#narrative choices

[brucenorris007]

“Silver doesn’t choose when he time travels.”

This is... a baffling decision to me. I mean, from a narrative standpoint.

Sure, he gets thrown around and put in Situations because reasons, haha, whatever, but...

I was under the impression that a major draw of these characters, these adolescent animals was the sheer degree of agency they have in their lives.

The only reason Vanilla and Vector haven’t literally adopted every single one of them (independently or jointly) is that the cast is so capable and self-sufficient already that people sometimes forget how young they are; so capable that even when they lack agency, they figure out a way to make agency for themselves.

And yet, Silver, the guy who suffers from tunnel vision arguably even more than Metal Sonic is just... at the mercy of some unnamed god’s whims?

That Silver the hedgehog? The Determinator whose philosophy for dealing with his enemies is equivalent to the fucking sentry turrets from the Portal series; IT’S ON SIGHT.

THAT Silver???

I get that some interesting stories and moments in this franchise are owed to Sonic and/or friends being dropped into Situations, but there’s usually a face responsible for dropping them.

Maybe there’s going to be some big reveal that ties into lore or something.

Right now it’s just... baffling.

[thepariahcontinuum]

Controversial MHA opinion time: The final villain of the story shouldn't have been Tomura Shigaraki or any other holder of All For One.

AFO was Allmight's villain and the story could have done more by, instead of giving Deku a legacy to carry on, actually giving him a nemesis that reflects his own struggles as a person in the society of MHA.

Personally I would have made the final villain a "Lex Luthor" type, someone Quirkless like Izuku who overcomes that limitation through a mix of Support gear and having the money and connections to subvert and use the system that's supposed to help people to their own ends.

The MHA universe is a world in need of change, with open discrimination and corruption to its' core where the best heroes aren't necessarily the best people and I feel like giving the protagonist of the story a nemesis who is a mirror of himself and forces the system to be changed would be a better choice.

[talaricula]

Things I've seen tumblr memeing about James Somerton doing à la "How did no one see how bigoted he was!" as if those things haven't been a significant part of tumblr culture for over a decade :

Presenting untrue and bordering on conspiratorial versions of (queer or otherwise marginalised) history without any sources

Completely disregarding and disrespecting any expertise on socio-cultural topics/humanities and distrusting academics and historians (incl. acting as if no academics or historians could be queer or marginalised)

Downplaying the role misogyny played in the historical oppression of queer women and concluding that queer men must have been more oppressed than queer women

Bi women are, at best, not as queer as "real" queer ppl, and at worst, simply equivalent to straight women

Despite nominal trans inclusivity, transmasculine ppl are functionally women when convenient (combined with the above, bi transmascs are functionally straight women)

Despite nominal trans inclusivity (bis), shamelessly attacking, threatening and actively endangering any trans woman who questions them or smth they find important (often by unfairly presenting her as violent or as a threat)

Having absolutely fucking wild and reductive takes about ace ppl, the oppression they face and their place in the queer community

Stating that marriage equality is an assimilationist fight while completely ignoring its direct roots in the horrifying consequences of the AIDS crisis for partners of ppl who died of AIDS

Praising western media creators from the past for queer coding even under censure and in the same breath condemning current non western media creators for being homophobic bc their representation isn't explicit enough

Blaming China for all existing homophobic censoring in western media

Assuming all queer media would be better told by western creators and by western standards

Only out queer ppl get to tell queer stories

Heavily criticising almost all queer media created by women or ppl they see as such (see above points about trans ppl) or involving/starring a significant amount of women for any perceived or real amount of "problematicness", but fawning over and praising and negating criticism of queer media created by and starring mostly or even functionally exclusively men (even when it could be argued that, you know, not involving/seriously sidelining women is a pretty clear example of misogyny which should probably be considered "problematic")

And I'm probably forgetting stuff or there's stuff I have internalised myself and don't recognise as an issue

Like idk but I feel like the takeaway from Hbomberguy and Toddintheshadow's videos should maybe be "be aware of such patterns in your communities bc they definitely exist" and not "this guy is uniquely awful" and I feel like a lot of the discussion I've seen surrounding this has been severely failing at that. Most ppl who've spent any significant amount of time on tumblr prob either have internalised at least one of those thought patterns, have had to de-internalise them, or have had to be extremely vigilant to not internalise them (which is done by, you know, seeking out other sources, which also seemed like an important takeaway from the videos)

[5ummit]

still thinking about this scene and these tags by @fuckyeahisawthat

[critter-of-habit]

All aboard the "enemies to lovers" trope train *toot tooooot*

[realtacuardach]

One of my favorite takes on Frodo, and why I value him so much as a character: unlike so many central characters in fantasy, he was not a Chosen One.

Instead, he was the One who Chose, and that made all the difference.

[tiredyke]

every time queer discourse surges on this site everyone is so quick to jump to “it was actually the evil lesbians who divided us” because y’all heard the term “political lesbian” and never bothered to figure out what that meant

[nancywheeeler]

hopeless time loop. the way out isn’t to save everyone. the way out isn’t to save even one person. the way out isn’t to change anything. the way out is accepting how it happened the first time is how it always will be. that’s how you acted, that’s how they acted, that’s how you would have acted every time if you weren’t given the curse of hindsight. the way out is accepting you can’t fix the past; you can only forgive yourself for it.

