#that’s not to say these roles can’t be interchangeable that’s just what I usually see most of the time

[roseofcards90]

I truly love your turn to die because it really shows the experience of older siblings having guilt because they fucked up and younger siblings feeling guilt at the fact that their older siblings have guilt to begin with

[aradiamaxxing]

Admins

copied these posts from a 4chan thread where I detailed my extensive thoughts on the middle management of pokemon’s various evil teams. thought people here would enjoy it.

The Galactic Commanders are, in my opinion, the gold standard for evil admins. They've got it all: immediately striking and memorable designs, strong personalities, memorable fights, even a unique battle theme. They also further the separation between Cyrus and the rest of Team Galactic. Cyrus wants to eliminate spirit, but the Commanders are all very lively and emotional. Saturn even says he disagrees with Cyrus and was just along for the ride. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are all a joy to behold and it's a shame BDSP didn't give them a touch-up the way HGSS and ORAS did for their respective admins. And Charon's there. I guess. Kind of odd to add a character who does practically nothing until the postgame and is marginally less interesting than the team's previous leader. 

Speaking of HGSS, the Rocket Executives had the biggest upgrade between versions. In GSC these guys didn't even have names! And I think they did a fine job of slotting their new characters into the available roles. They're different but all very distinctly Rocket-esque, be it Proton's ruthlessness and aggression or Petrel's "nice guy" attitude that reflects all the goofy and self-sabotaging antics of Grunts. The only real stinker here is Archer, who battles you once with a lackluster team and then never appears again. Also, the story of HGSS is pretty uninvolved in general, which kneecaps their screentime. It's a shame, but the Executives are at their most memorable when Gamefreak puts them in Kanto remakes. 

A lot of people don't like the ORAS versions of Team Magma and Aqua, and I honestly don't understand why. The teams from the original RSE were nothing. They were non-characters. The admins specifically were interchangeable between the two versions. Between the two revamped teams, I prefer Magma. Of course, I prefer Magma in any case, but something about them just seems to fit the story of ORAS more. Maybe it's because Omega Ruby was my version of choice but I find Courtney threatening to blow up a rocket and "complete project AZOTH" more believable than Matt doing the same. Probably because they were cribbing the event in Emerald where Team Magma raids the space center, and also because Courtney is autistic. I will give the originals one thing: the designs of the admins not named Matt was a lot better. Come to think of it, I'm not fond of Matt's new design either. I think it's the awkward battle art showing him from a lower angle than the grunts. Also, does this fucker have a beard in Gen 3 or not? I genuinely can't tell. I've rambled for a paragraph about two of the four admins so I may as well keep going. I like new Tabitha. He's got little touches that let you know what kind of work he does and what kind of organization Team Magma is. He's a pencil-pusher in a gang far more organized and professional than Team Aqua, which fits the respective personalities of the leaders. Gen 3 Magma was a gang of thugs with a cause, and they didn't have Aqua's excuse of being pirates so the whole deal was a little weak. It also makes sense that the group who wants to further humanity's devlopment run themselves like a company. And, uh, Shelly. Like I said, I never played Alpha Sapphire so I can't comment on how she was executed. At times I wish I had, though. You see, I like the color blue. And Alpha Sapphire has a lot more blue in it than Omega Ruby, for obvious reasons. I liked her in the Generations short, but that’s about all I can say.

The only thing sadder than how little Rood, Zinzolin, Gorm, Bronius, Giallo, and Ryoku do during BW, is how I can remember all of their names without looking it up. I don't know if anyone else noticed this, but Team Plasma has a glut of characters who don't do anything. And it's more noticeable than usual because BW was very good about giving its characters time to shine outside of their usual roles. I can somewhat understand why they added all of this stuff in. Team Plasma's not so much an evil team in BW as they are a proper social movement. You could even call them a secret society. I can excuse the sages for that, and I can excuse them not battling because they're supposed to be the thinkers and philosophers of the group. The ones who exemplify Plasma's ideals. They're vastly underused, but they make sense. What I can not excuse are the Shadow Triad. They do NOTHING throughout BW. They show up in cutscenes, say some words, and then disappear. They shouldn't have even been in the game. The most impact the triad have on the plot is whisking you across a bridge you were gonna cross anyway. BW2 Tightens up the ranks of Team Plasma significantly, cutting all but Rood and Zinzolin and giving the Shadow Triad something to do. But even they couldn't save Anthea and Concordia, names I also remember without looking them up. Man, what do I even say about these two. They exist. That's about it. I would've cut the triad from BW and given their scenes to these two, because god knows they need it. Team Plasma has the same problem as the Rocket Executives: too many characters fighting for too little screentime. Except unlike the Executives, who were split somewhat evenly, it's always N and Ghetsis who win the battles for relevance.

Team Flare's Scientists are the last ones I can be assed to talk about. They suck. I can't remember their names, except I know the blue on is Mable because that struck me as a relatively normal name compared to the others. Also two of them are Celosia and Bryony., but I couldn't tell you who. Then there's Xerosic, who suffers from Archer syndrome but at least has a somewhat interesting ace in Malamar. The others don't even have that. He's also got a postgame quest, but I played that one time 6 years ago and I'm not doing it again. Not helping, of course, is that you don't start seeing them until halfway through the game. You won't see any of them until both of your starters and likely the rest of your team is fully evolved, because XY's pacing and level curve is fucked. And its distribution. I've had my full team assembled before the 4th gym one time. I don't believe any of the broads have ever done science. But at least their music's cool.

[power-chords]

THE SCRIPTED LAUREN&VINCENT HOTEL BATHROOM SCENE!!!!! ooooh boy now that was fucked up i SO wish it had been in the movie because it was CRUNCHY. Gave such a different flavor to Lauren and Vincent. I don't usually wish canon was darker because i like Vincent to have a chance but that scene I would have welcomed it, felt like I was reading the Leon script lol. Do you have any thoughts on that version/its relation to the bus stop lauren&vincent scene?... (also, the thought of Vincent missusing Lauren's prescription... HORRIBLE! I LOVE IT!)

It’s so good! Freudian, Hitchcockian, Faulknerian, and most of all… Hemingway-ian? Hemingway-ish? Whatever — in the sense that the scene is so potently symbolically reflective of Vincent’s anxiety and ambivalence: about his work, about his family, about being a war veteran, who he really is and what he really wants, the deeply repressed but inextinguishable suspicions about his own authentic desire and expression as an American Working Man. The way that social constructions of gender — their expectations, the performances they demand — heighten that anxiety and ambivalence at every point of intersection. Masculinity is a prison, but femininity is an existential threat. To be like a woman is to be vulnerable, to desire true intimacy and connection even when it is not available (ask Vincent how he knows!), to experience the most brutal emotional losses, and worst of all to be mortally victimized. Who are the women in Heat? Every single one of them that appears on screen, what do they do, what do they want, what eventually happens to them? What does Vincent see happening to them?

So every time Lauren appears on screen, or Justine for that matter, the nature of Vincent’s insecurity as a husband and stepfather — in these prescribed relations of Man to Woman — is being dredged up from the murky, fetid swamp of his traumatized subconscious and probed at on a slab under a lamp. He does NOT like this. In fact he dislikes it so much that he will do just about anything to avoid it, even when the circumstances make it actually unavoidable. If he can’t physically get the hell out of dodge (he does this a lot), he either tunes out, shuts down, or explodes.

Lauren, especially, he looks at but does not really see, because she throws a spotlight on the most uncomfortable axes of comparison and consequence: that he is every bit as absent as the actual absent father, that he nevertheless bears identical obligations as a father figure (which he is likewise failing to meet), that he is a flawed facsimile who will never measure up to the literally invisible offscreen abstract Concept of Father [KILL BILL SIRENS], that Lauren in her self-destructive emotionality and escapist withdrawal is aligning herself with Vincent, is choosing him during these episodes of feminine hysteria, is circling the periphery of something that terrifies him so deeply he straight up just refuses to look. In the original draft of the script, he is completely oblivious to Lauren breaking into his hotel and into the shower, which is pretty hard to believe for a guy as sharp and attentive as Vincent. (NB: even though Vincent has exiled himself to a hotel, home invasions are a Big Deal and VERY BAD in Mann’s symbolic lexicon, so that suggestive similarity on its own should raise your hackles.) In the final cut of the film, he strolls right past a cracked-open bathroom door and a soaked patch of carpet, like he’s blind to it. Like it’s not even there!

A bus station, a hotel bathroom, these are both physical representations of transience and interchangeability, of being untethered from a secure domestic role. A place, like the quintessentially postmodern city of Los Angeles, that is also a non-place, almost dreamlike, hyper-real and not-really-real. What is this saying about the embodiment of gender roles? What is authenticity and what is escapism? If we were committed enough to our escapist defenses, how would we know the difference?

Mann’s protagonists are all lost, alienated, running out of time, chasing after something, never finding it. They claim to know who they are, what they’re lacking, and what they’re searching for. But the instant some ambiguity presents itself — an alternative to accepted truths, different ways of seeing and thinking, a challenge to more comfortable binaries — they freak the fuck out. And I think when Mann rewrote the climactic scene in the hotel bathroom, he was having Lauren pose that challenge in a different way, with slightly altered and more harmonious subtext (given the ending of the film). I’m glad it’s what he went with. But the original version is fascinating to me and says so much about where his head was at.

TBC re: those few pages in the book with the phone call between Vincent and Lauren, because I reread them earlier, closely, and I went UH OH

[mariacallous]

The Guardian's This Week in Patriarchy from Arwa Mahdawi

What are God’s preferred pronouns?

The woke agenda spares no one, not even God. The revelation that the Church of England is considering gender-neutral ways to refer to God has caused quite a ruckus this week; very predictably all the usual suspects have been foaming at the mouth about wokeness gone mad. Nigel Farage (AKA Mr Brexit), for example, even suggested that you might as well shut down the Church of England if they’re going to go all trendy and politically correct.

Steady on, Nigel! God isn’t coming out as non-binary anytime soon. The Church of England is considering moving away from referring to God as “He”. What does that mean? It means they’re going to launch a commission investigating the matter and, if they did decide to make changes, those changes would have to be approved by synod, the Church’s decision-making body. Maybe, once all that’s done, they might develop “more inclusive language” but, as of yet, there are no specifics as to what that language might be. Not all that sensational when you dive into the details, is it? But people like Farage don’t tend to be too fond of details.

While the idea that God might stop being described as “He” has generated a lot of headlines there’s plenty of precedent for gender-neutral religious language. “As truly as God is our Father, so just as truly is He our Mother,” Julian of Norwich said in the 14th century. As a spokesperson for the Church of England said: “This is nothing new. Christians have recognized since ancient times that God is neither male nor female, yet the variety of ways of addressing and describing God found in scripture has not always been reflected in our worship.”

As an atheist I don’t have particularly strong opinions about God’s preferred pronouns. However, I do have strong opinions about how language shapes the way we see our world. And the conversation that the Church of England has sparked reveals a lot about how gendered language reinforces stereotypes. “Given that people of faith think of God as another way of talking about ultimate reality, the gendered nature of God language could easily be a way of projecting male superiority in the very nature of things,” Giles Fraser muses in UnHerd. Yah think?

You can see that superiority complex in comments by the Rev Dr Ian Paul, who thinks God should remain a He. “The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralized to ‘Parent’ without loss of meaning,” Paul told the Telegraph. “Fathers and mothers are not interchangeable but relate to their offspring in different ways.”

There’s a lot to be unpicked in that last sentence. Do mums and dads really relate to their kids in different ways? It’s hard to say definitively because there isn’t actually a lot of research on non-maternal caregivers. Until the 1970s hardly anyone even bothered to study the role of fathers in children’s development – it was just assumed that dads made the money, and mums did the nurturing. Emerging evidence, however, suggests that parenting roles are flexible. When dads are the primary caregivers, their brains adjust and show similar patterns to those seen in mothers, one study shows. Fathers and mothers are a lot more interchangeable than some people might think. And yet Paul seems to be suggesting that God could simply never be a “mother”. Why is that, I wonder?

Anyway, I think there’s an easy way to settle this thing. God can tell us about Their pronouns themselves. I hear They are quite powerful after all.

Idaho wants to criminalize ‘trafficking of minors’ to receive abortions

Consider this scenario: your 17-year-old niece desperately wants you to drive her out of Idaho (where abortion is banned) to get a legal abortion. She doesn’t want her extremely anti-abortion parents to know. If you help your niece then some lawmakers want to throw you in jail and call you a human trafficker. A new bill, introduced by Republican Barbara Ehardt, would add the act of transporting, recruiting or harboring minors to seek an abortion to Idaho’s criminal human trafficking law. Just another day in the increasingly dystopian US!

Rightwing media are freaking out about new AP Stylebook guidance on abortion

The Associated Press suggests not using the incendiary and pseudoscience-drenched terms the right has invented (eg “partial-birth abortion”) and the right are very annoyed indeed.

The unacceptable look on Madonna’s face

If you’re going to read one thing about the furore around Madonna’s new look (and about 10m things have been published) then make it this Washington Post piece by Monica Hesse. “Madonna’s face forced her uneasy audience to think about the factors and decisions behind it: ageism, sexism, self-doubt, beauty myths, cultural relevance, hopeful reinvention, work, work, work, work … One of the most famous women on the planet and still the anti-aging industrial complex got under her skin.”

