jctorres31

[labec99]

I just really fucking hate having to deal with corporate software.

[babybluebex]

happy sad confused | joseph quinn blurb

this is a sequel to off menu that i wrote nearly two years ago to the day (wow time flies jfc i wrote that in my mom's hotel room as i was moving lmao), so if you haven't read that yet, pop on over to that link, it'll take like 3 minutes, it's very short :)

"Do you have strong food tastes?" Josh asked, and you rolled your eyes with a smile.

As opposed to the last podcast about food that Joe was on, you were present for the recording of this one. You remembered that day two years ago, right as everything was changing for you and your beau, when he had texted you asking if you listened to the Off Menu Podcast, and you had had to break James Acaster and Ed Gambles' hearts. Later, you had bumped into James at the BRIT Awards and were able to apologize for such a betrayal, and he had forgiven you, with the caveat that you did a shot with him (which you unfortunately had to decline, seeing as you were about 35 weeks into the standard pregnancy 40, and James accepted an alternate apology in the form of a hug).

Joe cast you a look from his place on the couch, a mortified smile playing at his lips. You knew he was thinking something like "Not this again", and you scoffed out a laugh. He was so funny sometimes that it made you sick, and you watched as Josh added, "Are you like, cilantro must be burned at the stake?"

Joe laughed. "Of all the herbs to bring up," he giggled. "Just, umm, a few weeks ago, my family was in Italy, all of us, my mum and stepdad and sister, the wife and boy, the whole lot, and, y'know, coriander is big over there— or cilantro, whatever you'd like to call it— and we were trying to convince our son, who's just turned a year old, to try something with coriander on it..." Joe paused, ruminating on the meal, and he looked at you, more distinctly and blatantly than before. "Babe? What were we trying to feed him when he wasn't havin' it?"

Your eyes widened, and you gulped as the entire room's attention shifted to you. Where your husband was a natural in front of people and cameras, it didn't come quite as painlessly to you. Especially since Anthony was born, you've been hyper-aware of the way people perceive you. You hoped, for your sake, that the focus was on your words and not you, and that people's eyes instead landed on the little tot standing with you. Little Anthony Quinn was holding both your hands, standing up but balanced on top of your feet, swinging and fidgeting about, waiting for Daddy to be done with work to come for a cuddle. "Just your garden-variety spaghetti," you said. "Not even with meat sauce or anything. The tomato sauce had cilantro, and he was not into it."

"Does he say it tastes like soap?" Josh asked. "'Cause that's some people's complaint."

"Well, he isn't really saying much of anything yet," Joe chuckled. "He's just one, remember. We've got 'Mama' in our arsenal, and 'juice', sometimes 'bankie' when he wants his blanket, but bankie can also mean his pacifier, so his 'binkie'— we haven't quite worked out the difference between bankie and binkie yet, but we're getting there."

"Regardless," Josh laughed. "Not a fan of the herb."

"He is the rest of the time," Joe said. "We do a roast every Sunday, and my wife taps me to do the chicken because she doesn't like handling meat, which I understand and, because I'm a good husband, I handle that for her so she can do the rest of the meal— but I put cilantro on the roast chicken and he eats it every week."

"No complaints?" Josh asked.

"None!" Joe exclaimed. "Eats it, eats the potatos, does the whole bit, and he always wants more! My kid doesn't like cilantro in spaghetti, but will eat a whole chicken by himself— make it make sense!"

"Well, with a baby around, I'm sure there's different food around than before," Josh asked. "My niece is into those, like, Gerber cheese snacks that are essentially Cheetos but not really—"

"Oh, we're familiar with the Lil' Crunchies," Joe nodded smoothly. "The mild cheddar flavor. What my son does is, he'll eat 'em by the fistful, yeah? And he decides to be nice and to share with us, which is very good of him, but he'll hand us a wet cheese puff that's half-disintegrated from the force of his little fist, and me and his mummy have gotta pretend like 'oh, yummy, thank you, Ant'."

“You brought up your girlfriend last time food was discussed,” Josh said, and Anthony stamped his little feet as he clearly wanted to run out to Daddy. “On the Off-Menu Podcast with James and Ed, who are just loads of fun. Is she still the same way, no mushrooms or anything?”

“Well, she’s my old lady now,” Joe chuckled. “We got married a few months after that podcast, just tired of not being married to each other yet, y’know? Plus, we found out that the boy was on his way, so it felt like as good a time as any. She's still picky, but there was a small time during her third trimester where she was eating everything in sight. For a few days there, she was doing popcorn with this, I don't know, novelty salt she bought at some shop in America? Anyway, it was pickle-flavored salt, and my girl... I love her, but pickle-salt popcorn... I have to draw a line somewhere."

"And that's the line," Josh chuckled. "Does she do pickles usually?"

"Um, yeah," Joe replied, and he bit his bottom lip as he smiled. "I guess I oughta get off my high horse, I don't like pickles. I'll eat 'em if they come on a sandwich or whatever, but I don't like it. But she'll take them off my hands and eat them for me; at the deli or whatever and I get one of those spears with my sandwich, and she's eating it for me before we're even out the door."

"Joseph Quinn, you hypocrite!" Josh exclaimed and Joe chortled. "Making fun of picky eaters but not eating pickles! For shame, sir!"

"It's my one flaw!" Joe cried. "Otherwise I'm perfect!"

You couldn't help your snort, and Joe turned to you in a flash. "Oh, do you have something to say, Mrs. Quinn?" he asked. "Something to add?"

"You thinking not eating pickles is your one flaw is very funny," you told him, smoothing your hand down Anthony's hair. "I could talk about the sock situation in our laundry room at the moment, or how your windowsill herb garden has spilled out onto our balcony, or how you always rile up the dog and Ant before bedtime, or—"

"Alright!" Joe whined playfully, and Anthony squealed out a laugh, recognizing Daddy's play-voice. "I get it! Stop the attack, woman, jeez."

"She's got a list," Josh smiled. "Are there any foods that are, like, special to you? Make you think of home or anything like that?"

"Um, yeah," Joe said thoughtfully. "Obviously a roast chicken. Umm, oddly, we have these little biscuits in the U.K., like it's a layer of sponge, then orange jam, then chocolate, but they're small, we have 'em with tea— they're called Jaffa cakes, and I don't have strong opinions on them, but my wife calls me Jaffa Cake when she's being sweet to me."

"Why Jaffa Cake?" Josh wheezed. "Are you just particularly sweet like one of those cookies?"

"Well, my initials," Joe began. "They're J.A.F, and one time a while ago, when we first started dating, we went out and she got very drunk. I ended up bringing her back to my flat because I didn't want her having to get an Uber alone back to her's, and she raided the pantry while I was showering, and she was eating out a packet of Jaffa cakes that my roommate had when I got back, and... I don't know, she was hammered and started laughing and calling me that, and she's never stopped."

You were glad he cut the story off there, because the detail Joe neglected to mention was that he had given you his bed to sleep in, and when you woke up the next morning, you had gotten ill in his bathroom. He had held your hair back and wiped your mouth with a washcloth when you were done, and he had kissed you for the very first time, even after you warned him that he probably didn't want to do that. While it was a very sweet story, you still burned with embarrassment at the memory of how drunk you had gotten that night.

"But yeah," Joe said. "Whenever I'm away from home and missing her, I track down a package of Jaffa cakes, and just even the smell of 'em make me think of my girl."

"Along with a roast chicken," Josh added, and Joe sputtered through his lips.

"Chicken and biscuits, the perfect way to think of my wife," Joe said. "You should come over next time you're in London. I'll roast you a chicken."

"That was... A lot of eye contact just then," Josh laughed. "I'm almost nervous now."

"Nah, don't be," Joe smiled. "I'll roast you a chicken, my son will show you his LEGO collection, we'll have a grand time."

[silverwhittlingknife]

the reason why nu52 Dick is so simultaneously messy and yet boring is because they don't let him be bitchy enough whilst simultaneously making him a little bitch

sdfsdfdsfs I don't totally understand what this means and yet I feel like I agree with the spirit, anon <3

Outsiders 21 - preboot Dick yelling at Bruce my beloved

Yeah, caveat that there's plenty of nu52 Dick stuff that I haven't read and I don't think it's all bad, but also... man, he is not for me. As far I'm concerned, the main good thing that came out of n52/Rebirth is some setups for sad!Dick fanfic. And yeah, "Dick is not bitchy enough" is actually a pretty good summary of my complaints sdfdsfs

The thing is, nu52 Dick has some similarities to preboot Tim, in that he'll sometimes be insincerely fake-cheerful even when actually upset, plus he periodically seems uncomfortable with direct confrontation so instead he lies to avoid confrontation. And mmm I mean, I like these qualities in preboot Tim, so it's not like I think these are terrible traits to have!!

BUT :

1) Preboot Tim has no authority. But preboot Dick does, and it's frustrating to take it away from him in nu52.

There's some post-2011 panel where Dick lies to Batman and is cheery about it, a la Tim bragging to his friends about lying to Batman in Teen Titans, and I had to stare at it for ages trying to figure out why it felt like such a record scratch moment to me.

But it's because there is a huge difference between a presumably independent superhero lying to another superhero vs. a sidekick and his sidekick friends secretly joyriding in Batman's car.

Like, Tim lies to authority figures more-or-less constantly, because he doesn't want to be told what to do, but also because - importantly!! - those authority figures reasonably assume they have authority over him that he has to evade. Of course he tries to avoid direct confrontation with the JLA / Batman / Red Tornado / Starfire - they're not his equals and a direct confrontation would end badly!

