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droasterchicken · 1 month

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The Philippines Cries in the State of Politics

As disputes in the country continue to rise with the passing time, people need to step up to the challenge to resolve the problems that society brings. This is done through governmental elections, where the citizens of the Philippines would vote for candidates who run for positions in the government. Whether these candidates are worthy of the position, the fate of the Philippines lies in the decision of the nation.

The people are given free will to vote those they deem fit to acquire a position in the government. Without elections, there is no free will, only submission to authority that has been predetermined by the privileged and those with high social status.

It was in the month of May in 2022 and on a rather cool afternoon. It was common knowledge that Duterte had to step down from his seat as president to allow someone else to take the responsibility.

The votes were tallied between BongBong Marcos and Leni Robredo, the tension was high until the results were released. The news came from my grandmother who casually spoke of how BongBong Marcos won the position as president of the Philippines. In all honesty, I felt nothing, I knew nothing about the candidates themselves nor did I think of how this would affect me since I was just 16 years old.

The internet was disappointed, if not hated the results, people on Tiktok were blaspheming Marcos and spoke of how it should have been Leni. Still, I underestimated the importance of elections until my mother spoke of how this affected the relationships of some families.

Parents were disowning their children, children were disowning their families, all because they had opposing views on who to vote for. This got me thinking, why are families willing to destroy their relationship because of the elections? Suddenly, it became a lot more significant to ponder about, especially when my time to vote would soon come.

The candidates for Philippine elections were represented through status and wealth. But that alone does not get one to succeed in the elections, one must win the hearts of the people to win the votes.

As I grew older, I realized that candidates in the privilege spectrum would make use of their reputation and do what they could to acquire the position they were aiming for in the government. Whether they were a star such as an actor, or from a long family line that withheld a rank in the government, unless the candidate was popular and had the money to buy people, it did not matter if the candidate was truly knowledgeable or fit for the position. If they are not popular, they do not have the chance to win in the elections.

I recall the 2022 Philippine elections when Robinhood Padilla won as Senator. He was known as a TV star and actor before he became a Senator. Another example I could think of was the vice president, Sarah Duterte, who shared the last name of the previous Philippine president who was Rodrigo Duterte.

These alone exemplified the Philippine’s voting pattern, not by wisdom, but through personal feelings. Through these observations, it saddened me that people chose to ignore those who had great potential to lead the country and focused on those of popularity. Just because they contain the fun or “bibo” vibes does not mean they are qualified.

As of now at 18 years old in 2024, I tend to wonder; just how reliable is the system of the elections? If the government allows movie actors or models to apply for certain positions, are these the kind of people that we would want to represent and lead our country?

The Philippine election is a place where everyone stands on equal grounds, a place where the country is properly represented by those who understand the country’s needs. By this, we should not view a candidate by simply their appearance, but predetermine whether they can handle the responsibilities given with the position and through their character.

As someone who is ready to choose the next leaders when the elections come, I am more than willing to not vote blindly based on popularity, but on the sets of skills that the candidates hold. Yet I shall never turn blind to one’s reputation, for whatever is built up by the candidates works as a surface that leads to their character and personality.

The Philippines is still in the middle of change, yet what never changes are the officials who are blinded with the power they hold, officials who are corrupt. Nowadays, people do not actually know how to properly see through the veils that candidates put up to please the public, later on this results in deep regret once that veil falls off.

The need for electoral reform in the Philippines is a call for improvement. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to having the right to vote. The candidates in the elections are not to be viewed for their outward appearance, but one must be an educated voter in terms of capabilities.

Duterte as president may have achieved many great things for the country, even helped progress the nation, but not without consequence. The War On Drugs campaign, despite its good cause, resulted in blood shed and corruption. Many lost loved ones and cried for them, just as how people cry for leaders who will lead this nation and lift it up.

Don’t vote without cause, nor because of biases. Don’t vote because of popularity, nor because of sweet promises. Have the research done for the candidate’s reputation reveals who they are even before they stepped foot into the elections. If the country chooses the wrong candidate, it will reflect on the country’s complexions.

#cryforgoodleaders #bewareoftheinfluenceofpopularpolitics #philippinegovernance #blog #politics #op-ed #memoir #journal #democracy

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danganronpasurvivoraskblog · 1 month

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Ranking the Warriors of other Worlds Death Battles:

//Recently, I ran a poll asking everyone in the audience what their favourite Death Battle to come out of the Warriors of Other World's arc was, and I'm grateful to all those who voted.

//So before I get into the purpose of this poll, I wanted to quickly announce the results of said poll, and go over the community ranking of the series. These are the fights from least popular to most popular with their final percentage of the votes.

9th Place: Seiko Vs Lizard - 1.3% Tied 8th Place: Peko Vs RHM & Sakura Vs Jonathan - 2.7% Tied 7th Place: Akane Vs Chie & Narumi Vs Toga - 4% 6th Place: Komaru Vs Katie - 5.3% 5th Place: Mukuro Vs Kayano - 6.7% 4th Place: Mikan Vs Fluttershy - 9.3% TIED 3RD PLACE: Junko Vs Monika & Kaede Vs Sara - 12% 2ND PLACE: Makoto Vs Phoenix - 16% 1ST PLACE: Hajime Vs Deku - 24%

//With all that being said, while I do appreciate the feedback, I do have my own personal takes on the matchups and how they actually turned out in the end. So I imagine people actually wanted to hear my thoughts and opinions.

//This arc ended up being even more successful than I thought it would, and that makes be pretty chuffed. I was excited for this, and based on the feedback, everyone else seems to like it a fair bit as well.

//So yeah, I will probably be doing this again in the future. I won't, or rather can't, say when exactly, but if this is a concept people can get behind, then there's no reason to end it here.

//That being said, while this is definitely a new style that I'm not used to, I definitely did my best with the writing of this fight, and having my friends IRL help me with the analyses was great. But there are some battles that turned out greater than others.

//So I'm gonna be ranking them, because I know some people really wanted to hear my own personal reflections and feedback on this event, and I'm more than happy to provide it. Going into it though, these are the criteria that I will be judging the final products on, and things to keep in mind.

This will mainly be judged on quality of the analysis, how deep it goes, and how good quality the fight turns out in the end.

Considering we remain unbiased to each fighter, the verdict does not wholly matter.

A lot of this will be judged on the matchup itself, how strong the connections are, and whether or not I would want to see it happen in the actual series.

This is my own personal opinion.

//Alright, without further ado, let's get ready for a RANKIIIING!

#12: PEKO VS RHM

//I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, this FUCKING SUCKED.

//So after I went back to polish and edit the original script to post on Tumblr, this fight and analysis ended up improving my opinion of it, and I don't HATE it anymore, but it still doesn't save it from being the worst matchup in this event by a long shot.

//First and foremost, the reason Right Hand Man ever ended up on Peko's list of combatants was honestly originally done as a joke. We found some loose connections, and decided that he could be a potentially interesting combatant to analyze if he DID win the vote.

//Which we were so damn wrong about.

//But he was by far the character on Peko's list of combatants that we were not only the least excited to do a battle for, but also the one that we least expected to win. But we figured out pretty quickly that he was picked due to the Henry Stickmin games being the most widely popular and well known at the time compared to Peko's other matchups.

//When I first ran the poll for people to vote for who wins this fight, it actually made me laugh to see Peko win the audience vote by a country mile, because to be perfectly frank, not only does this fight have the least amount of serious connections between the two fighters, but it's also the MOST one sided fight in the whole series.

//Sure, Mikan Vs Fluttershy was similarly one-sided against Mikan, but even Mikan Vs Fluttershy still has the benefit of the two characters being fundamentally similar in a way that gives them opportunity to interact.

//These two don't have that excuse because they have some of the most bare-bones personalities in their respective series. RHM is a one-dimensional jackass who's rude and hates everything, and there's no layers to him; not even a real name or a backstory. And while Survivor Peko definitely has grown from her canon iteration, she's still fundamentally a stone-faced warrior with little screen time to help improve upon that.

//And what makes it worse is that with that in mind, an analysis would mainly pertain to the characters unique abilities instead of their personalities and stories. But in that regard, RHM has so much to cover, and by comparison Peko has...NOTHING.

//She just has a sword, and if this was a battle between herself and another sword-user like Afro Samurai, it wouldn't be as much of a problem to cover it, since Afro also has limited weaponry. RHM however, is a machine of destruction with so many tools in his arsenal

//You'll notice that this is the shortest DB in the series because there's so little to actually cover and no way to drag it out in a way that's interesting. The saving grace is that the fight turned out to be alright in the end, but there was no way in a million years Peko was ever going to win this, and that upsets me immensely.

//I don't hold it against the voters obviously, since we were the ones who put the damn stick figure on the list in the first place, but this was not the right call in the end, and I regret it.

#11: MAKOTO VS PHOENIX

//Haha jokes on you muppets, I put your second favorite second from the bottom!

//Why? Well, no reason really! I just...kinda got bored of it?

//This fight has far more connections than Number 12, but still, it didn't turn out to be the spectacle I'd hoped it would be. It turned out to be really hard to portray Phoenix and Makoto in a hostile setting where they're at each other's throats and trying to kill each other. Upon reflection, I think this fight turned out ok, but it still could have been leagues better.

//If actual DB ever decided to do this, I imagine they'd do it better, but also they wouldn't use Survivor Makoto, so I doubt he would really win.

//The analysis was fine, but again, this being the first chapter in the series, it's really supposed to set a boundary of quality more than anything, and every episode that comes after it, save for Peko Vs RHM, just turned out to be so much better. And keeping both of them within character while also making them try to murder each other was far more difficult than it should have been.

#10: SAKURA VS JONATHAN

//The best part about this fight was that I genuinely wasn't expecting Sakura to win going into it. And the fact that she was the first actual fighter who won her battle made a lot of people very happy. Aside from that, there's not much to say here.

//It's a very standard fist fight between two beefy people. and honestly, I feel that Jonathan, as much as I love JoJo, was among the opponents I DIDN'T really want to cover.

//And while I know I said I wasn't taking the verdict into account, part of me is not wholly sure our judgement on this one was correct, and we were worried about facing backlash, but fortunately, everyone seemed to agree with our reasoning in the end.

//But other than that, while there is style, there's little substance. Analyzing both these characters was fine, but not something I remember being that exciting. Similarly to Peko Vs RHM, Jonathan is capable of so much with Hamon, and Sakura is just a regular fighter who turns out to be super duper powerful, but describing her techniques was a bit of a chore.

//What was nice was explaining how the functionalities of breathing work in a fight. That was pretty fun.

//But yeah, while I don't dislike this matchup at all, I still feel like both characters have far better matchups that can happen instead of each other.

#9: KAEDE VS SARA

//Given that she's hands down my favorite character, I was super disappointed with how Kaede's episode turned out.

