#of course i'm a fan of rt

[monarchisms]

All the sources I've seen just say he cheated which is shit but I guess I'm missing something worse. As an RT fan, where would you say it falls on the scale of "Geoff having an open marriage and hooking up with another adult from a dating app with full knowledge & consent of his wife", to "Ryan groomed and abused countless vulnerable young women"? With whatever the fuck Adam was doing somewhere in the upper middle of the bad end.

christ, this question is loaded

i'm gonna speak as a try guys fan first since, y'know, that's what this whole situation is about. for anyone looking at the tags who don't know who the try guys or ned fulmer specifically are, he, zach kornfeld, eugene lee yang, and keith habersberger were a group of friends who left buzzfeed in late 2019 to create their own independent company. this is important to note because with all 4 of them being founders, that automatically gives them power over the employees in smaller positions.

i'm of the opinion that cheating is bad no matter what because it's an active decision done by the person/people doing the cheating. it's so fucking easy to just... Not cheat on your partner(s), so i believe anyone who decides to do so is a self-centered asshole, to say the least. in this situation, ned is in an objectively worse position because not only did he cheat on his wife ariel, he cheated on her with someone he employed (alex herring).

now speaking as an rt fan, i feel that comparing the situations between ned and ryan (i'm not touching everything with geoff and adam again because that's more or less resolved) is appropriate to a very specific extent. i covered most of that extent half-jokingly in this post i made hours before ned got kicked out of the group. along with both men's cringy-ass notes app "apologies", i think as of right now, that's where the comparisons between the two should end.

basically, ryan's ordeal is SO much worse, without a fucking doubt, no arguments about it. with that in mind, i still think the both of them are shitty, self-centered human beings, but ned is the """""better""""" of the two. not by a lot, but... You Know. as for the other guys you've mentioned, it's up to you to form your own perspective based on the facts and opinions i have shared here. there's no point for me to do that for you because i can't and shouldn't dictate how others should feel about all of these situations. that'd be fucking stupid. i'm not putting what ned has done on a full scale because, at least how i see it, it should be, first and foremost, seen as its own thing before being compared to other similar controversies of varying degrees.

[cerealforkart]

Thank you so much everyone for the sketch requests! And super thanks to everyone I saw hanging around RTX! It was great to see so many Dad fans, hope everyone had fun!

[levmada]

in this exposé i will

Isayama talks about his drawing in way too humble a fashion. but this is especially true when it comes to emotions and expressions - especially in aot where emotions and the nuances of character emotions are portrayed outside of dialogue.

but - especially wit - went about doing a disservice to Levi in particular when putting his character to screen. i don't think it's too controversial to say that most aot fans are anime onlys right? and it's much less controversial to remember the very bad take that throughout aot Levi is emotionless.

obviously, this is clear enough in the anime. but the manga really brings the emotional spectrum of his character to all new horizons. it's been stated by Isayama that Levi is the most emotional character in aot. and if you cross-examine scenes in the manga vs the anime, this is unmistakable.

so i want to give a few examples of where the anime - mostly wit - miss these nuances in Levi's show of emotions.

thank you to this person on twt for giving me this idea with examples!

i'll start with what i consider the greatest offender of all (from the moments on my mind for now):

right as Midnight Sun starts, Levi has just managed to get back to Wall to find that Zeke is escaping and Armin is half-dead. he failed in carrying out Erwin's order.

i mean WOW, right? in both, Levi looks exhausted yes, but in the manga he looks frantic. on the verge of tears almost.

this is going to be a trend, where the anime portrays Levi in a much more hardened and determined manner compared to, arguably, how he really is. i think that there's a balance that the manga depicts much more equally.

later, Floch is recounting how he found Erwin. he found him alive, and considered putting him out of his misery, but decided that Erwin didn't deserve mercy.

this scares the shit out of Levi - much, much more clearly in the manga. in the left 2, he looks afraid in both, but in the manga, that fright is just. so much more intense. you know how strong Levi's feelings are.

right after RtS, Levi and Hange have come to let Eren and Mikasa out of jail.

understandably, Levi is neck deep in mourning. not just Erwin, but every life that was sacrificed just so he could fail; the two veteran squads that died when Bert transformed; Moblit; and of course Hange was badly injured too.

his depression is TANGIBLE in the manga. the anime doesn't convey it as well... (if at all i would argue)

in season 3, when Kenny has given his speech about how everyone is a slave to their own vice, and he's just retorted to Levi, "what're you, a hero?!"

clearly in the manga, he's much more exasperated. his head is hanging more and he looks pleading instead of angry.

the anime didn't even include this panel.

he feels sorry for him.

the attack on Liberio. Levi is cutting Zeke from his Titan.

in the manga, it's so INTENSE. i'm sure he's experiencing the same exact feelings as he did 4 years before. this moment is supposed to be his triumph - when he completes his promise to Erwin. you can clearly see the longing and disappointment, but along with forced determination, because putting on a show of killing Zeke is torturous for him, but it's his duty.

(i posted about this earlier but) Levi has just cut Zeke out of his Titan and needs to put down a grenade in order to give the impression that Zeke is dead. then he notices Magath, but most importantly that two kids are directly below him.

in the manga, his head is more downturned as opposed to above them, which is important in the scope of getting across that Levi doesn't see them (or Marleyans for that matter) as below him.

in the manga it's clear that he finds absolutely no satisfaction out of it, which is seen in the anime version too, but like i've said, not like Isayama gets it across.

[itsclydebitches]

IT'S BEEN A DOOZY OF A DAY, FOLKS

Yeah I've got a couple asks about it lol. (Always a terrifying experience when you log onto tumblr and immediately wonder why your inbox blew up...)

Man, I don't even know how I'm feeling right now. We've spent so many months working on the semi-confident assumption that RWBY would be cancelled that on the one hand I can't feel very shocked about this. On the other hand there's definitely a wide-eyed part of my brain going, "Holy shit the 'RT is failing' theories finally came true O_O" I'm kinda devastated that a company that's been a part of my life for almost a decade (and for other fans far longer) is just up and gone, but simultaneously I don't care because what I loved about RT hasn't existed for some time now. We've already been dealing with that nostlgia for years, we just got a hell of a concentrated dose of it today. There's admittedly some level of vindication regarding those who've been pulling shit in the company for so long and empathy for those who were just getting by and are now suddenly out of a job. There's regret that (despite my tendency to fall VERY behind on projects. RIP I owe everyone in this fandom a massive apology) I'll probably never have an official end to my RWBY Recaps. And there's worry about how this will impact the fandom...

Yeah, not to jump on the pessimism train, but I feel like this is going to catapult some fans' misreadings into new territory. RWBY is now forever the show that was canonically unfinished and thus its perfection is assured. Think there are major issues in Volume 9 and earlier? Nah, that's setup for Volumes we just never got. Catch a contradition or other mistake? They would have explained that if they could. Any possible issues with the show if it gets picked up by someone else? Well, of course there are issues, RT isn't writing it! This was already a fandom where having accurate, nuanced discussions about the text was hard as hell... but it just got so much worse.