Is computer-generated intimacy the future of film?

In Netflix romcom You People the two leads smooch at the end but it turns out that smooch is computer-generated. “Is the future of intimacy in Hollywood going to be deepfaked sex scenes?” Stuart Heritage asks in the Guardian. “Will actors need to seek out specific contractual clauses promising them that they won’t be turned into a horny avatar in post production?”

Toxic masculinity fuels dangerous driving like drink, French advert says

In France, 78% of those killed in road accidents in 2022 were men – a number that goes up to 88% when you look at drivers aged 18–24. Eighty-four per cent of people suspected of causing road accidents were men; 93% of drunk drivers involved in an accident were men. A new ad campaign warns that macho stereotypes may be to blame and asks men to examine how they drive.

The week in Pete-riarchy

Turns out Pete Davidson isn’t just a stellar rebound boyfriend, he’s also a talented taco salesman. The comedian recently starred in an ad for Taco Bell and, in a recent call with investors and analysts, the fast-food chain credited Davidson for helping their breakfast sales jump by 9%. Pete: if you’d like to help me sell my book, you know where to find me!

[asablehart]

So, about short stories...

This year, it was my goal to become a SFWA qualifying author by focusing on publishing my short fiction. I wrote about 20k words of short stories over winter break '21, and I spent the rest of the new year editing and submitting those stories. Since then, I’ve sent over 100 submissions, and I’ve received 77 rejections and 7 acceptances. Of those acceptances, 4 are in SFWA professional magazines (at least, before they changed their qualifying guidelines) and 1 is in an HWA professional magazine.

Needless to say, short story publication occupies a FAR GREATER portion of my brain than it has any right to. Below are some rambling thoughts I have about the process behind short story publication.

This introduction is intended to bring you to the dark side (a.k.a. you, yes, you, should be writing short fiction)

The process of submitting short stories is SO EASY, especially when compared to novels. Your cover letter will probably be less than 4 sentences. You just attach your short story to an email or form and press “submit,” and then you just wait. Having to query a publication or pitch a story before submitting are both very rare occurrences, and typically reserved for longer stories, like novellas. I’m serious. Sending something to a mag takes like 30 seconds. I use the same cover letter for everything. It’s stupid how simple this is. Read this formatting guide and you’ve got all the information you need to send a story to like a dozen markets.

Also note that I’m going to refer to short story markets as mags, lit mags, journals, etc, interchangeably, so don’t get confused. Most short story markets, from magazines to anthologies, function in extremely similar ways, at least when it comes to the author's role.

--

Please start submitting, but…. not to be a bummer, but it’s a numbers game, and most of those numbers are going to be rejections.

Acceptance rates are low. According to the Submission Grinder, many magazines have acceptance rates lower than 2% (note that I’m usually referring to professional and semi-professional spec fic magazines, since that’s what I submit to.) This statistic is probably artificially increased because the Submission Grinder’s user base is a self-selecting group of authors who care enough about magazine submissions to use a third-party website to track them (a.k.a. the actual acceptance rates are probably even lower than they appear).

So when you see rejections that say “We can’t wait to see more of your work” or you see editors on social media say “We reject good stories every single day,” these aren’t empty platitudes. Magazines recent hundreds of submissions during open calls and are operating on razor-thin budgets (it’s actually very likely that the magazine you’re submitting to doesn’t even turn a profit).

What should you take from this? Submit often, and to as many markets as you can. Don’t bet on a piece getting accepted at one particular magazine. If you’re writing for a specific themed call, have a back-up plan (but probably delay sending that piece to a bunch of new magazines after a rejection; everyone else rejected from the same themed submission call is likely doing the same exact thing, at the same exact magazines).

Anyway, the best way to cope with a rejection is sending out a new submission.

Also, use Submission Grinder to track your subs. I’m in love with this website.

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Should you take simultaneous submission guidelines seriously?

A simultaneous submission is when you send the same story to multiple magazines. Some magazines will tell you that they don’t allow for simultaneous magazines. Some will tell you that it’s totally OK as long as you disclose what you’re doing (in your cover letter) and promptly withdraw your submission from them if it’s accepted elsewhere. The editor of a magazine who bans simultaneous submissions is trying to avoid a specific situation: they’ve devoted a significant amount of time to a story they’re considering for publication, only for them to learn that it has already been purchased by another magazine right before they were going to send the author an acceptance letter.

How often does that specific situation happen? Very rarely. Like I said, acceptance rates are extremely low. The odds that you’ll get two acceptances on the same piece at the same time are just astronomical. Additionally, most magazines will take at least a month to get back to you, but probably significantly longer. It could take you longer than a year to get a piece published if you only submit to one magazine every 1 - 3 months. For some context: out of all my published pieces this year, only one was accepted by the first place I sent it to. The others have between 3 - 6 rejections each. Some of the pieces that I haven’t managed to sell yet have 10+ rejections. Some of these magazines held onto my stories for 100+ days.

In my opinion, it’s a real disservice to authors for a magazine to demand No Simultaneous Submissions while also taking months, and months, and months to respond with rejections. It’s disrespectful. It’s treating you like your time isn’t important. My favorite creative writing professor hated that magazines banned sim subs, and often encouraged us to treat these guidelines with a grain of salt if we decided to start submitting.

So should you listen to a magazine when they say No Sim Subs? It really comes down to your comfort level and how patient you are. You may also need to consider how easy it is to withdraw a piece, because some submission forms make it more difficult than others (looking at you, CWSUBMISSIONS). 

Ultimately, you never have to disclose why you’ve withdrawn a piece from a magazine, and authors CAN and DO withdraw pieces for a variety of reasons.

But if you decide to break writer law and the writer police come to get you, don’t be a snitch, thanks. I said nothing.

--

Lit mag twitter is surprisingly useful

Magazines announce future submission calls, their reading period schedules, and themed issues on twitter usually far in advance. You won’t get this information unless you’re checking their individual websites regularly (which would be a waste of time). I wouldn’t be prepared for half of these open calls if I didn’t have a twitter account. And unlike novel publishing twitter, you don't have to post or interact with anyone to reap these benefits.

--

Most speculative fiction magazines are publishing literary fantasy, scifi, and horror.

There are sometimes very clear divisions between literary fiction and genre fiction, but you won’t find that line with pro/semi-pro speculative fiction magazines. In my experience, literary speculative fiction far outnumbers pure genre fiction (however you want to define that). Short stories also tend to be more experimental, in terms of both content and story structure.

Why can short stories afford to take these risks? I think there’s a few reasons for this. The first is that many magazines survive off of yearly crowdfunding campaigns and independent investors/sponsors, not individual sales. So much of their money comes in advance in this lump sum from future subscribers, so they don’t have to cater to market trends like novels do. Additionally, subscribers generally don’t buy magazines because there’s one story in the magazine that they enjoy—odds are, they enjoy the editorial voice of the magazine. They trust the editor(s) to curate a cohesive collection of stories, which means the magazine doesn’t have to depend on a viral, popular story to boost their sales. 

This all comes to a head during award season (the Hugos, Nebulas, the Bram Stoker award, etc). Look, I’ve never edited a magazine, but the way magazine editors are constantly promoting during award season… you know it’s important to them. They’re probably looking for stuff to nominate all year, which means they’re chasing literary fiction, stuff that really resonates with people on a deep personal level. And you’ll see short stories on the ballot by authors you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re really up-to-date with lit mags. In my opinion, this leads to a diversity of fiction that’s very hard to find elsewhere. 

I also think this means you can and should just write whatever the fuck you want without worrying about marketability, which is a really freeing feeling. Seriously, lit mags publish some WEIRD shit.

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Lots of people (including editors) will tell you to read a magazine to get a sense of whether or not your story will be a good fit—I think this is bad advice.

Don’t get me wrong, I think you should read short fiction if you want to write short fiction. I also think that if you dislike the content that a magazine publishes, you probably won’t be able to sell them a piece. And that you can improve your craft by finding a publication (or two, or three) that consistently publish works that you enjoy so you can analyze their structure and incorporate what you’ve learned into your own stories. Additionally, if a magazine’s content really resonates with you, and you consume it regularly, it’s probably because your writing style is similar to their editorial style—this may be a sign that they’ll enjoy your work. That’s something that happens organically, in my opinion, not something that can be forced.

But like I said in my first point, the key to success here is to send out a LOT of submissions. I’ve submitted to over 40 different markets this year. I’ve read stories from maybe 10 of those markets (usually when it was offered for free on their websites). I don’t have the time OR THE MONEY to breeze through issues from that many magazines, and I’m not going to stop myself from submitting somewhere just because I haven’t read what they publish. In fact, I think it’s really unfair for editors to place this onus on the writer, especially if their magazine doesn’t have free content available and especially if their submission guidelines are otherwise vague AF—PLEASE, PLEASE, editors, just tell us what kind of writing you enjoy in the guidelines.

The fact of the matter is, even if you read a magazine and write something specifically for them, odds are you’re going to get rejected anyway. I’m not trying to be a bummer here, that’s really just the statistics. It’s really a fundamental misunderstanding to assume that authors regularly write entire short stories with one specific market in mind, and that they’ll forgo sending that story to other markets because it was only intended for Clarkesworld or F&SF. 

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Personal rejections are nice, but don’t think too hard about them. Alternatively, writing is so much more subjective than you think.

Rejections come in tiers, but they can be summed up as form rejections and personal rejections. Form rejections always look the same, and they are generally (but not always) sent to stories that weren’t really considered that strongly for publication--in fact, many magazines utilize first readers, who are volunteers who read the first few pages of submissions and make a quick judgement call about whether or not to send that story to the editor for second-round consideration. Form rejections often come from first readers. (Of course, this is not always true. Some magazines don't use first readers at all. Some magazines use first readers, but still refer every story to the editor anyway and promise submitting authors that the full text of all submissions are read before a decision is made.)

Personal rejections include specific references to your story, often explaining why the editors decided to reject it. This might be phrased as constructive criticism or simply as observations. Some magazines make it their goal to ONLY send personal rejections, but those are the minority. Typically, personal rejections come after higher tier consideration, and usually take longer to receive than a form rejection.

The thing is that writing is subjective. It’s tempting to think that editors, who are often the arbiters of publication, can objectively separate good stories from bad. The logical conclusion, if you think this way, is that they’ll give you objectively sound advice to revise your piece before you submit to another magazine.

But this isn’t really true. A personalized rejection is giving you good advice—if it were possible to resubmit the same piece to the same editor for the same magazine (and unfortunately, you usually only get one shot). The same advice might not help you sell your piece to a different magazine. In fact, it’s very likely that aspects of your story that one editor disliked will be the same things that make a new editor fall in love with it. I experienced this while submitting my sci-fi/horror story “Rider Within,” which was rejected from PseudoPod because of the amount of exposition in the first few pages. This same piece was accepted by Dark Matter Magazine without any edits after the PseudoPod rejection. The key difference here is that PseudoPod is an audio magazine; every magazine from PseudoPod’s publisher boasts the same line in their submission guidelines, “Our readers can’t skim past the boring parts.” Podcasts have a much smaller margin for too much exposition, and that magazine needs to be picky about that sort of thing to keep their readership. A print/ebook magazine will have different standards.

Really, almost all of my rejections/acceptances can be used as an example for subjectivity in editorial taste. My story “In the Nest Beneath the Mountain-Tree, Your Sisters Dance” sat in Clarkesworld’s second hold pile for a MONTH, which is insane and probably something that will never happen to me again. This same story was rejected by a much smaller magazine (probably by a first reader) after like 3 days of consideration. The story didn’t just suddenly decrease in quality, it’s just that the editor of one of the most selective scifi magazines out there liked it enough to consider it for publication, and a different editor really didn’t enjoy it at al.

Back to the point, there’s still reasonable situations where you may want to make edits after a personal rejection. If you read critical feedback that really resonates with you or if you get feedback that points out parts of the story that you were already iffy about, then by all means, make those edits! You might also want to do some editing if multiple rejections point out the same things.

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Read the submission guidelines, but don’t self-reject.

“Self-rejecting” is when you look at a magazine and tell yourself “my story won’t work here,” or “I don’t fit the submission call,” or “I’m not good enough to be published here.” And not all self-rejection is unwarranted. There’s going to be times where you read the fine print and realize that you’re not the right fit. Submission guidelines are written for a reason, and while the worst thing an editor can say is “no,” it does help if you don’t waste their time (or yours).

That being said, you can really take some submission guidelines with a grain of salt. When it comes to themed calls, there’s a huge variety between magazines who want their theme followed very literally and magazines who consider the theme more of a vague prompt to inspire new ideas—and it can be really hard to tell them apart, so honestly? Just go for it.

And unless a magazine is very clear about “hard no’s” (such as asking you not to submit stories with gore or other triggering content), it’s more accurate to interpret “we don’t like publishing these topics” as “we don’t like the cliches associated with these topics, which makes them a hard sell.” Some magazines will clearly separate their anti-wishlists into Hard No’s versus You Really Need To Impress Us With This Content, but more often, you’ll have to read between the lines. I’ve found that lists of hard sells often include stuff like vampires, zombies, and werewolves, because editors have seen a thousand stories about the same magical creatures, and they’re trying to encourage more diversity in the submissions they receive.