Whereas Nightwing lying to Batman feels like putting him in a subordinate position in a way that preboot Dick never is. Preboot Dick always tells Batman off to his face, because preboot Dick cares about being equals and refuses to accept being subordinate. He doesn't sneak around behind Bruce's back - he fights back! If he doesn't agree with Bruce's position, he tries to argue Bruce into his own. He'll do stuff without asking Bruce's permission, but he won't conceal it; he'll make a point of making sure Bruce knows what he did and also that he isn't sorry.

2) Preboot Tim's lying / tendency to be fake with people is a consistent personality trait that's also consistently problematized. nu52 Dick's characterization is wildly all over the map.

In preboot, Tim is a liar and obsessive compartmentalizer, which is both a strength (disguises, sneaking around authority) and a problem (loved ones who are hurt by it). He's self-aware about his lies, periodically resolves to lie less, and generally fails at it.

Tim's consistent enough that you can track this character trait in all his relationships: he lies to his dad. He lies to Batman. He lies to his girlfriends. He refuses to tell Babs his real name for ages for basically no reason. He stalks Dick and then tries to run away from him in his origin story and then tries to avoid telling Dick his name. And this evasiveness consistently causes him problems!! Dick's suspicious of him. Ariana's suspicious of him. His dad is suspicious of him. Young Justice and Steph get annoyed with his secret-keeping. Young Justice want him to take off the mask. Steph wants to know his real name. When she finds out and calls him by his real name, he has a panic attack and literally runs away. When upset, he insists he's fine and fake-smiles at people. In Teen Titans, when Tim's busy being fake-cheerful and Conner is startled to see him there right after his dad died, Tim gets upset and angry at Conner and demands that he not tell anyone about Jack. Fine, Conner says, I guess it's another secret. In AC 3, he's lying to Conner again and Conner accuses him of having an insincere "Starfire voice," which is a hilarious callback to Tim being fake-agreeable-yet-secretly-bitchy at Kory when he first meets her. I feel like I get that the lying is a Tim Character Trait which is sometimes endearing and sometimes less so and which all the people who love him are gonna have different feelings about.

By contrast, nu52 Dick spends a ton of time lying but it's hard for me to model his characterization in the same way? He's sometimes fake and ... sometimes that's totally cool and sometimes people punch him! also, does it say something about him? ehhhhh maybe? no? who can say!! At the end of nu52 Nightwing, he doesn't want to go undercover and Bruce beats him up, but then in Grayson he seems totally on board with his mission and willing to actively lie to everyone, and then in Batman and Robin Eternal he carries out a whole secret mission behind nuTim's back because he thinks nuTim is maybe a spy and is scared (?) of confronting him directly, but also he's so sloppy about it that he gets followed and the bad guys find nuTim's parents. Oopsie! He represents The Heart and is super-caring but also somewhat ditzy with a tendency to leap before he looks, and also he's very very very goodlooking and Grayson would really like you to know that.

You can try to make sense of this character's internal motivations and I have read various enjoyable fanfics that do, but in the comics I don't feel like he's clearly characterized.

3) Dick should be a convincing team leader

I know I kind of talked about this earlier but it bothers me SO MUCH that I have to talk about it again dsfdsfds

Preboot Dick is a natural leader: he seizes control of the feuding personalities in the Fab Five; he does the same thing in the NTT; he stands up to Bruce. He can overrule strong personalities like Pantha and Roy; he can hold his ground against the Outsiders. He doesn't back down and he doesn't quit. He's got instinctive authority, and he's a forceful and aggressive enough leader that he can lead teams even when his teammates are feuding or difficult or arguing with each other. Sometimes he's a little too forceful and it backfires on him, but for the most part, it works!

By contrast, nu52 Dick often comes off as kinda... hapless? He's definitely not a force to be reckoned with.

Like, just to take one small example, in post-Crisis's Red Robin 14, Tim and Damian are fighting and Dick wants them to cut it out, so he throws a batarang at Tim's staff and snaps at him, and the fight stops immediately. By contrast, in nu52's Batman and Robin 10, Tim and Damian are arguing and Dick wants them to cut it out, but nuDick is incapable of confronting anyone over anything so he just sighs about it, passive-aggressive and ineffectual.

And "ineffectual" is too often the vibe I get from n52 Dick in general. You put that man with Pantha, and he'll probably be bemused, but he won't be able to make Pantha do anything, and he wouldn't be able to make Danny Chase do anything, and he can't or won't stand up to Bruce so he has to lie the way Tim does, and he would never have a fistfight with Roy over the proper way to lead a team.

And in a lot of ways this makes sense, because n52 Dick isn't a team leader, because they've deleted the Titans. He's just a guy. He's nice, I guess.

But even though he gets all kinds of excellent woobie plotlines that I'd normally enjoy (an evil organization is stalking him personally! his dad is beating him up and forcing him into becoming a spy! he's losing his memory!) his personality is usually so far off from the character I like that I struggle to get invested.

Because the thing is, Dick's leadership instincts aren't incidental to what I like about him. They're all wrapped up in his outsized sense of personal responsibility and instinctive belief that if anything is going wrong anywhere near him then it is his obligation to handle it and if anything goes wrong then it's his fault if he was involved and also his fault if he wasn't involved and actually if you have ever gotten within five feet of him and unrelatedly something bad happened to you then it's probably his fault and he FAILED. This belief gives Dick a lot of control issues and makes him bitchy sometimes and is not great for his mental health, but it's also very endearing and an outgrowth of how much Dick cares!

Anyway, re:bitchiness, I have similar feelings about various choices in Batgirls and in Tim Drake: Robin and in current Nightwing; like, I don't think any of these stories are bad ipso facto, I don't begrudge anyone who likes them, and I certainly enjoy fluffy fanfic sometimes - I don't always want the same things in transformative fandom that I want in canon.

But in comics, I often want the characters to have a bit of edge, to be cranky and difficult and just... y'know, clearly the kind of people who would choose to be vigilantes. I want them to care enough to be bitchy about it. And I often feel like I'm missing that, post-2011.

[fanhackers]

Illegitimate Media, Part II

In my last post, I shouted out Abigail De Kosnik’s dissertation, Illegitimate Media: Race, Gender, and Censorship in Digital Remix Culture. De Kosnik’s goal for this project was “to place African Americans and women at the beginning of the history of popular digital culture, to ensure that they are credited with the invention and popularization of the earliest forms of digital remix culture.” She also wants to explain “why their genres of remix have been subjected to so much censorship and restraint, from outside and in.”  Notably, De Kosnik spends considerable time examining censorship from the inside–that is, she looks at the ways in which female media fans have not just fought off censorship from outside, but negotiated their attempts to censor each other.  She notes the early adoption of the convention of warnings–which were meant to warn readers away: 

Note, in Examples 2 and 3, the word “WARNING” in capital letters leading off the posts, and the series of repetitive, emphatic statements making clear the fact that the stories contain sexual content, and the defensive phrases that seem to anticipate a reader’s negative reaction to the sexual content: (in Example 1) “I really can’t take any complaints seriously if you fail to heed this warning”; (in Example 2) “if you don’t like that, too bad. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to”; (in Example 3) “If that bothers you, do NOT read this story...Don’t flame me if you’re silly enough to go ahead and read it after I warned you, and then get offended by it.” These prefaces put the onus of the responsibility for the reader’s enjoyment of the erotic fiction squarely on the reader: (in Example 1) “Caveat lector,” or “Reader beware.” In all three examples of headers, the writers do not advertise the appeal of the sexual fantasies they have taken the trouble to create; they do not promise the reader pleasure. They do just the opposite: they address the reader with the assumption that the reader will find these stories about sexual gratification unpleasing, and these headers constitute pre-emptive strikes in the expected blame game that will ensue from the reader’s discomfort and displeasure. These headers state, It will not be my, the writer’s, fault for writing what I should not have if you are made angry or uncomfortable by this sexually graphic story, instead it will be your, the reader’s, fault for reading what you should not have (148).

That said, De Kosnik also acknowledges that “every severe warning can also be read as an invitation,” as “sly and flirtatious come-ons, meant to intrigue and entice” the reader.  She thinks that the history of erotic fanfiction (and the warnings thereof) speaks very specifically to the feminist pornography wars of the 1980s - which might be useful to think about as we consider how our own use of tags and warnings speaks to our own historical moment. 

--Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

[revletter]

In the SMRPG remake, Geno is still around for the postgame fights. Here's a simple and awesome way they could explain that.

(I SO hope they do something even loosely resembling this. I have so many feelings, I made gifs about it.)

Up to this point, we know that there'll be post-game content where you get to fight bosses over again. And look, our blue guy, there he still is!

From this, it's safe to assume that in the remake, after Geno leaves to repair the Star Road, he turns right around and comes back.

Which is KIND OF A BIG DEAL. Because in the original game, it's heavily implied that for all practical purposes, he's certain this goodbye will be forever.

(😭)

For some time, I've had a little theory. I kind of desperately hope for some version of it to be part of the remake. Here it is:

Due to the events of SMRPG, ♡♪!? gets a merit promotion. Maybe, at the beginning of the story, he's not a full-blown Star Spirit (or whatever verbiage). But - as the one little star guardian valiant and capable enough to go down to the world to help save the entire Star Road - now he's become one!

And that comes with more freedom. Just imagine him crashing back down to Earth like "Yo GUESS WHAT PEOPLE, now I'm a STAR SPIRIT (or etc.) and I set my own schedule!" He can go back and see his friends! It's amazing!