Honestly, I say let it go. If they're going to do anything I'd prefer a complete reboot/reworking so that this story might stand a chance. Airing new RWBY Volumes was already beating a dead horse. Resurrecting the horse to start beating it anew just feels ridiculous. Yes, I'm sad for those fans who wanted an official ending, but we've spent so much time waiting on RWBY, being worried about RWBY's future, and I personally have encounted so many shows lately whose finales soured my enjoyment that there's something reassuring in the combination of definitive ambuguity here: you know you're not getting an ending by RT, so just have fun imagining your own.

Overall, I feel like I've got to sit with this for a while, you know? I totally get why so many fans (partiuclarly RWDE fans) are celebrating and/or releasing a sigh of relief right now. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen any crabs yet lol. But maybe it's just because I'm "old" my tumblr's standards, but there's something undeniably sad about losing that part of your fandom life. Or at least, losing what led to/represents that life. Getting introduced to RWBY by a friend, binging it for the first time, pulling new people in, finding like-minded friends here on tumblr, analyzing it for thousands of words, tracing its history and watching how radically it has changed... that's gone now. Not actually because RWBY still exists, as do my friends, and there's nothing stopping me from writing as much fic/meta as I want, but it still feels like someone closed a door on that part of my life. That's not wholly a bad thing given what RT has been lately, but I do think it'll take more than one post for me to unpack it all.

[ingravinoveritas]

hi again! you might already know about this, but i really felt like bringing it up to you!

turns out michael's mom is pretty active on twitter and these past few days she's been engaging nonstop with tweets talking about aziracrow being in love. she's definitelymichael's #1 fan, but i couldn't help noticing the amount of not-about-characters stuff she seems to engage with too. Among tweets talking about Aziraphale's loving stare, queer fans making our usual queer jokes and remarks about them, michael reading fanfiction, miles maitland gifs, there's a good amount of... this. She surely has liked random stuff among the 14.6k rts/likes she has, so i'm attatching some examples of what she's been liking and rting because-- what the hell (i even spotted one of your tweets in the mix!) she even liked a tweet calling AL and GT innefable wives ??

my first thought was how embarrased i'd personally be if my mom was seeing comments online about me and my best buddy being madly in love, let alone engaging with them, but after it settled i'm just... in awe that this probably +70 y/o woman is being this supportive over social media 😭 so heart warming (btw i'm sorry for randomly popping up into your questions twice today- i have literally made this account after finding yours, feeling a bit less alone in the world)

(Grouping these two Asks together since they are related.) Ask #1: Hi there! No need at all to apologize for being in my inbox twice in same day. I'm so glad that my blog has been helpful and meaningful to you, and that you felt compelled to write in as a result. Welcome aboard!

So, Mama Sheen. She's been doing this for years--at least since 2019, when I first started following Michael on Twitter--but I will tell you my slightly crackpot theory, which is that for a while back in the day, I thought that maybe her account was actually Michael's secret alt account. (What better place to hide than in plain sight, after all...). I'm not so sure about that now, of course, but it's been really interesting to see her retweeting so much shippy stuff involving Michael and David, and as both you and @tamose pointed out, she especially seems to have ramped it up since GO 2 came out.

I also wanted to touch on you describing Mama Sheen as Michael's #1 fan, because although I wholeheartedly agree, it's a curious thing to me that we can more easily see her as Michael's number one fan than his own girlfriend. It's Mama Sheen--not AL--who has been retweeting all of this, who's been cheering him on, engaging with fan content, and retweeting all things Ineffable Husbands/GO 2. I've written on my blog previously about how I've never really seen AL be supportive of him (and how she spent much of 2020 and 2021 making fun of his appearance/fat-shaming him), as well as how she is not at all part of that polyamorous/throuple dynamic with Michael, David, and Georgia. And while I know the lack of engagement and carefully calculated interactions/posts could be chalked up to her not being able to promote the show due to the SAG strike, that doesn't really excuse her tepid support of Michael himself.

(Also, don't even get me started on the cringeyness of Georgia and AL as Ineffable Wives, not to mention how insulting it is to David and Michael personally and to their work as professionals to suggest that they are replaceable/that Georgia and AL (or anyone else) could play Aziraphale and Crowley and give us the same dynamic and chemistry we saw on screen...)

But yes, going back to Mama Sheen, I have long thought that she seems to ship Michael and David, and how sweet and heartwarming it would be if Michael brought David over for tea or dinner--especially because his own mother passed away several years ago--and no doubt Mama Sheen would dote on him and make sure he's fed and happy. It's especially interesting to contemplate when we see this picture from the Bright Young Things UK premiere in 2003, which almost looks like Mama (and Papa) Sheen posing with Michael and his kilt-wearing Scottish boyfriend:

Beautiful. Well, it's certainly something delightful to think about, at any rate. Whatever the case may be, I fully agree that it is lovely to see Michael's mom being so supportive and accepting of her son, particularly in the midst of such a hostile, anti-LGBTQ climate in the UK. We love you, Mama Sheen! ❤️

[kitkatopinions]

I'm not going back through my posts to find this, but like three years ago I made a post that was like "when people say things about Ironwood that aren't true like 'he invaded Vale' I'm just gonna be like 'cool headcanon. My headcanon is-' and then insert some random headcanon." Well, nowadays, RWBY fans are making me want to do that again in response to every time they say something happened off screen.

"It's not that Yang and Blake 'don't talk about their problems,' they just talk about them off screen." Yeah cool headcanon. My headcanon is that Blake was actually closer friends with Neptune than with Weiss before the Fall of Beacon.

"Jaune isn't 'the only one who got to mourn Pyrrha,' obviously the others mourned, it just happened off screen." Uh-huh, cool headcanon. My headcanon is that Qrow and Raven are actually the children of Salem and they just don't realize it.

"You can't say that Ruby's message to the world in V8 didn't contain all the vital information, because some of the message just wasn't shown!" "Yang and Blake didn't keep secrets from the rest of their team by never telling them they told Robin everything, they told them offscreen!" "It's so stupid that people are saying Yang is a hypocrite for yelling at Oz about keeping secrets after she lied to Qrow about Raven, clearly she told the truth off screen!" "I can't believe that people are complaining that Weiss was never shown to deconstruct her anti-faunus beliefs or apologize and therefore her white-knighting for Blake feels performative. Clearly she unlearned that stuff off screen!" Cool headcanons, bro. I have this headcanon that when Ruby and Yang were kids, they started fighting over this toy yo-yo because they both thought the yo-yo belonged to them, and then one day Ruby was playing with the yo-yo and since she was mad that Yang kept saying it was HER yo-yo, Ruby clonked her on the head with the yo-yo and of course that dissolved into even more fighting, so Taiyang took the yo-yo from them. But then that only dissolved into even MORE fighting because they blamed each other for the loss of the yo-yo, and so Tai 'banned' all conversation of the yo-yo incident and even banned the word yo-yo and Yang and Ruby hold to that rule even as teenagers and will breakout into (now good natured) bickering about it if it comes up.

