#no you don't engage with media critically you point at things and say That's Bad

[sparrowlucero]

Even if a creator is a bad person it's still okay to like their work. People need to mind their own business.

Honestly it's not really that sort of situation. I'll actively defend Steven Moffat here.

There was a huge hate movement for him back in the early 2010s - which, in retrospect, formed largely because he was running 2 of the superwholock shows at once, one of which went through extremely long hiatuses* and the other of which was functionally an adaptation of an already well regarded show**, making him subject to a sort of double ire in the eyes of a lot of fandom people. Notably, his co-showrunner, Mark Gatiss, is rarely mentioned and much of his work is still attributed to Moffat (and yes, this includes that Hbomberguy video. Several of "Steven Moffat's bad writing choices" were not actually written by him, they were Gatiss.)

People caricatured the dude into a sort of malicious, arrogant figure who hated women and was deliberately mismanaging these shows to spite fans, to the point where people who never watched them believe this via cultural osmosis. It became very common to take quotes from him out of context to make them look bad***, to cite him as an example of a showrunner who hated his fans, someone who sabotaged his own work just to get at said fans, someone who was too arrogant to take criticism, despite all of this being basically a collective "headcanon" about the guy formed on tumblr. Some if it got especially terrible, like lying about sexual assault (I don't mean people accused him of sexual assault and I think they're making it up, I mean people would say things like "many of his actresses have accused him of sexual assault on set" when no such accusations exist in the first place. This gets passed around en masse and is, in my opinion, absolutely rancid.)

On top of that a ton of the criticism directed at the shows themselves is, personally, just terrible media criticism. So much of it came from assuming a very hostile intent from the writer and just refusing to engage with the text at all past that.

Like some really common threads you see with critique of this writer's work, especially in regards to Doctor Who since that's the one I'm most familiar with:

A general belief that his lead characters were meant to be ever perfect self inserts, and so therefore when they act shitty or arrogant or flawed in any way, that's both reflective of the author and something the show wants you to view as positive or aspirational.

An overarching thesis that his characters are "too important" in the narrative due to the writer's arrogance and self obsession (even though this is a very deliberate theme that's stated several times)

A lot of focus on the writer personally "attacking" the fans or making choices primarily out of spite.

A tendency to treat the show being different to what it's adapting as inherently bad and hostile towards the original.

Just generally very little consideration and engagement with the themes, intent, etc. of the shows

This one's a little more nebulous and doesn't apply to all critique but a lot of it, especially recently, is clearly by people who haven't seen the show in like 10 years and their opinion is largely formed secondhand through like, "discourse nostalgia". Which. you know. bad.

I think these are just weird and nonsensical ways to engage with a work of fiction. I also think it's really sad to see the show boiled down to this because that era of who is, in my opinion, very thematically rich and unique among similar shows, and I'm disappointed that it's often dismissed in such a paltry way.

This isn't to say people aren't allowed to critique Steven Moffat or anything, but the context in which he basically became The Devil™ to a large portion of fandom and is still remembered in a poor light is very tied to this perfect storm of fan culture and I just don't agree with a ton of it.

* I'm sure most people have seen the way long running shows and hiatuses will cause people to fall out with a show, with some former fans turning around and joining a sort of "anti fandom" for it while it's still airing. That happened with both these shows. ** Doctor Who will change it's entire writing staff, crew, and cast every few years, and with that comes a change in style, tone, theme - the old show basically ends and is replaced by a new show under the same title. As Steven Moffat's era was the first of these handovers for the majority of audiences, you can imagine this wasn't a well loved move for many fans. *** I know for a fact most people have not sought out the sources for a lot of these quotes to check that they read the same in context because 1) most of them were deleted years ago and are very difficult to find now and 2) many of them do actually make sense in the context of their respective interviews

[lady-raziel]

yeah fuck it i'm not done with my fanfic rant. it's very very clear that many of the people out there saying 'i don't read fanfic because its not canon and its poorly written'...have never really, truly spent the time to interact with fanfiction. it's kind of like they heard all the bad criticisms of fan writing, and just assumed they were true and never bothered to check for themselves.

yes, there are fanfics that are poorly written. yes, there are fanfics that are just porn. yes, there are even fanfics that are alternate universes of canon that may even have OOC characterizations. all of these things are true, and pretty much every fanfic enjoyer will agree with you.

but the point of fanfiction. the whole point is that you have to search around and find what you like. because for some reason, canon isn't doing it for you. or you just want to know what someone else's interpretation of how things could have happened is!

there are brilliant fanfictions. there are truly amazing, incredibly written fanfictions that take the good parts of a story and make them better. there are fanfictions better than actual published works that are better plotted out and researched than anything canon has to offer. but you have to FIND these fanfics, whether through recs or by searching yourself.

the people who say all fanfic is bad and poorly written seem to live with the expectation that good media will simply be handed to them and they can consume it unquestioningly. regardless of the slew of bad books, shows, and movies that exist and are thrown at us on a daily basis. would you really go so far as to say 'all tv shows have poor writing' because it took trying to watch several bad shows in your streaming recommendations to find one you liked? or do you really, honestly think that because something was made with profit in mind it inherently has better quality and more value than something made out of passion?

fanfic haters, find the love in your heart to engage with media you love outside of the context of it being sold to you. you may even find a gem among the coal that makes you love the original property even more.

[befuddledcinnamonroll]

I've been thinking a lot about expectations this week.

A number of years ago, when I was visiting my brother, he criticized me for not doing something that he expected me to do. It was a frustrating talk because he wasn't at all willing to hear my perspective. But what bothered me the most about it was when I said "you can just ask" and he said "I shouldn't have to".

I was doing everything culturally expected of a good guest, I didn't even know what his extra expectations were, and yet he felt entitled to be mad at me for not automatically knowing them, and not living up to them.

It can be so easy for us to let our expectations get ahead of us, to make assumptions based on our own perspectives, and to then feel let down.

And I feel like I'm seeing a lot of this kind of thing in people's experience with media these days. There seems to be a clash happening between expectations and reality. And people feeling genuinely upset when the reality is not what they wanted.

I'm seeing a lot of complaints and "critiques" that seem to fall in to the category of "this is not how I personally want this to go" or "this doesn't resonate with my personal experience".

To be clear, I'm not saying this in a pointing fingers kind of way, because I have 100% done it myself.

When the trailer for Cutie Pie first came out, I got so excited imagining Kuea as some bad boy living a double life. He was going to be so hard to tame, he was going to put Lian through the wringer, and it was going to be amazing.

What I got was something very different from what I expected, and I struggled with the show.

But it was a really valuable learning moment for me. Because everything in the trailer was in the series. It was my interpretation of it, of those few minutes out of hours of material, my assumptions about the moments not yet shown, that caused me frustration.

That was a turning point in my "let's see where the journey takes us" philosophy. And I have to say, engaging in QL has been a hell of a lot more fun since I learned to let go of what I thought should happen.

I still have critiques of shows, of course I do. Nothing is above criticism. But I don't get so personally affronted now when something doesn't do what I expect. I'm more willing to see where the destination takes us before I decide the journey isn't working.

Of course I am still human, and I still get caught off guard sometimes by expectations I didn't realize I had let slip in.

But I have found my experience immeasurably improved by considering a few things when I'm watching a series:

Am I leading with curiosity, or judgment?

What is happening here culturally? What assumptions am I making based on my own background and country of origin? What happens if I step back and look at the bigger picture of how this culture engages with media? Do I even know, or do I have more to learn?

Is this actually bad... or is it just not for me? Is this just not resonating with me? Is it making me uncomfortable? What can this discomfort tell me about myself? Is it a bad show, or just a show I need to walk away from?

Am I more focused on the story I want told, and not paying enough attention to the story that the creators of the series want to tell? What assumptions am I making about their intent?

Am I only focused on what the value is for me as an individual, and not considering how this may be making other people feel seen or be meeting their needs? Can I acknowledge that there can be inherent value in things that do not give value to me personally?

There is value in critique, but there is also importance in self-reflection and understanding why we are feeling the way that we are, and when our own setting of expectations may be playing a role.