And it fits exactly! With not a single caveat I can think of!

IN FACT, you might even say it's supported by a little discrepancy in some 27-year-old pixel art:

Remember the difference between Geno's first appearance and his last? He goes from this tiny lil twinkle guy... to a much bigger 5-pointed star. This is never explained....

((( Read on for my rationale, more gifs, and even more feelings )))

(the doll being bigger is not explained either, but humor me)

(and yes that IS him lighting things up like the Main Street Electrical Parade. I noticed that almost exactly a year ago and it rocketed this fandom back to the front of my So Cal Disney Kid brain so hard that I can't believe it took me so long to make this blog)

(only fitting that he would also usher in the remake reveal after an end like this. :'''D)

... But to me, it seems plausible that the little star's gotten stronger and grown! 💙

In the remake trailer, because I'm the kind of dweeb who does this, I went frame by frame trying to spot any telling differences -

(^ the scene where he's possessing the doll - this could just be a homage to the little twinkle he looks like in the original. even if that's all, I love the devs for it)

(more five-pointy? maybe? rev, did you just superimpose all the frames where Geno looks most five-pointy just so you could not quite prove anything? ABSOLUTELY)

Make of that what you will; all I can say so far is that we only see him kind of blobby. But what I'm secretly hoping is, maybe that's on purpose, so they can make it clearer in the game for the purpose of some big reveal like this. 😀

Anyway...

Wouldn't this be such a fitting and meaningful thing for Geno's character arc? I know one of the complaints among people who consider Geno overrated is that he doesn't really have an arc. Of course, his fans (myself included) either aren't bothered by that, or straight-up disagree, since he's central to the entire plot and goal of the game, and also literally the Mario universe equivalent of an angel, and maybe he was so reserved because he was trying so hard not to get attached even though we all know he totally did,

and also if he got an arc anywhere near Mallow's he'd be so compelling that he'd basically be the main character and they'd have to call it Super Geno RPG BUT ANYWAY,

I can't fully express, no matter how long I make this post, how much I hope they take a narrative route like this. It would be the actual best. My nerdy little heart would never be the same.

[communistkenobi]

Now that Succession is over I’ve been reflecting more and more on the fandom that sprung up around it. When I made this post I had Succession in mind, but it was too large of a sidebar to get into, so now I’m making a separate post.

And before I get into anything, both in anticipation of being yelled at and so I don’t have to constantly inserts caveats into every paragraph: this is not a universal or comprehensive description of how people interact with Succession in a fandom setting online, but rather my experience with it on tumblr and the experience of watching my friends interact with it. Additionally, this diagnosis of a narrow slice of the Succession fandom is not a moral or intellectual damnation of anyone who ships characters or whatever. I am talking to myself publicly on my own blog and this post is a sequel to the post I linked at the top, and so the primary focus of this is going to be about the “methods problem” within fandom that I outlined in that original post. If anything, this is an invitation to reflect on your own experiences and extend/adapt/critique the arguments I’m about to make to your own contexts, not a condemnation of those experiences and contexts. If you feel the urge to say things like “you’re trying to censor me” or “let people have fun” I would rather you not do that because I’ve heard those things hundreds of times already and those complaints are deeply uninteresting. anyway

I think one of Succession’s strengths as a show is that it is a drama about a modern corporate empire that is shown entirely through the eyes of the individual Roy family members. There is a particular, deliberate clash between the intensely intimate drama of Shiv and Tom’s marriage, Kendall’s addiction issues and estrangement from his family, Roman’s sexual and romantic problems, Connor’s loneliness manifesting in him “buying a girlfriend,” and the fact that they are wealthy beyond comprehension. They are so far above material need that the only arena of conflict is their personal lives. This comes to a head in S4, when their father dies and their family drama becomes the primary battleground over who will take the throne. Yes, they are fighting over acquisition deals and legal issues surrounding their father’s company, this is the “material” component that has a direct influence on their wealth, but that is still secondary to their conflict as a family. Kendall and Roman deliberately attempt to sabotage the sale of Waystar, both because of their personal desire to “be the boss” and the constantly-cited desire to “do what our father wanted.” Their primary concerns are always either an attempt to appease their dead dad or their desire to replace him with themselves.

This is the most intensified form of bourgeois interiority in fiction - all material concerns are made invisible, shoved to the side to focus solely on individual emotions and relationships, because the Roys are part of the ruling class. Their material needs will never be part of their problems. The individual landscapes of their emotions, desires, and traumas are the only real site of conflict. The army of servants and underlings beneath them, the public that is only ever at the periphery, are part of the massive social, political and financial scaffolding that allows them the time and freedom to act out these hyper-intense psychodramas with their lovers, friends and family. The character-centric focus of the show is itself a commentary on their wealth - they don’t have to work, they don’t have to worry about money, they don’t even have to interact with public infrastructure, and so they are free to focus entirely on interpersonal turmoil and pleasure. This intense, indulgent look into their personal lives is predicated on their wealth, and highlights how ridiculous and out of touch they are. This is an integral part of how the deeply uncomfortable, second-hand-embarrassment tone of the show is maintained.

But this nuance doesn’t get translated into fandom - or is only translated haphazardly - which is likewise deeply character-centric. As a fan of the show for many years I have largely avoided the Succession “fandom” because of its intense focus on shipping and rooting for your favourite characters to win. This is how you end up with people deeply invested in Roman’s character, running cover and damage control for him as he becomes increasingly openly racist, misogynistic and fascistic as the show goes on. In particular, the way that misogyny in fandom intersects with this character-centric method of engagement is that a lot of apologetic discourse about Shiv is reactive, excusing or rationalising her behaviour to an online crowd who finds fault with her behaviour not because she’s wealthy but because she’s a woman. It’s how you end up watching people online defend the actions of a fictional billionaire girlboss, because the dominant mode of discourse in fandom is focused so heavily on the actions of individual characters that said actions become free-floating, divorced from their context. Shiv is not being defended on the ground of her wealth and power (or not always, lol), nor even really being defended from the fact that those things make her an objectively horrible person, but that popular fandom perception of her boils down to “man what a huge bitch.” It’s not that (necessarily) people want to log onto tumblr to apologise for liking a fictional billionaire - although again, that does happen - it’s that fandom misogyny is so individualistic that Shiv’s actions are always discussed at the lowest rung possible, commonly expressed as “she’s a bitch” or “she’s being unreasonable”, and so that is the discursive arena that discussion about this character remains in, never moving beyond the individual. It reminds me of the backlash against Skylar from Breaking Bad - it was impossible to talk about anything else about her character aside from explaining why she’s not the devil incarnate. Yes there are also unironic fans who love the fact that Shiv is a vaguely progressive rich white woman, those people absolutely exist, but even when you want to approach the show from outside of that uncritical angle, I think you oftentimes get painted into this narrow discursive corner anyway because of how stupid fandom discussion tend to be.

And yes it’s all fictional, it’s not real, and people “blorbofying” a Roy sibling or shipping Kendall and Stewy together are not remotely good indicators of their beliefs about the ruling class in real life. I am not making claims about anyone’s beliefs or political convictions because they enjoy a show about billionaires. I also enjoy the show. But the rhetoric of fandom is so intensely individualistic that “shipping” characters in a show like Succession is seen as a regular thing to do. The easiest way to tell if you’re in a “fandom” on tumblr is to see if people are writing ship fic or drawing shipping fanart. I enjoy Succession a lot and talk about it with friends, but I am not “in the Succession fandom.”

And at least with the people I follow who do engage in Succession “fandom,” there is an intense self-irony on display - people making fancam edits of Gerri, someone who is general counsel to a fictional version of Fox News, or AMVs of Stewy, a hot ruthless venture capitalist. It’s funny precisely because of the dissonance between the use of fandom aesthetic forms (ie fancams) and the subject being fandomised. Embedded into these behaviours is an ironic self-distance, a performance of fandom with a wink to the audience that you don’t actually believe in this, that this is a self-ironic indulgence, a way of articulating sympathy for these fictional characters while maintaining the air of being in-the-know, being a good person who gets what the show is “really” about. And I enjoy that! Those posts rule lol. If anything I am in the meta-fandom, I stay on the periphery with friends to enjoy posts about how stressful shareholder meetings are, to celebrate the tomshiv scorpionmarriage win, to know what the phrase tomstar gregco endgame means.

But that self-irony is only possible to express because of the fact that “doing fandom stuff” with Succession necessarily involves an intense and constant form of apologetics for your favourite character or relationship - it is this assumed, unstated default that this self-irony is engaging with. If you were just talking about the plot of the show or its themes, if you disavowed any desire to ship characters together, if you never got into arguments with people about which Roy sibling “deserves” to be CEO, you would hardly be doing “fandom,” or at least you would be doing it in a fundamentally different way, and crucially you wouldn’t need to be employing that self-ironic tone of “alright now we all know billionaires are bad. But isn’t Roman such a cute little baby? Don’t you just want to hug him?”

