#which is a super bizarre evolution for me

[elesssar]

there are so many things in my life that are so weird rn so many big scary new things and idek. idek.

[mayomkun]

In the Sandman, since Dream 'came into existence once lifeforms capable of dreaming appeared in the universe', I wonder what that lifeform is and what did it dream of. Like what is the first dream in the universe about.

[analyzingadventure]

[Ni/digitalgate02 here] See, this is what i've been thinking for ages and i don't like to limit myself into what is stated on wikimon and other fansites' databases to make lines... They're not a mandatory rule, and with things like the new TCG DigiCa they just embraced the wild combos you can make and evolution rules are by card color and not by specific lines (tho they do have some... suggestions now on the cards, i think?)

i also like the wild combos like Tailmon's OG Adv/02 line?? Which is slime → cat blob → puppy → cat → angel woman → PINK FLUFFY DRAGON

I wish we had more things like these... At least consistent theme, but not like Agu → Grey → MetalGrey → WarGrey sort of line... (and look, i love this line, it just... I love the design + shapes to change a little... ya got me?)

i love most of the main kid/protag mons and their forms, tho...

Like to be fair to Toei/Bandai, there is partially a reason to why the main partners especially tend to have such linear, specific evolution trees; not only because it makes the Digimon easier to sell, but also because the characters need to be easily recognizable to small children. Like the main character(s) having really bizarre evolutions could make it hard for a child to keep up with who's who (especially if they missed an episode), while having very consistent and strong thematic and color coding (etc) will make it always super easy for kids to keep up with. So I understand WHY the main partners tend to be the way they are, it just is the way it is. (It's also why I really loved the evolutions in Survive because aside from Agumon's Vaccine-line, that shit was WILD and I was LIVING for it, Dracumon alone had me losing my fucking shit, Floramon too)

Also I do feel like the emphasis on evolution lines is something the fandom tends to enforce more than Bandai/Toei. And, much to my shock and horror, a lot of people do kind of dislike wild evolutions, some people prefer the Pokémon-esque strict evolution lines. (See: every person who has ever made fun of Tailmon's evolution line for "not making sense") So often I see people share their Tamer OCs and their partner Digimon with full evolution lines and more often than not it's just a known partner Digimon with their default evolution line. Everybody has their own comfort food, and strict evolution lines are just that for some people. Which is fine, I'm just a little 🔪 if anybody tries to enforce strict evolution lines in places they don't belong (aka any space for creativity)

But indeed, I wish we could see more Wild Evolutions in canon more often, or at least have the main partner's evolutions change things up a little more than they tend to (honestly probably the best protag evolution is Gumdramon -> Arresterdramon, like despite the mostly identical color palette and many key visual elements, they really do look nothing alike and yet the evolution feels like a natural progression and is still easily recognizable, really love that.)

[thebroccolination]

I try not to make snap judgments in the moment.

A long time ago, a friend of mine waxed poetic about why she hated a celebrity. Friend A told us horrible stuff she remembered them saying, and we were all fairly repulsed.

Then Friend B said, “I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of someone else.”

Friend A frowned. “No. Wait, why?”

“Because That Celebrity did a graduation speech and spoke out against what you’re saying. It’s on YouTube.”

Friend C said, “That’s even worse, then. Hypocrite. Be upfront about your terrible personality traits.”

Friend B said, “Hang on, I’ll look it up.”

And this is when I felt strange, because Friend B was the only one doing research on their phone while the rest of us just watched and waited in expectant silence. Friend C had even buckled down on Celebrity Being Bad even though they’d only just heard some accusations from Friend A minutes before. We trust our friends to have done the research, I think.

Seconds later, Friend B said, “Yeah, you’ve been talking about Another Celebrity.” They read aloud part of an article that quoted the same things Friend A had just told us.

Friend A sat with that for a second, forehead creased, and then said, “Oh, fuck. They were in that movie together! I’ve tarred the wrong feather. Sorry, Celebrity.”

We laughed and moved on.

We were all in our early twenties at the time, and that exchange took up maybe ten minutes of a several-hour hangout during which more exciting things probably happened. It stayed with me, though, and recently while I was scrolling through a comment section, I saw someone claim, “This person said [horrible bigoted thing],” and sixteen people replied with variations on, “EW, I hate them now.” They were all likely strangers, but there was this feral nature in how amenable they were to accept a terrible thing without any evidence at all. (Would someone on the internet lie?)

It wasn’t the first time. I see that exact scenario play out at least once a week. A person accuses someone of a bad thing, some commenters say, “Really?”, the person says, “Yup,” and the commenters say, “Sounds legit. Fuck that person.”

And it strikes me as bizarre that people can just…automatically accept the worst they hear about others without proof. What’s worse, the burden of evidence isn’t on the person making the claim—it’s on whoever cares enough to do the research. I don’t know if there’s a cultural element at play here, but I do suspect that people raised in the United States of Love the Sinner Hate the Sin have a super special proclivity to Moral Judgment. Regardless of one’s cultural faith or religion or lack thereof, I think the States’ particular brand of cultural Christianity seeps into everything and encourages our righteous anger and a subsequent hobby of enthusiastic othering. I see it online constantly, especially in fandom, dressed up as progressive activism: “This person has sinned, and we must punish them.”

There’s rarely much focus on any potential evolution or growth of the accused—just judgment and punishment. But that’s another topic.

Mostly I find it disturbing that so many of us seem to hope that someone else has Done Wrong. So vehemently that they’ll believe a terrible thing from some random person online without looking it up themselves. Username lovelysharktesticles probably did their research, and even if they didn’t, the person they’re accusing is human, so they probably did something bad even if it’s not this thing. Pitchfork ‘em.

That’s not to say that everyone needs to do an internet search on their phones whenever someone makes a casual claim in conversation. I’ve done it, and sometimes the person is right that Someone Said a Bigoted Thing, but they were wrong about which bigoted thing. Or they’ve missed some crucial piece of context that doesn’t explain away what they did, but it takes the severity down several notches. When it’s something I don’t want to or have no way to research in the moment, I just say, “Really?” and then make neutral noises after that. If I remember, I’ll look it up later. That’s if the conversation is in person.

Online, in public spaces, I rarely trash talk anyone. Privately, in chats or whatnot, it’s easier to open a window and do five seconds of research. It’s just a habit at this point. Human memories are notoriously unreliable, judgment is a bonding exercise, and I won’t be told who to judge by a mob parroting accusations they heard from someone else.

I just hope the burden shifts to the person making the accusation, because there are some wild claims out there, and not all of them are true.

[stillness-in-green]

Chapter Thoughts: 364, Why We Wield Power

This one got long. Have a jump!

Ujiko and All For One

O  Welcome back, Shie Hassaikai arc relevance!  Shame you had to be for nothing more than AFO’s “This isn’t even my final form” moment, but at least it’s something.  I do kind of wonder, however, how AFO administered this to himself?  Like, the Ujiko bit is a flashback; he’s clearly in the hospital lab, recording this message he’ll leave, and the thing he’s looking at is one of the bullets, not far from the device Shigaraki will later scavenge them from.  So what exactly did Ujiko leave AFO?  We don’t see it, just the kitty ear helmet.

If it were something external, then AFO would have had to have used it as Endeavor was burning him up, and I don’t recall seeing anything like that, even in the vague form of e.g. the strange close-up of Dabi flashing his collar at Hawks that turned out to be foreshadowing a micro camera.  I suppose it could just have been in a vial that was destroyed, splashing its contents onto AFO’s skin?  Or it was something he consumed/injected in advance, that was, idk, somehow triggered to his heartbeat stopping?  It’s a little on the handwavy side, is what I mean to say.

O  Every time the story brings up the Quirk Doomsday Theory (interesting that Ujiko calls it that now, too, despite that phrasing having drifted considerably from his initial terminology of Paranormal Singularity Theory), I wonder again if it’s ever going to seriously engage with the ramifications of it, and how it could even do so while still centering Deku and the rest of his class.  High schoolers, even super-powered ones, are not traditionally extremely well-equipped for dealing with matters like “devastation resulting from human evolution.”  (We might actually have seen some movement on this front in this very chapter, actually, so more on this below!)

O  Ujiko leaving AFO presents while nostalgically waxing fond about him is so cute.  God, that horrible little old man (affectionate) is so in love.  On which note…

You guys, I had a whole thing I was going to say about Ujiko wishing AFO’s heart would not be filled with hate.  It was so touching!  And moreover, it made so much sense!  It perfectly explained Ujiko’s strange ambivalence towards giving Shigaraki AFO, his bizarre attempt to pump the brakes on something we’re later told had been his and AFO’s goal for decades!  It slotted right in with his talk about loving traits of AFO’s that are inherently tied to AFO’s own body, things won’t go with him to Shigaraki’s body!  It added interesting nuances to his characterization, opening up possibilities that he went along with the bodyjacking plans because it’s what AFO wanted, but privately, he wished he could have found another way to get the man OFA, a way that wouldn’t require Ujiko losing those eyes and voice and smile he loved so dearly, or seeing that Buddha-like smile being tainted with hatred.(1)

And then the Viz official came out and it turned out, no, actually, the fan translators just got confused because Ujiko is an old man who uses extremely archaic language, and actually what he said was that he does want AFO’s heart to be filled with hate.

See, this shit is why I wait for official releases before doing chapter response posts.

Anyway, it’s fine, I guess.  It’s what AFO wants, and what AFO wants is of course also what Ujiko wants.  His heartfelt wish is for AFO to achieve his dreams—it’s sweet, in their awful way!  But man, it just doesn’t click like I first thought it did.  Why frame the line with, “Allow me to speak my mind,” as if it’s some big secret that Ujiko is nuts about his seventy-year husbando?  Also, it leaves that weird characterization gap about Ujiko’s reticence to give Shigaraki the AFO quirk wide open.  And there I was about to reconsider the AFO retcon theory!(2)

O  I deeply wish I could love AFO’s talk about passing the baton to Shigaraki.  It’s so well aligned with everything I liked about early-series AFO, and so horribly unsatisfying in execution.  Rather than me repeating myself, please go ahead and fill in more of my usual kvetching about the bizarre conflation of AFO-the-man with AFO-the-quirk and how badly I want AFO and/or Horikoshi to read an article on the Teleportation Paradox.  Maybe he could give Nolan’s The Prestige a spin.

That said, I do like that—while AFO’s de-aging is exactly as arbitrary as all of Hori’s ticking clocks of late—you can at least say, well, AFO is over a hundred years old, so it’s going to take longer to rewind him than e.g. Eri rewinding her father out of existence in a matter of seconds, especially since it’s coming in the form of something Ujiko whipped up, rather than just being one big concentrated, uncontrolled blast.

I do feel this runs afoul of the issue that a villain dealing with AFO absolves the heroes of having to figure out what to do about him, and that’s kind of giving the heroes a narratively unearned easy out.  But I admit I didn’t expect the villain to be AFO himself!  And, well, at least it’ll be fun to see him as a teenager, or even a child.  Looking forward to seeing if heroes will still be willing to try to beat the piss out of him at that juncture.

O  I’m very curious as to whether AFO has something specific in mind when he talks about thwarting the future of the entire world.  It could just be more of his Evil Overlord talk, a generic statement about how he plans to rule, but the phrasing, “An act which thwarts the future they envision,” implies that he’s already done the brainstorming to come up with an appropriate atrocity.

Which is all to say, oh heck, is whatever he’s hinting at finally going to be the thing that brings Ujiko’s quirk singularity theory into focus?  It’s been established that quirks have become the norm, and since they’re the norm, that means they’re an intrinsic part of the future people everywhere in the world envision.  So if AFO has come up with some sort of way to affect quirks en masse, that would certainly qualify as global future-thwarting. It’s also close enough to Aoyama’s depiction of AFO’s goals re: using quirks to arbitrate with countries who need what that quirk offers to track with AFO saying Aoyama was merely “wrong in some of the details.”

I’ve long thought that the only surefire way to save humanity from the future Ujiko theorizes is in store for them would be to remove quirks entirely, but given the series’ intentional conflation of a person’s quirk with their inherent nature/personality, as well as the story’s nature as an energetic and optimistic battle narrative, taking away all quirks is an extremely fraught topic.  I’ll be very interested to see how the story navigates that idea if it goes for it.

O  This is such a fascinatingly melancholy panel.  Maybe he’s being totally straightforward here, and it’s just meant to come across as alien in the totality of its evil, and thus scary, but I do wonder.  If nothing else, he did once wish for his brother to join him, you know?

Also interesting that his eyes look the same as Tomura’s when Vestige!AFO is piloting Tomura around.  AFO’s eyes always have looked like this in flashback scenes, of course, but somehow it had never struck me that ShigAFO’s foggy, blank eyes were anything other than an indication of his loss of control.  (Possible evidence towards AFO having fought a losing battle against the biological determinism of his own quirk decades ago?)

Timothy “No Idea What He’s Talking About” Agpar

O  His rhetoric here about children and adults sounds nice, but frankly, it’s not even in line with how Star acted, much less heroes as a broad category.  BNHA deals so much in the idea of heroes as people who wanted to be rich, famous, admired as Strongest, or even just to generically “save” people; the only heroes I can think of off the top of my head who are giving serious thought to future generations are Nighteye (future vision), Nedzu (super intelligence; school principal), Best Jeanist (self-appointed mentor to troubled youth), and Aizawa (school teacher, dead bestie trauma).

The rest?  Not so much.  Even the manga’s most iconic hero had to be browbeaten by several acquaintances, a death-timer prophecy from his sidekick, and a horrific injury from his nemesis before he was willing to give serious consideration to the next generation.  I’m pretty damn sure Deku is not thinking about future generations when he wields his power; he is rather explicitly thinking about the people he knows and cares about.  Indeed, the OFA council about how he probably won’t be able to pass OFA forward anymore pretty well insured that.

Star & Stripe? Who Tim apparently knew personally enough to be carrying around a childhood photo in the wake of her loss?(3)

Nothing we learned about that woman in the brief time we had her suggested that her primary motivation was building the foundation for the future.  She wanted to save people, sure, but that desire was all tied up in saving people BESTEST and MOSTEST.  She had pouty angst sessions about not being able to make herself stronger than All Might; she explicitly styled her hair “like All Might but moreso.”  Cathleen Bate, as far as we saw her, was entirely preoccupied with a hero of her current time/the previous generation,(4) not thinking at all about legacies and the children of the world to come.

Also, “Heroes use their powers to support future generations,” is a weird thing to claim when any given villain threatens just as many old people as they do young people.  (See e.g. Overhaul putting Pops in a coma or the old granny Toga must have at least harmed and might have done worse to in order to get her blood.)

All told, I can’t help but feel that these are the words of a man on the cusp of grandparenthood, not a man who understands heroics as a job class.

One more thing: @robotlesbianjavert brought this up first in some talk about the chapter, but like…  Many of the Pro Heroes we’re familiar with are in their early 20s to early 30s.  Maybe that seems really old to the target audience of HeroAca, but it is actually really quite young.  Edgeshot is 34.  That’s barely anything; he has got a whole life and career ahead of him in danger of being snuffed out.  It’s a noble sacrifice or whatever, sure, but maybe the manga could just call it that instead of playing into the bizarre Your Life Is Over When You Graduate High School messaging so typical of school setting manga?

At best, I can see the implications of, “Well, once you’re out of school, it’s all downhill from there and you might as well resign yourself to laying the ground for future generations!  Nothing to live for that’s just for you anymore!” as being in keeping with Japanese attitudes towards one’s responsibilities once one joins the workplace, but even so, it’s pretty grim.

That Ninja I Hate (Beware of All-Caps)

O  This Edgeshot twist is dumb it is SO dumb.  I cannot believe I have spent the last 100+ chapters waiting for someone to tie that damn ninja around a tree and now he’s going to escort himself out of the story with a noble sacrifice that doesn’t even involve dying and could presumably be reversed in the epilogue with a heart transplant THAT’S RIGHT, HORI, DON’T THINK I’VE FORGOTTEN THAT HEART TRANSPLANTS EXIST.

Christ.  Edgeshot has never even interacted with Bakugou.  Why in god’s name couldn’t we have gotten Fiber Master working on muscle fibers and let Jeanist have this?  That would have actual relevance and weight.  This?  For fuck’s sake, it doesn’t even have the bookending quality of a hero who failed to save Bakugou in the first chapter making up for that failure now, because Edgeshot wasn’t involved with the Sludge Villain fight.

THROWING US A REVEAL ABOUT EDGESHOT AND JEANIST BEING SCHOOL FRIENDS AFTER 300 CHAPTERS OF COMPLETELY PROFESSIONAL INTERACTIONS BETWEEN THEM DOES NOT ASSUAGE MY SUSPICIONS OF THIS WHOLE ARC BEING ONE BIG RETCON, HORI.

My god, they wouldn’t even have been in the same grade: Jeanist would have been in his senior year when Edgeshot was a freshman.  And I notice Edgeshot wasn’t exactly leaping to use his own body to stitch up the gaping wound in All Might’s side six years ago, or become his bestie Best Jeanist’s new lung after Kamino.  

