Must Watch For Workaholic Caretakers With Poor Emotional Boundaries

Japanese BL Starter Pack

It’s been awhile since I dropped a rec list, so I am here today to share one that is very near and dear to my heart—a Japanese bl primer for those who are new to the jbl game. I created this for @neuroticbookworm to help her on her journey when she decided she wanted to start getting into Japanese works. The fandom (on Tumblr and generally) tends to focus primarily on Thai shows because they are the easiest to access for international fans, since Thailand is working its way toward world domination via ql media and wants us all to be able to watch. But there is a lot of great stuff to watch beyond the easy access Thai channels, and Japan is the country where this genre originated, so its shows are important for anyone who considers themselves a bl fan. Japan doesn’t cater nearly as much to the international audience so tracking down the shows sometimes takes some ingenuity and can-do spirit, but that’s part of the fun!

And so, the list! Bookworm is about halfway through it and having a ball, so I figured it was time to stop hoarding it and share it with anyone else who would like to dip their toes into jbl and isn’t quite sure where to start. A few notes: 

I am not here to teach you about the deep roots of the jbl genre or give you a primer on yaoi manga. I am by no means an expert and there are other places to find that information. Start here with this great post by @nieves-de-sugui and then maybe wander over to @absolutebl to read up more on the evolution of the genre.

This list is by no means an exhaustive accounting of every important Japanese bl ever made; it is simply a nice sampler platter of the cream of the crop among various styles you will find in jbl. Watching through this whole list will not only expose you to some fantastic shows, but also give you a sense of what makes jbl unique and how the country’s style differs from others, and point you toward the types of jbl you’ll like most (they tend to put shows in pretty specific style and tone lanes and once you find the ones you like there are lots more where that came from). 

If you’re coming to this post as a jbl lover and you don’t see your favorite here, I promise it’s not because I don’t love it very much; I simply had to make some choices to get this down to a reasonable shortlist. Feel free to leave extra recs for others to find! 

I’m putting these in a loose suggested watch order that will take you through the various jbl lanes in a kind of popcorn style, because I always think it’s good to change it up so you don’t get too stuck in one mode, and it works its way up to most of the extremely Japanese stuff (you will know what that means by the time you finish). But do what’s in your heart and change up the order if you want, friends, I am not the boss of you! 

Cherry Magic (Crunchyroll or grey)

gif by @liyazaki

I believe everyone on Tumblr is pretty familiar with this one, which is not a coincidence—this is one of the most accessible jbls. Not in terms of actual access to watch it, mind you (we’ve all jumped through shady internet hoops to watch it) but in terms of its content and style. Cherry Magic is a classic workplace romcom with a magical twist, and it is charming af. It’s a great exemplar of Japan’s light and zippy comedy lane for bl—a lane in which, importantly, the romances stay chaste even when the actual plot is about sex, or lack thereof. My friend @waitmyturtles would kill me if I didn’t make sure you know that Cherry Magic also has a lovely follow up film. And bonus: there is now a Thai remake airing so if you watch the original you can get in on the discussion about the different adaptations between countries. This is pretty easy to find these days in all the usual places, but I strongly recommend watching it here.

Old Fashion Cupcake (Viki)

gif by @liyazaki

Moving on to a slightly more mature workplace romcom. Old Fashion Cupcake, another Tumblr favorite, is an age gap boss-subordinate romance, and it’s both very adult and somehow wholesome af at the same time. Sure, there is a lot of carnal desire going on here, but there is also a lot of wooing via fluffy pancakes. It’s a tight five episodes and a fantastic example of what Japan, with its extreme technical precision in writing, directing, editing, pacing, and acting firing on all cylinders, can do in two hours. There’s not an ounce of flab on this thing and you’ll want to watch it over and over again.

Utsukushii Kare (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Time to get a little weird! Weird is a key feature of Japanese media, and lots of jbls explore unusual relationship dynamics rooted in complex psychology. This is the first show on the list that will likely feel very Japanese if you’re new around here—my advice is to lean into it and finish the show, even if you get uncomfortable along the way. In Japanese media, discomfort always serves a purpose. This is a high school story with a twisted relationship at its center, and I’m not saying any more than that. Don’t spoil yourself and go watch it! This one also comes with two sequels—one short second season and one movie—that continue from the original story. They are less essential but still excellent.

I Cannot Reach You (Netflix)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Next up, another high school tale, but with a totally different vibe. This show is kind of a revelation in its willingness to tell a story about overwhelming desire—including sexual desire—with young protagonists. It’s rooted in a classic but often misunderstood trope, friends to lovers, and takes the angst of it seriously, giving us a low stakes story that feels extremely high stakes to our leads. It’s also gorgeous and uses a classic Japanese visual style (bokeh) that you’ll be dying to learn more about. 

His (Viki)

gif by @gabrielokun

Time for a break from high school, and we’ll sprinkle in a movie for some added flavor. His is a jbl film featuring a second chance romance between a stoic, introverted man who moves to a remote town to start over, and his ex-boyfriend who follows him there unexpectedly, adorable child in tow. Importantly, this movie does not take place in what we often refer to as the “bl bubble” where homophobia doesn’t exist; the leads’ experiences of being gay men in a homophobic society are hugely important to the plot and themes of the story. It’s a beautiful film and I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched it. @bengiyo would surely also like me to tell you that this film follows a brief prequel show called His: I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love about the characters originally meeting in high school; I do not think it’s really necessary to watch it but completists can start there.