I remember a popular sentiment being expressed around when Succession first got popular online, saying that Succession pioneered new ways for people to talk about their favourite characters on the internet. “He’s my Disney Princess” “I want to put him in a Pringles can and shake him” “she is a bug I need to study under a microscope” and so on. And I think this is partially a result of 1) absurdist internet humour in general, 2) a memetic mirroring of the show’s brand of humour specifically, and 3) people’s general political instincts running up against fandom engagement, the desire to engage with Succession as a fandom-text without experiencing intense cognitive dissonance, producing ways of expressing love and enjoyment for characters that are fundamentally, irredeemably bad people, people who are direct reflections of and parallels to the ruling class of modern America. It doesn’t even give you the benefit of historical distance the way a medieval fantasy would, where it’s easier to “stan” a king because it’s taken for granted that everyone here doesn’t support hereditary monarchy. Succession is a direct, immediate commentary on contemporary American life in a way that is impossible to ignore, and so to engage with it on fandom grounds requires a certain kind of additional effort, a way of simultaneously performing your real-world beliefs while also letting loose. I know Succession is not the first show to be like this, nor is it the only thing that has impacted the way fandom operates online, but it has enjoyed a five-year popularity whose digital omnipresence has reached far beyond its immediate audience. Most people on twitter remotely engaged in fandom have seen a Kendall Roy fan edit, for example.

So, all this to say: even when it feels like a text is deliberately choosing a character-centric focus to comment on its themes and structures, I think what happens is that this character-centric lens becomes easily and instantly adopted by fandom, but the commentary gets left behind. Which is again what I meant in that original post I linked at the top - character-centric lenses are not inherently bad, or inferior, or lesser to other lenses, but that fandom only ever engages in a very narrow and particular type of character-centrism, a lens that is so adaptable that you can easily import shipping discourse and “x-character-did-nothing-wrong” style apologetics into a show like Succession. If you engage with Succession primarily as a vector to ship characters together, or to “pick your favourite character,” I think you are falling into this fandom mode. Which I’m not saying is inherently bad, I have also done this with Succession by calling myself a romangirl or whatever, I’m just trying to articulate the whiplash I sometimes get when watching prestige drama television about billionaires being murderers and sex pests and fascists and then going online and seeing hundreds of people expressing a desire to wrap Roman Roy in a little blanket. A lot of people are engaging with the show’s themes and also doing this “fandom” thing with it, so you don’t have to choose one or the other, nor am I saying that there are necessarily “low” and “high” classes of artistic interpretation that people permanently slot themselves into, but I do think these modes of engagement are at some level mutually exclusive, because they require the adoption of fundamentally different interpretive lenses when approaching a text

[voxofthevoid]

As a writer, do you think that any of the “badness” of the manga of late (pacing, emotionally dry, devoting more time to bit characters than like… Megumi or Yuji….) is intentional? I can’t fathom that Gege isn’t self aware.. if its unintentional and an editor isn’t screaming in his ear then Shonen Jump is a joke.

A caveat before I answer: While I write (a...lot), I have nowhere near the creative horsepower needed to pull off something like JJK, in terms of plot complexity, character work, or sheer length. Despite my many and varied complaints about several recent plot decisions and especially the underwhelming ending, the fact that JJK exists in its current form is impressive in itself.

Honestly, what's making the shit ending stand out so much is that it's coming from a person who weaved together a story that deserves a hell of a lot better than this. Like you say, anon, it's so bad that it feels like it's got to be intentional.

And it probably is—or, not intentional so much as aware. Because my personal theory is creative burnout.

We've all heard the horror stories about the punishing practices associated with the manga industry and especially weekly releases, including the ruined health of mangaka themselves. Gege has also taken a number of hiatuses for health reasons. I assume it's more of that—or a culmination of it.

The impression the story is giving me is that its creator just wants it to be over. On top of consistent worldbuilding and coherent characterization taking a backseat, what really sticks out about the recent chapters is how rushed they are. Everything's being brought together and tied up, but it's clumsy at best and nonsensical at worst. It's hard to believe this is the ending Gege had in mind.

But you know that point where you care about getting something over with more than doing it well or right? That's what this feels like to me.

If burnout is what's happening, it's a shitty state, and I'm sorry they're going through it. Not having the luxury of putting a project you love(d) on hold until you can do it justice is never fun or fair, even if that's the reality for a lot of professional artists.

Whatever it is, I just wish it didn't have to be this way.

[dualcastimpact]

pictomancer, raginmar, and how the questline clotheslined me right in the feels

Buckle in — it's going to be a long read. Contains spoilers for the Pictomancer level 80-90 questline, obviously.

To provide you some context, I'm not an RPer but I play the way certain RPers do — that is, I only level select jobs depending on the character I'm playing. Adricienne, for example, enlisted in the Wood Wailers and then later became the Second Azure Dragoon of Ishgard before retiring from the lance and deciding to take up somanoutics, so she only has DRG and SGE leveled and nothing else. Despite having a deep interest in learning every kind of magic he can get his hands on, Raginmar is a shit healer; he's got every offensive magic job leveled, but at best he only knows the barest of field medicine (CNJ 30) and since he got roped into the whole Nymian Marines saga thanks to Thubyrgeim, his SCH 90 is just a reflection of his deep knowledge of the job and not any actual practical mastery on his end (apart from the shields and support buffs which he's genuinely interested in, but he generally leaves the healing to Lily; she functions independent of him and has access to his frankly ridiculous stock of aether, so she's the one responsible for all the high-level healing).

Naturally, this means that when PCT was announced to be one of the new Dawntrail jobs, I immediately knew I was going to have to level it for Raginmar. I was a bit wary at first because it's such a quirky and whimsical-looking job, with the twirling and colours and wild wacky effects and all — I wasn't sure how I was going to tie it to Raginmar's character, but when I actually started the job questline I thought it might actually fit him.

What will you say? > You had me at 'magicked painting'! > I might be interested in learning more about pictomancy.

The Pictomancer job quest begins with a cheerless hearer bemoaning the amount of complaints he's been getting about a moogle called Kupopo who's been making a nuisance of himself in the city, badgering people about some ridiculous new type of magic. From the get-go, the choice to learn pictomancy is yours — you're not being drawn into it by some strange circumstances or having it thrust upon you by somebody else. The Warrior of Light could have just told Kupopo to quit it, but they chose to know more about it, and I love that because it ties in perfectly with Raginmar's drive for knowledge, his curiosity and eagerness to learn as much as he can about magic.

Kupopo: "While other schools of magic that originated during that period—such as black and white—are expressions of the caster's will, pictomancy relies on something more abstract: the imagination!"

Kupopo: "By channeling aether into a concept held in their mind's eye, a pictomancer can give form to the formless!"

You can't tell Raginmar that and not expect his interest not to be piqued, honestly. There's just one problem though — Raginmar is a master artisan and engineer, so obviously he couldn't have become one if he didn't have any artistic skill whatsoever. Unfortunately, his draughtsmanship is limited to technical drawings and technical drawings only; unlike Alphinaud, he can't sketch or paint worth a damn. Luckily for him...

How would you rate your artistic abilities? > I am a master of the arts! > Above average, perhaps. > My stick figure drawings are second to none...?

Kupopo: "Well I, for one, think stick figures are wonderful—as is your honest answer! You'll be pleased to know that pictomancy relies more on one's imagination that their artistic abilities, so don't fret about your egregious lack of the latter!"

...what "egregious lack of the latter", you little shit. Having passed this interview that's doubtless given every jobseeking player war flashbacks, Kupopo deems the Warrior of Light worthy of becoming a pictomancer and bestows upon them a jobstone... with additional caveats.

Kupopo: "I deem you worthy of the soul crystal. However, I should warn you that it comes with some proverbial strings attached. A list of emotional baggage, too."

Of course it does. It wouldn't be an FFXIV job questline if it didn't involve us getting roped into shenanigans. But hey, at least it seems relatively straightforward!

Kupopo: "You see, several moons ago, I got into a terrible argument with my best friend. We went our separate ways, and I've not seen her since..."

Kupopo: "I wish I could meet her again, try to reconcile—more than anything. So if we hear aught of her during our journey together, I'd like you to lend me a helping hand."

Lending a helping hand is a major part of pictomancy; it's repeated multiple times over the quests how helping others is the duty of the pictomancer, because that what Archon Relm intended pictomancy to be used for. This forms the basis of the job questline: Kupopo and the Warrior of Light embarking on a journey to help those in need of aid, allowing the Warrior of Light to both embody the spirit of pictomancy and hone their skill in the art (ba dum tss). It goes well, for the most part! Kupopo is an endearingly straightforward and earnest moogle; he apologises to the cheerless hearer for having caused so much trouble, and while the Warrior of Light does the bulk of the work hunting down beasts for medicinal horns and negotiating with pirates for the return of capsized cargo, he also does his fair share by soothing the upset people that they're helping and generally being a reliable companion.

It also helps that he's actually pretty funny:

Kupopo: "Now listen closely: I have here a lovingly crafted—and blessedly breathable—hempen sack. I want you to stuff me inside and teleport me to Kugane with you."

Kupopo: "You needn't gawp—it's a well-considered request! While I may not be replete with teleportation anima like you, I can tag along as one of your belongings. So stuff me in the sack! I can take it, kupo!"

As an aside, I rather like this tidbit explaining why only the Warrior of Light is capable of teleporting around with impunity while everyone else has to travel the old-fashioned way — apparently in 1.0, teleporting used an in-game resource called anima; teleporting between and within regions cost 6 and 4 anima points respectively, and intercity aether points cost 1 point. If you teleported a lot, you'd run out of the 100 point anima cap real quick. To make matters worse, anima apparently regenerated at the rate of 1 point every four hours. 2.0 changed the anima system to gil and pretended there were invisible NPCs at every aetheryte crystal whom you pay every time you teleport (source), but this dialogue essentially confirms that the teleportation anima from 1.0 is still a thing! In other words, you not only need to be able to manipulate aether well enough to be able to transport yourself through the aether while teleporting, but you also need enough teleportation anima to even do so.

