Fearpocalypse Avatar Meetup!!

As the clock strikes midnight, I think we're all aware of what day it is now. I've got all the party supplies in the corner, all readied up. I'm not the best artist, but this is what it looks like so far.

We’ve got:

- Way too many doors. (Much more outside this image.)

- A suspiciously raw meat plate.

- Crickets

- Brownies (From someone who said they would bring baked goods. Probably the forever brownie.)

- A lot of sky. (Understatement of the century.)

- A feeling of slight isolation and vertigo.

- The smell of ozone.

- I may or may not have summoned the eyepocalypse.

Almost all contributed by the avatars who came into my askbox as of late. Thank you for bringing stuff to the potluck.

May our convention go well!

Ain't no way you're paying victim. You called Zuko a supremacist colonizer when his whole arc was about rejecting the Fire Nation's nationality and colonialism. You defended Aang prioritizing his culture over Katara's trauma. You can't get mad at Zuko for brushing off Aang using his culture to project his self-righteousness and not at Aang for dictating Katara's grief by implying culture is the only right way. In no way was that user being racist.

(Especially because Aang has made fun of cultural Water Tribe food and touched Water Tribe artifacts like they were toys)

YOU started the confrontation with her, then got mad that she rightfully replied (twice). You're butthurt because you were proven wrong. Grow up.

Hello anon, may I draw your attention to the fact that my interaction with the person you obviously mean here was limited to one post in which I disagreed with her opinion and dared to express my point of view, in which I was so polite, that I even apologized for the fact that the post turned out to be long and praised her art (yes, I bought that, mistaking this AI for real watercolours. Only after the last post did I look more closely and noticed all these countless artefacts, sixth fingers and meaningless shadows lying on the wrong sides of the form). I wrote my opinion and forgot about it because, you know, I have a life. But it seems that my post really hurt you and this person much and you felt so insulted and offended that you have not been able to calm down for several months: that person wrote gigantic (but rather meaningless) “responses” a few months later, you all bombarded my mailbox with anonymous hatred, and took ridiculous attempts to slander my art.

And, anon, can I ask: do you even read what you are responding to? I didn't call Zuko a supremacist colonizer; I called him the great-grandson of a colonizer (which is literally who he is in the story). And yes, Zuko's role in history is worse than it could have been for a conventional great-grandson of a supremacist colonizer, because Zuko personally took part in his great-grandfather's war, attacking the Southern Water Tribe, threatening the elderly and children, and using physical force against them

burning down the Kyoshi village and trying to capture the avatar, the world's last hope, even after he began to realize that this was not right (that scene from the book one where he turned away from the fire nation banner).

Just because Zuko repented and self-improved doesn't suddenly erase these facts from his story. I think that remorse and deep pain for his actions will haunt Zuko throughout his life because he truly became a good person, unlike you, who are just ready to pretend that none of this ever happened and are not worth remembering.

Aang is a genocide survivor. His beliefs are hard-won experience. Because he knows what it's like to lose your culture, your people and find the passed away parent (their direct parallel with the Katara). His philosophy of forgiveness is not something he was taught in school, nor is he the affluent 21st century suburban boy as he's so carefully portrayed by you. This is his experience. And he shares this experience with his friend, who is also a genocide survivor. He and Katara share this experience and Aang has every right to tell her his opinion. It is Katara's choice to agree or not, and she makes her choice, but Aang had every right to express his opinion.

And I wonder, anon, what can you say about Sokka? He is just as much a victim in this situation as Katara. Sokka is not a pacifist or an air nomad. Kya was also Sokka's mother. And he is also against Katara committing a murder. This is not the first time I have seen how, while attacking Aang, haters pass by Sokka in deathly silence, and past Zuko who also agreed with Aang in the end.

I will not specifically address your point about Aang being a racist for not liking traditional Katara’s food or for putting a hat on without knowing what kind of hat it was. I don't believe you are stupid enough to actually make such arguments seriously, it must be trolling. It’s clear that you have nothing to complain about Aang at all, because these arguments look desperate. 

It's impressive how much the opinion of a stranger on the Internet can hurt you. Are you so offended that someone dared to respond to your baseless accusations against fictional cartoon characters? Or maybe you're so offended by the fact that I can criticize a character and keep liking him (Zuko is literally one of my three favorite characters, along with Toph and Aang). If you look at my blog, you'll get a pretty clear impression of how much I love Zuko and what a giant amount of time and effort I spend on art dedicated to him. Because I see all of Zuko's flaws and still continue to love him—unlike you, who only love the emasculated "ideal" version of him. As very well said here, your treatment of Zuko is very similar to how Ozai treated Azula: "be absolutely perfect, otherwise you're a good for nothing waste of space". This is very noticeable from the posts of the person you are defending here.

So yes, the advice to grow up is very good, but you should turn it on yourself, who, for some reason, writes your complaints anonymously, like a coward, or on those people whom you are defending. This is the Internet, and if you're not ready that not everyone agrees with your opinion and that someone can actually respond to your takes, maybe you should just get offline.

(I see that you want to start a drama, but you are in the wrong place. Any anonymous letters like this one will be deleted.😎)

Prototype is to Video Games what Danny Phantom is to cartoons

Mid range early 2000s properties that were popular for their time but didn't survive past their era and are now relatively obscure.

Unique dark horror theming made them stand out as pioneers within the superhero genres in their medium, with many works in those mediums today building off the stepping stones they set.

Tended to play the role of "second best" to other franchises in their niche, with Prototype struggling to compete with inFAMOUS and DP getting upstaged by Spongebob and Avatar.

The remaining fandom now survives off the unfulfilled potential of their premise, featuring an inhuman protagonist struggling to unpack what it means to be human. A plot point the main series either completely dropped or never entertained at all.

Close ties with Spider-Man, both in fandom and creative influence.

Inhuman, overpowered shapeshifting protagonists who manage to be great trans metaphors by complete accident.

Too enraptured and held down by the conventions of the early 2000s to see past their own noses and embrace their true potential.

The ending absolutely fucking sucked, with many character arcs just getting completely dropped without payoff.

Weird White Men That Defy Classification: The Television Genre

How To with John Wilson, 2020

When you sit down to watch an episode of television it’s a real shot in the dark, you pray to find something truly special yet you brace yourself for potential mediocrity. The day I took a chance on 2020’s How To with John Wilson I sat on my couch, eyes glued to the screen, absolutely mesmerized. For those not in the know, How To with John Wilson is this odd thing that exists, it follows the daily exploits of New Yorker, John Wilson, as he goes around the city showing us how to do a certain task. At the same time it is absolutely not a walkthrough tutorial as rarely will I be able to execute the task described by the title card by the end of each episode. Likewise, the show isn’t really about the man named John Wilson as much as it is a lovely stroll through the people he meets on the street, the charming places he explores, and the little glitches in the matrix that stand out to him.