The Pornographer series (Gaga)

By now you should be ready to get into some classic Japanese fucked up psychosexual material, right? Right! The Pornographer series is told in five installments in this order:

The Novelist, a six episode miniseries

Mood Indigo, a six episode prequel series

Spring Life, a 15 minute short

Pornographer: Playback, a two hour film

Spring Life Continued, a 15 minute short

Confused by that distribution model? So say we all; sometimes Japan likes to make us work for it to make sure we really appreciate its many gifts to us. The story across these installments is about a very difficult to love protagonist, what makes him the way he is, and the also-unhinged-but-in-a-different-way man who finally gets through to him. It’s an extremely satisfying love story and one of the best character arcs I have ever seen, full stop. For this one, you’ll want to just pull the word problematic out of your pocket and store it in a drawer; nearly everything that happens in this story is problematic and that’s the point. Lean in! All of these installments except for the film are on Gaga, if you get that far hmu and I will supply you with the final puzzle piece.

Our Dining Table (Gaga)

You could probably use a break after those last two, so it’s time to shift over to a heart-tugging twofer: family trauma mixed with the cutest shit you’ve ever seen. ODT is an example of another classic type of Japanese show: the food drama (you will see the GOAT in this category at the end of this list). In Japanese culture, food is love, and the act of preparing food for your loved ones is a common path to romance. You’ll love this story about an isolated office worker who meets a pair of brothers, learns to cook as a way of connecting with them, and begins to heal from his own trauma as a result. The image above is a scan from the manga, which @troubled-mind curates to make extremely cool comparison sets like this one. Many jbls are faithful adaptations of yaoi manga source material, so it’s good to have a bit of familiarity with them.

Minato’s Laundromat (Gaga)

gif by @liyazaki

Japanese media loves to explore taboo, and often manages to do it in a way that is surprisingly light and chaste. This is an age gap romance between a teenager and his adult neighbor that explores internalized homophobia, emotional repression, and falling in love across seemingly impossible social chasms. It’s also a great example of old school yaoi seme-uke dynamics that still show up across the bl genre. Also, take my advice: end your journey with this one with the first season and just pretend season 2 doesn’t exist.

Eternal Yesterday (Viki)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

Remember what I said about weird? Time to do that again, but with a heaping dose of grief and pain on top. It’s not a spoiler to tell you this show involves a major character death; a major character death is, in fact, the root of the entire story. This is a magic realist tale of first love turned tragic, and it will hurt and heal you. It is one of my favorite dramas of all time.

Restart After Come Back Home (Gaga)

And now for a break for your poor exhausted brain. This film is basically the jbl version of a Hallmark original movie, about a city boy who goes back home to the country and falls in love with a total sweetheart while working together on a farm. Enjoy it, bestie, you’ve earned it! 

Tokyo in April Is… (Gaga)

gif by @wanderlust-in-my-soul

You’ve probably noticed by now that emotional repression and failed communication are big themes in Japanese works. This second chance romance has plenty of both, and it’s a great example of a kind of muted emotional style that Japan does so well, where the surface of the story seems almost placid and calm even as deep emotion roils underneath. This one (and Eternal Yesterday above) are part of a special line up of jbls on Japanese channel MBS called Tonku (Drama) Shower. The shows air one after another in the same time slot on Fridays (in Japan, perhaps Thursdays for you depending on where you live) and you truly never know what you’re gonna get, but they’re all interesting. Warnings on this one for sexual assault and trauma. 

The End of the World With You (Viki)

Time for sexy and weird again, but even more so! This has to be one of the most unique bls ever made; it goes to some truly divine and strange places, and it feels incredibly queer while doing it. Made by the same screenwriter/director of the Pornographer series with a lot of the same sensibilities, but in a more heightened apocalyptic setting. This one has existential angst, a road trip, a redemption tale, and a variety of interesting side characters in the mix.

What Did You Eat Yesterday? (Gaga)

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of the list and your reward is watching one of the best bls of all time, and a perfect slice of life food drama to boot. WDYEY now has two seasons (along with a couple specials and a movie that fall in between) because the universe clearly loves us. You can now get it on Gaga for easy access but I’m partial to the versions over at @kinounaniresource for better subs. Wherever you watch, settle in to get cozy with Shiro and Kenji and make sure to always eat before you hit play.

Something that really irks me about livestream culture is that everyone is sitting here criticizing concert attendee behavior from behind their screen while actively encouraging people to livestream the show which imo is extremely annoying concert behavior both for the people around them in the audience and the artist (regardless of who’s playing)

I get that it’s expensive and hard to get to shows now but the biggest proponents of this behavior are people who talk about seeing them on every tour so… idk maybe I’m just, like, old… but I’m truly not a fan :/

Yes, I 100% agree, it is so rude.

I feel like it’s now seen as rude to sing/scream/dance at all (within reason). Yet I feel like I see people on bandom absolutely crapping themselves in rage over “concert etiquette” that doesn’t affect anyone at all like people sitting down between sets or “looking bored” during the opener. 

And I DON’T understand the livestream things. Like yes. I support people taking a handful of videos during the show and posting about the show is normal. And of course everybody is going to talk about the show every night. 

But I DON’T understand how I have been seeing these bands live for literally 10 years, everyone has had smartphones all 10 years, and suddenly only now livestreams are a ginormous deal. I don’t understand how seemingly everyone has time to watch a 2.5 hour shitty phone video of a concert 5 nights a week and the site becomes actually unusable whenever there’s a MCR or FOB concert, which is every night. I don’t understand why people get so worked up and upset if they have to miss a stream because of work or because there isn’t a streamer. Who fucking cares. People will post videos after the show if something cool happens. I don’t understand why this is the world now. I think it has to be because so many people can’t go due to the insane prices. 

