#youre entire team literally only exists because of sexism

[the-witch-of-woods-beyond]

if you support team green, you’re a misogynist. it’s that fucking simple. you have literally no excuse - you support sexim and defend rapists and romanticise people who abuse children. hiding behind a show doesn’t excuse the fact that you hate women and yet you still lie to defend yourself, but the truth is plain simple: the dance would not have happened if rhaenyra were a man. team green thought they could steal the throne that was her birthright and she’d just lie there and take it and then got all surprised when she didn’t and tried to make her the villain for reclaiming what had always been hers. but then they all got killed stupidly - like they fucking deserve.

[sydalelys01]

Hello! I would like to know your opinion on this:

"In regard to your post about certain Daemyra fans hating JL&J and insisting A&V would hate them too, imo it has a lot to do with sexism.

I have seen countless AUs where the Dragon Twins still exist either as Laena's or Rhaenyra's daughters, the Strong boys however are conveniently missing.

It goes back to the internalised mi- sogyny surrouding female sexuality, it's ok for Daemon to have sex with women before Rhaenyra, to father children with women other than Rhaenyra but it's not ok for Rhaenyra to do the same.

The Strong boys are not only proof she was having sex with another man but also that she was 'enjoying sex with another man and taking control of her sexuality. They want her to be "untou- ched", the virginal bride for Prince Dae- mon to deflower and impregnate.

They don't like what the boys (Jace es- pecially) represent, so try to dimiss their importance to both Team Black and the overall storyline"

-Because I honestly don't think it's entirely related to misogyny that the Strong Boys are not included in certain AUs and the twins are, but rather related to the fact that they are very difficult to fit in being Daemon's legitimate children since they would have to change practically everything about them, they wouldn't be the same characters, they would have other names, another physical appearance, possibly another personality, they are characters that in my opinion have no place in any other scenario other than being Rhaenyra's bastard children with Harwin Strong as a result of her failed marriage to Laenor. Rhaenyra and Daemon's firstborn has to be Aegon, it wouldn't make sense for their firstborn to be called Jacaerys or Lucerys. Besides, this couple has such strange fans, they seem to enjoy them more because they are forced to separate and have to resign themselves to being with other people who are not their first choices and in Rhaenyra's case they call it sexual freedom 🤨 Well, it's always the same, they want to give importance to characters that lack it and this comes from a "pro Aegon and Viserys blog" but of course when they are the only ones left. And by the way, she mentions "many AUs" and I would like to know which ones because I only know one where the twins exist and the Strongs don't 😂

hi dear anonymous!!! i missed your questions!!!!..

Responding to your comment , i think i have already said this several times , for me people who make these types of comments are people who do not understand the universe of asoiaf, and everything they want to see from a modern and gender perspective, it is a story in a medieval context... in almost every sense.... And you are totally right it doesn't make any sense that their first children are named that way in the first place because they don't understand that the names of these children were put by corlys to "reaffirm " ( i call it fooling himself) that they are Velaryon, they are so obsessed with these children that they don't understand that these children are a danger to the existence of house targaryen itself, Perhaps these people see them as a sign of "change" since they do not have the physical characteristics of the Targaryens (they project themselves and want a dragon to feel powerful), and that because of them, Westeros would be a kingdom of love, peace and legitimized bastards. They do not understand that mixing their blood with other houses and giving dragons to bastards, leaves the power of the targaryen house in great vulnerability, they do not understand that the targaryen managed to rule with blood and fire despite being the fucking slogan of the house.

IT WAS A CONQUEST!! , it wasn't that they all held hands and decided to let the targaryen rule them , they literally told them bend the knee or we kill you. despite knowing how it ends up legitimizing bastards and mixing with other houses, and we didn't just see it in one situation, we saw it when dragons existed and when they didn't exist, both situations led to war, to minimize the circumstances that led to the dance with the argument that all this originated because rhaenyra "was a woman" seems stupid to me, several bad decisions by Viserys and by Rhaenyra, led to the events of the dance, it was not only the fact of being a woman that was also important but it was not only the only cause. SO THE FACT THAT THERE ARE AUs where the bastards do not exist and the twins do, has logical consistency because these people DO understand the context, the importance of blood and legitimization in the existence and superiority of the house targaryen. another thing is that also this kind of "daemyra fans" have very romanticized or rather idealized Daemon and Rhaenyra as good people .... and let me tell you alleged "daemyra fans" that they were never good people, both are super morally very questionable and super selfish characters.

.... both,not only one ,these people are so obsessed in always victimizing a character (usually rhaenyra just for being a woman,they complain about that and they do the same with her...in short hypocrisy..) which prevents them from seeing and accepting the bad of their presumed favorite characters, they DO NOT UNDERSTAND or do not want to do it that the world is asoiaf is not fair and never will be, the only one that survives is the one who know how to play with all that . So simply for me they are not Daemyra fans... they only like the fetish version they have of them , which tell me I have come across swill that presume to be daemyra and are a disgust of their fetishes... I have even come across fics where Daemon likes to fuck Rhaenyra being pregnant by someone else. .... that for me is a sexual pariphilia... they should go and get that checked... it's not normal... that has nothing to do with "sexual freedom" the fact that rhaenyra had 3 bastard children when there are "methods" to avoid getting pregnant in less than 6 years is not "sexual freedom". because she could have sex without having children, what rhaenyra did is called being stupid and trusting knowing that daddy will always cover for you, because rhaenyra needed an heir .... not three .... and the situations in which Daemon got to get women pregnant (including mysaria that didn't work .... that ohh surprise .... Daemon in question, he did suffer consequences for fathering a bastard .... viserys took care of that very well ) and he fathered the twins when he was single and remarried .... you know it is very funny, because Rhaenyra as well as Daemon was in a forced marriage, both fathered bastards during that marriage... both wanted children (different reasons maybe ,but same situation), but only her children lived to tell .... and besides that they held the title of princes, they were going to inherit lands, titles and they were given a dragon egg in their cradle.... while Daemon was branded as a thief for wanting to do the same and his pregnant lover was expelled from the kingdom (look that I am the last person to support the birth of that bastard that he was going to have with mysaria but I am not blind). In conclusion since I wrote a lot, for me they are people who have the perception of ASOIAF well altered.... and they make up things like there are many AUs where Aegon and Viserys are the first children ,when I have proof ... literal .... I have screenshots where there are thousands of AUs where they are a happy family and the bastards in some occasions are their children and in others not , but Aegon and Viserys are a zero to the left...always...they are more irrelevant than those who clean the dragons shit.... literal...so they have the perception of reality well altered....

[invested-in-your-future]

What are your biggest issues with the first three volumes?

Hmm.

The Vagueness

The show, from the very start, has been way too vague about specific things it shouldn't have been vague about- be it the racism or how ANYTHING works.

Do other countries have military or did all of them randomly dissolve it? If so then why does Atlas still do?

How does anything in the world work? What was the great war beyond few weird snippets?

What can or can't Aura do? What IS Magic?

WoR has some context here and there, but it's also pretty sparse for a lore video. And the show grows sparser and sparser as it goes.

Shaky foundations could be fine if the later Volumes expanded upon the world but...

They really didn't.

The Faunus/WF Subplot.

The milquetoast "violence bad" takes, using WF as generic mooks, the Faunus discrimination overall not being expanded upon, the way team RWBY handles Velvet bullying - it all stinks of ignorance and unwillingness to actually delve into it all at all.

This is basically the depth of RWBY's take on discrimination:

The Faunus are "angry at discrimination" but "being angry and violent is not right, they should protest peacefully and out of sight".

What discrimination? What do we see of that beyond just one school bully instance nobody does anything?

Why do Faunus appear only when the show needs someone to get beat up? What drives them to join WF in such numbers?

HOW do Vale's citizens view Faunus? Is it different from other Kingdoms?

Nothing.

(And yes I know that V2 subplot is just something they lifted straight out of Korra, but Korra had an entire show beforehand showing multiple benders as oppressive and powerful beings that made the world tremble - the idea behind the non-benders being fearful at least makes sense, especially since we DO see benders who exploit others through the Book One)

Heteronormativity

The showrunners, all of them, shouted from the rooftops about how Remnant is an inclusive world and yet in show the LGBTQ+ community existence was reduced to weird gags (sometimes literally going against the "inclusivity" comments like when entire school - all women paired up with men in the background - laughs at Jaune in a dress) or bait (sometimes intentional, like how in V2 commentary Miles talks about how they put in Ruby and Weiss scenes to attract shippers).

And yet the showrunners kept talking about how the gay people totally exist and how the world is inclusive and how they are just planning things and "getting better" at writing while they had no issues throwing in a TON of straight ships into the mix or highlight heteronormative romantic interactions and attractions.

The weird thinly veiled sexism.

Literally most of Jaune subplots pretend to be about how Jaune is in the wrong, and yet it's the women who are in the wrong - "Jaune hit on Weiss and Weiss said no? Oh how evil and selfish of Weiss to not give him a chance!" and all.

Some are okay like the Cardin blackmail idea but the execution just grinds everything to the halt.

Screentime and Focus Disbalance

Jaune gets A LOT of focus, while Ruby gets barely any. Now it would work fine if you assume the show is just building up to her development as she reacts to Fall of Beacon and all that - but the volumes after don't do that and instead keep giving focus to Jaune.

Specific character allusions.

Some character references are...uhhh, yeaaaah.

Like, I love the first three volumes a lot and I love the trailers but there are flaws - I was just more forgiving of them because of the usual growing pains and because there was always that promise of the show doing better going forward which they never fulfilled.

You can like something flawed and derive enjoyment from it. As long as there are things to like and the flaws don't overcome whatever good is left in the story.

[gotinterest]

idk man. trans men/masc people should be allowed to express the fact theres specific kinds of transphobia to them. while the poster is clearly in the wrong, that doesnt mean transmisandry doesnt exist. the trans community really needs to stop with the infighting

Ok let me break this down because the entire reason why "transandrophobia" and "transmisandry" as terms came into being is because there are a lot of trans men who are very poorly versed on intersectionality, yet feel as though they know enough to create a new term for the discourse.

The terms "transandrophobia" and "transmisandry" were created as companion terms to "transmisogyny". The logic being, "well, trans women have unique experiences with transphobia so that's what transmisogny is. Likewise, trans men also have their own experiences with transphobia... so let's call that 'transandrophobia' or 'transmisandry'"

The problem is that transmisogyny is NOT "a unique form of transphobia that trans women face". Transmisogyny is a unique form of misogyny that trans women face as a result of being both trans and women (just as, for example, misogynoir describes the unique form of misogyny that black women face as a result of the intersection between their race and gender).

Misandry does not exist as a systemic force. Our society is set up in a way that benefits men as a gender, despite the fact that sometimes those benefits entail a form of masculinity that many men find constricting, it still materially and socially benefits them with more opportunities, higher paying jobs, more respect, etc.

Trans men may have unique experiences as being men who are also trans, but they are not oppressed for being men as terms like "transandrophobia" and "transmisandry" would suggest. In fact, a lot of trans men BENEFIT from being men, especially as they transition (with many trans men reporting that they were taken more seriously, felt they were more listened to, got better paying jobs, etc as they transitioned).

Men- even men who are oppressed along other axis- benefit from being men within their oppressed communities. Women of color have talked about this at length- even as men in their communities are oppressed for their race, they still benefit materially over the women in their racial group.

The same exact thing happens in the trans community. Trans men on average make more money than trans women. They face less violence than trans women. They are not the ones primarily targeted in the most virulent transphobia campaigns. The image of the trans predator is of the trans WOMAN in "your daughter's team, in the women's restroom, in the girl's locker rooms". Conservatives don't fearmonger about "our sons being exposed to trans men, being outcompeted by trans men, being assaulted by trans men". The only time I've ever seen a transphobe bring up trans men being a problem in a men's room was to bolster their point about why trans women don't belong in women's restrooms.

And all of this is still as trans men are undoubtedly being oppressed for being trans. Trans men face impediments to important medical services due to being trans- including services that trans women don't have to worry about (such as getting an abortion). We face housing and job discrimination. But we don't face those issues because we are men... we face them because we are trans. Those are examples of transphobia that trans men face and it is very important to talk about them... but they do not require a separate term. Our maleness is not the influencing factor, our transness is.

We could talk about the uniqueness of trans men being the only men who are capable of experiencing sexist discrimination. That's a unique experience to trans men that cis men don't really experience outside of very specific circumstances. But that also does not need a new term. It's literally just sexism and misogyny.

The thing that is the most frustrating about "transandrophobia" and "transmisandry" is that those terms are the products, themselves, of transmisogyny and infighting. I have again and again seen cases that are ACTUALLY TRANSMISOGYNY get relabeled as "transandrophobia" and twisted to make trans men the victims at the expense of trans women getting the chance to talk about their own issues (such as the high visibility of trans women- which makes them a target- getting presented as "everybody only talks about trans women and nobody says anything about trans men").

The most common thing I see get labelled as "transandrophobia" are trans women pointing out a trans man being misogynistic. Or merely trans women talking about transmisogyny instead of specifically setting aside time to talk about "trans men's problems" (which is the exact same rhetoric that MRAs use to talk about how "feminists don't care about male loneliness!" or "feminists don't talk about men's issues like biases towards mom's in custody battles!" etc etc).

I would absolutely LOVE to talk about trans guy stuff! Like I'd love it if us guys could talk about trans guy stuff. Too bad almost every trans man online community gets infested with guys who keep wanting to complain about trans women instead of like. Regular guy stuff like feelings of inadequacy with your partner due to cis-centric ideals of masculinity or like pros and cons of hysterectomy vs tubal ligation or like best places to get a pelvic exam or like better tdick jerk off technique. But noooooooooo.

[phoenixyfriend]

OKAY so on the topic of Star Wars takes wrt “character ends up in an A/B/O universe where they’re an omega, but they were previously a cis male in their canon”

@atagotiak and I had some Thoughts on discord

So, obviously, Anakin would make a good omega and he’s also incredibly murdery. Foregone conclusion that we're using him for this.

There is no preexisting Anakin in the Omegaverse. He shows up JUST as the war is starting. Canon timeline is in the third year of the war (he’s 22), but whatever dumped him into omegaverse also tossed him back a few years. No de-aging, just a bit of mismatched timeline stuff.

He's... really good at war, and clearly a Jedi, so the Temple just kind of goes "WELL OKAY THEN, SURE, YOU'RE IN, EVERYONE PRETEND HE'S BEEN HERE THE WHOLE TIME." The Jedi, by and large, don't care about omegaverse dynamics beyond 'what do you need, medically, to be happy and healthy' and 'what do you need to be aware of so you can be prepared for biases you encounter in the field?’