It's funny that in some ways this seems to be a reflection of what a golden age of QL we are living in - there are so many options, and time is so scarce, that I can see why people are frustrated when they feel like a show is not living up to what they wanted.

But as someone who has lived multiple decades without this kind of media, and only relatively recently having been able to experience it...there is a lot more to be gained by reveling in what you are loving than over what you are hating.

[sokkastyles]

I have a question, I know we know that shipping does not equal morality. And I get that, and I really like that. However, on my other blog, that should have been my main blog (yes I am that dumb). I have talked about Aang's non-consensual and criticized how Kataang is written, however, if you ship Kataang I won't come for your throat because that's not my style. I know the few misogynists/antis on here and on Twitter, and I don't want to let a few bad apples be my impression of a fandom, that's not fair, So now I'm side-eyeing myself over my past remarks. Likewise, I know shipping is not equal to morality, but I also want to criticize Kataang because of how flawed it is and how wrong that kiss was (and other things). I have no idea what I'm saying because at this point I'm rambling. What do you think?

Well, there is a difference between criticizing a ship and criticizing canon. I don't honestly care what people ship. I use the antikataang tag because I don't want to argue with people who do ship it, but that doesn't mean I won't be critical of what is in the show. I think expecting people not to engage critically with media is absolute nonsense. But there is a difference between engaging critically with the actual media and criticizing people's fanon or headcanons, which is where you get away from critically engaging with canon and move into the area of criticizing other people's opinions, which is how arguments start.

Like, there isn't really any actual concrete argument you can make to criticize zutara, because zutara does not exist in canon. It's all fanon and headcanons and speculation. And criticizing other people's opinions just makes you look like a dick.

You also have to take into account the intention behind something. The thing about the way Katara's relationship with Aang is presented is that we're supposed to root for Aang to get Katara, and every obstacle towards that end is just there to create dramatic tension for the male point of audience identification. That's the real problem with the noncon kiss, and people who are critical of it are right to point it out.

In contrast, when I say shipping isn't morality, I'm talking about people who write, let's say, dubcon zutara fics. Fanfiction as a genre is largely female-centered fantasy. Yes, even those lurid fics you're thinking of. People write and read these fics for completely different reasons and have completely different expectations than when watching a series like ATLA. Trying to say that someone can't criticize the way the show presents Aang kissing Katara after she said she was confused as a mistake to be glossed over (that is forgotten as soon as it happens) because they also happen to like reading darkfic is nonsense. There's also a long history of women's interests being policed that informs my views here, vs the fact that consent has only fairly recently become a conversation in mainstream media. You have only to look at the way the show itself portrays Katara having interests (especially in boys) outside of Aang as dark and dangerous to see this happening in ATLA itself. Or the way the creators got away with saying that zutara shippers are doomed to end up in abusive relationships while painting Aang as a typical Nice Guy stereotype who expects Katara to magically become his girlfriend (and gets angry when she doesn't) and seeing nothing wrong with it.

The thing is that zutara, if we look at the way it's written in canon as a metaphor for a romantic relationship, follows the same tradition of how fanfiction has historically existed as an exploration of romantic and sexual dynamics. Those conversations about consent are actually happening and being explored in fanfiction, even the dark stuff, whereas relationships that are presented as "wholesome" often push us to NOT have those conversations. So when I say shipping isn't morality, what I actually mean is that noncanon shipping and darkfic actually has more of a moral leg to stand on than uncritically engaging with relationships on the grounds that Aang is the hero so his goodness and worthiness to get the girl should just be assumed. Zuko has to work for his right to be in a relationship with Katara because he didn't start out from a place of goodness, and that, on its own, is very female centered because instead of starting out from the perspective of the male hero deserving a relationship by virtue of being the hero, we see the idea that a man has to work to gain a woman's respect and affection.

So it's not so much that I hate KA, but I hate the idea that we should engage in it uncritically. And that would be true even if it really was the most wholesome relationship in the world. The same thing cannot be true of zutara because even the darkest of darkfic are about women centering themselves in the narrative and engaging with power dynamics in ways that are subverting patriarchal norms about relationships by definition.

[myfandomrealitea]

I really wanted to ask you about this:

Do you have any advice of how to develop critical thinking and media literacy?

There are many, many ways you can practice critical thinking, evaluation and media literacy. At its most basic, you can access student resources for lower levels of education like earlier high school years and look at the examples and guidance given there. Rehashing this will often give you a good foundation to build off of and apply.

One of the main aspects of critical thinking involves discerning what is fact and what is opinion. A good portion of media analytics is opinion. What is 'bad' by one person's standards is 'sub-par' or even 'great' by another's. Similarly, the majority of fandom space is opinion-based. The main pitfall of fandom spaces is that everyone wants their opinion to be taken as fact, which is where critical thinking and even basic communication begin to fall away.

"I'm right and you're wrong" and "this is the way it should be, if you do it or think differently, you're wrong" are common roadblocks people run into when engaging with things like media analysis and even basic fandom activities like fanfiction.

'Mischaracterisation' is fanfiction is one popular topic, especially here on Tumblr. What people often fail to recognize is the true creative depth of fanfiction and using someone else's pre-existing characters. Characters as they are in the source material may not make the choices or behave in the ways necessary to activate or validate certain plot material or author intentions in fanfiction. Which is, inherently, one of the main points of fanfiction. Exploring the alternate.

While you might immediately recoil and say "he'd never do that!" you then have to sit back and recognise that that's exactly the point. That this iteration of that character is not meant to directly reflect the source material. Its a re-imagining, a re-interpretation. That doesn't mean its bad. Its simply different.

'Mischaracterisation' is only actually applicable in fandom spaces when someone is trying to insist as a blanket fact that a character would do something or behave in a way that blatantly contradicts their canon behavior, opinions, morals and perspective or deliberately interpreting an action in biased bad faith. It is not actually applicable to fanfiction where creative liberty dictates you can do whatever the fuck you want with a character because you're not trying to claim it as part of the source content.

Questions To Ask Yourself

Am I reacting to [media] emotionally instead of rationally? Is my emotional response to [media] blinding me to the rational or critical approach(es)?

Am I allowing my expectations to get in the way of me understanding [media] fully? Am I forming a biased negative opinion of [media] because it isn't meeting my expectations?

Even if I disagree with [media], do I actually understand it? Can I recognise the reasoning behind choices made or actions even if I don't agree with them?

Am I searching too hard to hidden meaning or purpose in absolutely everything? Can I recognise what is simply passive information/detail and what is active information/detail? (E.g; English tutors saying a character's curtains are blue because they're depressed when throughout the literature its passively reinforced that blue is the character's favorite color.)

Even though I disagree with the statement or opinion shown, is it necessary to argue against it? Is there any benefit to making my counter-opinion known or is it simply a no-end argument? Am I just using arguing as a means of release/fulfilment? Am I treating this person poorly because of their opinion/statement?

Resources

Critical Thinking Exercises & Explanations #1 The Critical Thinking Activity Workbook Early Stage Critical Thinking Games Five Media Literacy Activities Six Media Literacy Ideas

[antlerqueer]

sorry im literally putting all of my complaints about ppl's critiques of leave the world behind here bc it's alll..... like what? so i literally looked up interviews from sam esmail and rumaan alam and i'm not crazy!!! the things i was like "this is the opposite of what was going on??" were actually the opposite of what was going on.

Some criticism I've seen is people saying "the movie mocks Rose's dependence on technology with the final scene" but it was like... Rose's journey was seeking her own solution to not wanting to be miserable and inside and waiting for death?? And she found it??

Quote from Sam Esmail, from Rolling Stone (emphasis mine):

During the early days of the pandemic, I remember how we were all very scared. We were scared for our loved ones, we were scared for one another, we were scared for ourselves. People were dying on a daily basis and we were locked in and trapped. There was this real sense of fear and anxiety. And then Tiger King dropped on Netflix and that was all we could talk about for weeks.  As silly as that show is, I love that we as a community dropped our differences to engage with this story and to laugh with it and talk about it. I just found that very human. I love when you can mix tragedy and comedy like that because I do think the essence of tragic comedy speaks directly to who we are and to the human condition.  So when I was constructing this story, I felt that throughout all this bleakness, to have this character, Rose, escape into something comfortable — I thought that was just something that felt like a kind of universal touchstone.

