#they are being made palatable for the ABLED AUDIENCE.

[engagemythrusters]

It would be nice if Star Wars actually treated their "good" disabled characters as actual disabled characters.

We see a lot of "bad" disabled characters have viewable disabling disabilities (ex: the latest The Bad Batch episode featured a cane-user with a prosthetic arm. This man was a hoarder of resources, and quite greedy and self-serving. Disability=hoarding resources is a TERRIBLE thing for Star Wars to highlight, but there they just went. That's a whole post I can make on its own, but I digress.)

But there are so few times that Star Wars truly acknowledges its disabled characters' disability in a positive light. It is always swept under the rug and forgotten about. This is what we have for our disabled "good" characters:

Anakin's hand only ever has problems twice--both of which aren't even true issues. His hand just gets caught by magnets. That's it. Sure, one time a little spark went through it durring the Zillo Beast arc, but despite all other mechanical appliances dying and short-circuting, Anakin's mechanical prosthetic does NOT. They didn't want to show Anakin without the use of his hand. Oh and he's turned into the "bad" character when his disability becomes actually acknowledged. Facisit disabled person... how charming (sarcasm).

Luke's prosthetic hand also does not cause him any true issues--again, minor inconveniences.

Echo's prosthetics are not acknowledged, ever. They act as if Echo has two hands, and he's constantly seen holding stuff as if he has two hands. Sorry, but he can't balance a giant ass box on a scomp like that. He would have to compensate--move his arm so that it balances differently.

Tech does not need to be more than autistic-coded. It's not a requirement to label everything. However, he has only had issues with his autism once. That's a good first step! But it's just a first step. Not to mention, he's a whitewashed savant. This is the most blatant, frustrating autism stereotype. I've already made a post about this.

Kanan and Chirrut's blindness is perhaps the most visibly disabling disability in any of the shows; however, said blindness is magically compensated for by the Force. They both still struggles with many things, which is a good change of pace, but ultimatley, it's not the representation it's meant to be. And, for Kanan, it is CURED at the end, before he DIES. Chirrut ALSO dies. I think that speaks for itself.

Yes, they are still disabled. That is not in question. But it's repackaged in a 'non-disabling' sense. Because why show disability when everything can be magically fixed? Why show disabled characters having realistic issues with their disability when it could be disabled characters made palatable for an abled audience?

Yes, a good number of disabled people would like to be, for lack of a truly appropriate term, ""fixed"" (a whole different topic, though--and a huge one at that). I don't doubt many amputees would probably like the a prosthetic like Anakin's. And yes, it would be nice to be so easily and readily accepted as disabled people like they are in Star Wars.

However.

The continued treatment of disabled people as if they aren't disabled is a massive problem in today's, real-life world. Because we don't have that luxury of being treated as nicely. So as great as it is to dream of a life where we're accepted as normal, IT IS IMPORTANT TO VIEW THEIR DISABILITY AS NORMAL IN THE FIRST PLACE.

It is necessary to see openly disabled people being clearly disabled, while still being viewed as equal, "normal" people. When disability is only shown openly as disabling when it is for the greedy or the facists... that is ableist writing.

All I want is for a main character to be openly disabled, in a disabling way, rather than just magically fixed and unacknowledged. Disability representation can only go so far when it is just "hey, here's a disabled character." We need them to be acknowledged as disabled, too.

[ponett]

Heya inspiring dev here, I'm brain-storming for a game concept based on classical RPGs (specifically on the 2000s Tales Of titles), I wanted to ask as somebody who's being a big fan of RPGs and a game developer yourself, what is the one big sin in terms of design you should avoid doing for a game in vein of the games of that era?

This might not be a particularly helpful response, but I generally shy away from "always do this"/"never do this" type game design advice these days. What works for one game might not work for another, and what sucks in one game might be exactly what another game needs. It's all about execution, and knowing how different choices enhance or detract from the overall experience you're trying to craft.

Players tend to vocally dislike anything that inconveniences them. Random encounters, for example. Everyone says they hate those. But random encounters have their place! They can be used effectively, and you can also design around them to make them more palatable for a modern audience, or you can just use them exactly how the classics did if that's the experience you're going for. People complain about limited inventory space, but having a smaller number of items usually means players will actually use what they have, rather than sitting on a stockpile of 99 of everything "just in case they need it later." People say they hate ice sliding puzzles in games, but I put some in SLARPG because I thought that was what that section of the game needed and by god, I'd do it again!!!

Uhhh anyway for a small piece of actual actionable advice: it's annoying when there's an incredibly long cutscene directly before a boss fight and you have to watch the whole thing again if you die and try again. Being able to fast forward dialogue or outright skip a scene is good, but so is structuring things so that longer dialogue scenes tend to come after bosses rather than before them, or placing a point where the player can stop and save between the long dialogue scene and the boss fight.

Also PS1/PS2 era JRPGs (especially FF) were often obsessed with including tons of obscure missable items that you could permanently lock yourself out of obtaining by progressing the story too far. Again, I won't say this is something you should never do - the argument can easily be made that this increases replayability, or that it encourages players to talk to their friends about secrets. But it can get frustrating if you do it too much, and it can encourage paranoid behavior in players.

[trashytoastboi]

Day of Lust - Asmodeus

~NSFW Alphabet~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Warning: NSFW content ahead (whole bunch of this and that)

A = Aftercare (What are they like after sex?)

💅🏻 Asmo knows the importance of aftercare and is very good at it. The pillow talk from his end is a little one sided; you'd think he’s having a conversation with himself. Asking if what he did felt good for you- but then answering his own question saying he knows it was great. Asmo does genuinely check in to make sure you’re fine especially if there was some kind of intense play involved or a heavier scene that Asmo wanted to try. (He likes a lot of different things) Aside from his quality control questions he will ground you, bring you back to the present and make sure you’re feeling okay physically and mentally. 

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partners.) 

💅🏻 Asmo is an anatomy genius for all the wrong reasons. He knows how to locate and sound out the exact erogenous zones on the human body. (His skills are not only limited to the human body) he doesn’t have a singular part of your body as it depends on whatever is the most sensitive. His favourite is whatever he knows will elicit the most response for you. If your back is sensitive then he’ll love to tease, touch and kiss your back. If it’s your thighs then he’ll turn his attention to your thighs, your neck, your sides etc etc. As for Asmo, his most loved part of his body is everything. Early on into his adjustment to his new form he never thought he’d be able to love himself but over time he came to love himself dearly, his new self and all the charms he possessed. 

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum, basically) 

💅🏻 Loves cumming on your face or body. He just adores how sexy it is to see you covered in his cum. If Asmo does happen to cum inside you then best believe he’s going to lean down and clean up his own mess with his tongue (he is nasty in the best way). Asmo gets a rise from seeing how shy you get when he does it. As for quantity, it's an average amount. Thankfully with the amount of times he makes you swallow you’re thankful he's not giving you those monster loads because you just know you’d choke. He’s also pretty conscious about taste and tries alllll the methods to keep it tasting on the sweeter side to make it more palatable. 

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs.)

💅🏻 Asmo picked up a few interesting hobbies, his regular, somewhat secretive cam shows being one of them. What better way to feed his need for attention while displaying the purest form of the Avatar of Lust. Frequently made little jokes about wanting his partner to join him during one of his cam sessions. There were already tons of people who already watched him, even a few fans who always suggested things! Asmo wanted to share his beauty in every aspect. It was the least he could do for his adoring fans. But now he wanted to show off your beauty, oh those adorable little moans and whimpers when you call his name. He would be so selfish to keep it all to himself. The idea alone of fucking you on stream had Asmo all hot and bothered. Asmo usually proposed the occasional theme, or took suggestions, maybe buying some kind of sexy outfit for you to show off and wear when you two were together. He decided to suggest a masquerade theme to make things exciting. Asmo's dirtiest little secret was never telling you about the hidden camera. Nor the live audience who were tipping Asmo everytime he made you cum. You also realized in future it might be a good idea to use your account to suggest more fun things since Asmo loved listening to his followers and you were one of his favourite fans that suggested many fun things, not that he realized it was you. 

E = Experienced (How experienced are they? Do they know what they're doing?)

💅🏻 Asmo definitely knows what he’s doing. It would be stranger if he didn’t. He knows how to do things and in a variety of ways too. You didn’t realize that the same act could have so many variations and alternatives, it was almost like taking a masterclass everytime he fucks you. Asmo loved exploiting your lack of knowledge to surprise you with something new every time. It’s more prevalent whenever Asmo himself learns something new, he’ll be running to give you a demonstration of whatever he learned. Oh look, a new position, he’s pulling you into his room already, some crazy new tongue technique that he wants to perfect while using you as his practice dummy. Asmo after all is so very generous with knowledge. Pleasure makes the world go round.  