//Part of it was because we were fully prepared for Kotone to end up winning the poll, but right at the VERY LAST SECOND, Sara swept it out from under her. So we ended up abandoning our planned script and instead rewrote about half of it to make up for it.

//That, and I unfortunately did not time this release well. This fight dropped IMMEDIATELY after Kaede achieved her latest and greatest feat in Survivor, and it made it clear to everybody that she had this one in the bag. Of course, that chapter and this fight were all pre-planned, so I can assure you that it's not unfair or cheating, and Kaede would have won regardless of whether she had taken down Himiko's robot or not. Even still, I do realize just how cheap it might seem from an outside perspective, and I acknowledge this, but trust me when I say that this was little more than poor planning on my part.

//But weirdly enough, what I enjoyed so much about this part wasn't analyzing Kaede. It was analyzing SARA.

//Going into it, we all knew that Kaede was going to win, because she's insanely powerful in DR Survivor, and against Sara, we never thought she was ever going to stack up.

//But our expectations were rather subverted when we started doing the analysis for her. While we were right in that Sara didn't have what it took to beat Kaede, we were pleasantly surprised by how much she DID have going for her, and how squaring up to the Ultimate Pianist turned out not to be such a pipe dream.

//One other issue I have with this part of the series is how much both characters analyses focused on their STORIES more than their capabilities in a fight, but again, like Peko, Kaede's lineup of abilities is rather straightforward and simple, and there wasn't any need to discuss the functionalities of the hacking gun, since Komaru Vs Katie already went very deep into that, and repeating it immediately afterwards was pointless.

//And as someone who loves writing Kaede, it became very difficult to have her and Sara interact in a way that was interesting without breaking character for either of them. The final result and the way they were both portrayed wasn't exactly what I wished for, even if it was...acceptable. It was just very hard to imagine how a fight would start out between them, given that both are very logical and try to assess a situation before deciding to leap into battle, so we were forced to get a little OOC.

//But while it could have been better, what we ended up putting together was pretty fun in the end, so it gets a little higher than some of the previous matchups.

#8: AKANE VS CHIE

//The reason why this fight ends up in the lower half of the countdown is because a lot of the actual fight is just Akane and Chie smacking each other. Chie uses her spells sparingly and there's not much substance to their actual duel.

//But the thing is that it's perfectly in character for both of them, so it's not really a good idea to change that aspect.

//Akane is already a character who I wasn't looking forward to analyzing, since while I don't HATE her, I certainly don't like her as much as ANYONE else in her home game. And a lot of it, for both of them, was going to pertain to their abilities more than their personality and history, since Akane is very one-dimensional, and Chie is a very standard character as well.

//But this was the first fight where I really felt like we were making something special, and again, while I said the verdict does not ultimately affect my ranking, this one is an exception, since I was VERY surprised that Akane pulled out the win.

//I'm GLAD. But surprised.

//Especially given how much people were underestimating Akane prior to the release of the fight, it was fun to see people react to Akane actually beating a character who comes from a series full of infinitely powerful magic users, since I, and everyone else, really underestimated how ridiculous Danganronpa scaling could be.

//And this was the fight that I think got a lot of people hooked on the concept, so I'm grateful that we ended up doing it. If either of these characters ever got into DB, which is quite unlikely, this is a matchup I would really like to see.

#7: MIKAN VS FLUTTERSHY

//Say hello to the thing that made me a Brony.

//Yeah, I had a LOT of fun with this one. I already knew that My Little Pony's lore ran deeper than it really should, especially with the latest DB season running Bill Cipher VS Discord, and I had guessed in advance that Fluttershy would somehow end up taking this.

//The fight is incredibly one-sided, even though neither Fluttershy, nor Mikan are really "fighters" per se. Given the fact that Fluttershy has access to so much powerful magic, there wasn't any way that Mikan could contend with it.

//Even so, the reason why this ended up being a rich man's version of Peko Vs RHM is that Mikan not only has so many more gadgets to work with, but both these characters have interesting, cute and well-made personalities that clash with each other PERFECTLY.

//Of every fight in this arc, this one is the one I feel has the most interaction potential. And in my mind, that tea party absolutely happened when Mikan broke out of that stone.

//When this fight won the poll, I wasn't particularly happy at first, and I still think Medic would have made for a more interesting fight, but I ended up falling in love with this one more than I meant to, especially with how much I learned about My Little Pony, and how much fun I had explaining the lore and scaling of Fluttershy.

#6: MUKURO VS KAYANO

//I had this one a lot lower originally, but when I went back to edit it and reread it, I fell in love with this one all over again.

//Danganronpa and Assassination Classroom have always been fundamentally similar stories, and not just because Monokuma and Korosensei are in similar positions in both.

//This fight was less of an argument between who would win between Mukuro Ikusaba and Kaede Kayano, and more of an argument between Danganronpa and Assassination Classroom, and which one has the more crazy scaling. And it was a BLAST.

//This is one of the few examples in this arc where both fighters are fundamentally similar and formidable warriors, in a way that I felt was akin to Black Widow VS Widowmaker, which to this day, is still one of my top DB episodes.

//And originally, this fight was going to be similar to that Assassin V Assassin fight, but factoring in Mukuro's Battle Trance and Kayano's tentacles, this was going to get anime as fuck at some point, and it did, and I really enjoyed it.

//Mukuro losing kind of sucked, but it didn't affect my enjoyment.

//And while I fully expected Reze to win the poll, given Chainsaw Man's popularity, I think that this is genuinely Mukuro's best potential matchup if she ever became a canon Death Battle character. And you know what? I'd actually like to see it.

#5: NARUMI VS TOGA

//So this was the first fight where I actually thought to myself, "yep, this one is my favourite."

//And as mentioned in the episode itself, we had FAR MORE trouble analyzing this fight than we thought, and we honestly didn't know if Narumi had it in her to beat Toga. It was only after hours of deliberating and getting all our facts together that we decided on a verdict.

//Toga being able to survive explosions that happened INSIDE her body as a result of her fight against Curious was the biggest outlier for us, and we read over everything that both these girls had done before we decided our final victor. And it was a fun ride throughout.

//Especially because I never quite realized just how many connections there were between Narumi and Toga, not even the fact that they're both yandere's for the main protagonist of their series.

//But the fun part was seeing how their own unique styles of fighting, which are REMARKABLY different, stacked up against each other. This fight will never happen, since Narumi Osone was never an official DR character, but if Survivor was canon, I'd love to see it. I've thought of some matchups for Narumi since, but Toga still retains her crown as the one with the most connections.

//Some of the later episodes dethroned it, obviously, but it's still one of my favourites, kicking off the top 5.

#4: JUNKO VS MONIKA

//I was really really worried that this finale was going to suck, and I'm super glad that it didn't. It was by far the most difficult matchup to write because we wanted to make it a spectacle, but were struggling on ways to do that.

//What made it so difficult was the analysis portion, not the fight, and the reason for that is because this is a composite version of Junko, which means we have to go over EVERYTHING she has across the whole series. And given the fact that Junko pops up in basically EVERY ONE of the series iterations, that's a LOT. Monika, in contrast, does not have NEARLY that much, so a lot of her analysis, at least in the beginning, details her origin story, then breaks down her powers and what she can do with it.

//And learning about the actual lore of how DDLC came to be in-universe was super fun actually.

//This was also probably the most even fight in the series, barring one particular fight that we'll get to next, for obvious reasons. Even if the setup is a little convoluted, it's not hard to imagine that someone like Monika could exist in the world of DR Survivor, especially given that there's already a chunky handful of AI characters in the main cast. And in the case of her and AI Junko, when they are at their best, they can both manipulate space and time in the digital world they live in to such an extent that stats practically mean nothing. The real fight comes down to which one of them is the more parasitic AI, just like in canon episode, Ultron VS Sigma.

//And that's what I think really sold this one for me - the fight, and the way it turned out. Junko was smarter, stronger, and generally had so many legs up on Monika that makes it almost impossible to beat her normally, but she didn't have the advantage in the ONE deciding factor that dictated this fight.

//And I think there's something really ironic about that, especially considering that's typically how Junko's plans fall apart in Danganronpa. The only reason that anyone ever beats her despite being so cartoonishly powerful is simply by never giving up, and exploiting the one weakness she has. Something that Monika does professionally.

//So while I do prefer Junko Vs Springtrap as a concept that I would like to see, this one turned out to be way more fun than I thought it would, and I'm glad we did it.

#3: KOMARU VS KATIE

//There's really not much to say about this one, it's just a fun time. But that's what you should expect when you put the goofiest protag herself against the protag of the Mitchell's Vs the Machines.

//Katie's analysis is one of the best in this series, and one of the most fun I had writing. Komaru's isn't AS good, but I still think both were solid sequences detailing the characters and their stories, even if in Komaru's case, it had to be cut a little to go over the important origin points.

//But the very obvious reason why this fight and its conclusion ended up being so good was obviously because of the verdict, and what we broke down in the conclusion. In that from the feats we see of them, Komaru and Katie are fighters on a near equal level, to the point where it's hard to know for sure which one of them could win if they did fight. Thus, it ended up as a draw.

//And I think that's a really solid way to conclude this thing. Both are (originally) gun-wielding teenage girls fighting against a robot apocalypse, with their stories throughout the entire series putting a heavy emphasis on family, and the importance of it. In a way, that makes these two perfect opponents for one another, and the way this fight ended up portraying that in the end was pretty fun to watch.

//And the interaction potential as a result leaves very little to be desired. Their personalities clash perfectly, as do their goofy little quirks and interactions, and the fight itself was also fun, especially with how it takes them across the city scape and forcing both of them to get creative, something they both excel at.

//Like I said, there's not much to say here. This one was just super fun and I like how it turned out.

#2: SEIKO VS LIZARD

//So you know how only like, one person voted this one as their favorite one? Yeah, fuck the rest of you, lol.

//This battle gets my verdict for biggest surprise of the series. Because this one turned out amazing and I didn't believe it would.

//I might have mentioned this before, but originally, the 10th battle in the original lineup was going to be Kuripa, but he was swapped out for Seiko last minute. This is because Kuripa still has some more insane feats on the way in future arcs when he makes his grand return, and I wanted to save his fight for a potential future season lineup.

//Seiko was a GREAT substitute though, especially with her fight against Kanade in the main series coming shortly before this. And weirdly, from both the analysis, to each characters similarities and stories, to how an actual fight between them would go, all of it FUCKS HARD!

//One thing you might have noticed with the lineup of this arc is I really really REALLY wanted to avoid putting any Marvel characters in the polls. The simple reason being that Marvel and DC are so drastically fucking overdone in Death Battle, and I didn't think anyone would want to see it in this because I know I certainly wouldn't.

//This however, turned out to be a GREAT exception. If Lizard ever got into Death Battle, there's quite a few opponents he could go up against; Man-Bat being his biggest contender IMO, but Seiko, I think, is an underrated alternative.