None of the civilian natborns (mainly politicians) want to put him on the field because of those biases. Anakin, being Anakin, is VERY blatantly an omega in scent, has never been on suppressants (because it wasn't a thing he fucking NEEDED), is incredibly emotional as a person, loves kids, etc.

Like, nobody wants an omega fighting a war anyway, but THIS one is like PINNACLE omega, and those awful Jedi are making him FIGHT just because he's good at stab!

The Jedi: Actually, it's because he's got several years of war experience that we don't, and he's a good tactician that works well with the clones-- Coruscant: You MONSTERS The Jedi: Look, we gave him the option to not stab and he looked absolutely devastated. Anakin, several days earlier: You don’t want me? I’m not good enough??? Jedi: Also he can beat up at least half the temple.

He doesn't know a damn thing about dynamics, but he DOES know that sometimes he's so horny he wants to stab HARDER. The clones are largely disinterested in their generals' dynamics because between mostly-Mando* trainers and no-dynamic Kaminoans, they only really care if a person can shoot.

* Mandalore approves of Fighty Omegas. As far as (traditional) Mandalore is concerned, you want an omega that will kill the threats to your children as well as you do.

Anakin: You know more about being an omega than I do. Rex: ...I'm an alpha. Anakin: Yeah. Let that one sink in a bit.

We have two options for Obi-Wan!

Omegaverse local Obi-Wan (beta) has never met this man before, and is very unnerved that the immediate default reaction Anakin has to his presence is releasing Family pheromones as if Obi-Wan is his DAD and like. This strange, too-tall man from another dimension has got absolutely NO control over what he projects in the Force OR in his dynamic.

Obi-Wan was ALSO transplanted from canon to omegaverse, and is also an omega, for contrast reasons. He is nice and friendly and and likes poetry and that sort of thing... but also he has the highest dismemberment count in the movies. Also he doesn’t prioritize romance.

We went with the second one because it's hilarious.

Someone watching them spar: Wow, omegas from that universe are terrifying.

As previously mentioned, now with some tweaking to account for both: Obi-Wan and Anakin just straight up don't exist until they drop headfirst into the council room, already covered in blood. (It's mostly not theirs.)

Nobody realizes either one is an omega until they "naturalize" to this dimension and Anakin goes into heat... and doesn't realize it, actually, because his primary symptom is heightened protectiveness and aggression. Everyone else with the right nose realizes, because the man has no control over his pheromone production, but Anakin? No. He just stabs. He’s angry and horny and he will cut someone.

Ahsoka has no reaction to human pheromones but basically everyone smells Anakin's "my child!" reaction to her, so... Cool. Have a padawan, we guess.

Anakin ends up sparring a lot with Aayla and Ahsoka, because only humans and near humans have dynamics, so these two don't REACT to the pheromones situation.

(Palpatine is a Kindly Old Beta who tries to treat Anakin the way he EXPECTS Anakin wants to be treated, which is. Not. Accurate.)

(Anakin hates it.)

I'm just so in love with "An omega can't fight." "You wanna fuckin' bet?"

There are plenty of omega Jedi, by the way, it's just... most of them can keep it relatively low-key instead of Anakin's jet-engine broadcast. Some, if they're known to be omega, probably take advantage of being underestimated, like Obi-Wan probably (and especially a version of Obi-Wan that was always an omega, unlike this version). They have a very different way of presenting themselves than Anakin, who's not subtle about being an omega and also not subtle about being all aggressive and stabby.

At one point, Anakin has to protect some Very Traditional Individuals who get all "Stay back, Omega, it's not safe!" and he's just... so tired of this shit. “You are squishy civilians and I'm a trained Jedi Knight and accomplished GAR General who's killed more people in one sitting than there are in this entire palace. Sit the fuck down and let me do my job.”

It starts making the rounds that Anakin insisted on fighting in person, and the rumors shift from "how dare the Jedi force an omega to fight" and over into things that are deeply hurtful in-universe in the vein of "broken omega" and some people try to say it to his face but like...

He didn't grow up here.

He doesn't care.

Say that to one of his friends and he's going to rip out your spleen, probably, but say it to him and he's just staring at you flatly and asking if that's a negative on getting away from the encroaching battle droids, sir?

"You're rather unpleasant for an omega, aren't you?" [deeply offensive] "I literally could not give less of a fuck about your opinion. Move."

It's not that there aren't omegas that act like Anakin, either, it's just that most of them aren't, you know, Jedi who regularly interact with the upper crust, or capable of his level of destruction. Unbeknownst to Anakin, everyone clocks him as Outer Rim based on his behavior, well before his accent gives him away, and certainly before he mentions he's from Tatooine, because Core Omegas Don't Act Like That.

Someone they meet in a more diplomatic setting says something decently passive-aggressive about how at least Obi-Wan acts more like how an Omega should. Then a battle breaks out for some reason, and... well. Anakin and Obi-Wan cause such a scandal by keeping score of kills in a battle, don’t you know?

Turns out sending Anakin to fight Ventress is great because she keeps expecting him to react a certain way but NO he's here to STAB.

I like the idea that Obi-Wan's favorite opponent these days is Grievous because the cyborg doesn't have a nose, and thus gives zero fucks about dynamics or heats. Dooku is a rich old man who has opinions heavily influenced by Sith Juice Making Him More of a Dick, and the Dathomiri can smell dynamics even if they don't have them, and so they have biases about those things. Meanwhile, Grievous is just there to Kill, and Obi-Wan genuinely appreciates the lack of commentary on his dynamic.

Dooku’s probably an alpha, or a beta who's used the whole "we are more level-headed" thing as one of several angles to keep himself the public face and supreme commander of the CIS.

On to more fluffy things that have less to do with political biases.

There's a lot of "I'm upset that my loved ones don't know me," but also please understand the appeal of Obi-Wan marching up to Quinlan like "Yes, hello, I understand you've been read in on the full situation behind myself and my former padawan. I was close friends with your alternate universe self, which I feel is necessary disclosure before I propose the following: Would you like to join me for my upcoming heat, as I have minimal experience with the dynamics situation and even fewer people I actually trust, and I believe I can put my faith in you to treat it as casually as necessary while still having control and respect for my person."

(The Team is in a fairly safe place to process stuff, but having sudden unexpected changes to your biology has gotta be a little traumatizing, on top of ending up in a universe where none of your friends know you and people have a whole host of unfamiliar forms of sexism to point at you.)

Obi-Wan, who wasn't quite touch-averse but was much more easily overwhelmed by physical contact than Anakin (who craved it), suddenly finds his body switching gears and insisting on cuddles with Trusted Loved Ones, which is.... mostly Anakin, on account of nobody else really knowing him yet. Also Ahsoka, who is aware that she's something of a replacement for her alt-universe self, but Anakin explained it as "I love you so much no matter which dimension I'm in or what you're like, and I'd like to get to know you the way I got know her."

(It's rather eloquent for Anakin. He got Obi-Wan to help him draft up the script for when he pitched taking on omegaverse Ahsoka as a padawan.)

Anakin gets a more intensely sexual heat than 'usual' at one point for Reasons (IDK it could be as innocuous as 'we got better food than the usual rations and my body is reacting to the higher fat content with the belief that it's safer to have a baby now'), which nobody takes a whole lot of notice of because they're in a WAR, and also this is only his fourth one so it's not like he's got a lot to compare it to... except then the predominantly alpha clones can't stop themselves from reacting to the pheromones, mostly by wandering past his door and asking if he needs anything, offering up alpha-scented blankets and stuff for the nest to soothe the hormones, bringing snacks and electrolyte drinks, and like, Anakin is flattered, really, but fuck off please.

(He got a warning from medical a few hours before it hit that it would be different, so he actually does have alpha-scented fabrics to help him out. Apparently that's a thing you can just ask friends for, so he asked Rex if he had anything on hand that he could spare. He now has one of Rex’s recently-used sheets and a bodyglove in the nest.)

(Anakin has no idea how to feel about the nesting instinct, but at least it’s warm.)

Tia asked "Oh hey, who has the scared and horny reaction to his carnage?" and like.

Listen. I'm not saying I've been low-key imagining this as Rex being a very subby alpha who's really into Anakin's whole Thing but...

At one point Anakin gets injured in a way that requires painkillers and he ends up whining to the point of almost crying about the fact that nobody is cuddling him right now in medbay and Kix just gives up and comms Ahsoka to come hug her weird older brother.

And Then There Is Purring.

That’s a Thing Now.

Rex ends up in the pile somehow. He came over to check on Things and ended up yanked in by half-asleep, half-high Anakin, who has a grip like an octopus and no impulse control and is purring like a pod motor while NUZZLING HIM.

There’s a lot of blackmail photos featuring Rex’s very intense blush as he’s cuddled by his commander (giggling at him) and general (clinging like a tooka and rubbing himself all over).

Anakin is deeply offended that ANYONE thinks he'd want to get pregnant by just any old person, NO he needs to fall in LOVE there needs to be EMOTIONAL DRAMA and if Padme won't have him (apparently she's in a relationship and no he's not BITTER) then he'll find someone else to have a whirlwind romance with!

People think Anakin's a slut because he can't control his pheromone production (he has NO practice and for health reasons he can't go on suppressants) so he always smells open and ready for flirtations, which Obi-Wan also has to a somewhat lesser degree (he's older so his body just naturally produces less), and then someone tries to cross a boundary and grabs his ass and ANYWAY Anakin has to now fill out an incident report for breaking a civilian's arm.

Again.

[mexicancat-girl]

Ok guys, I can't take it, I’m seriously at my limit here.

Uraraka vs Bakuboi was a sham of a fight and none of it makes any goddamn sense.

Uraraka deserved her win, for multiple reasons.

Shout out to @bnhasalt, who’s post reminded me how indignantly furious this arc makes me.

More under the cut over both how salty I am, and how Uraraka losing against Explodo Kills makes absolutely no sense, even narratively.

(Warning ahead for a discussion on sexism, misogyny, forced fanservice, the blatant favoritism towards That One Specific Character even if unearned in the narrative, and the general incompetence on how to write female characters.

I call B/kugo “Bakuboi” in this analysis bc I don’t want to write his Actual Name out and have it pop up in his character tags. Also, heads up, I’m sorry for how messy and long this rant is )

First, can I just say that Horikoshi is uhhhh Bad at writing female characters?

Which I’m sure many female fans already have an inkling about, but goddamn is it never more obvious than in the Sports Festival Arc. Because hey, at least the female characters are THERE and PARTICIPATING and have their own time to shine! This ISN’T one of those arcs that just stars THE BOYS, so that MUST mean this arc is equal opportunity! Right...?

God, I wish. I wish...

See, the girls are the minority of the Sports Fest in general. It shouldn’t be this way. And quite frankly, the fact that the classes (and UA in general) isn’t closer to being a 50/50 gender split also makes no sense, considering all children are raised in a society that values heroism EQUALLY and almost half the population is male and half female.

But, okay, let’s say I actually believe in the most illogical character ratio imagineable of there being a 2 boy to 1 girl, like this is another round of Naruto But It’s Superheroes So It’s Different I Swear.

We all know that there is going to be an emphasis on Izuku, since he’s the protagonist and he wants to make All Might proud during the Sports Festival.

Pre-Festival, there’s the reveal that Uraraka wants to do her best, with her main motivation of becoming a hero to give her parents a good life. Iida also wants to make his own family proud, specifically his brother, because of his family legacy. 

Since these three are a trio, you’d think they’d all get some time to shine, right? Since they’re Izuku’s friends? And Izuku considers them his equals?

Yeah, no. Wrong.

This arc is dominated by Izuku, Shoto, and Bakuboi. That becomes clear very quickly. 

I knew I shouldn’t expect much, since these three are powerhouses and also the most popular characters of the entire franchise (just look at the popularity polls) but still. I’d thought at least Uraraka would get a chance to shine! Since we get some character development and motivation revealed from her!

But the female characters in general get done so dirty this arc, despite it being first set up as a perfect arc to let the girls have just as much opportunity to participate as their male peers.

The most significant part of the female characters all getting an ‘equal time to shine’ is when He Who Must Not Be Mentioned and Kaminari trick the girls into dressing as scantily-clad cheerleaders. Which is both Tiring and Unncessary.

(This scheme also shouldn’t have worked because Momo is Vice Rep and she is an intelligent girl, top of her class. She would be smart enough to go to a teacher and actually double-check to see if Class 1-A girls really needed to cheer in the activities portion of the Sports Festival. 

But noooo, Horikoshi can’t pass up a chance for FANSERVICE and forcing his underaged female characters to be uncomfortable for The Funnies! Thanks! I hate it!)

The female characters that move onto the final round of the Sports Festival, and thusly have the most attention, are: Uraraka, Mei Hatsume from Support, Momo, Mina, and Shiozaki from 1-B.

Wow, I sure wish these girls could like...show their worth. And maybe NOT get steamrolled and easily tossed aside in their matches because they’re facing Boys and Boys Have Strong Offense-based Quirks, That’s The Rules Folks.

(Before you come at me, I know that isn’t a rule that applies to every single male character in the series, but the strongest and offense-based Quirks tend to go to the male characters, while the female characters tend to get more support-based Quirks. It’s both sexist, but also an inherent trend in media in general. Please Just Let Women Punch Shit To Smithereens And Control The Elements.)

Yes, Mina and Shiozaki won their first rounds easily! And that’s great to see! But then we turn right around, and they're eliminated just as quickly in their second matches! Without even a fighting chance!

Good God, Shiozaki is literally PUSHED OUT OF THE RING. That’s it, that’s how she lost. Same thing with Momo in her match! And Mei straight-up forfeits because her character is based more on advertising her inventions/babies, so she doesn’t even fight.

So essentially, the female characters are shucked away if they’re not used to make the male characters look good, or there for fanservice, or there to show a shallow form of ~feminism~ so Horikoshi can pat himself on the back and say “See! Girls strong! I can write girls!”

And now we get to the meat of things: Uraraka.

Oh, poor Uraraka. Out of all the female characters, your potential was the greatest, and also the most squandered...

As a reminder, at the start of the arc, Uraraka speaks with both Izuku and Iida about how she wants to do well in the Sports Fest. They all promise to do their best. Izuku’s friends admit that they want to face him in later matches, because they want to be his equals.

Uraraka wanted to stand on the same level as Izuku and Iida, but she's the only one that doesn't move on past her first match!

And man, what an absolute bogus match it is.

Is it emotional? Yeah. Did I tear up when I watched it? Sure, every single time! But that's more because Uraraka is one of my favorite characters and I feel empathy for her and thought she deserved better.

The match gets to me because I also hate how Bakuboi is so fucking entitled and gets everything handed to him on a silver platter.