Rumaan Alam, the author, also says this to Variety:

I say it’s funny, but I don’t think it’s a joke. I don’t think it’s a joke on Rose. I don’t think it’s a joke on the audience. I don’t think it’s a joke on “Friends.” It’s a reminder that art is kind of a salve.

Sam Esmail LOVES media. He's not fucking condemning a child for wanting comfort????? Anyway. The dependence on technology isn't a point of inherent criticism, it is a point of what do we do when our survival is reliant on technology but we lose it. It's part of the horror. It's scary.

Literally, a quote from Esmail in GQ:

[It] really kind of underlines the theme of this reliance on tech, and once it goes away, what are we left with? And that in its own way is pretty terrifying.

I've seen it said Julia Roberts's character was "redeemed" in the film from her bad actions, which I so heavily disagree with, and so does Rumaan Alam, in the Variety interview:

In that final scene between Julia and Myha’la, they don’t embrace. Even prior to that, when they’re in that little shed and come to a détente, Ruth acknowledges that there’s some truth to the things that Amanda has said, that they’re in agreement about something, but it doesn’t end with a hug. It’s not that kind of story.

(A detente is "the easing of hostility or strained relations" - not a reprieve or a reconciliation, but an easing.)

These characters don't have to like or forgive each other to agree that there are things more important to survival and making it through than Amanda being overbearing and racist. Ruth lost her mother and even though Amanda steps in and maybe saves her life (we don't know what the deer were gonna do) that is not an apology! And it's not treated like one because we don't see any sort of forgiveness from Ruth!

And then the whole "it's an attack from a foreign government making the US a victim" shit. Like... GH theorizes, out loud, that this could be the US government's doing? Anyway.

[mutfruit-salad]

I am sorry.

I enjoyed the show, I didn't analyze it critically when I should have and actively recommended it.

I realize the error of my ways and feel guilty.

Do you have any recommendations for good media in place of it?

The thing is that engaging with media isn't activism and engaging with more "ethical" media doesn't make for a better worldview. It's fundamentally impossible to purify your soul by consuming art, and the idea of purity in that way is already missing the forest for the trees.

Fallout New Vegas, along with 1 and 2, are games I love deeply. But New Vegas has horrendous problems with racism- specifically anti indigenous racism. 2 has some awful tonal problems and some downright horrifically aged humor.

The thing is, despite these works not being perfect- I still find tremendous value in them. The show, for all I have said about the ways it makes me deeply uncomfortable, is still quite often an engaging piece of art: an impressive passion project of thousands of creators and writers and filmmakers coming together to make something they believed in.

While I find the show's narratives quite troubling- I am also enraptured by the ways they're often presented. It is a show that is stylish and interesting and I think most people watching it don't notice these things.

Media analysis isn't a means of solving the ills of the world- because making media less problematic wouldn't solve any of the underlying biases that the society that PRODUCES this media has. Works like these are a branch of the tree, not a root. I'm pointing these things out as a way of countering some of these narratives- but also with the hope that it will help people notice these narratives in other places.

I'm not telling you that you can't like the show, or that liking the show makes you a bad person. I don't like it personally- and I'm wary of much of what the show is saying- but ultimately it is just a piece of art, and it should be understood as part of the current cultural landscape- created to turn a profit and entertain audiences. It is a product of its time and its culture and should be understood as such.

The things present in the show that we find offensive stem from the society that produced it- and must be understood as systemic problems and not one-off failings of the Fallout show team (not to say they are innocent, just that their particular wrongdoings are part of a larger issue.)

There are things far more important than the fallout show being problematic. Save the energy for other fights. There are a lot of people who need help right now. Take this as a learning lesson, and look out for these things in the world around you- not just on TV and in movies.

I hope this doesn't come off as rude or dismissive, and I hope it gives you something to think on.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I've been reading some of your homestuck essays, I think they're really good! I would like to know what you think about post-retcon homestuck and the interactions between reader and author throughout homestucks publishing. I was not in the fandom at the time of it being published, but I find this to be a very interesting aspect of the comic!

I was only on the fringes of the fandom at the time, but even that was enough to recognize that the fandom was absolutely awful. Every bad story you've heard about the Steven Universe, Voltron, and Undertale fandoms has its roots in the Homestuck fandom.

Pretty much as soon as the webcomic got popular on Tumblr, Hussie was put under intense scrutiny for basically every decision they ever made ever. I'm not going to say that Hussie was a perfect individual who never did anything wrong, because Hussie is a human being and that's how it works, but it's basically impossible to overstate how much the fandom tried to make an enemy out of Hussie.

The fandom was convinced that Hussie was their personal LE, and that attitude continues to this day - like, for an easy example of the fandom harassing Hussie for Literally Anything, when he stated that all trolls were bi/pan, to the point where they didn't have specific words for single-gender attraction, comparing it to a "more exacting preference" like somebody who only dates fat people - but that even within that framework, Kanaya was undoubtedly a lesbian character - people insisted Hussie was being homophobic. Fucking homophobic! For confirming all trolls are bi/pan, except Kanaya, who's a lesbian!

Other examples include: calling Hussie homophobic for John saying he wasn't a homosexual and Karkat literally not knowing what a homosexual was, because again, all trolls are bi/pan. Calling Hussie racist for making the kids aracial but accidentally leaving references to Dave having pale/pink skin in (because Hussie is a biased human person who can't be perfect and who did try to be more inclusive as the comic went on). Deciding that the dancestors served no purpose except for Hussie to be mean to their audience. Like there are valid criticisms to be made of Homestuck, but anything that was valid, nuanced, or thoughtful was drowned under a deluge of incoherent accusations of every -ism and -phobia that the fandom could possibly muster, the fandom as a whole racing to see who could paint Hussie as the biggest monster, even as they were harassing them to make more Homestuck.

Not to mention this was the era of rampant, unchecked ship wars and fandom misogyny. Not that fandom misogyny has gone away, mind you, but it's slightly more in check now. This was the era of fandom where it was normal to be sent death threats for shipping the "wrong" ship, and fandom ship wars were often encouraged by media of the time (love triangles were HOT - think zutara vs. kataang, team jacob/team edward, danny fenton/sam manson vs. danny fenton/valerie grey) because it drove up engagement. Homestuck was not really interested in shipping wars and love triangles - while many characters had circuitous routes and false starts, many were also pretty clearly set up to have specific endgame ships. But the fandom wasn't trained to behave that way, and the troll quadrants + canonical bi/pan trolls + active role of romance in the story meant that the ship wars were brutal - and also, Hussie was getting harassed every step of the way for not making peoples' favorite ships canon, a major part of a larger trend of people constantly ragging on Hussie for things not going the way they wanted plot-wise, to the point where Hussie had to comment on it constantly on his Formspring.

And don't think I forgot about the fandom misogyny! Here's a hot take for the class: Vriska is literally just Girl Zuko. She's ostensibly a noble from an imperialistic, warmongering, fascist society with an abusive parent who raised her with strict expectations, who thinks she has to act much more evil and more tough than she feels in order to earn the approval of her parent/society, and who secretly has misgivings and feels really bad about it and was set up for a redemption arc.

And people HATED Vriska. Vriscourse was so bad that many Homestuck fan spaces banned talking about Vriska at ALL, because just the mere mention of her name would spark massive, endless flame wars as people argued whether or not she deserved her little redemption arc (spoilers: yes, it turns out death is cheap in Homestuck and characters changing, growing, and becoming better is a huge part of the story) or whether or not she was justified in doing the things she did. Genuinely, I think a huge part of this intense hatred and anger was just misogyny. God forbid women have Zuko's character arc.

