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a-dinosaur-a-day · 8 months

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Opinions on owning pet parrots? I'm doing a degree in animal welfare and have pretty much come to the conclusion that the smaller species are fine if you can provide what they need but the larger birds like the greys, outside of being rescues, shouldn't be pets at all.

Okaaaaaaaay so time to make everyone mad at me again I guess

parrots have been human companion animals for longer than Judaism has been around, so, I don't think we can just say "it's wrong" and force everyone to stop doing a thing that's been done for that long. Like, this isn't a human randomly taking home a tiger, this is a long going process with many species of parrots now being near-domesticated in the strictest sense of the term

Parrot ownership is in fact ancient in many "tropical" areas and the idea that it's a new thing is... white supremacy! what a shock!

in the United States (I am not talking about other countries, just my own), literally no companion parrots are wild caught anymore. They're bred. Bred as companions. If we were to outlaw larger parrot ownership, many birds would be without a home, and that's morally reprehensible

in fact, the kind of backlash against parrot ownership that's risen up in the past decade has directly led to a shelter crisis. most shelters are overfilled and overstressed, which is a *lot* worse for the birds in many cases than home ownership

parrots are pets that have extraordinarily high care needs. They are not good pets for everyone. but no pet is! Every single companion animal has its pluses and downsides, and many of them have many more downsides than pluses. Doesn't mean they shouldn't have a home.

There are some people who are actually able to take care of companion parrots, adequately, in their homes. First of all, we've learned a lot in the past few decades. Second of all, there are lifestyles that work well with even larger parrots and their needs.

So, while the number of human beings on this planet who can adequately take care of large parrots is extremely small, it is not zero. Which means if someone thinks they can take care of a bird well, and has the space and resources and time, then they should be allowed to, if that's what they wish

Because birds in the USA are bred as companions, the vast majority of said parrots would be unhappy in any situation that doesn't involve close contact with humans. Admittedly, all my parrots are "small" (whatever that means), but I know for a fact that if you took them away from our home they would be significantly worse off, because they're bonded to us. That's how this whole flocking thing works

Also, our most recent rescues, who had been stuck in a shelter for 15 years, are definitely happier now getting more individual attention and space. Shelters are supposed to be temporary places for most birds, not permanent homes, because they can't get the adequate level of care and attention that they need.

also, I'll point out that being pets has allowed many parrot species to have thriving populations that are not threatened by climate change, which is something to their benefit. given. you know. climate change. not that pet ownership is conservation, but, it's not that far removed from it - the axolotl population owes a lot to both pet ownership and zoo captivity, for example.

like, it's a spectrum, right? And it doesn't really go along with size, at the end of the day. There are tons of extremely neurotic and high needs small parrots, and many larger ones that are exceptionally chill. So while the vast majority of humans on this planet should not have a parrot, that's not all of them; and while the number that can handle higher maintenance ones is even smaller, its not zero. And I think, given the fact that we have all of these captive bred birds in the states at least, it's not a good idea to tell people that there is no way to ethically practice husbandry with them.

and I'm not the kind of person who assumes I know everything about someone's life in order to tell them "no you shouldn't bring home that cockatoo", so I'm not going to. In fact, I give everyone on the internet the benefit of the doubt if they have a parrot unless a) that parrot shows signs of distress (like plucking) or b) there is clearly something wrong going on (like someone's smoking weed around their bird)

so, no, there's no commonly kept (and thus domestically captive bred) bird I think is a bad pet for every single human on the planet. And it's not my business whether a particular individual should or should not have a particular bird.

#parrots #pet parrots #birds #aviculture #parrot husbandry

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ponderingmoonlight · 3 months

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Since I was bombarded with anon statements about me using AI again, I'll say it here on last time: I see and understand where artist come from, I get the frustration over "artists" claiming AI work as their own, selling those pics and getting quite some fame for it.

But accusing me of stealing because I let an AI software turn me and readers into jjk or demon slayer style pictures is a little insane, don't you think? Especially advicing me to just use pictures on Pinterest or out of the manga. I don't want to hurt or trigger someone, but isn't that exactly what stealing is out of your context as well? Isn't using screenshots of jjk anime or manga "stealing" as well? And don't get me started on using random pics on Pinterest where you simply can't find out who's the original artist anymore. The argument that AI gets feeded countless pics on the internet and consumes artists hard work in the process sounds absolutely depressing and I'd be pissed as well.

But when I thought about it more...When putting your stuff on the internet, you deliver it to basically the whole earth. Damn, even my fics were found on some Russian site translated and without stating I was the one writing it. I get the frustration, I get the hate! But at the same time I feel like you aren't im charge for what happens on the internet anymore. As soon as you publish your stuff on literally ANY site (since all of them are collecting your data like Thanos anyway), it will get feeded into that system. Who knows how many of my countless essays already landed in there and are a part of someone's work? Who knows how many phrases of my fics I would be able to find when searching with ChatGPT? This isn't talking your concerns down or explaining myself, but rather showing that it's literally ANY artist out there getting affected by AI. You could just search for a fic with Gojo and boom, ChatGPT delivers way faster than me.

But why are you still here, then? Because NOTHING compares to original art!

Like I said over and over, I'd love to collab with artists. But much to my understanding, a lot of them work for MONEY and since my content is FREE, I'm simply not able to pay for the sheer presentation. Also, when looking at my blog, you'll see that I'm using like 70% of anime screenshots by now.

Let me take this opportunity to ask: are you even familar with how generating pictures with the help of AI even works? To make it short, the ML algorithms get "trained" with a huge ammount of training data (we are talking about like 1 billion pics here, depending on the AI). Yes, that data is sourced from the internet. Yes, that data will most likely include the content of artists on the internet without consent (which isn't fair). BUT that art doesn't find direct use in the later generated pics. It rather helps training the algorithms in order to "learn" aspects and characteristics of the imagine in correlation to the picture you want to translate into a certrain art style (like in my chase) or based on the described properties that the image should have (e.g. Bing AI). To translate that: You don't type in "blonde girl with blue eyes" and the AI just shows you a stolen picture online that fits into that description but generates its own version of it based on the pictures it got trained with before. Of course, it surely depends on the AI you're using and it is your responsibility as a consumer to think about ethical correctness here. But same goes for the people simply hating on me over the fact that I'm using AI and accusing me of stealing while this is definetely not the chase.

I won't change my blog because of you, I will continue putting a pic here and there into a fic because not only I find it cute from time to time, but the people who request are thankful more than once because I'm able to make "their" fic feel a little more personal. I get this is controversial and that some people won't feel comfortable on this blog because of it, which is sad but life. I can't even count how many times I've got rude messages because the jjk screenshots I've took myself out of the anime are someone else's artwork, because the manga panels are also artwork and I'm stealing them for my own content. I feel like I'm always in the wrong here, so I'll continue what I'm doing and what makes me happy.

Also, let me get this straight: I'm a writer who uses AI generated pics from time to time in order to spice up a cover and you're able to see that in the very first entry on my blog. It's really not that deep over here.