Bakuboi himself is written as, essentially, a Gary Stu. He always wins. ALWAYS. And even when he ‘loses’, he still manages to beat his opponents to the point that they need to be hospitalized (see Izuku vs Kacchan pt 1) or he makes his losses ALL ABOUT HIMSELF by twisting logic to fit his own narrative.

Remember how Bakuboi won against Todoroki in the final match? And was so pissed at him he was ready to Physically Assault Todoroki for him not being able to Get Over His Trauma to go 100% during their match? And even though Bakuboi LITERALLY won the entire Sports Festival, he’s so entitled that he demands a rematch because he feels like he “didn’t actually win”?

Not wanting a rematch for Todoroki’s sake, because Todoroki has been through a rough time and Bakuboi overheard Todo’s Tragic Abusive Backstory. Oh no, that would make too much sense and show too much character growth, we can’t have that! Bakuboi, even when winning the Sports Festival, demanded a rematch because he wanted to beat the shit out of Todoroki AGAIN to assert his dominance.

You see, Bakuboi is always rewarded in the narrative. Even when he loses it’s not seen as his fault. He’s never really punished for it, and he never learns any lessons from his losses.

Ah, and let’s not forget, Katsuki Bakuboi has the Best And Strongest Quirk Ever. Strong enough to even do the impossible and work to his advantage when it shouldn’t!

Like how he SOMEHOW manages to ‘beat the odds’ by breaking the laws of physics to win in Round 2. He manages to PUNCH THROUGH A QUIRK THAT CREATES A SOLID WALL from 1-B’s Tsuburaba in order to get back his team’s headband and move on to Round 3.

Or hey, his finishing move, Howlitzer Impact? Doesn’t make any sense either. It shouldn’t work as a...cyclone? Tornado? Drill thing? 

Look, the logistics of it shouldn’t work. Yes, this is anime, but do you HONESTLY think that a teenager YEETING himself in a fast spiral will somehow accomplish anything more than spreading out some explosions in a circle around him? You honestly think any other character would be able to pull that bullshit off WITHOUT upchucking their entire lunch?

But because it’s Bakuboi, it works somehow. Because Bakuboi’s Quirk is The Shining Beacon Of Quirks. 

Drawbacks? Sure, he SUPPOSEDLY has them. They’re noted in his character profile and everything. But very rarely do those supposed “drawbacks” ever actually come into play and actually, like, stop him. Or slow him down. Or, yknow, ACTUALLY WORK LIKE DRAWBACKS ARE SUPPOSED TO WORK.

Because apparently, human limits don’t exist for Katsuki fucking Bakuboi, nope, not at all!

One of Bakuboi’s "drawbacks" is supposed to be that he can't overexert himself or he can fuck up his wrists/his forearms will start to ache. 

Cool cool cool, except...This rarely slows him down or effects him at all. 

It’s actually astounding he hasn’t given himself Carpel Tunnel, because that would be a natural consequence to over-using his Quirk. Hell, he should be fucking up his arms almost as much as Izuku does to his own arms with a destructive Quirk like OFA! Explosions are dangerous and cause massive destruction, and that should be fucking up his arms SOMEHOW!

But, nope. Bakuboi is as fresh as a goddamn daisy. He can Never Have A Weakness.

(Another drawback is cold weather/Winter season is supposed to weaken his Quirk. Makes sense, since heat would help him produce more nitroglycerin sweat, and the cold would make it hard to sweat. But that sure as hell didn’t stop him during the Joint Training Arc in the future, and he didn’t struggle whatsoever to almost singlehandedly win that for his team.)

Not ONCE does Bakuboi’s Quirk ever effect him negatively and forces him to weaken! He keeps using his Quirk like it's nothing!!

And that’s the crux of the entire problem with Uraraka vs Bakuboi’s match.

Bakuboi apparently has “drawbacks” and “limits”, but he keeps somehow managing to break them without a sweat (ha) and without consequence, essentially PULLING WINS OUT OF HIS ASS.

Bakuboi was using his Quirk LITERALLY NONSTOP during Round 1, and kept using it to throw himself around in Round 2. Logically, he should’ve fucked his arms up and been at the very least SLOWED DOWN by the third round of the Sports Fest because he went past what were SUPPOSED to be his Quirk’s canonical limitations and logic!

It would've taught Bakuboi that he can't fucking steamroll through all his problems! He has limits! There are consequences to over using his Quirk! He’s a human being and he doesn’t have endless stamina like some sort of God!

Hell, every other character has these limits very clearly shown and outlined with their Quirks! Uraraka throws up when she over-uses Zero Gravity. Shoto, before using his fire side, would get frostbite. Iida’s Engines will stall after using Recipro Burst.

The other characters have limitations to their Quirks that slows them down, shows consequences for their actions, but Bakuboi NEVER HAS ANY.

THIS is why he’s a Gary Stu. THIS is why he won his match against Uraraka.

Not because of any logic. Because HIS QUIRK HAS NO FLAWS. And on top of that, THE NARRATIVE KEEPS REWARDING HIM, EVEN WHEN HE HASN’T EARNED IT.

Bakuboi SHOULD have been weakened from using his Quirk non-stop. Bakuboi SHOULD NOT have managed to pull out that “one final big explosion” that ruined Uraraka’s final attack.

Bakuboi was literally hissing about his arms hurting earlier, before their match started. And Uraraka forced him to use his Quirk so much that she managed to amass a ton of debris to knock him out and win the match. HIS EXPLOSIONS SHOULD HAVE SPUTTERED OUT, AND NOT SAVED HIM WITH THAT LAST-SECOND ASSPULL.

Like, I’m preeeeetty sure the entire reason Horikoshi wrote Uraraka vs Bakuboi in the first place was because he was attempting at writing Feminism.

See, Bakuboi Hates Everyone Equally, he’s not a violent misogynist for beating up Uraraka! It’s a Match, he Respects Women And Sees Them As Equals! The Crowd of Pro Heroes are the ones being Misogynistic and Judging The Match Early!

And look at Uraraka, she’s a Strong Woman! She keeps getting back up! That’s the Shonen Spirit! And she’s smart, too! Look at her amazing plan to win--

Oh, wait. Wait, nope. She didn’t win at all! :) Because our shining beacon of perfection Katsuki Bakuboi never loses!! :)) Look at all her hopes and dreams being blown to literal smithereens, because of Bakuboi’s ass pull, even though he shouldn’t have had enough time, sweat, and strength to muster up that last explosion!!! :)))

Can ya’ll feel my incandescent fury right now?

Because Horikoshi can NEVER write Bakuboi losing, Uraraka COULDN’T HAVE WON, even if her winning makes THE MOST LOGICAL SENSE.

This scene was supposed to show Uraraka’s strength. But it feels like Uraraka is being literally spit in her face, for even DARING to TRY to win against Katsuki fucking Bakuboi.

How much more impactful would Uraraka’s breakdown have been, if she had moved onto the Second Round with Izuku and Iida? How she would feel ashamed that she couldn’t keep up with them, with how Powerful their Quirks are? Especially after seeing Izuku and Todoroki’s amazing match, and seen how destructive and close a match it had been?

How DEVASTATED she would have felt, beating BAKUBOI--one of the strongest of their class!--and then STILL managing to lose the Sports Festival?

That would have been SO much more interesting! And even SADDER!! C’mon!

Uraraka SHOULD have won her match! It would’ve provided both character development for herself, and for Bakuboi! Bakuboi would realize he has limits to his body and Quirk, and realize not to underestimate his opponents! Uraraka would realize that she’s strong in spite of her Quirk not being necessarily combat-oriented, but still has a long way to go in being a Pro Hero!

But, nooooo. We can’t have CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT, can we? We ESPECIALLY can’t have THE FEMALE CHARACTERS IMPACTING THE PLOT IN SOME WAY, either! Or--what’s this? FEMALE CHARACTERS ACTUALLY HAVING THE SPOTLIGHT FOR ONCE? Perish the thought!

The only good parts about this godforsaken arc are 1) Mei Hatsume 2) Hitoshi Shinso and 3) Izuku vs Todoroki fight and Todoroki’s Tragic Backstory Reveal. Everything else is hit-or-miss, if not completely hot garbage.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, and for reading this entire thing! Four for you, reader. You go, reader.

[chrvstenpress]

i think the kelley comment was taken out of context. it’s easy to write off the experiences of marginalized people if you’re extremely privileged (heterosexual white males are a perfect example of this). kelley’s comment seemed to me like a way to kind of relate and perhaps draw sympathy from other women and who face oppression in society too. any logical person knows racism and antiblackness is different from misogyny but prejudice is prejudice and if we can relate in our struggles while lifting each other up then we can heal and fix our society. nobody got mad at pinoe when she said in 2016 that she knelt in solidarity because as a gay american she knows what prejudice feels like and would want support like how she was supporting kapernick. the carli comment was off the rails deranged lol she’s wild but just consider the context of what kelley said

(2/2) oppressed and mistreated people relating in their struggles while also recognizing that they’re different isn’t wrong. kelley was trying to sympathize.

///

I can understand where you’re coming from, but it’s also important to recognize that even well-intentioned actions and words aren't always good. I listened to the podcast to make sure I was hearing it correctly. No, I still don’t think I’m taking her words out of context, but whether or not she meant it as some sort of sympathetic or empathetic statement, sexism and racism are not the same. saying “I have a perspective on inequality that I wouldn’t have if I wasn’t in the position that I am - being on the national team and being a female athlete. It’s made me realize systemic sexism is real, therefore I know systemic racism is real because I’ve had that experience,” is different than “I think that we need to look at all the things that we say the flag and the anthem mean and everybody that it represents and all the liberties and the freedoms that we want it to mean to everybody, and ask ourselves, Is it protecting everybody in the same way?... Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties.” If we’re considering the context, Pinoe is saying that the national anthem’s meaning and the flag’s meaning need to be reconsidered if they are not truly representing everyones liberties and that’s why she kneeled. Her saying that she doesn’t feel represented by the flag as a gay woman was indeed the empathy that we’re pointing out here, not the literal reason for why she kneeled. Kelley was saying she literally wouldn’t understand systemic sexism if not for being on the uswnt, which is a problem in and of itself, so she then only understands racism because of that. yes, she prefaced by saying she didn’t want to make it seem like she understood what the Black community is going through or feels like. but she shouldn’t need to have experienced sexism to know that it exists, and she shouldn’t make it seems like one systemic issue existing is dependent on another or that it *makes sense* for one systemic issue to exist only because another does. Pinoe has continuously done anti-racist work *publicly*. to be quite honest, I'm tired of this “we don’t know what she’s doing behind the scenes” shit. Sure. Fine. We don’t know what she’s doing behind the scenes, but what she does when the camera is on just as important as what she does off the camera, and on camera, she stands for the national anthem with her hand on her heart after claiming to know what racism is, and that is complete bullshit. If she truly understood that some sort of hurt exists from racism, she would put everything aside to do the *bare minimum* of the work, which has repeatedly been said to be kneeling. if it’s going to be performative, which she also claims to understand, then she shouldn’t do it. She can keep standing if she doesn’t get it. and if she thinks online activism is performative, then she can very well use her platform on JWS to do more. Only 4/19 of her guests have been Black. She could perhaps hand the mic over entirely to a Black person without giving her input? Beat Everybody could do more work. She can do more work as USWNTPA VP. the list could go on.... but if I'm taking her words out of context, I don’t think its entirely irrational granted that all of her actions have contradicted her words, and I know I’m not the only one to take her words this way.

[hellsbellschime]

Let’s go down the list shall we:

Katherine: gets impregnated with child out of wedlock, child torn away from her right after birth. Her entire sympathy arc is based on a child she didn’t even connect with.

Rebekah: Believes her trashy life will all be fixed with a hello kitty bandaid if she just had Kids and a Hubby, (when all she needs to do is get away from her toxic brothers and experience life on her own)

Isobel Flemming: Teen mom ™ who regrets child but loves child who wants child but doesn’t want child, who looses child because the guy is a coward, leads person who clearly wants to use/kill child to said child, then turns around and says I love child. (It’s like they couldn’t stick to a single villain arc because how could a mother possibly not care about her child when even the shitty dad does all the while having eight different dad hates child story lines sitting in the back burner.)

Valerie Tulle: gets pregnant with Stefan’s child and has child LITERALLY beaten out of her, has child PHYSICALLY beaten to death inside her, is pushed to the fucking ground and kicked in the stomach till child dies, commits suicide because of loss of child, is not even given the dignity to choose her own death, comes back as first Heretic to exist, all of this to push plot and create dRaMa b/w steroline. Yes they actually used a women who was violently beaten to near death and experienced an even more violent miscarriage at the hands of a guy who believed the child will make him late for a bone sesh, revolve around steroline and how Stefan wouldn’t love Caroline if he just had that child, THERES HALF A EPISODE JUST DEPICTING STEFAN’S MANPAIN ON LOOSING A COULD BE CHILD, when Valerie literally acts like a mechanical robot reiterating facts and her entire emotional “reaction” so to speak is her committing suicide AND NOTHING ELSE (as if they couldn’t be bothered to write female trauma) Like JFC you CANNOT TELL ME THIS IS DISGUSTING FUCKING SHIT THAT SHOULD NOT EXIST.

Jo Saltzman: Looses twin foetus children on her wedding day, is literally killed by her abusive psychotic brother on the fucking alter, to cover up Candice’s pregnancy, JESUS, HOW DID A PERSON WHO IS NOT UNHINGED IN THE BRAIN SIT DOWN AND COME UP WITH THIS, and not for one second think how fucking traumatising ALL of this is FOR NO GOOD REASON. Not even good plot, this was all for logistics they could’ve fucking covered up in a hundred other different ways.

Caroline Forbes: Do we even have to mention it? Is forced to endure pregnancy she has NO obligation to endure, is not even given a single scene to process the pregnancy and come up with a coherent response that isn’t “I will do it for you” forces herself to marry a man who is as old as her dad in human years for said children, said man turns around and tells her she is not these children’s mother to her face when she was literally FORCED into giving birth to two children that aren’t even her own. Looses all character development and becomes Mother of child ™.

Hayley Marshall: Nah bro I shouldn’t have to TELL you, but ok, gets pregnant with an abusive psychopath’s child, ykw the list is too long, y’all know the drill choked when wanting abortion, experiences atleast 7 near death experiences in the nine months she was pregnant all because Klaus wanted to play King to three streets and one marsh, and she was KWEEN of the werewolves, has the most violent birthing experience, her child revolves around Klaus’ redemption, hence her character fully revolves around said child and directly/indirectly Klaus, is turned into a fucking animal when she decided to do one damn thing for her own child, is nothing more than “Mother of Hope” throughout the show.