But I digress. It's in Kugane, however, that we learn that the person Kupopo's been searching for — his dearest, bestest friend Beruru, whom he'd wanted to reconcile with so badly — has reportedly passed away. We learn this from the Ul'dahn art dealer whom the Warrior of Light and Kupopo have assisted before, and he later directs us to someone in Ul'dah who's apparently made it his business to know everyone else's — someone wearing sunglasses and a knowingly smug grin. Kupopo obviously doesn't know who the art dealer is referring to, but I was gleefully yelling out "Wymond! WYMOND!!" at my screen the entire time.

Wymond: "Aye, well, that's true enough. But to be fair, I'd have to be blind as a bat to miss a moogle travelin' with the savior of the bleedin' realm an' then some. I understand you're lookin' for a friend?"

I wonder if this dialogue changes if you 1) did not start at Ul'dah, meaning he never met the fledgling adventurer freshly arrived at the city; and 2) have not done the ARR Hildibrand quests, meaning he never spoke to the adventurer, much less ask to investigate some strange rumours he's heard about. He does deal in information, though, so I guess he would have known enough to recognise the Warrior of Light regardless.

Wymond tells us that after making a hefty donation to the Arrzaneth Ossuary and earning herself a tomb within its burial chamber, Beruru vanished, leaving behind only a few items in the inn room she had resided in — the general consensus being that she had ended her life by her own hands. After some errand-running and tomb-desecrating, we learn that the tomb Beruru had been "rewarded" with thanks to her donation is empty but for a single painting. Kupopo deduces that Beruru, having had such an incredible imagination that she could essentially reshape reality, had painted herself into the painting in her sorrow and grief over losing her companions — Janquetilaque, the elderly master pictomancer whom she'd trained under and loved as a grandfather, and Kupopo himself, who'd told her to stand on her own two feet and not rely on him forever after Janquetilaque's death, leading to the argument that ultimately split them apart.

In the final quest at level 90 (which meant a full set of Augmented Credendum gear, hell yeah), Kupopo beseeches our aid in going into the painting and getting Beruru back. Naturally we say yes, having gone through thick and thin together, and Kupopo takes us into the painting — into a castle that Janquetilaque had once seen in a dream.

That castle? It's the Grand Cosmos in Norvrandt. On the First. At first I was all giddy at this callback to the fact that Feo Ul could traverse between worlds and visit those on the Source in their dreams, much like they did with our retainers and Tataru — presumably Feo Ul or some other faerie had done the same thing here with Janquetilaque, probably one who loved the arts and saw what the pictomancer was doing and thought Janquetilaque would get a kick out of the Grand Cosmos. And then, as the duty begins and we set out to find Beruru, a Shadowbringers theme begins to play. I want to say it's High Treason but I need to double check it in NG+ to be certain, but also I know it was a Shadowbringers track and that, combined with actually being in the Grand Cosmos again (a dungeon that I actually really adore and have many feels about), gave me such excited joy I almost lost my damn mind, screeching at my monitor at 3am.

Shadowbringers: truly so peak that any callback to it still makes me lose it with excitement.

Anyway, we rush through the halls, defeat the fake Janquetilaque that Beruru had brought to her life using her pictomancer powers, and then Kupopo casually hits us with this wham line:

Kupopo: "I'm not real. No matter how much I wish it, I can't remain by your side forever."

What do you mean this funny, charming moogle we've been traveling all this time isn't real? And he drops this apropos of nothing! Just this sudden reveal as he's trying to coax Beruru out of the painting! The camera does pan to the Warrior of Light to show how they're taken aback by this revelation, but it's got nothing on MY shock.

Kupopo: "Like the Janquetilaque we defeated, I'm a product of pictomancy. Your imaginary friend, and nothing more."

Kupopo: "It isn't uncommon for children to have imaginary friends. They create us in their minds to help cope with their struggles."

Kupopo: "But children grow up. And when they do, we disappear, kupo."

That's why he wanted her to stand on her own two feet and not rely on him forever, as ill-timed as the sentiment was. He was never real and had an expiration date to boot, and he didn't want Beruru to be helpless and lonely once he had to disappear. It hammers home how young Beruru is, that this imaginary friend she'd conjured to life from her imagination exists still — that she needed this imaginary friend in her life still. Just the idea of that alone was bringing me to tears.

Kupopo: "Pictomancers can do wonderful things. By bringing our imagination to life, we bring hope to those in need, kupo."

Kupopo: "But no matter how harsh reality may be, a pictomancer isn't meant to paint over it, kupo!"

There's an interesting implication here, with the reveal that Kupopo is a product of Beruru's imagination — did he truly learn and grow throughout his existence as he journeyed the lands with Janquetilaque and Beruru, or is everything he knows a reflection of Beruru's? It certainly seems like he's got his own personality and thoughts, given how he fought with her about wanting her not to depend on him forever, but who's to say that's not Beruru's subconscious saying the same thing? Who's to say he's not just saying what Beruru's been thinking all along but just didn't want to accept? Here he berates Beruru about using pictomancy to run away from reality, but what if it's Beruru scolding herself through him? Just how much free will does he have, truly?

Beruru: "But... How can I when those who matter most to me are gone?"

She's lost the master whom she'd loved as grandfather, and she's about to lose her best (and only) friend. How in the world can she find the strength to move on?

Even outside the context of all that the Warrior of Light had lost, this is one question Raginmar was more than well-suited to answer.

What will you say? > If you carry on for them, they'll always be with you. > In giving hope to others, you'll find hope of your own.

Years before he came to Eorzea, back when he was a resistance commander fighting the Empire in northern Ilsabard, Raginmar lost nearly his entire squadron. Comrades and subordinates he'd fought alongside with for over a decade, and he'd had to kill them himself when they were turned into Hypertuned monstrosities. When the remaining survivors of his squadron stubbornly saved him and kept him alive despite his wishes, he truly ended up with nothing left. Everyone he knew and cared for were either dead or scattered to the four winds, fleeing the Empire. What did he have to live for?

It took a while, but he lives for them. For those he's lost. For those he can yet save. His squadron lived by that creed — we have always ever been for the people — and he would carry their memory with him always, so that he'd never lose his path. His dead walk with him, wherever that path leads.

I was already crying pretty damn hard at this point, but when Beruru accepted the truth and acknowledged she was ready to stand on her own two feet now and that Kupopo didn't need to worry about her now, and Kupopo rose up high into the air to disappear in a blinding flash of light, calling out fond farewells to Raginmar and Beruru, I wept. I absolutely bawled at this part, I was crying so hard my head hurt by the time the quest finished.

Listen, this questline started on such a charming and quirky note, I absolutely was not expecting to be hit so hard in the feels by that ending! I wasn't expecting it! I'd tweeted a few days ago, back when I just did the first quest, about how I thought PCT would be a good fit for Raginmar lore-wise despite how wacky the whole job was, but not only wasn't I expecting it to suit him so perfectly, I wasn't expecting it to clothesline me with feels as well. The quest ends with Kupopo's memories and feelings going to Beruru as the aether she'd used to create him seeps back into her, and she thanks the Warrior of Light for embarking together with him on the journey and helping him find her. She assures the Warrior of Light that she's going to be alright now and then runs off — and just why aren't we allowed to just adopt her, game?! That is a child, at most a young teenager we just allowed to run off into the wilderness with no support system after losing everything she owned and everyone she ever loved! Hello?!

I'm not saying Raginmar slipped her his address in the Firmament, his adventuring party's contact details and the address to their base in the Goblet, and said to ask the Adventurers' Guild's guildmasters to contact him if she ever needed help or just a friendly face to talk to, but he absolutely did.

That said, I think a more suspicious player, or maybe someone who wasn't as absorbed by the story as I was, would have connected the dots about Kupopo far earlier. Kupopo was very much your regular moogle, for all intents and purposes, but there was one thing that foreshadowed the truth: his name. Kupopo, as a name, doesn't adhere to standard moogle naming conventions — moogles living in the Twelveswood have names like Kuplo Kopp, Kupli Kipp, Kupta Kapa, Kupcha Kupa, and so on and so forth. Kupopo does not match those conventions, but do you know what naming convention it does match?

Lalafellin naming conventions. Specifically Plainsfolk Lalafell, which is what Beruru is. It'd made sense that he'd have a Plainsfolk name if Beruru created him. She saw a moogle when she was a child and was so enchanted that she wanted to have a friend just like it, which was how she ended up creating Kupopo in the first place, but if she'd never spoken to a moogle before then it'd make sense that she named him after what she knew.

Of course, you could have easily explained away his unusual name — it could have been a nickname, he could have been a rare moogle who'd grew up in Limsa Lominsa and received his name from a Plainsfolk Lalafellin child, it could have been explained any which way. But they didn't explain the name, so you're free to think how it came to be however you like — and that's how I think it came to be.

All this is to say, I think I'd been somewhat disappointed by the quality of the writing when it came to the post-Endwalker patches — or maybe having to do it in patches took away a lot of the enjoyment for me — so I've been a bit wary about starting Dawntrail. I actually haven't started the MSQ proper, even, but this job questline made an absolutely fantastic first impression on me, so I'm actually somewhat looking forward to Dawntrail's story now.

If you read this all the way to the end, congratulations and thank you for reading! I'd be happy to know your thoughts about the Pictomancer questline, and if you had fun nyooming around with the Smudge skill as much as I do.

