marinette says she can kind of get it because she had to keep her identity a secret from her friend and has to keep keeping her identity a secret from everyone else. Basically, she's telling Alya to suck it up because this is what being a superhero is.

So the next time she sees Nino, Alya tells him she's no longer Rena Rouge, but not about Rena Furtive, which troubles her. The very next scene shows Alya showing Marinette pictures she took of her new costume and asking her which version looks better.

You could always try reviewing Akuma fights. I heard there's one blog that does it when they're not criticizing the famous director Thomas Astruc on social media.

Yeah, in case you can't tell, Alya was only able to rent her brain for a few episodes because she really doesn't seem as understanding about being a superhero as she was in earlier episodes. In episodes like “Optigami” and “Sentibubbler”, we saw Alya use more strategy and show discretion as Rena Rouge, seemingly taking her job more seriously, but then this episode just had to go and piss it all away. I also love how the first time the animators made Alya's skin the same when she's transformed is in a single frame for a joke.

Alya thankfully deletes the picture, but Nino overhears her talking about struggling to find more content for the Ladyblog, and decides to go to the movies with her to help take her mind off things. Nino, in turn, proceeds to give the same reaction to the in-universe Ladybug movie that Astruc gives to the PV.

Apparently, that movie's already getting a sequel and it has a teaser. So was the sequel animated at the same time as the original like Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III?

Nino gets pissed the next movie in the Ladybug Cinematic Universe will feature Rena Rouge and not Carapace... even though Rena Rouge debuted first. The teaser then shows Rena Rouge falling for Cat Noir (yet another creative liberty taken by the writers or something Astruc's self-insert threw in himself), and takes it like it's the real thing. Dude, the first movie said Ladybug was afraid of cats, and the director yelled at the person it was based on for judging it. He clearly has a hard time distinguishing fiction from reality.

Alya leaves Nino early so she can go on patrol, but Nino sees Cat Noir heading out as well. He then watches a video on the Ladyblog where Alya praises Cat Noir which is totally not Astruc projecting or anything.

I don't know what your definition of a prince is, Alya, and I honestly don't want to know.

So Nino takes this as evidence that Alya is in love with Cat Noir and decides to tell Adrien, who naturally laughs him off. And just before you think we have an episode where Adrien plays the straight man, Adrien decides to visit Alya because he's afraid he accidentally charmed Alya.

Yes, because Cat Noir is so charming, girls are just fighting over him, aren't they?

We then cut to a black and white film noir monologue by Nino (dressed like a detective with a fake mustache), who decides to spy on Alya. When Cat Noir asks Alya if she is attracted to him, she naturally laughs him off, though Cat Noir is thankfully a good sport about it, even giving her a hug to apologize. Unfortunately, Nino took this the wrong way.

The next day at school, Nino takes Adrien into his “office” (it's really an excuse to reuse the boiler room setpiece), and shows him the picture of the hug. Adrien says that Alya would never fall for Cat Noir because she's always dedicated to finding out the truth and telling her boyfriend everything. What's Nino's retort?

Okay, several problems with this bit. First of all, why would Nino even tell Adrien any of this? What would it accomplish? Why not say all this to Alya while confronting her about her alleged unfaithfulness? Second, Ladybug didn't give Nino and Alya their Miraculous at the same time until it was an absolute emergency. She outright said in “Hero's Day” that she didn't have time to recruit Nino and Alya separately.

Ladybug: I'm sorry for what I'm about to do. I know I'm revealing your secret identities but I don't have time to find a good excuse to give them to you separately. Rena Rouge and Carapace, I need you both!

Nino and Alya kept their identities secret from each other until then, with Alya even keeping the fact she knew who Carapace was a secret as well. Nino didn't find out because “they don't hide anything from each other” (which I plan to talk about later).

Other than that, I actually liked Adrien in this scene. It was really investing to see him try to justify the whole secret identities rule while Nino blatantly said there was an exception. This is the kind of stuff I wanted to see when it came to Adrien doubting Ladybug, not him destroying things in his anger.