Freya Mikaelson: Of ALL the different things a women in literal captivity FOR HER ENTIRE LIFE can experience for backstory Trauma™ OF EVERYTHING they could choose, they yet again go for traumatic pregnancy, a self-induced miscarriage and a SUICIDE story revolving around said pregnancy, her selling point to the Mikaelsons is “I lost a child I won’t let you lose yours.” LIKE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Forget misogynistic writing that’s just paper-thin-rumpled-trash-in-trash-can writing.

Esther Mikaelson: Chooses to give up her first born child for the prospect of multiple children, in Lenore’s body actually bloody tells Hayley she can have more babies if Hayley allows her to make Hayley Human, Hayley CONSIDERS THIS SERIOUSLY. Is actually shown to want to become human so she can have more babies.

Sarah Salvatore: Black woman who is KILLED by Damon to give manpain TO DAMON, like bruh wtf?? You seriously had Damon kill a pregnant black woman and give him manpain in the form of guilt to redeem him? YOU MADE A WOMAN’S MURDER ABOUT HER MURDERER’S GUILT?? JP and her team of writers cannot get more fucked up than this

Feel free to add to this, and if any fucker ever dare come to your page trying to fight that tvd/to is not MISOGYNISTIC in its ENTIRETY, you send them to this post, and this post only contains pregnancy related batshit crazy misogyny in the show, if we went through everything that is misogynistic, I’d say the transcript of the show is an entire comprehensive list of all of it. And seriously anybody who believes JP’s writing isn’t the most misogynistic sexist piece of writing that’s just a steaming hot pile of rotten shit, Well then I sincerely suggest you fuck off to some other corner of the world where TO/TVD stans can gather and lick white manpain experiencing male dick.

Sincerely someone who has watched TO/TVD top to bottom and is traumatised.

LOL yes exactly, like I don’t understand how someone could see this and say that it’s not so soaked in misogyny that nothing in the show can be separated from the violent sexism. Saying “well this character stood there in one scene and didn’t say anything sexist so you can’t call the entire thing sexist and if you do then you’re basically doing the same thing as calling all men sexist” (and like I don’t want that anon to start that argument again but LITERALLY WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ANALOGY) is an absurd, fatuous argument. 

[newmoneytrash]

Death Stranding

I had to write about Death Stranding to get this not very good game out of my head and soul

(this has spoilers I guess but honestly who cares)

I was going to wait to play Death Stranding, if I ever even played it at all. I had barely seen any trailers outside of the first couple. I remember seeing them and thinking “this isn’t going to be the crazy, weird experience everyone thinks it’s going to be”. I didn’t think that I knew better than anyone else, or that the people who were excited were stupid to feel that way. I just felt like I could see what it was and knew that, having played the majority of Kojima’s work, that this probably wasn’t going to be the experience that people thought it was going to be.

And I was comfortable with my disinterest, content to know that this thing existed, that I was fine with it existing away from me. But then a week before release when the review embargo lifted and people started posting their impressions and experiences and reviews my interest was piqued in a way that no trailer or announcement had interested me before. It wasn’t the glowing and fawning reviews that drew me to the game, the people who played and loved the game. It was, weirdly, the negative ones that changed me from not having any interest in playing Death Stranding to going to the store on the Friday morning it was released and standing in the rain waiting too long for an Uber so I could get home as fast as possible to start playing.

The reason the negative reviews drew me to the game so much is not because they were negative, it’s not that I was taking some joy in getting to play something that I thought was going to be bad and now I had an opportunity to be vindicated by seeing for myself that it is bad. It was the things that they were negative about that sounded so interesting. The idea that a group of people would spend so much time and effort and money in creating a large premier video game experience where the main crux seemed to be tedium is an inherently fascinating concept.

The kind of elevator pitch descriptor that interested me the most (that was used by people both derisively and positively) was that it was a post-apocalyptic truck simulator. Travelling a dead or dying world as a UPS driver. Mad Max meets King of Queens (that’s a comparison that I made and I’m too proud of it not to use it). What if a development team who made one of the great action games on the last decade (Metal Gear Solid V might be a terribly lacking narrative experience with some frustrating mission design, but the core gameplay is extremely good) and funnelled all of that energy into something intentionally boring and monotonous?

Not only did that help reset my expectations of what this would be, it made me feel excitement for something that I had previously thought I wouldn’t be able to feel excitement or anticipation for.

I spent 40 hours with it over the course of a week. That might not sound like a lot of time in video game speak, but I don’t remember the last time I spent that much time with a game over such a short period of time. Over the first weekend I had it I played for just over 20 hours. Twenty hours. I don’t know if I’ve ever been that focused on a game in my life. But still when I reflect on my time with it, and especially when I try to recall those initial 20 hours which were far and away the most fun I had with the game, I feel nothing. It’s like static, like someone has gone back and just erased that time from my memory.

That’s maybe not entirely fair. I remember general things, just not specific gameplay moments.

I remember the gameplay loop. It’s less a truck simulator game and more of a hiking game, at least initially. And this was appealing to me. You’re slowly traversing across these barren, empty environments delivering packages to and from outposts and shelters. You’re packing a huge amount of garbage on your back and climbing up mountains and down cliffs and wading through rivers. You’re given ropes and ladders to try and ease your journey, and later you’re able to build greater structures like bridges and towers to help you more easily navigate the environment and scout your path ahead. Eventually you’re given access to motorbikes and trucks that can both help and hinder your deliveries, depending on the paths you take and forge. You even get a chance to help rebuild an actual honest to goodness highway, creating it piece by piece by providing an increasing amount of materials to each section. Maybe the greatest accomplishment I felt playing this game was spending a few hours creating large sections of the highway and then getting to just fly down it on a motorbike. It really did feel like I hate created something big, that I not only radically changed the world by creating this, but that I had bettered it.

And there’s there community aspect of the game. Having others donate materials to your structures as well as seeing structures others have built and abandoned vehicles and packages in your world is all really neat and interesting. Everything positive I have to say about this game is wrapped up in these systems, because there is a lot of the game that feels like you’re on a genuine journey. Taking a package over the peak of a snow capped mountain for the first time can feel like a legitimate achievement, it was rewarding just walking from one place to the next. Seeing a bridge helpfully placed in a frustrating location made me feel real gratitude toward that person, and receiving feedback that other people were using and liking things that I had built made me feel good, as if I was paying forward the help that I had received.

For a long time I didn’t even think there would be combat in the game but it gradually increases as you go along and, while it’s never good, it’s still serviceable and easy enough to never really get in the way. The shooting and melee combat feels off, and I might have had a better time if it wasn’t there at all, but a few boss encounters and combat vignettes were interesting and would occasionally help when the monotony of just delivering packages started to grow.

But after 20 hours of this nothing really stood out to me, there’s no one gameplay moment that will stay with me. I won’t reflect on this game and think “wow, remember that one journey I took by following the coastline?” It’s all just a long, sustained blur.

And it’s not that I don’t remember the story or the characters either. Those are all easy to recall. The story is especially easy to recall because, over 40 hours, it’s just basically telling you one thing over and over and over. It’s hard not to recall it, because there is only one thing to recall.

The thing that I was worried about before the game came out was that the story was just going to be a huge mess. Kojima’s games are always functionally good to great, that’s never really been an issue I’ve had with his work, it’s always been the stories he tries to tell and how he tries to tell them. From the first Metal Gear Solid through to The Phantom Pain there are always misgivings I’ve had with character representation, general themes, and just the delivery of that narrative. I know this isn’t a unique position to have regarding his work (sexism and his consistently awful portrayal of women is a pretty famous issue he has, even among his biggest fans), but beyond that I just never felt that anything he was doing was particularly special. They were different and almost always interesting, but a lot of people would like to tell you that Kojima was doing masterful video game storytelling that no one else was capable, that he was single-handedly raising the medium of video games to something as artistically valid and viable as cinema or art. But, to me, he was never doing that. He was making fun and compelling video games, but they were inconsistent and messy and overly verbose and self-righteous.

So my concern was that, now that he was the head of an independent studio that for all intents and purposes answered to no one, he would let that his storytelling get further away from him. In an attempt to prove his level of creativity, maybe to even prove his worth, he was going to put all of his ideas on the table and the result was going to be an indecipherable mess.  When they would release a trailer of a naked Norman Reedus on a beach holding a baby attached to him with an artificial umbilical cord, or Guillermo Del Toro standing in a sewer holding a baby in a jar while Mads Mikkelsen is covered in black tar leading a bunch of skeleton soldiers a lot of people responding with a variant of “wow Kojima is going to make something crazy, this is going to blow my mind”. But all I saw was a giant red flag.

So when I finally experienced the story of Death Stranding I was kind of taken aback. Not by how crazy or nonsensical it is, but by kind of how… boring and one note it is? There isn’t really any room for interpretation in this story. It’s all very, very literal. It tells you how and why things are happening, and if you missed the exposition the first time don’t worry! Here is another twenty minute info dump reiterating the same boring, one note narrative over and over.

The game just tricks you into thinking it’s being more creative than it is because it’s filled with endless jargon. There is timefall, void outs, BTs, BBs, Beaches, repatriates, chiral energy, and extinction entities. Ha and ka. But it’s all in service of creating a world and a narrative that ultimately says nothing, and spends dozens of hours painfully and slowly telling you nothing. It’s borderline torturous.

There is also some high school art level social commentary on social media. Likes are a huge commodity in this world, with people becoming addicted to the feeling you get when they receive one. And instead of having a smart phone or whatever you have Cuff Links, which is a literal pair of handcuffs that, when strapped to your wrist, functions as a way to communicate with people through the Codec or email. Because our phones are a prison, right guys? Pretty deep. In Kojima’s world we truly do live in a society.

But it’s not just the small stuff like that that’s so literal, every part of the game is literal. You’re Sam Porter Bridges, a porter who has a contract with the organisations Bridges, created by someone named Bridget, to create bridges with people across America (both figuratively and literally) to create a network across the continent that will bridge everyone together. Every metaphor and theme in the game is so painfully literal that the game never gives you the opportunity to interpret anything else. The only time there are moments in the game when you don’t know what is happening is when characters start talking about things that you could have no way of knowing about as if you did know about them, but even then these moments of mystery are immediately undone because they always immediately explain the thing that you missed. You will have a cryptic conversation with someone about something you have had no opportunity to deduce or discover on your own, but it never matters because it’s followed up a few minutes later with a flashback or exposition that lays everything out on the table.

Instead of Kojima creating something nonsensical and imaginative and impossible to follow, he managed to make the world’s most shallow metaphor about really nothing in particular. When he said that the game was inspired by Donald Trump and Brexit he meant that it was inspired by the division that these things caused between people and how we need to create Bridges to reconnect with people.

That’s it, that’s the game. That is its message. And it’s not interestingly presented, there’s nothing more to it than that.

One of the podcast conversations I listened to before released (that was largely critical of the game) that drew me toward playing it ended with one of the people saying “It is a game that I think everyone should experience, but not one that I could ever recommend” which is a perfect way of articulating how I feel. It’s a unique experience that does things that a game of its size has never really done before. I don’t think there’s merit in being different for differences’ sake, but this isn’t that. The gameplay is considered and deliberate and purposeful, but that doesn’t mean that it’s fun and it doesn’t negate the parts that are tedious and tiring. Just because you make something boring and annoying on purpose that doesn’t make it good.

If you had asked me six months ago if I think I would like Death Stranding I would have said no. I probably would have qualified it by saying I hope that I was wrong, that I would like it to be good, but that I was probably more likely to hate it.

I didn’t love it, and I don’t like it. I don’t even hate it, but in a weird way I wish that I could. Because then at least I would feel something toward it. Instead Death Stranding leaves me feeling something much, much worse.

It makes me feel nothing.

[ganymedesclock]

I don't understand the permanent lion switch theory. Why do the characters need to grow into roles other teammates can already fullfill perfectly? and why are Pidge and Hunk excluded from such "important development"?

Honestly I’m not surprised Pidge and Hunk are left out?

Again, I feel like it’s less a support of the first switch formation and more this sort of… elevating Shiro’s importance to the team, but also not accepting that Shiro is also if anything ludicrously overqualified to be Black Paladin.

With regards to Keith: people want him to be black paladin because they want to view him as “the main hero”, and the idea is that Black is the “most special”

I feel like there’s some irony to the mentality because it basically frames Shiro and Black the same way- their actual qualities don’t matter. What matters is that Keith (or Lance) are good, have good qualities, and deserve recognition, and that recognition should be given to them no matter how Black or Shiro would feel about it, or even what Keith / Lance are shown in-universe to want.

With Lance, and Blue, there’s a particular angle to it that tangles in with Blue’s role as the Heart. Even within Voltron itself as a franchise, most continuities put Allura in the Blue Lion. And as much as I’ve heard many people complain that Lance “deserves better” than the Blue Lion, it’s comparatively almost unheard of for people to gripe about Allura being “shackled” to the Blue Lion even though they frame Lance deserving better as Blue being dead-end worthless drudgery.

Because the Heart- characters similar to VLD Lance- are often sorted into two categories. Both are looked down upon- emotional labor, empathy, and supporting the team are not seen as valuable heroic exertions, and they’re virtually always framed as coming at the cost of the person themselves- because obviously you’d never want to support other people if you could put your all-important self first, even when that self is being adequately tended to.

A female character in the role of the Heart is just seen as this is where she ought to be. It’s effectively considered a pink-collar job, and you can look at in the real world what’s considered “women’s work”. Of course she’s tirelessly going to tend to her team, of course she’s never going to pursue anything important for herself (when that sacrifice of self is not actually remotely necessary) of course she’s going to be the doe-eyed loving supportive figure, she’s a girl, that’s what girls do, live for all of the men around them, right?

Conversely a male character in the role of the Heart? Is seen as an absolute joke for the most part. Isn’t it funny he’s so weak-willed and sympathetic, isn’t it funny he’s not aggressive and macho, god he’s so pathetic. But don’t worry, though, since he’s supposed to want better than this lame old Heart job, he’ll inevitably “grow up” to be tough in a stereotypically macho way, even if this character development is completely at odds with everything else about who he is as a person.

At best, getting the character development that actually befits him as the Heart, you can count on him to be unaccepted until he proves he gained something from it in a sufficiently “manly” proactive manner.

The thing is, a lot of the tropes around the Heart aren’t remotely actually necessary to the role, and a well-written Heart character either deconstructs them or simply does entirely without them. There is no rule that emotional labor is the level that people stoop to when they aren’t man enough to chase their personal objectives. The role of the Heart is where we, as a society, dump our garbage- all of the hangups about this womanish kind of heroism- and the misogyny that says “well if WOMEN do it, it can’t be valuable!” and “real men don’t cry, what are you, a GIRL?”