A typical episode of the show is more like a flowing conversation than a narrative arc, it branches out from its origins to go someplace entirely foreign and new. An episode about wine tasting leads to Bang energy drinks, scented bowling balls, and a lavish mansion party complete with historical wardrobe. John Wilson frequently interviews the everyday people on the street that we’ve all spent our lives passing by. He often highlights little niches in the city as he brings us to a fan club infatuated with James Cameron’s Avatar who go as far to learn the language and in another episode we explore the first ever Mandela Effect Convention. No matter how odd, John Wilson treats these spaces with respect and gives off an eager enthusiasm to learn more.

It is a show that defies classification and genre conventions. Sure it is technically a documentary but the genre usually insinuates an informative motive which is hardly the case for How To with John Wilson. If the show isn’t intending on spewing a steady stream of factual information then is it a reality television show which markets itself primarily on entertainment? Well, while thoroughly entertaining, John Wilson’s nasally narration and awkward insights aren’t the traditional host. It is a comedy that had me constantly laughing throughout its runtime and yet it is interested in so much more than just giving the audience a chuckle. Try as I might, I could not place this show in a box and I adore that about it, and in my search for quality programming I’ve found some other shows that similarly leapt out of each box I put it in. The only connection between all them besides having my undying adoration is that they prominently feature weird, extremely awkward white men talking at you.

The Rehearsal, 2022

Nathan Fielder’s 2013 comedy hit, Nathan For You, had me flabbergasted by its absurdity and awkward wit. While more clearly defined in the square labels of comedy there is something about Nathan Fielder’s persona that makes you want to unpack whatever the hell is going there. Nathan For You follows Nathan Fielder, a graduate from one of Canada’s top business schools, as he gives out business advice to real life struggling local businesses in the Los Angeles area. The only thing is, he's awkward and his solutions to their problems often read more like goofy schemes out of a cartoon than sound business advice. There is a mix of reality and fabrication as you are never really sure if what Nathan is saying is sincere or not as he constantly gives half truths and lies to the audience, the people around him, and perhaps himself all at the same time. His outlandish persona is juxtaposed with the business owners who reluctantly go along with his plots and blatantly unpolished ideas. One episode has discount Santa Claus pictures in the summer following the idea of how jackets are cheaper during the summer season.

The little oddities in Nathan For You become the core focus of Nathan Fielder’s latest TV venture. 2022’s The Rehearsal vehemently defies classification, it expands on his persona established in his previous work and blends reality and fabrication to a new degree. The premise of the show is a bit difficult to even explain, like Nathan For You he helps everyday people but rather than giving business counsel he allows real people to “rehearse” a scenario. Some episodes involve having a difficult conversation with a friend or simulating what it’s like to raise a child. It’s still a documentary, reality comedy but there is an earnest dedication to recreating and simulating the conversations and scenarios Nathan clients demand. Nathan creates an exact replica of a bar in episode one of the series, stains and all, in another he fabricates a relationship between one of his client’s and an actor posing as another actor’s grandfather to recreate something as abstract as feelings. This is a show that dissects the reality of its own production, peeling open layer after layer leaving us with something entirely unique.

In that way The Rehearsal is oddly transparent about its own continued creation, Nathan is open to showing us the monitors behind the scenes, the child labor laws that cause Nathan to have multiple actors for the same child, and the fact that extras can't talk which forces Nathan to have a completely silent birthday party in one episode. It is constantly reopening its own veins and reinventing itself, the core premise is under constant development as the show goes on. It’s an entertainment Frankenstein of mismatched ideas and concepts all slamming into each other creating dichotomy after dichotomy. Nathan draws out the acting we all do in everyday life through a show about rehearsing while Nathan is simultaneously playing a character. And yet sometimes he acts with such a sincerity the audience never knows what to expect. The final episode of The Rehearsal is absolutely dizzying in its conundrum, the lines of reality become marred as we follow a child actor who’s too young to even know he’s acting and Nathan being forced to confront this blatant contradiction. It is a supremely daunting task to write about that final episode and honestly I can barely wrap my head around it. I don’t want to spoil it too much but it is unlike anything I have ever seen and I highly encourage you to give The Rehearsal a chance.

Joe Pera Talks with You, 2018

The final show in this little bundle of uncategorizable strangeness is Adult Swim’s Joe Pera Talks with You from 2018. It’s the only show on here I haven’t finished as I remain in the midst of season 2, hoping to really take it slow and appreciate every little moment but rest assured from episode one I was absolutely hooked. Like How To with John Wilson the premise is much more slice of life but unlike the other two, this is completely scripted. It’s offbeat and awkward as the titular Joe Pera excitedly talks about whatever is on his mind in a somehow passionate monotone. Things just seem to happen the way our everyday happenings occur. There comes a ringing at the doorbell that introduces a new cast of characters or a conga line waiting to be partaken in. Inside of these natural happenings is delivered a wonderful simplicity, Joe Pera Talks with You ignores the narrative necessity for conflict during the majority of its runtime. I often braced myself for a cringe inducing failure in moments where Joe Pera is forced to dance or when he’s reading the church announcements. Miraculously, he never trips and falls or gets booed off the stage and although not everyone he interacts with is always happy to meet him, he doesn’t seem to mind one bit. 

That might be my favorite thing about Joe Pera, his unconventional happiness that is soothing to my occasionally anguished soul. Whenever life beats me down I just turn on an episode of Joe Pera Talks with You, his indifference to people’s expectations of what a good life is supposed to resemble reassures me that everything is going to be alright. It reassures me that I am enough. It’s a message I’m not used to when consuming media, much less a show that aired on Adult Swim. It is heartfelt and simple and enough to fill my heart and lull me into a lazy night after even the most stressful of afternoons.

I do hope at least one person reading this takes a shot in the dark and watches an awkward white man talk to them for about half an hour. These are all delightful shows that oddly feel, at least for me, paired together despite their differences. Season 3 of How To with John Wilson premiers July 28, 2023 and I for one am absolutely stoked for what this man tells me next. There’s talk of a second season of The Rehearsal in the works as well. I implore you to check at least one of these shows out! If you see any awkward white men talking about interesting things do let me know so I can grab my popcorn, thanks in advance and stay tuned besties <3

-Ghost Emoji 👻

hi ayala!! i see you posting a lot about animusicals but I dont actually know what they are? so I would love a short explanation hehe

sending you a hug and much strength 🫂

Thank you!