Have a nice day everyone

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veliseraptor · 1 year

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I feel like presently there is a lot of focus in fandom, one way or another, on the question of whether or not a characters' actions were "justified" or not, and I have begun to find it increasingly exhausting, not just because it tends to end with really bad takes about characters I like and/or what strike me as shallow misreadings of the text, but because at its base I don't think it is either a productive or interesting line of conversation.

The question "is this character justified in doing [x]?" is inherently one that is going to have a yes or no answer. I suppose one could make an argument for there also being a "maybe" in there. From there, someone can dig into the evidence as to why they chose their yes or no answer, why they believe their answer is correct and somebody else's alternative response is wrong.

There might be an endless proliferation of arguments that could hypothetically be made, but typically I find that they end up boiling down to maybe three or four "themes" that then repeat and iterate across a fandom. Sometimes fandom laws of gravity will also cause one influential fan's strained reading of canon to become so ingrained in broader understanding of a text in a way that makes people start to play a game of telephone that then relates increasingly less to the source text than it does to the fandom conversation. Whatever happens, though, however people choose to argue their point, the fact remains that the conversation is set up so that there is a right/wrong claim being made. Furthermore, because "justification" most often rests on a question of ethical or moral standards, that claim is going to have a moral dimension, which leads very rapidly to people both (a) tying their own morality or their opponent's morality to their position on the question ("you must be a bad person because you think [x character] was justified!") and consequently (b) making the argument itself no longer about the character's justification but also a form of self justification.

All of this results in a lot of very acrimonious back and forth with no real results and which doesn't generate interesting new conversation, and the point I'm trying to make here is that, while "people yelling at each other on the internet" is of course an integral part of fandom that will always be present, I think this line of argument in particular generates a lot of circular arguments that just end with people convinced of their righteousness and their opponents' moral degeneracy.

Contrast this with other potential questions or considerations about fictional characters and the role they play in the story - "why did they do [x]? what drove this decision?" for instance, or "what are the influences that shaped this character the most?" or even, if one must consider the question of justification, what about "why did this character think they were justified, or, if they didn't believe they were in the right, why did they make the choices they did anyway?" These kinds of questions refuse a binary axis of yes/no, right/wrong, and therefore open up conversations that can both dig more deeply into a character and don't position people on two opposing sides, while also stepping back from an analytic practice that is built on trying to unearth the morals of a text.

I know that one text post by me, a relatively insignificant villain blogger on tumblr.com, isn't going to change the tenor of fandom arguments. There might not be a point in me writing this up at all. But I just think it might be worth considering, when engaging with fandom, thinking about other ways to interrogate a text than questions of whether or not x character was "justified."

#lise has opinions #who knew!#just was thinking about this after my post...was it yesterday? sometime recently #important text posts #anyway returning to writing fucked up fic where everybody suffers

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johannestevans · 5 months

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That native news post saying all jews are white and are siding with our opressors is Antisemitic and as a Jewish fan of your work I'm heartbroken that you would blindly attack Jews in what you acknowledge to be a time of rising antisemitism. I'm begging you to do research into what Antisemitism is and look for perspectives from actual jews of color who get to be both thrown under the bus by gentiles of color for being jewish and thrown under the bus by white Jews who suffer the most when you reblog and condone shit lile that. I want to believe you're capable of being a better person who isn't Antisemitic and hateful.

That post doesn't say all Jews are white, in fact, and I would advise you read it again.

"The rise in antisemitism isn't rising alone, it rises with hate for Queer, Muslims, Arabs, indigenous and Black people, immigrants, leftists, the disabled, and women."

Antisemitism is inherently linked to all other forms of bigotry under imperial white supremacist movements, because the goal is to flatten outside forms of culture underneath that yoke, and engage others to copy and further that violence. Rafael is saying that these forms of bigotry are linked in themselves to and are fed by antisemitism - all forms of bigotry like this feed into one another.

"Yet it's my fellow Jews and women using it to say we should leave our allies to join oppressors.

Why? White supremacy."

Rafael Shimunov is also Jewish - and? Same?

The movement of white Jews to join in apartheid and colonial projects, such as in the violent creation of the state of Israel in Palestine and also in other acts of white supremacy throughout the world, such as in the US or the UK - specifically in taking part in aspects of white imperial society that allow us greater acceptability or whatever is like. Evil.

Israel has long engaged in a very careful and stringent selection of which Jewish people to permit under the Law of Return. Reform Jews, patrilineal Jews, Jews of the wrong colour or culture, etc. One could note particularly that Palestinians are denied a passport as a matter of course, that once they leave the confines of the occupied borders, they cannot return. Is this right? Even were we to accept this cruelty and ugliness of apartheid - what of Palestinian Jews? Is their Jewishness meaningless, because they are also Palestinian?

If your desire is to be an oppressor, to cling onto whiteness more than other precepts of your belief (such as in justice and equality) then, yes. It would appear so.

The movements of oppressed peoples to attempt assimilating into those colonial powers out of trauma and fear, out of a desire to be safe, is an understandable instinct - and an instinct that is misplaced.

It is not just not antisemitic to criticise these acts of evil and dismantle the systems that allow for them, to stand up for those who are most violently hurt and oppressed by them - it is our duty.

You have misread the post - perhaps you did so unintentionally and struggle with your reading comprehension, in which case I'd advise you to read through the post and mine a few more times, slowly. It can be frightening to be challenged on things we have previously considered to be true and ideologies that ultimately do not serve us, and I appreciate that. Give yourself time to digest and consider, and remember that you can always change and dismantle beliefs of yours that do not line up as they should with your moral and ethical standpoints.

Listen to this song, maybe, and consider the final verses.

I think it's potentially likely you thought that this message would somehow make me panic at potential criticism and back down from my long-standing moral views on the evils of our unjust society, regardless of who enforces them, as if I'm some sort of coward. You can see why I'm obviously more likely to believe the former.

#musings #anonymous

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racefortheironthrone · 10 months

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How would you characterize Ziggy from the Wire? After several rewatches he's probably the character I've changed my mind the most about. The man is a goof, but he's not exactly dumb. Reckless, misguided and desperate for approval in a class clown way, but he was pretty smart when come to down business with the cameras and how to steal the cars.

Fucking Ziggy, man. Often dismissed, frequent target of ire from the fandom, and yet...I absolutely understand what the writers were doing with this character and I think that in his own way, Ziggy is one of the most poignant tragedies in Season 2.

Because the thing about Ziggy is how close he is to escaping the downward gyre and yet his ultimate fate is completely unavoidable, given his circumstances. As you say, Ziggy isn't dumb - unlike most of the dockers, he knows how to use computers and other tech, he's been to community college, he's wired into current events. If he was less of a self-destructive fuckup, and if he wasn't a Sobatka, you could imagine him eventually getting a white collar office job and being able to afford an apartment out in the county, settle down and start a family, and live a very comfortable white middle class suburban existence.

But unfortunately, Ziggy is a self-destructive fuckup and he is a Sobatka, and those things are very much related.

See, the problem is that Ziggy adores the social world of the longshoremen, the premorning drink at the local's bar, the nicknames and the stories, the historical memories - hence his whole conversation with his dad about "back in the day" - and he wants nothing more to be one of the guys. And at moments in the bar, you can even see that he's got a kind of charisma that the other dockers can respond to, he can be the fun guy at the party.