[bimboficationblues]

is fight club a left or right wing movie?

part of what I like about the film is that it is politically idiosyncratic in a way that I find interesting, but I think I’d be hard-pressed to defend it as “leftist” without giant screaming caveats in a way I really wouldn’t if I wanted to make a rightist case. So take that as you will. I wrote about my feelings on it here so apologies if you read that and I repeat certain points below

Like another hotly debated Fincher movie, Gone Girl, I think that there’s a preoccupation with how we construct gendered identity and how it is shaped by class and conspicuous consumption and media systems. I find that quality really interesting, but I wouldn’t call it meaningfully leftist per se except in like an Adbusters kind of way - an interest in “authenticity” is something I’m both personally skeptical towards and also a grounding value of reactionary politics

I think it’s pretty unambiguous that Tyler Durden’s politics are a kind of nihilist, revanchist manhood, and his picture of an ideal society is a weird sort of “retvrn” take on primitivism. As far as authorial intentions go I think it’s likely that Palahniuk shares Durden’s worldview at least in part (which I personally don’t feel totally translates into the screenplay adaptation, perhaps in part due to the diminished homoeroticism) and Fincher seems at least sympathetic to it in his public comments, though he also seems to focus more on the economic aspects. But I don’t think author intent is the end-all of cinematic critique and I’m a lot more interested in how stuff is framed and structured and shot

I think what really seals the ambiguity is the lack of a meaningful alternative to Durden’s worldview even though that worldview is presented as wrong (quite literally delusional). Like, the reveal that Tyler is an idealized self looking to complete suicide and take the world with him (“liberating” it in the process), does sap the power of some of the salient critiques of consumption and advertising and alienation - the tradeoff being that it also undermines the stupid male resentment stuff. It almost becomes a kind of anti-politics. Is the idea that everything is actually fine? Is the critique unqualifiedly correct but the solution wrong - perhaps there *is* no appropriate solution and the status quo should just be accepted? Are the critiques a hodgepodge of semi-accurate complaints about modern capitalism distorted by male entitlement and fear of feminization, which leads to (or rather, justifies) bad solutions? That last one is probably closest to my personal reading, but I’m cognizant of the fact that it’s the one that most closely aligns with my own views, in that it resonates with how I understand certain reactionary modernisms. One of the most interesting details for me that supports this is how the fight club is meant to offer an alternative individualism to consumer culture’s pseudo-individualism, but the fight club is eventually subsumed into cultic, conformist behavior, the exact sort of mass manipulation that advertising and culture-industry engages in: people who dress the same, repeat rules they don't understand and had no participation in making, follow arbitrary orders, and only have identity in death.

On the flipside, there’s also a kind of interesting thread where like, the narrator is homoerotic with Tyler and views Marla as an invasive presence right up until the point where he’s reached disillusionment with Tyler and Project Mayhem, and at that point he pivots hard to a reaffirmation of his heterosexuality through desire for Marla. This might be a discomfort with M/M sexuality (note the adaptational change from the narrator meeting Tyler on a nude beach to meeting him on a plane), suggesting that the film's underlying anxiety is not Tyler's fear about emasculation and feminization creating a weaker society, but a fear of male homoeroticism and its supposedly destructive, anti-civilizational quality

These are all a lot of different, potentially mutually exclusive readings but I guess it points towards the answer of "I dunno, it depends on where you place your emphases."

[orionsangel86]

Are there anythings that you would have changed about The Sandman?

The show or the comic?

Plenty of things I'd change about the comic. As great as the story is, it is a product of its time and there are some underlying messages whether intentional or not that are inappropriate and fucked up and don't really belong such as:

The racism towards black women implied to be cursed to die violently when linked to Morpheus in some way following the Nada situation.

In fact the whole Nada story is pretty gross. When she thinks that by cutting her hymen she'll remove her virginity to put Dream off her, but then its stated that healing her hyman doesnt restore her lost virginity... like first of all. No. Second of all - shoving a rock up your vag does NOT remove your virginity lets not spread the message that it does.

The way Dream comes across a bit rapey in the Nada story overall and its not made clear how much influence Desire has in that.

The inherent misogyny which is typical of 80s/90s comics but in particular the violence towards women and overt sexualisation of women. Whether for shock value or not, its just not necessary.

The implied message that depressed and suicidal people should just kill themselves and everything will be better once they are gone.

The idea that a person who is depressed can be replaced by a better good version of themselves and even their family and friends will just treat that person as the new them. The implication that the depressed person isnt valued and must instead conform to the responsibilities and burdens of the system they are trapped in - rather than changing the system.

The concept that the moon is inherently transphobic and that witchcraft is transphobic just irks me as a pagan person- like yeah there are huuuuge problems in the community and the whole divine feminine and fucking womb magic bullshit is all over it but I really really hate how Sandman perpetuates that myth and indicates its the goddess that encourages that view and not asshole closed minded people. The moon isnt fucking transphobic FFS.

Everything about Gwen and Hobs relationship in Sunday Mourning. Its problematic AF and I hope I don't need to explain why.

Not a fan of the portrayal of Loki and Sigyn. Its too black and white for such a complex myth.

That fucking awful reaping joke in Collectors which I loathe with every fibre of my being.

Even with all these points I want to caveat this by saying that I love these comics. I KNOW that a lot of this is subjective and open to interpretation. These things have many shades of grey to them. I adore the comics in so many ways but that doesn't mean they dont have their issues. I know people are emotionally connected to these comics and this criticism isnt meant as an attack on them.

For the show, well tbh I think its practically perfect, but a couple of niggles:

That fucking awful reaping joke in Collectors - can't BELIEVE they kept that in. I mute my TV at that moment so I don't have to hear it every time.

Hob's slave trade ties - They needed clarity here and should have kept the regret in 1889 more obvious. I understand why they changed it but I think that topic should have been thought through better.

There were complaints I read about how black characters and black men in particular seem to disproportionately suffer violent deaths. I know this was unintentional and a simple matter of open casting for extras and minor characters which is a GOOD thing, but sometimes casting should be less blind, and more considered where minorities are concerned.

Some of the dialogue in Johanna Constantine's episode is clunky - but that only bothers me because I've watched it 284929294787 times and have it memorised.

Despair was handled poorly. It wasnt great rep for fat bodies (like me) and she comes across so weak and submissive to Desire. Which she just isn't at all in the comic. Thankfully it looks like they really did take that criticism to heart and made positive changes in Dead Boy Detectives. She was fabulous in her cameo in that.

Not enough gay sex. The 1 star homophobic reviews really overexaggerated on that and left me disappointed. There should have been at least 1 gay or lesbian sex scene in every episode. Do better season 2. Do better. (For legal reasons this one is a joke - Sandman is a goldmine of queer rep and should be on every queer fans watch list 100 times over)

There you go. No piece of media is perfect. There can always be changes and improvements, but the Sandman is a story that really does fit the description of masterpiece. I think my ideas of things that need to change are generally matters of framing. I dont think the comic story should be drastically changed in the show, I don't think it should be given a different ending. Its a tragedy after all, but tragedy can come in many forms and perhaps the story can be adjusted so the tragedy isnt so harsh. But anyway. This is all just my opinion and as with all things i'm sure there will be plenty of people who disagree with me.

[lenaperseveranceoxton]

It's been a while since I've posted any sort of character analysis, and I'm bored, so... here we are! I was mildly inspired by this post, but I've had the following on my mind especially since this video came up in my YouTube recommendations a while back.

Can we talk about how STUPID the chronal accelerator is? I hope that the Overwatch Declassified book sheds some more light on it, but I don't think the narrative teams across the franchise's lifespan ever really put much thought into it.

In Reflections, Lena wears her chronal accelerator out by zipping all over King's Row.

Notice how there's still a slight blue glow. So, does it have enough power to keep Lena anchored in time but not enough to let her control her "own personal timeline"? I honestly don't mind that as an aspect/caveat to the chronal accelerator. I promise I'll get back to this point.

In Alive, Lena uses her chronal accelerator to recall JUST before the bullet that killed Mondatta hit her.

One could argue that she anticipated Widowmaker's shot and got lucky. Still, this scene is set in slow motion. Is it purely to make it more dramatic, or does Lena perceive everything around her to be slower as she controls her own personal timeline? I think the latter would make her more interesting as a character, because it would mean that she had more than a split second to decide to dodge the bullet, only adding to her survivor's guilt.

Okay, deep breaths. We're treading into what I would argue are the most annoying portrayals of the chronal accelerator.

I'll get the first bit out of the way: London Calling has a lot wrong with it as a story. I've given my complaints on this blog before, but I'll give a recap. No offense to Mariko Tamaki, but her experience of writing for Marvel and DC comics is apparent. They tried to lean into the superhero aspect of "Tracer", and it misconstrues Lena as a character here and there.

As for the chronal accelerator, it starts electrocuting Lena after Widowmaker slams her into a wall at the end of Alive. After Lady's funeral, Lizzy follows Lena home and sees her being electrocuted half-to-death on the sidewalk, and they use parts sent by the one and only S. Paceape to repair it. Lena doesn't hear Winston's warning that the fix is temporary, and she blinks all the way to Iggy with no hiccups. Then, as she snatches Iggy from Kace, she says "Just need the chronal accelerator to hang in there for... got ya!" and it suddenly starts electrocuting her again. Obvious inconsistency there, as Lena shouldn't have known the chronal accelerator was about to electrocute her when it was most convenient for the plot, but why are THESE parts from Winston temporary? She gets them right after Mondatta's assassination, and she doesn't get electrocuted before then. She speaks about Winston as if they're not in regular contact, and Winston simply mails her parts on occasion.