And oh my, hang on because I DO love talking about those-

So. Animusicals. As implied by the name, those are anime-inspired musical productions, specifically ones made by the Israeli anime community and the organization AMAI(ארגון מנגה ואנימה ישראלי)!

There have been 16 such productions since the first one in 2009, and they're tranditionally played during the Animatsuri and Harucon conventions, and they're made by fans for fans!

There have been productions of changing qualities, and some are based on familiar shows while others are completely original

Some highlights include:

Fullmetal Alchemist- the first one ever!! It's sadly only available in hebrew. It's very much a parody, and personaly I didn't find it very good, but it deserves a place of honour. It also have FMA's Scar singing a "Be Prepered" parody.

And the Sushi's Free- the one I keep producing fanart for. It's the first one with an original plot, VERY funny, very 2012s-Tumblr-like. I am absolutely obsessed with it. And! It has an English translation! It's very good!! Watch this I promise you won't regret this!

Pandora musical- do you like fantasy? Do you like drama? Do you like a villain that feels like Azula from Avatar? Do you want to see shojo visual effects done in a live show?? Sadly it has no english translation. Fan fact one of the songs from this musical is cursed and I literally can't put my animusical playlist on without it coming up.

Janken Musical- what are you even doing reading this instead of watching this masterpiece? It has everything. Incredible acting, incredible music, the most FANTASTIC choreography I've ever seen. It has a 9-characters plot and they all get their arc and their time to shine!! It's really fucking good! And it has an excellent English Sub, too!

Ahem. Anyway yes I am very normal about those. Please tell me if you end up watching any of those because I WILL want to hear your thoughts(relevant to any of my followers)

Mortal Kombat's Sexualized Approach to Character Design

BLOG 7: Exoticism and Sexualization in Game Media

I turned to Mortal Kombat as a surprising and comforting release for my pent-up frustrations during the turbulent times of my adolescence. I found a therapeutic release from the difficulties and rage that surrounded me in the visceral world of fatalities and brutalities. I had no idea that beneath the surface of this legendary game was a rich tapestry of themes that I would not fully comprehend until much later.

I didn't start looking at the Mortal Kombat characters through a different lens until we got to talking about exoticism and sexualization. The very characters I controlled on screen, delivering vicious finishes, abruptly transcended the status of avatars and became representations of a widespread cultural phenomenon. This insight led me to set out on an investigative quest to analyze the complex interactions between exoticism and sexualization in the framework of a game that served as both a significant source of entertainment and a turning point in my coming-of-age story.

About Mortal Kombat

The 1992 arcade game Mortal Kombat, created by Ed Boon and John Tobias, introduced a revolutionary fusion of martial arts, fantasy, and digital graphics. Its popularity made way for more entries, ensuring its place in the gaming industry as a flagship franchise.

Mortal Kombat changed as time went on, embracing new storytelling techniques and technological breakthroughs. A pixelated fight turned into a cinematic experience with deep character arcs and narratives that drew players in and kept them interested beyond the boundaries of a normal fighting game.

Academic Standpoint

For a number of decades, academic discourse has focused on the intersection of gender representation and media, especially in the context of video games. The criticism of media representations that sexually objectify women has its origins in the 1970s, as Busby (1975) and other scholars have pointed out. (Ward, 2016)

Different definitions of sexual objectification have been offered within this scholarly framework. It explores the division of bodies, body parts, or sexual functions from one's identity and goes beyond the simple visual depiction of individuals. Sexual objectification reduces people to being nothing more than tools, existing mainly for the enjoyment and use of other people. Treating people as though their bodies are the only thing that can truly represent them is part of this dehumanizing process. (Ward, 2016)

Examining current beauty standards is an important part of the conversation about sexual objectification. According to research, there are certain standards of beauty for women in relation to American men. These standards frequently dictate a particular body type, such as slender and short or rounded and curved. The idealized female form consists of a bell-shaped lower torso, rounded arms, sloping shoulders, and a small waist tucked between a rounded bosom. The extremities are also examined, including the small, delicate feet and the hands with tapering fingers. The idealized complexion is described as white, and if colored, it may occasionally have a pink flush to the cheeks. (Mazur, 1986)

Character Case Studies

The case study is only focusing on women being sexualized in the game. It is not suggesting that women are the only characters which are sexualized in the game, it could be otherwise, and the data related to it will be absent in this post.

Just for the sake of this study we are going to consider three characters, namely Mileena, Kitana and Jade from Mortal Kombat.

The physical allure of Kitana, Jade, and Mileena adheres gracefully to conventional beauty standards, characterized by a fair or wheat-ish complexion and a harmonious balance between a slender, muscular physique. Each character embodies the timeless elegance of a bell-shaped lower torso, complemented by wider hips and a gracefully narrow waist, effectively encapsulating a universally accepted archetype of femininity. Their statuesque height further refines their curves, seamlessly harmonizing with established beauty norms.

Kitana, Jade, and Mileena's wardrobe choices are always form-fitting garments that skillfully draw attention to their figures' contours, combining martial skill with appealing beauty. Their purposeful use of form-fitting apparel draws attention to their defined curves and muscularity. The purposefully crafted costumes with well-placed openings that reveal skin with a deft artistic touch are what really catch the eye. The characters' visual appeal is enhanced by the meticulous creation, which also plays a significant role in the exoticization and sexualization of the characters by skillfully fusing sensuality into their combat personas. It's important to note how their wardrobe has changed over time, with some costumes gradually baring more skin, demonstrating the franchise's flexibility in response to shifting fashion trends and cultural quirks.

Conclusion

The Mortal Kombat characters Kitana, Jade, and Mileena represent a fascinating blend of conscious design choices and traditional beauty standards in the game's intricate weaving. Their pale skin tones, toned bodies, and balanced outlines capture both the traditional values and the changing aesthetic of the Mortal Kombat world. Beyond simple combat aesthetics, the deft combination of form-fitting clothing and well-placed gaps in their costumes reveals a complex interaction between exoticization and sexualization. As the characters' looks change over time, Mortal Kombat transforms into a dynamic canvas that adapts to shifting beauty standards and cultural quirks. Past the deaths and violence is a space for gaming, introspection, and scholarly conversation that provides an in-depth examination of societal narratives, identity, and representation in the gaming industry.