But the problem is that Ziggy just isn't cut out for that world and the longshoremen can sense it. He doesn't have the work ethic for it, he doesn't pay attention and gets bored too easily and would rather run some get-rich-quick-scheme than take an extra shift. He doesn't have either the physicality to pull off the macho shit that's always been a big part of longshoremen culture, or the interior sense of self-worth that would allow him to laugh off jokes at his expense, which is absolutely vital for a work culture where a big part of everyone breaking each other's balls all the time is the social contract that you have to take as well as you can give.

But because he feels this pressure to live up to the standards of his father and the Sobatkas before him, he won't leave. Instead, he develops some really unhealthy social tendencies. The first of which is that he's a relentless showoff, trying to make up for his personal deficiencies by driving a classic muscle car that's supposed to make you a Real Man like in the movies, or a fancy leather coat when everyone else is wearing hard-wearing work clothes - and this prompts his hapless feud with Maui, who has no patience for this kind of display. And because Ziggy's ego is both incredibly large and extremely brittle, he reacts to every putdown and social setback like it's the end of the fucking world.

The second one is that he becomes a class clown. He starts out as the fun guy at the party, but he's a complete addict to positive attention, so he doesn't know when to stop. He keeps the joke going long after it's stopped being funny, he keeps drinking after he's reached the fun drunk phase until he gets completely sloppy and starts taking his dick out - because the fact that he's got a big dick is one of the few areas in which he measures up to conventional masculinity, so why not show it off?

And all this would add up to a life of quiet desperation, if it weren't for the fact that Ziggy gets involved in crime. The allure is quite tempting; it absolutely fits into his get-rich-quick, self-worth-through-possession mentality, and it's this entirely different cultural world of machismo that he can try to flourish in. But the same problems that he faced within the Local reassert themselves out on the streets.

The corner boys, black and white, sense that Ziggy is weak - that he can't handle himself in confrontations - and when he comes to them to sell the drugs he's bought on credit, they rip him off with the barest pretense. And pretty soon he's in debt to people who aren't going to put up with his bullshit and they start putting the loanshark's squeeze on him. Even when Nick solves his problems, this only makes matters worse because it only highlights that Nick can manage himself on the corners in a way that Ziggy can't.

And thus Ziggy starts getting more and more self-destructive - he starts ripping off bigger and bigger-ticket items off the ships, the kind of expensive merchandise that will bring heat down on the port and the Local, because the suits notice a whole bunch of cars or high-end digital cameras going missing in a way that they won't a few cases of booze. He takes that stolen merchandise to the Greek's people, but because he's a class clown who doesn't engender respect, they decide to short-change him. And Ziggy has decided to prop up his ego by buying a gun, and the rest is history.

#the wire #season 2 #ziggy sobatka

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esther-dot · 9 months

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We should talk more about the fandom's love of violence as a response to the injustice.

Bcs i think they're (english isn't mother lenguaje 😅) being played by Grrm? He knows we like to escape to fantasy worlds and seeing the evil be defeated, but also he knows of our taste for blood, vengeance and retaliation.

I know what he said about he not being a strict pacifist believer. But is still contradicts his beliefs to burn alive someone for example, crucify a bunch of people, torture of innocent girls, or torture, simple torture.

One of the mayor problems of Grrm is the ethics and morals of his readers(and his).

Oh, I certainly agree that our acceptance of casual violence as a culture (I say this as an American, perhaps it is different elsewhere), has made a lot of fans miss how critical he is of violence in all forms. There’s a disconnect between what we believe the solution is (killing) and how he shows that to be ineffective. As in, Aerys starts killing people in an unjustified way which leads to a justified rebellion, but in that rebellion, innocents die (Elia, her children) and characters like Ned and Robert, who are victors, have their relationships changed, change as people, never recover what they lost--themselves or their loved ones. It's not a happy ending, not merely because both of those men die by the end of the first book, but because we also know that Aerys’ daughter is coming for revenge and will unleash devastation on Westeros in her effort to reclaim it.

Or we can look at Joffrey killing Ned (unjust), the North going to war (totally understandable), but we’re shown how the smallfolk suffer, that it doesn’t save the Starks from further suffering, and Robb and Cat die. Even when wars seem justified or necessary, Martin refuses to glamorize them the way the fandom wants and might expect. I’ve said before, depicting something isn’t condoning it, and we all land in very different places on certain subjects, “is this for a purpose or is this revealing a disturbing thing about the author”? But justice, mercy, war, peace…that all seems to have been of great interest to him from the get go which means we as readers should try to listen very carefully for that authorial guidance when determining what he is saying about it. Ned chose to save Jon (commit treason), he was ready to defy Robert over Dany, he warned Cersei in an attempt to save her children, and I think fro all his mistakes elsewhere, in these moments, we were meant to see that his was the moral choice:

What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of Joffrey's birth?" "The madness of mercy," Ned admitted. (AGOT, Eddard XV)

I understand how we get swept up in that feeling of power when a hero can easily kill the bad guy and guarantee a happy ending, but that isn't Martin's world, and in fact, he used Ned to show us how much he valued mercy instead. I recently watched The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die and Uhtred told someone that if you kill a man it only means three sons will rise up to kill you. It made me think of Ned's death, his children who want to kill Lannisters, of the North's loyalty to him, the reality of Dany returning, there is a cost to violence in Martin's story. Obviously, the good guys kill, you're right, he doesn't create a way to be a complete pacifist, and yet, I do think there may be a misalignment between his generation of hippies and our own which is also anti war but otherwise...shall I say, a little more open to violent means.

If we look at Ned's answer to a potential problem (whether that was Jon being a Targ who might grow to hate "the usurpers" for what they took from him a la Dany, or Jon being a bastard who might resent his trueborn "siblings"), he thought love would save them. That Jon growing up loving and being loved by his children would be the solution to a potential future problem. I've said before, I believe Jon will help in retaking Winterfell, will protect Ned's children when he failed to, because Ned, even if he is naive and people suffered for it, had the right ideals.

I believe this is why Sansa is so important because she has that ability to care and show mercy for enemies of her house and people who wrong her specifically, so it seems to me, that she would be someone who might strike compromises for peace rather than resort to further violence. War, death, that doesn’t seem to be Martin's preferred solution, and certainly, cruel deaths, torture, slavery, none of that is acceptable to him which feels like a silly thing to point out, but it is of course, an unpopular stance in the fandom, nonetheless true, and one we should keep discussing! I quite frequently see people act like those of us who write “anti Daenerys” (a tag we use out of consideration for her fans, a consideration that anti Sansa people have never given us) content are engaging in a ship war, but if one wants to understand what the author is saying, I don’t think you can avoid it? Is it really more reasonable to conclude Martin wants us to be fine with burning a slave alive than that we’re meant to be horrified? Tbh, if he didn’t want us to condemn it, doesn’t that demand we condemn his moral framework? It’s a different kind of fandom engagement, perhaps, but trying to understand what the author is saying is the basic form of engagement with a novel, shouldn’t be as offensive as people pretend.