I also think artists (including FOB) are actively encouraging streaming culture and these insanely high “demand prices” by constantly needing people to be scared of missing out so they’re always trying to do new things every show and like. Some of it is cool but with FOB lately I feel like they’re running out of ideas and people are paying way more for an actively worse than “normal” FOB concert because they’re scared of missing out on these gimmicks. Like I don’t need 20 people nobody cares about performing their solo music onstage at a FOB show plus also 20 covers by Fall Out boy. Just fucking have FOB play FOB songs. Also I feel like the “demand pricing” is part of why MCR continue to taunt an album for 5 years because everyone paying 5 trillion dollars for a MCR show is banking that they will be the first to hear a new song or whatever. 

I also think most people in bandom (not anyone specific) are all lying about how much they paid for concerts because concerts are so expensive it’s completely socially unacceptable to admit you can afford it, and in order to be popular on Tumblr you have to cosplay being as oppressed as possible. Like I’m not going to judge someone for saving up for something nice or making a dumb financial choice but it’s deeper and more cultural than that. I feel like so much of bandom is suburban white american teens making and reblogging posts about how FAKE PUNKS on TIKTOK wear $20 lipstick, unlike REAL PUNKS WHO are POOR LIKE THEM, and they could NEVER AFFORD $20 DESIGNER LIPSTICK and we need to EAT THE RICH, then they see MCR or FOB barricade ten times in a row or whatever. 

Like one pit ticket to Fall Out Boy costs almost my monthly rent. I have now paid this much for FOB tickets 3 times. I always have to buy a friend’s ticket because nobody has this kind of money to go to a concert so I pay like $1300 every fucking time. I also have a credit card (which, by the way, requires “excellent” credit to have) that allegedly gets me these tickets at a discount. Yet every single person online says they got lucky and got front row tickets for $40 or whatever. What is going on. 

Like I am able to afford to see FOB when they tour because I grew up privileged, have a well-paying office job, have never traveled in my adult life, and do not own a car, partially to afford concerts. I’m also in the top .001% of Fall Out Boy listeners and top 1% of Spotify listeners overall, so like, of course I will pay this because I’m not the average fan. But not every single fucking person at these shows is also in the top .001%, so they just like. Can afford this crap for random bands they like. 

Anyway, I don’t really think I get “unlucky” when buying FOB tickets, I think this is just what concerts cost now and everyone is lying about it so they can continue fitting in with like all the social justice posturing and because it’s rude to admit in public but people need to talk about it because it’s crazy and it’s not okay for Livenation to be doing this and its not okay for artists to be participating!!!!!!!! 

I also feel so bad for teenagers because when I was a kid going to concerts at all ever was a huge battle with my parents and they cost like $40-100 a ticket for like. Pit tickets to bands like All Time Low and Green Day. I never, ever would’ve been able to experience a concert as a teen if they cost back then what concerts do now, and it’s just really sad because those are important experiences. 

Anyway I think the fact that people can’t afford to go to concerts anymore HAS to be driving the weird livestream obsession and the emotional dependency people develop on these shitty obnoxious 2 hour phone videos. I also feel like the financial shift in who is going to concerts is driving a lot of the weird meltdowns about “concert etiquette.” 

Also as a final tangent, I feel like the livestream stuff is so immediate and impermanent too. Like everyone needs everything right that second and once its over it doesn’t matter? When I was younger it felt like people just blogged about the Tour and Tour Stuff as one big event for months/years, but now if videos are posted hours or days later its like they aren’t relevant and no one cares because everyone is panicking over finding a streamer for the next show. IDK i hate it

We all know I shouldn’t be allowed to make Tumblr posts after 1 AM, but here we go again… This has been in my brain for so long so now I am going to ramble about it (shoutout to the Hamlet Discord server for joining in the Thinking)

Surveillance Hamlet!!!

(Or, rather, the theme of surveillance in Hamlet and some fun and exciting ways I’d like to see it portrayed on stage assuming this mythical theater program has unlimited money)

(Warning- this thought is undercooked. This is going to get rambly…)

Surveillance is a major theme in Hamlet. Nearly everyone in the play engages in some kind of spying or scheming or is the victim thereof (or both). I love plays as a medium for the fact that each individual performance has the opportunity to completely change which themes get the most emphasis and surveillance is a theme I’d love to see take center stage with Hamlet specifically!

Hamlet is a pretty meta play. It ends with a message on the act of storytelling within the specific context of the story the audience has just watched just after it calls out the “mutes and audience” to the ultimate tragedy for their inaction during the runtime of the play. It’s also been performed and adapted plenty of times with a modern lens. Grief, depression, existential anxiety, and gay people are, apparently, universal pieces of the human experience, but if anything looms larger than ever over today’s society, it’s surveillance. Hell, I’m typing this on a device that is for sure selling my data to the government and probably also scam artists! So give me a performance where extreme surveillance heightens all the other aspects of the play, where Hamlet’s paranoia is exceedingly justified.

First, choose a good venue. Outdoor theater is almost always my favorite, but in this case, choose a massive indoor theater with a movie theater style sound system. Hang massive screens above the stage like you’d see at a big concert.

Now, these actors are going to be doing some major method acting. Put cameras above the stage at all angles. Put cameras in the wings. Put cameras on the crew. Put cameras in the audience- maybe some employee plants instructed to stream the show to the screens from their view or even to obnoxiously take photos and video throughout the show. No matter where these actors go, so long as they’re in character, there’s a camera on them. Put mics everywhere too, so even low whispers are heard from the backrow.

I want this play to start with an attempt at secrecy. The ghost appears, Hamlet begs his friends not to speak of it, but he can hear his whispers echoing right back to him and he knows it’s useless. The curiously missing line where Marcellus, Horatio, and Barnardo do finally swear upon Hamlet’s sword isn’t implied to be there as usual. It doesn’t exist. The ghost is only “satiated” by the coming of dawn, even this first, simple wish remains unfulfilled.