People sometimes think "if the RWBY writers did (insert thing they did here) it would be bad. Therefore they can't have done that, so what's the other explanation? I just must need to flex my imagination and fill in the blanks!" So then they see something like the show having Yang literally lie to Qrow's face and the show still four seasons later having not had that addressed despite the fact that Yang has been anti-lying to the point of angrily calling someone a bastard, and they're like "Well if Yang didn't tell the truth, she'd be a hypocrite. So she had to have told the truth and we just didn't see it, or else it would mean that the writers made a mistake. Why would someone say Yang has lied in the past when she clearly told the truth off screen!"

And it’s like.... Or... They got something wrong.... Or they made a mistake.

Some rwby fans will do this thing where they confuse 'I recognized the potential and imagined/headcanoned to fill in the holes left in this story to make it more enjoyable' with 'this story is great and actually DOESN'T HAVE HOLES.' It's like RT made a road that is full of holes in the concrete, and then when people are like 'wish this road wasn't full of holes,' other people come in like "um stop saying there are holes, clearly we're meant to pretend that the road is smooth and free of holes. How dare you call this bad construction and an incomplete road, the concrete is in the cement truck, duh. Why do you need your hand held?"

Before someone comes in and is like "so nothing that happens off screen can ever be considered canon?" that's not it. If it's established in canon that it happened, then it's different.

Let's use Volume 9 as an example! There's a scene where Weiss summarizes events she's been told including Yang's prosthetic being stolen. Obviously Yang had to have told her about it. I wouldn't be here like 'Why is Weiss acting like Yang told her something that isn't on screen?' I did however complain that the writers skipped over that conversation, because it left the interaction feeling stale, pointless, and it limited my connection to the characters because it bypassed all emotion that wasn't 'being done' and cynicism. But they established that it happened in some way, so if someone says 'Yang told the others what happened to her off screen,' I'd say 'yeah, she did, that was made clear."

However, then there's a mistake that Eddy Rivas himself said was a mistake where they decided 'Ruby should find out that Jaune killed Penny off-screen' and then they never gave any indication that she knew at all. So not only did they bypass what should've been included as an emotional scene that humanizes Ruby and clues the audience further into her mental state while seeming more respectful of a well-loved character, but they also fully made it seem like that interaction just didn't actually happen. So in the actual show, there's no reason to believe that Ruby has been told that Jaune killed Penny, and most people kept waiting for it to happen and then the whole season ended and we were confused about it because as far as people who don't follow Eddy Rivas on twitter are concerned, there's no reason to believe that it happened at all. 'It happened off screen' doesn't actually mean anything when there's no reason to believe that except that some people really want it to have happened.

Again, RWBY isn't real, and author's notes dropped after the fact only tell us about intent and do not alter what's actually presented to us in the actual product. Stuff doesn't just 'happen off screen, but it's still happened' the way that a documentary might not include all the footage, but the events still happened.

This post is running long, but yeah. When stuff doesn't actually happen on screen and isn't referenced and doesn't make it into the show and plot, it's not only disappointing - because that stuff should make it into the plot (I can't believe that there are bees shippers that just do not care that crucial moments and conversations that lay conflict to rest between their one true pairing just 'happen off screen' according to them like I would be kicking down doors for my ships) - but also makes that stuff not canon.

[texas-gothic]

So, Percy Jackson and The Olympians. To say that I have been excited for this show is perhaps a bit of an understatement. I have been waiting for a faithful, quality adaptation of these books since I was a boy. It's been a road fraught with many disappointments, but at last, it is here.

My feelings on this outing are overwhelmingly positive. There are some criticisms, to be sure, and we'll get to them momentarily, but I really can not emphasize enough how impressed I am with this. By far its greatest qualities are casting and production design. The choices made in these departments are simply inspired. Walker Scobel has proven himself a perfect pick for the part of Percy Jackson, and Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri have as well. Special praise really must be given to Virginia Kull, who so artfully exudes not only the love and care but also the fiersome determination that have defined Sally Jackson for millions of readers around the world, myself included. The sets and costumes are stellar. The design of the cabins and grounds is beyond anything even I had imagined them to be. They have a rugged, lived-in look but nonetheless contain an essential lement of awe and wonder. James Bobin's direction perfectly captures these feelings in a way very similar to how Chris Colombus captured the arrival at H*gw*rts in his own films. Let's hope Rick Riordan never ruins this for us the way Jowling Knowling Rowling has for her own increasingly embattled fans.

There are, of course, problems. Every production has them. I think the most glaring so far is the characterization of Gabe Ugliano. Gabe has the distinction of being one of the most loathsome characters in the series, standing up even against the likes of Kronos. He represents a very real evil that many children are sadly forced to endure, and a key part of The Lightning Thief is Percy and Sally's victory over and liberation from Gabe and his abuse. What we have here is a man being played for comic relief. He's an asshole for sure, but he doesn't strike me as a problem that can only be reminded with a long hard look at Medusa's face. I would like to see Percy and Sally's abuse taken more seriously.

I'm also not so sure about some of the corners that are being cut here. I understand that this is still only an adaptation, and that Disney is only willing to pay for so much, but large chunks of the story before Percy's arrival at Camp Halfblood have been removed from the story. The sequence with the oracle has been removed as well, and the attack by the hellhound also. Both of these things become very important down the road, the oracle especially, and I do not see the benefit in removing them. There is also information being presented far too early, especially Sally's survival. Her reveal as Hades' trump card in the Underworld was a punch in the gut when I was a boy, and I am saddened that something so tense and dramatic will now be lost in translation.

Still, I am very happy with this production. The good outweighs the bad a thousand to one, and I am greatly anticipating the release of the next episode on December 27. We will speak more of this then.

[irandomblogfulb]

God that cameo pissed me off.

"I'm sure there's a series of events that could have ended up with Blake and Sun together."

Yeah Miles. It's called "being a good writer and following through on your plot threads".

-Signed, a Bumbleby fan who was rooting for Blacksun because it was the better written ship

In a world where the bees weren't used as a gimmick by rainbow capitalists to cash in on performative activism, honestly I wouldn't mind mkek deciding on a bees endgame.

They are allowed to change their minds on storylines and character arcs. Sometimes, you start writing, and your characters gain a life of their own, and what you originally planned out doesn't work anymore. And that's fine. I don't believe sticking to a vague plan you had nearly a decade ago when you were "young" and inexperienced is the chops of a good writer, especially when you admit you believe your writing was subpar at the time.