[overtake]

ALL ACCESS Honda Thanks Day | All Fun in Japan

[essektheylyss]

Okay but you know what's really clever about the choice to include off-screen campaign content in the Nein animated show, is that it puts the audience on far more equal footing.

There's a lot of intrigue going on in Wildemount behind the scenes, and those of us who've seen the campaign have an idea of what that is, but rarely a clear answer. There are a lot of interpersonal dynamics that we don't see but that make a major impact on outcomes for the character: not only Essek's dealings with the Assembly but his relationship to the rest of the Dynasty's upper echelon, the Assemblies' interactions amongst themselves, Astrid and Eadwulf's dynamic with Trent or other scourgers, or Lucien's relationship with Cree and the other Tomb Takers. These alliances make or break the characters' decisions with regard to the Nein depending on how much loyalty or trust they share, and they shift a lot while the Nein aren't present.

I think there's a bit of this in tlovm with the happenings in Whitestone and the dynamic among the Chroma Conclave, but these exist primarily to ground the antagonists, because it's not the same kind of story; Vox Machina's story is about how they become Big Damn Heroes. There is political action happening, but while it does have an influence on them, it always exists to an extent to be either a boon or an obstacle to them, because it cannot deal with the threats at hand without heroes (not necessarily Vox, but in the archetypal sense). The Nein, in contrast, are in a story about being the tangential players to numerous plots of intrigue that occupy no small position of power in the world, plots that in fact actively resist the role of heroes, and the struggle for personal agency that comes with that.

So giving more information to the audience about those other happenings means new fans get a lot of the information that existing fans will go into the show with much sooner, while existing fans are receiving new information at the same time. By the time the characters find out what the audience knows, the audience is more or less on the same page waiting for that shoe to drop.

[aragornsrockcollection]

Isn’t it funny that you never see anyone throwing a hissy fit over the inclusion of flora not native to Medieval Europe in Tolkien or other fantasy works.

Tomatoes, tobacco, POTATOES, tea and sugar, are all perfectly acceptable and normal for Tolkien to have included in Middle earth, but depict a single character with brown skin, and suddenly it’s not realistic, and WHAT ABOUT OUR HERITAGE.

Forget that we don’t analyze the heritage of white actors playing these rolls to make sure they’re from the proper culture to represent Tolkien’s extremely English story. Has a single person ever complained that Frodo and Sam were played by Americans when Hobbiton is CLEARLY based on rural England?

According to some, Hobbits can grow food and other crops that were only introduced into Europe through the violence of imperialism, but to have the hobbits look like the people who originally grew those crops is sacrilegious.

Medieval Europe, which wasn’t as homogenous as people think anyways, is only ever trotted out to justify hating the inclusion of black and brown characters.

If Sam can wax poetic about potatoes, he can look like came from Peru, like potatoes did.

And if that idea bothers you, maybe examine why.

[sekhmetpaws]

Once more thinking about something that permanently altered my brain's chemistry and the way I see life and I think I should share it here, even if no one is going to see. In the How to Train Your Dragon book series, there is a scene where Hiccup faces an enemy who owns an axe that has two sides, one that is golden and shiny, the other that is blackened, bloody and rusty. He would throw the axe in the air and make decisions depending on which side it would land on. Said axe eventually is used to decide Hiccup's fate. However, despite being trapped by the narrative in many ways, Hiccup is the protagonist of his own destiny. He reaches for the axe as it falls, and turns it himself so it lands on the golden side. Whether the axe was going to land on the gold or the dark side originally is irrelevant. He chooses to be alive and be free. Every time I go through a difficult moment, as I am right now, I think about this scene, as silly as it may be.

I am allowed to grab the destiny axe. And so are you.

[l-just-want-to-see]

Let’s talk again about how Hermes tells Percy in TLO that immortals can’t change and then Rick hits us with Bob and Damasen. And then after we’ve cried over “say hello to the sun and stars for me” he hits us with an entire series about people breaking out of the narrative where the protagonist is the god of prophecy.

[lansplaining]

i just think there is something so maddeningly unresolved about wei wuxian's emotional state at the end of canon and the extras

like the vibe is "oh yay, he has lan wangji now, they've left the cultivation world (kinda) because that is the only way they can be happy" only if you stop and think about anything at all that happened in canon and in his backstory for more than ten seconds you realize that he has addressed none of his traumas, he has several deeply important relationships just sort of floating there and yet to be fully dealt with, and his and lan wangji's fantasy of a clean slate and a fresh start in a cottagecore paradise is not one that either of their personalities are going to let them actually exist in for very long

[beneath-themilkytwilight]

"something so scary the tardis ran away 😨😨💀" babe this is nothing new name one episode where the tardis doesn't vibe w the energy and just fucks off to who knows where until the conflict is resolved,, bye guys I'll catch you at the end of the episode