My first publication this year was “Emmory and the Wolf” in LampLight Magazine, and it’s a case where avoiding self-rejection really paid off. LampLight was holding a special call for authors without a pro-sale, and I wanted to get a story in right before the deadline. It was a last minute decision on my part, and I have to admit that I skimmed the guidelines. I’d submitted to LampLight before, and I could vaguely remember that they specifically asked for no werewolf stories, but I didn’t see it in the guidelines this time. A day after I sent that submission, I looked at the guidelines there, and the “no werewolves” rule was there, staring me in the face. I was mortified, and I really debated withdrawing my submission, but ultimately I decided that I would just assume it was a rejection and try to forget that it was sitting there in the Submittable queue. So, of course, imagine my surprise when that story was accepted.

I think a lot of factors went into this acceptance: “Emmory and the Wolf” subverts typical werewolf tropes and rarely features the werewolf (in wolf form) on screen. In fact, almost all of the story is a conversation between a woman and her wife on a road trip. Additionally, I later learned that the editor of LampLight held this special submission call because these two issues of LampLight would be the very last before the magazine closed. If he published werewolf content in an earlier issue, that would have encouraged more people to submit werewolf stories. But that clearly wasn’t a concern here. All of these factors (skimming the guidelines, catching LampLight when it was about to close) are coincidences that I couldn’t have anticipated when I was submitting.

Honestly? I think you should usually err towards submitting over not-submitting, because like I said, the worst you can get is a rejection.

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Okay, that's honestly it for my short story thoughts. I hope this is helpful, informative, or just kinda interesting to someone ^^ Even if it isn't, I'm glad I got it out of my head.

[mysteriesofloves]

I’m always sad about the things we missed with dair on gg, specifically her dressing up for him (aside from her one failed attempt) and how different it would’ve functioned in their relationship. like role play and dress up between her and ch*ck never felt sexy to me (because ch*ck is an ugly troll who nauseates me) but rather a way, in addition to many others, that blair used to keep ch*ck happy. And they mostly felt like a display or tableau for him to enjoy (🤢).

On the other hand, and I’ve said this before, blair’s desire to dress up for dan did and would’ve continued to feel joyous and an acknowledgement of her own desire as well as her partner’s.

*in general I get angsty when I think of all of blair’s great styling choices that were wasted on ch*ck.

yeah i know what you mean and i think if they’d been given more time we might’ve gotten that but the writers were never invested in them being endgame so we missed out on a lot :/ but honestly i love the little bit we got with blair revealing herself in the getup in 5x18 like it’s such a contrast from her and chuck because it doesn’t feel like she’s For his consumption. (another reason the short lived blair/carter thing was fun it was nice to see a rich, manipulative guy be blair’s plaything pretty much just for her fun.)

it really does feel like things she does to keep him interested but also i can’t remember at all a single time she dresses up for him that he actually responds… like he either doesn’t show up or he brushes her off or holds out on her or something it’s so one sided but she keeps doing it again and again it’s so sad.

and it does always feel like she’s something for him to enjoy/consume/posses. she’s positioned as another one of the beautiful, expensive things that he owns, that belong to him, that he controls, just like his hotel, his company. she’s not even interchangeable with them to him though, she’s actually less important. she’s not even his favourite, his prized possession. it doesn’t just go for lingerie she wears either but any look. and i think what ultimately makes it worse is that it’s what the writers intended. any time a scene is about blair they view it as somehow actually being about chuck, even when it doesn’t make sense to.

like, that dress i pointed out, which is gorgeous (i went on a hunt for it last time i did a full rewatch) and she looks insanely hot in it, is still interesting when viewed characteristically because it’s a lot less modest than what she usually wears. while it’s a proper dress it’s actually closer in style to the slips she strips down to in 1x07 and 4x09. blair’s style is for the most part always modest/posh/classically romantic. the most she reveals is usually a low back. so i think it’s telling that she chooses to wear that style when she’s set up a dinner for him. those two moments, when she drops her dress and walks off in just a slip, are meant to show the “real” and “true” blair that only chuck can bring out which just. makes me so angry lol. what an incredibly reductive way to view female sexuality.

but again, even the little bit we got shows how comfortable blair was with dan and how she knew he would appreciate it. she reveals this look similarly to how she reveals the prior slips: taking off the modest cover up to reveal something sexy underneath. but this time it’s with someone who respects her, respects her body, and loves every part of her—not just the “bad girl”, “dark” blair. it’s almost like…it was a satisfying end to her arc.

literally so many incredible styling choices that could’ve plainly been gorgeous but are in a 🪑 storyline so they have to have the contextual layer of all that grossness :)))) say it with me: and! for! what!

[alexkablob]

Okay, so, usually I’m talking about Marrow, because Marrow was designed in a laboratory to be everything that I, specifically, love in a character, but right now I’m gonna talk about Harriet, who I also love.

I’ve thought for a while now that Harriet...doth protest too much. You don’t reach the level of bitterness she’s expressed towards Ruby, Penny, or the rest of the kids, if you aren’t compensating for the fact that you did actually like them and are now feeling betrayed. You just don’t. And Ren confirmed that she’s overcompensating, that she doesn’t actually believe a word she’s saying and is desperately trying to convince herself that she’s fine, but it was an offhand line of Harriet’s that unlocked the key to her entire character.

Like Marrow replaced Tortuga.

That one line tells us so much.

Because right now, like Ren calls out, she’s grieving for Clover and trying to pretend she isn’t, because this is Atlas and they aren’t allowed to process their feelings. Clover’s dead, Winter’s replaced him—(even though Winter must be younger than anyone else here but Marrow, she’s less experienced, she doesn’t know what she’s doing, Ironwood only shoved her into the role because he trusts her more and that must sting, and is it any wonder Schnee’s the one that gets the favoritism)—and it’s fine.

Just like it’s fine that Marrow replaced Tortuga.

Tortuga, Harriet. Tortoise to her Hare. From the context of her mourning Clover? Tortuga meant something to her. They were her partner, she cared about them, and...they died. They were killed. Odds are very high that Harriet watched it happen. Odds are very high that she blames herself on some level.

And then she was told no, you can’t mourn them, you’re not supposed to care about them, you have to move on and replace them immediately.

It’s not an accident she said this to two members of Team JNPR. Imagine if, the day after Pyrrha’s death, Oscar had suddenly been slotted in her place and Jaune was told he’s your partner now, because Pyrrha was ultimately interchangeable with anyone else. Because that’s what happened to Hare.  From the moment we met her, Harriet Bree has been a woman drowning in grief that she isn’t allowed to process, and so...she pushes people away, she’s snippy, she’s abrasive, she does exactly what Ren has been doing since Volume 7.

Is it any wonder she’s always on Marrow’s ass so much? He never had a chance with her. It really doesn’t help that he is the rookie of the team, that he’s less experienced than Tortuga would have been, that he’s desperate to prove himself and feel included and doesn’t feel at all safe in expressing discomfort with anything that the others do, because he’s constantly aware of how quickly he could lose everything he’s worked for.

He could never be good enough, and that’s not his fault, because the well was poisoned from the start.

Harriet refuses to let herself get attached to Marrow because she’s already been burned and then forced to walk on the open wound, and she’s hypercritical of him because he’s a constant, walking reminder of what she sees as her past failures. And while he sure isn’t appreciative of it, and sure as hell doesn’t owe it to her to be understanding, the true fault lies in the system that forced them to work together in the first place.

[realcube]

trying to be nice to their crush hcs

navi | masterlist | taglist

thank you to 🍦anon for this cute request!

characters: tsukishima, kyōtani, sakusa & suna

content warning: swearing & sexual references 

kei tsukishima 

♡ this is all yamaguchi’s fault （︶^︶）

♡ he found out tsukki had a crush on you bc he mentioned you a lot in conversation so yamaguchi interrogated him for answers then lo and behold, the beanpole had a lil thing for you 

♡ you sit in front of tsukishima in homeroom while yamaguchi sits beside him so when you leaned back and asked him if you could borrow a pencil and he spat back a snarky remark about you being too irresponsible to care for your own pencils, yamaguchi hastily offered you one of his own before scolding tsukishima 

♡ he explained to his clueless friend that being nasty to people isn’t a good way to get them to like you 

♡ so perhaps he should be nicer :)

♡ honestly, tsukishima would’ve just looked yamaguchi straight in the eyes and went ‘no’, if it wasn’t for the fact you shot tadashi the sweetest smile anD PLAYFULLY BLEW HIM A KISS AFTER HE JUST GAVE YOU A DAMN PENCIL LIKE WTF 

♡ after that, he decided to give up his current personality and pick up a new one 

♡ jk jk 

♡ but he had to binge a whole bunch of those youtube psychology videos that are like ‘psychological tricks to make people like you’ and ‘THESE 5 MIND TRICKS WILL MAKE YOU THE MOST POPULAR PERSON *EVER*’!!

♡ spoiler alert: he wasn’t the most popular person but perhaps that was bc he only went to the effort of using those tricks on you 

♡ god bless him; he tries hard, he really does. (not his best, just hard)

♡ but you don’t have to be extremely observant to realise that he’s began acting different around you and of course, it confused you seeing tsukishima being nice

♡ what irritated you was how dismissive he was being of your questions though, as he was clearly trying to lead you to believe that you were crazy and he’s just always been a nice guy 

♡ but as soon as he figures out that he angered you, he’ll instantly switch back to him normal self - draining his mind of the hours of phycology studying he did last night to just pretend like it never happened 

♡ and if he’s feeling flirty, he might be extra mean to you （￣︶￣）

♡ also he makes a mental note to never take yamaguchi’s romance advice ever again 🙄

♥　♡　♥　♡　♥　♡　♥

you sighed, removing your hand from your bag after desperately rummaging through it in search of a pencil once again - deja vu. once you accepted that a pencil wasn’t going to materialise out of thin air, you peered over your shoulder and tapped the corner of yamaguchi’s desk, who wore a suspicious grin which you decided against questioning. 

“yamaguchi, do you think i could borrow a pencil again? sorry, this is the last time, i swear. i’ll be sure to get some on my way home after school tod--” 

yamaguchi dropped the line him and tsukishima had rehearsed many times beforehand, while clutching his pencilcase dear to his chest, “woah, (y/n). you’re so irresponsible. sorry, i can’t lend one of my pristine pencils to someone who is too forgetful to remember to buy some; what if you forget to return it to me?” 

tsukishima cringed at how forced it sounded but he couldn’t help but admire yamaguchi's dedication to his role. this allowed tsukishima to swoop in, pencil in hand, “here.” that wasn’t in the script but he panicked! okay, now, eye contact. 

you just sat there and stared at both of them with the most dumbfounded look plastered on your face. what just happened?  why were they both acting like they were in drama class?  and why are they both so bad at acting? they’re both passing performing arts for fucks’ sake!

kentarō kyōtani 

♡ sorry but i firmly believe kyōtani is the sorta guy to be extra mean to ppl he fancies smh

♡ the rest of them just act (somewhat) like themselves around their crush but kyōtani is himself2 (himself^2)

♡ like one time yahaba found you trembling in your locker bc you had gotten mud on mad dog’s white shoes so he chased you through the hallways of the school, threatening to trek mud on your forehead 

♡ yahaba took it upon himself to investigate as to why kyōtani was so rude to you and he got his answer as soon as he mentioned your name to mad dog and the boy’s face immediately flushed red 

♡ so after practise, yahaba schools mad dog on how to get chicks (⌐■_■)

♡ in short, his advice was ‘good guys get laid’ and for kyōtani’s understanding, ‘good’ and ‘kind’ were interchangeable 

♡ mad dog wasn’t completely oblivious to how he treated you and he was aware that he was far from ‘kind’

♡ although he usually doesn’t listen to people in general, yahaba seemed to know what he was talking about so he figured there was no harm in trying to be nice 

♡ but ngl, he just spent the rest of the day wondering...what is kind?

♡ after a few messages back and forth with yahaba, he figured that the best place to start was by apologising for - y’know - chasing you around the whole school 

♥　♡　♥　♡　♥　♡　♥

“oi!” kyōtani bellowed through hallway, paying no mind to the students that cast him dirty looks as his sights were locked on you. standing unsuspecting by your locker, stuffing your textbooks into your bag until you heard his deep voice echo through the hall, to which you visibly perked up and began frantically looking around.

he marched towards you, hands in pockets and when you noticed him out of the corner of your eye, you were more than ready to drop all your shit and bolt away. but he didn’t let you as before you were able to take off on your heels, he grabbed your shoulder and spun you around to face him - then he noticed your hands raised in defence by your face and your head hung low.

his heart sank and his grip on your shoulder immediately softened, “i’m not gonna punch you, idiot.” he spat, rolling his eyes and gritting his teeth, trying to appear angry in hopes you’d mistake his light blush for pure rage. 