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying.)

💅🏻  Listen Asmo truly has a taste for the challenging, but you can say for certain it’s unique and sometimes just a little bit on the challenging side to master. 

💅🏻The Spider - You weren’t so sure about this one, Asmo gave you the rundown and the how to. But it just didn’t seem..Comfortable?? Asmo did explain it should be treated like an appetizer kind of position. It can rub all the right spots if done right it just never really gets you there, but that’s precisely why Asmo loves it. (Despite his poor partners having an aching back for the next few days) 

💅🏻 The Star - This quickly became one of your favourites too admittedly. Also made you appreciate how strong Asmo’s back must be to pull this off for an extended amount of time, you were more impressed by that than the amount of times he made you finish. Especially when he spices it up with a really deep thrust as he grinds against you.

💅🏻 The Thigh rider cowgirl - It’s just a little upgrade from regular ol cowgirl and Asmo loves it from the front row seat he gets when you’re on top. Plus it’s hot that you’re getting all needy while riding him and grinding against his thigh at the same time. It’s so pretty to see you getting there, most of the time in this position,  he doesn’t offer you a hand because he loves seeing you getting yourself off by using his body. 

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment? Are they humorous? Etc)

💅🏻 Asmo is honestly so unserious and not in a humorous way. You’ll be so into it and catch him on Devilgram or something and you’ll just have to ask if he’s being serious that he’s literally doom scrolling right now. (He is) Sometimes he’ll be trying to show you a funny video or reel he found while rearranging your guts and you can’t keep up with whiplash. It can really kill your mood and he can sense that, then a switch flips and Asmo will get serious to make it up to you and get you back into the mood. 

H =  Hair (How well groomed are they? Does the carpet match the drapes? Etc) 

💅🏻 He is completely clean and ridiculously smooth. You’d swear that he has never grown any hair to begin with. You did ask if he’s even capable of growing a happy trail (or any body hair for that matter) and Asmo assures you that he can definitely do it! It might take a long while. Hard to believe and you’ll believe it when you see it. I mean you’re not complaining but you’re hounded by curiosity to know if the carpet matches the drapes since you’ve never seen the ever elusive and mystic carpet. 

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment? The romantic aspect) 

💅🏻 Asmo is a very sensual soul, he’s tried his hand at romance and can’t really go beyond the aesthetic of romance. Scented candles, rose petals and the like, the emotional aspect of romance isn’t really his style. If you had to find a way to describe it. Then the best way would be saying it’s like a summer fling. It’s hot, passionate but lacking a certain intimacy to it, like a deeper level of the corny romance. When you’re wrapped up in the moment you don’t miss it all that much, however, you do wish that you could experience something of the romantic variety with Asmo. It just doesn’t do it for him though and he won’t feel a reason or urge for romance in that sense. 

J = Jack Off (Masturbation Headcanon)

💅🏻 A little self love, Asmo is all for it. Very pro self pleasure. No one can learn one’s body quite like they can. Every time he does it he considers it an opportunity to get acquainted with his body again. He’ll also encourage you to do it! (Not Asmo suggesting watching each other masturbate) While in most cases he’d argue that he prefers having a partner or partners, he doesn’t mind giving himself a helping hand. Uses a lot of toys and sometimes calls you up so he can hear your voice while he’s busy. Asmo loves it when he learns something new about himself. 

K = Kink (One or more of the kinks)

💅🏻 He’s a kinky one and while that would be a bullet list so long you might confuse it for a shopping list, here’s three worthy of mention.

💅🏻 Exhibitonism - Asmo loves putting on a show and he loves being watched, or at least thinking he’s being watched. If there’s not another person to play the role of a voyeur he’ll propose taking photos and videos and in that sense the camera becomes the watcher. 

💅🏻 Bondage - Either on himself or on you. There’s a certain charm to being all tied up and at the mercy of someone else, uses it on you more for teasing purposes because he knows you can’t do anything while he’s driving you made with pleasure. 

💅🏻 Role Playing - This is really where Asmo lets his kinks shine, all the different roles he assumes and those he wants you to play. You’ve done the typical ones: Nurse and doctor, lonely spouse and repair man, cop and criminal. Asmo loves it so much and he puts ridiculous amounts of effort into cultivating an actual story for the scene?? (Came for the porn stayed for the plot) 

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

💅🏻 Anywhere - No seriously he has 0 issues about location 

💅🏻 He’s had you in more than a few bathrooms of the high end nghtclubs of the Devildom, his personal favorite are the ones that have LED lights on the mirrors because he says they make for the nicest pictures. Plus he loves having you bent over the sink looking at yourself in the mirror while he’s ruining you (affectionately of course) and then will use the same mirror to fix his makeup.

💅🏻 Asmo has had you just about everywhere in the House of Lamentation, save for (most) of his brothers bedrooms… Once he managed to convince you to fuck in Lucifers bed, you honestly don’t know why you agreed and were all the orgasms really worth the punishment?

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going?)

💅🏻 Asmo doesn’t need all that motivation when he’s the motivator, he’s a hair's breadth away from getting needy whether by something sexy or absolutely mundane his brain can spin it any way he wants it. Well only when it comes to you, everything and anything you do can get him going. You're attractive in so many ways that he can’t help getting all hot and bothered while watching you perform boring day to day tasks. He likes when you initiate contact with him and it doesn’t have to be of the sexual variety. 

N = No (Something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

💅🏻 He’s pretty kinky and he’s tried everything at least once, kudos to him and his curiosity. Things that he tried and will probably not do again has to do with certain body fluids, nope- it ruined his skin, the smell was a major turn off for him and overall the most enjoyable part of the experience was the shower and full body scrub afterwards. He’d permit blood, not tons of it and with your permission of course but he will not delve into watersport territory again. 

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

💅🏻 He’s a giver and a taker, it’s a two way street for Asmo and he couldn’t choose because it’s 50/50 for him and he loves them equally. There’s a charm to going down on his partner, sucking, slurping, maybe a little nibble or two to drive them mad while he works them over with all the accumulated tongue skills. He’s also not a major meanie who makes you choke on his cock or anything like that (unless you want to of course) Asmo really likes seeing you get all brave and try to take him all, something about seeing your throat bulge just drives him feral.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? Etc) 

💅🏻 Baby he can do anything you want. Asmo changes his mind halfway through sometimes and it might start rough, hot and heavy and end up being all soft and sensual (Whiplash) but different strokes for different folks (not kidding) Asmo will learn what really gets you going and how to cater to that. He sticks to it enough to know that you’re getting just what you want but also switches it up to keep it exciting. If you’re energetic and up for it, Asmo could easily have you screaming into his sheets while going at an inhuman pace, but if you're a little more on the tired side he’ll give you some Asmo therapy and really take care of you. 

Q = Quickie (They opinions on quickies, how often etc)

💅🏻 Biggggg fan of these. They’re cheeky, daring and exciting. Plus there’s a real appeal to the rush of it all just trying to get each other off as quickly as possible. Watching you get all whiney and needy while not even taking your clothes off properly and begging him to not tease because there’s no time and you need him right now. (Makes his brain go brrrr) 

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment? Do they take risks? Etc)

💅🏻 Do I need to answer? It’s hard to find something that Asmo hasn’t already tried. He believes he can only decide on hating something after trying it, and with you he knows you might have some reservations. So he’ll assess something in depth, looking at the risk and doability before bringing it up to you. He’s very informative about what it will entail, what to expect, and some things to look out for. Asmo does encourage you to experiment and push your limits but he’ll do so gently and respectfully with full boundaries intact.  

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for? How long do they last?)

💅🏻 While I would usually say he’s a one and done, he's got a crazy amount of control and endurance and can make that one round last an eternity.  Could push for a second round if he really wants to though it’s rarely needed by the time he’s done. You’re usually too fucked out that the second round actually sounds like overkill. Besides he’s got a mouth, hands, toys, a whole arsenal at his disposal and he might just make you regret asking for more. 

T = Toys (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or on themselves?)

💅🏻 He has the whole collection; nipple clamps, anal beads, monster dildos, fleshlights, buttplugs, chastity cages, vibrators- if it exists Asmo probably has it. There’s some things in his collection that you've never seen nor knew existed and some you now wish you didn’t know existed. Asmo knows how to use all of them and even gives you recommendations telling you which are the best for a little self love, which are great for playing with partners, and what's great for teasing. Loves using them on himself and you, honestly it’s hard to say you’ve been together without a toy being integrated into the mix somehow. 