It was also part of two other large trends in the fandom - the first was that, despite finding every possible reason to call Hussie -ist and -phobic they could, the fandom itself was, ummm... "of its time." For example, the original March Eridan stuff was pretty clearly meant to be funny because, look, man in a dress! Isn't it sooo funny when Eridan wears a dress? (No hate to the artist, this was a long time ago and I'm sure they're a different person now.) The fandom was also constantly goading Hussie on WRT which characters were fat, and while we can argue about whether Hussie is fatphobic because none of the characters are canonically drawn to be fat, I'm going to go to bat for them on this: people treat the Fat Vriska jokes as though Hussie is the creepy weirdo exclusively, but the fandom was goading them on and thought that shit was hilarious, because that was what early internet fandom was like a lot of the time - at the same time as it harassed and decried creators for being problematic, it would turn around and delight in shitting on women, neurodivergent people, POC, and fat people, and Homestuck was rampant with it.

The second trend the Vriscourse was a part of was one that also hasn't fully gone away, but it's better now - wilful ignorance of the actual comic's contents. I'm not talking about the usual fandom fare of noncanon ships or "x character is trans/autistic/etc. even though I know there's no canon basis," which is all pretty damn harmless, but I mean like, memes and fanon would override canon and you would be outright harassed for not playing along. There are STILL places to this day that will call you an actual fascist, genocide liker, evil and irredeemable, etc. if you try to stick up for Eridan, even though Eridan is actually the LEAST casteist highblood and his entire character arc is about how his shitty fascist society makes him deeply anxious and unhappy. Similarly, you can/definitely would be be harassed for saying you don't like March Eridan and/or think it's OOC (it is), and I have nothing but sympathy for Gamzee and Equius fans, who also get it really bad.

The most vocal parts of the fandom, if not the majority, were people who were generally uninterested in engaging with Homestuck on Homestuck's terms, instead dead set on making up a version of it in their head and harassing people who disagreed, including Hussie. Echoes of that persist to this day - Equius, Gamzee, and Eridan get it bad, but practically none of the trolls have fandom interpretations that actually line up with who they are - Kanaya is actually just Eridan's bully (and did nothing to help Tavros after she caught Vriska kissing him), but people portray her as Nice Team Mom. Feferi is a casteist hypocrite who loves classism and calling people the r-slur, but people portray her as bubbly equality lady. So on and so forth. Like, damn, I barely participate in fandom and I'm out here meeting people who think Karkat ACTUALLY hates his friends like he says he does.

And then, of course, these people went and harassed Hussie because actual Homestuck did not match up with the Homestuck that existed only in their own heads.

On top of all the fandom harassment, Hussie was also facing ballooning scope. Most of Homestuck was a single dude drawing, writing, and animating it, and they would update every two or three days, sometimes less. So from the get-go, Homestuck was an INSANE project that demanded an insane amount of work and time from Hussie, and as it went on, it only got worse - and fandom expectations only got bigger. Suddenly, Hussie had to be in charge of merchandise, in charge of vetting, hiring, directing, and paying third-party artists, planning animations months if not years in advance, creating entire sections of the comic that had GAMEPLAY, directing ACTUAL GAMES, etc. ... there's an argument to be made that Hussie should not have taken on a workload they couldn't manage, but at the same time, the fandom certainly wasn't telling them to slow down. If anything, they harassed Hussie for every update, and were furious when hiatuses needed to happen to plan and execute some of the bigger moments later in the comic.

There's a Sarah Z video out there on the creation of the Homestuck game, which I think is OK if you take into account that Sarah kind of has fandom brain and is a little biased against Hussie (and I guess Hussie did send a spurious legal threat which is pretty funny but, y'know, understandable that Sarah would be peeved), where it's really clear that Hussie was not ready for the kind of responsibility, time, and effort needed to manage a whole-ass video game.

So by the time Game Over and the Retcon roll around, you basically have to imagine that Hussie has so many irons in the fire that the furnace is about to pop like a balloon, and the people they were making the damn things for in the first place have been relentlessly harassing them for YEARS, and weren't even that interested in engaging with the actual story in the first place. I'd say the majority of the fandom to this day STILL does not understand Eridan - how do you think they would've taken his redemption arc, and especially the fact that he was set up to date Karkat and Roxy? Given the pattern of their behavior up to that point... they'd probably harass Hussie and call them homophobic.

This is why I genuinely cannot blame Hussie for turning on the fandom and truncating their story. Vriska got upgraded to main character and had her character development reset because fuck you, fandom, you couldn't understand her redemption arc in the first place so now you don't get one. DaveKat got (kind of) made canon but as a weird throuple with the Mayor because fuck you, fandom, you didn't appreciate any of the actual gay ships that were set up so now you're stuck with brutally OOC DaveKatMayor. Karkat and Jake have their plot threads left hanging because fuck you, fandom, you never even noticed all the prophecies and symbolism and character arcs because you were all too obsessed with screaming at women and took the dancestors as a personal insult, so now the guy who's supposed to defeat LE and the guy who's supposed to bring equality and forgiveness to all bloodlines don't even get to participate in any of the important boss battles.

People call Hussie a troll, and they really aren't. If you read their old Formspring, they're clearly deeply fucking passionate about the art of storytelling, and switch between bafflement, mild indignation, and playing along when people ask them stupid questions. But back then, they were always very serious and genuine when they answered questions asked in good faith, and I'm being 100% genuine when I say that I've learned about how to tell stories better by reading Hussie's Formspring. Over time, however, those stupid questions became more common, and often morphed into outright harassment, and in response to that, Hussie's answers became more humorous and facetious, and the fandom - who was already trying to find ANY reason to hate Hussie - started to paint Hussie as an unreliable trickster and liar who got their jollies by shitting on the fandom.

Honestly, in doing so, the fandom was what turned Hussie into exactly that. Again, I'm not saying Hussie was a perfect baby who did nothing wrong - there's a lot of stuff to critique and scrutinize about their writing, their biases, and what topics they found appropriate to joke about. However, I AM saying that they were also just a human fucking being who was trying to write a good story, who was harassed at every turn, mostly for things that actually weren't problematic at all, whose words and actions were always taken in the absolute worst possible faith, and that the fandom is not fucking faultless, and if there's anyone that I'm mad at for how bad Homestuck ended, it's the fans.

That's my hottest Homestuck take.

[mariacallous]

The patriarch of a right-wing Canadian family of 11 had had just about enough of gay people in his country. “We didn't feel safe for our children there in the future anymore,” father Arend Feenstra told Russian media. “There's a lot of left-wing ideology, LGBTQ, trans, just a lot of things that we don't agree with that they teach there now, and we wanted to get away from that for our children.”

Yeah, if there’s one place that’s just not safe for kids, it’s Canada. Russia would be soooo much safer. 

So Arend (and wife Anneesa) sold everything they had to move to sunny Russia and raise eight of their nine kids with “orthodox” values. They also gladly took donations on their social media platform from fellow right-wingers, all so they could live in Vladimir Putin’s wonderland. Russian officials assured them that they would work with them to get them established, and even help them get a farm. They did all of this just three weeks ago; long story short, they lived happily ever after. 

Except they didn’t. 

First, according to the family, the Russian bank where they moved the proceeds from selling their farm and belongings? It immediately froze their assets. The amount of money seemed suspicious, Arend states in a Feb. 9 video. I guess it would, since so many Russians outside of Putin’s circle are dirt poor. As a result, the family didn’t have money to live on—apparently those nice Russian officials offering to help them had disappeared.

Since no one in the family speaks Russian, they’ve also had a bear of a time trying to argue for their money—because Russia doesn’t require any bank, or any business, to hire English translators. In the meantime, they discovered that Russia is a pretty damn miserable place to be right now.

TikTok user Ukrainian.Networking translated a Russian Federation Reported Media story in a snarky post. 

The Russian reporter noted that Anneesa spoke her mind in a since-deleted video on the family’s “Countryside Acres” YouTube channel.

"I'm very disappointed in this country at this point. I'm ready to jump on a plane and get out of here. We've hit the first snag where you have to engage logic in this country and it's very, very frustrating."

Hoooo boy. They just arrived and already she’s insulted Russia. Now, I’m not saying Russia doesn’t have freedom of the press, but it’s really just freedom to praise Putin and the country he controls. Anything that resembles criticism in Russia is NOT taken as kindly as it is in our godless Western dystopias. I’m also not suggesting that Russian officials paid the family a visit to remind them of where they are, but I will point out that Arendquickly posted an apology video to the Countryside Acres channel, saying that his wife misspoke and they’d deleted the video. 