“i just wanted to say that i felt bad for chasing you through the halls yesterday - you didn’t stand a chance so i guess it was a bit unfair.” he said, frowning as you replied with silence so the duty fell on him to fill it, “and i got the stain out, anyway so.” 

more silence. lovely.

suddenly, he puffed his cheeks out as his eyes snapped to meet yours and he roared, “ARE YOU GONNA FUCKING SAY SOMETHING OR ARE YOU TOO BRAINDE-”

“are you wearing eyeliner?” 

and that was the true story behind why you missed last period, because you and kyōtani had a 30 minute conversation about eyeliner and make-up, then he convinced you to skip the rest of class with him so he could buy you ramen as an apology gift.

so yeah, he figured that perhaps he should try being nice more often.

kiyoomi sakusa

♡ he didn’t need someone to tell him to be nicer, he’s just predisposed to attempt to show kindness to someone he is fond of

♡ in his mind, showing kindness, respect and stripping himself of all his personality = the only way to be desirable 

♡ (ofc this takes place before he meets atsumu tho lol)

♡ so it’s not the realisation that’s the problem for him, it’s the execution 

♡ like how is he supposed to be nice without either sounding creepy or condescending? 

♡ *cut to sakusa practising in the bathroom mirror* ‘your hand looks- no-’ he scoffs, flicking cold water onto his face, ‘your hair looks cool- pretty- nice?’

♡ *camera pans to sakusa laying in bed, staring intently at the ceiling while imagining vivid and scarily detailed scenarios about ways he could mess up while talking to you* 

♡ *camera zooms in on sakusa’s face as he manifests a nicer version of himself*

♡ he might - depending on how insecure he is - watch one of those psychology videos or read a wikihow for help

♡ but other than that, he independently tries to alter his personality in order to gain your favour bc..true love ?

♥　♡　♥　♡　♥　♡　♥

you smiled as a basketball rolled up to your feet during gym class, followed by the sound of someone approaching you and upon raising your gaze, your eyes met sakusa’s unmistakable black ones. his face hovered only a few inches away from yours due to the fact you had both reached down to pick up the ball at the same time.

he quickly pulled himself away, tucking the basketball under his elbow as he adjusted his mask so it properly covered his face to ensure that you didn’t see the light blush slowly spreading across his cheeks. he then proceeded to blurt out what he had been rehearsing for the past few nights, “oh, thank you, (y/n). your hair looks lovely today, by the way.”

you giggled, holding your hands firmly by your side to avoid fidgeting and making it obvious that his sudden comment flustered you, “thanks, sakusa. and, if we’re handing out compliments today, i didn’t know you were good at any sport other than volleyball but you’re doing surprisingly well at basketball.” you joked, your lips slowly curling into a cocky smirk, “though, i don’t think you’d stand a chance against my team.” 

god, you’re such a tease. you make it so hard for him to be nice to you. so, of course, your comment returned his ability to utter almost every sarcastic comment that comes to mind - screw being likeable. “you think so?” he quirked a brow, tossing the ball onto your lap then pacing backwards, “go on, then.”

rintarō suna

♡ it was probably those tips on social media that told him he has to be nicer 

♡ and plus he saw terushima get all the chicks and he was just sitting there like ‘where are my bitches at? 🥺’

♡ anyway, all the guys on social media that had girls lining up outside their door always had one thing in common: misogyny  obnoxious personalities !!

♡ and his whole personality was a sacrifice suna was willing and ready to make for just a crumb of cooch  🤲

♡ though you weren’t exactly his crush yet, suna thought you were the best person to carry out this experiment with bc he heard through the grapevine that you had a crush on him so perhaps this would make you happy

♡ he didn’t prepare much beforehand though which he immediately regretted as soon as he approached you bc admittedly, his game plan of ‘be self-assured but friendly’ was a bit vague 

♡ so he basically just had to bullshit through a whole, awkward conversation with you while wearing a forced ‘bold’ smirk which, in reality, looked as though he had just seen tiddies for the first time 

♡ hardly self-assured or friendly 

♡ also, the fact you thought he was playing a prank on you must’ve drastically altered the results of his experiment 

♡ at one point he says something extremely stupid you’d just quit playing along and just blurt out ‘wtf is wrong with you today’

♡ to which he’d be like ‘ahaha, nuthin much bbg, how bout you?’

♡ THE EXPERIEMNT ISN’T OVER UNTIL HE SAYS IT’S OVER OKAy?!

♥　♡　♥　♡　♥　♡　♥

you rubbed your temples in order to soothe the throbbing headache suna gave you simply by existing. like yes, you had a crush on him 10 minutes ago - but that was before he came up to you and started acting like terushima on dodgy medication. “oh and your skin is glowing bab--”

“jesus christ, rintarō, shut up!” you cried, gripping the edge of your skirt to prevent your self from delivering a swift punch right to his stupid face. he’s seriously gotten on all your nerves at this point; firstly, by spamming your phone in the middle of the night asking for homework answers (accompanied by cursed memes) as he actually managed to wake you up. secondly, by acting so oblivious to the fact you clearly had a crush on him and now, this!

heat rose to his cheeks in embarrassment as his creepy smile instantly fell right back into his resting bitch face, “this isn’t working, is it?” 

“what’s not working?”

suna scoffed, rolling his eyes - his façade having evidently disappeared. “this.” he sighed, looking around as if someone was going to save him before his eyes finally settled on you and he was reminded of what he wanted in the first place, his sparkle was rekindled for just a moment which caused him to blurt out, “just fuck me already, i’m not asking for much.”

[bigskydreaming]

Hi! I was reading a fanfic and it brought up Roy and Dick's fight, which I see a lot of in fics but never what they fought about and consequently why they don't talk. I thought it was a vague excuse/reason why Roy was Jason's friend not Dick's anymore but this fic brought up when Dick was batman so I was wondering if there was actually a fight between them? Btw I really enjoy your metas! They're v thought out and well articulated. Also it's v easy to separate what's your opinion and what's fact which is. Very helpful for me

Yeah this is one hundred percent a fanon thing that's kept deliberately vague to justify why Roy in his friendship with Jason seems to have no positive thoughts or concerns about Dick whatsoever. Now granted, Dick and Roy are not nearly as close in the New 52 as they were pre-Reboot. The lack of their friendship there is definitely one of the things I disliked most about the Reboot - and I actually don't care if Jason and Roy are friends tbh, its the total erasure of his history with Dick as if he can't be friends with both, that like, bugs most.

But so like, yeah, Roy and Dick aren't super close when they interact on the Titans in the New 52, but there's literally nothing in any of their interactions that explains the complete absence of him from Roy's life or a reason that Roy would like, hate him the way he tends to in a lot of Jason-centric fics.

When you factor in pre-Reboot stuff though, it starts to get a LOT more.....uh wyd? And this is why I have trouble buying that people just write Roy and Jason the way they do because its the only thing they know from recent comics. Like one, most fans talk about how they don't even read the source comics, so there's no reason their knowledge of the characters or events would be limited to just recent comics if they're going off wiki summaries and scans anyway. And second, most fans AREN'T limited in their knowledge to just recent comics.

Like, the second people start writing Roy and Jason and Kori but with their pre-52 characterizations and references to events from THAT timeline, it all gets very messy, the way they're like, completely antagonistic towards Dick a lot of the time. Because Roy and Dick were always solid. Yes, they fought. A lot. But they always, ALWAYS made up afterwards. They had conflict about Roy's drug addiction - it didn't stop Dick from being there to support him through rehab, or Dick being the first person Roy called to help him get Lian after he learned of her existence. Dick literally held Lian before Roy ever did? He's the one who first put her in Roy's arms for the first time.

(Which is the prime grudge I and most Dick Grayson fans have about Roy and Jason fics which make Jason like, the absolute apple of Lian's eye. If you want to expand Lian's circle of loved and trusted ones to include Jason as Roy's friend and thus her uncle, like go for it! But there's zero reason that should require invalidating and erasing the fact that Dick was this little girl's adored godfather and uncle for pretty much her entire life. And the way Dick is just shoved offstage from Lian's life entirely, to slot Jason into his place as though they're completely interchangeable, its like....THAT'S the kind of thing that gets people irey about how Jason 'steals' Dick's dynamics and character relationships.

Because there's nothing saying they both can't be major players in Roy and Lian's lives! But just that they're not interchangeable! You need to develop the specific role Jason plays there WITHOUT just overwriting everything Dick actually did in relation to the two of them pre-Flashpoint, which is what you're drawing from the second you write Lian, unless you're specifically going with the few appearances we've had of her within literally just the last year.

But I mean, when people just search and replace Dick Grayson in all Roy and Lian's pre-Reboot stories and act like Jason was the one doing all of that instead.....why wouldn't fans of the source material be annoyed by a character getting credit for interactions and things done for Lian and Roy that Jason literally NEVER DID, while at the EXACT SAME TIME, conjuring some mysterious, unnamed 'Falling Out' that Roy and Dick had, that was clearly all Dick's fault, and resulted from him being basically excised entirely from Roy and Lian's lives?

Same with Kori, for the record, and like despite being Dick's ex, she and Dick have NEVER been like, estranged? She and Dick have often been close even after their breakup. None of it makes any sense, and the fact that a lot of fans don't even try to make it make sense or justify it, and expect other fans to just be fine with settling for an inexplicable reversal of Dick's every actual dynamic with these characters while setting up Jason to occupy the exact same role Dick played in these other characters' lives, like.....lol. Its fun.)

Anyway, back to your question, like, there are fights you can go with pre-Reboot as the source of various conflicts between Dick and Roy - but again, I maintain its just as crucial that they're always written as getting past them. They have a very tempestuous relationship because they are the two people MOST likely to call each other on their shit, two of the two people WITH the most shit in common due to the parallels in their childhoods and the roles they've occupied in the Titans and the superhero community in general, and the two people most resistant to being called out on their shit by each other, lol. Mostly in that case because like, they do recognize that they have a lot in common and understand each other very well, so the second the other is calling them out for something, they're usually like "ugh, if HE'S saying this, its probably true and I am just not prepared yet to be wrong about this. I need more time being unjustifiably rawr about things." Its like that thing where they both look at each other doing something that feels familiar or calls back to their own reasons for doing something and they're like ugh I'm in this picture and I don't like it.

So they clash. A lot. But always with the implicit bedrock of like, there's nothing either of them can do or say to the other that will push the other away for good.

They fought over Roy replacing Dick as leader of the Titans when Dick's wedding fell apart, even though Roy actually didn't want to do it and was kinda pushed into it by the government, but again, Dick like, got over it and realized it was for the best and forgave Roy for it that very same issue. And on and on. It always went like that. So there's plenty of stuff that can be used or pointed at as a source of conflict between the two, but the part I'll always call unbelievable is the idea that they never make up after one of these fights. Why now? What fight, specifically, is so bad between them that despite everything else they've gone through AND gotten past, they can't get past this one? Y'know?

So yeah, that's my take on this. There is no definitive falling out between Dick and Roy as many fics like to point to in order to shove him offscreen and make room for Jason in Roy and Lian's lives, and personally, I just don't find it necessary and I actually think it makes Roy look REALLY bad. Because when you're not specifically detailing all the things that Dick has actually DONE for Roy, the lengths to which he's been there for his friend, and like, specifically invalidating each and every one of them as something that never happened in a particular fic, then literally anyone who reads that fic and has their own awareness of Dick and Roy's friendship is kiiiiiinda likely to be reading that and thinking wow what an ungrateful asshole, when Roy's just written as bitching about Dick with Jason and sandbagging him without any real explanation as to WHY, beyond just 'oh they had a fight years ago.'

(And coming up with some random awful thing that Dick did to justify Roy hating him now isn't like, a superior alternative, lmao, because again, its still just trashing one character for the sake of getting him out of the way of two other characters' friendship and people are going to think what they think about that).

Anyway, my now standard stock disclaimer that like, there doesn't actually need to be a canon fight obviously, for people to just write things this way and handwave that Dick and Roy had an epic falling out years ago and now they just hate one another or whatever, or just Roy hates him or vice versa. Obviously people are free to do what they want. They don't need a reason other than "I want to write it this way so Jason and Roy are friends and Jason doesn't have to 'share' him with Dick or have his friendship be overshadowed by their greater history together." That just happens to be a reason that no Dick Grayson fan is ever really going to be happy about, lol, for what should be perfectly obvious reasons, so it honestly shouldn't be surprising to people that fans of the source material often gripe about it.

Because yeah fanfic is a tremendous opportunity to transform the source material into something better, but if what's better for some fans actively takes away what was working perfectly well for other fans the original way, they're going to say that. Especially in a fandom where so many new fans take their view of the characters and their dynamics from fics rather than the source material - when fandom has that much of an influence on what new fans perceive to be 'canon,' fans are perfectly within their right to emphasize what is ACTUALLY canon and what isn't, so that new fans at least have the opportunity to determine for themselves what take they want to go with, instead of just accepting at face value that the nature of say, Dick and Roy's relationship is just that Roy hates Dick because of some mumble mumble ancient history vague mumble details not found mumble mumble fight.

[kingstylesdaily]

Harry Styles — ‘It’s about bringing more music to Manchester’

The One Direction band member and solo star on launching into his first substantial business venture.

Two weeks ago, the stark phrase “HE CUT HIS HAIR” began trending on social media. I can confirm its truth: the One Direction member turned solo star Harry Styles has indeed cut his hair. The usual curly tresses are gone, scissored into a tousled, swept-back look. It’s for a film role he’s currently shooting in Los Angeles.

But the star hasn’t joined me on a Zoom call to discuss traumatic haircuts. Instead, we’re discussing what’s being billed as his first venture into the world of business. Styles is the public face of a new arena to be built in Manchester, which will be one of the largest indoor venues in the UK when it opens in 2023.