U = Unfair (How much they like to tease?)

💅🏻 He’s just soooo mean, he’ll tease you just for the sake of teasing. Asmo loves hearing you beg and will really deny you under the guise of calling it foreplay. He wants you to save yourself for the main event but god does he know exactly how to get you to the verge only to deny you and keep you frustrated. Asmo does it just to see how far he can push you until you’re desperately begging him to give you what you want already. He’s lowkey a little sadistic about it. 

V = Volume (How loud they are? What sounds they make? Etc)

💅🏻 Whines, whimpers, moans, talks, yelps - he’s got a range. He’s so shamelessly loud and does not care about keeping it down, even at the sake of disturbing his poor brother's sleep. Trust the whole House of Lamentation knows when ya’ll are fucking because he practically announces it. Half the time you’re in public it’s a struggle just trying to get Asmo to keep quiet, all of your close calls have been because of him being too loud. Asmo loves hearing his own voice honestly and will talk a lot just to talk. 

W = Wild Card (A random headcanon for the character?)

💅🏻 Matching lingerie sets ♡ he loves buying you lingerie and he’ll get himself the same pair in a different colour. The designs are ridiculously intricate (and hard to put on) He treats it like unwrapping a gift and wants it if it has a lot of things to pull on, untie and undo. Especially with his mouth, he wants you to figure it out too, but it’s hard to beat a demon that just unlaced an entire corset in under a minute with nothing but his ungodly tongue skills. 

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on under those clothes?)

💅🏻 Not very thick, more on the longer side. Slight curve and the prettiest shade of pink on his head. He has a prince albert piercing, he knows how to use it so it gets the job done (and very well you might add) lots of smaller veins along the underside that are all super sensitive and make him shiver if you touch him. 

💅🏻 Demon form - Not much change to size but changes shape a little. Gets a more horned tip, (perfect to really bump against all your sensitive zones) and gains a few ridges the texture of which feels pretty interesting and intense at times. 

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

💅🏻 Very high- he’s a needy boi. He’s just always down for that kind of fun and hopes you’ll join him. If you’re not in the mood then he’ll help himself along (honestly doesn't mind) buttttt he’d appreciate it if you watched him while he put on quite the show for you, an orgasm (or many) a day keeps the sad feels at bay! 

Z = Zzz (How quickly they fall asleep afterwards?)

💅🏻 He’ll deliver the swiftest, most amazing aftercare, proceed to bathe and do his skin routine before tapping out and going to bed. He does it out of necessity to meet his beauty sleep quota more than exhaustion. Loves cuddles afterwards though and helps him to sleep a little deeper than usual. 

Taglist: @completelyshatteredbrokenmschf

[jacquesthepigeon]

“the crew did not make marinette not knowing chinese to make her relatable to diaspora kids, they did it to prop up their male deuteragonist” u said it. plus they wanted to make marinette more palatable to the white audience. like before seeing sabine i had no idea marinette was supposed to be half chinese. she looks like any other white girl. i was called racist (i’m not white) for saying she should look more asian. “you know white passing people exist” is so tone deaf bc marinette is a white passing character in every tangible aspect, not only her features. she has no idea whatsoever of her mother’s culture. you don’t claim you created a french chinese character if the culture is never addressed once. you just make her white. which in the concept art marinette wasn’t so like… u see what they did there. not being able to explore your immigrant parent culture bc of racism isn’t marinette’s experience bc she simply doesn’t care. which really doesn’t make sense because like you said sabine is a waking stereotype and a coherent characterization would have made her want to share her culture with your daughter.

Yup yup yup

Marinette being white-passing and not knowing a thing about her mother’s culture is just the crew’s way of appealing to white audiences, patting themselves on the back for having “representation”, and an excuse to not actually put any thought into how they write her bc she’s culturally just like any other white frenchie

[lostcryptids]

Overall (not many people that even follow me watch or read the series but) I feel like the netflix city hunter movie was like, ok, it was fun, i think the casting was overall solid. They changed a LOT from the source material, from actual big plot points, to when characters meet, character traits, which is a little jarring. So it's pretty different from what most people familiar with the series know. I wish they had followed the first few chapters better. Because even the anime doesn't fully follow the manga continuity and censors some of the storyline that deals more heavily with the use for drugs. Like idk I guess since I was reading about the one piece netflix thing being faithful I kind of expected that, but they kinda wanted to make a new story..? Despite it being kinda cliche. Which isn't a bad thing, a lot of the actual series is very cliche, it just doesn't follow the cliches I know. You know.

I do wish they kept it in the 80s..though it would be nearly impossible I imagine to film city scenes and make it believably 80s. It does have a very "netflix" feeling to it. Like I wish it was a bit more gritty. Or sleazy. Felt a little too clean. Pretty big lack of sexual jokes and moments, though they did include some. The writers on the movie set some actual rules in writing Ryo's character to make him more palatable to modern audiences BUT...I do think they could have added some less offensive parts of his character into it. Like you don't really have to include groping but there are other things they cut that I think take away from his character. But I feel kinda confident that if they make another movie they might have more gags. Because it could have used more comedy overall. The comedy is my favorite part of CH overall like i LIKE the pervert humor and a lot of the other fans do so I see why they were upset I mean honestly they should use the same gags from the 80s because the whole point of the humor is that he's in the wrong and getting punished for it, by cutting out his bad behavior you cut out a huge part of his character + the gags surrounding it. Well overall I think it's fun and I'm just glad they made a city hunter movie in 2024, the lead actor is really really fun and enjoyable and carries the whole movie pretty much, I hope they're able to make a sequel (honestly I'd like a show more than anything lol) so that he can play Ryo again because he's really perfect. Also I want to see him naked again

[stromuprisahat]

Honestly, if Leigh really wanted Alina to have an ending where she's sapped of her powers and decides to go back to her normal orphanage life, she shouldn't have decided that Alina should be the protagonist of a trilogy dealing with the genocide of a group of people who are being killed or worse because of their powers. We got 3 books of Alina not really wanting to do anything to help the Grisha (things get much worse for them after Darkling dies). Not to mention, we got that whole power is +

a corrupting influence, except Leigh mixed that messaging up with parts of the books where Grisha who didn't use their powers were wasting away and very, very sick (wasting sickness). Also we saw Grisha in Novyi Zem with a very limited, incomplete understanding of their powers in one of the Six of Crows books I think. The fact that Alina was healthier when she used her powers and then was demonized for having powers in the later books annoys me. The series would have been better without the weird romances and if the Darkling was the protagonist. Because he's the sort of protagonist a story like this needed. I don't think every single protagonist needs to be badass, but in a story about genocide and a corrupt monarchy and a complicated political landscape, an effective protagonist should want to learn about all of those things, and they should have a more active role in the story. Which the Darkling was like.

I don't think there's much to add.

Alina might've been a very good protagonist, if she didn't cling to her smallness so badly. Or if she were made to abandon it and instead of slipping back into obscurity, accepted her role of bringer of social change.

Her butchering at the end of TGT is just another piece into gruesome tapestry that is being a Grisha in Grishaverse.

Aleksander is a main character for completely different genre, but to be fair, so are the topics introduced in the books. Braindead YA audience isn't able to handle him as the wrong choice of love interest, can you imagine the drama if he weren't constantly shat on?

I've encountered another, slightly more palatable suggestion- writing S&B!Genya as the protagonist. She's clever, active, more situation-aware and willing to take drastic actions. On the other hand she never left Os Alta, or even the Palaces, so there's room for a little bit of naiveté in practical situations, learning and growth waiting for her in the big wide world.

[oblivionbladetd]

So fun fact: The Dungeon Meshi video no longer has the likes number available, along with the dislikes, thus not allowing somehow to see either of them on the Dislikes Viewer site. Homewer, I was able to check them up just yesterday, when they were still up and.

It was 900 something likes

against 1500 something dislikes

Pretty sure I don't have to explain why that's hilarious. What's wrong Lily, removing the dislikes wasn't coddling enough for your ego?

That sounds about right. Though I will waffle a moment on why I think that is.

I would factor it down mostly to that dungeon meshi is a heck of an exception in many regards, namely not being as prone to the trappings other fantasy fall into. Plus, being short and not for children helps.