//The big thing that sells this fight for me is that it somehow succeeds at being both a Brains Vs Brawn battle, AS WELL AS a feral monster battle. As mentioned in the post-analysis, Seiko's genius with medicine is so potent, it's not impossible that she could have fashioned a cure for Connors, especially since unlike him, her bestial form still retains some of her humanity. But not only was Connors just too insanely powerful compared to her, he actually had the means to COUNTER this weakness!

//Connors winning was pretty obvious, considering Marvel scaling gets insane, and he was several hundred times more powerful than Seiko, but even so, this fight didn't feel totally lame and one-sided, likely because even though they take different forms, both characters had strikingly similar abilities and feats.

//And one thing everybody knew going into this that I'm so glad we were able to deliver for this was this fight needed to be VISCIOUS. It's basically the epitome of two mutant monsters trying to tear each other to shreds, very much like Beast VS Goliath or Sabrewulf VS Jon Talbein, and the sewer system made for an appropriate and gritty setting.

//This was certainly the most pleasant surprise of the series, and had it not been for one little thing, this would have EASILY been my favourite fight.

//That one thing being...

#1: HAJIME VS DEKU

//I mean...COME ON! How could it NOT be!?

//This is my most wanted Death Battle of all time, and it seems to be the most wanted for the voting audience as well, since it won the poll in an ABSOLUTE LANDSLIDE!

//And unlike the other top spots on the community poll, this is the one that we all actually agree on.

//Not just because Hajime would hands down be the best Danganronpa character to premiere in Death Battle (besides maybe Junko), but personally, Deku VS Asta, Deku's canon episode, left a lot to be desired. It feels like the team were trying to ham up the fact that they were finally getting Deku in Death Battle, but then put him against a super mediocre opponent with surface level connections

//The way THESE TWO contrast though? It runs a LOT DEEPER than that.

//Hajime and Deku's stories are basically the exact same. The only difference is the story beats and the outcome, with Deku's story being that of a rising hero, and Hajime's being a fallen hero. And as a massive fan of both Danganronpa and My Hero Academia, it was my duty to make certain that this one turned out the best it could be.

//Which is the reason why this is so goddamn long. In an actual Death Battle episode, a lot of this important info would be reserved for the black boxes, but since we don't have those, we went over BASICALLY EVERYTHING. And what helped with it is that both characters have deep lore, interesting personalities, awesome powers, and everything we could possibly need to rant on for ages without seeming contrived or bored.

//Essentially, it's the complete reverse of Peko VS RHM, where both characters have abundant content and character, as opposed to basically no content or character. Aside from that, there are three big reasons why this is my favourite one of the lot.

//Exhibit A: Symbol of Hope.

//Up until this point, I have never brought up the music tracks for these battles, simply because, like early DB, a lot of them aren't original music composed for the specific matchups, being either a random video game music track, fan song, or a commissioned matchup track by Brandon Yates, and some of them work better than others (personally hated the Mikan Vs Fluttershy one, but I legit had no other option when it came to a gritty, despairing track that also featured chipper-ass MLP.

//Symbol of Hope is one of the commissioned Brandon Yates tracks that wasn't made for an actual DB episode, but it's one of his best tracks ever. If I have anything to be concerned about, the lyrics of Symbol of Hope contrast quite heavily to the theme of the actual battle we presented, where in the song, Hajime and Deku seem to be at odds with one another, fighting for the same reasons, but are against each other because of their different philosophies. I think this is pretty realistic though, and it doesn't take away from the fact that I still love the track. Plus, it's pretty long, which is good because this fight is also pretty long.

//Exhibit B: Character interactions and dynamic.

//Speaking of which, in this battle, Deku and Hajime's dynamic in this episode is mainly inspired by All Might VS Might Guy, Goku VS Superman 3 and Saitama VS Popeye; kind of a mesh between the three. Throughout most of their fight, Deku's main goal isn't just to win the fight, but it's also to show Hajime the respect he deserves, and give him a battle to remember. Hajime, who doesn't take Deku seriously at first, going along with it for the sake of appealing to this kid, eventually starts to break out into a joyous sweat when Deku raises the stakes and starts fighting him on an equal level; something that Hajime has never gotten in his life since becoming an Ultimate Hope, not even from the likes of Fujimori or Komaeda, other Ultimate Hope's.

//Having Deku's optimism break through Hajime's apathy, even though it costs him the fight, turned out to be a heartwarming, fun ending, and a great way to end the semi-final match.

//And exhibit C: their powers and abilities.

//Analyzing the full potential of One For All and the full potential of the Ultimate Hope was AMAZING, especially given how much we needed to consider for the verdict. As we mentioned, and we stand by this, it's likely that Deku at his full potential is actually physically stronger than Ultimate Hope Hajime, even though his strength is supposed to be the peak of humanity.

//But even if that is the case, there's still the powers themselves to consider, Ultimate Luck being a VERY big caveat to take into account, but the fight we ended up coming up with showed off basically all their abilities and powers without being too weirdly contrived, and I absolutely dig it.

//If there are any issues with this, it's that the setting can be a little confusing, that much I am aware of. Halfway through the fight, it's revealed that Hajime and Deku are fighting in the Neo World because their power threatens to create potential world destruction if they clash, but since all these fights are taking place in a simulation already, it left a few people confused about the situation and...yeah I didn't really think that through, I'm sorry about that one.

//But yeah, that doesn't take away from how much I enjoyed this one, and it's easily my top pick for this arc.

-Mod

#danganronpa survivor #danganronpa #death battle #warriors of other worlds arc #ranking

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seventeenlovesthree · 1 year

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Fandom Shipping Polls - Taichi Yagami Shipping Analysis (Poll I + Poll II)

As pointed out in the main post, every single Chosen Child will get their individual analysis post to check on the status of the current popularity of their ships. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at Taichi, shall we!

The overall results / spreadsheet

Disclaimer: As the “Someone from 01/02″ and “Others” options from poll 1 and the “Someone from 01/02″ option from poll 2 have been excluded from the final analysis due to redundancy reasons and all results were culminated in another “final count”, the results will not be 1:1 to what the polls look like:

Overall votes: 164 (approx. 131 in sum after the exclusion), the main poll got 107 votes, the secondary poll got 57 votes.

The “Others” choice in the main poll received 6% (approx. 6 votes) and 7% (approx. 4 votes) in the secondary poll. The comments/tags did not specify any preferences here (aside from characters that were already part of the main choices).

Ship Analysis

1st place: This was actually a clutch one - and we may assign Koushiro’s victory (27%) here to the fact that Taichi’s poll was reblogged by Taishiro centric blogs as well. Initially, Yamato was leading the poll for the majority of the voting time and only got surpassed by Koushiro in the last few days (by round about 7 votes). Taishiro is still a well liked ship overall, presenting a “breaking your typical brawns/brains trope with a lot of mutual loyalty and devotion” bond that is still appealing to many, with them being all ride or die for each other. With several blogs even having picked it up in recent months, it should not be too surprising that they did get a lot of votes in comparison - however, a lot of big fandom names have moved on to different fandoms and it has become rather quiet outside of the Japanese spheres. Taiyama/Taito on the other hand has always been going strong and is a very popular choice for both parties.

2nd place: As mentioned above, Yamato (21%) was leading the poll for the majority of the time. And for good reason, as Taiyama is, not only in fandom but also in canon, a relationship that is highly focused on in terms of how they clash, but also complement, support and make each other better - which is also why there are tons of official promotional art that could have been used for the graphic! Taichi is Yamato’s (development) foil for a reason and the way their dynamics are being presented make them an appealing choice for one another. If the poll had been shared in Taiyama spaces, the results may have looked differently.

3rd place: Sora (16%) has been in the race for Top 3 the entire time, there wasn’t really any competition coming even close to them - however, she wasn’t surpassing Yamato at any moment of the voting. She did share second/third place with Koushiro quite a few times though. The poll was also making rounds in Taiora centric spaces, and even if there have been less enjoyable times in the past, tumblr itself is still having a dedicated group of fans committed to making content, as Taiora has always been a viable ship for Taichi, just like the other two. Since Sora has been presented as main heroine in Adventure 01, being ride or die next to Taichi and foiling his development to the point of even indirectly activating his Crest of Courage, it is not surprising that their bond is still as popular as it is.

Honorary mentions: Daisuke is the only other character who surpassed the 10% mark for his senpai, but only picked up speed in the last few days. Mimi and Meiko were the only other ones who got past the 5% hurdle, which is interesting considering that other internet spaces (such as Facebook or Pinterest) are a lot more active in the Michi department.

“The 1 vote squad”: As Taichi’s polls were the ones to get as (comparably) many votes as they did, there actually are no “just 1 vote” answers - every other character in the Adventure verse (except one) got 2-3 votes, making those quite the niche options.This includes not only the main characters (Jou, Takeru, Ken and Miyako), but also the minor side characters (such as Menoa and Catherine).

“0 votes go to...”: Iori is the only character who didn’t get a single vote (which can probably be assigned to the lack of screentime/interaction as well as the age gap).

Annotations: Hikari was automatically excluded as a choice up front. Taikari does not seem to be a wide-spread choice in English speaking fandoms, even if a look at Japanese centric spaces may suggest that it’s fairly popular there.

What did the other polls say?

Interestingly, the other polls mirrored the results above and thus, Taichi won Yamato’s (37%), Sora’s (32%) and Koushiro’s (55%) polls as well, making him the character to win most polls overall.

He was also coming in second in Meiko’s (22%) poll and ranked third for each Mimi (13%) and Takeru (6%).

In Jou’s (2%) and Daisuke’s (3%) polls, he was quite a niche choice overall.

He received 0 votes in the polls for Ken, Miyako and Iori.

Notable additions / comments / thoughts

As mentioned above, Taichi’s polls were the ones to receive the most votes overall, hence the numbers might be a little bit more accurate in comparison to other polls. He’s our main character after all, so he is likely to have interaction points and dynamics with a huge chunk of the cast. And thus, it’s no surprise to see people having different and also varying preferences for him - even if the results were pretty clear on who exactly was favoured most. However, the biases are still to be taken into account here. Thus, I really hope to reach a wider audience if I choose to repeat the polls.

Nevertheless, on a very personal note, I am both relieved and also not really surprised to see Yamato, Koushiro and Sora being represented as the most popular choices for Taichi, as canon does frame them to be the most viable options, trope wise and screentime wise at least (rival/foil/opposite, right hand, female childhood friend).