But what really gets me about that Cameo is Miles regretting even playing around with the notion of Blacksun. Like, why? Who cares what the shippers say and do, you are the writer - you can do whatever you want with the characters. Hell, he's already exercised his power as the writer by having Blake call herself an animal which is highly OOC and disrespectful to her character.

I already had sneaking suspicions but this confirms that the fans really run the show. I really do believe this is why the writing for team Rwby is so lackluster. I or anyone can easily come up with a dozen storyline ideas for team Rwby on the spot but when you care too much about maintaining their likeability/ ensuring that their merch sells out/ care way too much about fan opinions - of course writing for these girls is gonna be as though you are walking on eggshells. And that's not fun. It makes so much sense why the bees are so generic -- the writers are scared of backslash if they ruin the bees (and the financial repercussions cause only the avid white queers are willing to shill for merch for a capitalist pinkwashing corp).

Oh no people are mad the bees killed Adam - we gotta make sure team rwby never directly kill anyone and the bees will never discuss this ever!

Oh no people like Ironwood! Screw grey morality, make him skin a puppy, laugh manically at the camera and do villain monologues while having Ruby crying at the staircase doing nothing so people can feel bad for her and turn to her side

Oh no, people think Ruby is evil for destroying an entire kingdom. let's just shove in a half-baked, incredibly irresponsible, and horrendous suicide storyline to distract everyone of her crimes. Oh, and let's bend the world ass backwards so she gets blessings from a somewhat God and deify her as the second coming of Christ. We can not in any way have our fans see Ruby in a negative light. Cause in RT's minds -> fans hate Ruby = fans won't buy Ruby merch = Burnie Burns can't buy another Tesla.

[onewomancitadel]

Okay if you guys are scared about RWBY renewal this is a collection of thoughts which may or may not be reassuring:

CR was never a good choice. Finding alternate funding opportunities is preferable e.g. ideally not cutting a deal with a streaming service which subsequently leads to cut episodes. Streaming services are conservative to the point that successful shows do not often get renewed as it is. There are other issues there like I don't think the CR audience was ever one to crossover enough with the RWBY one.

RT seems to be looking at more local funding opportunities (drawing in sponsorships for RVB; RVB renewal playing on drawing back fans in - I know I haven't watched it consistently since Season 13). They've cut back on RTX (major money drain - events such as these tend to just about break even, speaking generally, if not work at a loss) and this was likely a decision made at the beginning of the previous fiscal year, which was around when CR did not renew RWBY. They've explicitly said they're looking at getting more sponsorships lol. Raise your hand if you cancelled yours because you thought they didn't own RWBY anymore

From what I can see a lot of people are concerned about the silence regarding renewal and from my personal perspective is that there are NDA's involved (I know for a fact that Miles has this in his Tumblr description, or at least did at some point), the year-long exclusivity with CR, etc. as well as the fact that with this type of money that RWBY is throwing around now as what is effectively more of a serious production than it was six, seven years ago means that you can't really admit to too much weakness in public (speculative investors), nor can you speak strategy. I'm not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but just potentially par for the course, especially because I'd argue the closeness RT had with its audience did not end up being for the best for many different reasons.

It's probably very likely that based on the success or failure of the new RVB, RWBY will or won't be renewed. I'm not saying you are personally responsible for making RVB succeed. There's no responsibility of the fan here. But if we look at the avenues they've taken to draw in money: crossovers (comic book audience), manga, novels, anime (Beacon era nostalgia), the CrunchyRoll audience of honest otakus, etc. they've cycled through to trying to re-establish their RT fanbase to offset RWBY production. RWBY fans are good for RT and RT fans used to be good for RWBY. RWBY was made because Season 10 of RVB was very successful.

It's no coincidence that RT's relative decline in years (I stopped watching around 2015, if that's anything) has led to this. I'm kind of at the point where I wouldn't even say any of this is really RWBY's fault because it's a very weird production (I say this as a fan). There are plenty of influences I've failed to cover here because I'm trying to keep this contained to my honest assessment - there's obviously something not quite adding up with the numbers of how many RWBY fans there are vs. its renewal dangling in the balance. They struggled with monetising way back when during the adpocalypse on YouTube which led to episodes not being uploaded on there anymore. RWBY has been a cult sensation and it owes its success not just to a loyal fanbase but taking risks. RWBY itself was a risky endeavour. I'm not sure if people remember but by that point RT was doing pretty well, but not corporate money well, and its flagship show was a Halo machinima. They were doing crowdfunding/Patreon before it was a thing, they were doing podcasts before they were a thing (obviously radio existed, but you know what I mean). When Fullscreen acquired them I remember thinking 'hm this feels weird' and I was about right.

I don't have any conclusive remarks here but I would say that I would really start to doomer worry by the end of this year. I imagine that between the exclusivity of a year (and how much that does or doesn't influence contract negotiation with other funding sources) and RT currently overhauling its strategy we won't really know until six months from now, let's say optimistically. It probably does in part hinge on RVB and getting back that sponsor base, but I'm not sure I perfectly understand it because I would sign up for sponsor if I knew we'd be getting RWBY, or something specific to RWBY only on RT - which is seemingly not possible right now. I don't know the full ins-and-out.

Of what's going on behind the scenes, we know less than drop. It's six to one, half a dozen the other, but my overall summary would be that CR was always the wrong move and RT needed an overhaul in its approach to sponsorships and funding as well as establishing its brand and regaining audience trust/transparency. RWBY should have stayed on RT and other sources of revenue needed to be pursued. I couldn't even figure out how to buy DVD's of the show a few years ago because it was so hidden. (Am I even suggesting something like Patreon here? Hell, maybe). We're not going to see the result of their developed strategy for some time. This is my tentative speculation.

[discluded]

Not looking to dump on you about the state of fandoms in your inbox but the MA fandom is the most Kpop adjacent fandom I have ever been a part of that shares some similar characteristics. It has been really eye opening to see the power of trending and just how much the efforts of the fans really do pay off in the promotion of the celebrities and the opportunities they receive but IMO you have to have one fan buy enough tickets to account for half of the presale record the movie set it is genuinely a bit demoralizing. It's amazing that fans are super committed and there was clearly interest in the movie as half the presale tickets did come from genuine fans and the public but I sometimes fear that people are too focused on the numbers games. These actions show the passion that fans have for these celebs but a person's work and the results should speak for themselves. I mean fandoms are changing constantly so maybe this is the new normal but for someone who isn't used to it it's been a bit annoying trying to find out what the actual reception of the movie is amongst the general audiences and how well the movie is actually performing in the box office.

https://twitter.com/Pandababygirl2/status/1709397703736824259?t=_yF0NTDyS3VL7wK3Jj19vw&s=19

you're not wrong with that and you're not the first to have noticed this rapid shift and interest in Thai stars recently.

for example this article was published on HBSg (which has a very friendly relationship with mileapo thanks to Kenneth Goh) and resyndicated in other Sg media outlets in the last couple of months.

As for whether that's good or bad, I think you've hit the nail on the head that business as usual changes, and this appears to be a new business as usual.