References

Ward, L.M. (2016) 'Media and Sexualization: State of Empirical Research, 1995–2015,' Journal of Sex Research, 53(4–5), pp. 560–577. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1142496.

Mazur, A. (1986) 'U.S. trends in feminine beauty and overadaptation,' Journal of Sex Research, 22(3), pp. 281–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224498609551309.

The longer a fan culture goes on, the more often it gets stuck in a rut that amplifies the flaws of the original work. With Avatar, that chief flaw is the narrative framing conventions of YA and the simplification of conflict. This is why we spend so much time on here stuck on old favorites like the perfect woobified awkward turtleduck Zuko, his demon-child war criminal younger sister, his supposedly neglectful and frigid girlfriend, his perfect wise old sage.

If one judged Avatar based on its fanworks, you’d think Zuko was the main character.

I don’t think we can just fault the fans for fanning wrong. To me, there has to be something at the heart of the story that informs this attitude, even if it is detached from the original story that was told.

And rightly or wrongly, the original show does invest most of its nuance in Zuko. Aang is the protagonist, and his conflicts and goals drive the story forward, but most of Aang’s character episodes are presented in the straightforward matter one expects of a children’s show. A lot of them are parable of the week stories that can come across as really hamfisted even to children, like the episode where the Gaang meets Bato and Aang gets a pretty crude little fable about learning to trust and not lie or keep secrets from friends.

Besides its brusque framing, the conflict begins and ends within the confines of a single episode. Aang’s larger character arcs are just not as prominent when compared to Zuko’s, which does not present the character or the audience with quick and easy answers.

Because of this complexity and the amount of time the narrative invests in giving the audience reasons for why Zuko behaves the way he does, it becomes very easy to just explain away the times Zuko continues to be an asshole even after he flips to the good guys, because the audience has already become invested in his happy ending.

We learn about Zuko’s sympathetic back story way back in season 1, when he’s the show’s principle antagonist. The narrative framing invests the audience in that redemptive outcome even before it even presents it as possible. This isn’t a bad thing, I just wish as much care had been taken in trying to get people as invested in Aang’s wellbeing.

ATLA, to its credit, does give just enough material for other characters that if you are paying attention, most of its child characters are sympathetic, and even if they remain villainous to the end of the story, they are tragic figures. See, for example, just how many people have gotten emotionally invested in Azula, who had just enough people going to bat for her in the writing room even though the showrunners never intended for her to be anything but a one-note villain for Zuko to beat.

And I shouldn’t let fans entirely off the hook. Fan culture has this terrible tendency of treating content either like it’s something to binged without appreciation, like a trip to the Golden Corral buffet, or getting hyperinvested in minutia that you miss the forest for the trees.

Probably too vague of a question, but does Lily ever strike others as fatphobic? Even when I was a fan of hers, she made me feel pretty bad about my proportions

this is the reason why i said on my response to her masterpost that she thinks marah is "thick". even a label like "curvy" might be pushing depending on what panel you're looking at.

(funny how LO stole a huge portion of another's reviewer video to talk about SU's character are often off model and yet she constantly has her own characters completely off base. if you didn't even know what marah's body type is supposed to be, i don't blame you.) on these one for example. there's barely any difference at all between the body type of CMO and marah, or between CLO or marah. her arms and "hips" (as opposed to G who has no hips at all) are not as slim as a stick so, on the creative world of LO, that makes her "thick" and it's another good example of how LO in general is bad at representation of anything outside of her own narrow preferences. i remember a series of posts she made where she kept talking about how "muffin tops" are so cute that sounded so fetishistic and uncomfortable to see, but she probably thought she was being body positive and flaunting how "open minded" she is for consdering that women that don't look like her avatar could be beautiful too. on one of her streams where she talked about past avatar she used, she said something along the lines of "i think that what make every puppet so different is that they come from someone who thinks that every body is beautiful", which strike me as a very odd thing to say because 1. why what does the person who has the avatar think about bodies in general would have any influence on how the avatars look? the avatar is supposed to be her idealized version of herself, right? but if her avatar is actually supposed to reflect how she views beauty in general then that doesn't really speak well about other bodies because 2. excluding the grey pony avatar, they're all conventionally skinny body abled women. some are skinnier than others, some have smaller waist than others, but they're all skinny, they all have conventional femenine hourglass forms. that on itself would be fine even if LO didn't claim to have a ED, but if she herself conflates her avatar with the way she views other people's bodies then we have to ask herself what does that mean. 3. she talks about how muffin tops are cute and sexy but that is not body positivity on itself, is it? if the only context in which she can say "having a body that is not skinny is okay" is when she's sexualizing those body types then that's just fetishization. 4. besides marah, you know what is the only other plus size character that LO has ever written for is?

if you don't have any mememory of this character existing, i don't blame you because she only ever appeared for the Bonnie arc as one of LO's friends that go check on her for the "rumours" of making a hybrid child. MO drools when looking at her and LO thinks she looks cute when Bonnie climb to her head. she informs LO of the rumours of her and G having a romance, believes LO instantly and then it's gone for the entirety of the comic to never be seen or heard from again. she never gets an appropiate introduction on the comic, meaning we don't actually know who she is, what she does or anything about her as a character, beyond the fact that MO thinks she's attractive and LO call her Lacy. she never had fanart that was frequently featured, LO never talks about her, never brings her out and none of the other characters does it either. she doesn't even have an actual role on the story. it wouldn't surprise me at all if LO did completely forgot about her. if you search for "lacy pokemadhouse" only then you'll be able to find her page and realize the only reason she exist at all was because LO wanted to spite Rebecca Sugar. really. she exist so LO can feel like she did something better than Sugar and then she discarded her as an extra who had fulfill her purpose.

making the weight of a plus size character part of her trivia and especially as "one of the heaviest, only behind a woman who isn't even part of the same universe who is full with metal, LO has done" is just gross and so disgusting. none of the other character have their weight exposed like this on their bios, it's not even a thought when it comes to them. this only become a "trivia matter" the moment they're visibly plus size. it's one thing that LO feels any type of way about how her own body is portrayed and even feel frustrated or uncomfortable when she sees fanart that portrays it on a way that upsets her (which still doesn't justify screaming and yelling at people to later not even apoligize to them). she talking about losing weight or wanting to be thinner is on itself also fine because it's her body. but this is how she treats all characters. all her characters are skinny and the very, very few that aren't can't be detacched from the exact number of their weight, something all other character are free from. given the treatment of these two characters (her only plus size characters that aren't buff ever on anything she has ever written) and those odd comments from LO, i don't actually believe her when she claims that she thinks plus size bodies are attractive and just as valuable as skinny bodies. at the most she might fetishize them on an attempt to prove to herself and other that she's okay with them but again, that's not body positivity or acceptance, and at the end of the day, it's pretty clear that LO still prefers skinny characters overal.