Hamlet spends the end of act 1 wavering between a genuine breakdown and an acted portrayal of madness. Pretending shields him from showing legitimate emotion on those screens.

To be or not to be is performed offstage, but on camera. Hamlet seems to think for a moment that he’s truly alone or perhaps it’s all part of the facade. Either way, emotion gets the best of him eventually and he realizes he can’t escape the cameras (or mortality). He comes on stage for get thee to a nunnery, frantically trying to get away from his ever-echoing voice, only to find a spotlight on him. The lines come across as cruel as they are pathetic. Ophelia is also being watched. Ophelia didn’t decide alone to speak to him. In some ways, she has far less privacy than he does, but Hamlet isn’t looking for solidarity in the watched. He wants to be alone. He wants to not be seen.

When he stabs Polonius, Ros & Guil track him down on the cameras. There’s no need to run, but he tries.

The only time Hamlet is truly outside of surveillance is on the ship to England (and then with the sailors who return him to Denmark). Maybe Claudius doesn’t want the world to know he has sent the prince to be executed, but it is clear that he too has lost any real control of this surveillance system. You saw him praying. Or was it a publicity stunt? Hamlet returns and simply tells Horatio (and by proxy, you) what happened on the ship, maybe resentfully. The only time he gets privacy, he doesn’t need it.

By the final scene, he no longer wants not to be seen. He isn’t sure you see him at all. No, you mutes and audience look right through him as if you know infinitely more than him, as if he hasn’t proven that he knows he is a sparrow that will fall. But you know the lines and he doesn’t.

He asks Horatio to tell his story. Maybe there’s something personal about being told a story rather than watching one play out. Maybe you can’t look through a storyteller.

Hamlet canonically knows he’s being watched. He uncovers Ros & Guil’s spy mission in the span of minutes, kills Polonius in the act of spying on him, and comes to mistrust the people around him because almost no one seems to be genuine with him (besides horatio). But it’s not just the characters, it’s the audience. In his darkest moments, he looks out for just a second, almost begging for help, only to discover that no one is coming to his aid. When he tries to exit, the spotlight follows him and so do the cameras. It’s inescapable. When he delivers the “mutes and audience” line, it should be as accusatory as it is pleading. You, the audience, have seen his life projected on massive screens, you’ve heard his every word and whisper, you know him, don’t you? Yes, you know him better than his closest friends. He’s spilled his soul to you because he knows you can’t be escaped, that you, rows upon rows of darkness to this actor blinded by spotlights, are always watching. Will you help? he asks, one final time. The answer is an obvious no, not because you’re heartless but because that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to see a play.

God, you’re amazing!!! I’m speechless!! How do you manage to post daily???

This story is the only good think happening to me right now

Part 12 killed me!!!

It feels like all this negative press is getting to her and i feel so so bad 😔 Hope she and Mick make up soon, but also can Max and Lando help with the media, I usually don’t believe in the whole prince charming saves the day thing but it feels necessary for someone really important to take a stance if the bulling doesn’t stop soon

Or maybe, she could take a break from a social media, stay out of the spotlight you know, Taylor Swift style. And If people still continue to hate on her, she’ll know it’s not because of her. It’s because some people have no life.

Now I’m ranting, but I’m so invested in this!! Can’t wait to read more

I just really enjoy making these a lot more than I thought I would haha. I normally spend a lot of time doing long form fiction writing…now I do these!

I think it’s getting to her mainly because it’s come out of something that is being taken out of context and misconstrued, but also because it’s coming out of something extremely painful. Mick really is like a brother to her, his absence in her life is weighing on her.

I don’t see Max wading into it on social media, just because I think irl he is embroiled in a lot of controversy that he rarely speaks out on. Also, I don’t think Y/N would want him to, and there will be a part that explains in detail a bit more. That said, I always planned that the trolling would happen this specific week and it definitely will be reaching some bigger audiences soon.

I really want her to have a Reputation era haha but we will see. She will be on only her “close friends” story for a bit.

Submas Portrayal Issues Part 2

This was originally going to be a shorter post about me personally choosing to block certain Submas content, but I feel the ableism is getting to be more of an issue than it was previously.

I’m not calling out or singling out anyone specifically, and this is not meant to be an attack on anyone. There’s just a lot of portrayals I’m finding issue with, want to address, and if you enjoy these portrayals or create them with harmful aspects and have no desire to listen or change them, then I’d prefer you not interact with me.

Anyone being hostile towards me or others over this will also be blocked. I don’t have time, energy or even the desire to fight and argue. I prefer to block and move on.

tw: mentions of ableism towards neurodivergence and mental illness

I blocked cr*zytr*inshipping and tr*inwr*ckshipping because I find so much of the depictions ableist and fetishizing mental illness. I also find them to be ignorant of the actual characterizations of Ingo, Emmet, and Volo. All three of these characters now have regularly gotten depictions that are so far from what we canonically know about them and their personalities for the sake of angst and some come very close to or veer into ableist territory. Not everything has to be tied directly to the canon, but there’s a difference between someone making a stretch or having an idea that might not fit into the canon but making it reasonably work, and someone ignores canon for the sake of making things as angsty as possible, or someone who did not even play any of the games or check Bulbapedia for existing info and so has no idea about the characters at all, and just decided to crank angst content up to eleven for the sake of making the saddest or most messed up thing possible.

It’s one thing to depict an unhealthy relationship realistically and/or portray a relationship where one person, or more than one person has a mental illness going unchecked/untreated and it affects the relationship, or they start feeding off each other, and let the audience know it’s unhealthy and not good. It’s another to use these things and depict the unhealthy, unhinged, or even abusive relationship as “fun” or entertaining, or even romanticize or fetishize it. 