Lily's greatest weapon is misinformation, for stuff like amphibia, owl house, and especially Steven universe, This was viable. The shortest of these is 43 episodes, the longest being 160 before the movie and sequel season. If she lied, you'd be pressed to really dig for where. With Dungeon meshi being only 22 episodes at the time of writing, you can absolutely slam down the whole shebang in a day, two if you're only a little busy. More people are A. Willing to just sit down and watch it, for it's far more palatable than it's contemporaries.

B. The target audience is teens and adults, which gives way to write more flawed characters and by extension leads more people to finding the nuances in them.

C. Its stellar pacing means people don't forget a lot.

So it really isn't a wonder people slammed her bulshit right back in the second she rolled it out.

Also she made an autism spectrum in the first version that was literally good to bad where laios was seated next to fuck mothering ULTRON. Mostly from what I can tell was just to stomp the toes of the neurodivergent and be ablist, but I'll leave that to other posts.

[spirit-meets-the-b0ne]

After the now infamous deleted GRRM blogpost it felt like a good time to bring up this rant that's been sitting in the back of my drafts for a while now. This is a long one so buckle in.

The adaptation discourse will be so much easier when the fact that an “adaptation” and “inspired by” are accepted as different things. Many of the things being argued as adaptations really end up fitting under “inspired by/based on” more than “adaptation.” The basis of the breakdown lying in “are you adapting for change in medium or are you adopting characters and worlds with new narratives and personalities?” Too often these terms are used interchangeably or amalgamated together.

Because an adaption from text to film should boil down to; okay we may not be able to show this grand explosion or wild fight so we will make it as similar in tone as possible with the right tension and have a choreographer work around our physical limitations. For example, if you tried to make a live action Naruto (which I vehemently condemn for the record) almost every single fight has to be changed because outside of overusing CGI you could simply never display the key moments of those battles. So while the resounding retort of, "aN aDapTatiOn iS nEveR gOinG tO bE a 1:1" is obvious, but that phrase is commonly being used as a blanket response to any and all criticism regardless of how valid the point is.

An inspired by on the contrary CAN deviate from the canon in ways that an adaption should not. Inspired by is categorically like what Disney did with 90s animated movies, they were inspired by myths, folktales and legends but changed to make palatable for young audiences and of course there’s subtextual references (Scar holding the skull as in Hamlet) through out. You would never call them adaptions however. A production inspired by Shakespeare (Lion King inspired by Hamlet) and an adaptation (Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet) are inherently different because of this fundamental distinction. Because the adaptation of Romeo & Juliet kept faithfully to not only the themes in a modern setting but Luhrmann being a madman left the play's dialogue unchanged, only the setting and props suited to the new format. Which is the case in point. THAT was an adaptation.

I always come back to it but with Avatar the Last Airbender adaptations are really categorically more suited for the label of “inspired by” because an adaptation doesn’t mean “okay let’s jam 3 separate story lines into one episode” like absolutely NO. If you don’t “have the time” to explore an arc fully then YOU NEED MORE EPISODES. Sokka not wearing Kyoshi makeup and therefore changing the entire dynamic and the entire point of that plot is NOT an adaption, it was something both physically and metaphysically that could and should have happened. Changing a character and their relationships is not adaption, it’s adoption, and listen it’s okay to want to do that. It’s the foundation of fan fiction. And it’s also okay to say, I like the stories as they’re presented because I don’t have a relationship/love for the source. However, the people who do have every right to take issue with the changes, even those you enjoyed.

Whereas the inspired by category gets a lot more leniency with the plot and characters. To go back to the Disney animated films of the 90s, Hercules is one of the cases referenced most often. Of course you can’t make a Greek mythological adaption for children with today’s ratings and restrictions - that was what made them stories to inspire not adapt. It’s why what Rick Riordan did was a great effort and worked to make complex mythology accessible to kids. It’s why tumblr nerds often laugh about the portrayal of Zeus being a faithful and loving husband and Hera being the loving mother of Hercules. In that case of course you have to change those dynamics and principles for the intended audience. Or sometimes inspired by requires you to introduce a different setting and protagonist inspired by a source. Detective Pikachu for example isn’t an Ash Ketchum led live action it’s something completely separate from that universe while following most of the main principles. Similar to the “based on” film/television that might also keep some foundational material but present a new plot or different tone. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is a fantastic example of this where the protagonist and antagonists are all familiar and they’re in Gotham City as fans would expect but their stories and relationships might not have been what the audience expected.

All that to be said, when a writer themselves is entering the ring to defend their work from the "adaptation" being put forth with their name on it - it is completely justifiable. GRRM isn't new to television or film, he's been doing this for decades and has worked on projects before, all of which had budgets and production teams to be considered. The other blanket response of "well THE BUDGET" is really fallible because we've seen low budget films pull off incredible results on screen. The reoccurring issue here and in the television media landscape really all doubles back to executives being the downfall. You have calculating business wads who wouldn’t know creativity if it bit them in the ass making creative choices for shows. Most of them being qualified only in business and not in media or entertainment by any other way. This is not exclusive to television we can see cases of this happening in music as well (see Sabrina Carpenters label not wanting to release “Espresso” the arguable song of the summer) when these people are more often than not dead wrong.

GRRM's main focus in the blog post was around Maelor's exclusion which was purported to be a budget/casting issue. To me this is a very fallible excuse. Mainly because, not wanting to cast another toddler when you already aged down the other children is an easy one. A. You could have had used an infant (also would have added more emotional tension in B&C if Haelena was alone holding the baby) because it's pretty easy to interchange infant actors. B. use a doll. I mean this is like elementary but seriously a swaddled baby doll and some sound fx could have been easily done. Still works for later scenes if you have the doll in a crib "sleeping" and that's me accepting a relatively lazy inclusion of Maelor. Considering there's no way to introduce him now after the explicit details of Aegon's dick being destroyed. Some of these changes or mashups of plot points are more than just budgetary issues they’re logic and continuity based issues.

My point being, the very purpose of an adaptation is to take the source material and doing what you can to present the best version of this story to the audience with the tools you are given. There are of course ways this won't mean every single line of dialogue or action is going to be followed to a t. However, if you were going to adapt a recipe let's say, to make it a vegetarian dish - you can swap out the meat for another source of protein or veggies and make the sauce/foundation of the recipe exactly as it's called for but adapt it to your palette or preference. Inspired by is when white people make shit like “lasagna tacos” where you’re like well that’s … nice I guess? But definitely not authentic. Or just ask an Italian chef if you put heavy cream in your Carbonara and watch them start foaming at the mouth.

So while I understand not everyone may agree with GRRM about his response - he is completely justified in doing so, as is anyone else critical of this adaptation. Because it barely adheres to what an adaptation is supposed to be. Some of you may not like that either but this production should have been labeled as "inspired by" or “from the world of” for a lot of reasons considering the liberties they took and omissions they executed. This goes far beyond the scope of this case but I truly applaud George for making a stand and calling out the failures of this production. If I had one more person try to tell me to basically accept shitty adaptations for the sake of them being adaptations I was going to start screaming at the sky. If you're one of the people that likes the changes to HoTD or ATLA or Witcher then god bless I'm happy you have that but the suggestion that fans of the source material are supposed to shut up and accept them is asinine. Discounting the majority of a fanbase is grossly disrespectful and dismissing their criticisms is truly unjustifiable. When an author has to throw their hat in the ring to explain this it's time to look at the bigger picture. He nailed it in a previous blog post:

it does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone.   No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it.   “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound.   Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though.   Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse. (x)

Not to sound like a Boomer but making a story your own is not an adaptation. It just isn't. If you aren't clever or creative enough (*cough* Ryan C*ndal *cough*) to make an original work I personally do not see any validity in taking someone else's work and implementing your own artistic choices that fundamentally contradict the source material. Unless you want to call it something else. I have no problem with taking a concept and reinventing the story ie: Kurt Sutter basing Sons of Anarchy loosely on Hamlet or Diablo Cody's Lisa Frankenstein. I actually rather enjoy re-imagined stories whether they be parodies or more creative interpretations. Those are all well and good. Not to be mischaracterized as adaptations tho.

"Adaptations" and "inspired by" works can and should coexist but there needs to be a clear distinction to the production teams and audiences respectively.