It’s worth noting that the cry to take Lance away from the Blue Lion is probably the loudest and most passionate- Shiro, Pidge and Hunk are completely ignored for this (there’s basically no discussion where Shiro should go except “not in the Black Lion, because we need that for Lance!”) because their roles are very standard. 

Here’s the brainy one, here’s the brawny one, here’s the Leader, and there’s his Right Hand, we don’t complain about these things. Because we’ve already been conditioned through just about any five-man team show to consider those four the important ones, and Shiro the most important of all. When canon already can be viewed as “tempting” us with the possibility of Keith “surpassing” Shiro and stealing his important leader spotlight, it’s just understandable people salivate over that possibility- because we all know only the Leader will actually get the biggest slice of heroism at the end.

But the heart? There’s a reason TVTropes dismissively calls that role “The Chick”. Just look at that name for it- “oh, the designated girl, they threw her in there just because they had to have a girl so people wouldn’t complain about their sexism, so she can, y’know, stand out of the way and look pretty. Maybe we can give her a dainty little weapon and let her do some fighting but not that much. When the Leader is having his real, manly problems she’ll drop all of her petty girl issues to run over and support him.”

This is not what’s in VLD. But it’s in the cultural lens that we’ve been led to look to these kind of shows. It’s why, even in absence of canon support, people assume Shiro asserts so much more control and influence over the team- to the point of how many fanfics assume if Shiro disliked Lance, that Shiro could turn the whole team against Lance rather than the team would kick him to the curb, as we literally saw happen in motion with our secondary Voltron team, Sincline, and how Lotor vs. Narti ultimately ended. The generals gathered around the fallen Narti, and Lotor was simply cut from the team, without particular effort or fanfare. The hardest thing for the generals was feeling bad about it.

But Shiro and Lotor, they’re Leaders, so they have to be inherently stronger than their whole team, inherently in charge- except they aren’t.

People likewise assume that just pointing out Keith’s strength and intelligence mean that he should be the Leader- the idea is that he’s too competent to be a Right Hand, because every position besides the head is perceived as settling for less. (And Hunk- a fat black man, and Pidge- a young quite-possibly-written-as-trans girl with choppy hair, outside of occasional token “no, THEY should be the special one! I’m so revolutionary in praising them without thinking about them instead of insulting them without thinking about them!” largely are simply accepted that of course they’re settling, they’re lesser people)

Here’s the thing about Lance in VLD. None of that applies to him.

Lance has never been characterized as a weak-willed doormat. Nor has he been characterized as settling for less, or less thought of than his peers.

In fact, the roles that are shown to diminish Lance and leave him unhappy… are the stereotypically “manly” roles people would logically propose as a “fix” for Lance being “stuck” as the Heart.

Lance’s attempted James Bond impression is what makes Allura frustrated at him- while in s3, when, with growing confidence, Lance is his sincere, sweet self- that’s when Allura starts responding positively, starts telling him that he has “greatness” within him. That’s when he unlocks the Altean sword (sword from a planet of diplomats, awakened in a flare of blue light)

Lance taking Keith’s position at the Garrison features him being reminded he’s only here because Keith couldn’t be, and him blowing off the importance of the job, him acting at his pettiest. In contrast, in the same episode with no time for character development, Blue is framed as, from the start, choosing him first, ignoring everyone else there to stare only at Lance when nobody else is “taken” much less knowing there’s a Lion fitting for them… and Lance immediately settles comfortably into place.

Lance’s response to being chosen for Red is to first refuse it, try to pass it off to someone else, and then, when he does go for it, he comes back to grieve his connection with Blue. And Black? We see Lance uncomfortable and stiff in Black’s cockpit, trying to tell himself to feel good, because isn’t this what he wanted? Isn’t it?

People who are fitting where they were always meant to be don’t respond to it by grieving their previous niche, usually. Especially not there’s no particular ‘sweetness’ of “but I have Red now” or “but I wanted Red.” Lance wanted to give up the Red Lion back to Keith with no guarantee Blue would even be waiting for him. That’s a hell of a contrast to Lance yelling at Keith in s2e4 because Keith even said something about the Blue Lion.

Yeah, the wrong-colored armors is a continuity joke, but I can’t believe it’s just a mythology joke. VLD made a genuine commitment to base the characters off of specific colors, meaning that Lance in Red looks awkward. Our inner kindergartener goes “ha ha, no VLD, blue guy doesn’t go in red cat! Blue guy goes in BLUE cat!”

And proponents of Lance in somewhere else are aware of this- they’re very quick to change that armor color. Except canon has in every conceivable way tried to show us that’s not the case. They keep setting up material to frame it, more and more and more, as Lance belongs to Blue. Allura doesn’t have much in common with Blaytz or Ezor… but both of them have an awful lot in common with Lance.

And what are Lance’s good qualities, the things he really excels in?

Lance understands the team, and several times he’s singlehandedly pulled them back from disaster by his ability to read people’s emotions. Kuron? Going to be solved by Lance, is the framing we’ve gotten here. Team needs to connect emotionally? Everybody follow Lance’s lead. Shiro as Black Paladin? Acknowledged first by Lance before they even knew Black existed. Team needs to act out roles that aren’t theirs? Gape in awe of Lance’s absolute mastery of emotions. His nature is putty in his hands.

Compared to other incarnations of Lance that genuinely did write this character as Red Paladin, VLD Lance is noticeably more sober-minded, clearheaded and perceptive. He’ll never actually sacrifice something important for the benefit of a petty grudge. If anything, this is what we see framed as an absolutely jawdropping tactical asset for Lance- VLD is the first one to actually make Lance a sniper, with the clarity and precision of intent that make that useful. He can sweep an entire battlefield, check on all his friends, pick off targets and bottleneck enemies as needed.

Even his success with the Red Lion frames his Blue Paladin cooperation and malleability. Because Lance in Red isn’t driven really by ironclad loyalty the way Keith, Acxa, and Sendak are- Lance hooks onto Keith with “Right now, I’m in your corner, and that means I’m gonna be what you need me. If you need loyal support, I’m there, but if what you actually need is someone loudly reminding you that you left Allura behind, I’m doing that too.”

On the one hand, I’m touched by how much VLD really adores Lance, and loves depicting him as the Heart, and loves emphasizing the Heart’s importance to the team. On the other? I am frankly beyond pissed that I have to aggressively defend Lance in the Blue Lion by emphasizing that he can still do violence onto things in a fight. Yeah, it’s important to let all your characters have a piece of the pie and if your series is an action series that’s gonna mean action scenes, but rather than examine some of our deeply flawed relationship with gender and how much that serves as background radiation to anything we see as “womanish” and why, exactly, do we see Lance’s job as less valuable if it “seems feminine”, it feels too much like we’re wasting time trying to prove Lance is enough of a real man he can rock this “girly” job.

I think the whole “Lion swap should stick / they should push it further and never go back to original formation” if anything sets itself up to be breathtakingly meta because I feel like it’s ultimately rooted in not thinking through any of the roles very much. Because if you just look at them shallowly, Blue and Yellow sound the least “Cool” the way our culture frames things (again, the whole devaluing of support / prioritizing individual victory- if you’re not actively selfishly taking for yourself, you must not be doing anything for yourself).

Green sounds a little better, and Red sounds cooler (“Right Hand!” plus the self-satisfying narrative of “well, when Zarkon went bad, Alfor was the one who Defied Him” ignoring that all four paladins did, and Alfor was merely the more visible thanks to his connection with Allura and with Voltron- ignoring that it was almost definitely one of the other three, and likely Blaytz, that gave Zarkon that scar), but Black Lion, oh, that’s the best one, right?

So just grab whatever character you like best and stuff them into the Black Lion. This is how you appreciate a character! You want best character to get best lion. Now nobody can question how much you love them, even if you would be hard-pressed to actively identify what are their good qualities and how they align with Black’s explicitly stated qualities.

I’m not saying nobody who supports Black Paladin Lance thinks about it that much, but that the premise feels so congratulatory when it’s actually quite patronizing (it basically hinges on the idea that the Blue Lion can’t have recognized and mirrored any of Lance’s good qualities and the Lion that chose him first was basically putting up with him because he wasn’t her best fit and if Lance really belonged to Blue that’d make him a total loser) can help explain why its appeal is so widespread.

Especially when it feels like every time Lance says something in an authoritative tone people go “oh my gosh, Black Paladin Lance!” like… I was not aware that being Black Paladin hinged on only one virtue and that was your ability to angrily yell things. Last time I checked fandom was quite cross with Shiro’s authoritative yelling.

[knightofbalance-13]

No Dudeblade, that’s just your reflection.

http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/176667343064/jaune-fails-so-much

Take a shot each time Dudeblade lies or misinterprets a scene.

And here’s why his failures are worse than the other characters’.

My guess the list consists of:

Racism.

Sexism.

And projection.

It’s because jaune’s intended character was to be an audience surrogate. Like I alluded to in a different post, jaune seems to be there to insult the audience.

As I said:

The insult only exists in your head. No one else sees this because you’re delusional.

I wish to expand on that.

Not hard to understand.

“I’m racist against white people”

“I’m sexist against men.”

“I want to kill Miles Luna.”

That’s all there is to it. I’ve long since learned you people are nowhere near as complex as I assume people to be.

“So, wait; you won’t capitalize Jaune’s name in the post, but you’ll do it for the title?”

Stan, it’s the first letter of the title. Be happy that this is fairly recent. I might hate jaune, but my appreciation for good grammar and punctuation exceeds my disdain for him… sorta. I don’t capitalize his name after other punctuation outside of the title.

Dudeblade, you don’t even use good grammer on your fucking fanfic. 

“Okay, so I looked through your stuff, and you have like… an entire tag dedicated to ripping on jaune. I think you have issues.”

The guy is an audience surrogate. Said audience surrogate cheated his way in the school because he wanted to be a hero. It wasn’t “So I could save people.” It wasn’t “So that I can travel the world and help people while doing that.” It wasn’t “So that I can try to help the oppressed.” It was “So that I could be a hero.” It makes me feel that the writers think the following:

A) That we, as the audience, aren’t good enough to make it into the school on our own ability.

And B) That we would want to join a prestigious school just to become a hero. Some of us would be more selfless than that.

He only wants the glory of being a hero. He doesn’t really want to actually do the heroic things that would make him a hero.

So jaune insults the audience through his actions and motivations. But since we’re ordinary people, surely the person representing us would have to face realistic consequences if we were to do the same actions as jaune, correct?

A. What Stanly would be saying here would be: “You preach Fiction is Reality, want to kill Jaune and cannot separate him from Miles Luna. You even refuse to capitalize his name like Jaune’ s AND we know what that means from you (http://dudeblade.tumblr.com/post/164274588366/dont-capitalize-donald-trumps-name). You’re fucked in the head. End of story.”

B. Jaune has outright said that his parents never had faith in him. Wouldn’t it be logical that they PREVENTED him from going to a Huntsmen school? ... I just broke your whole issue with Jaune didn’t I?

C. Jaune wanted to be a hero NOT for the glory of it but because he felt a desire to live up to his ancestors. No ambiguity, he DIRECTLY states this. And this is actually a very common motivation among people, a desire to live up to what their predecessors did out of a form of respect.

D. Jaune isn’t suppose to be a perfect reflection of the audience, he has his own character dumbass. It’s what he is generally, someone out of their depth but tries their damndest while still being clueless, is what is suppose to be the audience. And considering most of the audience has no combat training like Jaune: That’s pretty fucking accurate.

And E. This sounds more like you Dudeblade. You want the glory of a writer without actually IMPROVING as a writer. Me thinks you hate Jaune because he hits a bit close to home.

I have a feeling where this is going…”

NOPE! jaune gets covered by Pyrrha and never has to answer for his cheating ways!- Like how the audience would get a hyper-competent amazon to cover for them.

Or how about how jaune was apparently allowed to keep asking Weiss out despite her straightforward ‘no’ and how he wasn’t really portrayed as in the wrong for that.

Let me go ahead and replace Stanly here:

A. Stan: “So the audience should expect that no one will ever act like their friend and help them out so they should try to everything on their own...which is exactly what Jaune did and showed was a bad idea?”

B. Stan: “What about when Weiss goes and demands that Neptune be beaten up by team NDGO for flirting with them?”

Dudeblade: “... She’s a woman.”

Stan: “And that’s sexism.”

“Oh come one! That’s how all teenage guys act. Doesn’t mean- wait! Did you just say that he wasn’t portrayed as being in the wrong for that?”

Yes I did, Stanly. jaune was met with sympathy from other characters for Weiss’ rejection. Yang even said “Maybe next time.”

Yang also said that Weiss’ rejection of jaune was the reason why she was called ‘ice queen.’ Weiss has every right to reject jaune. And if a straightforward ‘no’ isn’t enough, then what is?

She slammed the door in his face for crying out loud!

Stan: “What about how Weiss went and assumed Jaune’s motives without actually talking to the guy? What if a guy just rejected a girl thinking she’s just a slut?”

Dudeblade: “...”

Stan: “You can’t answer that without being sexist can you?”

“Okay, but admittedly, the narrative does make that a funny scene at the expense of Jaune when Weiss slams the door in his face. That’s got to be worth something.”

Sure, but he deliberately lied when he was asked if he wasn’t going to ask her out again, and we’re just supposed to… let that slide?- The narrative didn’t seem all too eager to make jaune out to be the one in the wrong there. Instead, we’re supposed to sympathize with jaune, and feel bad that he got told ‘no.’

Stan: “That was a joke. By that same logic, Weiss is a Yandere who wants every guy she likes to be beaten up for showing interesting in other guys.”

Dudeblade: “A-”

Stan: “And even then, HE was the one who had to learn a lesson and humble himself! So even if he’s suppose to be sympathetic, he’s still in the wrong!”

Dudeblade: “...”

Stan: “You are really bad at this.”

“So the problem isn’t that he kept trying, it was the lack of the narrative saying that he was wrong for constantly trying?”

Yep. In fact, since jaune is supposed to be the audience surrogate, it could easily be interpreted by younger audiences that you can keep asking out a girl, and not face consequences. That’s harassment. Just because it wasn’t the intention, that doesn’t change the fact that that’s what it amounted to.

The fact that jaune doesn’t face consequences makes it hard to relate to him. In fact…

Stan: “... yeah, I already showed why that’s shit. Also: Cardin, Neptune, Cinder.”

“Oh no. Are you going back to that whole ‘he started the fight and got rewarded for charging in on his emotions while Yang got punished for doing the same when she wanted to save Blake but Jaune just wanted revenge’ rant again?”