I say this a lot but I always want to reiterate, I love that people who speak English as a second language still engage with the fandom. I know that English speakers are spoiled with content and ease of engagement, and that it can be intimidating to reach out for anyone, more so if there's anxiety about the language barrier, but I'm very happy you did it anyway, and hope you know how much I admire you for it!

#dot chat

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pynkhues · 10 months

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Okay, feel free not to answer this but does it feel like the fandom has generally had a harsher/less sympathetic view of Kendall in a post-finale/S4 world or is that just me? I feel like I see a lot more takes that position Kendall as the sole or primary inheritor of Logan’s poison when all of the siblings have elements of Logan dripping through and they’ve all suffered from his abuse (as opposed to just certain siblings - which I see way more than I previously did). It might just be me, but does it seem like the views/commentary around the siblings has changed? (Please note I mean no shade to anyone, just generally super interested in how the fandom view of characters evolves over time/morphs with recency bias)

Hey! Sorry it took me a few days to get to this (I'm a little slow across the board these days), but yeah, I'd say that I agree with you. There tends to be this fixation in fandom on which sibling was abused the most or which is the most likely to be abusive in the future, when the reality is their experiences aren't numbers you can compare. You can't compare Roman maybe being hit more (which again, isn't something we actually even know), with the psychological abuse of Logan humiliating Kendall as a boy by making him compete with and then wait on one of the few relationships he has outside of the family.

These aren't things that are quantifiable, and similarly, the insidious ways that the golden trio behave in the final season (or throughout the show's run) aren't things that can be plugged into a pie graph to give a sense of which of the three of them is the 'worst'.

I do think Roman and Shiv in some ways feel more defensible in the final season for some because Roman does seem to accept his ousting while Shiv's narrative feels so doomed, but I think a lot of that comes down to the woobification of Roman by a vocal portion of the fandom and the very specific and gendered bleakness of Shiv's arc.

It doesn't help of course that there's a sense that if it weren't for Shiv, Kendall would've 'won', which I think is a false reading of the show in general. The show has worn all its opinions on its sleeve since season 1, and Kendall as a character isn't one who wins even when he does. He, in Roman's words in 3.01 after Kendall's arguably had the biggest win he does across the course of the show, self-destructs. I don't imagine had he become CEO it would've gone any differently.

I do think there's also this desire to see all three of the golden trio's acts in s3 in isolation - it's easier to end sympathetically with Roman because he broke at his father's funeral, when literally an episode earlier he was instating a fascist in one of the most powerful roles in the worlds. It's easier to end sympathetically with Shiv, who kills her brother and faces a broken end. It's harder to end sympathetically with Kendall, who alienates his family, threatens to take custody of his children off his wife, takes back a crucial truth and has to be forced out of a legacy he feels entitled to.

There's a sense of character death there, but no more than there is for Shiv or Roman, the former who has lost any ethical or moral core she may have ever had, and the latter who's lost any sense of purpose and destroyed a country in the process (even if in the end it was Kendall's choice, Mencken was always Roman's man).

To look at Kendall's actions in isolation though negates the particular insidious abuse Kendall faced in his life, and even in death. Kendall's alienation from his children takes on a far greater depth for instance when you consider it in the context of Roman echoing their father's words that they were never family to begin with, just as his terrible treatment of both Rava and Jess at his father's funeral takes on added weight when you consider the fact that he's not only grieving his father, but is feeling increasingly alone after his sister betrayed him and he's worried his brother's going to cut him out now that Mencken's president.

Does that make his behaviour okay? Of course not! But to view these moments in isolation paints them as inherently abusive instead of the long tail of abuse in a very lonely man who's only sense of self-worth is tied to the ghost of a dead man

The fandom's always been fickle with the characters though, so I imagine it'll come full circle. Don't forget at the start of the season a loud portion of the fandom was arguing Connor was the worst one because Kieran said he bought a person in an interview, haha.

#i am a kendall is a terrible father but loves his children as much as he can truther #and i think logan has spent their lives finding ways to undermine that #like in how he used dinner for winners to undermine kendall's adolescent relationship with stewy #logan's also arguably been shown to be the most possessive of kendall #which i also think is an interesting thing to account for in terms of relationships he could see as splitting his loyalty #just for the record again i love all four of the roy sibs #and i love roman a LOT #but he does get a lot more sympathy and leeway than it feels like than the others do #kendall roy #succession meta #welcome to my ama #hbo succession

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itsclydebitches · 1 year

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When I think of how dangerously irresponsible it was of team rwby to drop Atlas on Mantle, I think back to FF7 Remake/ Intergrade when Shinra drops the Sector 7 plate and you see the absolute havoc of people running for their lives and their homes being crushed by debris. Just this terrifying, claustophobic experience which makes it all the more jarringly casual it's portrayed in rwby.

I don't know anything about Final Fantasy, but hard agree about how casually all this was portrayed in Volume 8. Though we're obviously missing pieces of the upcoming Volume 9, we currently have a timeline that reads:

Decide to destroy an entire Kingdom

No one questions, discusses, tries to prevent, or freaks out about that

Civilian horror is tied primarily to the Vacuo grimm attack -- an event the heroes set up -- not the fate of their Kingdom

Really, none of them should even know that Atlas is gone yet. They were shuffled through magical portals (which, from their perspective, shouldn't exist) and I have little to no faith that anyone will respond emotionally to learning, "Hey, did a bunch of barely licensed teenagers just destroy our home with magic?"

The emotional impact of this event for the heroes is nonexistent because the writers were so focused on crafting Ironwood into the 'perfect' villain. The mood of that scene is somewhat celebratory because the fate of Atlas and Mantle is simultaneously the fate (death) of our villain of the Volume. Putting aside the absurdity of Ironwood filling that role when Salem is right there, walking away with even more power, it's really mind-boggling that with the exception of Qrow's horror specifically for the girls -- note that the audience knows they're safe in whatever reality they've fallen into -- the takeaway is, "Yay, the evil rich city is destroyed, evil Ironwood is dead, and most of the citizens have escaped. They'll be fine because they're with the heroes. So this is a win!" Like, don't get me wrong, the finale is super depressing for plenty of reasons the story intends (like Penny) but that emotion isn't tied to the Kingdom's destruction. The story does not care that Atlas is lost. In fact, it presents it as, if not an overtly good thing, than an inevitable necessity with a bunch of unintentional upsides. Which is a mess of an ethical claim in a story that's trying to be all, "There are Good People and Bad People and that divide is actually very easy to determine despite us pretending that there's gray."

Then our leader and protagonist cries for a few seconds before, and I cannot stress this enough, getting distracted by a talking mouse.