I’m also starting to block people who post content where Ingo or Emmet are Zoroarks, or any other Pokemon or even non-Pokemon creature that can transform into and imitate humans (as in only one of them is human and the other never existed and is a Pokemon, etc, not content where a Pokemon tricks one of them via transformation, or Pokemon Mystery Dungeon AUs where everyone is a Pokemon). Many people have said that this sort of thing is ableist and hurtful as Submas is autistic-coded, and making them non-human plays right into non-autistic people's ableist perceptions of autistic people as less than human. It’s also extremely telling that Emmet, who is more obviously autistic-coded than Ingo to people who are not autistic and/or less familiar with autistic traits, is almost exclusively portrayed in aus as a Zoroark or other entity that can transform, rather than a human.

You might think you’re in a bubble on tumblr dot com, or maybe you’re autistic and/or have a mental illness and think these depictions are OK, or it doesn’t matter because Submas have not been stated to be canonically autistic, but fiction does influence people’s attitudes and ideas about these kinds of things, and will perpetrate stigma neurodivergent and people with mental illnesses face. And at the very least, the ableism is upsetting and alienating other Submas fans. Many people have made posts about the ableism regarding various depictions of Submas (but again, usually Emmet), not only because they’ve recognized things as ableist, but because it personally affects them. My roommate, @1863-project, who considers Submas the closest she’s ever seen characters like herself depicted in canon, tells me time and again since these fan depictions started becoming popular that she feels she can no longer go into Submas spaces due to people depicting Submas as non-human, tragic, or even scary and wondering if this is how people see her. This person posted about the issue of making Emmet traumatized and violent for entertainment purposes. I made a post almost two months ago because as someone who is neurodivergent, the depictions made me uncomfortable, and it’s apparently only gotten worse. (Another person made a post a few months ago about being uncomfortable with the ableism and specifically mentioned the changeling aspect in their tags. I have lost track of the post but will link it here if I find it.)

These depictions might seem harmless and entertaining to you and you might not think it’s not a big deal, or people are too sensitive or overreacting, but the fact is they can and do affect how people perceive neurodivergence and mental illness, and may end up harming real people, if not indirectly by influencing people’s attitudes, then directly by alienating, upsetting, or even triggering people who are in these communities. It’s important to learn how to address issues and depict characters without perpetrating stigma. If you think these depictions don’t cause harm or want to continue using neurodivergence and mental illness as a prop or punchline, you should really examine why you think this is OK, and I’d prefer if you did not interact with me.

And yeah, I’m just not going to extend charity to this kind of doublespeak from people, not matter how bad off they are. People cannot talk about “settlers” who should and must immediately forfeit their rights, and then also claim that this would be somehow peaceful, bloodless, and cause no suffering. They can’t sit around engaging in revenge fantasy and then also claim to be the most pure people who’d never be oppressive ever. I don’t care who and I don’t care if it’s just rhetoric, it’s bad.

Maybe this just bespeaks a fundamental difference in how you and I understand ethics. Regardless of any specifics of the present topic, I have to admit that I believe the approach you're taking here is essentially never the correct one. Yes, political doublespeak is bad. Revenge fantasies are not productive. But that does not make your response, your total unwillingness to extend charity or listen to people's concerns, a justified one. You must recognize that people are imperfect. It would be lovely if we all said exactly what we meant, and held our anger when cooperation was in order, and so on and so forth. But people are not always going to do this, because people are imperfect. That's a fact of life, and it's especially a fact of political organizing.

People are going to articulate their struggles in language that makes you uncomfortable, rightly or wrongly so. People are going to use terminology that sets off alarm bells for you, as the word "settlers" seems to. And maybe people are even going to hold opinions that you think would be harmful to you if brought to fruition. To get anything done in politics ever, to make the world a better place, being able to deal with this is a fundamental skill. I analogized it in another post to the place of math in physics. You need to be able to coalition build, to organize with people you disagree with (even in very fundamental ways!), to shape your tone to your audience. You need to be able to talk comfortably to all kinds of people who believe all kinds of things, even people who don't like you. You need to be able to tolerate a bit of nasty rhetoric.

Even in the worst of times, when conflict is hot and you perceive there to be some credible threat to yourself, the noble thing to do is still to listen, through your discomfort, and attempt to reach an optimal comprise between your interlocutors' needs and your own. Obviously this is not something I would demand of someone, if they really were in danger. But to me it is still the noble response. However, this is not the worst of times. Conflict is not hot. On an actual practical level, the only aspects of the decolonial movement that are not marginal in the US are the purely symbolic ones. The most radical forms of decolonization, the ones that could conceivably pose any actual threat to you, are ridiculously marginal (and indeed, limited in obvious ways by demographics, such that it's basically inconceivable to me that they could ever find themselves in a position to harm you). You are in no actual danger of an indigenous lead forced relocation.

Furthermore, it seems to me that many of the words which trigger you here are extremely common in discussions of indigenous issues (and in-and-of-themselves purely descriptive terms), like "settlers" and "settler colonialism". This means that, if you refuse to engage in charity or calm discussion with people who use these terms, even when no other associated rhetoric is present (as in many of the cases on this blog that have upset you), you are basically refusing to cooperate with any existing effort at all to address indigenous peoples' concerns. Again, even though these efforts pose no practical threat to you, and even though the concerns they address are very grave, as evinced by the discussion of poverty among American Indians that motivated this discussion. You are upset by rhetoric to such a degree that you continually obfuscate the discussion of real material suffering when it is not phrased in the terms that you like, attributing the least charitable possible mixture of political opinions, pulled from the most extreme and least-thought-through subsets of decolonial discourse, to (what appears to me to be) anyone broaching the topic at all.