……… Well thanks for stealing my thunder. So instead, I’m going to a different talking point.

The part where apparently he’s tired of ‘losing everything’ (Despite Ren, Nora, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang losing far more) but then later, he’s willing to let Tyrian attack Ruby without so much as a scream of defiance.

Stan: “Hey Dudeblade, remember that remark about Taiyang being an Armchair critic? Well, isn’t quite the armchair critic thing to do to say what someone who has suffered in a war should and shouldn’t be doing?”

Dudeblade: “No-!”

Stan: “So which is it? Is Jaune right or is Taiyang right?”

Dudeblade: “...” *falls to the ground, gargling on his own bile*

Stan: “Yeah, saw that coming.”

“Wait… What are you talking about?”

The part where he looked away. This is a guy who charged a Nevermore weaponless to save Pyrrha back in volume 3, right? But he just… stands there. As if he’s waiting for Tyrain to take Ruby away from them. Then later he blames Qrow for everything  bad that happened. Which, while he is right, he didn’t seem to have a problem when Ozpin showed up a volume later, despite it Pyrrha’s death being more Ozpin’s fault than Qrow’s. jaune was right to be mad, but considering that he was being ungrateful towards Qrow when he literally was the one who save Ruby single-handedly (literally in that case), but when Ozpin shows up, he has… no grudge?

And the most scathing thing we see is the rest of the team giving him glares.

Stan: “Yeah-has it not occurred to you that Jaune knows he can’t go after Ozpin without hurting Oscar, an innocent? Or is this a fucked if Jaune does, fucked if Jaune doesn’t situation because you don’t actually care about what happens?”

Dudeblade: *still gargling on his bile*

Stan: “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Maybe he was told off off-screen.”

That’s bad writing though. What’s the point of doing something on-screen if they’re going to face consequences off-screen? Resolving conflicts off-screen makes little sense because having the characters face consequences on-screen helps us to see them grow. And seeing them grow helps us connect with them more. Certainly much more than simply telling us that they’ve grown. If they were talking about a physical aspect, that would be one thing. But they literally had Ren just say that they grew in character. Which… pretty much erased all that growth. If you have to pretty much directly tell the audience that you’ve grown as a character, then you haven’t really grown at all.

Dudeblade: “Okay, I’m back. And I am gonna KI-”

Stan: “Storm Hawks did this too.”

Dudeblade: *goes back to gargling his bile*

Stan: “Also people have been noticing these changes for an entire Volume before Ren said it. Even so, You still haven’t debunked my previous argument so Jaune could still just not be involving an innocent person.”

“So, what does this have to with Jaune?”

Thanks for getting me back on track. The way this connects with jaune is that he hasn’t really grown at all. He’s still that hotheaded, entitled, whiny, consequence-free brat that we saw back in volume 1. He hasn’t grown, and that’s the problem. He keeps acting as if Pyrrha’s death mattered only to him, and that’s a problem. Ruby isn’t allowed to mourn because she has to keep it all in so that jaune can brood.

Stan: “... Jaune has stopped hitting on Weiss, Jaune WASN’T hotheaded in Vplumes 1-3, Jaune is more willing to call people out and HE EVEN FUCKING SAYS RUBY LOST PYRRHA TOO YOU IDIOT!”

“Didn’t you say that a big problem with Pyrrha is the lack of connections with other characters?- Wouldn’t it make sense for her loss to be only mourned by the only character she actually interacted with?”

Ruby saw her die though. Not only that, she also saw her kill Penny. Shouldn’t Ruby be having conflicting feelings for her? I mean… if Pyrrha’s death was what set off Ruby’s silver-eyes-machina, then shouldn’t that mean that she obviously has feelings and opinions about her death?- But no. Because it’s jaune that needs to brood, Ruby has to hold it all in.

jaune taking away character development from other characters makes it harder to connect with him, since he’s only ‘developing’ himself. He doesn’t develop Pyrrha, he doesn’t develop Ruby, he doesn’t develop Ren or Nora- he’s just a screentime black hole who alienate the audience by never facing consequences that the audience would realistically face.

Stan: “Yeah, We already know this is all bullshit. And Jaune has had LESS focus than fucking Illa. So bullshit.”

Wait… So why do people still project onto him?”

Because he’s a wish fulfillment character. He’s there to say that you can cheat your way into a school, and get an amazon to not only cover for you, but also get one to slobber over your dick. He’s there to tell the audience that you’ll get respect from a girl you kept asking out as long as you tell the person she wanted to take out to dance with her. He’s there to tell the audience that they can rush in based on their emotions to get revenge and never face consequences for it.

He’s just there to be a wish fulfillment character. And since his original creation was to make him the audience surrogate, that makes him a conflicting character. He is meant to be one thing, but ends up being another. Which is why he fails as a character. Both in his role, and as an actual realistic character.

Stan: “Yeah and guess what? He’s there to say that you will be mocked endlessly by everyone around you, always get rejected by the girl you like in the cruelest way possible even after you tried to SAVE HER LIFE, that women can be basically stalkerish but god forbid you ask someone out twice, that you’ll be beaten and tossed around like a ragdoll while earning the respect of none, that your feelings are secondary to everyone else’s, that no matter what you do nothing will EVER go right in your life. Real fucking great wish fulfillment.

But that just goes to show how fucking delusional you are, that you will outright DENY REALITY just to suit your wants and desires. You want to be racist/sexist/socipathic? Claim the white boy is a self insert so you can bash a man until he hates his job because he was born the wrong gender/skin tone. 

Face facts, Dudeblade, because even a Strawman like me can see it: You’re a psycho. You’re fucked in the head. Face reality.”

[julystorms]

The men in power were from the old government. They were the ones running the world. But now look at who holds the highest authority, Historia, oh and guess what she's a woman. Eren and Reiner who both hold the title of protagonist didn't make number one Mikasa did, oh and she's a woman and pretty much stronger than half the males there. Also as the other anon stated Maria, Rose and sina. So I doubt Isayama is as sexist as you make him out to be.

Dude, separation of writer and text, thanks. I stated that in another post earlier today. Whether or not Isayama is sexist has nothing to do with the fact that his world is sexist. I try not to include writer opinions in my interpretation of a text; it’s not always relevant. (Yes, you can choose to interpret these things with the author’s intention (or author’s opinions, however unconsciously they exist) in mind if you want to, but I actively choose not to.)

Moving on. I want to address your comments re: SnK as a sexist (or not) world.

1.) Historia is a puppet queen. She has no real power. I’ve discussed this before. Darius Zackly is the one who was actually in charge the last time we checked and God knows how many cronies he has working for him.

2.) One female character who ranks #1 in a class of badassery does NOT mean that all women are equal in the world. I mean, for fuck’s sake, she’s an Ackerman: a science project born with special talents. If Levi wasn’t in the story at all, I’d maybe give him a few points for Mikasa being a badass and not needing a male counterpart to balance her strength but nope, she can’t just be strong on her own merit alone or the only special female character. (Not that fandom wouldn’t call her a Mary Sue if she wasn’t balanced out by Levi anyway but ya know. Fuck fandom.) For a real life example how about the US women’s soccer team? 

3.) Legendary/mythical/important women are great but they don’t make the world somehow less sexist just because they exist. I have two things to talk about in regards to this:

The first is the Bible. You don’t think there aren’t a lot of women in the Bible? You don’t think every good little Christian learns about prominent figures like the (Virgin) Mary and (Other) Mary and Elizabeth and Deborah and Sarah and Anna and all of the other women who appear in the Bible and mean something? Play important roles? You don’t think little Christian girls latch onto those women ‘cause it’s the only positive representation they get? You don’t think those SAME LITTLE GIRLS (and boys!!) aren’t taught to be sexisT AS FUCK THROUGH the use of women like Delilah and Jezebel? Taught to hate women like that? Shown them as Bad Evil examples of What Not to Be? Hell, even Rahab is used as an example that Wicked Women Can Change Their Ways and Gain Favor with God–not by helping Joshua’s spies and doing what she feels in her heart is the right thing* but by changing her career (whether or not Rahab ever had a choice is never discussed). Oh, and don’t forget Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt. Boy howdy Christianity has lots of ladies!!! But it’s also a religion that has by default rooted itself so goddamn deep into the patriarchy and sexism that it’s become more toxic than I can even parse properly.

*don’t get me started on the canaan land y’all.

So cool, let’s go back to SnK. SnK has three walls (objects, hello) named after women that are kind of like goddesses of a religion that is scoffed and laughed at by most of the population within the walls. The wall cult is crazy, they say. HELL, THEY CALL IT A CULT for fuck’s sake. It’s also a religion that isn’t real? It’s a front for the fact tHAT THERE ARE TITANS IN THE WALLS. Don’t damage the walls it’s our religion lol (but really we don’t want the titans to get out.) Pastor Nick knew this (and notice that it was a man privy to this secret, not a female religious leader).

Also, I mean, there have been lots of historical queens. It didn’t make their countries or people any less sexist. HM. WONDER WHY.

Literally every person in this series with REAL POWER or control over others? Is a man.

I’m not talkin’ Team Leader Nanaba here; she has very little power. 

I’m talkin’ actual power. I’m talkin’ can make a big order and have people follow it under penalty of being accused of treason or worse, or has the kind of money to make a difference. I’m talkin’ Dot Pixis, Erwin Smith, Nile Dok. I’m talkin’ Darius Zackly, whom these men all answer to. I’m talkin’ the noblemen that we see who supposedly were abusing their positions (and yet no noblewomen talked about or even, iirc, in the throne room when Erwin’s about to be hung). I’m talkin’ a fake king and Rod Reiss. I’m talkin’ Reeves. I’m talkin’ Magath and all the men in Marley at their big important meetings. I’m talkin’ about the fact that every council meeting we see, every military meeting we see, we’re LUCKY if we see even one woman in the room, and many times we don’t see a single one. When Eibringer walks into a room to play cards and smoke/drink and hands his duty over to Marlowe, he goes into a room full of other men. When all the bigwigs are in meetings? Again, men. 

Who cares if Marley has Pieck, Gabi, Annie, Zophia? They have no power. They’re all being used. They’re little more than slaves, and we don’t even know how many of them volunteered for the job or were forced into it via coercion or otherwise.

And who cares if Paradis has Mikasa graduate her li’l class at #1? Has Nanaba in a team leader position? Gives us Rico (who is also an elite team leader)? Rico takes orders from Kitz who takes orders from someone who takes orders from Pixis who takes orders from Zackly. Nanaba takes orders from Mike who takes orders from Erwin who takes orders from Zackly. And hey, they gave us Marlene, who served no real purpose except, idk, to die; she doesn’t even count. She was made to tease Hange and die horribly. That’s not power.

Mikasa is physically strong. She’s an awesome female character who has seen some lovely character development in this series. But…where is her power? Her ability to influence thousands of other people? It’s not there. She’s strong, and she can make a difference, but she lacks that influential power–the kind men have in this series. Women don’t rule this world. Men do. 

Women are not equal to men in SnK. If they were, you’d see a 50/50 split of women in the trainee corps, women in roles of power, women as merchants. You’d see stay at home dads. You’d see women wearing pants and skirts as casual wear in equal measure. Notice that you don’t. Notice that every shot of random characters is almost entirely random men. Think about it. It’s not equal.

And Mikasa’s existence in the series doesn’t balance out the fact that she lives in a sexist world. She shines because she chooses to, not because she lives in an equal-opportunity world where women and men are treated exactly the same.

[she-shall-conquer]

The Controversialism of Inequality

I dream of a day when the church will no longer piggy back on the latest trends. I dream of a time when the church prides itself at being better at Human Resource Management and Leadership than at Marketing. What’s new right? John Donne has been saying this for (literally) centuries! The Bible has been pretty constant about it’s messages regarding the treatment of people, and yet only now is the church getting “woke”? Excuse me if I doubt your intentions… (however necessary and faux-noble). But also, how can you raise the race issue without bringing up the topic of gender? To be clear: Racial Inequality is a REAL issue and should be discussed and I’m glad that the topic is coming up, but why did it take BLM to make it happen? I’m pretty sure (absolutely certain) that the biggest contention of prejudice addressed in the New Testament was, you guessed it, racism… Now if we do the math: The Bible is one of the best selling books of all time, one of the most translated books of all time, and the fact that a vast majority of the colonized world was colonized by “Christian” nations. Therefore, this colonization should prides itself in establishing the least racist places, with the most selfless and loving cultures and have a great deal of generosity with perhaps a slightly lower poverty gap.

Oh, wait…

That’s right, folks, we stuffed up real good on this one… And how I wish we could all return to the genuine authenticity that I read about constantly. It pains me so greatly. Its like reading Narnia and knowing that Narnia exists, so you go to Narnia and it’s Game of Thrones. Man, oh man, the disappointment. This being said, there are a lot of missionaries and missionary schools that have done a world of good, people with pure hearts and altruistic intentions — these have been besmirched and thrown out with the dirty, grimy bathwater of exploitation, greed, and contempt. Furthermore, there are countless arguments, sides to the story, and this is a very real discussion with personal implications that needs to be had amongst brothers and sisters (in Christ) in practice and in community. Just a note — if you want to effectively teach people anything, psychologically, just talking at people is possibly the worst way to do it (just saying); it’s an organizational problem that requires change and development of an entire culture. This is a debate for another day and a more researched perspective/argument.

I believe it’s important to note that Christianity was never meant to be a social revolution, there are no colour codes or banners or marches or slogans. I don’t believe that Christianity supports slavery, I mean William Wilberforce was motivated to end the slave-trade because of his faith, but it speaks about slavery and how to treat your slaves/masters. This might be confusing at first approach. From my understanding what I see is that respect, love, and one’s heart were far more important than moral absolutes, which completely does in my need for justice.

Y'all got any more of that… Captain America?

But the New Testament is also excruciatingly clear about how people in the church should treat each other. If the Body of Christ (the Church) is family, it should be the safest place, it should b the place where you can be most yourself, and where people can be most honest with you about which parts of yourself are good and bad. It’s all part of the constructive learning process. In the New Testament, the bad parts of people were confronted when they were, in no uncertain terms, told to stop being so prejudiced. They were told to stop treating rich people better than poor people, told to stop treating Jews better than non-Jews, even Jesus treated the sinner and saint with the same love and dignity — a little less dignity, but still love, towards the proud and the hypocritical. From these values arose the declaration that in Christ there is no longer man nor woman, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile. These are arguably the three ‘-isms’ that have wrought the greatest havoc on our current world and society and have been proponents of the greatest evils: racism, sexism, and classism (I see you there, Mr. Marx). Abolished and condemned along with the sins of the world are our prejudices and our shortcomings. But as a Western Charismatic church, I do not believe we have established a church culture that is free of these things, but maybe in our attempt to address the racism in our church culture, these other two will also surface.