I mean, western celebs are also taking advantage of this as well. Some more egregious than not. TSwift recently got called out by her own fans for one of these common kpop practices of releasing multiple album versions specifically to drive up sales (cough line her own pockets with fans' money).

(op has already deleted her account now as she said she would but I have it cached from earlier)

as far as I'm aware, this was also a ticket donation project so not just a single person buying tickets and leaving the seats empty, or the equiv of a single fan buying dozens of albums which they can't listen to.

I actually think this is a much better use of fan funds than some of the projects like the Time Square ad placement for Man Suang... which of course was useless because there was no international release date announced 🥲 you want your advertising dollars to go somewhere effective and this was pretty much an equivalent of throwing money into a river. (sorry to the FCs who ran this.. I understand how hard it was to organize things like this so I tried to avoid criticizing but the effort could've gone somewhere else...)

as for the "actual reception", it's actually a relatively new phenomenon that we're able to hear first hand the thoughts of common viewers on the film à la Rotten Tomatoes. historically, films relied on good critic reviews to drive foot traffic. I actually have so many negative opinions about forums like RT (which suffer from the same problems as film critics... ie who is frequenting the site) but that's for another time.

ultimately the one who controls your fandom experience is you, so if you don't want to engage at this level or see this kind of behavior, just remove these kinds of more extreme (passionate?) fans from your line of sight. As long as they're not hurting anyone, including themselves in a financial sense, I don't feel like it's appropriate to moralise on the best way to be a fan. these fandom spaces are predominantly female-occupied when male dominated fan spaces (see, sports and video games) are not subject to the same amount of scrutiny over the level of zeal.

[secretgamergirl]

StarCraft 2's story- Good or garbage?

I'm kind of lurking in the discord of a new RTS that's running a kickstarter right now. I don't know how strongly I want to endorse that because while what they have in the can looks darn good in terms of mechanics and gameplay polish and the people involved seem generally cool, I don't think anything at all is really pinned down otherwise. At the very least though it looks very "I'll make my own StarCraft 2! With blackjack! And hookers!" and I'm down for a game with that flavor of mechanics doing well when made by anyone other than, you know, Blizzard.

It's impossible not to draw comparisons when a game is pretty nakedly marketing itself as "we want to divorce the things we like about this one game from the monsters who made it" of course, and so now I'm thinking about just how powerfully terrible the writing was in StarCraft 2, but I'm not going to go off about it in some poor people who I don't know even have a writer yet's forums. I'm gonna ramble about it on my blog.

Now there's two ways to look at this one. We can look at the story of this game on its own, in a vacuum, or we can look at it as a continuation of the story of StarCraft. It's terrible by either standard, but let's start by looking at it as a continuation first.

Now, I'm not going to jump in here and just slap you with a novella long list of all the flagrant plot holes, direct contradictions, and unrecognizable characters if you actually go through these beat for beat. I've done so in the past. Might have done so on this blog. I mean when StarCraft 2 came out I was absolutely insufferable to everyone around me shouting about these things. Like... I don't even know how you can drop so many balls like that. Maybe they were doing that thing where they didn't even glance at the source material and were just poking around some fan wiki populated with random crap from tie-in novels and comics by people who were just going off on their own things... I do always have to mention though that whether by intent or incompetence they seem to have totally dropped the expansion's story from the canon, at least before 2's expansions came along years later.

But no, I want to focus on just basic themes and character arcs here. So the original base game of StarCraft breaks its story into three arcs, each from the POV of a character from one of the three playable factions in the game. This isn't the greatest structure for maintaining narrative cohesion throughout, especially when one of those factions is the communal hive mind of a big swarm of space bugs who at the end of the day just want to eat everything. And if I'm being brutally honest, there isn't a whole lot to write home about in the back third either. They kinda slipped back into old habits there and it's kinda just the sort of stock fantasy story you tend to get with games. Decadent ancient space elf empire ignores a big obvious problem due to hubris and a frankly incompetent leader, turns out their ancient traditions and prejudices are total BS, go quest for some magic rocks, have your big grand final battle where the hero self-sacrifices to blow up the monsters.

That first third though, and some threads that carry through the rest, have some good stuff going on. We've got a newly appointed magistrate (the unseen unvoiced player) and marshall (Jimmy) on some backwoodsy wild west sort of planet. They're pretty young and idealistic. Space bugs attack, they try to help, trying to help gets them in trouble with their higher ups who don't really buy the seriousness of this space bug invasion. Desperate for anyone to help fight the good fight, they fall in with a fringe militant cult leader (Mengsk) and his right-hand gal (Kerrigan) who he busted out of some government psychic supersoldier program. Jimmy immediately crushes on her, she doesn't reciprocate.

The gang goes along with all of Mengsk's plans, overthrowing the government to gain control of their armies and psychic experimentation programs to deal with these space bugs, and the level of moral compromise this involves gradually ratchets up until everyone finds themselves complicit in Mengsk killing the whole civilian population of the capital by having Kerrigan set up a psychic murderbug attractor and nobody bother's to evacuate her afterwards.

The other two realize they made a really bad choice of who to throw in with, smash up some major military hardware in the process of bailing on Mengsk as he's setting himself up as dictator for life, and eventually throw their lot in with the protagonists in the third arc, just kinda helping out while they do the whole deal of defying the orders of the ancient space elf council, learning the magic arts of the misunderstood outcasts, flying a big spaceship into the main brain controlling the space bugs. Kerrigan meanwhile gets converted into a space bug/human hybrid super soldier which... honestly feels like it's setting stuff up for a big showdown that just kinda never happens.

Still, we've got characters, they've got arcs. Mostly we have Jimmy (and the silent player character) learning the hard way that long-established power structures tend to be too inflexible to be helpful, and you should never trust anyone openly seeking personal power because they will just exploit everyone around them. It all even roughly follows the classic 3 act structure (and I mean, there's literally 3 acts mapping to that too, just that act 2 is all shown from a villain's perspective). In other media, this is sort of just the bare minimum, but games rarely bother with characters growing, changing, or having real setbacks that make them question things along their way.

This was followed up with the expansion, Brood War, which mirrors that same structure. One long story arc for each of three playable factions. Space elves largely doing standard fantasy beats, middle third switching to a villainous POV so radically different the main narrative gets largely put on hold, and some really good stuff with threads stretching through the whole thing.

Here the villain interlude is that it turns out Earth in this setting is run by full-on fascists, they caught wind of everything going on in this region where there'd previously been a big rebellion, and swing back in to clamp down again. They don't interact with the actual protagonists much (generally, they see the space nazis sweeping in and run off to lay low), so we mostly just have them swooping in and quickly mopping up Mengsk's little newfound dictatorship, with the actual story being the relationship dynamic between the guy in charge (DuGalle), his right hand man he's known forever (Stukov), and a local rebel welcoming them with open arms (Duran). Long story short, Duran's actually a double agent and very gradually pits the other two against each other. DuGalle eventually has Duran kill Stukov thinking he stabbed him in the back, realizes that's dumb, ultimately fails at his whole invasion, and in the epilogue kills himself, which if you read the relevant bit of my FF14 summaries, you know is how I like my stories about clear nazi analogues to end.