If every time someone says the phrase "settler colonialism", you jump straight to the conclusion that they are trying to commit genocide against you and respond as such, you are significantly hamstringing your ability to talk with people about the very real and immediate struggles they face. You appear to be ramping up your own level of antagonism immediately in response to the perceived worst-case level of antagonism that might be displayed by your interlocutor, based on associations you have with the terminology they use. I hope you can see how this comes across as, frankly, a callous and immature response.

In fact, it's more than just a terminological thing, because the quote which started this whole exchange made no mention of the terms "setter" or "settler colonialism"—indeed, it was an example of "talking about extreme poverty overtly", as you yourself said you would be more comfortable with. And the article about "Man of the Hole", which you (I believe it was you) took umbrage with the other day, wasn't phrased in the rhetoric of decolonization either. This makes it look as if any mention of indigenous issues at all is a trigger for you, and I hope you can see how that's counter productive.

Look: you do not have to engage with this topic. If discussion of these things provokes such fear and anxiety in you, I want to say with full sincerity that you should probably stop. There is nothing wrong with that. Maybe our present discourse norms have convinced you that you must have a Take on every topic, but our present discourse norms are wrong. However, if you are going to engage with this topic, as you have been choosing to do by sending me angry anons every time I reblog a post about indigenous issues, I think that frankly you have a responsibility to tolerate some rhetorical discomfort.

having very tangled Haven-adjacent thoughts about how we view victims/survivors and how like ok, so you know how being too masc is penalized in women but so is too femme? Like yes women in media who are hyper-feminine in a specific way are portrayed as bimbos and ditzes and there to be shown up by the Cool Girl. . .but the Cool Girl isn’t butch either. She’s sexy-looking and her clothes are def designed to show that, but in a “cool” and “tough” way that make it look like gosh she didn’t INTEND that, she doesn’t ever wear makeup yet her makeup is always perfect even in the most extreme situations, she eats like a construction worker and doesn’t care about her weight but is always going to have a super taut toned skinny body no matter what that is going to be displayed sooner or later, etc. She’s frankly WAY more of an impossible standard than just wearing dresses and makeup, while also being attractive and acceptable to straight male audiences; all her “tomboyishness” is specifically calculated for the male gaze. Masc and/or butch and/or gnc are in no way being elevated above conventionally feminine women here, NEITHER can be this because it requires not making an effort at conventional femininity while also reaping all its benefits without any of the penalization. That’s not a possibility in the real world. And I feel like the way media and by extension a lot of people view victims/survivors and their portrayal like that, like you have to hit this impossible sweet spot. I have A Lot of Feelings about how survivors are expected to Be A Certain Way to be worthy of sympathy and compassion, to be delicate traumatized flowers who are just sad in a fragile beautiful way, or, if they do lash out, it’s never at the wrong people or someone undeserving, and if you deviate from this you’re As Bad As Your Abuser. It’s also why, while I absolutely have so much love for very kind and soft pacifistic characters like Haven, I am very very dubious about posts praising people for being soft despite hardship or trauma and how strong and good that makes you because like. . .what does that say about people who aren’t still soft and kind and sweet? Are they bad? Weak? And why does a trait need to be labeled as “strong” to be worthy? I hate that “we have to call this STRONG” mentality, instead of just questioning why only strong traits are considered good. But back to my original point, I don’t think these posts MEAN to put down one kind of person at the expense of the other, and some DON’T because they word it right, but many don’t word it right and it comes off as “good job not being like THOSE PEOPLE” BUT AT THE SAME TIME I feel like you’re also penalized in a different way if you’re too passive or soft. If you aren’t seen as angry enough, or fighting back enough. I see a real strain of Not Like Other Girls in a lot of fiction that deals with trauma and abuse, in which our lead is Special because she always fights back every time and is therefore Better than the girls who just give up and accept it, because how dare they try to avoid being hurt even worse I guess. And maybe it’s just because I’m in a superhero fandom, but the “healing” journey for so many ---every, even--- abused traumatized figure inevitably involves them inflicting violence on others. Typically the people who abused them and then ever bad guys too, and I am not saying that’s a bad thing AT ALL, but it seems like it’s the only acceptable narrative. There’s a lot of “I am going to show I am NOT just a weapon by. . .killing a lot of people!” and not any “I am going to show I am not a weapon by living a peaceful life apart from all this shit and taking care of myself” and like I get that’s not what people are looking for in the superhero genre so I should maybe just look into other genres instead of complaining but I just feel like it speaks to this mindset that’s very entangled with Western toxic masculinity values---regardless of the gender of the person---about adversity making you strong (bc the torture and abuse and trauma is ALWAYS what MADE this person so cool and deadly regardless of how bad it’s portrayed) and dominating over all your enemies in the end and THAT being what “fixes” you so like, you can’t be too angry and bitter and definitely not to the wrong people, your trauma can’t be an inconvenience, but also if you’re NOT angry enough in a very specifically Badass way you’re not worthy of stories, just contempt, and it just feels like the “you should have fought back more” mentality under it all. You even see it in how some people will talk about how superior “survivor” is to “victim” because victims are so gross and sad and piteous and contemptible, like being a victim is the most disgusting thing in the world and it just feels like this very toxic mindset. . .whereas Survivor implies you’re a total badass (and also conveniently does not imply a perpetrator as the term “victim” does) and is much more in line with American cultural values