This should have been Jeanist’s moment.  He’s the one who has the established relationship with Bakugou, the one who wanted to see what kind of hero Bakugou would become, the one invested in his future.  And as silly as Jeanist being able to use Fiber Master to do open heart surgery in field conditions would have been, it would have been far less silly than Edgeshot proclaiming that a super move that lets him piece others’ bodies—a move he typically uses on peoples’ lungs or center torso regions(5)—gives him enough knowledge to just set himself in Bakugou’s chest and be his hearIT’S SO DUMB I DON’T EVEN WANT TO TYPE IT.  GOD.

Further, as others have said, it’s a real cop-out on building any tension on Bakugou’s death.  No, I never believed for a second that Bakugou would stay dead, but seriously, two chapters?  That’s it?  All the drama and gnashing of teeth for two chapters?  This feels less like a planned story event and more like social media exploded so hard about Bakugou’s death that Horikoshi’s editor was like, “Okay, you need to get Bakugou back in the story now.”

It’s just real bad, y’all.  Two weeks out from the initial spoiler leaks and I’m still not over how incredibly, high octane stupid it is.

Odds & Ends

O  I am amused by the implication that the reason Shigaraki only recovered a small handful of bullets is that Ujiko only made a single perfunctory batch of them before turning his attention to aspects of their contents he found more interesting.

O  The close-up on AFO’s mouth is lewd the sort of thing I’d normally expect to be a precursor to some sort of breath weapon attack, but actually I suspect he’s just enjoying breathing without a tube down his throat for the first time in seven years.

O  First thing AFO does after regenerating is steal a cape off a doomed hero.  Truly, he is his student’s teacher.

O  Amused at Tim Star Wars and the Prez calling Tomura by his given name.  Do they think Tomura is Shigaraki’s villain name, or does Horikoshi just think all Americans are that forward?

O  A typo for “rein in,” or the POTUS thinking the US should take command during these troubled times?

–-FOOTNOTES--

1:  Also a way that wouldn’t have required any subsequent dinner dates be between Ujiko and a man who, to all appearances, is some fifty years his junior.  It’s always so awkward when restaurant servers assume your husband is actually your son, you know?

2:  Anon that sent the ask about said theory, if you’re reading this, I swear I’m still prodding at a post about it.  It’s just trying to turn into one of my essays, is all.

3: Which I feel like raises some questions about cronyism in the HeroAca USA armed forces, but that's neither here nor there.

4:  All Might was an active adult hero when he saved her, which would thematically put him in the previous generation, but they’re also concurrently active when she grows up.  Also, numerically speaking, he’s in his mid-late 50s, while she’s 42—not a big enough gap to be generational.

5:  And would it have been so hard to dig up a panel from Kamino of Edgeshot debilitating Kurogiri, rather than use two pages from the same scene—the same chapter, even!—of Edgeshot blitzing the first wave of the PLF and claiming that as ample experience with body invasion?  “Yes, I have so much experience in invading other peoples’ bodies, from that one time in that one fight.”

[sabadorks]

I'm watching the Metal Evolution documentary series from 2011 and i have a few thoughts:

Episodes 1-3

lmao at Yngwie Malmsteen just having a bunch of Ferraris just parked as randomly as possible in his garden.

I was not expecting Ronnie James Dio's mantlepiece to be full of statuettes of princesses and dragons?

No Arthur Brown? Bruh I'm pretty sure his performance of Fire contributed more to the look of metal than anything else (although gay leather culture probably contributed just as much)

NWOBHM

my verdict is that yes, Def Leppard do belong to the movement just because I really like them

Glam Metal

despite what they claim in the episode, the genre had a renaissance and it did manage to attract an awful lot of young people. But I guess it was too hard to take a look to what was happening in Europe in the mid/late 2000s (especially in Swden where they had a whole movement called the New Wave of Swedish Sleaze)

also very important considering the two episodes that follow this one: i like that the glam metal dudes seem to have a sense of humor, self awareness and a tendency to mind their own business.

also after watching the following two episodes, very sad that is apparently a bad thing for a band to have a sense of showmanship and wanting people to be entertained and have a good time.

Thrash Metal

yeah yeah you're better than the glam metal band because you don't wear makeup and spandex.

I absolutely dislike Lars Ulrich but it is super funny to listen to him try to convince everyone that the black album was not them selling out tho.

hysterically funny to see the people who opened the episode mocking glam metal bands for wanting to have crossover appeal not only celebrating the popularity of the black album but trying to justify the fact that each and every one of them changed their sound to try and replicate metallica's success?

the episode about thrash metal really made me realize that i just don't like the way a lot of US bands sound (Megadeth are the exception). Gonna stick with the European bands.

Grunge

Holy fuck I thought the thrash metal dudes were unsufferable but jesus fucking christ the grunge people are so much worse. "Glam metal was ridiculous and stupid unlike us who are very smart and deep and original and have integrity and personality" like settle down dude, you're not the second coming of the christ.

we have here a grunge producer dude who just informed us that metal is noisy and the songwriting is shit unlike grunge which is intelligent and apparently full of musical geniuses. Not sure if the documentary people are trying to make everybody who was in a grunge band seem like cunts or if grunge musicians are even more elitist than metal musicians?

oh god now the grunge musicians are mad at the bands they influenced for being too derivative and not challenging enough. Very bizarre thing to criticise considering that grunge is overall really easy to digest both musically and lyrically?

these people just feel miserable like they have been complaining about everything, including grunge raising to mainstream popularity. Buddy I don't know how to tell you this, you decided to sign a contract with a major label?

why on earth did they dedicate a whole episode to grunge God only knows considering that everybody here made it pretty clear that they want nothing to do with metal.

[bairusongassignment2]

Blog #2

Start by discussing the evolution of the armor of Metroid series' protagonist, Samus Aran. We won't cover every version, as that's not necessary. Instead, we'll focus on a few of the most iconic ones.

Samus, as one of the earliest heroines in video game history, was heavily influenced by the sci-fi movies of the time. In her role as a heroine, she also pays homage to Ripley, the protagonist of the Alien series (There are many connections between the Metroid series and the Alien series, but that's not our main focus here).

Initially, due to the target audience (predominantly heterosexual male gamers), Samus's human appearance was depicted as a blonde bombshell in a bodysuit. Her most common appearance, however, is based on a completely gender-concealing (and super cool) armored suit. Due to the era (1985), the sci-fi aesthetic back then was still very much in the realm of the straightforward and bizarre designs seen in Star Wars. Consequently, Samus's armor was rather bulky. Moreover, due to the limitations of the game graphics (8-bit), her signature weapon – the arm cannon – wasn't easily noticeable (unless you looked at the game cartridge's box art).

Samus in the FC game Metroid (1985)

After some time, in 1994, the most iconic installment of the Metroid series, Super Metroid, was released. At this point, Samus's usual appearance had achieved a widely recognized sense of balance.

Samus in the SFC game Super Metroid (1994)

The advancements in graphics made her look less bulky. The rhythmic geometric segmentation of her appearance added a lot of vitality, without losing her characteristic tall stature. This balanced look was so well-received that her image remained largely unchanged for a long time (almost 16 years).

Then came the era of 3D gaming, and Samus's character finally gained depth with the addition of the z-axis.

Samus in the NGC game Metroid Prime (2002)

At this point, Samus's appearance reached a kind of extreme, it became immensely bulky, with exaggerated shoulder width and thick upper arms. I even wondered how a woman's skeleton could fit inside such a massive, all-encompassing suit of armor. Her physique and proportions even surpassed those of Halo's Master Chief (another character completely encased in armor, but male). But it's precisely because of this that Samus became one of the most iconic female characters in gaming. Yet, many players who weren't fans would often mistake her gender at first glance.

Samus in the NS game Metroid Dread (2021)

Perhaps it was a case of extremes leading to a reversal, or the artists finding a new equilibrium. In the latest sequel, Metroid Dread, Samus's feminine curves are much more emphasized. Her body lines are closer to that of a typical human form, and the proportions are no longer overly exaggerated. Soft material elements have been added between the metallic armor segments (which somewhat tie into the storyline), creating a harmonious blend of rigid and soft lines, and the color scheme is much richer. This retraction in the design's tension doesn't diminish Samus; instead, it perfectly aligns with the current aesthetic trends in sci-fi themed games. But this is just the beginning; this new balance is leading her image towards a completely new style.

To demonstrate how this discussion is closely related to me, let's take a simple look at my own fan art.

Sketch A (02 Feb, 2021)

Sketch B (01 Nov, 2023)

These were just casual sketches. Nearly three years separate these two drafts. Setting aside the fact that I haven't made much progress, in sketch A, I experimented with a composition made entirely of straight lines, while in B, I attempted to bring the image back to curvilinear elements. This is, in fact, one of the most significant characteristics of Samus's image: the rich use of curves. It turns out that curves are easier to handle, and I was able to capture her features without resorting to exaggerated proportions. Unfortunately, with B, it seems I couldn't quite get the color palette right. Maybe in future attempts, I could be bolder, perhaps even trying entirely new color schemes.

References

Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems (1985) Metroid [Video Game]. Nintendo.

Alien (1979) Directed by R. Scott [Feature Film]. 20th Century Studios.

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) Directed by G. Lucas [Feature Film]. Lucas Film Ltd. Production.

Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems (1994) Super Metroid [Video Game]. Nintendo.

Retro Studios (2002) Metroid Prime [Video Game]. Nintendo.

Bungie (2001) Halo: Combat Evolved [Video Game]. Microsoft Game Studios.

Mercury Steam, Nintendo EPD (2021) Metroid Dread [Video Game]. Nintendo.

[bulgariansumo]

Welcome to the second part of my Mario Movie Retrospective. Here's the first part if you're interested.

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

This movie can be fun at times, and if nothing else, a testament that no matter how many things go wrong, you can still wind up with a piece of art that is charming in its own way to some people. 

But like the tagline says, this ain’t no game. It has enough to make it bizarre on its own, but it gets even weirder when considering it in the context of the franchise’s history.

I first saw this movie in the early 2000’s, not 10 years after its release, and I remember being so confused. Why is Mario so gruff? Why doesn’t Luigi have a mustache? Why does everything look so dark? 

Why are Mario and Luigi from the real world?

In the late 80’s/early 90’s, the franchise cemented that Mario and Luigi were plumbers from Brooklyn before stumbling into the Mushroom Kingdom. This is especially true in US-produced media like the DiC cartoons, the Mario Ice Capades, and Hotel Mario. I think this movie is the last thing to reference that before the 2023 one. 

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island got released in 1995, which has it so that the brothers are born in the Mushroom Kingdom, and that’s the story many games afterward go with. Charles Martinet’s portrayal of the Mario Bros. forewent a Brooklyn accent entirely starting from 1996, becoming iconic soon after. 

Mario’s image and premise changed drastically in a short window of time. If you’re like me and got into the series during Super Mario 64 or after, there’s a lot in previous portrayals of Mario and Luigi that feel foreign. People my age and younger can be a little unfair to this movie for that reason. It’s something I always found grating.

Besides, there’s enough to criticize as it is. I can still see the cartoons as Mario-related. Even if I was a kid who grew up on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, I’d still be deeply confused if I went into “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and got hit with a loredump about evolution and parallel universes.

As you might recall from last time, each Mario Movie faces a dilemma: How to stretch such a simple premise to movie length without adding so much that it feels divorced from the source material? How to balance making it a movie and making it Mario?

The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach focused more on the Mario. Sure, it had Mario and Luigi go on a mandatory treasure hunt for power ups, but even then, that movie had to throw in walking montages to make it to an hour.

The live action movie focused more on the movie. And its relationship with the source material? They see each other from time to time, but, well… someone’s paying alimony. The movie wasn’t always meant to stray so far, judging by the earlier scripts, but it changed so many hands on the way to completion that things got lost, rewritten, or outright ignored.

There’s a lot to cover when talking about this movie. It’s a little more character-focused than the previous one, so let’s start with the cast.

Mario - This Mario has no time to dream or think about what-ifs. He’s a plumber; he’s got work to do and bills to pay. A cautious man, getting thrust into adventure is not his idea of a good time. Though he calls Luigi his brother, he found him as a baby and raised him, so he’s more like Luigi’s father (-figure.) I find it interesting that though Mario had no official personality at this point, both The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach and the cartoons went with more optimistic, determined portrayals that share a lot with how he’s depicted now. This may be the only version to deviate from that. 

Luigi - He’s a young, starry-eyed dreamer who wants to believe there’s something more to the world than meets the eye, like parallel dimensions, aliens, and so on. He’s endearingly awkward at times and becomes lovestruck with Daisy at first sight. Extremely impulsive, he’s neither the brightest nor the strongest, but he has heart. Also, he is a gamer. This Luigi just so happens to be the protagonist. …Is anyone else getting deja vu? 

Daisy - Not yet known as Peach in the US, the writers must’ve felt Toadstool wasn’t the most charming name for a love interest, nor realistic. This version is raised in the real world, after all. Luckily for them, someone along the way discovered that a Princess Daisy existed, which was kind of a deep cut at the time; she wasn’t really an established character yet. In this movie, Daisy is a passionate archeologist, feeling a connection to dinosaur bones. The kind of girl who takes her date to a dig site. While she does spend a chunk of the movie in peril, she’s shown to be willing to stand up for herself and resourceful enough to eventually escape capture. Fun Fact(?): Allegedly, she has a character arc that was completely cut from the theatrical release. The extended cut is available, but I’m only focusing on the theatrical version because it’s what most people have seen. 

Koopa - This human version of Koopa/Bowser lacks the brute force of others and is instead more conniving. He reigns over the perpetually exploding Dinohattan. He’s also very concerned with germs. His motivation is closely tied with the movie’s plot, so bear with me. When the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs hit, it did not kill the dinosaurs, it just threw them and some fungus into an alternate dimension where they evolved into humanoids. Stay with me. A kingdom developed in this dimension before being taken over by Koopa around the time of Daisy’s birth. He used a machine to de-evolve her father into fungus. Daisy’s mother flees through the dimensional portal into New York, leaving her with some nuns before going back, only to be killed by Koopa. She left a necklace with Daisy containing a meteor shard, which will merge both dimensions back into one when placed back into the meteor. Koopa wants to merge both dimensions because the dino dimension has much less natural resources than the real world, and they’re not doing well. Also, he wants to turn humans into monkeys and rule both worlds. He sends some henchmen to kidnap Daisy in order to get the necklace back, but also because she’s the only one who can insert it into the rest of the meteor. Mario and Luigi end up taking the necklace, which is why he hates them.

Toad - A musician protesting Koopa’s reign, spreading rumors that the fungus infesting the city is the true king. He’s arrested along with Mario and Luigi before being forcefully devolved into a Goomba and placed into servitude. Despite this, he retains his morals (and harmonica) and helps the protagonists.

Iggy and Spike - Koopa’s bumbling henchmen. He gets so fed up with them that he reverses the settings on his de-evolution machine to evolve them into smarter beings. This only results in them saying big words. They switch alliances off screen since the scene that shows them doing so got cut. All of their lines go on for too long, leaving their comedic bits falling flat.

Yoshi - Koopa’s pet who ends up helping Daisy after she shows him kindness. The practical effects make him look like a tinier version of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. He’s kinda cute in an ugly way.

Lena - Koopa’s girlfriend/wife/main henchwoman? Her jealousy of Daisy makes her go to the extreme in order to win back Koopa’s attention. At least I think that’s what her motivation is? She keeps talking about “what I deserve,” but never elaborates on what that means.

Big Bertha - Not a fish. Instead, she’s a club bouncer who steals the meteor necklace from Mario and Luigi with the help of her jumping boots. Mario woos her in order to steal the necklace, then ditches her in the middle of their dance. She ends up helping the brothers afterwards. Why? Good question. 

Daniella - Mario’s girlfriend. She and a few other women get kidnapped by Iggy and Spike, being mistaken for Daisy. Her actress looks a little like how Nintendo would later redesign Pauline from Donkey Kong, which I think is interesting.

As hinted at in Luigi’s description, he’s a lot like the previous movie’s Mario in his determination. The same is true with this Mario and the previous Luigi being the more practical ones. These traits are amped up in the live action movie characters. But while Luigi is the protagonist, Mario’s worldview sets the tone. The alternate dimension Luigi dreamed of–the main setting–is just a worse version of where they already live: a crowded city rife with crime and corruption.

Now, I originally wrote some stuff about Luigi’s idealism and Mario’s world weariness butting heads and how it represents the older characters vs. the younger characters in this movie. Something-something about fighting the power and believing in yourself. That didn’t quite hold up after a rewatch. 

Mario’s willing to stick up for himself and anyone who he feels needs it (meanwhile, Luigi tries to sell him out to the cops.) His and Luigi’s conflict comes from Mario not believing hard enough. Nothing is impossible; that’s Luigi’s motto and the movie’s. He believes fungus is telling him to use bombs, he’ll jump off a cliff so long as he believes it’ll be okay, and he’s right every time.

Undermining this conflict is the fact that Mario will also do things at random. What’s his plan for sneaking back into Koopa’s tower? Turn off the heating system, steal some clothes, ???, profit!