In that video, he reiterated that no, Russia is really, really great (subtext: “Please don’t push me out of a window”) and he spoke of his hope to resolve the issue with the bank. Commenters weren’t so sure, or kind. They pointed out that the bank will likely never release their funds and it is more likely that he will be recognized as a foreign agent.

At this point, I’m not sure the Countryside Acres farming gig is going to work out. Patriarch Arend should have agreed to be used as a tool for Russian state media. I mean, if you are going to be a Russian Asset, might as well go all-in. 

I’m willing to bet that living in a country that grants gay people basic civil rights might not be looking so bad now. I was wondering if the family is desperately trying to split, so I looked up how difficult it is to leave Russia. According to the BBC, you can leave “as long as you have money and have not been called up to the army.” 

Even if only for his kids’ sakes, let’s hope Arend’s only lost his money.

And I’ll end with this charming reprise of a German eurodisco tribute to Moscow, originally released in 1979. (English lyrics here)

“Welcome to Moscow!” At least the song is catchy.

Comment Award goes to Laughing Gravy: “I’ll bet back home they used to whine about immigrants who don’t know the language, who have no money, who expect the government to hand them a house and a job, and who complain when they don’t get everything they want.”

[night-market-if]

Helloo, while I agree with you that Milo is also a victim, I also think that the other anons are also justified in feeling that way about him. I'm really sorry if I'm wrong, but the way you reply to other people's thoughts, about things that you don't have the same opinion on, feels like you're telling them that they are wrong to feel that way.

Let's unpack this for a minute. Because I think this is a great opportunity.

I am not invalidating that anyone has an opinion. They are allowed to have an opinion. And, if they approached me like you just did, I would most likely respond to that opinion in a constructive way. But someone messaging me and just throwing out a random feeling they have that is negative, and then getting mad at me in return when I don't agree with them, is childish. I will not be apologizing for that because most of the people that are "angry" about something, come at me in a really negative context. And then when I state something differently (without attacking them even) they get irrationally upset. I mean, a prime example is me saying that Milo is also a victim. That there can be more than one victim. I then got a response saying I was the one flying off the handle. Following that was another response telling me that I am a hated author. That my game is terrible. That I am a bad person. I mean, think about that for a minute here. Does the response corelate with what I said? Does it warrant that? No.

People are always valid to have an opinion, but there are two things to say about it. Most of the time, the people coming at me, are internet trolls. Not actual readers. And I'm sorry, we were indoctrinated at a young age to "ignore the bullies" and I just don't think that is the right response. Because now we have a generation that ignored the bullies and they got way worse because no one had a social contract to call them out.

Two, the ones that are not trolls, are lacking a lot of media literacy. That is actually an extreme problem within our society. And, since I am the author, it is my job to offer what I was trying to say within my story. That may not align with someone's opinion. But me having my own opinion, does not warrant someone getting mad at me. I didn't get mad at them so why am I suddenly greeted with toxicity.

I get where you are coming from saying that people are allowed to have their own opinion. And I have stated over and over again that everyone is valid for it. I'm not even saying for someone to change their mind or go away. But, someone else's opinion does not invalidate my own. Just as my own does not invalidate theirs. And if someone feels like it does, and this is going to sound cruel, but it is not my responsibility to regulate that for them. That most likely stems from a personal standpoint. I am not responsible for someone being offended by what I have to say about my own story and my own fictional characters. You don't see me coming on here and crying out that someone on anon made me "feel bad". That's not a thing.

There is a difference between just saying something out loud and engaging in a conversation. Constructive criticism is where you offer a opinion, give why you are offering it, and then explain how it does or does not work for the narrative. Then, I can come back, ask questions, respond with what maybe I was intending, and figure out a better way to get what I was intending across.

Non constructive criticism is just coming to me as an anon, and saying they are angry and want to hurt someone. Or that they don't like something of my story without giving why.

To further some points. Milo is a triggering character. I knew this from the beginning. The things that he did is not for the faint of heart and speaks to betrayal. And a lot of people who have been in a situation where they feel betrayed, are going to respond negatively to that. But, that is on them. That is for them to work through and own. It is not the responsibility of my story to change because of that. And coming on to say that you hate a character and want to harm them. Or coming on to say that I'm a bad writer. Or even coming on to say that I'm hated on reddit (to which I say, isn't everyone?) is providing nothing to this community, world, or our author reader relationship. It is done solely with the intent to try and hurt someone because the reader themselves was hurt.

To end this, I am going to make this statement. Telling me it "feels" like I am telling someone they are wrong is based in a personal feeling towards a situation. It is not based in facts. It is not based in anything that I have said. And while everyone has a right to their opinion, just because I am an author and a content creator, does not mean I don't get to defend my story or my characters. If I was being racists, sexist, transphobic? All things to come at someone for. But because I wrote something that makes people angry and they don't want to continue going on a journey with the characters and would rather just block their minds to character growth? I can't do anything about that. If there is no conversation they want to engage in, if they simply want to come on and troll me, then they need to not be surprised when I treat them the same way they are treating me.

I hope this makes more sense and provides some understanding.

Zinnia

[highfantasy-soul]

I think a fundamental misunderstanding of morality is so prevalent in Star Wars discourse and I wish more people would think in complex nuance rather than 'this side is right and if you listen to a single thing the OTHER side says, then you're falling to evilness'.

I don't think Osha listening to Qimir's side of the story and understanding it is 'her seeing she's like this evil person, and so deciding she might as well be evil too!'.

I don't see Qimir as evil. I don't see the jedi as good. So where are we when we analyze character choices?

Fighting for freedom and choice is not inherently evil (see: The Rebel Alliance). You have to dig deeper than 'I don't like the Jedi code' when determining if that person rejecting a super high-control cult is doing so to harm others or simply seek freedom for themselves or the galaxy.

Is it possible to fight against the Jedi for evil reasons? Yeah (see: Palpatine). But that's not the ONLY option.

It feeds into this idea that once you 'identify' the 'good guys' in a situation, you need to back them uncritically and to listen at all to those you're 'identified' as the 'bad guys' means you're falling to corruption and evilness. That's just...a terrible way to 1) engage with media, and 2) engage with the world.

You could have been wrong when you identified the 'good guys'. But if you never listen to the things the 'other' side says, if you dehumanize them to the point where even when they're making valid points, you shut them down simply because 'well, you're the bad guy, so it's physically impossible for you to have any 'right' things to say at all', you stagnate as a person/group and corruption thrives in your ranks and the conflict between you and 'the bad guys' will never end. Not to mention, you miss out on a lot of good philosophy when we're talking about media analysis.

It's about actually looking at what people are saying and doing critically, with as little bias as possible, that will help you make your way to 'the truth' of the matter. If you've decided you're going to put on rose-colored glasses when you look at all the decisions made by 'the good guys' and piss-colored glasses for all actions taken by 'the bad guys', then you're going to miss the actual path forward.

Sometimes, NO ONE is 'the good guy' and sometimes, NO ONE is 'the evil guy'. What we CAN do is look at everything, the effects of their actions, their philosophies, and analyze it dispassionately to try to glean some lessons from it. After all, this is a fake world filled with fake people - acknowledging Qimir might have some valid criticisms of the Jedi order isn't putting a dictator in charge of your real-life country. This isn't a life or death situation here, so maybe take a breath and realize it's ok to sympathize and understand characters in fiction who might have done things we consider to be bad.

But it's also correct to say that the way we conceptualize morality in media CAN impact how we interact with our real world. That's why I think it's so important to expose people to the idea that there isn't a clear 'good side' and clear 'bad side' you can neatly separate all people into in a safe environment such as storytelling. You cannot separate real people into 'orcs' or 'hobbits' in the real world and I think a lot of people with their purity politics are forgetting that. Is it easier to dehumanize those who do things that harm others? Yeah. Is that good storytelling to make a clear and irredeemable enemy? It can be! But it's not the ONLY way to tell a story.