While Nino rants about how Cat Noir “stole” Alya from him, Shadowmoth sends an Akuma his way, turning him into Rocketear.

And the design he has is just boring. It's just a blue jumpsuit with some black spots that look like teardrops, a teardrop-shaped head and a visor. I think the reason this season's been relying more on past Akumas and using more Sentimonsters is because DQ is terrible at character designs. I mean, compare this suit with Aigraon from Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger (his Power Rangers counterpart is Wrench from Dino Charge).

The design does so much more with the teardrop motif, giving him a perpetually miserable face with tear lines going all over his body. Add that to a more diverse color scheme, and you have a much more visually stunning design. And this was created in real life, not rendered on a computer. I'm not sure if this is a budget thing or a laziness thing, but if it's the former, you really need to do better, animators.

The powers are meh, giving Nino the ability to fling explosive tears at enemies. It's a clever idea, and it makes sense he gets a power that parallels Cat Noir's, but I think maybe it would have been more interesting if he couldn't control the tears at all. Like, imagine if he was constantly crying like Blue Diamond, and with every tear he shed, Rocketeer could send it at whoever he felt was causing him misery, mainly Cat Noir, all while serving as a metaphor for people who blame others for their own personal issues. Better yet, make him look like the detective outfit Nino wore for the second act. It would have made him more unpredictable instead of making his tears generic projectile weapons.

Marinette and Alya see the fight and transform into Ladybug and Rena Furtive respectively, the former summoning her Lucky Charm, a projector. Is it just me, or has this been happening with Ladybug a lot recently?

Back to Rocketear, we get a good moment where Cat Noir intentionally lets the Akuma hit him so he can get a chance to resolve things diplomatically. See, this is a moment where Cat Noir's self-sacrificing nature feels heroic and not selfish like when he does it without Ladybug's permission to spite her. Unfortunately, it doesn't really go anywhere as Ladybug shows up and plays the recording Nino took (Alya found his phone earlier), while Rena Furtive uses her Mirage to give the audio to what actually happened that night.

Rena transforms back into Alya and embraces Rocketear, who apologizes to her for his behavior. And then he just... rejects Shadowmoth's power while looking like it wasn't that much effort.

At least when Chloe and Alya did it, we saw them struggling for a little longer. I guess maybe it's because Nino is motivated by his love for Alya, but I think it should have been fleshed out more. So Ladybug purifies the Akuma, gives Nino a Magical Charm, and Cat Noir is still unsure about his feelings for Ladybug at the moment, though they still pound it.

Back in his room, Adrien ponders why Alya and Nino get to know their identities while he and Ladybug can't, but Plagg points out it's because she's the Guardian. It's brief, but I do like seeing Adrien start to doubt Ladybug's judgment, and it looks like it'll foreshadow future episodes. This is a problem I've had since “Hero's Day”, and I'm glad the writers are finally acknowledging this double standard. I just hope they don't end up blaming Marinette for whatever happens later on.

Marinette, of course, apologizes for what happened between Alya and Nino, and I have to say... yeah, no. It's obviously Nino's fault here.

Nino really pushed personal boundaries in this episode, much like Marinette's friends in “Gang of Secrets”. Yes, honesty is a valuable trait, but sometimes, people have secrets they want to keep to themselves. Nino's idea of “not hiding anything from each other” is somewhat controlling, like he's demanding Alya tell him everything whether she wants to or not. The fact that he immediately assumed Alya was cheating on him without giving her freedom to make her own choices doesn't make him look good. Let's be honest, a more realistic outcome would be Alya choosing to break things off with Nino or at least lecture him about how she can do what she wants and keep the secrets she wants. But instead...

And that's how the episode ends.