This is an overarching issue in the writing: Everyone just kinda does stuff for no reason, conveniently moving the plot to where it needs to be. Characters’ alliances change between scenes. Important items appear and disappear at whim. Some of this is due to scenes that were cut, but others are unexplained. It leaves the movie feeling like it’s falling apart after the first hour.

Another writing issue is that the movie treats lines that make no sense like the hardest one-liners ever dropped. “You know what I love about mud? It’s clean and it’s dirty at the same time.” –Koopa, 1993. Cool, what does that mean?

There’s bright spots in the writing, though. It can have fun with itself, leading to jokes I enjoy, like the reveal of Mario and Luigi’s last name, the elevator scene, and some visual gags. 

Everyone in charge of the visuals–the practical effects, CGI, costume, and makeup artists–did a fantastic job bringing the settings to life, even if they’re not what anyone would expect from the title. 

The music score is surprisingly full of wonder, but something I noticed when listening to this soundtrack vs. The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach’s is that the latter was filled with arrangements of songs from the game. The live action movie plays the Super Mario Bros. theme for exactly 20 seconds, and that’s it. That sums up the difference between these two movies better than I can.

The only things in this movie that feel vaguely Mario-esque in vibes are the lighthearted elements that feel necessary to make it suitable for a child audience. Otherwise, it’s too dark, gungy, and horny to match the series. Toad is lobotomized and enslaved. Daisy’s dad is a diseased-looking mass of fungus and slime. Mario dives into Big Bertha's chest like he’s bobbing for apples.

When the movie does want to reference the games, easter eggs are prioritized over recognizability. Enemy names are in the background if you squint, yet Luigi wears red more often than green. There’s no powerups, but Miyamoto’s in a crowd shot, so I’ve heard. It feels like missing the forest for a blade of grass. Though focusing on recognizability won’t fix much, at least viewers will know they’re watching the right movie. 

As it stands, we’re left with a Mario movie where the main characters don’t wear overalls and the villain is only a monster in the figurative sense. Nowhere are the blue skies and rolling hills of the Mushroom Kingdom. Instead, we go from New York City to… dystopian New York City. Toad’s some guy with a guitar.

This movie might be received better if it scrubbed the references and called itself “Directionless in Dinohattan” or something. I can see how people would get a kick out of it, even if it’s held together by duct tape and dreams. The thing that holds it back most is its disinterest in being Mario-related while shambling around in Mario’s skin. Like the Ice Capades costumes.

People with skill worked on this movie. There’s heart somewhere, regardless of whether it’s in the right place or not. The choices it makes are so baffling it makes sense to be a little fascinated. For those who want to enjoy the chaos, pick it apart, or just gawk at the weirdness, there’s something for different types of people. All of this gives it the makings of a cult classic.

Also, heads up if you do end up checking it out, Koopa is a real creep to Daisy. He tries to force a kiss on her and implies that he’s going to do something way worse later on. So if you’re sensitive to attempted/implied SA, skip a few minutes ahead after Yoshi’s first appearance. Didn’t think I’d have to warn for that in a Mario movie, but this one is committed to proving that nothing is impossible.

Here's some other stuff I have to say about the movie that I couldn't fit here or in the tags.

Next are my thoughts on Super Mario Bros. (2023).

[bairusong23conceptart]

Academic Blog #1

(Hearing that this segment was open to any topic, I was really excited. If it's just about discussing things I'm interested in, then there's a lot I could talk about, though the language might be a bit less formal.)

Let's start by discussing the evolution of the armor of Metroid series' protagonist, Samus Aran. We won't cover every version, as that's not necessary. Instead, we'll focus on a few of the most iconic ones.

Samus, as one of the earliest heroines in video game history, was heavily influenced by the sci-fi movies of the time. In her role as a heroine, she also pays homage to Ripley, the protagonist of the Alien series (There are many connections between the Metroid series and the Alien series, but that's not our main focus here).

Initially, due to the target audience (predominantly heterosexual male gamers), Samus's human appearance was depicted as a blonde bombshell in a bodysuit. Her most common appearance, however, is based on a completely gender-concealing (and super cool) armored suit. Due to the era (1985), the sci-fi aesthetic back then was still very much in the realm of the straightforward and bizarre designs seen in Star Wars. Consequently, Samus's armor was rather bulky. Moreover, due to the limitations of the game graphics (8-bit), her signature weapon – the arm cannon – wasn't easily noticeable (unless you looked at the game cartridge's box art).

Samus in the FC game Metroid (1985)

After some time, in 1994, the most iconic installment of the Metroid series, Super Metroid, was released. At this point, Samus's usual appearance had achieved a widely recognized sense of balance.

Samus in the SFC game Super Metroid (1994)

The advancements in graphics made her look less bulky. The rhythmic geometric segmentation of her appearance added a lot of vitality, without losing her characteristic tall stature. This balanced look was so well-received that her image remained largely unchanged for a long time (almost 16 years).

Then came the era of 3D gaming, and Samus's character finally gained depth with the addition of the z-axis.

Samus in the NGC game Metroid Prime (2002)

At this point, Samus's appearance reached a kind of extreme, it became immensely bulky, with exaggerated shoulder width and thick upper arms. I even wondered how a woman's skeleton could fit inside such a massive, all-encompassing suit of armor. Her physique and proportions even surpassed those of Halo's Master Chief (another character completely encased in armor, but male). But it's precisely because of this that Samus became one of the most iconic female characters in gaming. Yet, many players who weren't fans would often mistake her gender at first glance.

Samus in the NS game Metroid Dread (2021)

Perhaps it was a case of extremes leading to a reversal, or the artists finding a new equilibrium. In the latest sequel, Metroid Dread, Samus's feminine curves are much more emphasized. Her body lines are closer to that of a typical human form, and the proportions are no longer overly exaggerated. Soft material elements have been added between the metallic armor segments (which somewhat tie into the storyline), creating a harmonious blend of rigid and soft lines, and the color scheme is much richer. This retraction in the design's tension doesn't diminish Samus; instead, it perfectly aligns with the current aesthetic trends in sci-fi themed games. But this is just the beginning; this new balance is leading her image towards a completely new style.

To demonstrate how this discussion is closely related to me, let's take a simple look at my own fan art.

Sketch A (02 Feb, 2021)

Sketch B (01 Nov, 2023)

These were just casual sketches. Nearly three years separate these two drafts. Setting aside the fact that I haven't made much progress, in sketch A, I experimented with a composition made entirely of straight lines, while in B, I attempted to bring the image back to curvilinear elements. This is, in fact, one of the most significant characteristics of Samus's image: the rich use of curves. It turns out that curves are easier to handle, and I was able to capture her features without resorting to exaggerated proportions. Unfortunately, with B, it seems I couldn't quite get the color palette right. Maybe in future attempts, I could be bolder, perhaps even trying entirely new color schemes.

References

Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems (1985) Metroid [Video Game]. Nintendo.

Alien (1979) Directed by R. Scott [Feature Film]. 20th Century Studios.

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) Directed by G. Lucas [Feature Film]. Lucas Film Ltd. Production.

Nintendo R&D1, Intelligent Systems (1994) Super Metroid [Video Game]. Nintendo.

Retro Studios (2002) Metroid Prime [Video Game]. Nintendo.

Bungie (2001) Halo: Combat Evolved [Video Game]. Microsoft Game Studios.

Mercury Steam, Nintendo EPD (2021) Metroid Dread [Video Game]. Nintendo.

[adobe-outdesign]

What do you think of stuffle and beware? They are really cute imo, particularly stuffle and it's noises.

I have mixed feelings on this line. On the one hand, they’re wonderful from both a personality and a conceptual standpoint. A cute little plushie/mascot bear that will literally break your spine if you look at it wrong? Absolutely love it. It’s also wonderful that this line is also the most dangerous Pokemon in Alola, like its the Pokemon version of that one Monty Python sketch.

But on the other hand, the designs are a bit bothersome. Let’s start with the good parts: the color palette is nice; we’ve had all-pink Pokemon before but not many with a pink/brown (black once it evolves)/white scheme, and it both looks nice visually and gives it good contrast. I also like the red-panda like markings on Stuffle’s face and tail (though I feel like the tail one should be white), and the colors are carried through well.

However, my big problem with this line is that they’re meant to be living creatures that just happen to look a bit like plushies and mascots. Instead, they look exactly like those things, to the point where its hard to picture them as living creatures, even in the later gen’s more cartoonish style. Stuffle here literally has a tag on its back!

And there are just some other details--the lack of definition in the feet, the complete lack of any fur texture (especially on the head, feels like it needs something there), lack of an inside ear, and shapeless body--that really prevent it from reading as a living thing, and also just kind of look weird in general.

Also, the mouth looks absolutely bizarre to me, because both it and Bewear have their mouths open underneath their muzzles, and frankly that’s just horrifying.

As for its evolution, can I just toss out there that Bewear is possibly the greatest Pokemon name ever? People always whine about it being a pun, but frankly I can’t get enough of dumb pun names, especially really good ones like that.

I think I like Bewear a bit more than Stuffle, just because Stuffle’s dex entries mention that it can harm people, but it doesn’t really look like it could. Bewear, meanwhile, manages to look simultaneously cute and like it could crush you like a soda can, which is an important distinction. And there are some other nice touches; the black works even better than the brown, and the mouth is still underneath the muzzle but at least it’s less noticeable here.

It does, however, suffer from the same issue of looking fake that I brought up with Stuffle. I mean, there is no definition to its lower body. It doesn’t have to look super literally like a bear as that would kind of ruin the point, but some kind of anatomy would’ve been appreciated. The way the ears merge with the white stripe is a bit odd, mostly because the ears are really far forward on the face, and I’m not sure what the point of the white dots on the feet are. I would’ve liked to see a bit more pink carried through as well, maybe just on the feet and hands, seeing as it already looks like it’s wearing a onesie.

Like I said at the beginning, I still love these guys, and I think they have very well thought out concepts. The designs just don’t quite hit as strongly for me as they could’ve. Still would let myself get crushed to death by one of them though

[whetstonefires]

Hi Whetstonefire! This is the anon about bad characterization! Sorry about the ask! I have a question about the writing in Batman comics. So Batman (nowadays) is being characterized as a terrible father and person while Alfred, the guy who raised him, seems to be characterized as a saint. I'm confused, is this bad writing? Maybe I'm being dumb but, it doesn't make sense to me? Like we can trace a lot of the Batkids' issues to choices Bruce has made. And since parents influence their kids, (cont)

(cont.) does this make sense with the way Bruce is characterized? Alfred would be Bruce's biggest influence growing up, so how is Alfred like this and Bruce is like that? The way they're characterized doesn't make sense to me and the only conclusion I can draw is that it's bad writing. What do you think? Is this just bad writing? I'm sorry if the question draws some mean anons. I did ask another blog this, but I wanted another opinion. Thanks and have a nice day. 

Honestly, yeah, I agree there is a super weird phenomenon where as they punch up the grimdark on Batman and make him a terrible parent in all kinds of ways, they’ve kept falling back on Alfred as a sort of ‘voice of reason’ ‘author avatar’ etc to call out or lampshade this behavior.

Without considering that having raised Bruce from the age of eight Alfred is an active contributor to any emotional issues Bruce has, and that using Alfred this way is thus weirdly weighted.

This has resulted in quite a number of bizarrely hypocritical moments where Alfred is displaying a behavior you can very easily read as the source of the behavior he’s condemning, even as he condemns it.

There are a lot of reasons this happened, which are mostly--well, I suppose they are ‘bad writing,’ but compared to the conscious bad decisions that get made in comics every day it feels like small potatoes.

A major reason is that DC retconned Alfred into Bruce’s childhood very abruptly in the late 80s, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, while all kinds of things were changing around, and comics in general and Batman in particular were coasting hard into the grimdark.

And there was never any comprehensive examination of the impact this had on their relationship. What it meant that instead of turning up after Dick was already settled in as Robin and forcing himself into their household with his sandwiches and nursing skills in order to fulfill his father’s dying request, Alfred had been there since before that night in Crime Alley.

This new relationship, the emotions underlying the present day now that Alfred was a pillar of Bruce’s universe, was filled in in drips and drabs of bonding moments and retcons, with high points like that recent Father’s Day issue--but meanwhile Bruce and Alfred’s day-to-day adult dynamic was already a pretty settled thing, dry Jeeves-like humor on Alfred’s part included, and the evolutions it continued to go through were largely in response to fashions in dialogue and to New Comics Events, rather than their new backstory.

So basically the fact that Bruce’s fits of emotional illiteracy can very easily be linked to Alfred’s tendency to communicate through sarcasm and dry understatement, that if anything Bruce is demonstrably better at actually telling people he cares about them in words, and yet Alfred gives Bruce shit about his failures in this regard constantly, especially when it comes to his own children...that’s an extremely complicated generational tangle of issues that developed entirely by accident through the random idiot vicissitudes of DC Comics.

I really can’t call it bad writing even, it’s like. A pseudo-organic process, at this point.

Anyway this kind of thing is why cape comics make for such amazing fanfic communities, but also why half the time we all hate each other’s work because we’ve gotten attached to diametrically opposed elements of canon! 😂

Also Alfred is dead right now and everyone is just sort of ignoring it. It’s wild. But, like, last time he died he came back as a supervillain and he wasn’t even Batman’s dad yet?

So honestly I’m just hoping they do something equally fucking weird this time, which will be hard since that was the Silver Age and it’s hard for Very Serious modern cape comics to approach the batshittery of ‘announcing your identity to the batfam by sending robotic Batman and Robin to bring Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson coffins with your fingerprints on them.’ The Red Hood wishes he could achieve that level of nonsensical drama.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dreaming and overfitting

I'm not the first person to note that our understanding of ourselves and our society is heavily influenced by technological change - think of how we analogized biological and social functions to clockwork, then steam engines, then computers.

I used to think that this was just a way of understanding how we get stuff hilariously wrong - think of Taylor's Scientific Management, how its grounding in mechanical systems inflicted such cruelty on workers whom Taylor demanded ape those mechanisms.

But just as interesting is how our technological metaphors illuminate our understanding of ourselves and our society: because there ARE ways in which clockwork, steam power and digital computers resemble bodies and social structures.

Any lens that brings either into sharper focus opens the possibility of making our lives better, sometimes much better.

Bodies and societies are important, poorly understood and deeply mysterious.

Take sleep. Sleep is *very weird*.

Once a day, we fall unconscious. We are largely paralyzed, insensate, vulnerable, and we spend hours and hours having incredibly bizarre hallucinations, most of which we can't remember upon waking. That is (objectively) super weird.

But sleep is nearly universal in the animal kingdom, and dreaming is incredibly common too. A lot of different models have been proposed to explain our nightly hallucinatory comas, and while they had some explanatory power, they also had glaring deficits.

Thankfully, we've got a new hot technology to provide a new metaphor for dreaming: machine learning through deep neural networks.

DNNs, of course, are a machine learning technique that comes from our theories about how animal learning works at a biological, neural level.

So perhaps it's unsurprising that DNN - based on how we think brains work - has stimulated new hypotheses on how brains work!

Erik P Hoel is a Tufts University neuroscientist. He's a proponent of something called the Overfitted Brain Hypothesis (OBH).

To understand OBH, you first have to understand how overfitting works in machine learning: "overfitting" is what happens when a statistical model overgeneralizes.

For example, if Tinder photos of queer men are highly correlated with a certain camera angle, then a researcher might claim to have trained a "gaydar model" that "can predict sexual orientation from faces."

That's overfitting (and researchers who do this are assholes).

Overfitting is a big problem in ML: if all the training pics of Republicans come from rallies in Phoenix, the model might decide that suntans are correlated with Republican politics - and then make bad guesses about the politics of subjects in photos from LA or Miami.

To combat overfitting, ML researchers sometimes inject noise into the training data, as an effort to break up these spurious correlations.

And that's what Hoel thinks are brains are doing while we sleep: injecting noisy "training data" into our conceptions of the universe so we aren't led astray by overgeneralization.

Overfitting is a real problem for people (another word for "overfitting" is "prejudice").

Hoel advances this argument in a fascinating, short, accessible 2020 Arxiv open-access paper called "The Overfitted Brain: Dreams evolved to assist generalization."

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2007.09560.pdf

The paper demonstrates how the OBH resolves a lot of mysteries from previous theories advanced to explain dreaming. For example, it explains why dream-deprived subjects' performance fails on generalized performance tasks (which require extrapolation) but not rote tasks.

I learned about the paper from Peter Watts, an evolutionary biologist with a knack for turning scientific concepts into revelatory plot elements. His depiction (in MAELSTROM, 2002) of human/computer pathogenic co-evolution haunts me.

http://locusmag.com/2018/05/cory-doctorow-the-engagement-maximization-presidency/

Watts's blog-post on Hoel's paper is a great breakdown of the explanatory power of OBH, including (especially) why dreams are so weird - a proposed solution to one of the enduring scientific mysteries of dreaming.

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=9844

Watts connects Hoel's work to another paper, this one studying lucid dreaming, in which researchers are able to have two-way conversations with lucid dreamers while they are dreaming (!):

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(21)00059-2

In very Wattsian fashion, he wonders what this kind of injection of rationality into dreams might do to cognition, if Hoel is right and the irrationality is a feature, not a bug. You can see the beginnings of another banger of a sf premise stirring there.