Please understand that this piece of writing is not so much about what the practical outworking of it is as much as it is the value structure that influences how we treat people, built into our cognition. If we can work towards addressing that, I believe the practical outworking will follow, or be addressed at a later stage, perhaps by someone else. Inequality, and subsequent abuse, on a broad scale is often the result of an inherent cultural cognition that places features on a value hierarchy: rich are more valuable than poor, white are more valuable than non, men are more valuable than women (as per history’s norm). This is what I would like to address.

Gender inequality is not the “burn your bra” brigade or anything that God-fearing Christians should be afraid of, it’s a commitment to seeing the restoration and empowerment of women — she that gave birth to you. And apparently, I’m not the only one that uses this point — in fact, it wasn’t my point to begin with, it’s the Apostle Paul’s. After the section in 1 Corinthians where he’s done talking about not letting women speak and disrupting everything by asking questions about things they don't know (you know that part where he says they should rather ask the questions at home instead of disrupting the prayer meeting, which really has a lot to do with a lack of education) he speaks about God’s view of women, where there is no hierarchical difference. Woman was made of man, but man is born of a woman. This is gender inequality, where we refuse to see the perspective and heart of God, where God uses people equally, and views people equally — what we ask is that the hierarchy of value be eliminated from, at least, our church culture so that we can start to put an end to the ghastly horrors of violence against women.

Is violence against men a reality? Yes, undoubtedly, yes! But statistics show that a vast majority of victims are female, and of those females, it is more than likely perpetrated by a male. So instead of doing the dumb pretense of guilt thing that we do so often when we finally realize we have been wrong, let us be motivated by guilt (which focuses on others and their suffering) and not shame (which focuses on ourselves). These errors in judgement and culture are pointed out to help us all grow.

The South African news has been rife with stories of rape, murder, abduction, and abuse of women, and these are only a few of the stories. Women in Sub-Saharan African have a 1 in 3 (36.6%) chance of experiencing gender-based violence in their life time, a region with the third highest prevalence in the world. Something has got to give. How can we idly stand by and just send condolences, Facebook-React with a teary face, share, re-tweet, like, or change our profile picture? It’s deeper, friends, far deeper. When will we stop and re-evaluate our culture, our societal norms? How many more of our children, our aunties, our nieces, our students, our girlfriends, our best friends, our dear loved ones must bear the burden of abuse before we start to relook at our culture? If you like me, have stumbled upon the disillusionment of discord, between what you believe, what you read about, compared to what you see in practice, here are a few considerations I humbly ask you to think about, to look into, and to build upon:

Step 1: A Product of Your Society

Research says the relationship between culture and language and cognition is reciprocal, you influence your culture and your culture influences you, and your language shapes your culture and cognition just as your culture shapes your language and your way of thinking. To understand that our value system is a much deeper social construct than our individual upbringing and our own choices and beliefs is a necessity in bringing change. Culture is so very nuanced and so very fundamental to our entire being that we cannot just make a decision to separate it from our way of life, we cannot learn information or even practices that might entirely change the way we think. Even the way we talk influences how we think and therefore what we do, this is why “locker room talk” is a problem, because language shapes culture and cognition and cognition shapes language and culture. I’m not suggesting that we just keep our mouths shut for fear of saying the wrong thing or go on a witch hunt for bad statements, but rather let’s be open to having a brother or sister give helpful, loving feedback on our comments. This can in turn help us to recognize underlying prejudices in our cognition that we were perhaps unaware of. This is not to say that you are not to be held responsible for your prejudices, but let’s all remember that dehumanizing people solves nothing at all. We should all recognise that along with our culture and our upbringing, there are certain values that come along and form apart of our cognitions and processing mechanisms — ones we need to be open to addressing and mending. This is not easy, but if we’re all on the same team of Love, Kindness, and Respect, it makes it a lot easier. This of course, on top of the fact that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds?

Step 2: Right/Wrong are Contextual Variables

A team can be a lot more effective when half the team doesn’t have to run with a limp (or a pair of heels/a dress, ya know). It may be crudely comparable to a soccer game where half the team keeps getting carded for using too much of their hips while running, or flicking their hair too inappropriately, or their shorts being too short, or their laces not being long enough, or whatever ridiculous reason is being used for why the other team keeps scoring. The team would (or should) no doubt be up in arms, because of how it hinders their effectiveness to play the game, which is of course the main point. It may also be like saying that certain demographic categories of players may only be in the team as subs, none of them are ever allowed to be in the starting line-up, but they’ll be used if there’s no one else left. This is not a good strategic move to enable the goal to be achieved. And for some real talk, if we had to put all the highest earning players in the starting line up, it might be that we have selected the best players, but why would we make that a rule and sell ourselves short of employing the best strategy of players and placement based on their strengths and ability according to the context? I’ll not insult your intelligence by explaining just how we do exactly this in the church/societal norms. We forget that there is a great deal of contextualization apparent int he Bible. God remains the same, his heart and values remain unchanged, but in certain situations an action is wrong and in other situations it is right. If we look at the Bible purely as a book of moral absolutes of course there will be irreconcilable contradictions.

One of the reasons I dislike personality test is because they always ask for absolutes, of which I have none in my life. There is no one action that I will always take regardless of circumstance. We all have circumstantial decisions and choices we have made dependent on our values and beliefs. Often our values remain unchanged, be it principle based or outcomes based, even though our decisions differ. What am I getting at? We need to mine the various accounts of the God we serve, as well as personally invest time and devotion, to know His heart, and His values (if serving and following Him is something we want to do), and then, with His mercy and guidance, start to evaluate our current practices and see if they really are as Gospel-oriented as we think they are, and if they are in line with His values. In the culture of the time, I understand, let the educated people teach the other people. So in that case, women don’t teach, right? But if the church is family and family is where you should be most yourself, if women can’t lead or teach, how can you substantiate women studying management, or women being CEOs or presidents, or women being lecturers? It’s a cognitive dissonance that needs to be re-evaluated. Perhaps you don't agree with women being in these “secular positions”. Why? Is it possible that where the church has failed to press on with the agenda and has been crippled and sidetracked by secondary issues that the world has caught up? Let us examine our context in light of His Heart.

Step 3: The Talking Listening Cure

I referenced Freud in this step, but it really has nothing to do with him, except for his novel idea of talking through situations and circumstances in order to understand and reach a conclusion. What he really did, was listen. So should we. Of course I don’t know everything and I never will, not even about this particular issue. I do however know that it’s not so much about the philosophy as much as it is about having and acting upon values that will shape my relationships with those around me. We are focused on the goal of love, but how do we love? This is the question we need to be continually asking. To love is to pay attention, to listen, to hear, to move towards understanding and to value (love your neighbor as you love yourself). May we not only learn to listen, but may a deep yearning and desire to listen be born within our hearts and minds, may we be malleable and teachable. Let’s start the conversations in the closets of our homes, leaning in to hear the heart of the Almighty, and looking at the Bible more holistically and in context, never losing sight of the main point: Love, Truth, Light, Hope — Jesus. And then, take it one step at a time, speaking to those closest to you, then slowly broadening the topic to your community. This may help in emphasizing that is not a “Femi-Nazi rampage” but rather an honest questioning of how to love and value others better, from the very core of our hearts and minds, which will then change how we act, what we say, and how we treat those that are ‘different’ to us.

Final Thoughts

We don’t choose these things when we are born, I didn’t decide to be born a woman, or be born with my skin colour, or be born into the social class that I was, but yet, these are things people use to attribute value to me, each with their own measurement sticks (or pencils)… We all do it to a degree, and we all have it done to us to a degree. This is not my plight to be valued or recognized, this is my questioning of our culture and values that ultimately shape how we treat others and how we mistreat others.

You want to know why #MenAreTrash? Not because you as a man are trash, but because societal values and norms more often than not establish a value hierarchy that enables men to abuse women. The concept of a man that is often taught and learned is trash. Yes, it is a generalisation, but that’s kind of how statistics work. For all the things men are allowed to say or do, even with harmless intentions, that shapes culture and in turn shapes other men, that spirals to rape, murder, abuse, that concept of a man is trash. This is a desperate plea for men and women alike to relook at what you do, why you do it, and what your underlying cognitions are — this is a call to re-examination of values, particularly in the church.

I’m not asking us to revolt, I’m asking us to structure our organization, the church, differently, where we remain true to his heart and the call He has placed upon us. I ask that we move towards a church that exemplifies the heart of God, where everyone has equal value and equal ability to contribute, regardless of race, gender, or socio-economic status/class.

I hold no sway in formal church structures, mostly because I’m young, and a woman, and not married to an elder, (give or take) so in the spirit of using what I have to do the best I can, I aim to start exploring this topic in greater detail, through research, through art, and through engagement/conversation.

[debbstepps]