All I know about BG3 is through osmosis, but am always happy to enable talking about things you enjoy, so 105 for the ask game?

THANK YOU.

Something random is that I'm meticulous when it comes to planning out outfits. There are a couple of exceptions, but I try to always choose clothing that both fit the character's skillset, background, and place in the story.

Malla wears black clothing, slightly asymetric to give her an "edgy" look, and heavy black eyeshadow. This is both to create a contrast to her pale skin + hair AND to highlight that she's a ranger/rogue. She needs to blend in with the shadows as part of her infiltration work, so it makes sense. She's used to taking whatever she has available, so she doesn't change clothing throughout the game, and her overall "look", from her short hair to her choice of clothing to her tattoo are all totally out of line with the conventional Drow look. The only time she wears Drow armor is when she's in the Underdark and she's trying to play up that connection. Other than that, she's been living outside of Menzoberranzan for a long time, and she's adopted a totally different look for herself. Even if she stays loyal to Lolth out of a sense of pragmatism + fear, she enjoys the sense of liberty she gets from the surface world and has integrated into it.

Kitrye still wears her hair long, pulling it back to keep it manageable in fights, highlighting that, even though she's in exile from the Drow, she still very much keeps certain aspects of Drow culture around her. She starts off wearing whatever she has available, then begins wearing Minthara's armor after killing her. This was a part of a long arc with Kitrye having to face down the Underdark for the first time since she left it. (She never wears Minthara's camp clothing, partially because it's STILL too difficult for her -- it reminds her too much of the life she left.) When she faced down Nere in the Underdark, in what can be the Act 1 boss fight, she was wearing Drow armor, wielding a sword blessed by her goddess, and facing down her own relative in an dead forge beside an active pool of lava. Iconic moment. For Act 2, she went from a pale blue + black color scheme (since that was the armor that she picked up from the forge) and a white/gold one -- this was Kitrye at her most heroic, being more secure on her own two feet, aiding an angel, breaking the Shadow Curse that was afflicting the land, fighting the avatar of an evil god. She carried that white/gold look into Act 3...with two exceptions. The first was for Gortash' coronation ceremony, where she wore her hair up and wore a black and red dress with matching earrings, gauntlets, and diadem. I toyed a LOT with looks for her for this, more than anyone should, but the red/black look was chosen for two reasons: Most importantly, she looked hot and secondly, it was my way of indicating Raphael's growing influence on her, as she's adopting elements of his color scheme and style. (Even though she still hasn't adopted The Duchess Look that she'll have. Like. A couple centuries from the end of the game).

But the major change came when she broke her oath. I came to the conclusion as early as the first act that, if there was ever a *story* related reason for her to break her oath, not something stupid, I would let her become an oathbreaker. And so, when she did, I decided that it had to be a major thing for her, because it feels, on her end, like everything she's been doing the whole game, her entire personal arc, just ended in failure. She's lost her life's purpose, she thinks she's lost her connection to her goddess, her companion has been kidnapped, and there's nothing she can do. So for several in-game days, when I decided to RP her as going through a crisis of faith, she actually got rid of her sword, even though she kept carrying it in her inventory (because it was too much a part of her for her to toss away). Replaced it with a morning star. Dyed her clothing a black/red/gold color scheme. Tossed out her golden gauntlets because she thought she didn't deserve them. After she roused herself from her depression, she brought the sword back, but the color scheme stayed, as she chose to stay on as an oathbreaker, and that was how she ended the arc.

Overall, Kitrye's style changed a lot more than her sister's has thus far (I have no plans on changing Malla's style) -- she tends to bring in more Drow elements to her appearance, and she also has much more of a taste for luxury in her clothing, even though she kept her plain cotton shirt as camp clothes throughout the entirety of her canon run (because, from her perspective, that was something she'd fought to have, the simplicity of a comfortable shirt to sleep in at night beneath the stars), highlighting her slight vain streak. In general, Kitrye is very deliberate with her clothing choices, because she *knows* how to convey a message with tiny details. Malla does as well, but in a different way -- If Kitrye tries to convey heroism, elegance, and chivalry, Malla tries to convey rebelliousness and a hint of danger. She enjoys being the edgy rebel, even if her allegiances are a lot more complicated than they seem.

I've said most of this on Twitter already, but here is my Obligatory OFMD Finale Feels post.

In short: I'm disappointed on a plot and character level and people are right to say it's ableist, but I mainly think the writers fucked up while trying to do something positive. A lot of this is conjecture, and it doesn't absolve the creators for making the mistakes they did or continuing to preach kindness and happy endings in interviews, but I think it makes sense and frames OFMD as an effort to make a show that is far more progressive than most other shows, but still really, really fucked up without meaning to.

Looking at the timeline, the show got renewed in June 2022, and was filming by September. The fandom has had a full year to explore Izzy's character and get more attached to him than the writers, who got about 3 months to gauge audience reaction and potentially rewrite his whole arc, could have expected.

I think the fact that the writers seem to have tried to give a fan favourite an arc in which he achieves happiness and self-actualisation is laudable. The problem is that in doing so, they made him even more of an avatar of queer and disabled survival while failing to change the endpoint they had planned for him. As a result, when he died, he wasn't just a complex deuteragonist with an arc that served the main story who saw the error of his ways, but a protagonist who had come to represent the themes of survival and acceptance that the show has embodied from the start.

The fact that s2 explicitly gave Izzy an arc about becoming disabled and coming to terms with it is what invokes the "bury your cripples" trope, and the idea that being disabled makes life not worth living despite earlier episodes (and other characters!) in the series explicitly demonstrating the contrary. If we look at his death as something the writers viewed as a fixed canon event, it's clear that they badly fumbled the ending, thinking they'd given him peace at the end when what they'd actually done was rip the prospect of more peace and happiness from him.

The way Izzy's death and funeral were handled--the in-universe inconsistency of having his fatal wound be on the left side, the cruelty of the British noticing his golden leg, the implication of something beyond the grave by having possibly-seagull-Buttons landing on his grave and denying us the closure of knowing that's the end, as well as separating him from his community and from his prosthetic were repeated slaps in the face that I see as the result of internalised ableism and trying to force a character that had grown beyond his original narrative purpose back into a predetermined fate. To me djenks' garbled rewriting of Izzy's relationship with Ed in interviews confirms that the character broke the bounds of its intended purpose and left the writers unsure what to do with him.