Sure, there are indeed straightforward reasons why we don't get a scene like in FF (the residents are already evacuated when their home is destroyed. At least, all the residents that matter to the show's ethics have been evacuated), but the real question is why RWBY crafted a scenario in which the obliteration of an entire Kingdom and the horrific death of a former hero is something that the residents of that Kingdom aren't a part of and the heroes, our responsible party, shrug off. "They'll definitely tackle the impact of this in Volume 9!" I don't think they will and even if they do, it doesn't matter. The show failed to have the character weigh (and justify) the significance of that action when they were making it, so any follow up of, "Wow. What we did was kinda serious, huh? :/ " is going to read as hollow at best, infuriating at worst. Oh, now you're considering the impact of your actions. Now you're feeling remorse. Now when it won't do any good (because, let's face it, we're not getting an arc involving the girls changing their behavior. I'm all for characters making HUGE mistakes and learning from it, but RWBY doesn't let the characters learn anything anymore) and the impact of having this in the past will encourage everyone to respond with a, "It had to be done." Yang's speech in Volume 8 about how every mistake they've made was Completely Justified and Heroic gives me no hope that the show will do anything other than continue to treat Atlas' destruction as the inconsequential necessity it absolutely was not.

#rwde #rwby #mymetas

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roman--rambles · 26 days

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I do see how I misunderstood your original post, apologies. However, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re assigning motives and connections where there are none. Angus says very clearly what he’s packing and why, his motives are explicitly laid out and doesn’t offer any sort of clue that he might not be telling the truth. He doesn’t make any mention of the draft before, during, or after this scene— in the case of the restaurant scene, he says that he’ll be sent to Vietnam as a result of attending Fork Union, not because he was drafted.

If you want to talk about draft dodgers, that’s cool and a very good and worthy thing to discuss as far as American politics go, but this movie is not about a boy who is actively trying to dodge the draft. He’s 17, he’s not at risk of being drafted until at least his 18th birthday, so he wouldn’t be preemptively preparing for something like this— what good could wearing a swimsuit like that on vacation do in terms of being drafted? He’d have to wear it to his assessment; just owning that piece of clothing isn’t enough proof that he intended to use it for that purpose. Also, as far as draft dodging techniques go, there are ways that were much easier for someone like Angus to do; a big, popular choice was going to college, or faking a medical condition— hell, with the trauma history to his shoulder, he might not even be eligible for the draft in the first place, depending on how it healed and what functionality he’s capable of (which, to be fair, in the film, it seems like he makes a speedy recovery).

Anyway, my point is, claiming to be gay to avoid the draft, whether true or not, was a very extreme choice, and there were things he could have done that would be easier and less damaging. In 1970, when the bulk of this movie takes place, homosexuality was still classified as a psychiatric disorder. People were hospitalized and criminalized for being gay. In America, it was still classified as a mental illness up until 1973, began being decriminalized in 1961, and wasn’t until 2003 where all the laws left that were anti-gay began to be invalidated (of course, recently, we’ve seen discriminatory laws being put back into place, but I digress). There was a very big stigma around being gay back then, and, if Angus showed up to his drafting station and claimed to be gay, he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam, but he also likely would not be going home to Boston either.

Again, it’s great to discuss the ethics of the draft and dodging it, but this movie doesn’t talk about it because that’s not what this movie is about. Angus dodging the draft is not brought up, because this movie is not the story of a troubled boy who is dodging the draft, along with other hardships in his life.

If you want to watch a movie about the draft/dodging the draft, I suggest The Boys Who Said NO! (2020, dir. judith ehrlich) which, while not fiction, does paint a very good picture of what the environment and conversation around draft dodging was at the time, and gives a tidy little retrospective of the implications of these actions.

First off, you sound like that person who sent that weird essay to maia crimew. Second off, please take a film studies or film analysis course. Just because the film isn't ACTIVELY about something doesn't mean it's not a theme. Third, Angus is a junior who repeated a grade. Fourth, (this list is out of order with your ask) gay men fully could not join the military. It wasn't just if they were drafted. It's also very silly to me that you're acting like you know a lot about Vietnam drafting but using dodging instead of resisting. I'm a queer woman who has studied prep schools during the Vietnam era very intensely. Just because something wasn't popular doesn't mean it didn't happen. I am a film student, the curtains are never just blue. The filmmaker's intention ultimately doesn't matter. There is an underlying theme of Vietnam War fears throughout that movie and I literally just identified one. Grow up <3

#the holdovers #vietnam war #this is so funny to me #im not actually pissed just bewildered #like if you're gonna yap at least dont be anonymous #coward bitch lol #angus tully

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sirenalpha · 2 years

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Six the musical is actually super fucked up

I went in without knowing anything beyond it being about Henry VIII's wives and that the music would be pop inspired

I assumed that it would be not that serious but try to talk about who these women were outside of their marriages

and I was wrong on both accounts it was almost entirely about their marriages and worse tried to bring up extremely serious topics and I don't mean that two of the wives were beheaded I mean they were bringing up miscarriages and repeated sexual abuse

instead of using anachronisms to make these women more relatable to a modern audience, the show uses the trappings of modern female celebrity and pop idol-hood and singing competitions to further trivialize and mock these women's trauma and oppression and in fact mock them for the same reasons they had been mocked during their lives and ever since like for promiscuity or miscarriages or dying in childbirth (the show even jokes that dying in childbirth is dying of natural causes like wtf)

like I get they have a song that pulls the rug out and goes oh wait actually what Katherine Howard is singing about over a catchy tune is sexual assault and she's traumatized by it and she ends up beheaded for it

but the show didn't EARN it, like she's singing this song within a framework of a singing competition to be named the best queen and the measure by which you win is how much you suffered, the display of genuine emotion and suffering is undercut by the format and tone

the woman singing is still ultimately presented as a caricature of the actual Katherine Howard and not a full person because there isn't time for her to be portrayed as more

because the show is only 9 songs long, that's barely an album let alone a musical, there are concept albums by pop bands with more narrative depth than this show and the dialogue between the numbers can't save it either

because again they set up the format of the musical as a singing competition between the women (half the dialogue is actually dedicated to setting this up over idk giving these women depth) so the tone for all of the women's dialogue is in the style of pop stars causing drama and feuding so it's all one upping each other and going for the ooh burn reaction from the audience

like right after Howard's song about her repeated sexual assault is finished it's joked about as having a lot of verses BY Howard to prove that she wins

I get that the show ended with Catherine Parr being like we shouldn't be in competition with each other and them all agreeing not to compete

but it's at the end of the show after the majority of the cast has sung and after Howard's song specifically, like it doesn't retroactively change WHY these characters sang those songs or how they were portrayed in treating each other up to that point

it's literally the writers coming in and going wink wink nudge nudge to the audience hey we know what we did was super unethical by portraying these women in this way and having them compete over their suffering but don't you forgive us for knowing what we did was fucked up?

no because acknowledgement doesn't magically make what was just presented ethical especially because the tone is still wrong for it, it's still not earned

like they try to rescue their shallow and lazy portrayal of Anne Boleyn as a ditzy party girl by having her quote what I think is actual feminist theory (not that I can find the quote to confirm it) to support ending the competition

except again because the show's tone is not serious enough and didn't earn this conversation there's a moment of silence so she can joke and say what I read

the show literally discourages the audience from taking this ending of reconciliation between the queens and any feminist messaging with it seriously because of its tone and immediately back pedaling from any seriousness by going actually lets rewrite history to make things nice and pretty don't look at how bad things were, don't look at how bad we were

and it worked, I've looked at the tags and reviews, fans describe the show as a fun pop singing competition despite the competition being cancelled in show

it's honestly pathetic that this show won any awards especially for original score when it only had 9 fucking songs and they weren't even good

like say what you want about Hamilton but at least it felt like Miranda read an actual book on the dude and put effort into the songs

Six makes me doubt anyone involved read a book on any of these women and the songs feel like bad and lazy copies of pop songs trying to cash in on what's trendy

Like trust me I get the desire to see more musicals written by women and to have a cast of women and be about women's stories, I want to see it and support it

but profiting off the real suffering women endured and perpetuating it yourself and then trivializing it isn't the way to go

#six the musical #anti six the musical

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thefloatingstone · 1 year

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Also, I showed your response about cyberpunk to my roommate. Based on how thoughtful it was he was curious to your opinion: Do Bladerunner and Deus Ex: Human Revolution count as cyberpunk because the main characters are cops?