Okay, Marinette just said she trusted Alya to make the right decision, but I highly doubt she meant this. Marinette strictly said Alya had to keep Rena Furtive a secret, and now she's telling Nino this despite the risk? The whole reason Marinette and Luka broke up was because Marinette had to keep her secrets from Luka, but now it's okay for Alya to be completely honest? How is this not a double standard?

This episode was just dull, and there’s not even much I can really say about it.. There were a handful of standout moments, and the stuff with Adrien was somewhat compelling, but Nino's behavior was just insufferable and dragged the episode down. The Akuma fight was weak, only lasting about four minutes at most, and while the Lucky Charm was more creative this time, the plot was just frustrating. It's really one of the weaker episodes this season.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch the better Rocketeer.

[captnjacksparrow]

Thank you, thank you THANK YOU ABOUT THAT POST ABOUT SASUKE!!!! Don’t get me wrong I fully believe that sasuke’s anger was truly justified and that his ending was disappointing because it’s absurd how he was imprisoned but the ones who had his entire clan murdered suffered no consequences

But the one thing I hate about some sasuke stans is the way the hype up every single one of his actions as if he wasn’t fucking torturing himself and losing his sanity towards the end of shippuden

Like ok he SHOULD get some sort of revenge but if the price to pay is seeing him losing himself and the qualities that mostly defined his characters then I’m sorry but I don’t want that

Part 1 Sasuke was a character who valued loyalty and camaraderie most of all, he constantly defended his teammates and was ready to die for one of them and you want me to hype up the sasuke who stabbed his FUCKING TEAMMATE???? Yeah he was always distant and independent but he’s also a character who wants and need to be loved and I get being mad at the konoha system and konoha s ideologies but stop with this dumb ass narrative of terrorist sasuke being badass when he was just being manipulated left and right and suffering as never before because of his “revenge”

So no I will never believe that he would have been happy after fulfilling his “goals”

I get that Reddit dudebros naruto fans who blindly hate sasuke are stupid but SOME sasuke stans are also self inserts with 0 reading comprehension skills

Finally😲😲

And Thank You for this Ask in response to that post, Anon.

And Please refrain from saying Terrorist Sasuke... Otherwise you would be mercilessly destroyed by those stans🤡🤡... Just like those Sakura self-inserts who come and scream at the places where they are not welcome, one such Sasuke stan also came and screamed at my comments even though I put a big disclaimer to not read it... 

REVENGE AND IT’S REACTIONS - IN OTHER MEDIAS

Let's see their claims.... So, Let's dissect their delusional visual and reading comprehension...

You just dumb it down to Sasuke’s Character that he loved Itachi and Naruto

Okay.... Was I wrong???? Let’s Leave Naruto out of it.... I don’t care about him for now.... 

I’ve written so many posts about Sasuke... And in most of them, Naruto don’t even plays a very important role.... Because Sasuke’s character, for the most part, was driven by Itachi and it revolves around him.... You don’t even need 5 Braincells to say that. A 5-Year old Child can say that when it sees it. 

This is Uchiha Sasuke comparing Naruto with his most beloved Person in Chapter 698. 

It’s one thing to make assumptions without any panel support and concoct delusions... But it’s another thing to prove something using the Pictures drawn by the Author.... 

I wonder, what can they say about this panel and countless other panels inside the Manga???? 

He always loved Itachi, definitely didn’t smile or felt that fleeting relief

Fleeting Relief??? Relief??? Really??? 

They are very bad at Sarcasm.... It’s not even funny.... I’ll bring this panel about Sasuke smiling after Itachi’s death... in this post too...

Okay, Let me talk something sensitive.... But before that, 

This is something I wrote in one of my earlier posts... As you can see, I am not totally against Revenge plots or something.... I love/stan it, when it’s done properly with a strong purpose and motivations. 

And just like I expected.... I got this from Chapter 4..

These lines from Sasuke actually piqued my curiosity to keep watching this series because of my inclination towards Revenge Plots. And since Sasuke mentioned that he wanted to ‘resurrect his clan’... I pretty much built my Head Canons as to how it would pan out. Because, I come from a Clan based culture and movies about Clan Massacre are pretty common here... 