In the main narrative though, we pick right back up from the big heroic sacrifice with the bummer of a reveal that killing the primary brain of the psychic space bug collective didn't really get the job done, because some of its secondary brains (refreshingly not a concept pulled out of nowhere, these were firmly established to serve the dual purposes of having clear military targets for a giant pile of bugs, and a way to actually have enough characters for dialog exchanges in that third of the story) are trying to put the band back together. In their current disorganized state though, Kerrigan is no longer a semi-autonomous corrupted bug minion, but totally has her free will and sense of self restored, while still being all chitinous and at least somewhat capable of commanding the other bugs.

So as the whole expansion plays out, and the perspective shifts from the space elves doing some real desperate migration and defense because the plan to save their home world from the big bug invasion ultimately failed, through the nazi invasion, and ultimately to the POV of the secondary bug-brain you'd previously played as who'd been buggified Kerrigan's baby sitter essentially, now forced into taking orders from her, we are mostly dealing with this big hanging question of whether she's really good and trustworthy again, or secretly still under bug control, or if she's good for now but any minute that hivemind could properly come back online and take her over again. And of course, Jimmy's all angsty and pining because he never got over that one-sided crush.

While there's plenty of red flags about her being trustworthy over the course of things, the narrative actually manages to play things close to the chest well enough for the ultimate reveal to be a pretty fun twist. She absolutely 100% is fundamentally herself again, it's just that for a series of mostly pretty well-justified reasons, she absolutely hates every other character in the story. Either they've been trying to kill her, they abused and manipulated her, or they've totally objectified her. Or they're nazis who just showed up, who you don't really need a personal reason to want to kill, but just for good measure they're trying to revive and mind control the central bug mind, so, yeah, that's a threat. So at the last minute the whole thing just reveals itself as a big elaborate revenge story with a fairly strongly gendered theme about being denied agency and being othered, where the actually quite clear-headed just ruthless girl wins.

And then, a decade later, we get StarCraft 2. And what's the main narrative of StarCraft 2? We spend the whole time focused on Jimmy, who has somehow gone from this young idealistic biker/space cowboy with thinning hair, talking like a hippie and bouncing around getting in way over his head trying to rescue people from space bugs by just lending a hand to whoever else seems interested in doing that and crushing on this girl Kerrigan who couldn't be clearer about not liking him back to uh... some sort of gruff jaded old former military general with a bunch of old war buddies, a drinking problem, and a full head of hair, cruising around on his big personal battleship saving various worlds from the big space bug threat pretty much singlehandedly, and hoping to rescue his love interest Kerrigan from space bug mind control, with the help of some kind of prophesied magic space rocks you can build a big totem out of. It even completely de-buggifies her in the end, leaving a helpless little naked girl to chivalrously scoop off the ground and carry to safety. P.S. She's white now.

This isn't like, "oh whoops, we forgot the main character lost one of his boots at the end of last season" nitpicking. This is doing complete 180s on the character arcs and backstories of the central characters here. Kerrigan not needing to be rescued from zerg corruption is the ENTIRE point of Brood War's story. Which also establishes there's no longer really a zerg threat of any sort beyond what she personally wants to tell her mindless bug pals to do. And really, even if you want to de-canonize all of that for whatever reason, tacking a "hero saves the girl" ending onto the story we had in the base game of the original StarCraft still just does not work. You're taking a story whose whole theme is "putting faith in the wrong sort of person has serious consequences" and then turning around and going "actually no it doesn't."

And you know, speaking of Mengsk, it's a much lesser point, but StarCraft 2 depicts him like he's some sort of grandiose emperor from some ancient dynasty. Big imperial palace, little silver spoon in his mouth prince of a son who wants to break from his family's legacy, the whole nine yards. Again, this both fundamentally misunderstands his part in the whole central narrative, and everything that happened to him in the expansion (where not very long at all after his big power grab the UED showed up and completely took him apart, and would have executed him but Kerrigan prolonged that to watch him squirm). And when did he have this kid of his? With who? And where is Jimmy getting all these war buddies? He didn't have'em at the start of things or he wouldn't have had to join up with Mengsk. And his war buddies from that war would just be the magistrate and the surviving protoss characters who act like they barely know him here.

So, no. This does not hold up at all as a continuation. How about if we just look at it in a vacuum then?

Nope, still bad. It leans heavily on a backstory we don't get to see. And I don't mean we're missing a ton of StarCraft 1 flashbacks. I mean, we have all these "old buddy" characters, especially Tychus, but we don't get into how they became friends or do anything to show how they still are, so there's no real emotional stakes to where that ends up going. We start with him drinking his life away in a bar over how he misses this apparent old girlfriend, but we never get into the history between them and even the depressed drinking never comes up again past that shot. We vaguely establish some bitter history with this Mengsk guy, but that never really leads anywhere at all. We just kinda have these various vague and generic handwaves at Standard Protagonist Backstory Stuff. Then we actually dive into things, and it's this very episodic affair where you just hop around from planet to planet either showing up to rescue people or showing up to collect a magic rock to help build the magic Toblerone that cures being half-space-bug. And I mean, I already covered how this sort of simplistic no tension, hero always wins, collect all the treasures for victory sort of narrative is the general baseline for game writing, but other people have been trying to move things forward the last couple decades and this is just sitting at the starting line with a princess to rescue.

Now to be fair, the original StarCraft absolutely also had questing around for magic rocks. The protoss have a totally magic rock based electrical grid, the overmind wanted to eat their special magic rocks to make them more vulnerable, the last protoss mission even had a big ancient temple that did an energy blast, but that one just killed all life on the planet outside of its immediate vicinity, which feels like a more grounded thing for an ancient alien artifact to do than... vaporize/purify space bugs and leave everything else alone. And it wasn't scattered in little bits everywhere.

And then of course there's the expansions to StarCraft 2... well the good thing here is they're so divorced from anything in the original game, and even from the base game of StarCraft 2 that you don't have to worry about them messing with the legacy. I mean, OK, Heart of the Swarm has this whole weird reset where we have Kerrigan mostly human again, just so she can go on a big spirit journey and bug herself up again, so that she's strong enough for her ultimate goal of... showing up to take down Mengsk... again. And you somehow end up with a zergified version of Stukov which... OK that's just the weirdest possible way to double back and recanonize that expansion. I'm not sure that Kerrigan and Stukov were ever even really aware of each other's existence, and he died to a bullet through the head in a military base with no zerg anywhere near it. I mean, unless you remember that Duran was a double agent working for Kerrigan. Except the thing there is if you know the plot of the secret epilogue mission you'd know he was ACTUALLY one of the secret ancient aliens who created both the protoss and the zerg just pretending to a horrible bug monster spy for Kerrigan, in turn pretending to be a normal human. And that's a pretty obscure detail I'd forgive someone for missing except that literally in the mission where you're playing as Zerg-Stukov, the whole reason you're playing as Zerg-Stukov is that Kerrigan is busy doing one of those things where the two wizards fire big energy blasts at each other like some kind of tug-of-war with weird phallic overtones, and the big energy phallus she's trying to squish back is FROM Duran, in his revealed-himself-to-be-that-whole-mess glory. They remembered one thing only to get it wrong basically.