Hoel is *also* an sf writer, as it turns out, and his debut novel, THE REVELATIONS, drops in mid-April: a murder mystery about "neuroscience, death, and the search for the theory of human consciousness."

https://www.erikphoel.com/

Image: Gontzal García del Caño (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/euskalanato/1971828859/

CC BY-NC-SA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

[doshmanziari]

Musical Offerings for the New Year || What is “Radical Music” in 2021?

Near the end of 2020, a bunch of musicians populating a chatroom, including myself, each submitted ten minutes’ worth of our work to another musician, Chimeratio, who generously compiled it all into a set totaling nearly ten hours.¹ The work didn’t need to be new; just what we thought might best represent our abilities/style(s) and/or perhaps what we were especially pleased with. The set premiered in late January. Since I have some tentative plans for reorienting Brick By Brick this year, while not overriding its emphases, I wanted to share that music with anyone who’s interested.

I compiled the four videos into a playlist, although you can also access them individually: here (1), here (2), here (3), and here (4). If you care to, and are on a computer, you can also view the accompanying chatlog and read people’s responses from when they were listening to the live broadcast.

The compulsion for this project was sparked by excited discussions over and usage of the term “digital fusion”, most helpfully propagated by Aivi Tran, designating a computer-based body of work that for years lacked the rooftop of a commonly agreed upon genre-name. While describing my music has never been a big concern, even if it’s usually felt impossible (what, for example, is this? or this? I dunno!), I’ve appreciated how the spread and application of this term has brought together people who may have felt isolated.²

As “digital fusion” gained designative traction, I witnessed the activity in the aforementioned chatroom explode over the course of a few days. Before, a day’s discussion might’ve been a few dozen messages; now, there were dozens of messages every half-minute. This had positive and negative ramifications, the negative being that conversations often proceeded at a pace of rapidity which precluded concentrated thought. Eventually, I bowed out because the rapidity exceeded my threshold for meaningful interaction; but I was glad that significant invigoration was going on.

I wanted to share this music also because it intersects with thoughts and talks I’ve been having stemming from the question, “What is ‘radical music’ in 2021?” This was stimulated by a 2014 talk given by the writer Mark Fisher, wherein he contends that, were we to play prominent “cutting edge” music from now to people twenty years ago, very nearly none of it would be aesthetically shocking, bizarre, or revelatory (think of playing house music to an audience in the early 1960s!). Fisher also observes a trend of returning to music which once was seen as the future -- as if, deprived of a shared prograde vision, imaginations turn hazily retrograde; ergo, genres such as synthwave or albums like Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.

It isn’t my goal here to argue about the “end of history.” Fisher’s time-travel hypothetical, however, rings loud and true to me. Visible musical radicalism has, for at least a decade, been strictly extra-musical, in the sense of songs like “This is America” or “WAP”, where one’s response is primarily to the spectacle of the music video, the performer’s identistic markers, and/or the manner in which the lyrics intersect with (mostly US-centric) ideological hotspots. Musically, there is really nothing radical here. Any vociferous condemnations or defenses of a song like “WAP” deal in moralizing reactions to semantics or imagery: how progressive or regressive is the political aspect? how propelled or repelled are we by the word “pussy”?

It would be a mistake, and simply wrong, to assert that the only music one can enjoy escapes the parameters outlined above; and my inability to coherently categorize some of my own music hardly raises that portion to the status of radicality. But the question here pertains to what is being made, and I think that if we’re going to seriously consider the nature of truly radical music today, we do need to question if such a quality can prominently exist when our hyper-fast consumerist cycle seems to forbid not just sustained, lifelong relationships to artwork but also the local, unhurried nourishment of creative gestation. Now, in my opinion, there are good, even great, examples of radical music still being made in deep Internet-burrows, and for evidence of that I would offer some of the material contained in the linked playlists. Moreover, I’d say that this quality can exist in part because these little artistic communities are so buried.

Let me share a quote that another person shared with me recently:

For culture to shift, you need pockets of isolated humanity. Since all pockets of humanity (outside of the perpetually isolated indigenous people in remote wilderness) are connected in instantaneous fashion, independent ideas aren’t allowed to ferment on their own. When you cook a meal, you have to bring ingredients together that have had time to grow, ferment, or decompose separately. A cucumber starts out as a seed, then you mix it with the soil, water and sunlight. You can’t bring the seed, soil, water and sunlight to the kitchen from the get-go. When you throw those things in to the mixture without letting them mature, the flavor cannot stand out on its own. Same thing with art and fashion. A kid in Russia can come up with a new way to dance, gets filmed on a phone, it goes viral quickly but gets lost in the morass of all of the other multitudinous forms of dance. Sure it spread far and wide, but it gets forgotten in a week. In the past, his new art form would have been confined locally, nurtured, honed, then spread geographically, creating a distinct new cultural idiosyncrasy with a strong support base. By the time it was big enough to be presented globally, it was already a cultural phenomenon locally. This isn’t possible anymore. We’re consuming too many unripened fruits.

The main impression I have here is that radical music today will, and must be, folk music. Our common idea of folkiness might be the scrappy singer strumming a guitar, but my interpretive reference rather has to do with the idea of a music being written, first of all, for one’s self, and then shared with a small-scale community, which in turn helps the artist grow at their own pace. This transcends a dependence upon image, the primacy of acoustic instrumentation, or the signaling of sincerity versus insincerity. It is a return to the valuation of outsider art, so rare nowadays. As someone who I was recently in dialogue with wrote, “Where can you find new genuine folk music? Pretty much just with your friends, imo. Even then, the global world is so influential and seeps into any crack it can find. I think vaporwave was radical and folk for a while. Grant Forbes made that music way before the world knew about it.”

Sometimes, a lot of fuss is made over what’s seen as “gatekeeping” within certain communities. It can be, depending on the context, justifiable to question and critique this behavior. At other times, the effort of maintaining a level of exclusivity, of retaining an idiosyncratic shapeliness to the communal organism, can be a legitimate attempt to protect the personal, interpersonal, and cultural aspects from the flattening effect of monoculture. Hypothetically, I welcome the Castlevania TV series and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate having introduced new and younger demographics to Castlevania. In actuality, stuff like “wholesome sad gay himbo Alucard”, image macros, and neurotic “stan” fanfiction being what’s now first associated with the series makes me want to put as much distance as possible between my interests and those latecoming impositions.

The group-terminology David Chapman uses in his essay “Geeks, MOPs, and Sociopaths in Subculture Evolution” is kinda cringey, but some of the cultural/behavioral patterns he lays out are relevant to the topic. Give it a look. If we cross his belief that “[subcultures] are no longer the primary drivers of cultural development” with our contemporary consume-and-dispose customs, we’re left with the predicament of it’s even worth attempting to bring radical/outsider art beyond its rhizomatic habitat. This is troubling, because it would mean that artistic radicality no longer might not only refuse to but cannot encompass cultural upheaval. It would be like if dance music were invented and -- instead of progressively permeating nightlife, stimulating countercultural trends, and ultimately being adapted as the basis for pop music globally -- only were listened to via headphones by a few thousand people on their own, stimulated a group meeting once a year or two, and never affected music beyond a niche-within-a-niche. That’s a very sad picture to me.

⁂

¹ Chimeratio has also maintained an excellent blog on here dedicated to looking at videogame music written in irregular time signatures, far preceding higher-profile examinations like 8-bit Music Theory’s video on the same topic.

² For myself, creative isolation has had its uses, because it has led me down routes that are highly personalized. The isolation can be dispiriting too. Although a lot of my music is videogame-music-adjacent, almost none of it uses “authentic” technology, such as PSG synthesizers or FM synthesis; and the identification of those sounds is fairly important for recognition.

[coal15]

Wild Speculation Time! Weeeeee!

Okay, so I don’t literally think this will happen or that this is what’s going on, it’s more of an: it would make a lot of the recent strange writing choices make more sense.

Ahem. Let the wild rumpus begin:

I’ve noticed there are persistent off-and-on rumors that Ryan and Oliver don’t get along like they used to. Whether “not getting along” means “not besties” or “I loathe the very sight of you,” who knows. 

If it is true that they don’t get along while at the same time more and more people are not only shipping Buddie, but anti-shipping other options all well? Wow, that is a tricky spot to be in for a showrunner. 

Forcing actors who can barely stand eachother to play love interests is . . . well, it’s been done before in plenty of shows, but it’s certainly not a working environment I’d wanna be a part of. It’s a great way to make everyone on set super uncomfortable, and I don’t want that experience for any of our lovely 911 cast or crew. Bleh. 

So let’s look at other options:

Write both men off the series (which would, by default, get rid of Christopher too). Or  write only one of them off the show. 

Okay. I’m running the show. Who do I write off? The audience does love seeing Eddie in Awesome Protective Dad Mode. But overall it seems like Buck is the more popular character in general, and the audience also loves his bond with Christopher. 

But if you get rid of Eddie, Chris goes with him, right?

And now for the absolutely terrible idea that I could totally see them doing just for the sake of resolving fan displeasure and/or on-set issues:

We all noticed that Eddie and Ana are not only an unpopular pairing, but it almost seems like they’re intentionally boring and w/out chemistry, right? It seems to me like most viewers have noticed that. And they wrote Eddie being a bad parent to Christopher the second he had a chance to get New Pussy in the near future. Unconcerned about bringing Ana into their home without a mask or any distancing, seeming not to care that his son has CP (which is often associated with a weakened immune system). And then not even noticing his kid leaving the house and getting in a car that then drives away. Yeah, he went from sweet concerned father to shitty oblivious father in the space of a single episode. 

Like I said, it’s a terrible idea, I’m not a fan of this idea but what if . . .

They BIG TIME played up the bond between Buck and Christopher while highlighting Eddie’s inexplicable attraction to Ana and how it instantly makes him a worse father on purpose. What if it’s being done to make general viewers less sympathetic toward Eddie. Thus less attached to the character. And by contrast more aware of what a great father Buck is to Christopher? 

I mean, one way of making a ship less popular is to turn half of said ship into an asshat. Hell, they could even spend the back half of S4 and some of S5 slowly morphing Eddie into an outright total douche if they wanted to. Then give his character some kind of “semi-redemption-then-he-dies-at-the-end-of-the-episode” send-off to close out his arc.

“BUT WOULDN’T THAT DESTROY CHRIS?!?” You bellow at your phone after reading those words. “PERISH THE THOUGHT YOU HORRIBLE HORRIBLE MONSTER PERSON!!!”

And yeah. With the way their relationship has been written up to this point it would be basically awful. But many a show has been willing to retcon an entire character and/or relationship history if it suits a narrative they wanna push. Not saying it’s a good thing to do, it’s usually not. Just saying it’s not unprecedented in TV Land. (and sometimes the only workable option if a drastic change simply has to be made for whatever reason) 

Anyhow, my point being : if the showrunners wanted to get rid of Eddie but keep Christopher and his adorable relationship with Buck, they might think that their best option is to gradually (or not so gradually) morph Eddie into an uninvolved and/or shitty parent, while at the same time highlighting Buck’s evolution into a full-on paternal presence in Chris’s life. Aaaaaaaannnnnnd then write Ryan off the show via whatever means while making it clear that he wants Buck to take custody of Chris in the event of his absence or death. 

Can’t say enough: I DON’T LIKE THE IDEA, but it would make several recent and super bizarre writing and casting choices make more sense. This is a show that usually does a great job with matching for chemistry. Athena and Bobby, Maddie and Chim, etc. Even Buck and Ali had . . . well, not terrible chemistry. Same goes for Taylor. Which makes it so strange that Eddie and Ana are such a huge dud. Even outside of “interfering” with Buddie, the actors simply have no chemistry at all. Which wouldn’t be weird if we didn’t have so many examples of the same damn show getting it spot-on right. Part of me believes it has got to be intentional. 

Which gives us 3 likely(ish) possibilities:

1) They planned to straight-wash both characters all along and the utter lack of chemistry between Eddieana and ooc Eddie were simply poor writing/casting choices. Or that we’ll soon be moving on to Eddie’s “the one” (also female, of course)

2) Every writing choice in the last ep was actually designed to showcase the stifling awkwardness of Eddie with a “girlfriend” while also showcasing how much Buck already fits into the Diaz family as a parental figure. Basically nudging the general audience toward the idea of an official Buckley-Diaz family. 

3) Eddie’s shitty parenting and tight Buck+Christopher bond will continue to escalate, highlighted more and more, until the audience dislikes Eddie and loves Christopher+Buck enough that writing Ryan off the show is a hell of a lot less risky. 

I know Christopher has already been through so much trauma-but the Eddie Diaz I saw in the last episode is probably the last person (besides Ana) I would want guiding him through yet more trauma. If we’re going by this last episode alone? Yeah, that should be Buck’s job.

OH! Nevermind, there is a 4th possibility:

4) They just straight up re-cast Eddie and have the other characters make a few offhand comments like “did you change your hair? You look different,” and the show goes on as if he’s always been played by Mr.NewActor. 

(Or I guess they could re-cast Buck instead, but I’m honestly less attached to Ryan as THE Eddie, so if I had to choose? Like, me personally? I’d pick Ryan for the ax. Sorry Ryan. Best of luck in the future, but I can’t imagine anyone besides Oliver playing Buck)

[roccomoon]

a birth anniversary noticing

7.22.21

1036am

if you’re reading this, maybe you know me, maybe you don’t,

maybe you care, maybe you don’t,

theres no way i could know,

so i don’t really care,

but i do appreciate the energy,

and attention,

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

its my birthday today, and im writing this,

typing it,

reflecting on how it feels,

an anniversary that notices when i first breathed life into this form,

it brings something tender, vulnerable, and sensitive out of me,

i woke up this morning, sat up, checked the time, and closed my eyes,

i sat until it felt i was ready to open eyes, i checked the clock,

20 minutes had passed,

all i saw was who i am, and how that wants to be,

how it already is,

but honestly, how that isness wants to be expressed,

theres so much i want to do,

and yet,

only ever one thing to do, that does all things,

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

i remember being a young human,

feeling like i was just overflowing with a world inside of me,

it seemed like my dad was really important to a lot of people,

people showed up to his concerts and they cared about the things he said,

they cheered and applauded ,

i wanted that,

i tried to do it in sports,

and failed,

for the past 10 years,

I’ve really been doing my absolute best at creating meaningful art,

and admit-tingly , it always feels really nice when people care,

when they care enough to pay close attention,

when their attention is on me,

when i am in the center of someones attention,

and they’re absolutely focused on my expression,

performing music on stage,

acting in film,

seeing someone really grasp a tech idea that can be a huge business,

it feels really nice,

to be really seen and heard,

and felt , and noticed, and understood,

i guess i don’t need it,

but i actually do,

i have God’s love pouring through me,

and in many ways, that is the end all be all,

it is enough, but as my sadhana deepened,

i realized it was actually a bizarre western roman catholic christian trauma distortion to act like you don't need attention, or want to be the center of attention, or the center of your own galaxy, .. a star.

the west actually, because of toxic christianity mostly, has developed some kind of weird anti ego - egohood...

its like an ego complex about being anti ego...

like its frowned upon to want the spotlight or something...

but as sadhana deepened, and the Parusharthas unlocked much that was suppressed, ... i ... as i actually am, was unlocked, ... and allowed,

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

there, here, is presence, that could go unnoticed by others, for centuries,

but i , rocco, now with integration, noticed,

that i actually need to be noticed,

i sat with this, and observed the reality,

i need it,

its not just a want,

it is a literal need. not just human. but a meta-physical need,

of every soul,

to varying degrees,

some more than others,

karmic structure is just as real as physical skeletal structure,

its about potential , and potential being wasted,,,, is sad,

the All is sad when such occurs,

so,

i need to be noticed,

in my growth and evolution,

it confirms that its happening,

and i only discovered this because i did my best to become invisible,

totally avoided my calling, and that "wanting" to being seen,

heard,

felt,

witnessed,

as a kid on tour, i practiced being invisible,

then in art, i wanted to become invisible so the art was seen, but i didn't get in the way,

but that was all still woven with fear of being seen,

for being seen as being the greatest living thing in existence,

which , i am,

i am literally the greatest living thing in existence,

,

not stuttering,

clarifying ,

i , am , the , greatest, living , thing , in , existence,

...

and i want, which is predicated on a need,

to be witnessed in that,

witnessed as attention, attention as awareness ,

awareness as love,

of, and for my evolution and expansion,

and not from lack, but from having,

from abundance,

from being, ,

,,

its not just a want,

its an actual human need,

that i acknowledge is sacred, and actually of divine accord,

why else would i be beaming with these desires,

to be seen and heard,

for no reason?

or for the one and only reason.

sat. chit. ananda.