Seeing people slightly fancying characters like Meiko and Takeru is interesting, presumably due to his protective attitude towards them - a huge focus on Tri had been his and Meiko’s arcs being intertwined, making them contemplate whether and how to make very difficult choices, thus relating to each other. Takeru may look up to Taichi in a more brotherly way, that could also turn into more as they get older. Mimi is also represented for similar reasons, as the fandom sees a lot of potential in Michi, even though their anime interactions are more rare. Jou’s and Daisuke’s minor appearances suggest a niche interest in their dynamics after all; with Jou and Taichi gaining understanding and respect for each other through the series and Daisuke looking up to Taichi has his senpai, maybe even putting him on a pedestal there.

The comments in the tags have also only mentioned the three winners overall, so the “Others” option did not reveal any other potentially preferred suitors. This leaves room for speculation, but usually, the option is reserved for OC ships or for when people prefer to not ship a character at all (which will definitely be a future option to include as well!)

Other Analysis Posts

Yamato Ishida Shipping Analysis

Sora Takenouchi Shipping Analysis

Koushiro Izumi Shipping Analysis

Mimi Tachikawa Shipping Analysis

Jou Kido Shipping Analysis

Takeru Takaishi Shipping Analysis

Hikari Yagami Shipping Analysis

Daisuke Motomiya Shipping Analysis

Ken Ichijouji Shipping Analysis

Miyako Inoue Shipping Analysis

Iori Hida Shipping Analysis

Meiko Mochizuki Shipping Analysis

#taichi yagami #tai kamiya #digimon #digimon polls #digimon shipping #my two cents #meta #my edit #taishiro #taishirou #taiyama #taito #taiora

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birdsthatsingaftermidnight · 2 years

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The Current UK Prime Minister is a Shitweasel and the Next One Could Well Be Worse OR I've Noticed A Trend About The Five Most Recent People Allegedly Running The Country

Every PM we've had since the turn of the millennium is in competition to be the Worst Prime Minister of the 21st Century.

Let's take a look.

Tony Blair (1997–2007) - Illegal war in Iraq.

Gordon Brown (2007–10) - There are genuinely only two things I can remember him doing. As Chancellor under Tony Blair, he announced that there was an end to the "boom and bust" economy and that things would remain gloriously boom in that department forever more. Then, as Prime Minister, the country went into the deepest recession it's experienced since the Second World War. The second thing was he lost the election in 2010.

David Cameron (2010–16 ) - But don't worry! Here's David! He gave the country a referendum on whether or not to leave the EU and didn't have any plan whatsoever as to what to do should the Leave vote win, and so quit instead of dealing with it.

Theresa May (2016–19) - decided to trigger the two year deadline to get everything sorted for leaving the EU without having anything whatsoever planned for how to do this and no agreement inside her own party on how to do it, never mind in the rest of the House. In order to get some sort of upper-hand over Boris, she held a snap election to prove she had the support of the country and destroyed her party's healthy majority instead! Basically, she's like me when I had to write an essay. I knew the deadline was approaching but I didn't actually do any work until the week it was due. Only instead of giving herself seven days to write a 2000 word essay based on book study, seminars and lecture notes, it was leaving the EU without any sort of agreement in place because the opposition wouldn't vote for anything she put forward and she no longer commanded a healthy majority so it really mattered if any Tories voted no.

Boris Johnson (2019– ) - I don't have enough to time to list everything. I have to sleep at some point. Basically, Boris thinks Boris is a charismatic, popular head of state who just needs everyone to stop harping on about how he literally broke the law and got caught and fined for it and literally lies to parliament whenever he gets into a sticky situation and assumes everyone will believe him. When they don't believe him because of all the evidence proving what he did is abundant, resoundingly clear, and pretty much watertight, he seems to think that because he's said sorry to the House we should just forgive him and let him get on with being the charismatic, popular head of state he could truly be if only people would stop saying things like "How could you give a government job to a person you'd been warned was a sexual predator" and "sorry, could you explain one more time how you thought it was a work meeting when there was cake, wine, and people singing happy birthday?" and even "So the guy was caught breaking the rules about How To Be An MP Without Taking Bribes and you literally tried to change those rules so you wouldn't have to fire him?"

The rats are deserting the sinking ship Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Health both resigned today, but it's okay. He's gone and appointed a person who once claimed over £5,000 in expenses - paid for, as the say, by the British tax payers - in order to pay the electricity bill for his stables. Sure, it was in 2013, but if you can't tell that your stable block's electricity bill is on the same bill as your house's bill because you never thought "Ooh, that looks like quite a large number for the electricity needs of a second home that I need to use so I can attend parliament and thus can claim expenses on" which has its own damn stable block my god you can't buy a house in London without several wealthy relatives dying and leaving you all their wealth and his second home has a stable block and we're paying to subsidise this sort of thing then honestly, is he the sort of chap we want in charge of the treasury just as we're barrelling head long into a recession? I would argue not.

Boris Johnson has never, since being in the public eye, broken up with a partner. Even the wife undergoing cancer treatment that he was cheating on with his current wife had to deal with both that and actually being the one to point out that the relationship wasn't working. Apparently he also feels the same way about his job. He will never break up with being Prime Minister. Let's hope the Tory party actually gets rid of him as their leader, because it's either that or waiting for the next election and hoping like hell that the country has come to its senses and will vote them out. I'm not hopeful, because everyone on this list but Gordon Brown has actually won an election. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

I despair.

#UK politics #Boris Johnson #our prime minister is the worst #and that really is saying something #politics #despair

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fnvminorcharacterpoll · 1 year

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Preliminary Voting Round Masterpost

Hello! This tournament is massive. Very massive. There's somewhere close to 200 named characters in Fallout: New Vegas, but even after disqualifying the characters too important for this poll and eliminating some other characters still, there was more than 150 left. So that's why we're having preliminary voting rounds starting Monday, April 3rd.

[PRELIMINARY VOTING ROUNDS HAVE CONCLUDED]

What is a preliminary voting round?

Preliminary voting rounds ("prelims") are not the FNV Minor Character Poll proper. Prelims are a series of 16 multi-man free-for-all polls that will occur before the tournament itself starts, or is even seeded, where candidate characters with key similarities are grouped together. Only the most popular choice or choices from these free-for-all polls will earn the chance to get seeded in the actual tournament.

What is the point of prelims?

In addition to thinning out the herd, prelims prevent the final bracket from being clogged up by too many characters who don't particularly have a lot that makes them uniquely interesting. We don't need every single officer in the NCR or every single member of the Mojave Brotherhood in the tournament, for example, but some characters who fill the same niche may not be aligned enough in their goals to pair together (for example, Thomas Hildern and Angela Williams are not a paired entrant, but Francine and James Garret are). Many of these characters in the prelims are low seeds already, so these preliminary rounds ensure that only characters who can cross a certain threshold of popularity can get into the tournament in the first place.

So just to be clear, the characters in the prelims are not every single character that's going to be in the actual tournament?

Correct. For example, there are other Powder Ganger characters with guaranteed seeds who are not included in the group of Powder Gangers who need to qualify in a prelim first. However, note that characters that do not qualify in their prelim are guaranteed to not be in the actual tournament. If they lose their prelim, then they've lost before the tournament's even begun!

I thought this was a tournament for unpopular characters?

Not all unpopular characters are equally unpopular, and besides, minor does not equal unpopular, or even necessarily obscure.

What is the structure and schedule of the prelims?

There are sixteen total prelim polls. Each poll will feature anywhere from two to seven characters, and only the highest-voted character or characters will earn a place in the real tournament. In some prelims, only the first winner will move on. In others, the top two or even the top three will earn spots. It depends on the size of the prelim and the type of characters in the prelim. There will be two prelims every day from Monday, April 3rd through Monday, April 10th.

What if there's a tie?

In the event of tied results, I will privately flip a coin (or generate a random number, if it's more than two tied candidates) in real life to determine which of the tied candidates qualify. I know that that's pretty low-tech and anti-climactic, but at this stage of things, It's really not that serious.

What happens after the prelims?

Once all of the prelims have been decided, the victors of the prelims will be added to the tournament seed list, which includes all of the characters that didn't need to go through prelims to qualify. I will then seed the tournament from the highest seed (1) to the lowest seed (104), and the actual tournament will be able to begin once that's done.

How did you determine which characters needed to qualify through prelims, or how to group them together?

It's all subjective. Tournament seeding is always subjective to a degree, and this is just an extension of seeding. I thought that this would be a better idea than just making yet another judgement call of my own, though. Audience participation!

So with all that said, what are the prelim groups?

I'm glad you asked. This list will be updated with the results of each prelim to reveal the winners.

PRELIMINARY VOTING ROUNDS:

1-A: The NCR Office of Science and Industry (April 3, Top 1 Qualifies) —Angela Williams, Researcher at the NCR OSI Eastern Division at Camp McCarran —Thomas Hildern, Director of the NCR OSI Eastern Division at Camp McCarran

1-B: Tops Talent (April 3, Top 2 Qualifies) —Billy Knight, street comedian —Bruce Isaac, runaway club singer from New Reno —Hadrian, ghoulified insult comic —The Lonesome Drifter, wandering country musician

2-A: Battle of the Bartenders (April 4, Top 3 Qualify) —Fitz & Lupe, proprietors of the Grub 'n' Gulp —Francine & James Garret, proprietors of the Atomic Wrangler —Genaro, proprietor of a...food stand in Freeside —Ike, proprietor of the Boulder City Saloon —Lacey, bartender at the Mojave Outpost Barracks —Samuel & Michelle Kerr, proprietors of the 188 Slop & Shop —Trudy, proprietor of the Goodsprings Saloon —Cpl. William Farber, NCR mess officer at Camp McCarran

2-B: Which Boomers are OK? (April 4, Top 2 Qualify) —Argyll, the doctor —Jack, the lovesick one —Lindsay, whose teddy bear is missing —Loyal, the eldest one —Pete, who keeps the story —Raquel, master-at-arms for Nellis AFB.

3-A: Brotherhood Cull (April 5, Top 2 Qualify) —Lars Taggart, Head Scribe —Linda Schuler, Senior Scribe —Lorenzo, Senior Knight —Melissa Watkins, Apprentice —Stanton, Initiate —Torres, Knight and quartermaster

3-B: Doctor Draft (April 5, Top 2 Qualify) —Ada Straus, traveling "doctor" in Novac —Alex Richards, NCR medic at Camp Forlorn Hope —Bert Gunnarsson, ghoulified missionary at Aerotech Office Park —Doc Sawbones, NCR medic at Camp Golf —Doctor Usanagi, Followers surgeon at New Vegas Medical Clinic.