And usually the person who murders an Entire Clan would be portrayed in a certain way where it’s plastered on their Head that ‘I did it to show my superiority or I did it to achieve my Goal or I did it because they all hurt me so much and I killed them to have my revenge and many more reasons..’ And since Sasuke said that his Older Brother did that... I was expecting an evil jerk who was inherently bad like Joffrey from Game of Thrones.

So, I know what I am going to get... Until this moment from Chapter 145/ Episode 81.... where the Author decided to do a 360 degree on the Readers... 

When I saw this scene... I instantly knew, “It’s not what I expected... Probably Itachi might have his reasons. He is not an evil jerk... And probably Sasuke might suffer later...”.

Am not saying that I was totally convinced that Itachi might be a good guy with this scene alone because I don’t know the full picture about the bond between Itachi and Sasuke... But a doubt has been indefinitely planted here that he didn’t do it on him whim... And he feels sad and conflicted before performing that Massacre... 

And during this Part 1 flashback.... I became 90% sure that Sasuke will never be happy after the revenge.... Because, The bond between I and S was very strong and extremely pleasant before the Massacre. However, It all changed in one night....

Let’s keep this UCM plot aside.... 

And Let’s see how people who enact revenge reacts to their Perpetrators from Other media....

THE JIANG CLAN MASSACRE - THE UNTAMED (Chinese TV Series)

As you can see many dead bodies lay everywhere... An Entire Clan got wiped out purely on a whim.... However our protagonists escaped from this tragedy and they will have their revenge... 

The perpetrators behind this Tragedy is this Lunatic.... And he was 

Disfigured into this.... Yeah, this series was all about Ghosts and Spirits... The Hero sent out a vengeful spirit to do this deed... 

 And in this picture, that idiot was practically begging on his knees in front of our Hero to not kill him... But instead of feeling anything... Our Hero was extremely amused.. Well, He has every right to be...

STARK MASSACRE - GAME OF THRONES (US TV series)

This is popularly called Red Wedding... And Starks (A House) were betrayed by the Host in a Wedding Event... It was one of the painful Event in any Media I’ve ever come across... I even wept for a week....

And this is how Arya Stark got her revenge on the person who wiped her entire Family in that Bloody Dinner.... She is even delightfully saying that “The Last thing you are ever going to see is a Stark smiling down at you as you die..”

And this is Sansa Stark having her Revenge when she fed her Violent Rapist to the hungry Dogs...

MASSACRE AT TWO PINES - KILL BILL Part I and Part II (A US movie)

This is the tagline of that movie... Which says a lot as to what you are going to get... I can talk hours and hours about this movie... But that’s for another Day... As you can see the movie was titled ‘Kill Bill’.... Meaning, the Protagonist, Beatrix Kiddo’s one and only Objective was to find this Bill and kill him.... Just like our Sasuke’s only objective was to kill Itachi.

This is the Massacre where our Pregnant Bride Protagonist was also seemingly dead among her other friends in the Chapel where she was about to get married... But then she survived this tragedy by some miracle and she swore revenge on those Monsters who did this to her.... 

These are the perpetrators who did the deed.... ( However Bill, the Antagonist is the Mastermind behind this tragedy is not in this picture and these people are his subordinates).

And this is her reaction when she killed one of those Bill’s Subordinates... She is still Angry..... As she is supposed to be... And I am not going to attach her every reaction Screen Shots after killing the remaining 3 people who participated in that Massacre... Because it was all same and she never felt anything.

And we, as Audience were eagerly waiting for her showdown to see how she was going to kill that Bill.... And Lo and Behold... We get this important revelation about her.... That is...

Beatrix Kiddo and Bill loved each other and the baby she was carrying earlier was Bill’s baby.... And After killing him....