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

i remember being backstage, and getting in the way one time,

we were on tour with kiss, and lynyrd skynyrd,

and i got in the way,

these dudes were pushing huge container things on wheels down the hallway, and i think i was walking while playing pokemon on my gameboy... and my dad grabbed my arm tightly,

and in my eyes, told me to never get in the way like that,

always be aware and cognizant of what's happening around me,

so i did,

that wasn't the first time that happened,

but it was the last,

i was never in the way again,

well, there were probably times, but since then i have been keen on not being in the way if i don't have to be,

since then, i love being against a wall,

or in a corner,

so i am able to see everything that is occurring around me,

i love being able to see, everything, clearly,

even in life, if i go days or weeks without being on top of a mountain, or on a big wide open road, it feels like claustrophobia,,, like i need to see evvvvverryyyything around me... its like a clarification of where i am in relationship to everything around me... and what all those things are...

theres this scene in one of the jason bourne movies where he basically flexes as to how aware he is... he's like... theres 3 dudes over there... one just got divorced... 2 are well trained... then there 4 other dudes over there... one likes pickles... etc etc... its like a sherlock holmes thing too... who is another one of my favorite super hero style reference points amongst the all.

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it feels like that's what happened for several years,

i moved to la,

and just disappeared,

i needed to get bearings on who i was in relationship to literally everything else in existence.

i dissolved most the friendships i had from high school, and became a loner, and nocturnal,

i had actual human friends still, but now something changed,

and i was inward almost seemingly more than i was outward,

my friends were people who i didn't even know,

kid cudi, yeshua, tesla, einstein, thelonious monk,

artists, legends, great ones, channels,

and as i became more and more alone,

i became more and more aware of what i wanted to do with my life,

i wanted to channel the infinite into the finite,

and i although i thought i didn't need anyone to notice,

i realized, after a while of no one noticing, i did.

so if you're reading this. thanks.

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

the i am witness seamlessly bright in awareness at these words,

as they move through my fingers and appear on the screen,

when i watch them appear on the screen,

it feels like a mirror,

to me,

that’s how it feels,

i had these sensations inside of me,

and they were just sensations,

but not i am typing those feelings,

and they show up as words on the screen,

that’s pretty cool,

i guess that must be what my dad feels when he plays the guitar,

they were just feelings and sensations inside of him,

and then , because he is a master craftsman ,

he is able to become a channel, and fully express himself into that form,

i feel that when i write,

i feel that when im acting, when the camera is on,

or even on stage,

i feel that when im performing a piece of music i really care about,

i feel like i haven’t felt that in a while with music honestly,

it feels like i got away from just being my most ridiculously authentic signal there,

and i wanted to be cool,

cool feels like death sometimes,

sometimes its nice when it happens, but sometimes it just doesnt feel like who i am,

i don’t think I’ve ever felt cool acting,

i don’t feel like like that’s what its for ,

for me,

i love feeling the feeling of completely disappearing, and feeling whatever is that, fully,

and not having an opinion about what the feeling is,

terror, horror, anger, jealously, hatred, pain, sorrow, torment, love, joy, bliss, fun, happy, friction, confusion, lostness,

whatever,

as long as im feeling it fully,

then i call that “perfection”,

i call that “missing out on nothing”

i call that “fully reflective”

im writing a book about it actually,

its called “moon theory”

“missing out on nothing” means nothing is missing,

when nothing is missing everything is perfect,

resistance-less-nes-

the state of no resistance,

wu wet, zero point, crystallinity , buddhic emptiness,

perfectness,

my version of it,

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

…

so im sitting here,

writing this,

and noticing what is present for me,

and the other things i would like to be present,

that feel like, because i don’t see them outside of me,

but feel them within me,

they are missing,

but they are only missing from the outside,

they are present on the inside,

and that feels nice to distinguish,

they aren’t actually missing,

they are loading,

so they are coming,

coming into existence,

growing from thought, to feeling, to experiential manifestation,

from the inners of my inner awareness,

to the palpable touchable holographic matrix i access through senses,

that’s basically where im at right now,

nothing is missing,

but i notice what i would like to add to what is present,

i knew this last year too, but it was less accessible ,

less tangible,

as clarity,

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

last night my mom said that jesus is the only way to God,

that made me sad ,

cuz yeshua literally came to me and said that not true,

he said folks misunderstood his teachings, and ran with em,

he literally said that he is the crystal soul self,

which all are, and so all can get to God,

and his teachings have been horrifically, violently misinterpreted,

he told me this,

and it feels sad sometimes when those closest to me don’t notice who i am,

it feels sad sometimes when it feels like those closest don’t see me,

or , like they haven’t taken the time to realize who and what i am,

that’s okay though, it gives contrast so when there is the feeling of being super heard, seen, felt, and understood, its clearly noticed,

i know who i am,

and amongst all the things pouring through me,

and into the holographic field of reality,

i am glad to be this one,

with the awareness i have,

,,,

enough thoughts for today,

:{}|:{}:}|}:}|{:}:}|:}:{|}:}{:{}|:|{|{:{}|:|:|:{}:}:|:{:{|}:|{}:}{:}:|}:|}:{}|:}{:{|:{|}:

i phase out of rocco,

rocco’s eyes glaze over,

rocco looks up,

the channel opens like a flower,

we see rocco looking up to us,

we receive him with love,

he asks us,

what else should he write,

what else should he share with those who will read this,

he feels like not that many people will read it,

and so he feels less important,

because he compares himself to others so quickly,

we reassure him that is not appropriate ,

for the time will come ,

when everyone pays attention,

he feels our reassurance,

the reader wonders who is We,

we are rocco’s guardian guides,

yeshua is here,

gautama is here,

arch angel michael is here,

quan yin is here,

thoth is here,

gabriel is here,

st. germain is here,

melchizedek is here,

abraham is here,

ra is here,

we are rocco’s channel prism guardian gateway keepers,

rocco feels slightly scared to share this right now,

and we reassure him it’s okay,

for he is emptying into the infinite,

and dissolving into resolution,

you reading this is a sacred witnessing of a human beings dharmic resolution,

rocco looks up to us with a prayer hand emoji,

we look to him with the same,

this is enough for now,

thanks for reading,

thanks for paying,

thanks for your attention,

thanks for all you are,

ase, aho, amen, amun,

ra,

co,

,

[miraculouscontent]

Askplosion #12 4/4:

(I would like to state for future reference that, while I do not mind long/multi-part asks, if you’d like to engage in actual discussion with me over a non-Miraculous topic, my DMs - Tumblr Messenger - should be open; I lost pieces of three multi-part asks this time just due to Tumblr not sending the remaining part(s) so yeah, I just wanted to make that clear)

(like, this askplosion ended up being super long because of this section and that’s not really what I want to have going on since I’m supposed to be a primarily Miraculous blog; I don’t want to have to stop answering non-Miraculous related asks but I might have to if this keeps up:)

.:New non-Miraculous Asks:.

Anonymous said:

What are your experiences with some really rude anons?

It’s partly my fault when it happens. Like I’ve said before, I’m an aspie, and part of what that means is I struggle to understand situations emotionally. I can come off as insensitive or read the mood wrong which often leads to people misunderstanding my intentions or where I’m coming from.

More often than not, what I’m saying will make 100% sense to me but not the person/people reading it. I also stick a lot more firmly to my opinions than I should because people tell me I fold too easily, and I come off as more egotistical than I actually am to cover up my low self-esteem lol.

So yeah, can’t think of any experience in particular but sometimes it might be my fault? At least I suspect that it is?

Anonymous said:

“Killed by kindness” makes me think of an assassin who kills people by giving hugs and compliments to people and the occasion gift that isn’t tampered until thre target does like Conrad Birdie making women swoon into fainting by singing.

omg

yes

Anonymous said:

You're watching Yashahime right now? rip

MARINETTE TAKE 2 MOROHA DESERVES BETTER

SETSUNA HAS SO LITTLE REASON TO HANG OUT WITH THE OTHER TWO GIRLS

IF I SEE ANOTHER DEUS EX TOWA I’M GONNA KICK SOMETHING

(so yes, I’m watching Yashahime)

Anonymous said:

Since someone recommended Remarried Empress, I would like to recommend my own webcomic: Princess Love-Pon! It's about a young girl named Lia Sagamore who becomes the titular magical girl and purifies people's hearts when they're tainted by the Dark Queen! It's really cool due to its diversity, the main character is black and her best friend is Afro-Latina, the villain and her prince son are also black, and there's a Japanese girl, a black guy, and an Indian girl. Plus, loads of pink and frills!

Thank you very much, though I actually don’t take recommendations, even from close friends. The Remarried Empress anon wasn’t a recommendation; they were more pointing something out to me and then I went to confirm.

Anonymous said:

Unrelated to MLB: Which Pokémon are your favourites?

I used a “Favorite Pokemon Picker” because I prefer going by generations to pick favorites and that was the easiest way of going about it. I struggle picking super favorites so here’s what I got form each generation! (my only rule was “one Pokemon per evolution line” with an exception of the Eevee line since they’re different types, and also Alolan/Galarian forms)

(note: the blue-patterned Vivillon is my favorite and I honestly don’t like Charizard normally but the Y version actually slims him down and gives him the wings I feel he should have; it’s an improvement of the design so it gets my seal of approval, I don’t like the X version at all)

(lol I was looking through this after I was done and find it really funny how it’s like, 50% cute things and then the other 50% is just EDGY, there’s very little in-between with me I guess)

Anonymous said:

Bridgerton the Series: Yay or nay? Sorry if you haven’t seen it or it’s not your thing. I was just curious.

Never seen it, though when I brought up to someone, they didn’t recommend it to me at all ahaha.

Anonymous said:

I previously kept having this argument about The Bechdel Test with someone. She keeps insisting that the test is invalid because there's nothing wrong with talking about men and that it was created for lesbians only, and not for feminists, with the implication that being a lesbian somehow means that you dislike men or want them gone. And she also thinks the test is about NEVER talking about men, rather than merely occasionally talking about other things. I keep telling her otherwise, but...

jdfhkgdfhjgdfg “lesbians only”

now all I can imagine is “lesbians only” sections at restaurants and such

Anonymous said:

Have you ever played Akinator, with or without the Miraculous Ladybug characters? Because I played it with Ochaco from MHA and Marinette and he guessed them within a second(can your character control gravity? Is your character a protagonist?). I even played it with myself as the "character" and he guessed "your shadow" lol. How about you?

I’ve played Akinator before but I don’t specifically remember what I was searching for lol.

Anonymous said:

The cast for the newest Power Rangers series got revealed, and I hate that as soon as I saw the Pink Ranger's bio mentioned she was an internet journalist, I thought of Alya. I really hope she doesn't have the same problems as Alya in the series proper.

fhgdfkgd journalists have been ruined for us forever

Anonymous said:

Have you noticed that in many shows, especially shonen shows, people tend to hate the most "feminine" female character? Like, in Naruto it was Sakura, in Death Note it was Misa, in My Hero Academia it was Ochaco(although a lot of people like her so I'm not so sure about that last one?). The most hated character in one too many a shonen is almost always the "girliest" of the characters. They're always claimed to be useless or reliant on a man. And this is within the fandom who should know better!

It probably didn’t help with Sakura that she was decked out in pink hair; that’s an instant girl label for you (or lesbian label, depends on the person :P).

I don’t think I’ve been in enough fandoms to have such an experience but I definitely see where you’re coming from.

Anonymous said:

Rewatching Chat Blanc and Here To Help from Star vs. and hearing Adrien/Marco tell Marinette/Star that they always liked the girls from the beginning makes me so pissed. It's not that I don't ship Starco(I do! But I also like MarcoxJanna), although I don't ship the love square, but I'm so annoyed with writers finding the need to make the audience "know" that the main ship's characters "always" liked each other, as if that makes their love for each other more true, even if it's obvious they had other crushes? Like, what happened to Kagami Tsurugi? Jackie-Lynn Thomas?

News flash: Teenagers are allowed to have crushes on multiple other people before they find "the One". It doesn't mean their love for that "One" is any less valid. And if you still want to pull the "they always liked each other since they first met", at least make it actually TRUE!!! Don't have them have crushes on other people before moving on to the "official" crush and be all like "Oh, by the way, I liked you from the start," when it's dead obvious they didn't. You're doing a disservice to the romantic "false" leads.

I'm willing to forgive Star's crush on Oskar and Tom since she's not the one claiming she always liked Marco(even though she fell in love with him LONG before he fell in love with her, which is a nice turn of events), although her "love" for Oskar was merely an infatuation at most and I personally don't see why it was needed. Why don't they just say that their old crush didn't do it for them???

UGH, I remember watching that show and being so annoyed because I really liked Marco and Jackie and wanted them to be a thing but I knew that they’d pull Starco in the end because of course they would.

It also totally makes it seem as if love is the most powerful relationship there is (aros would like a word), which is so bizarre when there are so many “power of friendship” tropes. Like, a male and female lead have to get together because their relationship is the strongest.

The love square would hold so much more meaning to me without this love drama nonsense. It’s tiring.

Anonymous said:

Have you seen Yuki Yuna Is a Hero? If so, then what are your thoughts on it? I was thinking of watching it but it seems to be another "taking away the empowerment of the magical girl genre by making the girls suffer instead" type story. I read about it on TV Tropes and apparently it's a deconstruction that takes after Madoka Magica which already puts a bad taste in my mouth, but then I got to the examples and they're basically about how girls who get magical powers lose their body parts one by one and that the reason only girls can be heroes is because "young girls have always been sacrifices".

Not to mention it was written by a man and aimed towards a seinen(adult men ages 17-35) demographic, making it torture porn for adult men. Also, both the laconic page for Yuki Yuna and Madoka Magica say "Being a magical girl sucks."(though for Yuki Yuna it adds "Unless you have the power of friendship.") and to be honest that kills any desire in me to watch the show. Should I give it a chance?

Oof.

Yeah, after bringing it up to a friend of mine, it was instantly recommended of me not to watch it, so I’d say, “no.”

Anonymous said:

Let's make one thing perfectly clear. I, love, love, LOVE Sailor Moon. And I love the transformations, too. But if there's one thing I don't love, it's that their outfits all look pretty much the same but with different colors/different lengths of gloves and shoes and stuff like that, and that they all have the exact same body type save for the one fat girl who's made to look bad. I don't like Madoka Magica, but at least they all had unique/different costumes(but they still have similar bodies).

We’re not allowed diversity here. Take your different body types to a show that cares; we’re all about femininity here and how girls can be beautiful and powerful no matter wha--oh wait...

Yeah, I don’t care for the design in Sailor Moon, but that’s because skirts don’t interest me design-wise unless it’s really unique/interesting.

(note that there’s a lot of talk about tomboys, sexism, and TV tropes and such below, and then Madoka Magica after that; that’s basically the rest of this askplosion:)

Anonymous said:

I just saw the thumbnail for a video called "Why You Should Watch Princess Tutu(Yes, I Know The Name Is Stupid)". Umm, why is it stupid exactly? Because it's "girly"? What is with people thinking that in order for a girly show to be good they have to first separate the show from its girliness in order to enjoy it? It's like how men will say a show is good despite it being girly, or that since it's good it's no longer girly. Nobody does this for boy shows, because boy things are "never" stupid.

Princess = girly thing

Tutu = girly thing

girly things = bad

That’s the formula~ They should’ve called it something edgier and manly so that more people would be interested.

Anonymous said:

I'm wary of any woman or girl who says, "I'm a girl, but I'd rather read books about guys" or "I'm a female writer but I mostly write stories about male characters". I feel like those women are the "not like other girls/one of the guys" type who suffer from internalized misogyny and don't like female characters. I also feel like they're the type to not care about female representation, because in their minds, girls shouldn't care about female role models. We can enjoy males just as much! I do!

To be fair, they might also just be writing about shirtless men doing “handsome” things. ;P

But nah, I see your point. Me personally, I try to find a balance of writing both, but I do think there can be bias.

Anonymous said:

Do you think it's okay to like a ship but acknowledge that it wouldn't be safe or healthy or condonable in real life? Because I was just thinking of how a lot of people like some really "toxic" ships like Veronica/JD in Heathers, Yuno/Yukki in Future Diary, Madoka/Homura in Madoka Magica(although some people don't like it because of its toxicity/like it but don't realize it's toxic), almost any villain/hero ship, the list goes on. But they're aware of the fact that it's not a good standard for healthy relationships in real life.

An alternative I've seen is people having a crush on "dangerous" characters like JD and Yuno, or Karma from Assassination Classroom(there's not a single video on YouTube with him in it that DOESN'T have comments full of people saying they want Karma to father their children), but still being aware of the fact that the character is a) not real and b) wouldn't be a good partner if they were real(and that's assuming they even want to be with you. But sometimes there's a good reason for falling in love with a "toxic/dangerous" character.

Take Monika from Doki Doki Literature Club! She's obsessed with the player(not the player CHARACTER, the flesh and blood player themselves) to the point of killing off all the other girls and "trapping" you in a room with her where she talks endlessly about lots of things. But she's actually a lonely girl who's driven insane by the fact that nothing around her is real. She latches on to you because you're the only other person who's real and sapient and has got a mind of their own. You're literally her outlet to the outside world.

She's personally my favorite character in the game due to her actually being a more fleshed out, sympathetic(and not in the idealized "moemoe" way), and realistic take on the Yandere archetype(which, like many moe archetypes, is kinda misogynistic in nature in that it reinforces submissiveness; it's basically animes version of "woman scorned".). So it makes sense that people would sympathize with her and want her to become real, because all she's ever wanted was to be real and to talk to real people. Especially since she really did care about her friends and even returned them back to life because she saved their backup files, taking herself out of the picture.