4-A: Enclave Remnants (April 6, Top 2 Qualify) —Cannibal Johnson, former Enclave soldier —Daisy Whitman, former Vertibird pilot —Doc Henry, former Enclave scientist —Judah Kreger, former Enclave captain —Orion Moreno, former Enclave soldier

4-B: Fight of the Fiends (April 6, Top 1 Qualifies) —Cook-Cook, gourmand —Driver Nephi, avid golfer —Motor Runner, statesman —Violet, dog lover

5-A: First Recon (April 7, Top 2 Qualify) —Cpl. Betsy, lady killer. —Sgt. Bitter Root, former Great Khan —Lt. Gorobets, squad leader —Cpl. Sterling, former Ranger and Legion escapee —Ten of Spades, novice and spotter

5-B: Shopkeeper Showdown (April 7, Top 2 Qualify) —Chet, proprietor of the Goodsprings General Store —Clayton Ettienne & Tom Anderson, co-owners of Westside Co-Op —Cliff Briscoe, proprietor of the Dino Dee-Lite Motel —Johnson & Ruby Nash, proprietors of the Mojave Express —Mick & Ralph, proprietors of their eponymous store in Freeside

6-A: Legion Cull (April 8, Top 1 Qualifies) —Canyon-Runner, slavemaster at Cottonwood Cove —Dead Sea, Legion commander at Nelson —Lucullus, ferryman at Cottonwood Cove —Karl, Legion advisor to the Great Khans —Otho, operator of the Legion Arena

6-B: NCR Brass (April 8, Top 2 Qualify) —Dennis Crocker, NCR Ambassador at the NCR Embassy —Maj. Dhatri, NCR officer at Camp McCarran —Cpt. Gilles, commanding officer at Bitter Springs —Col. James Hsu, commanding officer at Camp McCarran —Ranger Jackson, NCR ranger in charge of the Mojave Outpost —Cpt. Marie Pappas, head officer of NCR Military Police —Cpt. Parker, commanding officer at Aerotech Office Park —Maj. Joseph Polatli, commanding officer at Forlorn Hope

7-A: NCR Misfits (April 9, Top 1 Qualifies) —Cpl. Mags, bitter and blonde —Sgt. McCredie, frustrated squad commander —Pvt. O'Hanrahan, sweet ol' farm boy —Pvt. Poindexter, do-nothing know-it-all —Pvt. Razz, who hates everything

7-B: NCRCF Releases (April 9, Top 1 Qualifies) —Carter, Powder Gangers trader —Dawes, door guard of the NCR Correctional Facility —Eddie, leader of the Powder Gangers —Hannigan, medic at the NCR Correctional Facility —Scrambler, enforcer for the Powder Gangers

8-A: The Omertas (April 10, Top 1 Qualifies) —Big Sal, second-in-command of the Omertas —Cachino, opportunistic Omerta lieutenant —Clanden, weapons engineer with, quote, "exotic tastes" —Nero, leader of the Omertas —Troike, arms smuggler and blackmail victim

8-B: The White Glove Society (April 10, Top 1 Qualifies) —Marjorie, anti-cannibalism head of the White Glove Society —Mortimer, pro-cannibalism head of the White Glove Society

#info #prelims

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sabrina-author · 1 year

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Character Introduction- Cetus

someone must have raised me, but if so I remember them not

Backstory

Cetus comes from nothing, born and raised in Laika he's been alone for as long as he can remember. That is, until he's found by Canis. Only 8 and 13, neither have anyone looking out for them. Canis offers him food, to come into the building he's been living out of. Offers him survival. Cetus bites the extended hand and flees with the food.

Just a week later Canis will save Cetus from life threatening fever and bring him in, take Cetus under his wing. It was in this moment that Cetus swore to god that no matter what he'd remain by Canis' side, ensure that he would keep Canis safe. From then on Cetus stuck by him. They watched each others backs, found ways to keep one another alive. Canis was and always will be Cetus' everything.

And, when you get into it Canis did need someone at his back. With a personal vendetta against the low level police assigned to their neighborhood more often then not he would darken their doorway with the prize of whatever weapon the police had. Keeping them stored and out of the hands of those who used them. This makes him a target, and it only took a few years of getting lucky for all of it to run out. 13 and 18 it isn't good for either of them. Canis gets met by an option in court, jail or to take on a job within the police, acting as living meat shield on more dangerous jobs. He chooses the option that'll keep him alive.

Like that Canis would be sent out, and Cetus would hide in the apartment they'd been "given" (forced into). As someone underage, along with not working, Cetus is illegal even being there. Not only, a slip up as large as finding him and they'll throw them both in jail. Canis spends the years rising in the ranks, he's given a name, a new one assigned by the people for him. Lux Asrani, hardworking light. Years come and go, and he rises further, going so far as being one of those elected for chief.

That is, until Cetus is found. In a last ditch attempt to keep them both alive Canis introduces Cetus to the world under a new name, Kage Betzalel. They hide his face, hide who he is, only that he's Canis' sidekick. The public latches onto them boosting them into popularity high enough that Canis is voted chief in a landslide.

All goes well, for a few months. Canis grows quiet, grows busy with paperwork and jobs he won't let Cetus help with. Grows paranoid, grows a solitude to him that once wasn't. Grows stranger each day in a way that Cetus doesn't know how to fix.

And finally, on a regular patrol its like Canis snaps. On what would be a normal encounter with a repeat offender they've been assigned to apprehend for the umpteenth time, Amaryllis, Canis snaps. Canis moves to kill Amaryllis and he wont stop. Going against one of the only codes Canis has kept from the beginning Cetus knows that breaking this will break him.

Forced to hold a gun to the head of the only man who's ever cared for him Cetus finds that a picture has been taken of him and spread into the media. Cetus has to flee before he can even get an explanation. Labeled a criminal, a traitor, and worst of all of them, disloyal. That is where our story starts

Physical Description

Cetus wants so badly to look like Canis and part way he already does, pale, coming in at 7'6 long (relatively average for mer) Cetus has round eyes, a rounded short nose, stress lines starting to form and bag under his eyes. His hair growing out like Canis but still only at his shoulders and a bit shaggy looking. a thin mouth and a rounded out face with gaunt cheekbones.

About Section

-16 years old -Aro-ace with strong family and platonic ties -Not the strongest morals, but above all else he holds loyalty as the most important of all -He holds a fondness for street animals -And the color yellow -Food for a long time has held a large significance to him, considering how little of it he got as a kid, however a long time favorite is always going to be quick and easy microwave fish and noodles. A common brand, cheap, and it can be eaten raw or heated by the microwave. It was the first thing that Canis gave him -he chases lonely abandoned hope far beyond its dying point -

Symbolism Ties

-lone mountains -desolate winter and snow -bleeding heart -loyal dog -polar bear symbolism -moon symbolism -star symbolism -"despite, despite, despite"

Playlist Wikipedia poem

Taglist:

@misery-and-magic

@junypr-camus

@imthatwannabeauthor

@shockingtitle

@pzos-amiserableidiot

#character reference #character intro #character introduction #original character #oc #Cetus #bitw #important!!!#blood in the water #writeblr #writblr #character board #that is my art up top by the way :)#my art #my oc #my character

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airlock · 1 year

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SO, for the first and fastest bit of CYL nerdery for me to do this year, there’s something new!

this year’s poll came with a fucking hilarious novelty, y’see. we had our midterm results as usual, except... they were unranked, in alphabetical order, betraying not a trace of who was actually winning

at that time, just for the love of guesswork, I made predictions as to what was most likely going to be shape our top 20s would actually be taking. so... how close to the mark was I?

let’s find out.

first things first, I estimated that Soren, m!Byleth and Felix were the top contenders on the male side. I probably meant to count m!Robin among the top contenders as well but I seem to have forgotten to jot his name down anywhere in my predictions, whops. anyway, that blunder aside, the remainder of those predictions all composed the actual top 4 on the male side, so! we can scratch that as a win.

(that aside, though, I was not expecting that, if only one of Soren or Felix would get a foot in the door, it’d be Soren. I sure wasn’t expecting him to be just 500-odd votes shy of even putting a dude between himself and Felix, at that. color me impressed, ye stans of old)

Sigurd, Leif and m!Shez were the ones I admitted I couldn’t really predict on the male side. in the end, they’ve landed, respectively, #5, #9 and #12. moderate results all around. pity that Thracia 776 remains nowhere near breaking out of its rut, although at least this isn’t one of those years when fucking Reinhardt is the game’s top contender--

but speaking of my unknown quantities, hey, guess, what? one of them won the female side. by almost 3000 votes over the runner-up. which is to say -- either the last couple months in FEH have been real interesting, or some of yall need a date--

my other non-predictions on the female side were Sharena, who finised at #7, and f!Shez, who finished at #14. seems like, most of the time, those unknown quantities landed themselves firmly in the middle of the pack.

(speaking of which -- f!Shez was more popular than m!Shez, but by a margin of only 39 votes, probably the smallest differential we’ve EVER seen between two differently gendered versions of the same character. certainly the smallest to happen to a character who gets thousands and votes and not, y’know, Kana)

speaking of Kana, their mum is our other winner this year, so -- Gullveig aside, how well did I do at anticipating the female top placements? well, I guessed that our top contenders were f!Robin, Anna, f!Corrin, Azura, Bernadetta and Hilda. these guesses were mostly correct; these characters occupy the rankings spanning #2 to #6... except for Anna, who only earned herself a #9 ranking. we’ve fallen far off the year when she almost won, that’s for sure. but who knows what Lady Anna might pull off next year?

top contention and unknown quantities aside, I also had guesses as to which of our remaining characters were unlikely to win, but likely to make it to the top 10. these were Dorothea and Tharja (#12, #9), then Lyon, Black Knight, Takumi, Leo and Yuri (#13, #7, #16, #18, #8). close enough on the female side (much as I hate that Tharja being top 10 is such a safe guess), but whoops, that wasn’t a very good guesswork all in all on the male side. I suppose the leokumis of the world were too busy this year either stanning Corrin, stanning Azura, or arguing over Soren and Felix--

anyway, here’s to Elincia, Alfonse and Sylvain blindsiding me and making it to the top 10. one of these is a very happy surprise, another a just kinda mid one, and the final of them I’m going to guess is the reason why Felix couldn’t stay competitive with the other winners-- (look, I’m just saying, both Soren’s and m!Robin’s most popular dates were inelligible this year.)

lastly, an interesting question: did anyone outright fall off from the midterm top 20s? it doesn’t seem to be the case, unless the two characters on each side that I didn’t put in a guess for were not just the ones I forgot about in the midterm, but instead, the ones who unseated whoever else was there. so... it’s just a matter of whether Petra and Ferdinand have been on this list this whole time or not, I guess

anyway, the TMS#FE gang has put on a stronger showing than ever this year, but it doesn’t look like Fódlan’s vise grip on the overall rankings has lessened at all, so... I guess the most interesting things that will remain to be observed are how well the new characters from Three Hopes fared, and how much shit is imminently going to be eaten by each of the characters who finally made it to FEH last year. in any case, it’s time for me to start chewing the top 100, without gender divisions!

#Fire Emblem is tagged in this post #Fire Emblem Heroes is tagged in this post #CYL nerding

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bl-bracket · 1 year

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Info for how the brackets work:

So since there's been a lot more attention on this current competetion then the last, I thought I'd share some of my process on how the brackets get formed so y'all can understand how it works more!