While some people have had negative responses to George's post, on the website flooded with creators whether they make art or write, I find it rather a suspiring reaction. It's an odd position to take even if the justification is that he sold the material - how many of you wouldn't take that opportunity? Who wouldn't want a major media corporation to offer to adapt your work. Shit, I would sell my work for pennies on the dollar to see a television show produced from it. That being said, I would be devastated beyond belief if the changes that I never accepted or approved were implemented and put out there under the name of my work. So whether it be from the point of view as a fan or an author I simply cannot subscribe to the notion that disappointing adaptations are in and of themselves a compliment undeserving of criticism. Nor can I accept some of the television productions being marketed as "adaptation" when they're categorically "inspired by" in nature. If that distinction was acknowledged I could at least justify some of the changes we’ve seen and dismiss book purists as well, but as the show is purported to be an adaptation I cannot see this as a success. It fails in ways an adaptation would not, for reasons that frankly have more holes in them than Swiss cheese. George deserves better and the fans deserve better.

[blackgumball]

okay weird pull but you know how people say that taylor swift is so popular because her work is so bland. she’s uninterested in making any sort of statement or breaking any sort of mould, so her work is so palatable and widely relatable that it becomes so popular among so many people? (real quick psa im a tswift hater so i dont listen to her music, this is a recycled opinion from a more educated hater than me)

i am beginning to feel a similar way about bridgerton. its premise relies on the idea of a diverse regency england, but it becomes clearer and clearer to me every day that the show is meant for white people. all the bridgertons are white, so every love story will either be swirl or just a white relationship (shoutout to polin ig). not saying that poc dont enjoy the show (we obviously do) but there’s this vocal white audience that keeps harassing actors of colour whenever a decision is made that they dont like. or that strays from the books (which is soooo insane literally the moment they cast rege jean page your dumb cracker asses shouldve realised that the show wasnt gonna care about being book accurate ESPECIALLY since julia quinn basically said out loud that every character in her books would be racist.)

and the show Clearly isn’t interested in pushing any boundaries. look at fucking cressida cowper. given, i have no idea whether her character is going to return to the show, but the way they handled her was so muddled and fucked up that i wondered why they even bothered? they bring her in, humanise her, and then cart her off with this terrible fate. why? if anything, it made eloise and colin far less likeable (eloise, because it seemed like she didnt care about the fate of the only person who treated her with respect after she was “ruined”, and colin, because it made him seem shortsighted, naïve, self centred, and pitifully stupid). i complain because i think eloise is right. the women in this period were stifled. they were not able to study as extensively as their brothers, not able to travel by themselves, kept from sex education into their adulthood, and married off to random men (sometimes against their will, as it was for danbury, charlotte, almost cressida, and arguably daphne). you set such a sexual show in a deeply unsexy time. there’s romance in cressida escaping, being cunning and able to run. it also would’ve made the show more DRAMATIC. it straight up doesnt make sense for cressida to learn whistledown’s identity and not go immediately to the queen. why not have her escape, and let the bridgertons deal with the consequences? i don’t know. they seemed to take the stupid way out.

and then there’s the lower classes, who we rarely see outside of the women bridgerton men fuck with no/low commitment, paperboys, and printers. i’ve said before how i think it’s hideous that the lives of these women aren’t explored outside of their role as sex objects. season one at least explored the tension between anthony and sienna, who he loved but couldn’t commit to (im very glad she got out of there. im glad she respected herself enough to cut ties w him). also in season one, we see how the servants of the bridgerton house played a role in saving daphne from marrying that gross dude, but it feels like that role has vanished from subsequent seasons. maybe they know that seeing how none of the lords and ladies and other rich pricks of mayfair can’t fend for themselves is a turn off for the modern person (remember when anthony and daphne couldn’t use a stove in s1? i got the ick bad). but by ignoring this massive demographic, the show proves its disinterest in exploring the pitfalls and prejudices of the society it is set in.

its a show where women who want to escape their circumstances are villainised for their attempts and where the lives of the poor are either ignored or used to threaten the privileged. you occasionally have a sienna or a theo, but through knowing them, we are never left with the sense that society should change. they may try that next season. i know benedict is supposed to fall in love with A Poor.

i want the show to be good. i want the show to be interesting. i want all the fans who think that it can’t be good unless it’s explicitly relatable to straight white women to get over themselves (or at least go back to tswift and tsitp). i want to watch the show and not feel as though all the female characters are trapped. i want to LIKE ELOISE. some things i dislike about the show are impossible to change, but i guess i just have to hope it can be better. actually start pushing against the constraints of the genre, why not? you’re already one of the most popular shows on TV, you can risk making good television.

[escapedaudios]

Agent Ursula Schäfer in Der Wolfsjäger is canonically 32. I picked her age for a few reasons:

1) I wanted her to have history, experience and authority

2) I wanted to give her a canon age so people didn't self insert their own real-life age when the Jäger, the love interest, is 36. I want to characterize her more and let the listeners use their imagination to see the story through her eyes, not their own.

3) A lot of media with mostly female audiences does this weird thing where they take a female lead with clearly adult personality traits, skillsets, backstory, and responsibilities, then canonically make them teenagers for some goddamn reason and I high-key hate this trope. There are tons of women older than the YA demographic who favor reading and enjoying YA novels over "adult" novels and I sincerely think there's just a shortage of fun adventurous romantic stories featuring them over the age of like 23 and I think that's just so tiresome.

4) A lot of audio roleplays are set in schools, where the characters the listeners roleplay as would explicitly be younger than (most of) their real-life selves. The reverse almost never happens. I don't like the implication that you can't see yourself having an exciting, fun, and romantic adventure if you're over the age of like 25. Most of my listeners are in their early to mid 20s, but I want them to be able to imagine an older version of themselves that's still exciting, capable, desired romantically, and experiencing new things.

5) My channel is for adults. It's fine if teenagers listen to it and there's no NSFW content in it or anything, but I'm targeting adult listeners because I want an audience that appreciates more mature and complex storytelling.

6) I want to cater to my 30+ audience. There are a fucking billion school bully roleplays and anime-high school channels with MHA characters catering to teenagers, but basically nothing for listeners (especially in M4F) who are explicitly 30+. I might be an outlier here but according to my analytics, only ~9% of my audience is under 18. People seem to think audio roleplay is more popular with high school-aged teens than it actually is and less popular with older adults than it actually is. I actually have more listeners over 35 than under 18.

7) I want to bring my content to more people, and I want it to be something that they aren't embarrassed about. I'm sick to death of people talking about audio RP like it's this embarrassing thing for lonely people that you should be ashamed to listen to. I want it to be unique and exciting and cool as fuck and I want to make characters and settings that a fully mature adult would want to share with their friends and talk about openly and not secretly ashamed of and I do in fact think that having more mature characters helps with that.

8) I'm doing it for myself. Besides Ivan (a 33 year old divorced dad) and Jäger (a 36 year old with a long history), I have future concepts for characters that are older than my real-life self because I want to also picture my future self as interesting and desirable, and not see aging as something to dread. I kind of tested the waters with this long ago, where I made Basher 48 and Benji 42, albeit in the bodies of their early-20s selves to make it more palatable. I wanted to play characters older than myself from the beginning.

9) I want to give the listener characters some character. Building everything around being perfectly suited for self-insert is constraining and literally so boring. By making something fit everyone, you leave the listener with nothing. There's a few things I leave open to interpretation for inclusivity (ex: the ethnicity of the Listener character) but I want to start giving more of my characters a canon age, canon backstory, and more for the sake of contextualizing their place in the story.

10) I want my 30+ love-interest characters to just be themselves so that I can write love stories without also having to account for the the possibility of my more mature characters being interpreted as a "DILF" or the subject of some kind of taboo age gap fetish. I want it to be clear that they see each other as equals from the start.

Anyway, long ramble over. I wanna make more mature characters and I have a lot of thoughts about it.

[ssruis]

Ruikasa posting that got away from me (again). You guys can’t be mean to me pandemonium is on engsekai in like five days. don’t blame me blame colopale.

Ruikasa is very interesting for me 2 think abt wrt rui and his hang ups bc Rui is very single-minded in going after what interests him - he taught himself robotics/engineering/a million other things, he pursued directing on his own, he would rather stick to his own paths and do what he wants to do instead of do what would make him more palatable to his peers

Rui: I wouldn't be expending my energy on something I don't intend on doing.

Tsukasa: Yes. That's the kind of person you are. You wouldn't be doing something if you didn't really want to...

Rui: right?

(Wonder Halloween)

(Area dialogue)

I don’t feel like hunting down every instance of kids around him going “we don’t want to play with you because it’s dangerous/we think you’re weird” I think I’ve done that enough times. But my point with those instances is that he valued what he loved over attempting to become someone who would fit in.