Seriously, look into some more 'lit fic' stories and you'll see that the common 'good vs evil' storytelling of fantasy/fantasy adjacent genres isn't the only way to write a compelling and meaningful story. Everyone can have good traits, everyone can have bad traits, and some traits can flip flop depending on the situation. Most importantly, identifying with the antagonist and certain traits they posses DOES NOT MAKE YOU A BAD PERSON!!!!

I guess the tl;dr of this is that it's ok to not be able to identify the 'good guys' or the 'bad guys' - it's ok to look at the characters and say 'boy, this is messy' and leave your moral judgement at that. There's no law that says you have to correctly identify the perfect people in fiction and if you get it wrong, you're punished somehow. Release yourself of that expectation and I think you'll find engaging with media a much more rewarding and eye-opening experience that can help you learn things about yourself and others that you can take into the real world in a non-combative manner.

Black vs White morality is not the only dynamic available in media and it's time we reminded ourselves of that, especially when looking at Star Wars.

[onceuponalegendbg-rwby]

I think it's because people just see an easy designated punching bag online and view it's supposed "shittiness" as carte blanche to mistreat anyone who dares to not be part of that mob. We've seen it happen many times over the years.

Star Wars. Sonic the Hedgehog. RWBY. If there's a punching bag available, people will do everything they can to justify punching it.

A lot of people enjoy being cruel, but they hate being seen as cruel. So when an opportunity pops up where they can be as awful as possible because "the person/group/thing deserves it"? They just jump on it like hyenas to bloody carcasses. And then they get to pretend it's all justified to be an asshole because they're "on the right side", and will get protected and praised for their cruelty until it's not the socially acceptable thing to do anymore, or they just jumped onto the next bandwagon/fad for them to be an asshole about. Then they'll just go "Oh I'm so sorry, it wasn't that bad, can you just ignore and pretend I wasn't an absolute asshole that probably hurt you immensely? KTHXBAI. Oh and if you dare to call me out, I'll call you thin-skinned and sensitive but I'm just a victim UwU"

And the reality is that even IF this thing or media had a deserved bad reputation, more often than not that STILL doesn't justify being cruel about it. But a lot of people WANT to be cruel about it.

You are definitely not wrong. And it's gets so exhausting after a while, especially if you engage with that group, but even if you don't just seeing all the hate can wear you down after so long of seeing the same complaint (valid or not) over and over and over. Whether the piece of media deserves it or not, it just becomes redundant after a certain point.

It's hard to fight the urge to fight back, to not defend something you cherish so deeply, because you know the other person wants to get you riled up, they want act like they've got some make believe moral high ground because they're "objectively" right about how this piece of media should be perceived.

As I said in my original post, it's okay to not like something but that doesn't mean you have to make that vitriolic disdain your entire personality. More people need to figure out the ancient and therapeutic art of "Disengage if You Don't Like."

Now this also isn't to say we can't criticize media. As much as I love RWBY and will always defend it from its haters, I have my fair share of complaints about how certain elements were handled, mostly in the first four Volumes and especially in V4 itself. However, do those criticisms I have derail my overall feelings toward this show? No. Not at all. But I've already spoken at length about my feelings so I'm not going to repeat myself again here.

[corvuscorona]

"You Never Forget Your First Love."

The other day, a mutual (hi! you know who you are I think probably hello hi! thank you for the Posting Impetus!) said something that made me curious (for, like, the 80th time, actually; lol. I Have Thoughts) about something: what's the split on people who subscribe to the "Stranger of Paradise probably intended for us to believe that Jack & Sarah were in love" mindset, vs. not? In general, but ESPECIALLY around these parts.

I genuinely didn't read it that way myself (& I do NOT normally give media (general) this much credit, but the writing in this game is sublime; I had no choice but to fully engage Scholar Mode on it), + I think it's interesting that SPECIFICALLY any of my fellow tumblr people / AO3-heads / Gay People Online / etc. seem to have. (I expect nothing from people who haven't been basting themselves in the same online sub-subcultures as me for over a decade. They're allowed to write wrong things on wikis, and have done so already; it's whatever.)

I wanna metapost badly again, so let's go. Join me. No poll. If you have an opinion on this, I'm looking directly into your eyes and beckoning you towards your own keyboard + also the reblog button / comment section, like a weird ghost. What did you think when you first played the game?? What do you think right now? What are you about to think after you have read a bunch of my words. Tell Me. I Need To Know This.

Spoilers for, idk, everything? Today we will use everything we've got to talk about Princess Sarah.

1. As a Narrative Element

This game makes a point of referring to Sarah as things like "a symbol of hope and peace" as often as possible, & when it isn't doing that she's usually in the role of An Object Or Device Of Some Kind, anyway. She's important because she's capable of holding light and dark in balance & SOMEONE'S gotta hold onto this dark crystal for safekeeping, and also we're gonna need to upset that balance on purpose later. There's that conversation in the Wicked Arbor about whether the Strangers would "choose" her (as opposed to "treasure") as the "reward" for succeeding in their mission[1], & there's the one in the Sunken Shrine where Jed asks Jack what he thinks of her and Jack says that he doesn't care about her as a person[2] BUT that protecting her is mission-critical (lol), too.

Sarah's death is metaphorically charged. It's the point of no return: the dark crystal breaks, the balance of light & dark gets extremely ruined, & Literally All The Darkness In Cornelia converges in one place (Fool's Missive XXVII). That's the payoff for the "symbol of hope and peace" motif, and communicating this idea that "the metaphorical light of hope just For Real Died, Like Catastrophically Imploded, No Take-Backs" feels to me like it was the highest priority here. Second-highest goes to "Jack had way more humanity before, but he set it aside on purpose and is actively in the middle of losing the rest of it." "Sort of." "I'm not getting into what counts as humanity or doesn't because if I did we would be here forever."

Basically, I'm saying that the tidiest read on the situation is "Jack despairs because Sarah dying means in a very literary and final way that everything is ruined forever, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with, like, Love (romantic)." I don't think the text of the game is particularly signaling that Love (romantic) is involved, and I think that if it meant to, it would be more obvious about it. You could bundle "an romance" into the "humanity" thing if you wanted to, but I'm not inclined to, based on some additional list items that you can read below this one.

[1] The fact that Neon ALSO says she feels bad for her for being thought of in this way only reinforces my conviction that the game is pointing at Sarah & yelling "REMEMBER THAT SHE IS MOSTLY A SYMBOL!", tbh. Who wants to go point out how freaky the mechanics of Being An Royalty are w/ me and the boys??

[2] I will give the Wiki WrongPosters this: I can totally see this as some kind of irony thing, given that he's still missing like a fucktillion of his memories when he says it. However! As mentioned above, I have other reasons not to read it as evidence that he was ever, like, romantically interested in her.

2. As a Sheltered Youth™

We don't have a TON of information to work with RE: Sarah as, like, a person, but here are a couple of hard facts to start with: she's 19 (per the data book, but she'd have to be somewhere in the 18-to-early-20's age range regardless or her whole deal wouldn't really make much sense, imo. She's a baby...!), and she's royalty. I think this ties into her utility as a walking metaphor, among other things; she's archetypically young, fresh, & idealistic. I'd call her naïve but the game obviously isn't interested in portraying it as a weakness, so positive words only; why not.

You could argue that people look to her as a symbol of hope because she hasn't directly experienced enough strife to exhibit hopelessness or fear in response to bad news in the abstract. I find it interesting that before Jack, like, knocks the wind out of her & tells Sophia to take her outside so she can see for herself how bad things have gotten at the end of the game, she says that her duty is to die with her people if she has to, & it doesn't even seem to occur to her that she could lead at least some of them away to safety...? When she changes her mind, she still talks about herself as a symbol before she ever uses the word "leader". She sees HERSELF in terms of symbols and metaphors, and takes action based on her designated role As One Of Those. Not very practical.

There's also the dialogue you can have with the queen the first time you're allowed to run around in the throne room at the beginning of the game, where she asks Jack to smile in front of her daughters (NOT just Mia; daughters, plural). Even if she only means "dude can you be polite please," the fact that this is The thing she has to say to Jack is telling. Is it going to upset your 19-year-old daughter to see that the Guy Whose Job It Is To Kill Monsters looks serious? Why do you think this? Does your 19-year-old daughter understand how serious the situation is, generally speaking? Do you not WANT her to for some reason? Boats don't work anymore unless a weird elf messes with them first. Not thinking very hard about the implications of this is something a sheltered person does.