I read a few "Monika becomes real and lives with you" fanfictions where she's really sweet and not at all crazy and cares for you a lot, and it's never felt the same as all those other "Yandere/psycho lives with you and is your girl/boyfriend" type stories precisely because those stories tend to just glorify possessive partners that kill your loved ones, drive your family members to commit suicide, and tear up your stuffed animals and dollies for the sake of it, rather than go into why they're so crazy for you, and often reinforce Stockholm Syndrome.

Plus, those "things" she talks about in the empty room? They're actually quite smart and make you think about the world for a bit. Not many "crazy" type characters actually get that. They're all about how "I'll slice your boyfriend open with an axe if you don't date me wa ha ha", and even if they're not, it's all the fandom will focus on, to the point of ignoring any and all other aspects to their character. Because that "crazy in love" aspect is the most appealing part of them. Maybe it's due to forbidden fruit/bad boy(or girl) appeal? Who knows? But I'm starting to wonder if it's still as bad if people recognize the problematic aspects of "crazy in love" characters or "dysfunctional" relationships.

Because if they recognize it's not real and don't really want it for themselves, then it's probably not much of a problem. But if they just go on wanting it to be real and never take a step back and go "wait a minute, this isn't real love; they're only together because he latches onto the first girl to show him any kindness and affection and she's a doormat who doesn't want something bad to happen if she leaves him", then that's bad.

Obviously it's not as bad as being in love with literal stalkers, killers, and rapists in real life(which is an actual thing, believe it or not, it's called hybristophilia), because fictional characters will never be real. Karma Akabane will never be real. Yuno Gasai will never be real. JD will never be real. But loving fictional characters who do those things and not realizing the problem with it may cause people to seek out real criminals, so it's best to separate fiction from reality.

I can’t help judging a little internally, but yeah, I think people can ship whatever as long as it has that “not in real life” scenario going for it. It’s ultimately fiction, so just because I don’t like it and/or think that it’s bad doesn’t mean other people can’t ship it.

Anonymous said:

I'm getting tired of all the racists on TV Tropes getting upset whenever a trope has a Japanese name. Whether it's Tsundere, Yandere, Meganekko, Genki Girl, Bokukko, or any Japanese anime name, people will complain that the trope exists beyond anime so it shouldn't have a "cute anime name", and that it should instead just be given a broader(read: English) name with the same meaning. Or that the site is too obsessed with anime. I'm just sick of people saying that anime names are bad.

The other thing is that we don’t actually have English words for certain things? I mean, the whole reason we say, “tsundere,” is because it says everything in one word. It’s easy.

(Also, people are aware the the English language isn’t some unique thing that takes no inspiration from other languages, right? It’s a mix of things, so accept that other languages exist because we literally wouldn’t have English without them.)

Anonymous said:

Have you seen the TV Tropes reviews for "My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic"? Holy crap, they are all a perfect example of the "Real Women Don't Wear Dresses" phenomenon that I have mentioned earlier and is so fucking present on this site. While some reviews praise the show for showing that "it's okay to be strong AND girly"(such as Hadles' review, which was really splendid), and that girl shows are no less good, others either insult the show by calling it "girly, saccharine, and stupid" as if "girly" is synonymous with anything bad about a show, or feel the need to distance it from its girliness in order to praise it as if a show can't be good if it's also girly.

Some people were saying things like "the show might seem girly at first, but it's actually a good, brilliant show with intricate plot twists, well-developed characters, and even some scary moments" and "the characters aren't just shallow girly-girls, they have depth!" So what, girliness is mutually exclusive to anything of value? One person even said that the Girl-Show Ghetto was the reason they couldn't get into the show or respect it. Just...wow.

And one review even said "Rarity's pretty tough for a girly girl!" Excuse me? Tough FOR a girly girl? So being a girly girl somehow automatically disqualifies you from being tough? Like "yeah, she's tough despite being a girly girl! Because girly girls aren't supposed to be tough."

It reminds me of the phrase "you're pretty for a black girl", which, while it's never been said to ME, I have heard other people complain about. It's sick and it hurts, just like this. And the few people who didn't say things like that still said that they couldn't get into the show at first because it looked "girly and vapid", before changing their minds and thinking that the show either proved their biases about girly shows wrong, no longer think it's girly since girly shows "can't" be good, or like it "despite" it's girliness.

And there were 70 reviews in all. 70 reviews full of this misogynistic "girly is bad" shit. So in conclusion nearly all the reviews on TV Tropes for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic were along the lines of one of three things. 1) "This show is girly so I looked past it because girly shows are dumb." 2) "This show is good despite being girly/the characters are good despite being girly." and 3) "This show is not girly to me at all because it is well-written and captivating and girly shows aren't capable of such things."

Granted, some people there were able and willing to call out those who judged the show badly for being girly(or gave it the "not like other girls" treatment, but in show form), as well as people warning other potential viewers to get rid of any potential bias they may have against it due to it being girly. But there were still more people insulting its girliness as a reason they think it sucks or denying its girliness to justify their liking of it than the other way around.

I would've accepted it in the form of "If you think this show is bad because of its inherent girliness, then you are wrong!" or "This show is proof that a show being girly or aimed at girls doesn't and shouldn't take away from its value, as people seem to believe." or "A girl can be girly and be a strong female character.", but no, instead I got shit like this. It's especially insulting when TV Tropes is a site that devotes itself in part to critiquing sexist tropes found in media, only to turn right around and reinforce them.

I don’t read TV Tropes that frequently, so I fortunately missed out on all of these complete idiots who associate girly products with being bad.

(that “pretty for a black girl” comment makes me hate all aspects of “expectations of beauty” and it’s like--plz let these die)

I could maybe see an argument for criticizing a girls show for being “saccharine” if it were like, “girls’ shows written by men who clearly don’t know how to write girls are usually bad,” because then it’s not a criticism of girls’ shows exactly but rather who keeps being put in charge of writing them.

Anonymous said:

I get so annoyed when people get upset when confronted with the matter of female representation with "what's so wrong with one show having a male protagonist or mostly men and one/a few women? Why do we have to include women in everything?" These people clearly do not understand that one show doing it is one thing, but when multiple shows do it, it's an obvious problem. It's even worse when they turn around and diss shows with largely female casts for "not having enough men".

And as for people getting upset that "every show has to include women/come with a checkbox nowadays", as if it's bad to include women in your story...look around. Women make up 50% of the population. They're literally everywhere. What reason do you have to not include a substantial amount of women?

These people act like male is the default and women are a last resort. They see no problem with men dominating a cast because it's justified(despite that not reflecting real life), and yet having female characters, or, hell, a female-dominated cast(I know they also don't reflect real life, but there are still female-dominated spaces; most colleges are 2/3 female) is "unrealistic" trying to fulfill a quota, or a straw feminist agenda, as if characters can't be female for their own sake. You shouldn't have to be forced include women because their presence should be a given.

How many stories nowadays take place in the war front in Viking times or whatever? A lot of men just don't want to include female characters or see them represented(well) in media because those who are overrepresented tend to want to stay that way. They likely also have insecurities about their masculinity and are worried about female characters flooding their shows with estrogen and ruining the shows they love, because they can't relate to female characters or enjoy shows about them without negating their girliness(ie. This show seems girly, but it's actually good), since they're ashamed to associate themselves with anything feminine due to looking down on women or seeing them as bad.

Plus they want to be the center of everything so the second a show is about mostly women they get upset and claim it's "sexist against men" because it's not about them. Hence why bronies(bless their souls) are made fun of for the grave sin of enjoying a female-centric show with a female protagonist and largely female characters. Granted, there are some freaky fans, but there's still some sexism at play here.

This reminds me of a post I saw about a boy who actually looked up to female characters because you can pick a role model who doesn’t fit your gender. Crazy concept, I know. ;P

And yeah, that’s how it goes with equality. People who are best/most represented don’t want equality because they think it means less for them and they don’t want that, like a child who doesn’t want to share their cookies with everyone else.

Anonymous said:

I love TV Tropes, but if there's one problem I have with it, it's how often it associates femininity with weakness. The "Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy" trope is a good example of this, but the worst offender in my opinion is the Girly Girl With a Tomboy Streak, as most of the examples there are simply of girls who are strong-willed or fierce or can fight. Because you know, those traits are male. It's bad because there are ALREADY tropes for girly girls who can fight, Girly Bruiser and Lady of War (which TV Tropes even goes out of its way to SAY shouldn't be counted as a "Tomboy Streak" and yet does stuff like this), but it's also bad because ANY girly girl with these qualities, no matter how feminine they are otherwise, will be seen by TV Tropes as having to be at least somewhat tomboyish(read: masculine) in order to have those traits. Because regular girly girls are just weak and fragile and only want to be housewives.

It's even worse when you realize that much of these characters are created with the exact purpose of subverting the stereotype that girliness equals weak, and instead present a new and more empowering form of femininity: that femininity is strong and DOES NOT equal being a passive sex tool for men's pleasure. They're MEANT to show that being a tomboy is not the only way to be strong, and TV Tropes acknowledges that! But then they also go and claim these characters have "Tomboy Streaks" thus undermining the positive message by insinuating that you have to be tomboyish to be strong and that even girly girls have to have some level of masculinity to be deemed respectable and equal human beings, plus manipulating many impressionable folks into thinking strength and bravery is automatically tomboyish.

Worse yet, they often put a character here because "she's a big eater" or "she burps/farts a lot". Gee, I didn't know women had bodily functions? I didn't know women had digestive systems? So basically any time a girl shows that she is a human being and not a pretty, passive doll to be idealized, she is acting like a man. Because only men are fully-fledged human beings. Even outside of that, look at basically any masculinity-femininity contrast trope(Tomboy and Girly Girl, Sensitive Guy and Manly Man, Masculine Girl Feminine Boy, etc.). The "masculine" character will often be described as dominant, assertive, or outspoken, and the "feminine" character will often be called weak-willed, passive, emotional, and timid. It's fucking sickening.

The Tomboy With A Girly Streak trope is similar to its inverse in that a tomboyish girl will often be placed under this trope with their proclaimed "girly" streak being that she's tender or cries a lot or is soft spoken/a doormat. Because being girly is about not taking up too much space, not having any ambition or aspiration, and overall being a weak and shallow waste of space. For a site that claims to dismantle such sexist misconceptions, it sure does reinforce them just as much.

I almost want to stop using TV Tropes based on that and many other reasons, but it's a genuinely informative site that at least tries to avoid these stereotypes(plus it's edited by more than one person), it just doesn't do enough. For example, they made an awkward claim once that women can't fight while on their periods, and even have an Improbably Female Cast trope, as if it's abnormal that a cast could consist of mostly women and demands an explanation. To them, femininity=inferior.

And then in comes the “anti-girl tomboy” characters who basically do everything “girls don’t do;” glares at things like make-up and such, rolls eyes at the subject of “girl talk” or “romance,” drinks anything carbonated and spreads their legs wide open, etcetera.

Guys really don’t get the same version, at least not that I’m aware of? Like, at best, they don’t participate in “guy things” but that’s about it.

Having characters acknowledge it just makes everything more blatant, like if a woman comes by and the guys have to assure “DON’T WORRY, SHE’S LIKE ONE OF THE GUYS.”

It’s like a woman can only hang out and engage in “guy talk/time” (the concept of which I hate but that’s besides the point) if they can crush a beer can against their forehead.

Anonymous said:

OMG TV Tropes called Cirno the Ice Fairy from Touhou a "tomboy"? Why? Because she's boisterous and outspoken and not a "shy girly-girl" like Daiyousei! TV Tropes clearly believes that any girl or woman who is more than just a pretty face(which ALL women are, by the way), who takes up space, who has a dynamic personality and isn't just a weeping wallflower(which I'm not saying Daiyousei is) is a tomboy. Because she's acting like a man that way. Ugh, so over TV Tropes and their sexism.

And all the girls in Touhou(including Cirno) wear big frilly dresses anyway so it doesn't really make sense to see ANY of them as tomboys. But no, apparently any girl who is rowdy or tough or is active and not passive is a tomboy. You gotta be a tomboy to have attitude. You can tell they think so because they often say things like "strong, but still feminine" as if those things are opposites. They even described femininity as "weak and susceptible, vain and superficial". Like, ugh, kill me now.

I legitimately want to see a bullet point list here of what qualifies as a “tomboy.” Like, what, anyone who does one thing that isn’t “girly”?

Can we just throw out all of these terms; not even replace them, just throw them out?

(the below ask is incomplete - the first part is missing - but the asker clarified after I asked them, so clarification is below:)

Anonymous said:

Tropes is because I'm working on a story and I hope when it becomes famous that TV Tropes will write about it, but as it stands, I'm beginning to wonder that TV Tropes undermines most stories or plots to do with women one way or another. I mean, they constantly create tropes with the intent of calling out inherent biases, yet reinforce those biases themselves.

For example, they have a trope called Men Are Generic, Women Are Special, which points out the bias of male being the default, and yet on almost every other page on the wiki describing a trope, the default character will be a "he"(especially if it's a character trope), and whenever they mention "The Hero" or "The Big Bad" it's always a he unless it needs to be female(like if the heroine is in a romance story, or if the villain is a seductress). Female characters at best, can hope to be "The Heart" or "The Chick" of the group(which is often used in a demeaning way).

They even have a trope called "Improbably Female Cast" in which they point out all the instances of a story's setting having an "over-abundance" of women or girls with no men in sight, and claim that such stories have majority female characters when it is "unusual" "unlikely" or "lacks justification". Someone even suggested that the trope should be called "Where Are All The Men?" as if there's something inherently weird or wrong when a story is dominated by female characters, and like the story is in dire need of men, as if only men can be protagonists.

Even if the story has a justifiable reason for having mostly women, the fact that the writer made that choice at all is somehow deserving of mention. The mere fact that there's no "Improbably Male Cast" trope shows where the site's biases lay. They don't see anything wrong with a show being dominated by men with little to no female representation(ex. Death Note), and yet a show dominated by women(ex. MLPFIM) is somehow an anomaly and demands an explanation(even if the story does provide a reason for it, TV Tropes will still list it and presume it "improbable", as if to say "I mean, yeah, but there's no reason why you couldn't just make them mEn instead", as if writers who have mostly female characters are going out of their way to steer away from the "default" males.

In fact, they even admit that "Men Are Generic, Women Are Special" is their reason for having such a trope, but not the inverse. They even say that it's not the trope if the show revolves around a group of girlfriends with no indication of the gender ratio in the wider setting. So any time the females outnumber the males a story it's instantly labeled "improbable" because there's NO WAY any setting AT ALL could have more females than males. That's improbable! You see, this is why when women are 1/3 of the people in a given space men perceive it as "majority female" because they're uncomfortable with women having more of a presence than men.

We'll never have true equality if shows with majority female casts continue to be scrutinized under a microscope and assumed to be of inferior, lesser quality, just because there's no male characters around and it's women who are driving the plot. My problem isn't that they have a trope for majority female casts, it COULD be a testament to gender equality(ie., "there used to not be a lot of shows revolving around women, but now they're becoming increasingly common and well-known), but it's that they single out such stories as "unlikely" and thus discredit them.

And worse yet, they refuse to change the name, because they don't see a problem with it. So now every single show that doesn't have an equal number of males and females or more males than females is going to be called "improbable" by TV Tropes, because there's something(bad) to be said about shows that choose to make most of their characters women. Death Note and Naruto can slide by the radar of having loads of men, but Madoka Magica and Touhou are "improbable"? Because they have loads of women?

the clarification:

Anonymous said:

I started out complaining about how TV Tropes says that boys will watch Star Vs. The Forces of Evil only because of Marco(who's great, but it comes off like boys can only relate to boy characters) and that the show only looks girly but has a deep complex plot with scary moments(as if a show can't be dark and complex and still be girly; girly=shallow, watered down fluff), hence my complaint about TV Tropes undermining girly shows or anything "girly".

Yup, exactly like I said.

Good stuff in “girly” things is the exception. Good stuff in “manly” things is expected.

Which is funny when you consider stuff like “edgy” reboots of things. Like, Disney remakes their original movies and that usually means making them worse (like in Beauty and the Beast - god I hate that remake - where the objects are going to become complete objects when the last petal falls even though the enchantress is explicitly a good person and it comes off as super cruel and unnecessary), but that seems to just be its own breed of bad I guess.

Then there are terms like “chick flicks” and “soap operas” which are usually women-oriented and tend to be considered dumb/over-dramatic.

You know, not like MEN shows with their sexualization of women, guns and MEN things.

Anonymous said:

Remember what I said about TV Tropes being sexist? Well, they also have a trope called "Girly Run". Like, that's literally the name. Girly. Run. Thankfully the first example(which is under advertising due to the forms of media being in alphabetical order) is an aversion from the blessed Like A Girl campaign, but...just reading the page lets the casual-yet-bold-faced sexism speak for itself.

why can’t things just be like the Sims where characters can wear whatever the hell they want and have any personality without any judgment or criticism from other Sims?