Why did Babs Tarr draw her like this? Why is it that these parts are suddenly temporary? Winston would know that Lena uses her chronal accelerator REGULARLY. She prefers to use it over taking the tube, for example. All of a sudden, his parts can't handle a short walk to the Underworld? The writing did BOTH of them dirty in this comic. I can't lie.

Now, onto the thing that frustrates me the most: the Doomfist Origin Story. Remember my point about it being interesting concept for Lena to be able to slow down her perception of time? I feel like, with this origin story, they focused so much on portraying Akande as the cold and calculated warrior that he is that they made Tracer look ESPECIALLY inept.

It would've made more sense for Akande to study the fighting patterns of Genji. He very clearly dislikes Asa Yamagami in that one OW2 interaction he has with Genji. Surely, a light bulb would've gone off like "Ah, this cybernetic ninja fights quite like a student of Asa Yamagami. I might be able to predict his next move."

Time to bring this essay full circle! Remember my point about Reflections kind of implying an interesting concept of the chronal accelerator having just enough power to keep Lena anchored but not enough for her to control her own timeline?

Rewatch the Doomfist Origin Story. Seriously, look at how much Lena is blinking here. I think it would've been more fitting for Lena's character if her overconfidence led to her burning her chronal accelerator out and leaving her defenseless, frozen like a deer in headlights. It would also fit Akande's character, as he would know that Lena would eventually tire herself out (maybe not to the extent of her life support device giving up on her, but my point stills stands). Akande would still be able to destroy Lena's chronal accelerator, presuming that it would take her out of the fight for good, and the plot would move on the same way.

Now, I don't know how to end this, so I'm just going to say that Lena "Tracer" Oxton is my original character. I'm taking her from Blizzard's grasp. No one understands her like I do. 😔

[saintsenara]

If you're feeling the violence, I'd love to hear your thoughts on 1, 8, 18 or 25 😈

thank you for the questions from the choose violence ask game, anon!

1. who is the character everyone gets wrong?

obviously, this is caveated with read and write and interpret characters how you want, but sirius, 100%.

and i'm not just referring to the womanising, prank-playing, "you're not serious?"/"yes, I am" version of fanon, but also the dark-aristocrat!sirius which has been created in many fics to counter this portrayal.

i find myself really not fond of a sirius who is, at any one time, one argument with dumbledore away from becoming a death eater; who finds himself saying "mudblood"; who feels more comfortable around characters like lucius malfoy than he does lily; and who would happily take a hereditary seat [not a thing!] on the same wizengamot that will later sentence him to azkaban without a trial.

yes, sirius undoubtedly had a lot to unlearn from his childhood, and i think we are absolutely supposed to suspect that this included blood-supremacist prejudice. yes, sirius' capacity for arrogance and cruelty and ruthlessness are very voldemort-ish characteristics. yes, the difficulty sirius has with reconciling the fact that many death eaters are his own flesh-and-blood is obvious in canon.

but once he made the choice to stand against voldemort his rejection of the world he came from was total. as long as he loves james - and he will always love james - there is nothing on earth that could drag him back.

[i'm also going to answer this by mentioning the concept everyone gets wrong, because this truly does annoy me: occlumency.]

contrary to what you see if you read any snape-centric pairing, occlumency is not the total shutting down of all emotion. it is controlling your emotions, under enormous mental pressure, to an extent which allows you to lie fluently. putting up occlumency walls/shields is not a thing - or, not a thing as fanon uses it - and snape is not a good occlumens because he's emotionally repressed, he's a good occlumens because he's petty.

8. what is a common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about?

there is not a single soul on earth incapable of redemption.

i do not want to see another 1000-note tumblr post or 500-comment reddit circlejerk about how malfoy or snape or whoever you want to choose is irredeemable; that their crimes are so heinous there is never any space - in canon or fanon - for them to be forgiven.

the harry potter series is not morally spotless by any means, but one thing it does - in my opinion - do right is highlight the complex and combined power of failure, grief, regret, atonement, and forgiveness, and how this is a weapon in the face of hatred, rage, and arrogance.

and it's an important lesson! at some point in all of our lives we will fuck up badly - maybe even to the extent of joining a terrorist group intent on murdering our peers [i come from northern ireland, i've seen it happen; and this is in "peacetime", when the lure of the paramilitaries is a fraction as strong as it was during the troubles] - and we will long to be forgiven. and we will deserve it.

to be human is to have access to the fragile, beautiful possibility of atonement. even if you're as much of a knob as draco malfoy.

18: it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

the fact that hagrid is a death eater.

i'm being facetious here, but i would love to see more fics which explore the idea that hagrid's deranged buffoonery is all an act, allowing one of the most evil men in history to operate under dumbledore's nose.

"he is at hogwarts, that faithful servant". so true, my lord, and he's teaching care of magical creatures.

25: what is a common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing?

this is a call-out post for myself, because i complain about this all the time, which is petty and boring and i need to get the fuck over it.

yes, ideally stories will be britpicked, but, in the grand scheme of things, americanisms etc. don't matter.

we are all just having fun writing our little stories and drawing our little pictures and offering them, tentatively, to the world. we are creating something free in a society increasingly hostile to such things. we are finding community. we all deserve to be proud of what we've done, even if we don't understand how london geography operates or we think ron's slamming down a stack of pancakes and a 20oz soda every morning, and brits whinging about sweater v jumper or mum v mom [anyway, real ones know you call her your mam] doesn't contribute to that and should be avoided.

[other answers from this ask game]

[crippleprophet]

so im going to the doctor in 2 days (i go on the 30th and im writing this on the 28th) and im physically disabled, and this is the first time ive gone to the doctor since late 2019 when i caught covid, and the doctor im going to is our old pcp's son, and our old pcp constantly brushed my dad off and i have all the same stuff as him and m o r e, so i need advice on how to not get brushed off since im 14 and my dads side has a past of drug seeking and shit. ive already made a list of all my symptoms but other than that i straight up dont know what to do

oh, god, i’m so sorry. my medical neglect journey started at 16 (aside from psychiatrization starting at 14) & i had no language for what i was going through so this ask really makes my heart ache, for you & my past self. on the one hand, you knowing to expect & prepare for this kind of shit puts you leagues ahead of where i was at your age; on the other, no amount of understanding the systemic ableism behind your pcp’s behavior will erase the pain & trauma of not being believed.

here’s some general appointment prep i do + other advice, as always with the caveat that i am Just Some Guy on the internet & you know your circumstances best:

think about the narrative you want to craft. i’ve got a primer on how to lie to doctors if that’s the route you want to take. try to group things by category (autoimmune symptoms together, neurological symptoms at a separate point in the conversation, etc) without saying that that’s what you’re doing to like set up the paint by numbers for him & hope he picks up the brush.

in that vein, lead with the symptom you want to prioritize. doctors are trained to build a diagnosis around the “chief complaint,” so burying the lede—or even listing it second—is more likely to get those symptoms ignored.

in addition to listing symptoms themselves: when they started, frequency/duration, intensity, how it impacts your daily life. framing things through the lens of “i want to be a good little normative student but X keeps making it difficult to do Y” usually goes over better.

if a supportive adult will be with you, talk to them about what you’re going to say & at what point you’d theoretically want them to intervene / push back against the doctor’s response, & how so.

determine your goals for the appointment. do you want a referral to a particular specialist? certain testing to be done? a prescription for a particular medication? the more you’ve thought about what you want out of it, the easier it is to advocate for that outcome.

ask leading questions, invoke other authorities, & act like you don’t know shit. for example, if i was trying to get bloodwork of an ANA panel from my rheumatologist, i’d be like, “my pcp was really concerned about this face rash that i’ve been having along with my joint pain, he said there’s some sort of blood test to check if it’s, like, lupus or something?”

do your research, but never ever mention that you have. if you’ll have an adult with you & this would be a safe conversation to have / they’d listen to you, it’s worth mentioning to them that a lot of doctors get dismissive when patients mention having googled symptoms.

this post on finding + navigating specialists might be relevant, especially if you want to get a referral or try to find a new pcp (obv decisions affected by insurance or lack thereof, whether your parents are supportive, etc)

i’ve also got this post about coping with medical neglect & trauma if you want to plan for / set up any of those coping mechanisms in advance.

i really want you to know that no matter how your appointment goes, your disabilities & symptoms are real, & you deserve quality, compassionate, comprehensive healthcare. unfortunately, under an ableist healthcare system it’s impossible to earn our way out of medical neglect—fucking tragically, doing everything “right” at an appointment doesn’t mean we’ll get taken seriously—& equally, folks who don’t know or bother to play this bullshit game are still just as deserving of care & shouldn’t be victim-blamed for neglect they’ve experienced.

i hope some of this is helpful! feel free to send a follow-up ask if there’s any other info or support i can provide. i’ll be thinking about you on the 30th & hope things go as well as possible 💓💓

[mdhwrites]

THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS!... Is Good.

And that understated response is also kind of my condemnation of it. That as an independent, Youtube dark comedy series, it's just about what you'd expect. Really in your face with some elements, lingering a bit too long on others but in general pretty enjoyable. After all, if a series about existential dread and parodying game development for its comedy and horror sounds appealing to you, you will probably like this.

BUT if that thumbnail makes you squint like I did, you might not come away with an amazing opinion of it. I actually saw this thumbnail when it first came out and IMMEDIATELY dismissed it as not for me. Like I said, I actually did end up liking it, its visuals are much better than this thumbnail suggests, but it is kind of in your face with how 'weird' it is, at least times, like you'd expect from this picture.