But yeah, otherwise that one's just so wild a departure I don't even know what to say. There's just... named zerg characters? They're all like bug centaurs? Because we need people to talk to and they just totally forgot they had cerebrates to get around that problem? Instead of the ancient ancestral zerg being like, psychic ringworms gradually specializing their hosts over generations, here they're like... talking dinosaur puppies who steal each other's "essence" to get huge? Past a point there's so little resemblance to the source material that I can't even be mad. And then the protoss expansion just kinda decides that the whole casting the dark templar out of their society over irreconcilable religious differences is something they've actually done like... 3 or 4 times? So we've got the outcast invisible jedi and the outcast robots and the outcast Darth Vader wannabes with some sort of society-wide ordered queue where there's exactly one person directly ahead of everyone they're allowed to kill to move up in the world. Oh and we're claiming this one robot centaur is Fenix somehow. Despite Fenix being very dead, and this robot centaur neither having that goofy muppet-y orc voice nor the overwhelmingly positive attitude. And he also somehow doesn't notice that he's a robot centaur and not a guy in a life support pod inside a robot spider. They also expect us to believe this little naked twink turned into this pile of steroids and shoulderpads somehow:

Oh! I almost forgot but also there's this thing called the Khala and it's unambiguously this set of religious teachings defining a caste system and such... but then here someone watched Avatar so we're retconning that into some sort of psychic spiritual network you connect to through your hair. You don't plug your hair in though it's just like a wifi antenna. Also it only works if you're part of the main society that keeps throwing other people out none of these other people have hair wifi. Also like the entire deal here is that protoss just are not psychic, it's their one flaw. There's this whole thing with them representing physical perfection but being held back by being a bunch of very religious idiots, while the zerg are mentally perfect what with the hive mind but physically just, like, a ringworm, so the ultimate life form their creators really wanted to create requires the zerg to take over the protoss, or just going screw it and hybridizing the two in a lab. Again, this is one of those really obscure details, it only comes up in the weird backstory in the manual that doesn't even get touched on in the game outside the one secret mission in the expansion... but here we have the same scene both acknowledging that deep lore and totally contradicting it.

But yeah, taken as their own independent stories... well... what stories? Kerrigan wants to be a big buff bug lady so she can depose a jerk she already deposed, and she does that. There are no complications or twists along the way. "Artanis" has to go collect all the protoss the in-group don't count as people, because Satan got into their hair wifi and anyone who didn't just get a haircut turned evil. So he goes and does that. Again, no complications of any sort along the way. Also no real ideological conflicts.

The deal with the robot protoss is some idiots went "hey what if we took all of our greatest most celebrated heroes and we copied their minds into robots in their entirety" and then got super confused that they still, you know, want to be treated as people with rights and such and not just mindless robots. So, you know, simple fix there. Then the... actually just evil ones are... lead by John DeLancey. Everyone likes him. So, problem resolved? And the dark templar are already befriended from before, so nothing's needed there besides going to their homeworld to pick them up. Their uh.... home world everyone already evacuated to and then that was compromised and their leader was replaced with puppet and then everyone maybe died? But yeah they're fine.

So then after all the racism is solved forever by just... deciding not to do that anymore, Kerrigan jumps in some kind of magic pool to transform into a giant naked golden angel, and she does this to become the embodiment of purity of essence we apparently need (which also purges all zerg-ness I guess?) and... look there's no easy way to say this. It turns into Homestuck. That whole convoluted thing from Homestuck where there's this eternal cycle of universes being created by light and dark themed people teaming up to create the next one and in theory kind of operate as it's gods but not if they don't feel like it... we're just ripping all that off wholesale for this complete asspull of an ending. And then everyone shoots space satan in the face. He's a big squid. And then Kerrigan turns back into a normal human girl so she can go on a date with Jimmy. Oh and then there's a third expansion recycling the scrapped plot from that action game they were going to do back on the N64 or whatever but I learned how awful the company was before getting curious enough on that one.

It's just bad. Even by game writing standards, it's bad. And I didn't even get into how bad it is with women in particular. We've got the big doe-eyed scientist who needs to be rescued from the scary bugs and then oh no it turns out she got bit by a bug and now she's turning into one and has to be put down (and no, this has never been how that worked). Then we've got Kerrigan who aside from needing rescuing and purifying and coming out naked has this whole expansion to herself where in theory she's totally in charge and self-directing every decision, but every time you click anywhere the confirmation is just her getting all pouty and whiny? Like a toddler you're telling to put shoes on so you can go to the doctor or something? Like, is it just me? Is it the direction? Is it the voice filter? Was the actress just miserable in the recording booth?

Then she's got this little bug girl assistant who hangs down from the ceiling, kinda like the adjutant from the original StarCraft, but instead of being all detatched and robotic she's all uwu pwecious? And the protoss campaign just kinda keeps turning women into mouthpieces for Satan. It's... a whole thing.

So yeah, badly written stories all throughout, no matter how you slice it. No continuity, no consistency, no character arcs or tension, just be the big cool action hero, do some getting the band back together stuff, collect some magic rocks and ritual circles, purify this girl here with the big magic circle (3 times no less) and then whatever there's space Satan. It's a mess... did I even have a larger point with this?

Probably not, but it was entertaining I hope? Maybe throw a little cash my way?

[darthkvznblogs]

If this is the end of Rooster Teeth, can I ask what your honest opinion on the ups and downs of RWBY was?

Difficult to answer, since there were so many of both, but I'll try to keep it brief.

I don't know if this is a hot take or not (it's been ages since I delved into the fandom at all), but despite how much I do love the series as a whole, there's always been a part of the fan in me that died with Volume 3. I wholeheartedly bought into the premise of the school setting, the conflict simmering in the background and only really coming to the forefront once a season or so, the world ending conflict seemingly years and years away. When people started dying - and some of my favorite characters, at that - I disconnected from the show, and truth be told, I never 100% reconnected.

Of course, a ton of fun and interesting characters and developments hide behind that V3 "barrier", so to speak. It was definitely worth picking the show back up, even if the direction of the show just never appealed to me quite as much as it did in the beginning. While, yes, the animation suffered after the loss of Monty, they improved very quickly and re-figured out their visual identity, delivering some incredible fights and locations later on in the series.