This is how she reacted... You can see tears welling up in her eyes and she is neither Happy nor Angry.... And if this not enough.... After this scene,

We see her totally broke down by sobbing in the Bathroom hugging a Plush Toy... Which is an indication that she was not happy at all.... It’s not like she is regretting about the revenge or anything... It’s just that she feels empty and because of that she couldn’t control her emotions...

I’ve attached 3 massacres from 3 different medias.... Out of which 2 Victims were extremely satisfied after the Revenge and one wasn’t....

You know why they were happy and Beatrix Kiddo wasn’t????

Because she killed the person she loved the most.... Whereas in the former cases, the Perpetrators were purely evil with no ties to the Victim. 

Let’s come back to Naruto series....

This is Sasuke right after killing Itachi.... The Author has spent a whole page to show that Sasuke was feeling empty... And after this page.....

We get this!!!!! Where Sasuke was forcing himself to pull a smile.... And that Sasuke stan was boldly claiming that this is Sasuke feeling Relief....

Seriously????? How can anyone with a clear mind can say that Sasuke was feeling relieved here???? If he was relieved... Why did he feel sad and empty here???

And right after knowing the truth.... We get this heart breaking scene...

How is Sasuke any different from Beatrix Kiddo....???? In Beatrix’s case, Bill was a clear sadistic piece of shit who really wanted to kill her & her Baby... and fortunately she miraculously survived.... And yet, she felt extremely sad and empty after taking the Revenge.... But in Sasuke’s case, it was totally different.... Itachi never ever wanted to kill him. 

Imagine to what extent Sasuke must have felt empty & sad after the revenge????

It’s precisely because of that Love for Itachi... He is weeping here...

And you are telling me that Killing Naruto for his Revolution will make him Happy????

These people clearly lack Reading and Visual comprehension and Media Perception.... They are totally delusional by hyping up a single panel while conveniently ignoring all the good panels that shows the vulnerable side of Sasuke... 

Sasuke didn’t hate Konoha even after he learned the Truth

Geez!!! I never said he didn’t hate Konoha... I only said he couldn’t completely hate that Village...

So, What I could infer from these people is that.... They couldn’t even read and comprehend what I wrote in a simple post which might have taken a maximum of 10 minutes to read.... 

How could they even comprehend a manga which has 700 Chapters which could take a week or 2 to complete???? 

Also you said Sasuke knew what he was doing was wrong then why the hell did he do all this for or changed his mind after talking to the hokages

This person is making Sasuke into this dumb idiot who didn’t realize what he was doing was wrong.... 

This is the real Sasuke who couldn’t even kill 1000 people for a training purpose even though he could’ve easily finished them off....

And you are telling me that Sasuke didn’t know that killing innocent people from that Village was wrong??? He knew it and yet he was willing to do it anyway...

“I have no intention of protecting the ‘Peaceful’ world that sacrificed him...”

So, he knew that Itachi’s Act brought peace... And yet he was willing to destroy it??

“I turned out this way only because of you!!”

So, Sasuke consciously realize that he turned into something that he never wished for... So, he knew it’s wrong, didn’t he???

It’s not only this panel... There are so many other panels which conveys that he knew what he was doing was wrong... And it’s precisely because he knew it was wrong... He had doubts and hesitation and went onto hear the story from the Hokages. 

What kind of Shitty Reading Comprehension these stans have, I really wonder????

You just took all of Sasuke’s core themes and threw it away to suit your purposes and ship... you yourself aren’t so different from those ‘stans’ or good ol Sakura you are complaining about...

Oh Really??? 

First, I didn’t even bring Naruto in this post . And I never hesitated to bring any panels for any arguments.. But still I proved their views are hilariously wrong on every aspects.

Second, I don’t even understand what is Sasuke’s core theme that they frequently spout about... Please someone let me know... I am willing to hear it. Because all he wanted was Revenge for 574 Chapters.... And right around Chapter 627... Sasuke diverged his path away from revenge and thought about doing something that wasn’t about himself.