Who gets put in the brackets?

Basically everyone who gets submitted at this point! I'm still starting out on here and I don't have a ton of traction yet, so every character submitted has been put in the bracket. Right now I've been doing 16-competitors brackets, so I basically take everyone's submissions and then add my own if I need more. The green flag bracket had the most amount of submissions so far (39) with 12 characters nominated. I added another 4 based on my personal choices to complete the bracket and that's how you got what we have now.

Why is X character against Y character?

The pairings for the bracket are about 80% randomized. The remaining 20% is my interference, which, in order to make the competition more interesting, is avoiding putting the real heavy hitters against each other in the first round. For this bracket (and those going forward), the "heavy hitters" were basically the characters I got the most repeated submissions for earlier. Like I said, I had 39 submissions with only 12 characters, many characters were submitted by multiple people. I took the ones with the most submissions and adjusted it so that they weren't going to face each other till later rounds. Maybe in the future I will adjust this policy but for now just keep in mind that the match ups are largely randomized.

Isn't this just a popularity contest?

I mean... yeah? Unfortunately that's how these bracket competitions seem to work and I'm not sure if there's any way to combat that. My best advice is to use as much campaigning and propaganda as you want for your desired canadite (also reblogging the poll if your follower base tends to have similar opinions on the shows can be advantageous to you ;).) I also think in future brackets I'll add the reasons people give for submitting their character to the posts to hopefully even the odds a little.

Also just some general info, I'm trying my best to be neutral as possible with these! I don't vote in the polls (originally because the very first round I ever did didn't have a lot of votes and I didn't want to sway any of them. Now it's just a fun little game of self restraint) so I'm not trying to get yall to vote for a specific character. I also haven't watched every single drama that is a part of these competitions so pls don't get too upset at a character being included that you think is inaccurate! There is a very real possibility that they were just a user submission I added! I don't want to stay which dramas I have or haven't watched (again I don't want to sway anything) so please don't ask me or interrogate me on why a character is a part of the poll! Like I said before, it's primarily user submissions and only a few are added by me, but I would really rather not say which are which (except maybe after a bracket has been completed!)

Anyways! This is just a reminder that this is all in good fun! The most popular bl is not necessarily the best bl, nor is the bl you find most enjoyable always the best bl either! It can be fun to argue and debate over fictional characters but please stay kind and remember to keep fun at the forefront!

#bl bracket #bl bracket info

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wildnheart · 1 year

Text

꒰⠀⠀⠀⠀ryan destiny. 28. cis woman. she/her.⠀⠀⠀⠀꒱ hold your f*** horses ! angel meyers has just been spotted walking into revolution headquarters. they are best known for being the vocalist in sovereign and have been signed with the label for five years. they share a lot of interesting things about life in the music industry on their social media, so make sure you don’t forget to follow them at sweetnsavage. fans know them for being manipulative but i swear they’ve got a sweetheart side as well. maybe that explains why they’re always associated with red velvet, red lipstick stains, smell of weed and black stilettos. stan twitter even voted them most likely to drop the f bomb on live tv. we’ll see how they live up to that reputation.

┕ ♡ THIS IS THE STORY OF A GIRL

► general information

FULL NAME: Angel Jane Meyers

NICKNAME: Angel or A.J

AGE: Twenty-eight

DOB: April 11th

GENDER: Female

PRONOUNS: She/her

LANGUAGE: English

► appearance

FACE CLAIM: Ryan Destiny

HEIGHT: 5′6″

DOMINANT HAND: right

HAIR: dark brown

EYE COLOR: dark brown

SCARS: tbd

PIERCINGS: ears only

TATTOOS: noyb

┕ ♡ LET’S GO BACK TO THE START

► background

HOMETOWN: Atlanta, Georgia

FAMILIAL CONNECTIONS: tbd

ROMANTIC CONNECTIONS: Bash Middleton (boyfriend since she was 16)

PLATONIC CONNECTIONS: tbd

► information

TRIGGER WARNINGS: car crash and death

“smart, pretty, popular, organized and already ahead on her college applications, Angel is the model of a perfect kid.”

Angel is a tough girl who knows what she wants and how to get it.

Angel had a normal childhood. She was raised by her parents in Atlanta, Georgia

She is the typical “Girl Next Door” but she does have a dark side. She only lets people who are close to her see it though.

Angel was extremely close to her younger sister, Keke. They were inseparable, like two peas in a pod. they did everything together. Little did everyone know that tragedy would strike. Four years ago Keke was involved in a hit and run with a drunk driver, which Angel witnessed first hand. She was stunned by what happened at that moment. She tried her hardest to resuscitate her sister but she was too late. The event still haunts her to this day.

* ┕ ♡ ° › Angel finds herself waking up from a nightmare of her sister’s death out of breath.

more here

► wanted connections

unrequited love

first love

ride or die

best friend(s)

open to more just IM me

#revolution.intro #━ 𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐋 𝐌𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐑𝐒 💄 ⠀ 𝑭𝑰𝑳𝑬𝑫 𝑼𝑵𝑫𝑬𝑹 ⠀ ﹕ ⠀ 「⠀ ／ ⠀ intro. 」

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namazunomegami · 4 months

Note

If you’re comfortable answering this question, when and how did you begin to write fan fiction? How did you get so good? I wanna start writing fan fiction, like I have the plots and the storylines in my head but I’m scared of how shit the execution is gonna be lol, so I never actually write anything down out of fear. Any tips for an aspiring writer? Thank you so much ☺️

Hi anon!

First: the secret is practicing! Lot of practicing! And read a lot of fiction! Good fiction! And experiment with different genres and styles, find what suits you the most! Do research if your plot needs it! You might get some interesting plot elements out of the fun facts you find.

I started writing fanfics when I was around… 16-17 maybe. But before I did a lot and lot of roleplay online! I can’t remember the exact number of characters that I played, but I believe it’s around 40-50.

Our roleplay community always encouraged me to write long reacts, develop the plot between the characters and not just write about what they do. That I need to immerse myself into the character, add a lil spice to their thought processes, underlining feelings, communicate everything that can’t be seen. Give them more dimension outside of the general stuff, especially if it’s a background character!

So I had a bit of a headstart before writing fanfics. I started roleplaying in 2014 and give it up completely around 2019.

Around 2016 I made a Wattpad account and started publishing some shitty vampire au BTS fics (one of them was extremely popular in terms of numbers, 6k hits, 600 votes, 160 comments idk why people ate that shit up). I had a bbc Sherlock fic and a Gotham fic there but then I quickly got bored of the whole hellsite.

Idk why but I started with multi chapter fics instead of one shots. Maybe because I like plot driven fics, I love the foreshadowing, twists, the slowly evolving connections between characters. But this means a longer fic and more practicing.

I also wrote two original stories. Just for myself. I developed the plot to be around a novel length but I never finished them sadly.

And ofc I’m an OC parent. It’s a must have to create at least one character and fit them into the current fandom that I’m hyperfixated on. And I always put a lot of effort to write them with the least amount of canon divergence.

I was a lil wary to start writing in english mostly bc my roleplay buddies frequently told me that my english skills are… well, bad. But I got the most wonderful proofreader who not only corrects my flaws but makes the whole fic a hundred times better <333

So… I guess the reason I got “so good” is the decade worth of experience.

I’m rooting for you anon! The most important thing is to have fun with what you write! Whether it’s a shipfic, ocxcanon or reader fic. With every lil sentence you write down you’ll get better and better! Progress comes with time!

#asks #good luck anooon I’m curious what you’ll write!!

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seventeenlovesthree · 1 year

Photo

Fandom Shipping Polls - Jou Kido Shipping Analysis (Poll I + Poll II)

The overall results / spreadsheet

Overall votes: 109 (approx. 89 in sum after the exclusion), the main poll got 69 votes, the secondary poll got 40 votes.

The “Others” choice in the main poll received 11% (approx. 8 votes) and 0% (0 votes) in the secondary poll. The comments/tags did not specify any preferences here (aside from characters that were already part of the main choices).

Ship Analysis

1st place: With a huge lead of 34 votes, while basically facing no serious competition at any point of the voting time, Mimi (38%) won this poll very clearly, mirroring her own poll in the process. And that is not surprising; within the tumblr fandom - and especially throughout the last year -, the ship has gained visibly more attention than it has in other internet spheres, especially Japanese centric. Considering how their bond is displayed in the anime, framing their arcs to intertwine at several points in the timeline around the theme of “selfish choices vs own choices”, it is not surprising that they are viewed as viable romantic options for each other as well. They do discover their roles as supporting characters while also supporting each other just splendidly, with tiny hints of (mutual) affection sprinkled in, making it quite an appealing ship.

2nd place: This has been one of the few cases in which the secondary poll had an impact on the final table, with second and third place being literally just 1 vote apart; Yamato (17%) won this race in the end and even though he was inheriting this place rather comfortable for the majority of the voting time, the third place could have overtaken him if it had gone on a little longer. Seeing how Joumato has gained more attention on Twitter lately, it is no surprise to see Yamato placed here though - as several media forms (the anime as well as the novels and the stageplay) have focused on their relationship. They encourage each other in terms of finding their paths, making their own choices and Jou was even responsible for activating Yamato’s Crest of Friendship in the first place.

3rd place: Our third spot is taken by none other than the famous Bike Girl (16%), one of the few unnamed side characters with only a short appearance in the “Diablomon Strikes Back” movie. However, she left a remarkable impression to a point that was highly appealing to the fandom - a mere passerby character, whom Jou enthusiastically asked for her bike to get Daisuke and Ken to their destination safely. STILL, she stayed by his side for the remaining runtime of the movie, even being shown contributing to the defeat of their enemy while standing next to him... Ending in a very friendly departure that, EVEN SEVERAL YEARS LATER, left us wondering if she wasn’t the mysterious girlfriend he had been referring to all throughout Tri. And thus, it is understandable that said mystery put her so high in the poll.

Honorary mentions: Following up to third place, Jou’s unnamed mystery girlfriend (13%) was pretty close as well - since we never got confirmation on who she was, what she looked like or what her name was, a very popular headcanon of the fandom is that her and Bike Girl are actually the same person, as mentioned above... Thus explaining why the votes were so close together. Other honorary mentions in this section include Sora and Koushiro, who received 4 votes each (5%). Taichi at least received 2 votes (2%).

“The 1 vote squad”: The niche section is occupied by Daisuke, Miyako, Iori and Meiko (1% each).

“0 votes go to…”: Zero votes have been given for Takeru, Hikari and Ken.

Annotations: Nothing extraordinary aside from the fact that Jou’s poll (as well as Iori’s) had been the reason why the secondary polls had been created in the first place. Despite Jou being among the characters who received the least votes overall, the “Others” option had gained comparably many votes (11% with 8 votes).