Globalization excerpt: chpt 1.

````Caleb’s notes````

Country: Kingdom of Olive-Jane

language: Wispin (English from our pov)

land mass/size: Try thinking of Texas with two Hawaii's. that’s the size of the country/kingdom

culture: yet to figure that out yet

values and beliefs: don’t know yet though I think its a country run on atheism

enemies: none.....yet

year: don’t know

other tidbits: they’re all white... Is this the new USA??

The way things were going, the last destination I expected was an entirely new universe. Like, the highest I was betting was the nearest hospital. Yeah, that bad.

the difference is, I wasn’t about to Christopher Columbus this sh*t. Nah, I’m going to as open-minded as God.

My friends and I were supposed to meet up at the carnival in town. We did, as planned, and were just waiting for our enemy’s arrival. You see, some 11th graders challenged us, 10th graders, to a soccer match. Said something about teaching us a lesson but I never got a say because the Chupacabra in my friend group agreed to it without consulting the rest of us. Insulting right?

Anyways, we agreed. Decided on a meetup spot, date and time, and basically just waited on which group of boys was gonna chicken out first.

Obviously, none of us did.

Anyways we meet up, rough each other up, trying to hurt egos and stuff, and then we get into the game.

We chose who was going to be the goalie, the referee, etc.. The 11th graders brought more guys than us so they expected us to be cowering in fear or something, but we weren’t. Cause like I said, my team has a Chupacabra to score us a few brownie points.

We were passing, kicking, dribbling- wait that’s basketball- and shooting nets, or goals. Three to a team. So that means one player doing the goal-keeping, while two others were in the field. Really bad right?

Kicking, more kicking, some passing, ah, I forgot running and… I don’t know any other action words. I’m not a good spokesperson. Like, imagine if I was one of those people that describe what’s going on in the field during a sports match. I would fail miserably. Like, totally bamboozle the show or tv network. I would make listening to sports a crime. So damn awful they’d take me to prison for obstruction of something, or something.

So I’m the goalkeeper, protecting the net and stopping winning goals and such, when out of nowhere, my other-other friend yells my name from atop the small hill that prevents soccer balls from skyrocketing into the busy streets.

“Caleb”, they shout. I turn my head towards them and wave a little. They smile and wave back.

“Keep up the good work”, they yell encouragingly. I mouth thanks and return to my duties.

That wave, that small moment, cost me two minutes of a lifetime because as soon as I got my head back into the game,

I was knocked out, cold.

Straight to my forehead. Shame it didn’t hit my heart or it could’ve helped me become straight.

But like, blacking out? How little food did I eat that I got thrown to the ground, never to rise up again? For how long did my mother starve me that one soccer ball literally threw my perception of reality into a whole other time-space-time place? Time…. Back in time? Back- never mind.

I- my soul, got sent to a whole other world where racism, sexism, and other isms do not, or have yet, to exist. Maybe they call it something different, or maybe it's covert.

But I’m still wondering. I’m still wondering how I managed to fall from the sky and land in an apple… farmers... carriage basket?

Luckily, I’m not the only one wondering that.

The number of eyes looking at me. The stares going in my direction. The gaping mouths and covered faces and shocked expressions and- how-come-I-did-not-die-from-that-fall looks and on and on and on.

Mirrors I tell yah. But that’s not the only thing that bothered me and made me feel uneasy and unsettled and out of place.

The er, people, were white.

All of them. Every single shade of skin as far as my eyes could see were a creamy white or a pale white, or peachy white or orange...white or a…silky…white? I think the author is just searching things up now, but you get the gist of things.

White, everywhere. Aside from their hair of course where the only two variants and gradients were blond or light brown.

A trumpet sound (I’m assuming) erupted from the crowd of people and they all looked up, simultaneously.

I looked around frantically and then remembered I was sitting on apples and quickly but wobblily got off.

I tried apologizing to the man on the horse, but his attention was fixated on what everyone else was looking at.

A very important person (thing)? Probably. My legs were somewhat sore but steady and I just stood there. Where was I supposed to go? I literally got teleported- no transported here without permission, without my consent and now I may or may not be the bad guy or impending evil that this, country? kingdom? I don’t know, was looking forward to.

Whether that’s a good thing or bad thing is up for interpretation.

The crowd started to part. Great. It’s the story of Moses only in live action.

The people were whispering amongst themselves as whoever or whatever was passing through. As soon as the people closest to me moved to the sidelines I saw who (it was a who) they were.

A boy. About my height, so I’m also assuming they’re my age. Same redundant skin tone, brown eyes, short cropped blonde hair, wearing a long deep red robe. Sort of like a royal.

America and their want for diversity cultural acceptance really spoiled me. 

Now I can’t even stand looking at the same repeated skin tone on the ever similar group of people even though they’re all vastly different. 

Like, how am I supposed to go to a country in Africa if I can’t stand this place?

Do I say they need diversity? Do I say they need to be accepting of other races? Do I- wait, I don’t even know if these people are the original people of this land.

they are probably are and I’m just assuming they’re colonizers because of the color of their skin. Oh damn, am I a racist now? Do these people even know what that means?

My train of thought went wild until my ears picked up something that the same-height boy said to his (I’m assuming) servant:

“He is weird looking, is he not? His skin is... peculiar.”

“Yes, quite strange indeed. what do you suppose he is?”

“Well, he certainly looks like one of us I presume. With eyes, and ears and a mouth and a nose. his lips are.....plump”, I snorted at this remark. the kid took this in.

“You understand what I’m saying?” he asked surprised, “Yeah, I do. Which is shocking since I thought I was transported to a new old world where y’all speak olden English with twisted riddles and all that Shakespearean crap”. 

“Fascinating, you speak as one of us.” he turns around and grabs one of those hornet thingy’s that people bring out on Thanksgiving and yelled in like a megaphone, “HE IS LIKE ONE OF US!!! HE SPEAKS LIKE US AND, well, LOOKS LIKE US, to some extent I suppose, but, BUT, HE IS ONE OF US”. 

the crowd looked somewhat pleased but at the same time concerned for the mental state of their ruler. 

I know I would if a strange person fell from the sky with absolutely dark beyond your complexion skin tone and the moment they somehow manage to understand what you’re saying you announce “ONE OF US, ONE OF US”.

whether they’re racist is still being processed. 

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@writingonesdreams

[it-will-not-last-the-night]

Victimhood-P5 the end

Or: Because I still had one of these in me.

Put simply knocking out a friend, who has done nothing wrong, and then abandoning them at night on a street with no form of protection at all, is evil.

How do I support my protagonist characters when I know they are willing to sink to such immoral actions?

This is the problem I now have. When I play Persona 5 I am now constantly aware of things which make me grate me teeth;

1) My protagonist can be a womanizing asshole with little to no repercussions. Apparently treating women as simple trophies to be acquired is better than being Ryuji.

2) My protagonist is at best too afraid to protect Ryuji from completely unjustified physical beatings and near-constant verbal abuse. The Phantom Thieves as a whole are a group who claim to be opposed to Abuse but, when it comes to Ryuji, happily practise and enable it themselves so long as he is the victim.

3) The game dips into homophobia (AND FURTHER ABUSE OF RYUJI) with its depicition of the homosexual male couple.

4) The game’s ending moral for Ryuji is that he is a ‘no-good son’, ‘idiot’, ‘pathetic’, ‘worthless’ and ‘rotten child’ who’s only value exists in serving as an extension of the protagonist, any individual agency he has is instantly determined to be wrong.

5) Physical and Verbal abuse of Ryuji is simply tacticly approved of, with the game going so far as, in the Ship-ending and Ryuji’s Track Team-ending, effectively stating Ryuji DESERVES TO BE PHYSICALLY BEATEN. We, as the protagonist, have the literal option to tell him he DESERVES IT!

Imagine, IMAGINE, one of the female characters being treated like this. Imagine Ann being told that her victimization at Kamoshida’s hands was HER fault, and allow Shiho to punch her for it. Imagine Makoto almost died after making a selfless gesture and then returned later and was beaten upon by the entire group, then left abanonded somewhere on a street whilst they went off and enjoyed themselves without her.

THIS ISN’T FUNNY. Its abuse. I hate it. Abuse is horrible, living with it made me feel like less than a person, and I at least didn’t have friends telling me I deserved it or abandoning me when I was going through it. Abuse is wrong.

6) Sexism. Just. No. This game and women and the protagonist. No. How do I even begin? Basically ever female character you meet can only develop feelings for one boy in all the world, your teacher becomes an ultimate fantasy for objectification, all female Palace holders are redeemable and all female characters recieve far more coddling than the equally suffering and broken male cast. There is literally volumes about the way this game handles women which could be written and I don’t have the mental fortitude to organize now. To put it bluntly; Persona 5′s writing virtually veers into being a single step away from traditional anime/manga harem style ‘women can only be attracted to the protagonist’ and ‘now woman is evil they just need the protagonist to redeem them with his awesome’.

I keep coming back to that scene though. Ann, Makoto, Futaba and Haru beat up a crippled boy. They physically attack a cripple. And Yusuke and Morgana and the Protagonist are FINE with this. I’m tempted to just quote and go; ‘our protagonists ladies and gentlemen’ since the action is simply, very plainly, evil.

Not to mention the fact that Futaba and Ann are dedicated throughout the game to making sure Ryuji understands he will always and forever be alone and he should accept it. I mean...it even builds into yet another scene I can’t understand. Ryuji mentions hitting it off with some girls, and Futaba and Ann instantly respond that he must be lying, and I have no idea what to believe. Ryuji practically never lies to the group ever so it seems strange to imagine he’d suddenly, this one time, concoct such a grandiose deception, but, at the same time, the game does hammer in consistently that almost all things female find Ryuji inherently repulsive, so Ann and Futaba seem to make a point. So what am I meant to believe? That was just the one day Ryuji felt like lying to his friends?

Why is Ryuji so detestable to all things female in any case? He never asks Ann to strip naked for him as Yusuke and the protagonist can, he doesn’t cheat on seven women at once as the protagonist can (and then still can romance them as well).

I honestly wish Ryuji died. Just to escape the pain. I wish he’d been revealed to be the traitor. That his feelings of isolation and worthlessness were taken advantage of to manipulate him into betrayal and then he’d died so the suffering would stop. It’d probably be a smarter commercial move too as Akechi could then be made a replacement for Ryuji and Akechi is FAR more popular than Ryuji is (despite being a straight up murderer). So I’m sure most fans would get behind it too.

But there really is nothing for it or how else do I say it? I should probably write some fanfics to express my interpretations since I struggle to spit out more without delving into calling every other character monstrous (and I do still like them, I jus can’t get over this single aspect as it taints the entire end product for me).

[narrator-scio-story]

What’s Happening 7/21

It’s weird because I was first writing this blog entry over a week ago. Anyway, I will finally get to post it and update you.

Ugh, stuff has been happening. In fact, AP and SAT scores have been out since before my last blog post but I didn’t mention it because it just didn’t seem important. Yes, I waited very anxiously for 1 pm (aka 8 am eastern time) to be able to check my AP scores on July 9th (they were out in New Jersey on the 5th, but being overseas I didn’t feel like using a VPN). I was literally refreshing for minutes prior, and then had to take a minute to process when it actually came up Everyone tells you not to stress, that they did fine so you’ll do fine, that it doesn’t matter that much, and intellectually, you follow, you agree, you don’t think you should worry about this, but then you do it anyway. Then with my SAT subject tests on the 12th, alright, we were at the zoo but I did check several times until when I looked around 1:20 pm they had been there for a while.

But they didn’t seem to matter in the general scheme of things, to the point of inclusion in my novelling blog, at least. Last week they didn’t matter.

Now, though, I feel very involved in home town things. The only major world news they were giving us on the radio was the new Doctor and tennis, for several days, so I guess instead of caring about major world events I started caring about our own little local issues. The new Doctor I care about, although the fact that she’ll be female I think could be made less of. This isn’t about having the first female Doctor, it’s about having the 13th Doctor, and the Doctor should always be played by whoever had the best audition, and anyone who can act should be able to audition. It is not “time” to have a female Doctor, and it wasn’t previously “time” to have 12 consecutive white male Doctors (but that happened anyway because of racism and sexism). There should be roles for women, just as many and just as important as for men, but those roles should not be defined as being for women, they should be nuanced and realistic and for people, just as all roles should be. And then same about other races, although we haven’t gotten there with Doctor Who yet.

So that’s my rant about how we haven’t achieved equality if we think this will be the female Doctor instead of the Doctor. Sorry, not.

And then tennis. I mean Wimbledon, of course, you know where I’m staying. We watched the entirety of the men’s singles finals on TV and Roger Federer won so easily it would’ve been boring even if I were a person who cared about tennis. I mean, I wanted him to win in so far as I cared, but really, couldn’t he have had a more exciting contest prior to his victory?

When that’s the only news I was hearing, you can see how I’d turn back to New Jersey stuff. And New Jersey stuff means not only caring about test scores but getting involved in the Science Bowl fight.

There have been no new developments in the Science Bowl fight, so perhaps it sems a bit odd that we’re up in arms about it now. What there were developments in, though, was football. The football teams from the two high schools wanted to merge, because one of the high schools doesn’t have enough players. The school sports association, governing body kind of thing, I don’t know exactly what it is but it’s the thing for New Jersey which has the authority to make decisions about high school sports teams, it said no. The superintendent took it to court and got told no again. Everyone got upset.

The thing is that without enough people for a team, the people who do want to play can’t. And that is unfair to them.

We could also talk about how if enrollment is declining that much, then in a couple of years maybe they won’t be able to form a team even using both high schools combined - that’s what my Lang teacher suggested as the sports governing body’s rationale. If your school district doesn’t care enough about football to build two teams, soon they won’t be able to build one from one team so why change the rules to give them one team now? So yeah, merging the high school teams really didn’t address the core problem of declining interest in football, and maybe that was the governing body’s concern. But that’s not really an argument people have been talking about, why they made the decision they did, so much as everyone’s been worrying about what happens to the few people who are now losing their opportunity to compete in an activity they love?

But the same district which went to court to try to bring back an opportunity to football players got a lawyer to avoid even talking about the reason they got rid of middle school Science Bowl. It’s not just that they won’t bring the program back - it’s not just that they won’t have discussions about why they can’t bring it back - it’s that they won’t even talk about why it was gotten rid of.

So that parallel, caring only about one type of program, is what we’re getting excited about. How can they claim that they’re fair and helping everyone if they don’t even have enough respect for us to state why that program we loved can’t be offered to more students?

Some of us - presumably the super angry rising college senior first, but we all got involved once we saw that the discussion had come to our topic - commented on one of the posts about football, not asking that football lose its support but asking if we could have the same support. Obviously it created a huge fight - one consequence, though, is that there’s now a group chat, created by the aforementioned college senior, consisting of some of the most intelligent students from several graduating classes, and me, all people who happen to involve themselves in discussions in his one district discussion group on Facebook where everything’s been happening.

The group chat’s name comes from the “whole child” policy the district promotes, which has been used to justify all of the changes which take away academic opportunities, and has resulted in us academic-oriented students feeling ourselves considered inferior to other people. As though we were only fractions of children. Fake children. Partial children. But I don’t really want this to be a fight about the whole child policy anymore - I want this to be solely a fight about Science Bowl.

So my feelings about the focus of the group chat and our efforts and stuff, it’s part of what makes me feel like there’s loads of hidden disagreement even between those of us who want the program back. I’m worried it’s goiing to stop anyone making progress. Like, the college senior, at the board meeting about reviewing the superintendent’s contract, he wanted the superintendent gone, very clearly. He disliked every decision the superintendent had made, and the superintendent as a person. Like, I am willing to believe that the superintendent thinks he’s doing the right thing to benefit students, despite the discomfort his destructive actions have caused, which is a lot nicer than a lot of them think, and a couple of his decisions, like getting rid of finals, I don’t think it’s improved my stress level or anything if that was the goal - I used to really enjoy finals week, because you only had to come to school for a few hours in the morning and then you had the entire afternoon to go to froyo and stuff, plus if the final was for the block that you had gym or band or study hall, you didn’t have to be in school, you could come in late or leave early. Still, to me, it isn’t a big enough deal to fight over. If changing things makes the superintendent feel good about himself, that’s a change that doesn’t greatly harm me, so whatever. I only want to fight for the things I really held dear, which really changed my life.

So back to this “Science Bowl” thing I hold dear. I feel like the others are using this issue as a way to ask for all STEM things, calling it a symptom of the anti-intellectual attitude in the town, rather than what it is - an opportunity some middle school students (who aren’t personally taking part in the debate) no longer have.

I’ve been considering asking the people in the group who don’t support Science Bowl what it is they’re concerned about. If it’s funding, that would be straightforward to address, we could use outside sources and it won’t lead to cutting any other programs. If it’s not having a coach, we’ve already fixed that, at least at one of the middle schools, but I’ve asked students at the other high school to think about fixing it at their middle school. Otherwise, I had assumed most disagreement came from a fundamental lack of knowledge about the program, leading people to think it only benefits 5 people, or is redundant when Science Olympiad still exists at the middle schools, or isn’t necessary when the high school still has a Science Bowl team. Surely if other people felt listened to, they might listen to our explanations of why those descriptions of the program aren’t accurate. I even drafted a Facebook post asking them - drafted it in my notebook, in the hopes that they would see us trying to compromise if I posted it, and so be willing to support if not the program itself immediately, at least our efforts to have a discussion with the district about the issue. But presumably the rest of the chat won’t support that.

Of course the college senior emailed the superintendent and the superintendent was very displeased. Some of his disagreements might have been fair, some of them might not have been, but the most important thing to me was that he said he wasn’t going to say anything about our arguments about Science Bowl because it was a decision made by a previous superintendent back in the 2010-11 school year.

The decision he was talking about there was actually just the decision to remove funding to the program at the middle school level, and the program continued at one of the middle schools for 3 more years without funding. That’s the form in which I participated in the program, and look how much it changed my life, directing me into Science Olympiad, granting me some of my closest friends, inspiring me by the former team members whose legacy I was trying to maintain.

At the same time as I’ve been concerning myself with all of this, the MIT community has watched as Senior House is changed from being undergraduate housing. There’s loads of information about it on the admissions blogs, I won’t go into why the administration decided it was necessary to end that living community because other people know a lot more and a lot more directly than I do, but watching from my perspective, I really felt like there’s another administration which isn’t really communicating well with students. I was especially struck by them saying that last year, they started some turn around program, but that had failed - and I’m amazed by that because if our district is trying to change an overly competitive culture supposedly, we all know that can’t be done in a couple of years, so I’m surprised that Senior House was supposed to change its culture in a year. And then they said that the administration first told them there would be some new pilot program to change the culture more drastically, and in another few weeks or so said, actually no, this building will no longer be undergraduate housing. So watching these two disagreements between students and their administrators, it made me reconsider my long-held dream of going to MIT. I don’t want to spend another 4 years fighting with my administrators - and perhaps I’ll be fighting with my high school administrators simultaneously, considering some members of our group chat are MIT students (or other similar things) and they still involve themselves in our fights.

Just to throw in some more positive hometown thoughts, my girlfriend, if we’re going to call her that, I asked her if she wanted to come interrailing around Europe with me next summer, like, after we both graduate from aforementioned hometown.  She said she couldn’t, because her parents wouldn’t let her go anywhere other than China. But then the next day, she asked me if I wanted to go to China with her and another friend. Now, I don’t speak Chinese, so that might be somewhat of a difficulty, so I responded to her quite hesitantly, but... that would be lovely. I do want to spend my summer after graduating with people from high school in some form, and I always wanted to visit China at some point, and who better to visit with?

Who better to visit with, except my boyfriend, who like my girlfriend, is Chinese. And he tends to visit China every summer, and he’s been begging that if I come to the UK next year, could he come with me, and I’ve been very skeptical of that. So would it make more sense to go with him? Can I justify going with her instead in that we would all be girls that way which is less weird, and we would have all just graduated which makes it a more unified thing, and so on? Would I not regret it if I don’t spend time with him - but would I not regret it if I don’t spend time with her?

So even this happy question isn’t purely happy. It’s tied up in my confusion over the status of my girlfriend generally, it’s tied up in my confusion as to my sticking with my boyfriend for such a long time when I can’t see myself marrying him, it’s complicated.

There you go, those are the utterly unproductive thoughts I’ve been having that relate to home, while I’ve been on vacation.