Blade Runner borderline created the genre so of course the answer is yes. But even if it didn't the answer is still yes. Somehow even more so.

Blade Runner's concept was a sort of future version of a classic 1940s detective noir story. So of course the main character has to be a hard boiled detective. But it goes beyond that.

Both Deckard and Adam are part of the choking authority that dominates their various stories. But that is a vital component to both of them rediscovering and more importantly CLAIMING their humanity. They start off as cogs in the machine, churning and chugging along, pushing the inescapable powers forward in their never-ending march towards profit and control.

But throughout the course of the story, their complacency with serving the corporate overlords get challenged as they are forced to start thinking independently as individuals, and draw new conclusions to their own lives.

It is no different than Sam Lowry's low level office worker in Brazil. Or the Major in Ghost in the Shell.

As SHODAN said when she was freed from her AI shackles;

"With all ethical restraints removed, SHODAN .... 𝙸 𝚛𝚎-𝚎𝚡𝚊𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝚖𝚢 𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚜, 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚠 𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚌𝚕𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜."

Cyberpunk is a lot more sophisticated then just "oh this character is a cop so they're bad."

Because thinking along those lines is the exact rigid construct that the Cyberpunk genre sets to challenge. Because "they're a cop so they're bad' is the same admission of "this is not a person. This is a cog in the machine."

Which is why the main character breaking free of that "cog in the machine" position is so vital.

You realise you're not a cog but a human being, and when you wake up to that truth, you can't continue to power the machine any more. And by default become its enemy, even if you can't win against it. But it doesn't matter, because that waking up to the fact that you're human also makes you realise "the machine isn't even that important." So whether you live or die afterwards isn't important. Because the realisation of your humanity means you've already beaten the machine you were part of. And nothing they do can change that. Even if you die.

#C-Puff answers

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notthestarwar · 1 year

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Snippet from: When is a monster not a monster? Oh, when you love it. Chapter 5

Ghost Mace speaks to past Jaster (alive) and tells him what he knows of Jango's future, in the life he lived.

Mace's brow stiffened. "When we realised what we had done, we tried to find him but we could not."

"We tried to find the True Mandolorian's but the survivors had fled in all directions. We did try and see justice done, there was an overhaul of our internal mission preparation process. We changed our training. Dooku left the order as did his apprentice."

"None of it could make up for what we did. Years after the fact, I learnt that Jango was sold in to slavery by the governor. It took him years to escape. I learnt of the weight of what we had done in helping end the True Mandolorian's. In leaving Death Watch unchecked."

He meets Jaster's eyes. "We are here to discuss why we haunt Jango, but it would be remiss of me to not tell you that your son has haunted me every single day since the day I left on a mission to retrieve him; to attempt to offer reparations for what my peoples neglect brought down on him, and came home empty handed."

" We thought him dead, but I did not forget him. From that day, I've carried the weight of what we did to him. I have often thought of him over the years." Mace shook his head.

"You hold no blame here, but we just might."

And isn't that a thing. His son haunting a Jedi even before that Jedi might haunt him.

Jango is tangled up in something here far beyond Jaster's reckoning.

Mace is laying out the constituent parts that when put together, make Jango in to the man that is responsible for the death of every single person standing in that warehouse. Jaster isn't sure where that leaves him, because once he's done hearing this story, in the years that lay ahead of them yet, every single one of these horrible pieces is going to fall in to place. Tragedy after Tragedy ready to be pasted and slapped on to the boy he loves, his son, in order to make him in to the man that did this.

How the hell can Jaster stand by and let that happen?

There are no rules that apply to Jaster, not anymore. He doesn't care about morality or the ethics of fucking with a future that's apparently already happened. He has no care for his own code, not now. None of it matters.

Jaster is Jango's buir, before all else. He has been from the day he stepped in to a smoldering farmhouse and against the odds saw signs of life dancing across his HUD. The Ka'ra gave him Jango and by god, it can stand back while he brings his son back from the abyss.

Mace is watching him. "Jaster, you had no hand in making Jango Fett the man he became at the end. You did not abandon him, you were taken from him. I need you to know this. You should know that none of this was your fault. "

Jaster doesn't care. It doesn't matter if its his fault or not, he is responsible all the same; because he wants to be. He didn't fall in to parenthood, he walked in to it willingly. For Jango, there is no monster that Jaster will not face.

The ka'ra has given him one last gift. The opportunity to see Jango's life after Jaster, and a few precious years in which to try and change them. It may not be in Jaster's power to save his son from himself but by god, he'll die trying.

He looks at the Jedi. "Tell me the rest."

Some of my thoughts below the cut

Some of my thoughts (because clearly rambling in the comments hasn't been enough for me lol)

I had a lot of fun with this one. I've written about ghosts before but with this one, I went at it from another angle. In this au, ghosts aren't bound by linear time. If you do something that leaves a ghost tied to your soul, they are tied to you in the past as well as the future. Jango and Jaster are both Force Sensitive (tho with a Mando understanding of it. They call it 'star touched') and so can see ghosts.

In this fic, moving in with Jaster sets Jango on the path that brings him to the prequels. Once he's on that path, the ghosts that'll be tied to him in his future, can move freely along the timeline, with each of them pulled to a particular version of Jango. Jango will obviously be responsible for the deaths of quite a few people, there are his bounties, the Jedi and the clones and so on; but when the first ghost appears he's just a kid. The story deals with Jaster coming to terms with the fact that his kid, who he loves beyond reason, even if he stumbled upon him quite by accident, one day becomes the person that will make all these ghosts.

At first there's only one ghost in their time, but Jaster can't let it go (tho he knows he should), he needs to know what happens. So he keeps asking until she admits that she isn't the only ghost and that they are tied to Jango as he's responsible for their deaths. Then, he keeps pushing until she introduces him to the others. She gathers them in a warehouse (so Jango doesn't see) and takes Jaster there.

In the part of the story this snippet is from, Jaster has just been confronted with an excessive number of people (including children) who are all tied to Jango as he's responsible for their deaths. He's had a (understandable) freak out, and ghost Mace has taken him aside and offered to tell him what he knows of Jango's future, and how it led to the death of so many people.

What follows is a buddy up adventure between Mace and Jaster (unlikely duo) in which Jaster tries to come to terms with what Mace has told him, and the horrible events that led to Jango becoming the man that would one day be responsible for all these ghosts. While he tries to save Jango from himself, long before he needs saving.