Residual time loop un-memories aside, a young woman in this situation is so obviously going to have a huge crush on Jack Garland no matter what. He Is So Cool, first of all, & he's also Different from the adult men she gets to see on an everyday basis (family, guards, rando townspeople[3]...). It's not like the political social scene could POSSIBLY be thriving in this world, either; it all seems to be one kingdom we're dealing with and they're kind of busy with the external threat of being Under Fucking Attack By Monsters. Does she even get fun treats like "handsome visiting dignitaries" & what-have-you? The game doesn't present us with any potential options, here. Jack is mysterious, he has special-boy Warrior of Light status, his one job & apparent life's purpose is protecting the kingdom she loves, he's pretty nice to her (even in later cycles he at least goes out of his way to be polite!), & additionally, he's shredded. THIS makes sense to me.

There's a Q&A in the data book that has something to say about JACK as a symbol & what that has to do with this whole thing but we'll get there. We'll get there.

[3] Tangent: what's up with how Cornelia's entire adult male population appears to consist of aging queens. Why did they only make models that look Like That for the NPCs? It's awesome but I have 1 quastion

3. JACK JUMPSCARE !

I'm not about to say that he's just humoring her, or anything, but please humor ME for one second & put yourself in Jack's shoes. Not the default shoes; we can have more fun than that. Maybe the Banded Boots. Blurple ones? Shaped like a cartoon would wear them? Big spikes on the back for no reason? I love those things. Anyway, you're Jack. You're working for literally the king, & the work means Everything to you for reasons you can't even necessarily explain except to say that it JUST does. The king's eldest daughter (very young adult; Never Been Outdoors; a little overly-sociable but nice enough & what do you expect from a princess, anyway) has imprinted on you like a duckling for whatever reason. You would be nice to this person, yes? You'd be patient with her while you're in town. You have Brutal Murders to be doing, but not until, like, 2 days from now, or whatever; you're sharing space with her in some capacity in the meantime & it's in your best interests to keep her happy. (You probably even enjoy doing this, if you're Jack of a Way Earlier Cycle; I'm in no way ruling that out. Sharing your music collection with an enthusiastic Baby Adult? That's fun. I think he was probably having fun. Okay, you can step out of the fun purple shoes if you want; the Humoring Me Minute has concluded; thanks.)

Also, @2000sanimeop and I think that if Jack felt that way about her Astos would have been a little More Something about how much it was gonna suck for him when she died. In Fool's Missive XXVII he uses the word "painful," but that's about it. He doesn't even bring it up in XXV, which is the one where he says he's curious about whether she'd survive being turned into a fiend (side note: Astos fucking rocks. Why did he write that down?? I love him). & Hey SPEAKING OF ASTOS,

4. I wouldn't put Jackstos on a wiki, either.

The writing in Stranger of Paradise, SERIOUSLY, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION, is some of the best I've seen in literally anything ever. It suits not just its medium but also its sort of Place in History Relative to Other Video Games & the things it chose to DO with that medium & that niche INSANELY well. It is CUSTOMIZED. It's SO INTENTIONAL. I can't get too far into this or we'll be here all day, but the essence of what I want to say here is: there are relatively few facts presented to us by this game, compared to the implications we can go about drawing from those facts & other, external sources of context.

Sarah calls Jack her first love; that's a fact. No facts are presented to us that REALLY say much one way or the other[4] about what Jack thinks of this, himself; "fucktillion memories missing" Jack says he doesn't care, but he's missing a fucktillion of his memories, and DLC2 Jack has a set of dialogue options (hi Anne the Malboro I love you Anne the Malboro) that can point either way depending on what the player chooses, which is kind of nothing, on balance. As the audience, we can (should!) draw whatever conclusion we want about it, but none of those conclusions are text.

[4] I WILL GET TO THE DATA BOOK IN ONE SECOND. HOLD ON.

And, okay, please let me level with you. Let's be on the same page. Jack & Astos had some kind of thing going on, imo, OBVIOUSLY, but I want to be CLEAR and I want to get CREDIT for the things I'M bringing to the table to help generate this conviction. I drew that conclusion & I read that reading based on subtext, context, personal history, personal preference, & sheer gay zest for life. It is also, emphatically, NOT TEXT.

Astos refers to Jack with the ol' "...friend" in Fool's Missive XXI. He calls him "my Jack" in Fool's Missive XXXI. Canonically, textually, he has some big fucking COMPLICATED fucking feelings about this man. These are facts. If you're playing this game as Some Guy, I can see how you could potentially absorb these facts & still pay them much less regard[5] than I did & continue to. My argument here is that god I wish I lived in a world where Some Guy could extend the same courtesy to me and not treat Sarah's textual affection for Jack as something that necessarily indicates Some Kind Of Reciprocal Romantic Whatever, Definitely, Obviously, Of Course.

[5] Longer Tangent: I have been informed that the Some Guys of the world are currently pretty good at Recognizing a character that behaves in a way that's Pretty Gay, but tend to stop there, possibly for the combined reasons that A. they're not very familiar with a lot of the the ways gay relationships often work (you know, soul resonance. mutual recognition. sharing a brain etc.) and B. the Object Of Affection is usually the player character and they subconsciously shy away from thinking of a Guy They're Supposed To Identify With as gay. This is practically a lead-in to an entire separate post I could make, so I'll leave it at that, lol.

The writing is too good for that kind of assumption! I'M SERIOUS!! It's mind-blowingly subtle & endlessly fascinating to hold up to the light & view from every possible angle, and "Jack & Sarah were in love" + "Jack & Astos were in love" are BOTH ANGLES. I'm personally very very interested in giving the text credit for that. I think it's impressive. I think it's really, really cool, and I think it was on purpose. Speaking of which,

5. Word of God agrees with me, btw

This is from the Q&A section on page 156 of the Confidential File. The translations below are my own (I think they're straightforward enough, but lmk if you know more than me & I'm actually being stupid in there somewhere. Alt text has the JPN, if you want to copypaste it or something). Someone asked:

Why is it that you established Garland as someone Sarah has a romantic interest in?

The answer is from Daisuke Inoue (director, one of 3; the other 2 are from Team Ninja; he's from Square Enix):

That was because, from a narrative standpoint, we wanted Sarah to be the kind of person who holds onto hope. You can imagine that she saw the "hope" to save the world in Jack, a potential Warrior of Light. Sarah is seen by her people as a symbol of a bright future, but if there were nobody to give her hope, that might destabilize her emotionally. As for whether she felt genuine love for Jack, or just mistook her feelings of admiration towards him for "first love," we'll leave that to your interpretation.

The first time I read this, I thought the question was implying the aforementioned Reciprocal Something, but on closer inspection that doesn't even seem to be true! "思い人" seems to indicate a directional relationship; as in, the question assumes that Jack is an object of affection to Sarah, but assumes nothing about what Jack thinks.

Also, the answer uses the word "初恋" (hatsukoi), which is a very established Concept as far as "first love" goes, but in that one cutscene, Sarah says "初めての恋" (hajimete no koi), which is. Different, but I couldn't tell you how, lol. It's Not The Exact Same Phrase, but I'm not sure whether it's meaningfully different in this context. If I had to guess, I'd say that IF ANYTHING it could be a way of saying "first love" without invoking the cultural CONSTRUCT of First Love (as much)? But it's whatever. The localization holds up. All sources show that Sarah had Feelings about Jack, and all sources CONSPICUOUSLY neglect to mention Jack's feelings about her.

It was on purpose. This is my license to be as annoying as I want for one second here. I am right. All the other writing in this game is notably subtle, efficient, intentional, and skilled, AND ALSO, WHEN do you ever see anyone write such a richly beautiful, mostly-subtextual relationship between two men, which can easily be read as a romantic thing, and NOT explicitly canonize a very possible romantic relationship between at least one of those men and a woman, like not even in an interview or anything. What the fuck, man.