Ultimately, I don't think djenks and the writers intended to be cruel. I think they're the products of an ableist, racist, homophobic society with a lot of internalised prejudice who should have hired a disability consultant for their silly pirate show that unexpectedly punches far above its weight in terms of representation. Still, I can absolutely understand why viewers might feel that the failure to account for their internalised ableism is enough of a betrayal to stop watching. I do hope those viewers can still find joy and representation in the fandom going forward; if they move on to another show, our fandom will be poorer for it, and I think other fans need to recognise the hurt they're going through and use this experience as an impetus to create better-informed fanworks themselves.

I'm not especially interested in litigating whether OFMD signposted this from the start or is breaking or sticking to genre conventions or three-act-structures or whether it broke in-universe rules (it did, though. bite me.) Izzy's death was neither an inevitable beat in a well-told story nor evidence of an intentional shift towards Game-of-Thrones-style cruel and pointless deaths. They just fucked up, badly, and I hope they'll do better in future.

Honor and Shame in Avatar: the Last Airbender

So I rewatched ATLA (as one does) recently and in my nostalgia trip, I found myself focusing on Zuko's "honor" obsession, and also the way I've seen people react to it. I realize that ATLA as a whole has been fan-theorized ad nauseam (though it doesn't seem to stop any of us!), but I do want to reflect on the way the word "honor" is interpreted by fans. I don't want to meme honor too much, though.

Too late, I suppose. But at any rate, this is probably fan-philosophy more than theory. I should preface this post by saying that my contention is based mostly on anecdotal evidence. I have seen fans assume that Zuko kind of discards the notion of "honor" more than a few times, especially when people read Zuko's arc as a commentary on abuse (which it definitely is, of course). This post from Blackwell Philosophy makes a similar conclusion, even though it attempts to draw on Confucian sources to elaborate on the concept of honor: "...as Zuko’s character arc shows, the only authentic honor we can pursue is the honor that lies within us and that comes from our own actions."

But let's remember that honor never ceases to be an operative idea even after Zuko makes the decision to switch sides. Iroh even says that this choice is about honor: "You restored your own honor, and only you can restore the honor of the Fire Nation." Whether you believe Iroh is up to you, but I'm inclined to take him and the series' terms seriously.

The Blackwell essay discusses righteous and conventional honor and disgrace, both of which describe relative states of esteem or reverence that people have for themselves or others. Righteous honor/disgrace comes from an inner assessment of one's virtues, and conventional honor/disgrace comes from external assessments. While I cannot claim to be familiar with Xunzi or Confucian philosophy more generally, this discussion is useful for drawing out a potential ambiguity that the English term "honor" that I suspect arises in the minds of English-speaking viewers.

For a show that seeks to draw significantly on Asian (especially Chinese) cultural, religious and philosophical resources, the use of the word honor in ATLA seems to flatten multiple ideas surrounding virtue, respect and propriety into a single usage. I realize it's a children's TV show, but it is still one that directly portrays war and colonial violence. Nuance is not missing from ATLA, most of the time anyway.

There are multiple words that translate to different aspects of honor in Confucian thought. Among them are the Five Virtues:

Rén (仁, benevolence, humaneness);

Yì  (義, righteousness, justice);

Lǐ (禮, propriety, rites);

Zhì (智, wisdom, knowledge);

Xìn (信, sincerity, faithfulness).

All of these, in my opinion, bear upon the idea of honorable conduct in some way. "Honor" in English generally connotes propriety in one's relationships and a solid sense of one's own values, especially when shared in community with others (think of a brotherhood of knights or the retainers of a king). "Honor" is also a verb, which conveys esteem or reverence paid to someone else (often for good deeds performed). It is the latter usage that the Blackwell essay calls conventional honor (勢 - shì), quoting Xunzi, and which it recognizes need not be associated with righteous or "honorable" behavior. Other words that may be associated with conventional honor are 榮 (róng, glory) or 尊 (zūn, reverence), even when paid to a genuinely honorable person. It is this tension which Helen de Cruz, the author, recognizes as the central theme of Zuko's struggle with honor.

My point here is less about the correspondence of English to Chinese concepts, than to point out the awkwardness of the uses of the noun "honor" and the verb "to honor". It creates a slippage between the notion of externally received esteem and the personal, moral propriety that one has (and which Zuko ultimately claims).

Consider, by contrast, Iroh's repeatedly being scorned by his family and nation. He never once wavers from his own values and convictions, all the while remaining loyal to the welfare of his people and his family. Two places this shows up are his claim that he is not, in fact, a traitor to the Fire Nation when he turns on Zhao at the North Pole, and again when he explains that he would not take back the throne of the Fire Nation from Ozai, as he believed that history and the people would only view it as a power struggle between brothers. Both choices involve seeming straying from his purported causes (the Fire Nation and the resistance respectively), but in reality conform to his values for balance in the world and righteousness in governance. It is why Iroh, despite being elderly, chooses to assist his nephew Zuko and even allows himself to be imprisoned because of it.

This raises important questions about honor and its opposite, shame or disgrace. In my experience in English-speaking circles in America, there is a great deal of resistance to the very ideas of honor and shame, especially nowadays with conversations about mental health and self-love. I imagine that it is because these terms conjure feelings and images of inferiority and humiliation before family and community, especially if the terms of the conflict are being stated hypocritically. I certainly don't hold these feelings against anyone, though I wonder how we might recover the more basic principles behind "honor" and "shame" for living our lives in the future.

Honor and shame exist in many Asian cultures, with merits and flaws alike. As an Indian American myself, I grew up with my own concepts in Kannada of ಮರ್ಯಾದೆ (maryāde) and ಸಂಕೋಚ (saṅkōca). These are not exactly the same as "honor" and "shame" per se, but were extremely functional in teaching me about the relationship between a view of oneself and others' views of the same, albeit somewhat problematically. ಮರ್ಯಾದೆ (maryāde) is generally glossed as "etiquette" or "manners", but is often associated with notions of a proper upbringing and treating others well. ಸಂಕೋಚ (saṅkōca) is a variety of shame, experienced when gifts are excessive or favors are too generous. It literally means "contraction", and was taught to me as the idea of feeling small because of someone's inordinate generosity. It is not a good thing to shower gifts, praise or support when it makes someone feel incapable or unworthy of the fruits of their own efforts.