(more Madoka Magica talk - and ONLY Madoka Magica talk - below because I’ve unleashed a monster apparently:)

Anonymous said:

I know you don't like Frozen but I saw a theory somewhere that Elsa's powers came from making a contract with Kyubey and her wish was to impress her sister and anyway I can't stop rolling my eyes. This isn't(just) because of my distaste for Madoka Magica compared to my love for Frozen, but if Elsa's a Puella Magi then why didn't she become a witch long ago? How did she make it to adulthood? How did she become emotionally stable? And why do her powers have to come from a negative source?

I think it might just be people looking for excuses to do their crossover fanfiction which--yeah, I’m not crazy about that.

Anonymous said:

Did you know that Cristina Vee voiced Homura Akemi in the English Dub? It's very noticeable, especially during the Cake Song, where I could've sworn she sounds exactly like Marinette. By the way, I'm still not sure what the hell was going on in that song. Could you please explain it to me(if you know)?

Nooooo don’t make me think of Homura when I think of Marinette!! fjkdgjnfdg

lol but seriously, I think the Cake Song is just meant to be one of those “weird but meant to be dEeP” things that shows do sometimes to be cool (not a criticism technically; depends on how it’s used).

I think the cake is the labyrinth and Homura saying that she’s the pumpkin makes her the odd one out since pumpkins are associated with scares and halloween, so it’s “foreshadowing” her being the witch. The things that they say they are... they’re like--ingredients for a meal, but not a cake, so the the cake is the labyrinth and they’re the things that would go inside it.

Homura and Madoka are the only ones who really get descriptions to go with them. Homura says that she’s “full of seeds” (despair?) and Madoka implies that it’ll bring sweet dreams once she’s sliced (which is either referring to the godly freedom given to magical girls before they turn into witches, or foreshadowing Madoka being “split” after Homura stops Madoka from purifying her, leading to Homura’s “sweet dream” of what it’s like when everything is “normal” after her reality twisting).

Anonymous said:

May I ask what you don't like about Kyoko's character? Is it because she was the stereotypical "jerk with a heart of gold"? Or because the writer made her flip from hating Sayaka and wanting her dead to suddenly dying for Sayaka even though she barely knows her compared to Madoka(because the writer doesn't understand how girls' relationships work)? For me it was a mixture of both(though I still don't mind KyoSaya!), but I still liked her enough, she just felt a tad stereotypical. Your thoughts?

It’s both. I just don’t like characters like her at all and the runtime of Madoka Magica can’t maintain all of these characters, “developing” them, and then killing them off. I don’t even have any time to get attached to them because they’re dead within a matter of a few episodes.

And it’s always like, “okay here’s this character’s backstory to make you feel emotionally attached--HA NOW THEY’RE DEAD. SEE??? WE TOTALLY GOT YOU.”

Like, no, you didn’t. I didn’t even have time to care about THEM, much less their actual death.

Anonymous said:

What about the girls in Madoka Magica? Do you think they're strong female characters? Now, obviously the show is not feminist, since it misses the whole point of Magical Girl, which is to empower girls and show them that girls can be powerful and feminine and can find strength in solidarity with each other by instead making them suffer and fight each other and have their power come from their emotions, which are exploited and turned against them because women can't be powerful, but still...

It’s the same way I feel about Marinette; there are some who I want to say are strong characters, but the writing is ready to just kill them off at any time and bully them for essentially having emotions.

Basically, imagine a male writer hands you a character sheet and is like, “AW YEAH CHECK OUT THIS sTrOng FEMALE CHARACTER I WROTE.”

Like, even if they were right, their ego and obnoxiousness about the whole thing, along with what they actually do to said character, makes you not want to give them any credit for it.

Anonymous said:

How do you think Puella Magi Madoka Magica would be different if they had magical boys as well(which can mean either gender-bending canon magical girls or introducing original magical boys)? Do you think the show would be better? Worse? Or would it be just about the same?

Personally I feel like having magical boys would be good and bad; good because there would be no more of the “teenage girls are hysterical” crap and it wouldn’t just be girls suffering because they can’t handle power, and bad because it would still be problematic(for stereotyping all teens as over emotional and deserving to be taken advantage of by the Incubators, and it would still be about kids suffering in a genre meant to empower girls, having some of them be boys wouldn’t help that much).

I also feel like Gen Urobuchi would still make the girls suffer more and have them be more emotionally and mentally unstable. Holy crap it feels like he read up on Aristotle’s views on women while making this show.

It would at least be more balanced I guess? Like, teenage years are a fragile time, so it would make sense for both girls and boys to be taken advantage of. I still wouldn’t like it but it would be nice to point out, “there are emotional boys as well as emotional girls.”

Anonymous said:

Literally all the problems with Treatment of Marinette, Chat's Entitlement(TM), and the sheer sexism in general(ex. all the teenage girls and even women villains being catty and bitchy, while the male villains are cool, suave, and calculating; female villains being irredeemable scum while male villains are "not as bad as they seem", etc.) could all be solved if the show just got some more female writers! You know a show isn't feminist like people claim if none of the writers are women.

That's what I love about Friendship is Magic; the show is written and directed by a woman and actually has a variety of both male and female writers! Plus, Lauren Faust explicitly identifies as a feminist and claims her works are meant to empower women and show them that there's no wrong way to be a girl. And the show reflects that! There's no "token girl" who checks all the boxes; the females have realistic flaws, diverse personalities, and let's not forget ARE THE HEROES!!! Not to mention that the cast is actually PREDOMINANTLY FEMALE. Do people have any idea how refreshing that is?!

And that's why whenever people claim that shows like Madoka Magica are feminist when it's written by men for men while also dismissing actually feminist shows written by women for women as "sexist" or "demeaning", I cringe inside. It's not just what the show looks like, it's what the people behind it say.

And Gen Urobuchi is not a feminist. At all. Just listen to the things he says about the girls, that they're terrorists who are full of hubris and destined to be alone, and that actual magical girl shows weren't his inspiration beyond the show's cosmetics, he just based it off of porn games. He only watched those shows after making Madoka Magica and admitted they were weird to him. Well, maybe they wouldn't be weird if you actually used them as inspiration! Why are you even making magical girl? So basically he admitted that all the suffering the girls go through is because it's his fetish.

I knew I wasn't imagining things when I saw all those weird shots and angles(ex. zooming in on Sayaka's thighs and breasts when she collapses to the floor, Madoka gripping the bed sheets between her legs when agitated, zooming in on Kyoko's ass when she takes her phone out of her shorts' back pocket, it's all for cheap titillation). And yet people keep saying the show is devoid of male gaze and sexism and why? Because apparently men know how to represent women better than women themselves.

you said “Madoka gripping the bed sheets between her thighs” and it gave me an immediate flashback, I hate it

I find that it’s a similar thing with gay anime/manga; I’m more likely to trust a F/F story if it’s written by a woman since they’re less likely to sexualize everything.

Anonymous said:

Homura in Puella Magi Madoka Magica: But Madoka, what's going to happen to you? You'll end up all alone here forever! You'll never be able to see your friends and family! Homura in Rebellion: Haha, screw Madoka's friends and family! Only I am worthy of Madoka's love! That girl belongs to me! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!(I'm sorry for the over exaggeration, but this is how it felt for me.)

Apparently, it was better for Madoka to just have all of her memories and powers yoinked away.

Sayaka is Madoka’s right hand girl so idk why Homura has this idea that she needs to sAvE Madoka. The fact that this whole thing comes out of a misunderstanding (because Madoka doesn’t have her memories) is so irritating.

Anonymous said:

I actually love Madoka Magica, but I completely agree with you on the hysterical women thing. Why couldn’t they just have... both magical girls and magical boys? Like, just mention that magical boys are a thing? They don’t even have to change anything but that, they don’t even really have to show it, just be like “yeah there’s magical boys too but that’s not really what this story is about, it’s about our characters we have here”. I don’t know, feels like that would have at least helped stuff.

Yeah, they don’t have to bother having the magical boys around. Just to know they exist would be enough. I mean, the fact that the focus is on them would still be bothersome (they’d probably do a thing where each girl represents a different emotion that is easily manipulated/easy to control), but it’d be something.

Anonymous said:

One thing that weirds me out when people are talking about Madoka Magica is when people refer to the characters as "little girls". Like, excuse me? They are not "little girls". They are teenagers! All of them are at least 14 years old! I hate when people call them "little", it's just so condescending and infantilizing, especially when the show does enough of that to them already. After all, no one makes that mistake with the heroines of Lucky Star and Hidamari Sketch(who are also drawn by Aoki)!

I feel like it’s the equivalent of when people call women “girls,” y’know? Sort of a “treating females as younger than they really are,” which is probably what gives guys the feeling that they have control.

For a gender that claims to be so dominant, certain ones sure have to delude themselves a lot to make themselves feel better.

Anonymous said:

I was thinking about what you said about Puella Magi Madoka Magica passing the Bechdel Test, and if it counts if there's barely any men to talk about. And while I do agree that it counts, I also feel that it doesn't really matter much in shows such as Madoka. This isn't even about feminism, this is about the fact that if a show has next to no men in it at all then it's pretty much a given that they won't talk about them since it would be impractical to talk about something that doesn't exist.

So because of that, I think there should either be an alternative test which only applies to shows that have a significant or equal number of male characters and yet the ladies still pass the test(making it feel more "real" since the option to talk about men is there), or the test should be rewritten entirely so that it only applies to shows in which the cast is either equally gender-split, or has a majority male cast/significant amount of males even if the females still outnumber them.

Reminds me of how, on TV Tropes, someone suggested that there should be a "Weak" and "Strong" Bechdel Test, where "Weak" refers to the women talking about something other than men because it is literally what's relevant at the moment(such as two female police officers discussing how to catch a female killer), thus applying the Bechdel Test there seems semi-void, while "Strong" is when they could talk about men but choose not to(ie. two female students talking about their grades during lunch).

And just to clarify about the "Strong" one, when I say they could talk about men but choose not to, this isn't to imply that female characters should talk about men, or that something's wrong with them for not talking about men, just that there's nothing stopping them from doing so, but they choose to talk about something unrelated to men. I think this strategy is much better than the test we have because it makes conversations between female characters seem more real since they're discussing things other than men of their own volition, rather than the non-male-centered talk being because they have to talk about it in-universe. I say that because The Bechdel Test serves to show that women's lives don't and shouldn't revolve around men, and they can talk about other things if they want to, but if the conversation is because they have to(like the example I gave), that gives sexists the opportunity to go "Yeah, well, they're only talking about it because it's their job!"

But if the female characters talk about things other than men of their own free will(as in, when the option is still there), then it shows that women really do have their own free will to talk about their own things and that there is NO REASON to not pass the Bechdel Test in today's day and age(I keep hearing people claim the test is stupid and doesn't matter, but then it should be easy to pass). "Oh, but if they had the choice, they would talk about men." No, because men don't sit around and talk about the women in their lives all day so why should women talk about the men in their lives all day? And to the people saying these types of tests are getting in the way of their "creativity", well, now that we know that you think female representation is stupid and something you have to be forced to do, we don't have to listen to a word you say. ;)

I like the idea of adjusting the Bechdel Test for other circumstances and expanding it as such!

You could also extend it to things like sexualization, because--I mean, having two female characters who talk to each other probably doesn’t mean much if they’re half-dressed or the writer wanted to make them bisexual for “The Fanservice.”

Anonymous said:

To be honest deconstructions of Magical Girl confuse me. There are some good ones out there(such as Princess Tutu and Revolutionary Girl Utena, so I know they're not all just torture porn, my only gripe with Utena is the implication that girls who take on the feminine "Princess" role are weak), but at its heart Magical Girl has always dealt with death, gore and pain just as much as female empowerment.

It makes me feel like the people who write these stories haven't seen magical girl and think it's all just sunshine and rainbows and that just because it's "girly" it's vapid and has no substance, and since the only way to have substance apparently is to be "dark", they go "screw it with all this princessy magical shit! Let's make our show dark instead!" When in reality if they had just sat down and watched a magical girl anime, they would understand that this is not the case.

Not to mention that many of them tend to have fanservice and the idea that magical girls have to suffer, so instead of empowering young girls, they end up misrepresenting the genre and turning it into fetish fuel torture porn for adult men(Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna are very good examples of this; the writer of Madoka says that the girls are terrorists and full of hubris and that he was inspired by porn games). It's not that you can't deconstruct the genre at all, but it's almost never done tastefully and the magical girl themes are just a cover used to explain the suffering the girls go through. :(

Another thing about magical girl deconstructions is that they often reinforce patriarchal themes, like that girls shouldn't want things for themselves and that genuinely doing something for someone while also having ulterior motives that help yourself are a BAD BAD BAD thing, no matter how ultimately harmless they are, even if they help everybody involved. They also tend to reinforce Tall Poppy Syndrome and portray the powers as harmful or a bad thing, implying that girls shouldn't have power.

Honestly, I think there can totally be even more substance in magical girl anime that doesn’t have to resort to “make it eDgY” (which I feel like is a slippery slope that can easily come off as lazy); for example, I’d really enjoy seeing something deeper to magical girl powers than something like, “oh, this magical girl happens to have the power that fits their personality,” such as a magical girl who has a power she feels she doesn’t fit but it’s a matter of perspective/seeing herself differently, or a magical girl who does have the powers that “fit” her personality - like a “fiery” girl with fire powers - and the weaknesses in her powers correlate to the weaknesses in her personality, so she has to either iron out those issues or find workarounds, as true “perfection” isn’t possible nor practical, which is something all the girls have to accept despite whatever pressure they’re under.

.I dunno, I like lore and powers revolving around metaphors. It’s fun.

Anonymous said:

About what you said in regards to "no pueri magi because it doesn't hit the shock value threshold enough", I remember this interesting comment I saw on an article called "The Problem With The Dark Magical Girl Genre"(which I would totally recommend checking out, by the way!) which said that shojo magical girl and seinen magical girl both embrace a different philosophy regarding strong female fighters. In shojo, they tend to embrace femininity as a strength and show girls that they have the power to do whatever they want and undergo dangerous professions. But in seinen, which conveniently enough is more likely to "deconstruct" the genre(ugh), rather than admiring the girls and supporting them in their endeavors, the girls are meant to be pitied(often to the point of infantilization) when bad things happen to them, with the fact that they are girls serving to make everything worse. It operates under the idea that girls are fragile, in need of protection, and shouldn't be fighting at all.

That's why deconstructions like Madoka Magica and Yuki Yuna don't sit right with me, and also why I don't consider them feminist series. People can say whatever they want about Sailor Moon and Pretty Cure, but ultimately they also had dark and dangerous themes(to the point where some kids had nightmares), but ultimately allowed the girls to rise above the hell they went through and find the strength in them to save the day. We feel bad for them when they die, not because they're moe girls, but because we were actually given the time to form a connection with them and want to see them succeed, rather than just be expected to pity them because they're cute manipulated girls. That way, when they ultimately save the day, it's all the more satisfying. Princess Tutu was a deconstruction that actually went about it in the right way, because the girls eventually found the courage to defeat their enemies in a way that made sense. Why the hell is it a "good" thing to subvert that?

No clue, but I basically agree with everything there. I mean, Madoka Magica’s entire stick is basically that all the girls are like “uwu” in terms of the style (with Madoka being the “cutest” of them all) and then being put in this dark and edgy plot+setting; it’s for both the shock value and the “contrast” of having “moe” characters be thrust into these situations to essentially die.

And the conclusion doesn’t end up being satisfying (at least to me) because the villain doesn’t have emotions so he’s just like “owo” (seriously, I wouldn’t hate on Rebellion so much if Kyubey had been given emotions rather than going crazy; Homura can basically do whatever she wants and it was SUCH A MISSED OPPORTUNITY) so it ends up being more about the journey getting there like wow look at all the sUbvErSiOnS and dEaTh we had along the way!

Because at the end of the day, it’s still like, “the girls give into their ‘hysterical emotions’ in the end basically no matter what,” even if they get saved by Madoka in the end.

Anonymous said:

Do you remember, in Madoka Magica, when Kyubey said that humans would still be living in caves if not for the Incubators? First of all, keep in mind what Incubators do. Their entire purpose on this earth is to feed off the emotions of young teenage girls as they spiral into despair as a result of their delusions of power. Like wow, let that sink in. Apparently humanity's advancement relies on the exploitation of women. We are literally the punching bags of the universe. Isn't it lovely?

No! You see--we’re so important to the world! If we weren’t emotionally exploited, the world wouldn’t be the way it is now! :D

(kill me)

Anonymous said:

I once saw a tag on tumblr that read "The only good magical girl anime is Madoka Magica because it's gay, and even it has problems." Like, ugh. Really? Has this person not watched ANY other magical girl anime? Such ignorance. So many things wrong with that statement that I can't--and WON'T--even begin to unravel here.

MADOKA MAGICA IS NOT GAY AND I’M SO TIRED OF PEOPLE CLAIMING IT IS

s T O P

I DON’T EVEN CONSIDER YURI ON ICE TO BE GAY. MADOKA MAGICA? NAH MAN.