I'm putting away the Respectable Scholar Hat now. This is so funny. The person asking this question didn't EVEN go as far as assuming Jack & Sarah had any kind of Actual Romance going on, & the answer STILL dials it back to "she might have been conflating her feelings about Jack AS A SYMBOL with actual affection, also. We'll let you decide : ) ". This game is everything ever.

[magpod-confessions]

the thing about literary analysis and media criticism is that everything is fair game AND sometimes things aren't that deep. someone could write an impassioned , thoughtful meta about Needles but he's still gonna be a Funny Little Guy, horrible edition. but: maybe the meta writer wants to explore body horror vs bodily autonomy and the role of piercings in individual queer empowerment narratives, and they give it some thought and say 'this is a way Needles can be read.' and that's legit!

there's also a difference between listening to magnus like it's a story and listening to magnus like it's a puzzle. it's really apparent in how much tmagp meta reads like a continuation of the ARG: people making spreadsheets and notes and figurative (perhaps literal?) red string boards (which is also a thing people liked to do while tma was airing, too, i'm not trying to point fingers at protocol in particular). the coffee/tea people say that the oiar crew's hot beverage of choice symbolises their ties to either protocol-verse or archives-verse, but what a lot of them seem to mean is not that coffee/tea are symbols, but that they're *clues.* (personally I don't think it's either, but am prepared to be wrong about this.) because tmagp is still so new, too, it's harder to understand if/how it's operating on an overarching thematic level; we can't see the forest because the trees are still saplings.

when people say things like "the fears are capitalism," I mean. the fears are a pretty good allegory for the systems of power and oppression that, in their avarice, seek endless and complete consumption of the very resources (people) that keep them alive. the web is a great image for the inconceivably complex systems that surround and entrap us, whether we're a fly or a society. at the same time, the fears/the fear entity is literally an extradimensional force beyond human comprehension that must feed off the terror of other living beings and seeks to expand its reach across the multiverse. the fears are also scary because being trapped in a cave is scary, and the endless void of space is scary, and clowns are scary, y'know?

so I think my hot take is that critical engagement with media and textual analysis and interpretation and meta of all kinds is fun and rewarding, but that while stories generally have literal meanings (they've got a plot, they've got characters, things occur), they don't tend to produce clean solutions. if the magnus archives were two sentences long ("exploitation is bad and we are probably mostly doomed. you should still try I guess, and also care about people," for example) it would be a lot less memorable!

.

[andreal831]

TVDU and Morality

I've recently said, a few times, that the morality debates in the TVDU fandom are boring, and some people have gotten offended so I thought I would explain.

First, this idea of hypocrisy in the fandom is laughable. The amount of times I've been called a hypocrite because I've called out problematic behavior, while also liking a problematic character. The gut reaction for so many in this fandom when their favorite character is being criticized is to shift the conversation onto a completely different character and even to the commenter themselves. This is boring and even downright offensive at times. Every single character has been a hypocrite at times. It doesn't inherently mean someone is bad. It means they are "human" and life can make hypocrites of all of us at times. Also, just to clarify, I am not a hypocrite for merely liking a problematic character. I promise I have never nor will I ever commit the acts that I criticize these characters for, which would be the definition of hypocrisy. I have also never told anyone they can't like certain characters.

We have these complicated characters and none of them are "good" people because, guess what, people aren't just one or the other. Everyone has the capability to be "bad" or "good." Trying to put a character firmly on one side is a generalization and ignores so much nuance. Some of their actions may be completely bad or completely good, but typically even that is an oversimplification. Are there characters that seem to do more bad things or more good things, definitely. Are their some characters that cross certain, unnecessary lines, absolutely. Are we allowed to criticize and question every character, please do! That's literally what media literacy is about.

Every single one of these characters has had completely selfish moments (except maybe Bonnie) and every single one of them has had moments of selflessness. These acts don't inherently demonize a character or automatically redeem one. This is what it means to have interesting, complex debates about characters. Looking at the characters as a whole and having open discussions of what it means. We can still love the character and acknowledge the good and the bad of the character.

Another annoying point that is always brought up is, "they weren't born evil, they were made that way." Yes, we get it. No one is born evil. Whether it is mental illness or life events that shape a person, they still have to take responsibility for their own actions. Obviously certain mental illnesses didn't have treatments for a very long time, but that doesn't just allow people to be serial killers.

Every single character has dealt with trauma, and how you react says a lot about a person's character. Separating out characters to say well "x" didn't deserve it but when they became "x" they did. No one deserves good or bad things. I know I say it all the time, they deserved better, but when I do, I'm being facetious. I'm saying I wanted better for that character, better writing, better storylines, a better ending, etc. That phrasing implies that some people deserve better lives than others and I just morally don't agree. No one deserves trauma or abuse. That logic only furthers the cycle of abuse. Now, that being said, people are responsible for their own actions. Spend centuries creating enemies, and guess what, a lot of bad things are going to happen to you.

But the real debates I enjoy having, and have been fortunate to find so many people to engage in these debates, is the morality of the decisions in context of the characters. I like to apply similar logic from the Trolley Problem. If you don't know what that is, enjoy this tik tok I made of Cami teaching the Mikaelsons.

Essentially, many of the characters weight their options, like Jeremy killing Kol and thousands of vampires with it in order to find the cure. Kol is a thousand year old serial killer and is attempting to kill Jeremy, but again Kol is attempting to stop Silas from rising. Neither side is inherently right or wrong. There is a debate to be had.

In the majority of situations in the show there is a debate to be had. The only exceptions being any SA. I will never debate the morality of these actions. Even for immoral characters, there is a line to be drawn.

These debates get even more complex in TO because we move into a world where nearly every character has done absolutely horrendous things. It's okay to sit down and say, "This thing that x did was awful, but I can see their reasoning." It is not justifying their actions, but allowing the characters to be the complex morally corrupt characters that they all are.

[olderthannetfic]

Something I find really exhausting is the ongoing insistence in fandom that you give up on something if it's problematic. Yes, canon is problematic. A lot of good fanwork can come out of asking, "what if we change X, Y and Z?" or "what if we actually really explored how fucked up X, Y and Z are?" or "what if we write about what comeuppance in retaliation to X, Y or Z would look like?" Saying that if something is problematic, we should just give up on it as a piece of media and not engage doesn't do anything in terms of activism, but it also doesn't let me as a person sit back and really think, brainstorm ideas, look into how similar shit impacts people IRL, etc. I learned a lot from my problematic faves because it made me research shit in order to write fic accurately or fic written to fix the worst and most egregious aspects of something taught me something.

Consumption as moral action and refusal to engage in something as the only option are really pointless, but also they don't let people get the catharsis of screaming about the problem in question for a while. I like that catharsis. That catharsis is useful for me as a trans biracial person. "Think critically!!!" I did, that's why the fic is fun, because I'm slinging mud back at canon. "Think about your faves!!!" I did, I just also think that writing people struggling with shit is cathartic because I too am dealing with shit. "Why don't pro-shippers/anti-antis/other fanfic term about shipping that I'm applying to you despite you not shipping anything be critical of their shows' canons?" I do. My thesis statement is that this canon is a dumpster, it's just a dumpster I'd like to dive in for a bit to see hat I can build out of the trash piles.

I hate that so much of fandom has become "cast everything impure aside". That's my emotional support impure thing. I use it to get into and work through shit. But also, casting aside every impure thing doesn't challenge anyone intellectually. "Your fave is problematic" cool but like, saying that and setting something aside doesn't do anything for my mind. It doesn't get gears turning. I don't think or feel in response to refusing to engage with things. So what's the point to giving up a problematic thing instead of delving into it and really looking at the nuts and bolts? What's the benefit? What am I gaining from abandoning everything that has issues?

And the response is always just a repetition of, "your fave is problematic", as if that's the answer to the question. Having one less problematic thing in your life is both an act of activism and a reward for your activism, I guess? It's an accomplishment of some kind, hence why you should do it, and failure to do so must mean you don't think at all.

I wish "think critically" wasn't used to mean "never engage with". I like critical thinking. I just don't find any critical thinking, or really any thinking at all, to be present in "thing bad, discard, the end".

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