and I am NOT saying survivor is a bad term or should not be used for people who prefer it but I am saying the contempt and disgust with how many people will talk about victim, victimhood, how people use negative terms like playing the victim, perpetual victim, and so on, how characters like Cinderella are criticized for not standing up to her stepmother or not running away and how DARE she need outside help to save her, it reminds me of the Cool Girl issue. You can’t be too soft, you can’t be too hard. You can’t be traumatized in ugly aggressive ways, but if you’re not aggressive ENOUGH you’re stigmatized too as a worthless doormat who isn’t worthy of stories or representation and you’re A Bad Example. You have to be Black Widows and Wolverines, a Cool Badass Survivor whose trauma just makes them Cool and Badass and they kill a lot of people but it’s all BAD people and I also understand the value in that kind of fantasy but like idk I’m just kinda tired of these impossible dichotomies, and it came to mind because so many musings/quotes/inspiration posts I see just Don’t Work for Haven, because she’s not a “you’re so strong for being soft” person but she’s also not a “I am the weapon you made me and now I will turn against you, I am no mother I am no bride I am KING, some girls have sharp teeth, etc” either. Like I do think her power is in being soft and kind but also like. . .not in the very simplistic way these posts seem to imply? and like I said they also tend to imply NOT being that way is bad, in the same way that the opposite kind of posts tend to imply NOT being angry and hard is bad. . .and also maybe I just overthink everything and am nuts.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force #60: “Hand Banana” | October 29, 2006 – 10:30PM | S05E05

Meatwad wants a dog and of course he is a piece of shit who refuses to adopt a pit bull from a kill shelter, so he resorts to using Frylock's dog-making kit/computer program and Carl's pool, which is converted into some kind of science-fiction vat. The only thing you need to supply for the kit to work is som DNA. Shake winds up being the one to supply the DNA after he absent-mindedly dips his hand into the concoction to have a nice splash. The result: a friendly little critter that looks like Shake's yellow hand. Wait, I assumed he wore gloves? Well, in this episode that's his skin, I guess. Don't have a cow, Homer.

The dog is a dream pet for the Aqua Teens; in fact he is a world-class pastry chef. Unfortunately for Carl he mindmelds with him, turning him into a Son-of-Sam. The dog, named Hand Banana by Meatwad, begins threatening Carl in somewhat vague ways. Then he rapes Carl. Multiple times.

Okay, so obviously there is a type of retard who would like to condemn this episode for promoting rape culture (remember when everyone said “rape culture”? Now I'm the one that says it! :D) and there's also a type of retard who would like to specifically tout this episode as being the best one ever because they can't handle a world that no longer directly reflects their values of being able to laugh at horrific sexual crimes so they make a point to like stuff with rape jokes on purpose. I, an extremely reasonable person who never uses slurs like “retard” unless I'm being toxically ironic on tumblr, am here to weigh in with the exact correct opinion: this episode is extremely funny.

Look, I'll get sincere for a minute: I'm not a fan of political laughter. If you don't know what I mean (because it's a term I am pretty sure only I have ever used), think about an obnoxious male-feminist type laughing extra hard at an objectively tepid female stand-up at an open mic. I'm not calling all women who do stand-up bad! I'm just saying, imagine one that isn't actually that good but is getting over-supportive laughter because she's the only woman whose gone up in the last hour (or she's actually great but this particular set is bad, happy now?).

Now imagine your redneck uncle, telling his friend a racist joke that you've personally overheard him tell this same person about a dozen times. And yet, he exclaims with laughter as if it's the first time he's heard it, even though jokes are supposed to have diminishing returns. You get the sense he's laughing because the joke flatters him, propping him up as a straight white man who deserves to be celebrated for being exactly that. The racist joke makes him feel superior or at the very least normal. So he laughs not because it’s funny, but because it’s “true”. At least, he hopes it’s true.

Is the supportive male feminist who is over-laughing at the heavily-accented Indian woman telling nothing but shitty puns less evil than the two yokels telling a joke that was designed to make non-whites feel less-than-human? Well, that depends. There aren't any black people at your redneck uncle's BBQ and there was never going to be weather he tells that joke or not. The male feminist at the open mic has a few beers in him, Gonorrhea, and is planning to try and have unprotected sex with the female comic after the show. Harmless?

So please don't mistake me for some FREAKING RIGHT-WING MAGA CHUD for liking this episode. I've acknowledged that it's impossible to enjoy things in a total vacuum, and I've observed something sorta disturbing about myself: I am a bit of a reactionary contrarian. If I were to find a posting about this episode that I wrote right after this aired, I would bet that somewhere in there I'd complain about how there's too many rape jokes in comedy. Does this make me a hypocrite? Eh. Maybe. But it is absolutely worth noting something about the comedy landscape at the time: to mainstream audiences in 2006 rape jokes were seen as merely “acceptably edgy”. Not saying everyone loved them; I'm just saying it was like making fun of religion. You could get away with it only at the expense of a few zealots. With rape jokes now, that it just isn’t the case. (to be clear: I think this is a good thing. But I see no need to pretend I don’t laugh at problematic stuff a lot of the time).

You know who RedLetterMedia are? Youtube Channel by a bunch of Midwestern slobs who manage to put a phenomenal amount of production value in their content which is mostly them extemporaneously critiquing movies? I like them. They're funny and pleasant to listen to. I put them on a lot when I just want noise to fill my head, you know? There's a phrase for this, and I've seen it applied to other shows (mostly podcasts) of this ilk: “friendship simulator”. Well, they tend to not take too much flack for their content even though they can, ON OCCASION, exhibit the insensitive sense of humor that Gen-X white dudes did well for decades and now get yelled at for. It's not, by any means, the main drum they beat, but if you watch them drunkenly mock bad movies on Best of the Worst sometimes some slightly ugly humor comes out and I can imagine them not being for everyone. It's fine. Society is progressing. It's good. I don't care if people hate the stuff I love. What else is new?