It’s being built by the US entertainment company Oak View Group at a projected cost of £350m. The capacity will be 23,500. Following a link-up with the Manchester-based business The Co-operative Group, it will be called Co-op Live.

“It feels like full circle for me to be doing this,” Styles says, speaking in what looks like the stainless steel confines of his LA film trailer. He grew up near Manchester, in a village in the neighbouring county Cheshire. “My first job was with the Co-op, it was delivering papers for them,” he recalls.

Manchester was where he went to gigs with friends. It was also where he auditioned for the television talent show The X Factor in 2010 when he was 16, singing an unaccompanied version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. It led to him joining the boy band One Direction. Transcending their talent show origins (they came third on The X Factor), Styles and his bandmates became a global phenomenon. They were the first band in US chart history to have their first four albums debut at number one, outdoing even The Beatles. With his newly shorn hair, a green jacket with big stitching, a T-shirt with blue palm trees and a cross dangling from his neck, Styles manages even on a visually unflattering Zoom call to look the part of the teen heart-throb. But, whereas other boy band singers have struggled to establish themselves as individual acts, Styles has made a handsome success of it. He launched a solo career in 2016 and has released two accomplished hit albums. In 2017, he made his acting debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk. He’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s horror-thriller, Don’t Worry Darling.

Diversification from the evanescent world of teen-pop continues with his involvement in the Co-op Live arena. It links him with two big names in the US entertainment industry. Tim Leiweke, former CEO of the concert promoter AEG, and Irving Azoff, former CEO of Ticketmaster, run Oak View Group, the company building the arena. Azoff’s son Jeffrey Azoff is Styles’s manager. “This is a big project and it would be a lot scarier if I was with people I didn’t know,” the singer says.

He has a financial stake in it as an investor. “I didn’t get into music because I wanted to be a businessman,” he says. “I got into music because I love music. That’s always going to be a first for me. But when an opportunity like this comes up, for me it feels so much about what I can bring to it as a musician, and also as a fan.”

Construction of the arena is due to begin in November. Styles has a vaguely defined role as an adviser in its design and decor. “Obviously I’m not an expert architecturally, in terms of building an arena,” he says. “I guess the weight of my involvement falls into the idea of what you want backstage as an artist. People operate in different ways after a show. Some people like a quiet space, some people like a place where you can invite all your friends.”

Arenas have a reputation as soulless venues, the kind of interchangeable setting where a forgetful star can get the name of the city wrong (as happened to Bruce Springsteen in 2016 when he cried, “Party noises, Pittsburgh!” during a show in Cleveland).

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.

“There’s a lot of cold rooms that you can play in,” he says. “You definitely remember being in the ones that sound better, the ones in which you can create some sort of feeling of being at home.

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.” Manchester’s new arena is being designed to maximise sightlines between performer and audience. “That’s usually the first thing that you miss when you go into big rooms,” he says. “There’s a point when you’re doing shows and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and you can have that connection with people. It’s easy to lose that if you can’t see people’s faces.”

The first time he sang in public was in the canteen of his Cheshire school, for a music competition. He recalls the feeling of exhilaration: “You’re so used to sitting in the classroom and looking up at your teachers. All of a sudden everyone’s down there and the teachers are looking up at you.” He gets the same sensation when performing for tens of thousands of people. “It’s obviously on a different scale but that feeling is very much the same,” he says. “I think it’s the same chemical. It’s just like such an unnatural thing. It’s kind of like — this isn’t supposed to be like this, this isn’t how life works. That kind of adrenalin I think is just something that you wish you could share with people that you know. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a really special moment.”

The coronavirus pandemic poses an existential threat to venues. “It’s such a strange time to be talking about live music, because right now it just doesn’t exist,” Styles says. He insists that the Co-op Live is designed to enhance Manchester’s live infrastructure, not overwhelm it. (The city already has one of the UK’s largest indoor venues, the AO Arena.)

“The purpose is not in any way to try to monopolise the city in terms of music,” he says. “It’s about bringing more music to Manchester, wanting to bring more artists there, to use this building as a reminder of why it’s such a great music city, not trying to wipe out other venues.”

After its projected completion in 2023, Co-op Live will be able to welcome its celebrity investor on stage (“If they’ll have me. I’ll have to speak to someone and ask about that”). In the meanwhile, Styles is due to embark on a world tour next February, although the pandemic has cast it in doubt.

“It’s one of those things of just seeing how things go,” he says. “I don’t think anyone wants to be putting on a tour before it’s safe to do so. There will be a time we dance again, but until then I think it’s about protecting each other and doing everything we can to be safe. And then when it’s ready and people want to, we shall play music.”

via the Financial Times

[queen0fm0nsterz]

I wonder if Scarecrow girl regret pushing away someone that she initially disliked? Given one of the meanings for scarecrow in dreams is wanting to correct negative decisions and realizing the good qualities in a person you dislike?

(give this post a read for context!)

MASTERPOST

Ok, I'm going to use this question to answer a few of the Ladies related questions I got. Thanks to all of you for the positive feedback on that theory, I really appreciated it!

Starting with you, anon.

1) About Scarecrow

You know, after making a full analysis on the Ladies and getting a good look at each one of their rooms, both in the Residence and in the Nest, I think I agree.

The question now would be, who was she pushing away?

An obvious answer would be (her) Mono. As I previously established: a Lady of the Maw cannot exist unless a Thin Man creates her and a Thin Man cannot exist unless he's betrayed by said Lady. Maybe she regrets leaving him to his fate? The Eye paintings are quite prominent in her section.

Or, this could be referring to the other girl.

I theorized that Scarecrow may have had a sister who ruled the Maw alongside her. Not only that, it might have been one of the others as well.

The candidates to fit this role would be Tengu and Teapot. I lean more on the latter.

Tengu is tecnically the second in line, following the order we previously reconstructed, yet I also mentioned that she and Scarecrow may have been interchangable because you can choose to retrieve them in either order. They're the only ones to which this rule applies; Fox will always be first and Teapot will always be last. Plus, Scarecrow's pedestal is taller than Tengu's, effectively making her the second.

Another thing I think is worth mentioning is that, in the way to reach Teapot, we have to pass over the two armchairs. Reminiscent of when Teapot had to sneak past the sisters, perhaps?

Then, when we do get Teapot, to leave the room we have to once again sneak past Tengu (albeit it's her false persona).

Lastly, I wanted to mention that Red and Blue have always been opposites. It would make sense for Scarecrow to dislike Tengu, especially considering how drastically different they behave. For example, while Scarecrow prefers to hide away from the monsters and ignore them, Tengu actively engages with them and pretends to be a monster herself. I could easily see the Lady in Blue be either disgusted or irritated by this way of handling things.

On the other hand, we have our other candidate, Teapot. I do believe it's less likely, but pictures of one of the girls in the paintings (the one with long braided hair) are seen in her area.

Of course, it's also possible that Scarecrow's possible sister is not one of the other Ladies and was someone else entirely.

This lowkey got me thinking though.

If the "Lady & Thin Man coexistence theory" (yes we're naming it lads), is true, then this means that, if there were two Ladies governing the Maw at the same time, then the number of Thin Men wouldn't line up... because one Mono accompanied two Ladies. Consequentially, our Mono would be the fifth Thin Man and not the sixth, and the number 6 on the Thin Man's door was indeed referring to the number of Ladies.

Now I can't help but wonder how such an event would go down. My guess would be that the Thin Man of the time only took one of the girls (maybe only one of them was wearing the yellow raincoat?), awakening her Hunger which would then lead her to become the Lady while her sister helplessly watches and follows.

Mh. I have to think this one through. The concept is really interesting though.

2) About Fox (and Six)

" I wonder if Fox Mask Girl met a gruesome end for being too kind? Given that kindness will guarantee suffering with certain death in the little nightmares world so it won't be too farfetched that she got killed by someone that she offered kindness to. " - anon

" You know given how Fox mask Lady was able to have children be comfortable in her presence and how she likely died a gruesome death, maybe she was the type to continue on being kind and caring despite what she experienced as a kid and becoming the Lady of Maw? Her horrible death is definitely her being punished for still being kind since the world of little nightmares is where kindness will make you suffer and guarantee certain death. " - anon

I do think she met her demise as a consequence of her gentle nature. But in her defense; if the order is correct, then she was the first Lady ever. Maybe she wasn't aware of the cycle/loop. I'm pretty sure she died at the hands of her successor after trying to offer her kindness and shelter.

(Another thing to think about: the rip on her statue kind of looks like a bite.)

People who try to be kind always get the worst possible outcomes in the Little Nightmares universe. Once again, that famous achievement expresses the core belief behind this world: "Kindness will be your undoing!"

And talking about achievements... the other day I was on the wiki reading the achievement list - as one does - and something caught my eye.

Little fox.

In the achievements, Six is referred as a couple of small animals that relate to her in some way. For example, she's called a "little canary" or a "sneaky rat". Both connections are obvious: the canary is a bird with bright yellow feathers and rats are considered vermins - which is how Six is seen by the monsters.

This only draws more paralleles between Six and Fox, who have been stated to be quite similar in many ways.

3) Additional Color White Meaning - Teapot

@pidgeapodge

That is absolutely correct! Then again, this begs the question: who or what could the Lady in White be mourning?

Again, maybe (her) Mono? Or perhaps she's mourning her own lost freedom?

Out of all the Ladies, current one included, Teapot really seems to be the most depressed about the whole situation. It's really heartbreaking considering how her coding made her out to be an innocent, pure hearted, happy go lucky soul.

4) About Scarecrow's and Teapot's masks.

@doragonlw

Thank you so much for the kind words!

So, personally I do think they kept wearing their masks, even if they're a little peculiar.

You have to keep in mind that people wearing masks is kind of the whole "brand" of the Maw.

When Six gets there every single employee and even some of the guests are wearing masks, with the only exception being the Granny. Then again, the Granny is a contractor, not an employee. She kinda does what she wants and no one can really stop her, which is really funny in my eyes.

Plus, Scarecrow is not the only one we see wearing a sack on her head. We have the Hunter as well! So I wouldn't say it's that uncommon.

Teapot's choice of mask is way more goofy, bc let's be honest. An extremely powerful force of darkness going around with a teapot on her head? But then again, it lines up with her innocent nature.

It's a stark contrast with the current Lady, who is so refined and came right after Teapot.

5) Lady Six design? An headcanon, I guess!

@agandcw20

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE!

I actually may have to correct you on one thing before we go though: if the girl in this portrait in the Lady's quarters is infact a younger Lady, then it's safe to assume all Ladies before her wore a yellow raincoat as well.

Perhaps that's their signature clothing, like Mono's paper bag. Paperbag and yellow raincoat, always together.

Moving on!

Yes, I do agree on Six's kimono being yellow. A darker shade of the Lemon color - like how the Lady's kimono was a darker shade of Tangerine - would be PERFECT. Lemon is usually associated with Awareness, Enlightenment and Alertness, which I think would fit Lady Six. She finally realizes how things work in this world and how she was just a pawn into the Eye's plan all along.

As for the mask, I actually thought about it for a while. I don't think it would be the same as the Lady's, because they're really different from each other, but I still think it would have something to do with Noh masks.

Personally, I settled on the Ja mask. It's badass and scary, something I think Six would definetely wear.

(Btw, I tried searching for what Noh mask could be associated with the Lady's. I found several, but the Fushikizō may be the best candidate.)

6) Same person from different dimentions?

" Random thought but what if the ladies and Six actually exist similar to the movie "Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse", where they are actually a different version of The Lady brought into Mono's dimension to continue the cycle? Some of the masks seem to hint the presence of other worlds, AND Six's connections to previous mask owners. Six herself is also hinted to be from a different world as well, as she is labelled to be "awaking in a world she cannot recognize" " - massive brain anon

OK BUT THIS ACTUALLY MAKES A LOT OF SENSE???

And this actually explains why Mono and the Thin Man would be drawn to her! It's still his friend, but a different version of her! Especially after we've established how the human children are all lured from other dimensions in the LN universe... Wow. Good thinking, anon. This way, the selection of the next Lady is not casual and actually makes sense all things considered.

[hldailyupdate]

Two weeks ago, the stark phrase “HE CUT HIS HAIR” began trending on social media. I can confirm its truth: the One Direction member turned solo star Harry Styles has indeed cut his hair. The usual curly tresses are gone, scissored into a tousled, swept-back look. It’s for a film role he’s currently shooting in Los Angeles. But the star hasn’t joined me on a Zoom call to discuss traumatic haircuts. Instead, we’re discussing what’s being billed as his first venture into the world of business.

Styles is the public face of a new arena to be built in Manchester, which will be one of the largest indoor venues in the UK when it opens in 2023. It’s being built by the US entertainment company Oak View Group at a projected cost of £350m. The capacity will be 23,500. Following a link-up with the Manchester-based business The Co-operative Group, it will be called Co-op Live.

“It feels like full circle for me to be doing this,” Styles says, speaking in what looks like the stainless steel confines of his LA film trailer. He grew up near Manchester, in a village in the neighbouring county Cheshire. “My first job was with the Co-op, it was delivering papers for them,” he recalls.