It'd be remiss of me not to mention the show's troubled production, both on its own and as part of RT's issues at large. I'm not really qualified to comment on it much, but what I did read was pretty heartbreaking, and coupled with my disdain for certain narrative choices in V8 (talked about it before, but tl;dr I find Penny's 2nd death a baffling decision that smacks of cheap shock value), it ultimately led me to simply stop watching the show.

End of the day, I still love RWBY, warts and all. It's got a very cool premise and some of my favorite comfort characters. RWBY was one of the very first fandoms that got me to read fanfiction, and I believe was the very second one I ever wrote for (even though I wouldn't want to look back on those old fics in a million years, lol). I'm sad that RT is at the end of its rope, and I'll be sadder still if RWBY doesn't ever get a proper ending, but I've also made my peace with it. I'm a notorious cherry-picker, so I'll always have the good bits to remember.

[mintyvoid]

i know my voice means nothing and it's kinda silly but i will definitely mourn rt getting shut down for a while.

(more word vomit below)

change really fucks with me, and i'm like many who grew up with rt. been watching since the early days of rvb before monty came onto the team, and i cried and was really shook for days/weeks when monty passed. tho of course this pales in comparison to those who were actually affected, i feel bad for feeling so strongly as i literally didn't know him.

the amount of shit all of the employees of rt have gone through is redick to say it lightly and it super sucks that like it seemed to never got better. I remember really wanting to work for rt, whether as an artist or va- i didn't think i'd ever be lucky to be on screen talent. and really moving to the states was never in the cards. I remember daydreaming of like a canadian branch opening, it was a really silly dream.

ah was what got me through hs and some of college, i didn't really have many friends. I was aware i formed a parasocial relationship with the channel, it filled the gap of socializing i wasn't getting. Always dreamed of having a group of friends to play video games with, to do silly challenges or whatever.

i feel bad having such an emotional response cause I am just a fan, it's not really good to have an attachment to a company or to entertainers.

i sincerely hope that all those who lost their job are able to find work, it's an awful feeling when you are let go from a job. specially when i bet a bunch felt that rt was 'the job'. and course many that are glad rt is dead.

[ms-hells-bells]

today i was like 'man, i haven't checked up on anything roosterteeth related in years, i wonder how they're doing?'

a burning building. a sinking ship. the plane is going down. oh my fucking god. it's not that i'm exactly shocked, but more surprised at how much this is destroying them, considering they had been openly like this for years, but then seemingly changed (well kinda, but not really, as some of the info revealed), and so i just thought that the community forgave them and moved on....

nah, turns out that the community could recover from RT being terrible employers (came out years ago), horrible fratboy culture (came out years ago), censoring of fans (has been occurring for years), racist (found out years ago), harbouring a predator (they weren't exactly aware, but facilitated a culture that normalised it), but transphobia was the straw that broke the camel's back lmao. the cherry on top is that they would call said former employee f*ggot as a nickname.....UNTIL he came out as a trans woman, then they stopped. they wrote the n word on a whiteboard for their black coworker to see, but the one thing they won't touch is trans lmao. all superficial, of course. they'd trot him out as their evidence of inclusivity, but then have him work so hard, for such little pay, that at one point he got pneumonia. it just shows the pure virtue signaling that all these progressive companies have. whatever the latest zeitgeist is, and currently it's trans and genders, that's what they lean into full force.

[itsclydebitches]

I really enjoy Razbuten's gaming vids and his most recent upload - "The Games I Wish I Never Replayed" - really resonated with me in regards to RWBY. Tl;dr, he makes the case that some games (Bioshock: Infinite is his example) get away with seeming deep and meaningful primarily through their spectacle. The audience is so blown away by what's happening on screen, is so immersed in one cool thing after another, that they don't even question whether this makes sense until after the credits roll. Or, more likely, after they've stepped away from the game for some time and then replay it. This is by no means his only or even core argument - he's really talking about how changes in ourselves, the gaming landscape, unreliable memory, and nostalgia all combine to influence whether we still adore a game years later - but that particular bit about spectacle really stuck with me. This idea that if you just throw enough stuff at the viewer they'll get caught up in the excitement and, likely, fail to see the larger, less-than-stellar picture. This feels particularly relevant in the most recent Volumes not just because the quality of the writing has gone down after RT's attempt to turn the show into more than just a boarding school adventure, but because RWBY has embraced more and more of that spectacle along the way. We've gone from stuff like "A train the heroes were trying to stop derails and lets in a bunch of the show's standard monster fare" to "The girls fall into an alternate reality filled with pretty/humorous distractions and one main character has aged several decades while another is having a breakdown." Despite the show often feeling slow and like there's nothing of real importance going on, RWBY has nevertheless really leaned into that spectacle, making it that much easier to miss the ways in which it doesn't hang together.

The other, related thing Razbuten mentions is how he also didn't see these problems back in the day because he wasn't looking for them. He stresses that this isn't a 'I'm smarter now' situation, but merely a different perspective: someone who analyzes games for a living is of course going to be primed to see more issues in the medium than someone who only plays games for fun. Same with the RWDE tag. By and large we're fans who were - to a greater and lesser extent - already engaged in meta writing by the time we learned of the community's existence, meaning we were already viewing RWBY through the perspective of, "What makes this show tick and how well is it achieving that?" RWDE (generally speaking) isn't made up of people who hate the show, it's made up of people who approach RWBY with a more critical eye by default and, as a result, find it that much harder to buy into the spectacle. We've "replayed" the show as a whole and found it wanting. And there's a reason Razbuten doesn't conclude, "But then I just decided to enjoy those games anyway and everything was fine." Once you see those problems you can't ignore them and once you have that skill at your disposal you can't turn it off. At least I can't.

[harristanning]

IM SO SORRY IF IM BOTHERING YOU 😭😭 BUT IM GLAD TO SEE MY FAV OG BLOG IS ACTIVE AGAIN AAAHHH!!

Hello!! You're not bothering me at all! in fact, I invite interaction, it gives me something to do and reminds me this blog exists!! I'm sorry it took me so long to reply, I don't have my notifs turned on lol

I'm glad to be back! I heard about the new episodes (although I didn't know when they'll come out- thank you for the info!) and I guess that blew some air into the very small Camp Camp shaped spark in my soul. The previous season left much to be desired to be honest, I didn't vibe with it much. And RT's radio silence on the series didn't help at all. My fingers are crossed, I really want to enjoy it!!

In general, life has been really busy. It's not only my loss of interest in CC that put this blog in hibernation. I also started working more, got a boyfriend, started working even more, graduated, started a new course and then ditched it because it sucked, started working even more, broke up with boyfriend, starting working even more, and am trying to go back to uni. Life is just....busy. But I'm finding my rhythm again, and I hope CC is still part of my life. I missed all the fan art and I especially missed scanning the background of episodes to see whatever shenanigans they put Harrison into in each episode!

I'm happy to see I'm welcome back most of all. <3