Thinking about this in relationship to Zuko's own journey with the ideas of honor and shame, I believe it is possible to view honor more generatively. Honor isn't about getting accolades or validation from others (at the very least, not all the time), but living fully by one's values, particularly in relationship with others. Zuko wanted his father's love, but didn't realize that no amount of falling in line with his expectations would earn him self-respect, because it violated his own principles and severed his relationships with people he cared about, like his uncle. Insofar as honor serves to make one's relationships ethical, just and even loving, I think it's not such a bad idea. Similarly, shame for Zuko isn't about needing to be dehumanized or abused, but his feeling that he has strayed from his own values and done wrong by others. Speaking English, I think we can fall into a trap that "honor" for oneself and "honoring" others unilaterally are the same thing, and the same goes for the word "shame". Feeling that one's values have been betrayed or violated by one's own mistakes may or may not be called "shame", but it sounds right to me. The reason is that it comes with the ever-present possibility of redemption and restoration.

Zuko's journey toward recovering his own honor was about learning what he strayed from and thus what mattered to him, because it made him more alone than anyone in the world. In contrast to de Cruz, I think honor is about one's relationships to others and the values embodied in it, something that Zuko was ultimately able to restore in the end. It might not be the most original take in the world, but it makes me appreciate Zuko's arc that much more.

Vast avatar here :3

Into the void with you. enjoy. 🪄

🪐

What do you mea- gets voided

I wonder how much overlap there is between the soul eater fandom and the magnus archives fandom. Probably not much but I am trying to think of which entities the main cast fall under and I'm struggling,,,

Maka

For some reason I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of potential options for her. I can't think of which one would relate to the fear of being deadweight. The Lonely perhaps but she is very capable of breaking through other people's fear of the Lonely so it's hard to say

The Spiral maybe? Direct link to how the Black Blood effected her but not much else other than that

Soul

His primary fear is losing those he cares about, namely Maka, which makes the Lonely the most immediate choice but I'm unsure

His nightmare, the one where he bursts out of Maka's chest, has a more body horror side to it so the Flesh might work at a stretch.

Throughout the series he worries about losing himself to the black blood and madness in general so the Spiral could work pretty well too

Black*Star

Probably the Hunt or the Slaughter, right? The quest to kill god is a type of Hunt which makes me favour that idea but you could argue that the history of the Star Clan has a lot to do with the Slaughter

Tsubaki

I don't want to keep suggesting the Lonely but I find it hard to categorise her as much else. The constant need to put others before her and claiming to be a sentless flower reminds me a lot of Martin. If anyone has any other ideas let me know

Kid

Kid could fall under a lot of them, poor thing

The obvious one would be The End, pretty self explanatory. Kid is a reaper and the End is everything to do with death.

The Corruption could work on the basis that Kid detests things that he deems disgusting and he shows notable aversion to things that are dirty but you could make a case that it's more about the idea of disorder than a dislike of gross things on their own?

The Spiral is maybe more niche, I don't think it would be a primary one for Kid. However, Kid questioning the very foundations of the DWMA and its philosophies is integeral to his arch. He does worry that things are being kept from him a lot. The Eye could also apply to this

If I wanted to go for a deep cut then I'll throw the Vast in because of how it links in the the whole "nothingness" thing he had going on during the Salvage arc

Finally, the Stranger. I base this more around how his OCD adjacent mental disorder effects him (there's a lot of debate about what best to call it and I'm not super up to date on it). This is more about the 'creeping fear that something is not right' side of things

Liz

She's generally a scaredy cat so you could make a case for the Dark or the Stranger since they best fit the more typical conventions of horror stuff? This feels a bit surface level though

Perhaps, The Hunt on the side of the hunted. Most avatars of the Hunt embody the Hunter side of the spectrum but in Liz's case I think you could relate back to her time on the streets being chased down by those mafia guys and presumably the police. Constantly being on the run is pretty symptomatic of the Hunt I think

Patty

Patty is difficult to pin down.

Her primary concern in life is being with Liz and later on being with Kid which makes me, oddly enough, want to put her in with the Lonely. She definately doesn't really fit in with the other typical victims of the Lonely but that's part of what makes it interesting

Although, the Desolation may work better with her more outwardly destructive and aggressive tendancies from when she lived on the streets

Crona

It might be be easier to say which ones they don't fall under :(

They are in many ways a textbook case of the Lonely. They don't know how to deal with people so they look towards isolation to give them a sense of security. While this is a very big componant of their character, there's more to unpack and I think the other options should be considered nonetheless

Buried, Desolation and Dark could all relate to their trauma with Medusa's abuse. Being locked in a small dark room relates to Buried and the Dark while Ragnorok's moral physical abuse links to the Desolation.

Eye and Web also relates to the more psychological aspects of the abuse, the fear of being watched and controlled by Medusa is a constant

On a very surface level the Slaughter tracks because, especially in the manga, Crona be killing

Then there's the Spiral, Crona grapples with madness and unreality a bit and that relates heavily to the Spiral

Finally, the Stranger. Due to isolation growing up, Crona is deathly afraid of all things unfamiliar, that they don't have the framework to properly understand

Arguably, they could be this universe's equivilant of Medusa trying to make them into the next Kishin if we take for granted that Asura was also marked by all entities. Crona is, what, 9/14 the way there after all

I could probably do others but I wanna hear if anyone else has ideas

Now onto Episode 78.

Chojiro's bellboy is back from the previous episode, once again without voice.

Shinji vs. Yuya is a somewhat weird matchup, due to circumstances. Yuya, as I said before, will go peak ENLIGHTENED CENTRIST against Shinji, though to be fair in context, Yuya is pissed off with the fact Shinji does not care for Yuzu's well-being. We are supposed to believe this is because Shinji is too preoccupied with his revolution, but it feels more like that Shinji does not get their relationship. He is also clearly resentful for Yuya being a rich dude's kid.

But fear not, since Sora is here. Sora rescues Yuzu, somehow, and then takes her (actually Rin's) helmet to Yuya, to encourage him in Dueling. This is supposed to parallel Gongenzaka vs. Ankokuji duel in Maiami Championship, where Yuya came back with Gongenzaka's original sash.

How Yuzu survived would be a mystery, though in universe this supposed to be a hint for being a freak manifestation of En Flowers, and thus not entirely human in the conventional sense.

Sora's presence is somewhat important for three reasons, first Gongenzaka, and Dennis are not here, second Gongenzaka already done Pendulum-Synchro much before Yuya, and third Sora's relationship with Yuya is supposed to parallel Shinji's relationship with Crow in-series. So yeah, even though the context of this episode is YuyaxYuzu, it is actually SoraxYuya we are focusing on.