Desiring to connect with a person beyond the level of just friendship/wanting to know way more about someone is different than studying & learning a subject though, bc it’s

1) typically a two way street in that it’s reliant on the other person to want to share things and want to connect with you in return

2) also reliant on you not fucking up the relationship, which is pretty easy to do if you come out guns blazing like “hey you fascinate me & I want to know what makes you tick. And also everything else about you.”

Both points being something rui has zero experience with. Which is also why I think he opted to ask other people about tsukasa instead of talking to him directly.

(Kaito initial 2*)

(Area conversation)

He’s still very curious about Whatever The Fuck is up with tsukasa tenma but he’s obviously pursuing knowledge a little less intensely/overtly than he does for other stuff

(After talking about movie directing techniques) Director Ohara: … Well, that might not be useful to you as someone who’s aiming to become a stage director.

Rui: …No.

Rui: I’d rather be taught more specific techniques.

Director Ohara: …Huh?

Rui: What I want to create is a show that everyone can enjoy regardless of any limits.

Rui: In order to make that dream come true, I want to learn about direction in all kinds of media.

Director Ohara: …Oh?

Rui: That’s why I want to absorb any ideas and ways of thinking from any field.

Rui: All of the methods you know — please teach them to me.

(Backlight lens flare - TL haruka’s penguin)

All of that to say Rui is very clearly interested in learning more about Tsukasa, but also (imo) very wary of overstepping any social boundaries that would damage their current relationship.

He mentions that he tended to rely on shows to connect to other people around him in Pandemonium -

Rui: I had always thought that I could never properly understand everyone around me.

Rui: As I started doing shows at Wonder Stage with everyone, my way of thinking and feelings began to change.

Rui: Now, I am able to understand and connect with someone without relying on shows, and I’ve come to value the beauty of laughing alongside others.

Rui: that’s why — tsukasa-kun. Thank you for giving me the chance to change.

(Pandemonium - TL tsukasa’s #3 fan)

- which is also the event where he & tsukasa connect more *outside* of shows, and the event that both he and tsukasa acknowledge as an event that made them grow a lot closer. (more recent connect live, wrt them talking abt performing fixer, iirc. I hate to “source: trust me” but we’ve reached my limit for hunting down sources & it’s finding a tweet from forever ago where someone translated what they were talking about)

Anyways. Sorry. I just love that quote & what it says about Rui. I’ll spare you the “directing as a one way street/settling for the closest thing to a connection/laughing *alongside* others instead of providing a show for the audience to laugh at (ensekai if you change that specific sentiment I’ll be so mad)” thoughts. Back to the original point.

It’s interesting to think about how rui’s hang ups wrt friendships and his very intense curiosity/very determined pursuit of knowledge on the subjects that interest him intersect. Like. Before this point, whenever he was interested in something he could just go online and read everything he needed to know and satisfy his curiosity to his heart’s content.

Having to both navigate something completely foreign and pump the brakes on obsessively learning everything he can would be a novel experience for Rui. To say the least. “If I pursue this with as much intensity as I do with any other endeavor I am going to fuck something up (he is suffering)” kind of situation.

Being interested in a *person* is so much different & so much trickier and scarier to navigate. Especially with how much Rui values his relationship to Tsukasa as someone Who Matches His Freak.

and with Rui’s whole “I should be satisfied with what I have and if I’m not then it’s because I’m greedy/selfish” :

Rui: (… Geez, I really lack a backbone. When will the time come when I find myself satisfied with the way things are?)

(…)

Rui: (While working to make my dream come true, together with everyone, I will make their dreams come true. A way to do that — let me think of one.)

Rui: (fufu, how greedy of me.)

(Curtain call - TL Arven Oven & tsukasa’s #3 fan)

(Talking abt wanting to keep doing shows with wxs and his actions in OHE) Rui: Now that I think about it, I’ve been pretty selfish.

(World link - TL haruka’s penguin)

I think Rui’s approach to it would be very “I’m asking for more when I already have a great friendship I’m The Most Selfish Person Alive & must never say anything” which, tbf, would be his reaction wrt having feelings for literally anyone, not just tsukasa. However. Since this is a ruikasa post. unfortunately. I will say that what would be exclusive to Tsukasa is “he’s already given me so much and I still want more… I’m The Most Selfish Person Alive & must never say anything.” Rui is dramatic like that.

[selfproclaimedunicorn]

Just had a fun idea 💡- if someone else were adapting the Roycegaryens from book to screen, what sort of changes do you think might be made to their characters?

Okay, but this is such a fun thought experiment! And after finally emerging from my Crusader King's 3 hole (made a new dynasty twice, hoping this second attempt goes well & that I can successfully create a dynasty of hot witches) I am ready to tackle it!

Just gonna get the "bad faith" points out of the way first. If it were HOTD's show runners & writing team, they'd be dumbed down & we would wind up skipping most, if not all, of Aemon's Bisexual Boy Winter arc at White Harbor (pay no attention to the fact he's there during the summer. If I'm calling Ella's time in Essos "hot girl summer" even though she's there during the winter, then I'm gonna call Aemon's time with the Manderlys something equally as thematic but incorrect). We'd probably also have to suffer through fully blonde!Yorick just to make the wig easier, & maybe even blonde!Aemon going off of the fact they changed Rhaenys's hair from black to silver. Anyway, having gotten the bad faith, HOTD critical stuff out of the way, let's move onto some actual thought experimenting, lol

I think Yorick's childhood crush on Alicent would probably be cut or transferred onto to Shireen, just to tidy some stuff up & get rid of things that aren't really plot points or something to serve the narrative. Yorick's childhood crush doesn't really serve much since it fizzles out after he's betrothed to Shireen. I also think they'd probably make the Yorick/Rhaenyra/Shireen thing messier--not necessarily have there have been a thing with Yorick & Rhaenyra (although that probably wouldn't be off the table given they turned Nyra & Alicent into a situationship lol), but just probably misinterpret why she's weird about him (either through not getting it, or to make it easier for audiences to grasp). His angst would probably also get dialed up, or they'd get rid of him being willing to cry to make him manlier or something, because "men with short tempers aren't getting emotional & crying" or something.

The girlbossification of Rhaella Royce would be so real. A lot of her rougher edges & the times I let her be wrong would get sanded away to make her a bland, palatable, Girl Power fantasy. She'd get the adult!Rhaenyra, post-popularity-boom/fanon!Daenerys treatment, really bad. Because on paper she's got the perfect traits for that: has a dragon, has several hobbies that aren't seen as traditionally feminine, she more-or-less gets to do what she wants & doesn't see super extreme (or sometimes any due to circumstances) consequences, she can kind of steamroll her way into getting what she wants a good chunk of the time while still being likable because she's gregarious & charismatic, I legit had a comment on my fic calling her a feminist once. Like...she'd just really easily be able to be a Sexy Girlboss We Try To Have Cater To Everyone treatment. I don't like it, but unfortunately it's much easier for me to see how her character would be botched in an adaption than it would be to see objective/neutral/perhaps even positive changes.

In terms of Aemon...I'm not super sure. There's been so little of him so far & he's still unfolding to me in a way. Like, I know where I'm going with him & I know his personality & his deal, but I haven't had as much chances to play around in his head as I have his older siblings, y'know? In general, I think there'd be a very real chance his first relationship would either be cut altogether, or just glossed over to make sure we know it happened (kind of like how we didn't find out Laenor was gay until the episode he got married in 😅)--although I think cutting Medraemon would do a disservice to his healing arc. Guess it would just depend on how the adapter(s) would feel about having the two canon, very real, very equally good for him, relationships when moving Aemon from page to screen. He'd also either have his edges sanded away like Ella, or he'd have them made even worse like Ser Criston Cole (again, it depends on the person adapting him for a show feels about him), either way His Deal™️ would probably get simplified for ease of understanding like the Yorick/Rhaenyra/Shireen thing.

All of this said, I'm not really someone who understands adaption super well so I'm pulling a lot out of my ass. I am beyond open to how anyone else things my Roycegaryens would get adapted into a televised version of SOTF, because it really is an interesting thought experiment & there's probably someone else who'd have ideas on what would happen there as well.

[theamityelf]

In a Danganronpa Hunger Games AU, I think the made-up rule about two people being allowed to win if they're from the same district would have to just actually be in place (no romance required), in order for most of the Ultimates to be victors while being around the same age. Plus, it allows one to play around with who won by being the last alive and who won alongside their district partner.

I already said Junko's from the Capitol, so some of the Ultimates aren't victors. (I'm torn between saying Yasuhiro is another Capitol TV personality who's secretly helping the rebellion and saying he's a victor; both offer some fun hidden depths to explore, and "hidden depths" is my favorite trope to explore with Hiro. It would be cool if he won at eighteen with a district partner who was twelve)

Sonia is the daughter of the president of District 13. (We'll get to her later.) So, I'll probably kick a few characters 13's way.