Manchester was where he went to gigs with friends. It was also where he auditioned for the television talent show The X Factor in 2010 when he was 16, singing an unaccompanied version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. It led to him joining the boy band One Direction. Transcending their talent show origins (they came third on The X Factor), Styles and his bandmates became a global phenomenon. They were the first band in US chart history to have their first four albums debut at number one, outdoing even The Beatles.

With his newly shorn hair, a green jacket with big stitching, a T-shirt with blue palm trees and a cross dangling from his neck, Styles manages even on a visually unflattering Zoom call to look the part of the teen heart-throb. But, whereas other boy band singers have struggled to establish themselves as individual acts, Styles has made a handsome success of it. He launched a solo career in 2016 and has released two accomplished hit albums. In 2017, he made his acting debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk. He’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s horror-thriller, Don’t Worry Darling.

Diversification from the evanescent world of teen-pop continues with his involvement in the Co-op Live arena. It links him with two big names in the US entertainment industry. Tim Leiweke, former CEO of the concert promoter AEG, and Irving Azoff, former CEO of Ticketmaster, run Oak View Group, the company building the arena. Azoff’s son Jeffrey Azoff is Styles’s manager. “This is a big project and it would be a lot scarier if I was with people I didn’t know,” the singer says.

He has a financial stake in it as an investor. “I didn’t get into music because I wanted to be a businessman,” he says. “I got into music because I love music. That’s always going to be a first for me. But when an opportunity like this comes up, for me it feels so much about what I can bring to it as a musician, and also as a fan.”

Construction of the arena is due to begin in November. Styles has a vaguely defined role as an adviser in its design and decor. “Obviously I’m not an expert architecturally, in terms of building an arena,” he says. “I guess the weight of my involvement falls into the idea of what you want backstage as an artist. People operate in different ways after a show. Some people like a quiet space, some people like a place where you can invite all your friends.”

Arenas have a reputation as soulless venues, the kind of interchangeable setting where a forgetful star can get the name of the city wrong (as happened to Bruce Springsteen in 2016 when he cried, “Party noises, Pittsburgh!” during a show in Cleveland).

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.

“There’s a lot of cold rooms that you can play in,” he says. “You definitely remember being in the ones that sound better, the ones in which you can create some sort of feeling of being at home.

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.”

Manchester’s new arena is being designed to maximise sightlines between performer and audience. “That’s usually the first thing that you miss when you go into big rooms,” he says. “There’s a point when you’re doing shows and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and you can have that connection with people. It’s easy to lose that if you can’t see people’s faces.”

The first time he sang in public was in the canteen of his Cheshire school, for a music competition. He recalls the feeling of exhilaration: “You’re so used to sitting in the classroom and looking up at your teachers. All of a sudden everyone’s down there and the teachers are looking up at you.”

He gets the same sensation when performing for tens of thousands of people. “It’s obviously on a different scale but that feeling is very much the same,” he says. “I think it’s the same chemical. It’s just like such an unnatural thing. It’s kind of like — this isn’t supposed to be like this, this isn’t how life works. That kind of adrenalin I think is just something that you wish you could share with people that you know. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a really special moment.”

The coronavirus pandemic poses an existential threat to venues. “It’s such a strange time to be talking about live music, because right now it just doesn’t exist,” Styles says. He insists that the Co-op Live is designed to enhance Manchester’s live infrastructure, not overwhelm it. (The city already has one of the UK’s largest indoor venues, the AO Arena.)

“The purpose is not in any way to try to monopolise the city in terms of music,” he says. “It’s about bringing more music to Manchester, wanting to bring more artists there, to use this building as a reminder of why it’s such a great music city, not trying to wipe out other venues.”

After its projected completion in 2023, Co-op Live will be able to welcome its celebrity investor on stage (“If they’ll have me. I’ll have to speak to someone and ask about that”). In the meanwhile, Styles is due to embark on a world tour next February, although the pandemic has cast it in doubt.

“It’s one of those things of just seeing how things go,” he says. “I don’t think anyone wants to be putting on a tour before it’s safe to do so. There will be a time we dance again, but until then I think it’s about protecting each other and doing everything we can to be safe. And then when it’s ready and people want to, we shall play music.”

Financial Times about Harry being the new face of a new arena in Manchester. (26 October 2020)

[hlupdate]

Two weeks ago, the stark phrase “HE CUT HIS HAIR” began trending on social media. I can confirm its truth: the One Direction member turned solo star Harry Styles has indeed cut his hair. The usual curly tresses are gone, scissored into a tousled, swept-back look. It’s for a film role he’s currently shooting in Los Angeles. But the star hasn’t joined me on a Zoom call to discuss traumatic haircuts. Instead, we’re discussing what’s being billed as his first venture into the world of business. 

Styles is the public face of a new arena to be built in Manchester, which will be one of the largest indoor venues in the UK when it opens in 2023. It’s being built by the US entertainment company Oak View Group at a projected cost of £350m. The capacity will be 23,500. Following a link-up with the Manchester-based business The Co-operative Group, it will be called Co-op Live.

“It feels like full circle for me to be doing this,” Styles says, speaking in what looks like the stainless steel confines of his LA film trailer. He grew up near Manchester, in a village in the neighbouring county Cheshire. “My first job was with the Co-op, it was delivering papers for them,” he recalls. 

Manchester was where he went to gigs with friends. It was also where he auditioned for the television talent show The X Factor in 2010 when he was 16, singing an unaccompanied version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”. It led to him joining the boy band One Direction. Transcending their talent show origins (they came third on The X Factor), Styles and his bandmates became a global phenomenon. They were the first band in US chart history to have their first four albums debut at number one, outdoing even The Beatles. 

With his newly shorn hair, a green jacket with big stitching, a T-shirt with blue palm trees and a cross dangling from his neck, Styles manages even on a visually unflattering Zoom call to look the part of the teen heart-throb. But, whereas other boy band singers have struggled to establish themselves as individual acts, Styles has made a handsome success of it. He launched a solo career in 2016 and has released two accomplished hit albums. In 2017, he made his acting debut in Christopher Nolan’s war film Dunkirk. He’s currently shooting Olivia Wilde’s horror-thriller, Don’t Worry Darling. 

Diversification from the evanescent world of teen-pop continues with his involvement in the Co-op Live arena. It links him with two big names in the US entertainment industry. Tim Leiweke, former CEO of the concert promoter AEG, and Irving Azoff, former CEO of Ticketmaster, run Oak View Group, the company building the arena. Azoff’s son Jeffrey Azoff is Styles’s manager. “This is a big project and it would be a lot scarier if I was with people I didn’t know,” the singer says.  

He has a financial stake in it as an investor. “I didn’t get into music because I wanted to be a businessman,” he says. “I got into music because I love music. That’s always going to be a first for me. But when an opportunity like this comes up, for me it feels so much about what I can bring to it as a musician, and also as a fan.” 

Construction of the arena is due to begin in November. Styles has a vaguely defined role as an adviser in its design and decor. “Obviously I’m not an expert architecturally, in terms of building an arena,” he says. “I guess the weight of my involvement falls into the idea of what you want backstage as an artist. People operate in different ways after a show. Some people like a quiet space, some people like a place where you can invite all your friends.”

Arenas have a reputation as soulless venues, the kind of interchangeable setting where a forgetful star can get the name of the city wrong (as happened to Bruce Springsteen in 2016 when he cried, “Party noises, Pittsburgh!” during a show in Cleveland).

Even at the tender age of 26, Styles is a veteran of these cavernous spaces, which he refers to as “rooms”.  

“There’s a lot of cold rooms that you can play in,” he says. “You definitely remember being in the ones that sound better, the ones in which you can create some sort of feeling of being at home. 

As an artist, it’s rare to find that if you’re touring for months at a time, to go in these big rooms and feel that comfortable.” 

Manchester’s new arena is being designed to maximise sightlines between performer and audience. “That’s usually the first thing that you miss when you go into big rooms,” he says. “There’s a point when you’re doing shows and you can see the whites of people’s eyes and you can have that connection with people. It’s easy to lose that if you can’t see people’s faces.”

The first time he sang in public was in the canteen of his Cheshire school, for a music competition. He recalls the feeling of exhilaration: “You’re so used to sitting in the classroom and looking up at your teachers. All of a sudden everyone’s down there and the teachers are looking up at you.”  

He gets the same sensation when performing for tens of thousands of people. “It’s obviously on a different scale but that feeling is very much the same,” he says. “I think it’s the same chemical. It’s just like such an unnatural thing. It’s kind of like — this isn’t supposed to be like this, this isn’t how life works. That kind of adrenalin I think is just something that you wish you could share with people that you know. It’s a beautiful thing, it’s a really special moment.” 

The coronavirus pandemic poses an existential threat to venues. “It’s such a strange time to be talking about live music, because right now it just doesn’t exist,” Styles says. He insists that the Co-op Live is designed to enhance Manchester’s live infrastructure, not overwhelm it. (The city already has one of the UK’s largest indoor venues, the AO Arena.) 

“The purpose is not in any way to try to monopolise the city in terms of music,” he says. “It’s about bringing more music to Manchester, wanting to bring more artists there, to use this building as a reminder of why it’s such a great music city, not trying to wipe out other venues.” 

After its projected completion in 2023, Co-op Live will be able to welcome its celebrity investor on stage (“If they’ll have me. I’ll have to speak to someone and ask about that”). In the meanwhile, Styles is due to embark on a world tour next February, although the pandemic has cast it in doubt.  

“It’s one of those things of just seeing how things go,” he says. “I don’t think anyone wants to be putting on a tour before it’s safe to do so. There will be a time we dance again, but until then I think it’s about protecting each other and doing everything we can to be safe. And then when it’s ready and people want to, we shall play music.”

[curedigiqueen]

So while I was working on my… analysis I suppose, on why Digimon Adventure: does not work as a show, it occurred to me that despite claims that Taichi in Adventure: is inspired by V-Tamer Taichi, his partner is an Agumon whose final evolution is Omegamon, and why that doesn’t work. But I realized that it is a point that I could expand on, and so I have separated it out here. Consider it a preview.

The protagonists of Digimon V-Tamer are Yagami Taichi and his partner Zero, a Veedramon. The story is carried by these two alone. While others help and hinder them on their way, their mission is theirs, and the responsibility of defeating Daemon belongs to no one else. It is with that power that they reach their highest form, UlforceVeedramon Future Mode While Taichi is the main protagonist, Zero is just as much a protagonist. Their names, even reference binary. While there are other characters who impact the plot, the role of protagonist belongs to these two. 

This is echoed in the themes of Digimon Adventure:, the digivice in the title supposedly representing the bonds between human and digimon. And, while I don’t think it particularly succeeds, I can see clear attempts to be made to make the digimon partners their own characters, equals to their human partners. 

But yet, Digimon Adventure: uses Omegamon as Taichi and Agumon’s final evolution. And that is a bit of a problem. Digimon Partners are not interchangeable. Well, okay, the species are a bit arbitrary, all things considered, (after all, Zero’s rookie form is also Agumon) but the problem is what UlforceVeedramon represents vs. Omegamon. 

In Digimon Adventure, Omegamon is not Taichi’s power alone. Not by a long shot. Taichi is not the solo human protagonist of Digimon Adventure. Even in the first film, before Hikari was even meant to play a key role in the series, she shared the series debut. Regardless, the burden of defeating Apocalymon is not his alone to bear. And Agumon’s evolutions reflect that. WarGreymon is reached through borrowing Hikari’s power. Omegamon is literally formed by WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon (who was formed by borrowing Takeru’s power), but in reality is born from the power of hundreds of people reaching out from across the world. And perhaps even Taichi’s crest of Courage is not something that belongs to him alone. As Yamato puts it, “It’s everyone's Friendship”. Though Taichi best embodies courage, the courage he wields is not his alone. Even tri. which I usually avoid using as an example, has Omegamon Merciful Mode, which very explicitly draws from the other children’s partners. Adventure’s Taichi’s not strong because he himself is powerful. Really compared to Hikari he seems rather unimpressive on his own. He’s strong because he is able to easily act as a receiver to others powers, a trait that is fitting for a leader. Because that’s what sets Adventure Taichi apart from his peers, he’s a leader.

Note, that I didn’t really bring up the partners in regards to the discussion of Adventure, not that they aren’t important, but that they aren’t a driving factor. Digimon partners are something vastly different in Digimon Adventure. They are reflections of the children’s inner selves. For straightforward characters, like Taichi, his partner Agumon is very much like him, and for characters like Sora, Piyomon seems very different. This isn’t to say that the digimon are simply their partners, Tailmon went through quite a bit on her own. But nevertheless, Tailmon is the way she is, because Hikari is the way she is. 

Digimon Partners and their evolutions are not things that are just assigned, and given. They are things that arise from the circumstances. Omegamon is there because the themes and circumstances make Omegamon the most appropriate "Ultra”. This is true both in and out of universe, who can forget SkullGreymon? SkullGreymon isn’t wrong. It’s just not the evolution that fits Taichi and Agumon’s situation.