What did the other polls say?

Jou won Mimi’s poll (22%) only by a slim lead, and finished third in Yamato’s (17%) and also in Sora’s (7%), thus mirroring his own results at least to a certain degree.

In the majority of the remaining polls, he turned out to be a very rare and very niche choice, including Iori (4%), Taichi (2%), Koushiro (2%), Meiko (2%) and Daisuke (1%).

He received 0 votes in the polls for Takeru, Hikari, Ken and Miyako - as the former three didn’t receive any votes in his poll either, neither Joukeru, Joukari or Jouken are considered viable options.

Notable additions / comments / thoughts

Mimi had been almost without any serious competition - at least in terms of characters that actually had a name (or face), which was not surprising in the slightest, as he had been the winning choice in her poll as well. They are a popular choice in the Western fandom (and probably less visible in Eastern fandoms mainly due to the age difference). While Yamato has been a popular option overall, with their ship having gained more popularity recently, he earns his place here as well. Interestingly enough, due to the fact that Bike Girl and Jou’s (mystery) girlfriend were the choices that got most of the votes outside of the main cast, basically every other “main cast” option can be considered a rare-pair at this point - which the small sample size obviously also contributed to. Thus, I really hope to reach a wider audience if I choose to repeat the polls.

Jou in general is a very interesting case to look at when it comes to the subject of shipping - while he gained a lot more popularity in recent years on tumblr and twitter and has fans who passionately do ship him with fellow Chosen Children, he still received among the least votes overall here (only behind Iori and Sora). This is especially due to him being the oldest character, so he is very unlikely to get shipped with the younger characters members of the cast. On one hand, that explains why “outside” choices (such as a somewhat canonically confirmed girlfriend) have been so popular here - and even though the Mimi/Jou/Koushirou triangle had a very tight race in Mimi’s poll, they had never been as intensely debated as, for instance, the Taiorato triangle. It may also explain why Hikari and Takeru, for example, didn’t receive any votes at all (despite Jou having saved the latter several timesand them sharing a bond due to that). Iori, however, did receive singular votes - which may have to do with him being Jou’s successor of the Crest of Reliability and him being his kohai, despite their age difference being the biggest in the entire series.

The comments in the tags have also only mentioned characters already included in the polls - since the “Others” option in the first poll already indicated lots of interest in outside choices, it is not surprising to see Bike Girl and his girlfriedn being so prevalent, while the “Others” choice in the secondary poll didn’t receive any further votes. So the “Others” option did not reveal any other potentially preferred suitors. Usually, the option is reserved for OC ships or for when people prefer to not ship a character at all (which will definitely be a future option to include as well!)

Other Analysis Posts

Taichi Yagami Shipping Analysis

Yamato Ishida Shipping Analysis

Sora Takenouchi Shipping Analysis

Koushiro Izumi Shipping Analysis

Mimi Tachikawa Shipping Analysis

Takeru Takaishi Shipping Analysis

Hikari Yagami Shipping Analysis

Daisuke Motomiya Shipping Analysis

Ken Ichijouji Shipping Analysis

Miyako Inoue Shipping Analysis

Iori Hida Shipping Analysis

Meiko Mochizuki Shipping Analysis

#jou kido #jyou kidou #jou kidou #joe kido #digimon #digimon polls #shipping polls #meta #my two cents #my edit

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linelpisffxiv · 1 year

Text

Hokay, so... If I do the thing (Though I'll probably pop a poll again cuz only 4 real responses, though it still gives a majority pangender sexiest) I'll have guidelines

Can I propoganda?

Yep. But keep it propaganda, not antipaganda

That's not how the word works.

I don't care. We both know what I mean. Tell us why to vote for who you want, not why we shouldn't vote for who you don't want moving on.

But what if it was a counterpick?

Look up why fans like the character and use those.

Can I Counterpick?

Sure. I do it all the time when I'm neutral on one character but don't want the other moving on in polls.

Why aren't the twins/Lalas in the sexy poll?

The twins are 16. I know there's some debate and they could be over 18 by now, but until the powers that be say they are over it, we're not touching it. Yes, it says 16 is Sharlayan Adulthood, but there's still laws in the real world about this. If it helps, I HC the twins as 18/19-ish by the end of the quest "Endwalker." But again, until we're shown a growth spurt and they're explicitly said to be over 18, I'm not touching it.

As for Lalas, my reasoning comes from my FC leads when they did art. We all know they're adults. Many have facial hair, and many talk about sex/are implied to be sexually desirable, but if some friend sees you reblog a poll where one of the images is of Tataru and the header says "Sexiest Final Fantasy XIV character" would your non-XIV mutuals understand "Oh, this is a dwarf race"? Or would they wonder why there's a toddler in a poll like that?

(Kan-e-Senna is removed for the same reasons as Lalafell. Yes, she's in her 20s, but she canonically stopped aging in her teens and uses makeup and shapewear to look more mature than she does naturally. She may be the oldest-looking of her race, but I still feel uncomfortable with putting her in, even if she's more borderline than the others)

It turns out X character is under 18!

If this is after the poll concluded, I did my best to try and find out how old these characters are, and if they're using an adult body, unless I had some reasons to doubt, I let them in.

It turns out X Non-Lalafell character you refused is over 18

Again, if they're using a child body, I chose caution.

So-and-so is brigading against X character

Honestly, I don't care. Even if it's my favs, I don't care. I tried to give my favs rougher first rounds for this reason. Even if they're putting it in the tags on the poll itself, I don't care. I suggested otherwise, but I don't control it. And while I'm also not fond of Brigading, especially in the thread of the poll itself, nothing I can do. We all know this is really a tournament of most popular/has the most popular fans/Is a really lucky guy who keeps ending up being used as a counterpick.

What is a counterpick? You keep using this word

When you're not so much picking the person cuz you like them, but because you hate/disagree with the other option. Like when you said Die Hard is your favorite Christmas movie 10 years ago. You aren't saying it's your favorite cuz you actually like it (you may or may not) or think it's a Christmas Movie. You're picking it cuz it takes place on Christmas and you hate traditional Christmas movies. (These days, the statement isn't exactly as provocative as it was. We all get it. But it's the best generic example I have.)

Or in this case, if... say... the fight is Vauthry against G'raha and you hate G'raha because he's a nasty little fanboy who should have stayed dead in 5.3 or even 5.0 or 2.5 and is a homewrecker, you pick Vauthry. Not cuz he's hot. You just want to make it one vote harder for G'raha to win.

Just remember to put Heimlich and Sqiudward memes in your propaganda post and I'll be laughing with you. Vauthry didn't need any submissions cuz I knew you'd all flock to those.

Alternately, your blorbo is Gaius. He's safely winning his poll against Erichthonios so you're not too worried, but the next round he's up against the winner of Vauthry vs Hien, which is pretty tight (Within oh, about 15%, which is less than you expected Vauthry to trail). You know that if Gaius goes up against Hien, he's probably going to lose handily, so you vote for, and post propaganda for Vauthry with all those Squidward and Heimlich memes, because despite the fact that his Innocence form is hot, you know it'll be easier to win against him than Hien.

Will you be sharing Propaganda?

If I find stuff for both sides early enough, sure. Or if there's funny posts of the two kissing.

Do you want your Blorbos to win?

Fuck no. I want them out as fast as possible and I deliberately messed with the polls some to make the first two rounds tougher for them to advance. I'm sorry to those who I gave tougher polls to as well for those two rounds, but if my faves won, it's the will of the people.

What about your BEC? You want him to win or lose?

Eh, lose if I'm being honest, but I left his bracket alone for the first two rounds. If he wins, it's the will of the people.

0 notes

tokiro07 · 1 year

Note

Hey, have you checked out the 4th character poll for Medaka Box in the drawn section of the Medaka Box guidebook? I think what happened was that it happened after chap 190, so all the Kumagawa worshippers left without a vote and basically this is the closest thing to what the real Medaka Box fandom ranks characters. The Dark Hero actually outrank the titular girl. I remember the ranks were: 1. Naze 2. Akune 3.Kumagawa 4. Zenkichi 5. Kairai 6. Kikaijima 7. Kamome 8. Najimi 9. Medaka 10. Tsugiha.

My lovely wife bought me the Medaka Books for Christmas the year they came out, and I proceeded to add the kanji from the Skills section of the dictionary to the wiki for the next several months, never once realizing until I was literally on the final page that there was a Japanese wiki that already had all of it

Because of how much time I spent trying to translate the new information from there with the help of my friend Steph (who THOUGHT I was using the wiki the entire time and could have just mentioned it offhand ANY TIME EARLIER THAN THE END), I never tried to translate anything else from the rest of the dictionary or from the picture book

Looking at it now, your listing is close, but slightly off

Naze, 2155 votes

Akune, 1661

Kumagawa, 1310

Kairai, 603

Hitoyoshi, 536

Tsugiha, 532

Ajimu, 479

Tsurubami, 248

Medaka, 225

Kikaijima, 184

Munakata, 147

Nabeshima, 121

Koga, 110

Maguro, 77

Nienami, 73

Hanten, 55

Shiranui, 52

Mukae, 33

Gagamaru, 28

Jounan, 26

Hinokage, 24

Kuguhara, 23

Tsurumisaki, 21

Oudo, 19

Kamimine, 16

Shibuki, 16 (tied for 25)

Royal, 16 (tied for 25)

Kajiki, 15

Dianne, 15 (tied for 28)

Itoshima, 14

Yunomae, 14 (tied for 30)

Kairai is easily the most surprising of the top 10; he is definitely the most memorable of the fake suitors, but I wouldn't have expected him to be FOURTH

Jounan ranking at all is completely shocking to me considering that he does absolutely nothing except try to grab Medaka's boobs one time, and the cast that he outranks is nothing short of flabbergasting

Hinokage, Oudo, Shibuki, ROYAL??? And Oudo loses to Tsurumisaki too, who I would say is the most boring of the entire Thirteen Party. The only reason I remember him is because I think about him proudly declaring that he has a low bowling average all the time. I guess people found that endearing?

WANIZUKA'S NOT EVEN HERE??? Tsugiha was just past the top 5 and Wanizuka didn't even beat her imaginary friend???

No Saki, no Unzen, no Hitomi, no AOKI??? JOUNAN BEAT THE NURSE?!?!

The first poll had 4,000 votes, the second had 14,000 votes, the third had 11,000, and this one only had about 9000. It's pretty clear that there was a significant dropoff after peaking in year 2 (plebians and Philistines...) which only got worse by the end of year 4. Comparing the differences between 3 and 4 makes it especially clear that something has changed

Tsurumisaki and Jounan went from 3 and 4 votes to over 20 each without doing anything to actually garner more popularity (unless they do something in the books that I don't know about?). Kairai's running bit definitely justifies him getting more, but going from 17 votes to SIX-HUNDRED?! Because Medaka STEPPED ON HIM???