It seems that person got triggered because I compared them to Sakura... Well, they are proving me right by clowning themselves like this... So, Of Course they are some ‘Real Life Sakura’ without a doubt...

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You know, When I was an Unspoiled, Extra Virgin after finishing the series... i.e, Not knowing anything about Fandom’s perception & such.... I almost formed an opinion about Sasuke because he was always that Mysterious Black Box whom I couldn’t read what he was thinking. Well, he was intentionally written that way. And his feelings were all left to subtexts instead of explicitly mentioning out loud... [[Not talking about SNS...]]. But My opinion about him was... ‘Why is he saying something and doing something else?’... And Since Naruto series made me deeply affected on many levels, I decided to participate in the Fandom... 

So, I went to Reddit....

A Grave mistake on my part..... I shouldn’t have done that.

95% are filtered idiots who don’t even know anything about Character Development, Visual Story telling, Scene Coherence and whatnot.... 

And on the other end of the spectrum, I stumbled onto Tumblr and I saw some honest opinions being written here frequently.... UNTIL IT’S NOT.... Man!!!! They defend every one of Sasuke’s actions as Cool and Being Badass.... is just incomprehensible!!!!! Seriously, they are no different from Dudebros either...  

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Revenge is extremely gratifying on many occasions but when it comes under the context of killing the person they loved the most.... No matter what, It will always lead to emptiness and sorrow. Sasuke and Beatrix were the best example of it... It’s a pity that these self-projecting clowns don’t even have this basic understanding....  

[turbocao]

the lonely stoic badass dude character trope bores me so much bc theres one of those in every piece of media and ppl always obsess over every single thing they do even if it's been done 329804 times before, so i was 100% predisposed to be bored by ogata in golden kamuy like oh boy here we go again, but i was ultimately unable to dislike him and i think the main difference between him and other Lone Wolf type of characters is that in most media the BadAss Stoic Loner™️ usually saves the day with his individualistic, pragmatic choices and is often regarded as a hero by the rest of the cast, therefore portraying drastic individualism as the most effective way to go about life (at least as long as you're strong and badass enough to be able to afford relying on no one but yourself), but in golden kamuy Ogata does the complete opposite of saving the day (although it's mostly by his own choice) and he is not heroic at all. the other characters do not admire him or rely on his sniping skill to get by more than they rely on anybody else's skills. what's more, he IS flawed. there is none of that bullshit many media do where they pretend being lonely and cold-blooded is a flaw, then showing you the BadAss Stoic Loner™️'s tear-jerking backstory and expecting you to feel bad for them when theyre nothing but the 438th male power fantasy self-insert character of the year.

Ogata's backstory DOES make you feel bad for him AND doesn't erase any of the actual flaws he has. and im meaning flaw as in "trait that plays AGAINST the character, not in their favor. being ruthless or cruel or lacking empathy does not count as a flaw if the character in question still gets what they want thanks to their ruthlessness or cruelty or lack of empathy. im meaning ogata being not so good at hand to hand combat, which limits the number of ways he can approach situations, and him being good at lying and pretending but clearly not so good with words that he earns Asirpa's trust thus failing to get the code from her (!)

at least thats how i see it! im thankful for this refreshing take on the lone wolf type of character.

he's also very clown-able, but i think that has more to do w the fact that he's the token serious character surrounded by chaos (in a sargeant tsukishima (my beloved) type of way), so that's not entirely on him.

although the way you watch him reach the wrongest possible conclussions about his own past & trauma is p funny too, if only bc you, as the reader, know better, and bc the story doesnt dwell on it too much, bc it is sad when you stop to think about it, but if you dont its like lol dumb ogata he didnt realize he always had inner worth as a child it was not his fault that his mother didnt love him, he only made it worse by pushing everyone away huhuhu what a dummy

(and there's also the way the author chose to portray his backstory. like, you know there's so much more going on but what we see is young ogata going "broccoli for dinner again, mother?!" *gun loading noises*)