But I did like it. I'm just in this weird limbo where I like it... But I don't feel inclined to really praise anything. Nothing in this wowed me. The biggest compliment I feel like giving, no caveats, is that the animation is genuinely good. How it's being used isn't always for me but I can respect the craft and effort put into it. A couple errors here and there but honestly nothing that I wouldn't let slide in a bigger professional work for the most part (there's once where the glitch effect on Pomni's hand is just gone when it shouldn't be as an example).

I have two main complaints so far that worry me going forward. The first is a pacing issue. You could cut four minutes out of this, lose nothing and really help there be some amount of snappiness to this. Have the comedy and horror both flow better because it's rarely trying to build a bunch of tension or atmosphere with its slowness, it's just... Slow. Period. Not to the point of being bad but to the point where you start feeling how long things are taking.

The other has to do with the main character: Pomni. She has no personality currently. Narratively that's actually fine. She's effectively just accidentally dropped herself into purgatory and that's a pretty shit situation and where a lot of the existential dread is from. There's no way out and very little to do. That is HARD to handle. The problem is she never gets to break the image of a trauma doll for the entire episode. At best she shows that she's willing to abandon this place for self preservation which could lead to her choosing the inhabitants over herself later... Or just as well be for emphasizing a 'natural' reaction to the place. I don't know because as far as who she is, a tweaked out expression with little thought behind the eyes is kind of all we have.

I do want to give one scene a shout out as a change of pace from these two critiques though: The scene when Pomni comes back to Ragatha is actually really good. The glitchy animation is great, the voice acting on Ragatha is really good, Pomni apologizing is a good sign that she'll grow to care for these people and while I won't say the scene couldn't have been done more quickly, the slower pacing actually did allow for the unsettling elements of the corruption to seep into the scene rather than just feel like a gimmick. The show does have genuine promise and that scene was easily the standout of the episode for me.

The final thing is a personal one. I didn't find Nier Automata very compelling but I don't find existential dread that interesting unless you DO something with that question. If your whole point is "Doesn't monotony and entropy suck?" (not saying that's Automata's point, just that that's how many sidequests felt) that I just don't get into it. I don't find that by itself interesting. The plus side is that the cast is actually made in a way where they could be a bunch of archtypes just put together for an ensemble... Or they could be various responses to trying to deal with this dread. To showcase how one handles the concept of eternal monotony and repetition.

I just don't know if that's actually what they're doing. I don't really know what this show is doing besides "Everyone wants to get out of this game dev purgatory." That's not a bad concept but I wouldn't call it a great pilot. It is good enough that I'll be keeping an eye out for episode 2 and I might try out the studio's previous outing, Murder Drones, which I've been recommended by my Discord before.

And if literally any of this sounds even intriguing to you, I really do suggest trying the show out. It's good enough that it deserves your support as a very well made, indie animation project and I hope it gets better and better as it goes forward.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[jechristine]

https://twitter.com/chescaleigh/status/1655314770927685632?s=46&t=7jIGcg5G8QacS815icUwsw

This! But some people not ready to hear it

I went on strike as a first year educator this year and luckily our biggest point wasn’t actually pay but wanting smaller caseloads and more mental health support. We walked for 2 weeks and ended up taking a pay raise with smaller caseloads with caveats and im still pissed bc the demands of more mental health support were not addressed at all besides a general statement of providing more SEL

Yes! Good news on your contract and you should lead around mental health supports next time it’s up. Do you mean for students or for staff? Tangential rant: My district mandated a PD around us staff supporting each other emotionally, and it was complete bullshit imo. Like, I work at a title 1 school, a huge percentage of our kids have experienced unique traumas in addition to generational poverty and institutionalized racism, and we staff are trying our best all the time to support them even though they take often out their pain on us (they are young and this is not a complaint). We don’t need “supporting each other during lunch breaks” to be added to our list of our staff responsibilities. We have our own families and friends to support in our spare time. I plan to bring this up to our union, actually. If you’re going to put so much on school staff, we need more professionals in the building always to make up for the lack of help everywhere else in our society.

Anyway, back to the tweet! I love this reply—

I’m always rooting for a general strike. It’s called a union for a reason, it’s called getting organized for a reason. Those who support the status quo will always try to divide those who call for it to change.

[greetings-inferiors]

You mentioned KH asks?

What’s your hot take on something KH related?

My hottest kingdom hearts take is probably that kh3 is better than kh2 in nearly every way. Both of them are incredible games and in my top 3 (with the original too), but to me I think kh3 is much better.

To me the only things that kh2 even has a chance at beating kh3 at are the combat (which is fucking excellent) and the story (but it has some caveats I’ll get to)

First, the combat: it’s flawless, I won’t even lie. My only complaints are that in critical the early game is wayyyy more difficult than the rest of the game. Yes I know that I’m complaining about the hardest difficulty being too difficult, but what I mean is that before you get enough options and get going Sora’s kind of a sitting duck to every enemy except literal shadows. Every single thing one shots or two shots him, and enemies are difficult because you don’t have to proper abilities to crowd control or do single target damage yet. But once you get going then the combat is excellent. The other problem is that it doesn’t explain summons, and to a lesser extent limits, very well. I think almost every casual player has this same problem, being they hardly use limits and summons and mainly only use drive forms, which are much more intuitive. Once you know how to use them they’re insane, but still.

Kh3, however, ALSO has excellent combat. It basically does all that kh2 does well, with drive forms being replaced by formchanges (which while maybe not as fun are definitely more balanced, they’re still really fun though), summons being replaced by links (which I personally prefer, apart from like Ralph they seem more intuitive), and the long combos are back. The only problem I have is that kh3 doesn’t have as many reaction commands. They’re still there, but they’re fewer and far between compared to kh2 where most enemies and practically every single boss had a reaction command, with most of them being unique.

So if kh3 does better the one thing that kh2 unquestionably does perfectly (which is my opinion, apparently Sora feels too “floaty” in kh3 and honestly I don’t even know what that means he feels great to control to me, my favourite combos in kh2 were the ones were sora takes an enemy to the skies, I enjoyed grinding mushroom no.8), how does the other boon of kh2, the story, fare?

Well let me just say that the beginning, middle, and end are ALL incredible. The Roxas prologue might be the best opening to any game ever, the battle of a thousand heartless will never stop being awesome, and the ending is just *chef’s kiss*. But a story has more to it, you can’t have a banger opening then go missing for ten to twenty hours then come back then go missing again for another ten hours. You have to be there throughout. I’m obviously referring to the Disney worlds. They’re honestly chain of memories in terms of story, they’re just lucky that they have incredible combat to back it up. Kh2 started the trend of “just do the movie with sora Donald and goofy in the background” and it’s particularly heinous. Either the original or revisit is just the movie’s plot, and the one I enjoyed more is ALWAYS the one which tells a new story. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but 99% of the time a unique scenario is better.

To use kh3 as an example, we have two worlds whose stories are just “movie but with sdg”, and that’s arendelle and kingdom of corona. In arendelle yeah it’s awful but in kingdom of corona the tangled story is actually really fun I think it’s the 1% that get it right imo. And the toy box and monstropolis scenarios are so cool that it’s actually possible to say that they are canon TO THE MOVIES because they work so well. Also, ALL worlds tie into the game’s plot and they ALL tell you how they relate to the themes of the game. And if you think that Arendelle is just frozen but with sdg if you agree with game theory (which I do) there’s evidence that the story was going to be an original one, about Elsa being tempted by the organisation into being a villain, but sdg convince her not to and that her powers don’t make her evil. But Frozen 2 was coming out soon and disney probably just made them do the first movie almost as a promotion. Anyway, kh3 also puts a little bit of story inbetween each Disney world, so even if you didn’t enjoy the Disney world’s story, you get some story as a reward every time you finish one! A lot of people have problems with the story but personally I don’t see it, I think a lot of that either stems from not being familiar with every game so they have no idea what’s happening, or just not being keen on the cheesy dialogue (newsflash it’s always been this cheesy). Personally I love Kh3’s story and feel it’s a great wrap up on the dark seeker saga, and a great Segway into the lost masters arc.

Now, the biggest thing that kh2 does poorly is world design. It’s been said a million times but kh2 is essentially a bunch of flat corridors between fights. Which is all well and good since the game’s combat is so damn good, but compared to kh1 and kh3 it’s honestly quite sad. Kh1 does it the best, it almost feels like a 3D metroidvania, and you can interact with everything, and kh3 is similarly packed with interactions, but on a massive scale. Kh2 is small scale and you can hardly do anything. Chests are just placed around with little thought to hide them in interesting or hard to reach places, and the only reason to EVER use your movement options outside of combat and getting places faster is to collect puzzle pieces, which umm suck sorry not sorry.

Anyway now time for small things - the gummi ship in kh3 is the only time I don’t want to die while playing the gummi ship, the magic feels SO GOOD in kh3 whereas unless you’re in a drive form it just feels clunky and stiff in kh2, the chemistry between Sora Donald and Goofy feels so much better in kh3 than in kh2, switching between three keyblades is the best thing ever honestly it’s so cool and works really well with formchanges, the three arrows building up to give you formchanges or magical finishers or whatever is way better than the drive gauge, shotlocks are really cool and really fun to use (my only problem is that focus is really hard to build up), flowmotion is so fun to traverse with and can be used to extend combos, the game is just more charming, aaand that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

Honestly I literally just finished kh2 and haven’t played kh3 in a year or two, but still. I really really like kh2 but I just think that kh3 does everything it does badly well and everything it does well at least good or sometimes even better. My personal ranking of the games is 312, but idk it’s so close between all of them. I probably had more fun with kh2, but 1 and 3 was more fun at all times, y’know?