I feel like a lot of these were joke votes, but at the same time the rest of this top 30 feels pretty understandable. Despite the number of missing choices that would have made a lot of sense, it's only those surprising ones that make me really feel their absence

In other news, evidently Medaka Box has recently hit 6.5 million copies in circulation, which for a 22 volume series is...not a lot. For reference, JJK has 22 volumes NOW and has sold over ten times as much with 70 million. Chainsaw Man has 14 volumes and has sold 24 million. I know those are both outliers that happened to get really huge, but it's so hard to believe that Medaka Box went as long as it did and just...wasn't popular. At all. It managed to be just popular enough to not get canceled, but never popular enough to really make any kind of mark on the industry

There's a timeline where the anime got to Kumagawa and the general populace of anime fans got just as weird about him as the fandom did and he became a tumblr sexyman and the manga had a huge boom in popularity, but we don't live in that world, and I'm very sad

#medaka box

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uboat53 · 1 year

Text

Who's in the mood for some history? We all know that the Republican Party, led by Trump and those who've come after him, has gone around the bend, but how in the world did it get to that point?

Well, the history of that goes longer than I've been alive, so settle in for a LONG RANT (TM) that may or may not be entertaining and educational.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Before I start, a quick word on why this matters. The Trump craziness can sometimes feel like it sprung up out of nowhere which makes it a particularly frightening phenomenon. What I'm hoping to do is show that it didn't come out of nowhere, the heart of this movement has long roots both in American history and in the Republican Party as a whole.

In doing so, I hope to show not only how we got to where we are now but also expose the ways in which people who are not themselves a part of an extremist group enable and support it in order to better equip people to prevent any similar issue from happening in the future with their own group.

IN THE BEGINNING...

The Republican Party as we know it emerged from the ashes of the Great Depression and World War 2. You see, during the Roosevelt years, the Republican Party was decimated. In 1936 Republicans held just over 16% of the Senate (1), just over 20% of the House (2), and wouldn't win the Presidency again for 16 years. It wasn't until 1952 that they would win a majority in either house again (along with the Presidency) and both of those majorities were short-lived.

During this wilderness period, two visions of the Republican Party emerged. One of them, represented largely by Dwight D. Eisenhower, was internationalist and largely pro-free market for the time while the other one, represented by Robert A. Taft, represented a much more aggressive pro-business, anti-government, isolationist, and nationalist vision. It wasn't quite Trump-ism, but it definitely bears a familial resemblance.

The two competed in 1952 for the Republican nomination for President which was won by Eisenhower, but it's important to note that this did not reflect the result of the actual primary contests. In the 13 states that had contests, Taft won with a plurality or majority in 6 of them and led Eisenhower by over 10% in the popular vote. In other words, Eisenhower won at the convention, but the primary showed strong support for Taft and his ideas within the party. (3)

This is the Republican Party that emerged from its time in the wilderness during the Great Depression and the Second World War.

TWO TUMULTUOUS DECADES

The Republican Party held the Presidency during Eisenhower's two terms and then lost an extremely close contest in 1960 when Eisenhower's Vice-President, Richard Nixon, lost to John F. Kennedy. This defeat weakened the Eisenhower/Nixon faction within the party and, by the time the next primary came around in 1964, the Republican Party nominated Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) for President.

Goldwater's campaign, though he lost by a landslide to President Lyndon B. Johnson, sparked a massive shift within the Republican Party, bringing the Taft wing of the party again to the fore. More importantly, he created grassroots organizations that helped his wing of the party maintain control and influence even after his loss. By 1968, even with Nixon again as the nominee, the Republican Party represented more of the ideas of Taft and Goldwater and less of Eisenhower.

Another major shift was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After pushing for its passage, President Johnson, a Texan/Southerner himself, is alleged to have remarked to an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation" (4). You can see evidence of this in presidential results, the core confederate states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas) had voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates since the end of Reconstruction but, beginning 1964, began to swing toward Republicans with the exception of Carter and Clinton's elections. (5)

Part of this was antipathy toward the Democrat's position on civil rights, but some of it was also a deliberate shift in strategy by Republicans. Starting with Goldwater the Republican party began to deliberately drop its appeals to black voters in the north (this was the Party of Lincoln after all) and work on messages to better appeal to white voters in the South. This was known as the "Southern Strategy" (6).

A NEW PARTY

By the time we get to 1980 and the Reagan Revolution the Goldwater/Taft movement is now a dominant movement within the Republican party and Reagan's outreach to religious conservatives, particularly represented by the Moral Majority (7), expanded on the gains that the Southern Strategy had made with conservative whites in the South and expanded into the Plains and Mountain states.

The change was slow as many former "blue dog" Democrats in the South ("I'll vote for a dog as long as it's blue") continued to vote for their historical Democratic representatives at the local level even as they shifted to Republican at the higher levels. Over time, though, these voters died out and the legacy Democrats they had voted for retired. This shift eventually culminated in the 1994 election when Republicans took control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952 while also capturing many southern governorships that had been Democratic until then (8).

Over time we've seen overtly racist candidates like David Duke and more subtly racist candidates like Pat Buchanan gain substantial support within the party and even as more "establishment" candidates like the Bushes, Romney, or McCain have defeated them, it has always been their ideas that have gained more and more of a foothold as the establishment is forced to co-opt some of them in order to fend off the challenge.

These changes have largely created the party we see today; a party strong in the South and the rural Plains and Mountain states, largely pro-big business and anti-government, with a growing faction hostile to immigration, free trade, and internationalism, and in line with a very conservative interpretation of Christianity on social issues.

A SHIFT OF IDENTITY

When the party shifted the base of voters it was trying to appeal to, it empowered a different group of candidates and elected officials. Moderate Republicans had a hard time winning without the base of moderate voters they used to have while staunchly conservative Republicans won more often with the new conservative voter base. Over time this has led to a shift in the identity of the party and their overall positions on various issues.

It is important to note that this isn't just about individual Republicans changing their minds about ideas or just about old people dying and young people replacing them, though that did happen too, this is about a group of people who used to largely be Democrats, independents, or even disconnected from politics entirely switching their identification to Republican and bringing with them the same ideas they always believed while Republicans with the ideas of the Eisenhower or other factions have been slowly leaving the party. If one were to be glib about it, one could describe it as a factual version of the racist "replacement theory".

MEDIA

Along with the political change, the Reagan and post-Reagan era has seen a realignment of information. With the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine (9) talk radio proliferated. In 1996, FOX News, the first explicitly partisan cable news network, debuted, and we've seen an explosion of conservative TV channels and web sites since then.

This collection of media forms what is known as an echo-chamber (10). If a person hears a story from one source, they may wonder about its validity, but if they hear the same thing from multiple sources they become more sure of it. In conservative media one can observe this in action as numerous sources report the same information; this makes it seem as if that information has multiple sources even though there is only truly one source that all of the others are referencing.

What this does is reinforce ideas and make it seem as if those ideas are universal. Increasingly it is difficult to convince people who consume information in this way that any of their ideas may not be true or actually enjoy majority support.

THE MISSING PIECE

At this point I think I've given a decent explanation of how the Republican Party got to the points of view that it has, but there's one more piece that explains how it got the point of outright dysfunction and conspiracy theories.

It has to do with that shift toward nativism and the deliberate courting of racist southern (and other racist) voters. You see, what those voters want isn't possible. At this point, even if we completely closed off immigration, white voters would no longer be a majority of the American electorate within the next few decades. The only way to maintain the power of the conservative, white, Christian voters who used to compose a reasonable majority of the electorate would be to end democracy, something that is completely unpalatable to the vast majority of voters, even white voters.

(I should note that many in this movement claim that they are not trying to end democracy but to "prevent fraud" as they believe that their movement is genuinely more popular and would win in a fair election. They are incorrect in this belief as there is no evidence either of fraud or of the widespread popularity of their beliefs. Though they do not believe they are trying to end democracy, they are operating under false information and that is the end result their demands will have if allowed to be put into action.)

When a party's voters demand something that isn't possible, there are two ways that it can go. In a functional party the leaders will recognize that it is impossible and communicate that to the voters. Either they will convince them to give up on that demand or they will guide them to a compromise position that is possible.

If a party is not functional, if the link of trust between the voters and the party leaders has been broken as it has in the Republican Party where leaders for decades have pandered to an extremist faction without following through on their demands once in office, then a demagogue can convince the voters that they have been betrayed by their leaders and that the demand is, in fact, possible.

If those demagogues achieve power in this way, they will need to demonstrate to those voters that they are fighting for that demand. However, since the demand is not one that's possible to meet, they will be forced to go to increasingly destructive lengths in order to show that they are trying to achieve that demand.

THE BYSTANDERS

I think at this point it's worth saying a word about the Republicans who weren't a part of this but who, through their pursuit of their own goals, enabled and benefited it. As I think I've shown, this part of the party has existed since long before most of us have been alive and has increasingly gained power and influence over that period. Those who strategized the Republican Party's way to victory by taking advantage of the fervor of this wing of the party are complicit in its rise even if that rise was not their intent.

At every step of the way, more mainstream or establishment Republicans were well aware of the extremism of this group and chose to appeal to it or use it in order to advance their own goals regardless. There is no one of these choices that led us to the current moment, but a slow build-up of individual choices to do and to not do any number of things that may have reduced the influence of this movement or prevented it from gaining more.

It's also worth pointing out that many Republican leaders pandered to this movement by promising things that were not possible and then not following through on those promises while in office or validating parts of the worldview while acting in a completely different manner. What this has done is create a massive gap in trust between Republican elected officials/leaders and their own voters such that it is easy to convince those voters that even their own leaders are lying to them as Trump did.

In other words, there are a lot of Republicans or people who were at one point Republicans who did not believe in the Taft descended vision of the party or the country and yet who were willing to grant that movement power and influence in order to achieve their own goals; power and influence that it eventually used to take over the party in its entirety. As much as some of us may respect or agree with the ideas or goals of such people, we have to acknowledge that they played a significant part in bringing the Republican Party to where it is now.

CONCLUSION

So there it is, the current condition of the Republican Party is not necessarily a new thing, but something that has been building slowly since at least the immediate post-war (WWII) period as part of a struggle of ideas within the party and those ideas are ones that have been present to varying degrees through pretty much all of American history.

If there's one thing that I would like people to take from this it's that extremism flourishes when it is humored. There were a lot of people who gave this movement power and influence in exchange for advancing their own interests, firm in the belief that it could not gain enough power and influence to take over. Until it did.

I hope you found this useful or at least interesting.

SOURCES

(1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10)

#politics #history #us politics #us history #republicans #gop #the gop #trumpism #robert taft #barry goldwater #ronald reagan #donald trump #extremism #maga #long rant (tm)

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