I'd say Byakuya and Celeste are both victors from District 1 who won in the same year. Not through mutual trust or anything; when two tributes survive, they're usually from one of the Career districts (1, 2, and 4). Their win was very predictable. Celeste didn't even have to personally fight anyone; she just traveled in the toughest pack. Byakuya killed like three or four people over the course of the Games, and Celeste poisoned the rest of the Careers when it came time for their alliance to dissolve.

Mukuro is from District 2, and she's the illegitimate daughter of a victor and a Gamemaker; the Gamemaker is also Junko's dad. (Haha! Didn't think I'd manage that one, did you? They're still sisters, but one's from the Districts and one's from the Capitol. I could even make them still twins if I wanted to. Never underestimate me! 😁)

Chihiro is obviously District 3 (technology), and I'm thinking maybe they won alone, just for the trauma. Unless Hiro is District; then I'll say they won together, because I want an age gap win for Hiro (eighteen-year-old Hiro protecting twelve-year-old Chihiro!) and also he seems to be the go-to technology guy in late-game THH, so District 3 is a good fit for him. BUT, for right now I'm going to say Hiro's Capitol (and a TV personality alongside Junko) and Chihiro won alone. In fact, I'll say that if Chihiro's partner wasn't Hiro, then they weren't even an ally; Chihiro wasn't there when their fellow District 3 tribute died, because that person believed Chihiro was deadweight (since they're really small and emotional) and avoided them.

Obviously, Hina is from District 4. Great swimmer, great runner. She was allied with her district partner, but he died in her arms. She killed one person in the whole Games, and it was probably the one who killed her partner. (She did survive a few hand-to-hand grapples, but only one resulted in her killing someone.) So, she won alone. Her brother was in the Games a year or two after her and won as well.

The Katniss equivalent (or maybe the Peeta equivalent actually) is Makoto; he's subversive enough (in palatable enough ways for the Capitol audience) to earn an exception to the rule. Instead of winning alongside his District partner, he's able to win alongside a player from another District, which is of course a HUGE deal, a serious embarrassment for the Capitol, and a spark for the rebellion. Instead of glory for his District, he champions solidarity.

The person he wins with might be Mukuro. Again, more on that later.

[fondcrimes]

hii u posted about poetry recently and mentioned the difficulty in finding a good poem, and specifically that you think the issue is pedagogical—i’d be so curious to hear more of your thoughts about where current(?) pedagogy might be insufficient and/or just your thoughts about contemporary poetry more broadly! no worries if you’d prefer not to though! 🫶

helloooo I would love to elaborate abt my post! thanks for asking (apologies if it gets super long though) I'm gonna break my response down into separate parts so I can better explain my perspective

I will preface this by saying I know I'm usually being haterish when I criticize the writing world in general. I understand I won't like everyone's writing and that doesn't take away from the value of a piece, but my somewhat uncharitable POV stems from my ongoing observation of writing trends and marketability (which is why we have colloquialisms like ig poetry, tumblr poetry, booktok etc). writing trends are not inherently shallow or reductive, however, we as both creators and consumers can observe how trying to sell writing produces specific "brands" of writers. the categorization of contemporary writing, to some extent, will always about marketability and branding, and then we know that digestible and palatable writing sells. it sells a whole lot! and that's not inherently bad either because that's entertainment, sometimes you just wanna read some bullshit. additionally, I don't see the value of discouraging people from reading when it's something I'm very passionate about and more people need to be reading anyway. I could talk about this in great length too but my main beef is with the over-saturation of "palatable" writing, writing that is marketed in a specific way that caters to the consumer rather than engaging an audience and provoking our curiosity and wonder. my main beef is that it creates a type of reader/consumer who is stagnant and not intellectually engaged. I think we're all too familiar with the sort of people who are more concerned with the marketable aesthetics of reading/intellectualism rather than actually using their brain *cough* booktok *cough* but the scope is much wider. I would say that neoliberal politics necessitate this mindset/level of literacy in order to function but that's such a loaded statement kgfkgjf anyway moving on~

in order to understand why people like shitty poetry, I have to understand why people like shitty writing and also why shitty writing exists in such great amounts. I kept going back to elementary school, where we made first contact with writing and reading interpretatively. underpaid overworked teachers already have it hard enough, I don't blame them for not being able to spark the joy of reading in every child they encounter. literacy is unbelievably complex and capitalism is like blood in the water. it’s also bad enough that kids are actively learning how to put themselves into like social boxes while their developing skills are placed into boxes of their own like gifted, advanced, remedial, etc. all that shit gets internalized too. when I refer to the "intellectual", I am speaking from the belief that each person has the potential to embody intellect, rather than adhere to a deluded elitist view of gatekeeping intelligence. I want readers to engage their intellectual selves because we're living in a cultural moment where it seems like nobody is using their brains anymore, nobody is thinking critically, and that's bc it's easy to shut your brain off. it dawned on me that if a child could be dissuaded from reading entirely due to bad experiences/treatment, a child could also be dissuaded from building analytical or evaluative skills of what they're reading. there are so many college students who can read but want to use chatgpt to write their essays... so many (voting-aged) adults who can read but consistently make bad-faith interpretations of tweets, articles, books, etc. I won't get into the marxism of it all but it goes back to the capitalist state, we need to be literate enough to work and participate in bureaucracy and get married and raise more workers but that's it, it's okay if our literacy stops there and I would argue politicians actually prefer that. but I'm not saying the alternative isn't difficult though... because it's meant to be!

ok so the pedagogy of it all. poetry is notorious for being kind of inaccessible to the common person for a variety of reasons but I'll focus on the fact that we're conditioned to prioritize convenience or become "lazy" readers. I didn't really know how pervasive this notion was until I was listening to ada limón talk about how people will straight up say they don't like poetry. she was talking about how really has more to do with how it's taught rather than what it is. I also reconsidered my own relationship with poetry as a form. I have the typical writer predisposition: my favorite book growing up was the giving tree, I wrote sad gay poems in high school and obviously I was a teenaged fangirl during the peak tumblr web weaving era. but I didn't think about poetry too deeply until a few years ago (during quarantine-ish) I decided I wanted to start writing seriously again after a series of depressive episodes and found my way back to contemporary poetry. I should say I'm veryyy biased and prefer studying modern poetry but I know a few things about that old greek shit too lol. I read poems I instantly really loved, but some poems even by the same poets fell flat or I straight up disliked, but I didn't know why I had those opinions. so I kind of became really obsessed with studying my favorite poems on my own, going line by line and figuring out the writing techniques and measuring their effectiveness. (I read a lotttt of writing criticism too)

now that I'm thinking about it, it was very adhd of me to obsessively read and reread short-form writing bc sometimes I simply don't have the attention span for a 20k-word creative nonfiction piece unfortunately lolll.... this was noticeably much more fun, esp compared to reading poetry in school elementary/middle/high school (even though I had enjoyed those classes too). as a teenager of the subversive aesthetic age, I still carried the notion that most poetry was about obfuscating meaning, or like purposefully being vague out of pretentiousness and exclusion. like I get why somebody would find poetry annoying, there's plenty of annoying poetry out there even in the literary world. all of this is to say that reciting poems in school or trying to teach poetry to students in absolutes (like this poem means this, this poem means that) is not conducive to comprehending the form/genre. you can’t achieve poetic understanding or connection to a poem through objectivity or removing yourself and your emotions. a poem is not just static, it’s meant to interact quite intimately with a reader. ada limón describes how transformative it can be leave a poem and come back to it. sometimes, the intimacy has more to do with the state of receptiveness than the text itself. poems are constantly concerned with emotional/somatic information whether you’re reading or writing them. I always explain it to myself in relationship terms, which is why it might feel impossible to build that relationship with something that seems doubly foreign

this doesn’t really stop at elementary school students. as you get older and read more poetry, you start to catch on and see that poets within a movement are effectively doing similar things, and I fear a good amount of poets are doing the same BORING or PREDICTABLE thing. (I will be nice and not name names)

it wasn't until I read a lot of poems that I noticed my favorite poems did the exact opposite.

this is one of my favorite poems everrrrr it made me write poetry bc I just wanted to do everything he did. it has also drastically shaped and informed my taste. so I will try to briefly explain how it has influenced my writing:

Let me begin this time knowing the drumming in my dreams is me inheriting the earth, is morning lighting up the rivers.

there have been weeks in my life where this line "inheriting the earth" played in my head over and over again like a mantra. "inherit" is such a loaded word, culturally and politically. I think I had been enamored by the sheer power of it, esp as a black person who has spent the majority of my life feeling unworthy of existing:

a brown child on a beach at dawn straining to see their future.