And here’s the thing. Digimon has done the whole focus on “Bonds with Partner’s” before. That’s Tamers. And in Tamers, the final evolution was born from a human and a digimon literally coming together as one. The final episodes all appear somewhat humanoid as a result, particularly notable from WarGrowmon to Gallentmon. Because that was what evolutions were needed narratively and thematically. Otherwise, we have Megidramon. And guess what, the Adventure timeline also has a movie in which the focus is on the bonds between human and friendship, and lo and behold. In Digimon Adventure Kizuna, Agumon (Bond of Courage) and Gabumon (Bond of Friendship) were born. Born from the bond between human and digimon. They even use the “looking like humans” idea from Tamers.

Interestingly, Kizuna came right before Digimon Adventure: started. 

Now, I am really advocating for the Bond forms to be used in Adventure:, those forms were something special to that timeline. But that’s just the thing. Many evolutions, whether unique digimon or not, are brought about by circumstances unique to that timeline. Look at 02’s usage of Armor levels, Frontier's Hybrids, and Xros Wars' Xros mechanic. It’s not new for later seasons to take these Digimon that have existed in these specific circumstances and use them generically later. It would, after all, be a shame to put all those good designs to waste. But at the very least, the evolutions of the main cast are carefully chosen, created if need be, to fit the show.

And that creates a problem for Adventure: as a reboot. It is pulling from the evolutionary lines of its predecessor, despite aiming for different themes and using an entirely different world and characters, and in the process the meaning behind the evolutions has been stripped out. While it has been able to throw in additional evolutions, most of those are well within the confines of precedent: Armors and Ultimate’s that are already related to these evolutionary lines. Adventure: is trying to be a show that, as a reboot of Adventure, it cannot be. Adventure: spends so much of its time screaming that it is not the original Adventure, while simultaneously dragging in call backs that it loses any sense of identity.

The enemies they fight are not Taichi’s responsibility alone. These kids have to have crests. Agumon must evolve into Omegamon.  Angemon still has to die, HolyAngemon and Angemon have to mean something. Tailmon has to be Adult, and has to have been evil. Hikari and Takeru have to give their brother’s power. Omegamon still has to appear. . They still go to summer camp, and Taichi still fights Parrotmon. 

Note, that this is far from Adventure:’s only problem, however I do think it illustrates a large problem that affects the way certain elements and characters are used in this show. Taichi is a solo protagonist, but his “Ultra” is still Omegamon born of Yamato, Takeru and HIkari’s influence. Mimi is now a bossy rich girl, but her crest is still Purity. Yamato is a loner who doesn’t overly concern himself with others, but he’s still Friendship, and still Takeru’s semi-estranged younger brother. 

When Adventure: manages to work a new angle into the old mold, it works well. Yamato’s focus on his friendship with Gabumon works well, and various side characters work alright. Resolving the conflict over Tailmon’s Ultimates by using both for separate things and bringing in Goddramon is a great idea. But more often than not, it doesn’t. Properly contextualizing what a holy digimon is is great, but Angemon’s death is awkward, and Pegususmon’s presence smooths over the issues of Tailmon being champion and keeping Angemon special in an awkward way, refusing to address what an Armor is. Because they are trying to write a story around a set of evolutions they are required to have while absolutely refusing to be Adventure where it matters. Leading to the awkward mesh of Adventure elements and characters, with themes and stories that they were never meant for. 

If Adventure: was meant to be about the bond between Taichi and Agumon, Omegamon was never going to work, including the concepts of crests, was going to muddle things at the very least, and including 7 whole other partner pairs who are going to require at least a few episodes of focus a piece was not going to work out. It’s not that we couldn’t have had more focus on Taichi and Agumon within a reboot and their bond, or that the idea of Taichi and Agumon (or any other pair), activating an evolution because they are in agreement on a concept isn’t a good idea. Just an understanding that this primary focus wasn’t going to work because Adventure in its very concept has a lot of characters that need some degree of focus. Savers with its heavier Masaru focus and use of shonen tropes, dials back the number of “main” characters to half that of Adventure, because it is built around its premise. That unless they were going to be bumped down to secondary, recurring characters, this was never going to work, because that’s not how Adventure’s concept was intended. To tell a new story, it needed to have dropped a few more of Adventure’s elements. But to do that would be to essentially admit that this isn’t Adventure at all. Adventure: needed to have evaluated what story it could tell with what elements it was required to include.

Anything goes in Digimon, and Adventure: seems to want to make the most of this, using armors, Hybrids and Xros Wars digimon with regularity. But you can’t build a cohesive narrative simply by plucking your favorite ingredients and sticking it in a pot. Some things just don’t go together. You can’t take the ingredients to make bread and make a salad. But in short, V-Tamer Taichi and Adventure Taichi aren’t interchangeable. They are two different characters because they are designed for two different stories, and their partners reflect this. Adventure: was doomed from the start if it didn’t realize this. 

[photonflight]

Hello, I read and loved your last post. I know this is not what it was about but you mentioned it later on briefly that there is a difference between BIPOC groups of the same basic descent. When is it appropriate to distinguis between?

When is it okay to talk about different varieties of cultures?

When it comes to Representation.

Will try to make this as SPECIFIC and detailed as possible with examples.

In cases where unity among an entire ethnic group is promoted, it may be counterproductive to insist on dividing or differentiating between a group. Similarly when one is referring to a culture, the place of origin and its entire diaspora fall under that culture. (For example when Indian and African culture is discussed usually, the diaspora is not separated as they are also considered Indian and African or descended from them, so they are also part of the culture.

The diaspora here meaning people who are descended from these groups, mixed with these ethnicities or grew up in the cultures outside of the country of origin.)

example: Ordinarily, people of Asian descent or of the Asian diaspora all refer to themselves as Asian, and this can be done without distinguishing the region of Asia or the country or culture, because it’s a broad term to describe people of or descended from people of Asia. It is also used by people who know they are of Asian descent but are not exactly sure what part of Asia their ancestry lies. This does not mean they’re not Asian. Some people are just not able to trace the exact origin of their family beyond the broad term, and it would be unfair to tell them they aren’t Asian or aren’t Asian enough because of this. The same could be said for European people and those descended of them. There are different countries with different cultures and there is a European diaspora as well but they can also all choose to identify broadly as European, because they are.

When speaking of Representation, however it is important to note differences to avoid interchanging and erasing some cultures in favor of others, because when it comes to representation SPECIFICALLY, every cultural group does not represent each other.

Even if you belong to one variety of culture in a broader ethnicity, for example what is acceptable for Indo-Caribbean people may be unacceptable or offensive to Indians from India. This is not to deny the cultural similarities between them, but acknowledge the cultural differences make them all independent of each other and worthy of note. Not to divide them, but to compare them.

For example, when talking about Latin America on a whole any examples may be used, but when a role calls for representation for an Argentinian person, a Costa Rican person would not be ideal because while they’re both Latin American, they are not the same, two different countries and cultures

Another example is the diaspora of African people globally. The movement of Pan-Africanism calls for unity among all Black people around the world, and in a case like that, it may not always be appropriate to differentiate or separate each person.

However, when it comes to representation, and the role calls for a Caribbean Person, it cannot be accurately filled by an American or European or Asian person who does not have Caribbean roots, but it can be filled by an American or European or Asian person who does unless the role explicitly states the character is strictly from the Caribbean with no other influence.

It is not gatekeeping or saying they aren’t “Caribbean enough” to say that someone without Caribbean roots cannot represent Caribbean people, or to say that someone who isn’t Caribbean, and isn’t of Caribbean descent whatsoever is not Caribbean, because they’re not.

I don’t know why people fight and argue this point. If you’re not you’re not, and it doesn’t make you better or worse than anyone who IS. It just means you may not be right for a role.

Similarly, if a role calls for a Trinidadian actor, casting a Trinidadian-American is appropriate unless the role specified the character is born and raised in Trinidad, but casting a Jamaican-American or Jamaican person is absolutely a problem because they’re different cultures and doing so promotes the interchanging of unrelated cultures that leads to stereotypes, ideas, preconceptions, perceptions of attitudes and beliefs from one culture being imposed on people of a completely different culture who have nothing to do with it. As a Trinidadian person, I’ve had so many non Caribbean people say “yeah mon” to me although in Trinidad that’s not our slang.

Doing this is what leads to cultural misinterpretation and misrepresentation.

African American and Afro-Caribbean people are of different cultures, countries and speak a different language entirely. By using an African American person (who does not have Caribbean roots) to represent an Afro-Caribbean person, it results in erasure of Caribbean culture because while they are both diaspora culture African groups and cultures, they are very different and cannot be interchanged or substitute each other. And vice versa.

In Disney’s The Little Mermaid as revealed in an interview with Samuel E. Wright, Sebastian was intended to have a Trinidadian accent, but as the actor couldn’t do it, they told him to just do a Jamaican accent because they felt there was no difference, when in fact Trinidad and Jamaica don’t even speak the same language. (According to Communication Studies Syllabus by the Caribbean Examinations Council for the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination)

This would also be true if a character is meant to be from an African country, and assuming they were also meant to be Black, were played by an African American person (without ancestry from that specific country) or an Afro-Caribbean person (without ancestry from that country). There would be erasure of accent, culture, and even mannerisms as what may be normal in America or the Caribbean may not be acceptable in that African country, something I learned in my university History course AND Linguistics (Phonetics & Phonology) course

Similarly, refusal of people to acknowledge the differences between the cultures of the Caribbean islands is why SO MANY NON CARIBBEAN PEOPLE think that all Caribbean people are Jamaican or have Jamaican accents when all the islands in fact speak a different variety of Creole altogether. The refusal to let Caribbean people fill Caribbean roles also adds to this, because people who don’t know any better tend to give every Caribbean character a Jamaican accent, examples below:

(See Ajay Chase, Haitian with a Jamaican accent/ and George, Guyanese with a Jamaican accent/ Sebastian the Crab, Trinidadian coded with a Jamaican Accent)

Again, this distinction is drawn for the purpose of accurate representation because this is an appropriate context. However, if the matter at hand was regional integration then similarities would be examined over differences; so this is just to remind you that there’s an appropriate time and place to do this. Don’t go throwing this at people randomly, you asked me about a specific time to do this and I am answering.

Another reason why it’s important to research a specific culture when creating a character is because you can say you are creating, for example, an Indian character, but There are separate cultural groups in India as well and customs vary throughout. If you treat them as generic, you may add elements that are offensive. This is because what may be acceptable in one Indian culture may be a taboo in another one, and so cross-breeding these cultures may cause problems when people from the actual cultures encounter your character.

Even AFRICA isn’t one country with one culture, the different tribes possess different cultures, and therefore when creating African-coded characters it is better to focus on a specific tribe instead of combining random “African” (which is again not a country) elements. Every African culture is different although the people are all African. If you are referencing African culture it’s best to focus on a specific country THEN focus on a tribe from that country, instead of copying and pasting elements cut and dry from every tribe and mashing them together; some tribes don’t have a friendly history with each other and it may be offensive to just combine their elements.

Similarly, when the recent hate crimes against Asian Americans are being spoken about, it is important to make the distinction that the most recent victims are East Asians, because Asian is only a broad category that does not make a distinction between Asians based on region. People that look East Asian as opposed to those who look like they’re from another part of Asia might be more at risk for a COVID-19 motivated hate crime, because people do see a difference. (Although these racist people believe that anyone that appears East Asian is Chinese because they can’t tell the difference, they can differentiate between someone who appears to be South Asian and someone who appears to have features that are more East Asian; putting that specific group at risk.)

Just like if a role just calls for an “Asian” character anyone from any Asian country can be used, but if it calls specifically for East Asian, it would be misrepresentation to put an Indian person in that role if they aren’t mixed at all, and if it calls for someone who is 100% East Asian, then in theory it would be misrepresentation to place someone who is mixed or from another region of Asia to fill that role, but anyone from any East Asian country may be cast.

If the role is narrowed from East Asian to Japanese, then a distinction must be made between East Asian actors. A Chinese or Korean person in the role instead would be misrepresentation, because the role calls for a Japanese person, even though they all fall under the general term East Asian, which falls under the general term of Asian

It isn’t gatekeeping, it is what is required under the topic of accurate representation. By saying that differentiating between different BIPOC cultures is unnecessary because “they’re all BIPOC”, it gives room for people to misrepresent them and interchange them.

Representation is where we have to make these distinctions; but remember there is a time and a place to do so.

It’s not gatekeeping to say that if you are DEFINITELY* not part of a culture then it’s inaccurate to say that you represent it.

In fact, BIPOC can erase each other too. Pro-Black African American YouTubers constantly raise the issue of Light Skinned Black Americans and even mixed Americans being cast in roles meant for unambiguous, non mixed Dark-Skinned Black Americans. They believe it takes roles from them and perpetuates colorism because according to them, lighter skinned women and mixed women have different features and are treated differently in America than dark-skinned women, so they feel that they cannot be represented by them as they can’t relate to them; which leads to them feeling like they are being erased by members of their own group. (see video by I Am Eloho on YouTube: “Jorja Smith REMIX PROVES Bi-racial women erase DSBW” (Dark Skinned Black Women).

*Definitely here means if you are not a part of a group or it’s diaspora whatsoever. Does not apply to people who are of the diaspora because they are considered part of the group under normal non-specific circumstances

[casualotptrash]

Why the Persona 3 FES vs Portable Debate Makes Me Want to Fly Into the Sun Pt. 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Da da da daaa!