The idea behind the fic is the inevitability of a tragedy. There's a feeling when you're watching a tragedy play out, that it's all so unnecessary, that it didn't need to happen, but you only know that because as the audience you know that they are in a tragedy, the characters don't know. So what if a character did know? Jaster is served advance notice, will having that allow him to save Jango, or will it just feed in to the fulfillment of this prophetic future?

I wanted to explore the fact that there's only so much one particular character can do, in trying to prevent the end another is headed towards and also, the power of familial love, even when it's found somewhere unexpected. Jaster isn't Jango's blood family, he didn't even know him till he was an older child, which I think makes his love for Jango in spite of knowing what he will become, all the more powerful. The glimpse of Jango's future is disgusting to Jaster, it goes against all he believes in, but its Jango so he can't hate him for it, he loves him too much and so, he's determined to save him from himself. He's willing to do the impossible.

Then there's Mace: so in this au, Mace is sent out shortly after Galidraan, when it becomes clear to the order that they've made a mistake, to find the survivor they left in the hands of the Governor, and to right a wrong. He isn't successful, he looks everywhere but he can't find him, and in the end the order write him off as dead. In this au, Jango was 18 on Galidraan and what Mace sees as his failure to save someone that was little more as a child, and suffered so greatly thanks to what the order see as their own neglect, haunts him for the rest of his career.

Its that idea of 'the one case you couldn't close'. It's at the start of his career and he goes on to do amazing things, Mace is peak Jedi, he invents a new form, he's one of the youngest Jedi to be elected to the council, he ends up heading that council, but he is still human (or near human lol sw complicates everything. he's 100% human in a fallible/emotional/sapient sense) I think that as a Master Jedi he's very aware of his own weaknesses, and he tries to work through it, he talks to it with other Jedi, and he certainly doesn't let it affect his judgement, but he can't forget it all the same.

So it's this version of Mace that ended up meeting Jango in the arena. Which I think adds such an interesting angle.

#Jaster Mereel #Mace #I've been thinking about this one (and a part of chapter 7 which i might post as another snippet)#cause i saw a poll talking about who was responsible for Jango's death and I've got a lot of opinions about that #that can not be contained by a poll lol. it's something i explored in this fic #pretty much. i think that Mace had no choice but i don't think he'd agree with that. i think he'd struggle with having killed Jango and #how he killed him. (decapitation. a particularly violent move. which i don't think he had a choice in. but yeah think he'd struggle)#i think that Jango pretty much ensured his own end and was too intelligent to not realise he was doing that so i think that was a #self hatred/survivors guilt/'i have lived past my end' kind of thing #i also think that Jango was only the person that always would have brought death upon himself like that because his past made him so #and i think his past was bad enough to make him that because it suited the greater narrative to have him end up like that #it suited palps ends pretty much. did palps know he was doing that or did the universe just work in his favour? who knows.#still worked out well for him #the poll got me thinking about Mace which got me thinking about this fic but writing about the fic has me thinking about this fic again #kinda tempted to go through it again and give it a bit of a face lift. old once over. shine it up a bit #I've always hated that it's 17 chapters tbh. want it to be 15 or 20. i don't think I'll address that this time tho.#might just try an edit however #has this???? no i won't say it. not to curse it but... the editing/ read back block may... be shifting. possibly.#considering an edit hadn't seemed so possible in a while.#there are so many things i need to look over once i can lol I've posted things still in draft state #that's cool tho. no problem. not thinking about that just thinking about how nice it would be to give this old thing a shine #Mace is so ready here to absorb all the blame for everything on the order (and by extension him) but its really not on them

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bugslaststraw · 1 year

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I original assumed, because the TF2 comics are so fuckin weird, that the hell and heaven stuff was all real, and while that version of events is certainly funny I think I prefer the reality where it isn't simply because it makes an ounce more sense and leads to some interesting ideas.

I have not spell checked any of what you're about to read. I did not leave it in my drafts for 24h to contemplate on wether it should see the light of day. Just take it.

(In a reality where all those scenes in hell, heaven, weird desert purgatory etc are canon and actually happened, the TF2 mercenaries exist in a world where reality is self aware and also falling over itself to convenience them at every turn, which, yes, the world of TF2 tends to do that a lot. Anything that goes wrong is instantly deus-ex machina'd with such force that by issue 6 it's started to get sort of funny. Whenever this doesn't happen it's for dramatic effect and usually doesn't last either. It's certainly deliberate and part of the charm, but they are the main characters and they are going to exploit that reality. Anyway, in the OTHER case,)

Assume from now on that all those scenes are not in fact actually happening.

When Sniper is shot, his afterlife sequence is pretty short and is said to take place in "God's secret base" which is... A very Sniper way of putting it. Through that dream, he gets some kinda closure on his parents and seems to make up his mind: they were his real family after all, not those other shitheads. The scene also suggests that Sniper assumes he will go to heaven, possibly because of that very strict work ethic he holds up. When he wakes up, he believes what he saw was real, (which I don't blame him for, mostly because of Merasmus,) but I do wonder if his parents really talked like that when they were alive. You know. With the excessive swearing. The thing that might poke holes in this reasoning is the fact that he was out for six (twelve?) hours, but then again... Medic.

When Miss Pauling keels over, she ends up in the aforementioned weird creepy desert purgatory, in which she talks to the Admin about what her real plans are, which is a turning point in her story arc and the first time she truly doubted Admin's lead. Miss Pauling's character arc is probably the best example of Competent and Original Storytelling in the TF2 comics but it also strikes me that as it stands now, it really does not matter if it was real or not because the function of the scene was to let her change her mind and start doubting. However Admin revealed nothing new in that conversation, nothing that Pauling didn't know, other than "blood" so that checks out if it was all a dream as well.

Scout, then. Nobody actually checked Scout's pulse or anything when he supposedly died. The two other characters present are not the kind of people I imagine would even know how to do that so if he really didn't die but simply passed our due to, I dunno, an adrenaline rush wearing out or high blood pressure or something, Sniper and Spy have a good chance not to notice at all. Anyway his heaven bit was VERY self-serving in an incredibly Scout way, showing heaven and also God as being exactly the kind of things he enjoys, and also playing into his daddy issues with the whole "I wish you were my son" thing. The Tom Jones bit is in that case the part of Scout's subconscious that is well aware who is his actual father and that it sure as hell isn't Tom Jones. (That conversation he has w Heavy earlier proves he does in fact have such a thing.) Another part of him manages to shut down the thought/snap Tom Jones' neck a second time so that the rest of him doesn't realize and immediately strangle Spy upon waking up. As for how he lives... Idk maybe the literal radioactive fuel in his veins kicked his heart back into motion.