I had to sit with that feeling and characterize its meaning. for me, "inheriting the earth" immediately looked like a stampede of horses fearlessly galloping across the plains:

Let me run at break-neck speeds toward sceneries of doubt.

I could say a lot more about this poem, but moving on~

some valuable lessons I learned from being inspired by poetry: kill my pride and obliterate my quest for originality. at this point, I've embraced being a copycat:

because in my noble solitude, I have inherited nothing.

Our heads turned alongside the window, chasing a breakneck road.

I read jackson's poem up and down, left to right, tried to solve it like a rubik's cube. I wanted to turn my love for this poem into data points I could use in my own writing, but I kept hitting a wall. I couldn't shake the feeling I was stalling something inevitable, circling the truth embedded in my writing like an eagle stalking its prey. I considered the strain of the futureless brown child:

objects of my brutal childhood fascination

an instinctive deserter at the finale of my girlhood

one day I stumbled upon this article, the pieces suddenly started to come together:

as a society, we do entirely too much about youth and maintaining youth, so much to the point where the cultural obsession is perverse and the child is neglected. I only say this to offer an alternative, wherein we consider the childhood self not as a means to regain lost "purity" and powerlessness, but to take our power back. I love this article so much; I think it perfectly captures why writers are constantly fighting themselves and their words. it's evident one's learned self-consciousness and uncertainty cause someone to over-explain and impede on the poem. this makes it a matter of emotional fidelity and trust, rather than technical skill or knowledge. if poetry is inaccessible, I think it's only because we have become inaccessible to ourselves. this is what I mean when I say a good poem is "distilled", it has more to do with the clarity of the feeling you're trying to evoke or convey. it requires self-knowledge and making space for yourself to maintain emotional fidelity if that's what you want (ofc you can also evoke vagueness or uncertainty through the clarity of the form). I wondered, how can a creative know what they're doing if they don't know themselves? soon I realized at its core, the writer struggling with words was an issue of trust, on some mary oliver wild geese shit. there is a great deal of trust involved when you let yourself wonder. and sorry it's hard for me not to get all writer-brained and idealistic about this subject so please bear with me when I say I have good news, we can always find the way back to ourselves.

I think poetry should be about trusting the self and others, trust that they won't shatter the fragility of you in their closed hand. good poetry is deep intimacy and touchy-feely shit. learning how to write hurts because you’re also learning how to unlearn. it's extremely hard to teach that in a society that is more concerned with making sure you learn how to become wholly alienated from yourself (I've written extensively about how this damages the creative spirit, I'll save you the rant). in the midst of my poetry renaissance, I developed a schema around poetry in my attempts to write poems that were intimate and personal and powerful. I wanted to read stunning poetry, so I approached every poem like its intent was to pierce my heart. ofc that doesn't have to be your approach, but as someone who somewhat struggled with subtext and implicit messaging as a child, I am super into patterns that help me reach meaning. but I could only develop taste or preference through knowing myself and listening to my creative impulses, letting art and words alter my heart and my mind. it's about all that mushy gushy woo woo therapy shit. it had to be about me regifting myself a sort of agency. the resting state of a poet is precarious and sometimes contradictory. I believe in trust but I still feel the urge to over-explain myself or my thoughts for manyyy reasons. sometimes I don't even fight that urge, but the point remains. in order to teach and understand poetry, you have to know yourself (your intentions, your haunts, your beliefs, etc). in order to trust the reader, we have to trust they know themselves, or at least are willing to learn how to do it.

Reader, I should have married you sooner.

[gonuclear]

i’m so mad i could bite the bark off a tree so humor me in my ranting. 

i saw this tiktok and while agreeing with it, almost just scrolled past it. but i decided to take a look at the comments to see if anyone agreed with my long held sentiment, and boy was that comment section like taking hit after hit of psychic damage. because everyone in there was right. the one that stood out to me the most was one of the first comments on the video: “they only like us in captivity, not in the wild.” 

especially on tiktok there is this massive trend of characters becoming trends, of people cherry picking aspects of said character in order to make them more palatable to the masses. i can’t speak on wednesday because i haven’t seen it, so i’ll be using the other most recent example of eddie from stranger things. (also seeing as he was one of the characters mentioned in the original video.) yes, i will admit i am not immune to my enjoyment of a character being influenced by their popularity. this works both ways; my enjoyment may increase or decrease depending on the content i see and how i feel about the character (you see someone enough and you kinda get tired of them, y’know?). but what happens, primarily on tiktok, is something so much worse than a character just becoming popular. 

it’s a wash of (typically) neurotypical, able bodied women (though men are not excluded from this) who don these characters they “love” as a costume without ever acknowledging why these characters actually behave the way they do. they venerate and romanticize traits that they’ll turn around and bully neurodivergent kids, teens, and adults for because to them it’s just a character. that’s not how people really act. 

they make behaviors and actions that are overtly, or sometimes even stereotypically, neurodivergent into a trend and for what? what’s the fucking point? what’s the point if when someone who is actually neurodivergent says they relate to a character because of that fact and all they get is told no? there’s such an obsession among neurotypical people and mainstream media with having a token “weirdo” and i can damn fucking near tell you with absolute certainty that whatever character it is will be noticeably neurodivergent to anyone who is neurodivergent as well. 

it seems like the fucking second anyone who’s neurodivergent claims a character as one of their own neurotypicals who act like they’re the final authority on characters vehemently tell them that they’re wrong. thank god i and many other neurodivergent folks have found circles in which this is accepted, and oftentimes a common occurrence, because our experience of fandom would be so much worse without it. 

the weirdos are made for us. characters like eddie are made for the kids who played dnd, who listened to music they said belonged to the devil, who never fit in and never really wanted to. do you know how gratifying it is to see a character that’s just as loud and dramatic as you are on tv when you’ve been made fun of for the same thing your whole life? how it feels to see them be loved and appreciated and valued by their friends? the hope it gives you to see them be included, and never pushed away or ignored? 

there is a camaraderie built between these types of characters and their fans. a kinship, a bond formed when you look at a character and think “hey, they’re just like me”. but something in that bond is damaged when the kinds of people who would make fun of you, or make fun of the character should they exist in real life, try to change the narrative and say that character belongs to only them. they use the characters’ actions as trends then when neurodivergent people act that way in real life they’re recorded in public or have their videos reposted with captions making fun of them for just being themselves. i’m not saying you can’t enjoy a character, but at a certain point you have to realize that sometimes you’re not the target audience, and when the target audience speaks up you damn well better listen. 

[the-study-of-fandoms]

Sometimes I am reminded that James Cameron is a cishet white man writing for what he assumes is a majority cishet white audience. Even though fandom spaces tend to be more queer, there is a lot of heteronormativity in fandoms and especially fanfiction. I have many thoughts, so this is going to be several parts. 

One of my big questions that is not answered in canon is the way that Tsahiks and tsakarem work. I think the problem with this is that we only know how Neytiri was chosen, not Ronal or Mo’at. The majority of the fandom has fallen into this idea that 1. Tsahik is a gendered role, specifically feminine and 2. the tsahik is just the mate of the olo’eyktan. However, it is infintely more interesting to consider that Tsahik is a spiritual role, and not just anyone would be suited to interpreting a deity’s messages. If we say that only people of a certain bloodline are able to do so, that gets into weird territory. Wouldn’t it make more sense that Eywa choses the tsakarem by sending a sign to the current Tsahik, and James Cameron just made the current canon tsakarem their daughters for his own convenient narrative vs. being a universal truth. And with Neytiri taking over for her sister, I chose to believe that Eywa chose her as a placeholder and teacher for Kiri to actually become the next Tsahik. 

If we want to queer the narrative, we need to separate the idea of Tsahiks from both gender and the sexual/romantic position of mating to the olo’eyktan. It’s one of the things I don’t like about the comics, that all the Tsahiks are female and the only female olo’eyktan is also Tsahik, like that makes it more palatable. If the olo’eyktan can be chosen for their skills, then the tsahik is chosen for a reason, and anyone of any gender should be considered for both. Neteyam and Kiri or Ao’nung and Tsireya should both be able to serve their clans in their respective roles as siblings and partners, rather than assuming if one of them gets mated the other will be ousted from the role they trained for their entire life.