As we discussed before in name origins, the "ya" in Yuya means arrow, and references "hama no ya", evil-crushing arrow, which teases Shinji's next monster, Hama. It is also ironic, since Yuya (an avatar of a demon dragon) defeats a righteous warrior of justice with an evil crushing arrow by achieving enlightenment. In Buddhism, every being can achieve enlightenment, so I guess this is not too much of a stretch.

(Also, once again spoilers for Age of Overlord, Z-ARC is both Buddha, and Jesus now, literally, so I guess he too is not out of question.)

Though Shinji will obviously lose this Duel, he will get his revolution soon. He might not get Yuzu's importance to Yuya, and rest of the gang, though.

Gonna disagree with you about Joshi Kouhei.

The Assault Girls aren't like real women, either cis or trans. The fact that they're virtually indestructible (immune to conventional weapons) and always beautiful except in combat, and inhumanly strong, makes them more like

female avatars & video game characters

Not only that, but the "dimensional physics" aspect makes them abstract representations, which fits with that as well. Video game characters are, after all, low-dimensionality constructs.

The pilots largely don't behave like they're real women; they behave like the subset of boys/men that enter and operate in that sort of computer / cyberspace environment.

Portion of our society aren't really MTF but are having a cyberspace-only MTFTM arc due to entering symbolic / simulated space using computers, post-2000. JK fits very well with this.

Some overlap w/ actual MTF due to similar cyberspace exploration (leading to overrep in internet moderation like w/ furries, but that's a topic for another time).

context You think "men who use female avatars whenever possible" and "trans women" are two seperate categories with no overlap?

I could go chapter by chapter and list dozens of subtle transgender things, but like, the main character nearly commits suicide because he thinks he'll never have a female body, and he'll always be an ugly man in a dress. cis guys don't do that. Nobody puts a gun in their mouth because they can't play a video game anymore. Even if I agreed with your theory about "cyberspace only mtftm arcs", Joshi Kouhei goes *way* beyond a guy just playing a cute avatar for fun.

‘’ Czego Bały Się Dzieci ?

Very few of the original Jesheua-12 teachings have survived into the present time, though there are remnants of these teachings secretly preserved in France, that will one day be discovered. There are many other species involved with the Guardian Alliance, from various hybrids created through intermixing of these species, to the vast, formless sentient conscious entities who direct the Guardian Alliance, entities that exist beyond the scope of dimensionalization. Membership within the GA reaches from the matter-based galaxies and universes of the lower dimensions, to the unfathomable cosmic reality fields of pure consciousness that exist beyond the Metagalactic Core, free from dimensional structure. Many members of the GA appear to be quite human, but they possess knowledge and abilities far beyond conventional human development. Though the GA has many members of a truly ET nature, unrelated to Earth, many of the GA contacts are quite terrestrial in origin, (i.e. In return for his assistance in diverting attention from Jeshewua-9, the body of Arihabi was restored to life by the Elohim, even though he was not an avatar. The Elohim, Templar Melchizedeks, Blue Flame Melchizedeks and many other unrelated Host Matrix groups have assisted, and continue to assist, many individuals in clearing their genetic codes in preparation for ascension.

Another man, by the name of Arihabi, who was a Jerusalem-bom Hebrew-Annu-Melchizedek, was led by the Elohim, through a series of visions, to believe that he was the true Jeshewua-9, and this is the man who was crucified. Their mission is to protect and insure that species discover and fulfill their genetic plan of true spiritual enlightenment and multidimensional heritage as they were intended. The plan for preparing the races for the 2017 AD ascension wave was put back on schedule. After his ascension to Sirius B, the Elohim granted him special favor and adjusted his energy field so he could ascend to the Sirius star system in HU-2 via the planetary core of Sirius Oraz in HU-1. All of the major Earth religions were seeded at one time or another by guardian groups, to help the races prepare for their eventual ascension out of HU-1. Jeshewua-9 was also taken to Egypt for initiation, ascension training and ordination as a Melchizedek priest, and portions of these rites were conducted by Jesheua-12.

The teachings of Jeshewua-9 became more well-known, which caused him progressively more persecution from Roman influence and also within some factions of the Hebrew and Templar-Melchizedek race lines who did not accept deviations from the original patriarchal Templar creed as set within the Jewish religion by King Melchizedek. During rozprawka that Jesheua-12 practiced in Egypt (8 AD-21 AD), the second Christ, Jeshewua-9, grew in popularity among the families of the Templar Melchizedeks and Hebrew Melchizedeks who were not aware of, or interested in, the birth of Jesheua-12. Jesheua-12 studied primarily in India and Persia before coming to Egypt at age 20 and his Templar teachings showed a stronger eastern orientation than those of Jeshewua-9. The training and ascension activities of Jesheua-12 and the Blue Flame Essenes remained primarily hidden and practiced as a secret “mystery school” within Egypt at Giza and in various other locations. The promise of ascension is the hidden heritage and legacy of the human condition, the fulfillment of humanity’s evolutionary blueprint. The Blue Flame Melchizedeks carried on his teaching legacy and became the primary keepers of the secrets of the Arc of the Covenant and the Sphere of Amenti. The teachings of Jeshewua-9 and the Templar Melchizedeks became the primary foundations for both the contemporary Jewish and Christian faiths, but the Jewish religion did not acknowledge Jeshewua-9 as their savior.

The teachings of Jesheua-12 were originally included in the manuscripts that became the Christian Bible, but were distorted or edited entirely at various times, to suit the needs of the power elite within the evolving political-religious machine. The original teachings of Jeshewua-9 were also distorted and misrepresented through political and religious structures of various times. When wypracowanie -9 was 32 years old (25 AD), with the assistance of supportive Templar Melchizedek Essenes, the Elohim exiled Jeshewua-9, his wife (the woman who came to be known as Mary Magdalene in Biblical reference), and their three children to the territories of France, to avoid political persecution. The teachings of Jesheua-12 were highly censored by Templar Melchizedeks who later came into political prominence, and were kept alive through the secret mystery schools that evolved throughout Europe, Egypt, the Middle East and in certain parts of China and Indonesia. The distortions of the true facts of history were used to protect the lineage of Jeshewua-9 from political persecution, making it appear as if the Christ had no descendants, thereby allowing those descendants to remain obscured from the public view. Plans were made to perpetuate the Jesheua-12 lineage, which carried the full 12-strand DNA imprint, and six women of various Melchizedek Cloister sub-races were chosen to bring forth the children of Jesheua-12, the First Christ.