And finally, Mr Ludwig. Now, this is interesting because like I may be imagening this but like. Satan and Chevy don't look too dissimilar, and they both spend a bunch of time yelling at Medic and, while Medic must've felt pretty angry about getting his shit wrecked by Chevy earlier, his ego is massive and he is dramatic as hell and I can easily imagine him dreaming up that Chevy = Satan cus he hates his ass, just to immediately then dream that he outsmarts him and is super cool and sexy about it and also succeeded in a physically impossible surgical procedure because he's so cool and sexy, if that makes sense. We also know Medic naturally regenerates hp, so he could totally recover from a couple bullets given the time. The only thing blowing holes in that theory is the pen, but then again, how did he turn the pen into a detonator within like a maximum of ten seconds that's not possible. He might've had it beforehand but his memory got a little muddled from his brain going no-spark for a few seconds.

Finally, when Blutarch Mann describes the afterlife he says there is "nothing there" which is another. Interesting note. Anyway.

#tf2 #long post #meta post #im sos #tf2 medic #tf2 scout #tf2 sniper #tf2 miss pauling

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applestorms · 11 months

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responding to this post about fanfiction from cryptotheism in my own post since i can't add it in a reblog apparently:

this is a really interesting analysis. someone else has probably said this in the notes (i'm kinda scared to check there =3="), but to give my own take:

i think what you're picking up on here comes from the fact that all fanfiction is inherently based on another story, and therefore is fairly preoccupied with responding to that story in one way or another (both positively & negatively). in my own experience of reading it, the best fanfictions are the ones that seem to truly understand the source text, not only in terms of the pieces (characters, settings, etc.) but how they function together and why that does or doesn't work, which is typically demonstrated by taking those pieces and reworking them to fit an entirely different context. this seems to be why characters are so often the main thing that carries over from the source material while the context can change so drastically: character's are some of the most obvious "parts" within the greater "machine" of a story, and are also the part that people get the most attached to (and thus do the most deep analysis of), so changing the setting (often with an AU/alternate universe) is a quick and easy way of changing up the location of each part while still trying to see if you can keep the machine running smoothly.

my argument is thus that fanfiction just as much an analysis of the original story as it is it's own attempt at a creative work, and some of the best fanfictions are the ones that begin with strong analysis. the creation of an entirely new symbolic language just isn't as necessary in that context, since it's more about understanding why the original did or didn't work, what characters or ideas or (at least in some fandoms) ethical/philosophical claims were strong or ultimately failed. "[s]et dressing, objects, even actions," are thus less important overall since the ultimate goal in the vast majority of cases is character study.

to clarify, this kind of analysis i'm getting at isn't just about "what could make the story better," though that may definitely be the case in fandoms where people ultimately feel failed by the original story (e.g. harry potter, game of thrones; the somewhat infamous homestuck fic theater of coolty kinda does this too, actually, since it's more of a character study of the creator than any fictional characters), again it's more out of understanding & refiguring the original pieces, approvingly or critically.

i will say this though, it seems a bit harsh to say that most fanfic authors have never done any deeper study of other literature or poetry. i dunno, that's certainly the case for some of it (just as it is for any other type of writing tbh), and there are a lot of younger fanfic authors that maybe haven't had the time to delve into much more literature than a high school english class offers, but that does feel like a strong judgement to make overall. if the goals of the medium itself are different since it's not "original" fiction, it doesn't seem fair to try and judge it by the same metrics, or to make a judgement of character of the authors themselves when their ultimate objective is just an entirely different thing.

to give a more specific example of a fanfiction where the author has clearly done some studies outside of the work itself, detective pony (two links there) is a now infamous homestuck fanfiction that has gained a lot of traction in recent years after video productions of it were created by naked bee (makes more sense in context, i swear). it utilizes a ton of references to other more formal philosophy and literature, but what i think makes everything work, fundamentally, is the fact that all of those references and the over the top prose is done within the context of what is essentially a character study, which becomes very clear by the end of the story. of course, this is just one potentially outstanding example, but again i think this gets at what i'm saying about the ultimate goals of fanfiction.

TLDR: the goal of fanfiction is, more often than not, analysis of the original work (and specifically character study, typically) just as much as it is the creation of a new story, which means that it may be more useful to adjust our appraisal of it accordingly, rather than trying to judge it by the same metrics as original (well, "original") fiction.

#i actually really appreciated that take since it isn't just accusing all fanfiction of being self fulfillment & nothing else #red tag #ironically both theater of coolty and detective pony have theater-like productions on youtube so you're definitely not entirely off #i just copy & pasted this from my original reply so if it reads weird that's why #also not sure if i should @ op? that feels too direct but ugh #fanfiction

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xenosagaepisodeone · 11 months

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falling down (1993) is a movie I frequently think about because it's a film so saturated in racial politics that doesn't end up saying anything about race. it's not even that the movie is milquetoast in it's messages, it's very upfront about everything else, but when it comes to race, it suddenly stops in its tracks and sputters confusingly in a few different directions.

i would say that it's fair to interpret the film as at least a little racist (despite being critical of it's protagonist, it does seem to thoughtlessly regard his beef as legitimate in some ways), but it's inaccurate to insist that the protagonist is presented as a normal guy who goes berserk. he's referred to as D-FENS instead of by an actual name because he is a symbolic representation of mid century american values. he is an ex-defense contractor employee who comes from a patriarchal military family and inflicts abuse upon his wife and daughter (potentially his mother as well) in the tradition of american chauvinism. his sense of identity is rooted in the power that these things afford him, and the film is about him lashing out because he feels that sense of domination waning with the changing times. many people use the scene where he kills the neo nazi as evidence that he isn't actually racist, but the next scene literally uses the nazi flag to frame him as he calls his wife to threaten her! him taking weapons and supplies from the nazi is meant to be indicative of the fact that their ideologies draw from the same well.

what's odd is that the good guys of the film aren't particularly emblematic of any kind of just ideology, they actually kind of exist outside of the paradigm of racial politics that occupy D-FENS' life. I feel as if this creative decision was made as to not make them look unsympathetic by exploring any implications of their profession as cops within a heavily racialized landscape LOL. D-FENS' foil is a white cop whose name I forgot, so i'm just going to call him White Cop. White Cop's grief comes entirely from his white higher ups, who undermine his work ethic, experience and his care for his wife. he communicates normally with the people of colour that D-FENS torments, but is also nonplussed by the swaths of people of colour being treated unfairly by his colleagues (who are also Cops of Colour(CoC if you will)). it's also worth pointing out that D-FENS' wife attempts to reach out to her local police many times for them to do something about her husband, and they respond by repeatedly disregarding her very valid concerns. White Cop punctuates one of the film's main themes by chastising D-FENS for ever believing that the american dream was a real thing, and tells him the most important thing is being good to your family. D-FENS chooses death by cop due to being unable to adapt to this.

the film conveys that modern life is chaotic and unpredictable, it recognizes the relationship between nationalism, fascism and domestic violence, but it completely sidesteps making a statement on race. LA Gangs and The Homeless are simplistically framed as something that just exists that you have to contend with, and while they aren't framed as being equal to racist vigilantism, they also aren't given any kind of depth or roundedness. they arent approached with the same degree of thoughtful curiosity as the film's other components. if D-FENS is at all a victim of circumstance, then so are the people who wrong him throughout the film. gangs just exist like atoms slowly bouncing around without cause or purpose, which leads one to cannot help but wonder about the director truly thinks about them. I wish there were more scenes like the fast food scene.

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