Part 3 of this lovely emotional rant is here, for anyone who wants to spend their time reading these. With the last two posts, I have mostly tried to be informative or just complain a bit about why this debate makes me want to fly into the sun, but for this post it’s going to go a little different. Perhaps a bit more subjective than the others.

In this post, I’m going to go over everyone's favorite clusterfuck...a definitive version of Persona 3.

Now, as we established in the previous post, we know that the argument of FES vs Portable is essentially pointless because everyone’s opinion on either game is subjective. However, I have neglected to bring up this topic that puts a huge ass nail into this dusty old coffin: the fact that there is objectively no definitive version of Persona 3.

Everyone can argue all day and night about which version of P3 is better, but no one can deny that either version are “definitive.” By definitive, I mean that the game has the most content that is offered, like Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal. The reason none of the P3 games are definitive is because base P3 lacks stuff from FES and Portable, FES lacks stuff fro Portable, and Portable lacks things from FES. It’s a gamble of whether you want to experience cutscenes, an overworld, and The Answer, or a whole new route with the FeMC and the brand new option of dating male party members and saving...you know who.

One might be able to say FES is definitive because it has The Answer, which I believe is considered canon according to the Arena games. Another could say Portable is the definitive version because it came out after FES, added the FeMC (who is technically canon as per the second Persona Q game), and removes The Answer (which a lot of people said The Answer messed with the core theme of P3). However, the definition of definitive in this case, and with all of the other games, is that the game offers the most content. Arguably, FES and Portable provide the same amount of content, just in different ways. This is why this whole conversation of which one is better, or which to play first, spawned in the first place.

The reason I am bringing this up in this post, about why this whole discussion physically pains me, is because having a real, definitive version of the game could finally put this discussion to rest. At least, it somewhat would. People would probably still argue that FES is the best for some reason.

Now, the argument becomes...well, what does a definitive version of Persona 3 look like?

I have seen quite a bit about this topic, and people seem to really miss some common sense points. For example, they get caught up in whether it would be considered a remake or a remaster. I know some use those terms interchangeably, but the “official” definition for each is that a remake is a game that is made from scratch, while a remaster is made by updating the existing assets and engine. For example, the upcoming Nocturne HD release is a remaster. Personally I find it difficult to neatly fit the typical persona definitive editions, like Golden and Royal, into either of these categories. It may just be me not fully grasping the differences between the two, but I believe they would fit into more of the “remaster” category. It is true that there are new assets and content being added to the game, but it’s so minor that I’m not sure it could be considered a remake. On the other hand, because new content is added it couldn’t just be defined as a remaster because typically the effects and such aren’t even changed that much. It’s just gameplay and story content that is tweaked.

When people get so caught up in what it would be considered, logic seems to...go out the window? For example, in a debate between a P3 remaster or remake, a person made a comment that if a remake was to happen then people would demand that all of the social links be available to anyone. Now, that just isn’t possible for a variety of reasons. There’s no way we could ever mix and match social links to get a preferred grouping. Another issue with this is that if just a remaster was made, then one of the two games would be left out.

This is why I don’t really think about whether a definitive edition is a remaster or remake, because using such strict labels make it harder to judge what could, or should, be in one. This is why I’m just referring to this process as making a definitive edition. That being said, I would consider a definitive P3 game to be more of a remake (not that it really matters) because my ideas would essentially combine FES and Portable, in a way?

So here we go, into my idea of what a definitive version of Persona 3 would look like. (Warning: This will contain spoilers for all of the P3 story and *gasp* may be a bit biased toward Portable because I like it more)

1. Presentation

In simple terms, I would want the game to essentially be Portable...but with updated graphics, cutscenes from FES, and an overworld. It’s easier to use Portable as a base because it’s already closer to the format of P4 and P5, so then adding in the good parts of FES with the cutscenes and overworld are par for the course. As far as graphics go, I would like the models and environment to look more like P3D (aka whatever engine they used for Persona 5?) because damn did the characters get a glow up.

2. Gameplay

Along with the format of Portable, I would also want the gameplay of Portable to be in this definitive version. That means no jealousy system, no fatigue until after you leave tartarus, the vision quest, and the other changes I mentioned in the first post. Sorry FES fans, but yes...I would still want the option of controllable party members. However, a new change that should be added is backup members earning exp. I don’t think baton passes or anything should be added, we don’t want a clone of P5, and the combo attacks in P3P kind of fill this role anyway. The idea of having social links give certain perks with ranks, like how confidants work in P5, is interesting but I don’t think it would be necessary. I would also say that the soundtrack should be exclusive for each side, like how it is in Portable, and that there should be an option to choose which skills are inherited.

3. Social Links

The stance I would take with social links would essentially be how Portable did it, but with a slight tweak. No matter how much it would be cool to date Rio or Saori as the Male MC, or vice versa with Kaz or Keisuke and FeMC, I don’t think any mixing of the two sides would really be feasible. However, I would love to see cameos of those characters in the opposing routes. For example, you see Yuko and Kaz in the female route, but in the male route you could see Saori and Rio at school. That being said, and this is probably one of the biggest issues, I would want the male protag to be able to have social links with the entire party, men included. This brings up the issue of what social links you would cut out because you can’t have two social links be the exact same arcana. Unless they want to add more arcanas to the game, which would probably not go over well either, the best option is probably to prioritize the male party members and then have who would usually be in their place just show up sometimes. For example, Kenji would show up in the social link with Junpei instead of the magician social link just being about one or the other.

I know this seems weird, but it does kind of avoid shafting one or the other. If it was too hard to fit the two together (such as Chihiro and Ken both being Justice), perhaps a few more school scenes could be added where the MC interacts with the school friends that are not seen as much (Kenji, Chihiro, etc.) However, and this might piss off 1% of people but whatever, but the moon arcana with Nozomi (Gourmet king dude) could just be completely taken over by Shinji. Nozomi is a meme, but he is not needed in any way. Also, I would prioritize Yuko in the male route over Koromaru since, although he is a very good boy, he is still a dog. Also, please get rid of the option that you’re forced to romance every girl in the male route, and personally I would say keep in the fact that you cannot date Junpei. In a headcanon sort of way, I totally dig the idea of the MC being able to help Junpei through his rough time after Chidori dies (if she dies?) and feelings grow from there, but from a story perspective I think it’s integral to his character that he friendzones the player if they try.

So TLDR; who the social link is about would mainly stay true to the original route (male route with Kaz, etc. and female route with Rio, etc.), however in the male route the party members would take priority (so Akihiko would take the star arcana place and Mamoru (track guy) would just be featured in the link sometimes), and in both routes Shinji would take Nozomi’s place as the moon. Important note that besides including the other character, the main substance of the social link shouldn’t be changed; aka they should not change the format of the social links to operate more like P5 social links where the MC is just solving all of their problems.

(Sidenote: This is imply my idea on how to include party members into the social links for the male route, however if they just decided to keep the social links the exact same as Portable with no male party member social links with the male route then I’d be fine with that too. It wouldn’t really take away from the game as a whole for me, personally.)

4. Romance Options

Riding off of the social link talk...and I know this is like the least likely option of happening, but please make some gay options Atlus? If we can romance every single girl in the male route, why not just add the romance option for the men too? Yes yes there’s the whole argument about the issue of “making everyone bi” (thanks for erasing sexuality that care more about connections rather than gender?), but I say look no further than how Dragon Age 2 did it. Every romanceable option in that game can be romanced be either the male or female main character (barring a DLC character who is only romanceable by females), and it works just fine. Turns out, no one really gives a shit if it’s “realistic” enough (aka only having one or no bi/gay people apparently?) because it’s a video game and people want to romance whoever they want...because it’s a video game. Even if you really, really don’t like this approach there is also the option of going the Dragon Age Inquisition route, where characters are able to be romanced by certain genders and not by others (race also plays a role in this in the game, since there are elves and other fantasy races and such, but this is not applicable to Persona obviously). This is simply a hypothetical example, but how this would work is that like Fuuka can only be romanced by the Male MC, Akihiko and Yukari could be romanced by either MC, and Mitsuru could only be romanced by the FeMC. Obviously social links specific to a run would be a romanceable option to the MC in their route (as in Yuko would only be romanceable by Male MC because she’s only in her run, and social links like Saori could be a romance for FeMC because she’s specific to her route). I have a gut feeling this would cause an even bigger uproar with the fandom, so having any romance option (barring route specific social links for the route they’re not in) be available for either male or female MC is the best option in my opinion.

Take out Ken’s romance option altogether though. I know some of the language is different, so it doesn’t say you “spend a long night together” or whatever, but that doesn’t really make it any better. I do think it’s fine if Ken has a crush on the MC, and maybe has a whole Kenji thing of thinking they are together cause he’s 10 and kids can be like that, but the MC wouldn’t actually act on this and the player could be given the choice to actively dissuade Ken. The only good thing that came out of Ken’s romance option was the fact that him and Akihiko can argue in Tartarus if you romance them both, and I don’t want to lose that hilarious dialogue.

5. Tartarus

Tartarus...uh...to be honest I’m not really sure what to do with this beast. It’s boring and tedious in the first place, probably by design for symbolism in the game, but I’m not sure how to make it interesting without copying the dungeon/palace format. Perhaps the blocks could be restructured to act more like a big puzzle that needs to be solved, like certain sections of palaces in P5, but also have bosses and shadows thrown in. For example, perhaps one block could be more reminiscent of hide-and-seek stealth tactics while another is formatted like a series of arena-esque gladiator fights. Also probably lower the number of floors you need to climb? It gets a bit ridiculous when you realize there are 264 floors of Tartarus and 99% of them are the same but just with more funky music and slightly different decorations. This job is suited for someone with actual video game making experience though, and not me.

6. Awakenings and Pacing

Let’s talk about some quick fixes to awakenings and pacing of the game. Now, since this is a definitive version and not a true remake, I wouldn’t want them to rewrite the entire story or something. Most of the party member’s original awakenings happen off screen, which can be kind of lackluster. The MC’s and Fuuka’s are the only two we really see, and those moments were really cool in my opinion. Obviously we wouldn’t see Mitsuru’s, Akihiko’s, or Shinji’s original awakenings, but that is fine. Yukari and Junpei also fall into this boat because Yukari awakens before the MC gets to the dorm, and it would be hard to show Junpei’s awakening while also having his whole “reveal” moment when he comes to the dorm to live there. I don’t know if it’s ever mentioned when Ken awakens to his persona, but making a scene to show both his and Koromaru’s would be helpful instead of just saying Ken has the potential and he’s joining, and hearing about Koromaru awakening but not actually seeing it. As for the pacing, I’m mainly talking about the summer time where you can’t hang out with a good number of social links. I would just change this so that you can hang out with school social links during this time more readily, like if they’re just hanging out somewhere in town if they’re not at school. Like I said, this isn’t a remake (and I’m not a video game designer) so I didn’t want to get into how to fix the overall pacing of the story, which can be pretty slow until October or so. My one suggestion is maybe adding in a few extra scenes with Strega before October so it’s not like we run into them a couple times and suddenly they’re a major villain.

7. Shinjiro

(Spoilers for after October) I know certain people will definitely not like this point, but I think the option to save Shinji should remain in the game (and Chidori too). I’ll go into this in another post, but my main reason for keeping this in is because some people really do like this option, so it would be kind of unfair just to get rid of it because other people don’t like it. However, I would suggest a change to his social link so that there is the option to save him or not while also being able to complete the social link. Perhaps after rank 10 would be when you could give him the pocket watch, so that people could get the rank 10 and not be forced to save him. 

8. Extra Content

(Spoilers for the ending of Persona 3 and The Answer) Each definitive version has extra content in the “third semester” (because Persona 4 and 5 both essentially end after December), but in Persona 3 the natural game ends in January. I am not sure if they would try to add another whole months or so on, but because The Answer already exists, but I assume they wouldn’t add extra content in February or something for the MC. For The Answer, I would keep this in the game as sort of the “extra content” but add a FeMC version of this. Obviously it would be largely the same, except with the FeMC and perhaps the male party members could get more of a focus since the female party members get a larger focus in the male route (ie. Yukari breaking down with the keys. Maybe Junpei or Akihiko could take on this role as the people who don’t want to let go). Also, as a possible new addition to The Answer, Shinji could be a part of it if he is saved during the main game. In the NG+ run of Portable FeMC route, if you romance Shinji he comes to the rooftop for that final scene, so in a way it could be possible for him to recover by the time The Answer happens in March.

Now, if Atlus decided to add a more typical “extra content” thing, I hope they wouldn’t try to cram The Answer in on top of that unless they were able to do it cohesively. It might be a lot to have the whole ending of the game in January, come up with a reason to have extra content in February (presumably with the MC still alive, but also combat would need to be a part so then the issue arises of Tartarus coming back or something?), and then have the answer take place right after near the end of March.

Well that’s the end of that I think. This will also be the last post in this little “series” because I pretty much went over everything about this debate that makes me want to fly into the sun. I know the things I talked about in these posts will probably never stop, but I really hope that if a definitive version comes out at least the discussion will change to saying what is good or bad about each game rather than FES supremacy or whatever. That being said, above all I really hope this debate doesn’t discourage new fans from Persona 3 or the series in general, because that would probably be the worst outcome from all of this. It’s a great game, and it’s a shame that the game itself is kind of held back by being split into two (I’m not counting base Persona 3) different forms.