Anonymous said:

Do the girls in Madoka Magica even have transformation phrases? You know, like how Marinette says "Tikki, spots on!" or how Sailor Moon says "Moon Prism Power! Make-up!" or how Iris in LoliRock says "Iris! Princess of Ephedia!" etc. But in Madoka Magica, there doesn't seem to be any of that. At least in Yuki Yuna they pressed a button on their phones. But how do the Puellae Magi even transform? Just goes to show you how Gen Urobuchi knows next to nothing about the genre he claims to deconstruct.

Transformation phrases are magical and cool and you can’t take that away from me.

Anonymous said:

I had a shower thought about Madoka randomly in bed last night: If a Magical Girl's Soul Gem loses control over its user when 100 metres or further away from it, that meant that when Homura got Sayaka's Soul Gem back for her, Sayaka should've regained consciousness once Homura was less than 100 metres away, even if she didn't have her Soul Gem yet. I also love to ponder why on Earth Homura would even bother retrieving Sayaka's Soul Gem if she only cares about Madoka and Madoka's well-being.

I think it’s just a complicated process of Homura trying to make sure Madoka doesn’t fall into despair herself (in a non-witch way) and is convinced to make a wish.

Anonymous said:

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Sayaka really got the worst deal out of the whole thing. While her story may seem more "mundane" compared to the others(she just wanted the token Ill Boy osananajimi to like her back), she's the only one who somehow isn't brought back when Madoka recreates the universe, loses her Soul Gem on more than one account(and on the second, she starts decomposing and her crush sees her and calls her a monster because he thinks she's pretending to be the REAL Sayaka), is supposedly the weakest Magical Girl, getting swiftly taken out by both Kyoko AND Homura(the latter of which doesn't even make sense, if her body can heal why was she taken out so quickly?), takes a long while to show up in Magia Record, and Gen somehow finds it suiting to single her out as the one who is "destined to die" every time she makes a contract. Apparently the series director wanted Sayaka to live/be brought back, but Gen refused because it just had to be edgy.

Of course, MEN are allowed to have wish fulfillment power fantasies and dream like the sky's no limit and aspire to be all they want to be, but the second WOMEN try to be the strong ones, the powerful ones, or dream of something for themselves and others, they have to learn a lesson about how unrealistic their fantasies are and how they'll never live out their dreams. Hence why Sayaka puts the blame all on herself, saying that she's not a hero and was stupid and selfish the whole time.

"token Ill Boy osananajimi“ dfhbgjhfdgdfg

It was a real shame because I liked Sayaka somewhat (not saying much but still) and she was such a predictable one to go. Like, “oh wow, an angst-y anime all about shock value? so basically the best friend is dead then with no chance of survival.”

I think I do remember being told/reading somewhere (so don’t quote me) that Sayaka is the one that’s hardest to keep alive in the games, so you have to work hard for it. It just sucks.

Anonymous said:

Yet another thing that bothers me about Puella Magi is how the show frames the young ladies as if everything is their fault even though they have no idea what they're getting into because the person who makes the deal doesn't even bother explaining shit to them and all the show's attempts at deconstructing is just taking lighthearted elements meant to empower girls and show them that they can be brave and strong as well as feminine and make them dark and morbid.

Like, I get the whole "having young girls fight is a little unrealistic" aspect, but most magical girl shows actually do touch on that! Only difference is that over time, they become stronger and better at fighting(which is only to be expected, whether you're a teenage girl or not) and become more competent along the way because the whole genre is about FEMALE EMPOWERMENT.

Not to mention how the show seems to forget that the Incubators are villains and even seems to put them in the right and the girls in the wrong, what with the claim that they rationalize with the girls they make contracts with like sentient human beings(yeah, because emotionally manipulating young girls and literally taking their souls out of their bodies and making them liches without their consent is definitely treating them like sentient human beings), and that they always follow up on their end of the deal whereas it's the girls' faults their wishes go sour because they never wish for what they truly want(I'm sorry, but I simply DO NOT buy that. Homura and Mami outright wished for what they wanted. Their wishes went sour because the plot "decided" that they should have wished in a different way; plus, you're telling me that if Sayaka had outright said she wished "for Kyousuke to love her back" that the show wouldn't just "make" him mind-controlled or have Sayaka "outgrow" her feelings by the time he falls in love with her, all the while making it out to be "her" fault he's so heartbroken because she was some kind of tease or whatever, further demonizing girls' sexualities?).

Plus they explicitly claim that every woman in history was a magical girl and that without them, humanity would still be in caves(as in, humanity wouldn't be able to progress without the oppression and exploitation of women, and women can't gain power without going insane because female power is some unhealthy, inhuman, infernal thing.). Even if we take this all as a reflection of patriarchal society(which I highly doubt it was, if anything, it reinforces it), all it does is imply that the oppression of women is the natural order of things, required even.

As for the girls themselves, they routinely beat themselves up and the show makes no effort to tell them they're wrong(up until the massive cop-out of an ending), like how Sayaka's last words before becoming a witch are literally her "admitting" that she was "stupid, so stupid" for wanting a boy to love her and be healed of his infirmity. It just seems like we're supposed to think "you know, maybe the Incubators aren't that bad!" while ignoring that the girls are being treated like the disposable trash bags of the universe. This show already does the magical girl genre dirty but treating it like everything the Incubators did was necessary and like it's all the girls' faults these things happened to them in the first place is the icing on the stale, sour cake. Nothing like a giant heap of sexism to help get you through your day. :/

I’ve noticed this a lot in Miraculous, but Madoka Magica somehow does it worse; this “one (supposed) mistake leads to all of these consequences you never saw coming.”

Like Ladybug calling Lila out. We know that Lila’s pettiness in “Chameleon” shows that it wouldn’t matter whether Ladybug yelled at her or not; the simple fact that Marinette opposes a liar led to Marinette getting expelled, even if only for a while. Then there’s “Miracle Queen” and all that garbage that came with it.

These two shows put their teenage girls through hell for having emotions and there’s no way to undo it.

Anonymous said:

Honestly, the Madoka Magica fandom is basically the magical girl equivalent of "not like other girls" type women. I can't say I'd be surprised if they didn't watch a single magical girl show other than Madoka because they're all "stupid and girly but this one is edgy and dark" just because those shows are written by women to inspire other girls and show femininity as a strength while Madoka Magica is written by men for men who want to see young girls suffer without any actual feminism.

Like, let's go through their arguments one-by-one to prove that they don't hold up. They love to say that Madoka Magica is better than other Magical Girl shows because "it's dark and edgy and shows the downsides to being a Magical Girl unlike other shows where it's all sunshine and lollipops". First of all, other Magical girl shows also got very dark. Princess Tutu and Utena are also "darker" takes on the genre, but even more lighthearted shows like Sailor Moon and Precure had scary moments.

The only difference is, with them, they still managed to critique problematic aspects of the genre and actually provided ways to improve it, while STILL managing to keep their target audience(FEMALES) in mind, without condescending to them and infantilizing them. And they still showed the girls being empowered and overcoming the darkness.

In Madoka, there's none of that, there's no actual critique of the genre because Gen didn't have the respect for it to do his research, it's aimed at men so it doesn't keep female viewers in mind by definition(which is also another reason why it can't be a deconstruction; deconstructions should be done FOR its target audience), and the girls are constantly put down and treated like Moe crybabies by the narrative even when they're not(cause, you know, teenage girls are "emotional"!). And it doesn't offer ways the genre could improve, it just takes a female-empowering genre and twists it to be this system of oppression that the genre is meant to avoid.

Magical Girls tend to have a very strong focus on girls empowering girls and all that awesome stuff, and yet when Madoka and Mami form a special bond and Madoka encourages Mami by telling her she's not alone? It makes her big-headed and overconfident and she gets devoured by Charlotte. See what happens when girls rely on each other? Madoka is Sayaka's best friend, but gets pushed aside in favor of Kyoko, who later dies for Sayaka because girls who want to help each other had better be prepared to suffer and die for their beliefs. Sayaka loses everything, which happens to include her best friend, over a guy. And the whole witch process means that any female solidarity that could be found in the show is thrown out the window since the core concept of the show is girls being forced to brutalize and kill and exploit each other.

People act like Madoka is Yuri when it's not, Gen was asked if Homura really was in love with Madoka and if Kyoko really was in love with Sayaka, and what did he do? He beat around the bush. Naoko Takeuchi and Kunihiko Ikuhara(the latter of whom also worked on Sailor Moon R; woah, what a surprise) both admitted that there was gay love in their stories, yet people act like Madoka is super progressive regarding homosexuality when it's just implied and those shows were MUCH more open! Doesn't stop people from claiming the show is "honorary yuri" and saying that the meaning of "yuri" should be broadened to include any close bonds between two female characters, whether or not it's actually romantic, AND favoring the show(and HomuMado) above actual yuri shows that are made to appeal to women. If all this were actually valid, Sailor Moon would be yuri as hell.

I hate seeing people fap over this show and act like it's so revolutionary for recycling things that the genre was ALREADY DOING, because I know full well that the ONLY reason it gets this wide acclaim is because Magical Girl shows have traditionally been written for women and this show is aimed at men. That's literally it. Because nothing a woman writes is good enough, especially when it dares to go against patriarchal constructs of femininity as weak and docile by portraying it as cool and awesome. It doesn't matter how cool and dark and diverse and inclusive and complex Sailor Moon and Precure and Princess Tutu and Utena are, they're written by/for women with the intention of empowering them so they're automatically invalid, cheap, happy-go-lucky crap where nothing bad ever happens and anything those shows try to do ought to be discredited because they don't appeal to men like they should so what's the point?

But the second a MAN comes in and intrudes on a female-dominated space by doing all of those things but with a very shallow understanding of how they ought to be executed, people are all over it because a MAN did it and now it's interesting and respectable! I have seen so many people say that they don't like Magical Girl because it's girly and shallow and stupid, but then they praise Madoka for things that the girly and "shallow" shows have already done! Men are always taking away things meant for women and distorting it to fit their patriarchal views and yet when they do it it's somehow better and anyone who complains is simply a whiny straw feminist!

The fandom does it all the time, someone complains about the show and why they don't like it and find it sexist, and the response is always "you're just not smart enough to understand it; you have no idea what you just watched". Because obviously since it's made by a man it's sooo much smarter then the traditional sappy stuff made by women. That's why it's so annoying when others praise it at the expense of other works in the genre: they know their reasons for liking it are, more often than not, rooted in sexism against female-aimed and female-empowering works, so the only way they can praise it is at the expense of said works, hence them being just like girls who claim they're "not like other girls" when there's nothing wrong with girls being feminine and in fact many of those girls may like the same things you do!

So while I'm not saying there's anything inherently WRONG with liking Madoka, I DO have a problem with people who act like it's better or more serious than other shows in the genre and simply discard them on the grounds that they're "for girls", since they obviously didn't watch them.

me when I initially watched Madoka Magica: I don’t get why this exists.

me when I learned it was written by a man: ohhh, now I get it.

I also take issue with people comparing things that are made for different demographics. Like look, I don’t care if you enjoy your angst display over here, but also maybe don’t compare it to the stuff not even made for you unless you’re willing to get into a fight over it?

It comes off wrong, like they have to trash on stuff because it wasn’t made for them, y’know?

Anonymous said:

Honestly, I am so sick of people saying that Magical Girl shows are sexist or anti-feminist, when all they do is portray girls being awesome and powerful while also being feminine at the same time, because "Well in Japan it's actually gender conformity because it's telling girls they can only be strong if they're feminine! You're just projecting your Western values onto an Eastern work!".

First of all these shows are made by women for women and often have explicit feminine messages that you literally cannot miss unless you are simply blind or trying not to see them. And they also tend to have a very strong focus on women supporting or empowering other women. Just think of Sailor Moon, which constantly gets this "criticism", and yet there's an episode where the girls explicitly protest against a villain who claims women are all shallow and useless and can't do anything without men's help. Would Naoko Takeuchi put that in the show if she weren't a feminist?

And then there's the fact that she has said that one message she wanted the female leads to convey was to value their relationships between other girls because girls are strong and don't need to waste time depending on men. There's also the fact that most Magical Girl shows tend to treat the powers as something special and awesome that's unique to women and girls, paired with the coming-of-age themes present in the show, and you get a magical equivalent of female puberty, with magic mixed in.

But no, all of that gets thrown out the window because they dare to be "feminine" while doing all of that stuff and the Japanese are forcing their girls to be girly through Magical Girl propaganda. And I just HATE when people act like anything feminine must be societally forced onto girls, rather than girls just happening to like them. In addition, stating that they are simply reinforcing gender roles by being feminine is such bullshit because the whole purpose isn't about conforming to patriarchal femininity, it's about reclaiming femininity.

Too often, femininity is associated with being weak, powerless, helpless, submissive, docile, vapid, catty, bitchy, petty, vain, stupid, the list goes on. Magical Girl saves femininity from a bad reputation. It shows femininity in a new light, as something strong and powerful and, hell, even admirable! It's about telling girls "Hey, you can be strong and powerful and smart, but you don't have to be a tomboy or act like a man to do so". Girls are always told they have to act masculine to be taken seriously because the only way to be respected is to be like a man, which is an indirect way of saying that only men deserve respect.

Magical Girl does away with all that in favor of showing the feminine as something innately powerful, and yet naysayers MISS the point and say that it's just stereotyping girls instead. To see people claim that Magical Girl forces girls to fit a feminine ideal to be respected is just disappointing. It's supposed to be a female power fantasy for young girls that shows them as the ones being powerful and empowering each other.

Take how in Sailor Moon the heroine often says something along the lines of "I won't let you take advantage of girls", which Wedding Peach went on to imitate. The purpose of the genre is for girls. To empower girls. So why on earth would they show them fitting into a "male" mould of power? Do these people think that any time women are shown acting distinct from men that they are doing something wrong?

And the hypocritical part is that nobody pisses on male-oriented anime for reinforcing a harmful narrative to boys that they have to be masculine to be valued and respected. Of course they don't! Because being "masculine" is never seen as a bad thing to be. It's assumed that masculinity is always strong and good and awesome and there's nothing wrong with boys being forced to be masculine because you're supposed to want to be masculine. You're not supposed to want to be feminine.

So of course people will shit all over Magical Girl for embracing, empowering, and reclaiming femininity, because it's not supposed to be that way! You're not supposed to be feminine and also be strong. You're supposed to deny your identity as a woman and assimilate into the boys' club because only boy things are worthwhile! And they cover it up by saying that Magical Girl forces girls to be feminine, when in actuality the WORLD forces girls to be MASCULINE. Magical Girl doesn't force girls to be feminine, It ALLOWS them to. Do you see the difference there?

Another thing I'd like to bring to the table is that the claim is racist and here's why: The claim that "Magical Girl shows are seen as feminist in the US for portraying femininity as a source of strength but not in Japan because it's telling girls they have to be feminine"...what does that mean? Japanese people can't be feminist? All Japanese people are sexists and think girls have to fit in a certain role? Do Japanese feminists HAVE to be anti-femininity? Are there literally no Japanese people who think you can be feminine AND strong(who also obviously identify as feminists?) Because it seems hella sexist to insinuate that Magical Girl shows are sexist because they're made in Japan and they don't believe you can be feminine AND strong there.

While there is some credibility to it since Japan IS, by and large, much more strict with gender roles, hasn't it ever occurred to these people that these types of shows exist to counter that belief? Not only that, but it implies that people aren't allowed to have opinions on works that aren't made in their culture, and that anyone who sees those shows as feminist are just projecting their Western beliefs onto an Eastern work. And even worse, when people say that, they don't have the same opinion of Western Magical Girl works.

Just look at LoliRock, Miraculous Ladybug, Winx, W.I.T.C.H., Star vs the Forces of Evil, and countless other European/Western Magical Girl works. Where are the people saying "They get their power from femininity and that is sexist!"? Nowhere! They're silent! Even though those are very much like Magical Girl works from Japan(although I don't think the genre originated from there), while still being original.

It's because people think that any media exported from Japan is automatically sexist and demeaning and so anything they create, no matter how empowering their intentions, gets twisted into something that's somehow toxic or unsafe for girls to watch. But when Europeans do the exact same thing nobody complains. Because Japan is not allowed to do anything empowering whatsoever; something's always wrong with it, apparently.

So that's why I have a problem with people who say those things; it's so problematic because they think they're being all open-minded and aware/respectful of other people's cultures, but all they're doing is reinforcing negative stereotypes further. It's kinda like what I said earlier(in another ask) about how people love to praise Madoka Magica for being a unique, dark, and interesting take on the genre when all it did was rehash elements of the genre that already existed, strip away the female empowerment, and gear it towards grown men, which is why people like it more. How about instead of speaking for Japanese people you let them speak for themselves?!

I would also like to add that there’s even a limit to women acting masculine because that’s still “not enough” for those kinda of men who would promote those beliefs. Women need to act more masculine to “be taken seriously” but then you have men who’ll tell them to “dress less” or whatever.

I think what it comes down to is that they want women to not be “emotionally taxing” with all those dAmN eMoTioNs of theirs (unless it’s for the sake of their angsty magical girl anime where the girls suffer for having emotions), but they also need to look pretty and be sexualized.

We can’t win.