Anyway, they recently got a tiny amount flack (most of it was just ribbing from fans) because they were among the most-subscribed sub-reddits among those subscribed to the incel sub-reddit! Fans of RLM just laughed about it and made jokes. I, an appreciator of them, understood that they were just MASSIVELY POPULAR and the overlap between them and incels was probably not a coincidence per se, but a function of the same reason I enjoy them: it's just nice to hear other people who are roughly your demo make each other laugh and have healthy camaraderie in a world where that seems to be harder and harder to come by. In fact, I can attest that their following seems to be all over the map politically generally speaking. I’ve been surprised to find out certain people I knew were fans that I’d expect to take a moral stand against them for being sporadically problematic.

People who had no context started approaching their content from a “I've never heard of these guys they must be bad” position and started digging into their channel, slightly puzzled. I made a joke (or maybe not even) about it on twitter, and some rando replied to me saying something like “gee those rape jokes in the Mr. Plinkett Reviews sure feel different now that we know who their fans are, huh?” I didn't want to fight with this probably-well-meaning person on twitter, so I simply didn't respond, which is a thing you can totally do.

The Mr. Plinkett Review in question was the thing that made them famous. It was a long-form video essay that explains in detail why the Star Wars film The Phantom Menace could be considered objectively terrible. While the points being made were genuine, the humor of the video came from the Mr. Plinkett character; a deranged elderly man who has an unhealthy obsession with the Star Wars prequels, and whose disgusting home life we see little glimpses of. When he wants to show us some kind of Phantom Menace promotional item to drive home some point about consumerism, we see that he has a kidnapped prostitute tied up in his basement, begging to be let go. Mr. Plinkett reviewed the other Star Wars prequels and her kidnapping becomes part of a story arc. That was 2009, a few years after this. I guess I'm just illustrating how much of a thing it was to casually include male-on-female sexual abuse as a dark punchline.

I should probably come up with more examples instead of over-explaining that last one. But I promise if you examined a lot of alternative comedy from 2005-2010 you’d find a lot of rape jokes. I guess my point is: everyone was doing it. Now barely anyone is doing it. I guess that's a good thing. But will I laugh? Sometimes. Will god look upon me and smile? Yes. God is a man. And he's old as fuck. He probably thinks rape is hilarious.

MAIL BAG:

Honestly I don't care whose harp strings he plucks in his offtime, as long as Andy Samberg keeps bringing the funny he's alright with me.

MESSAGE TO ANDY AND ANDY ALONE: Bring on the funny! We can’t wait to laugh!

‘American Fiction’ Review

Below is my short little review of ‘American Fiction’! Please go see it if you can! Beautiful movie and fantastic cast! Since I’ve had some free time over the past few weeks I’ve been going to the movies a lot lol. Maybe I’ll post a review of ‘Poor Things’ and other films I’ve seen soon!

Fed up with the consumption of traumatic Black tropes by troves of white audiences, Thelonius “Monk” Ellison tries to highlight its hypocrisy by writing a Black trope story of his own. He dons a pseudonym, hunkers down, and completes ‘My Pafology’ (later changed to ‘Fuck’). What was created to be a satirical fuck you ends up becoming a best seller.

‘American Fiction’ beautifully balances satire and reality! It also did a great job bouncing between Monk’s family and career driven narratives. It really made me rethink what I consider to be an “accurate” Black narrative. Can we consider these traumatic stories of Black life (death, drugs, and destruction) pushed in creative media as misrepresenting us as Black people OR can we accept them as part of our reality? The film really highlights the power of white guilt and how we as Black Americans (and more specifically Black authors/creators/scholars) cater to that market. I see the positives and negatives of that decision. This film low key could be an autobiography of mine (and other Black people that exist in white spaces) but I think that’s exactly the point! We need more satirical stories like ‘American Fiction’!

Fantastic performances by Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, and the rest of the cast! Jeffrey Wright seriously needs to do more comedies! He was fantastic in this film and made the life and characterization of Monk so believable. Every character was beautiful and at least partially developed. Like seriously everyone in this film was sexy af lol! The writing was full of life and clearly thought out. Extremely quick-witted and quotable. The entire audience laughed out loud throughout the entire film! For this being his first film- writer and director Cord Jefferson made hilarious and smart decisions in how the characters, stories, and cinematography developed throughout. I will say it was a really weird experience to see this film with a majority white audience. Were they in on the jokes being made at their expense? At times I literally started laughing about the nuances they probably missed during our shared viewing.

I guess the only qualm I have is about its meta-ish ending. I’m still debating if I enjoyed the narrative decisions made in the last 10 mins of the film. I guess that’s the whole point!

Such a fun watch! I really enjoyed this film and it gave me a lot to think about. Absolutely hilarious and beautiful and full of life! I’ll be reading ‘Erasure’ (the book the film is based on) over the next few days and thinking more about this! A wonderful watch for smart sexy viewers like me lol. Please go see it if you have the chance!!

4.5/5- I don’t like doing 5 star ratings by why not!

race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.  

You probably know this by now, I don't know if you keep up with Whumptober, but one of the prompts this year includes "blindness". I'm not blind but based on your posts about writing blind characters, and based on how I would feel if one of my disabilities were used as a whump prompt, I'm not super comfortable with it. I was wondering what your thoughts are on blindness being a Whumptober prompt.

(unironically and with feeling) thanks, I hate it.

Yes, I’m familiar with Whumptober, but I’ve never participated myself and I haven’t seen this year’s prompts.

Edit: I later did see the prompts and check out the blog. I think it's a good set of prompts and I look forward to all the promising content, especially since some of my favorite tropes are there. To be clear before you read this, I have no problem with Whumptober2021 or whump in general. This is not the first time blindness has been included for a list of whump prompts, and it won't be the last.

This post directed at the concept of "blindness" as a whump prompt and why I think it's a bad idea. The intended audience is individual writers thinking about future projects.

The timing of this is almost too perfect because I read a fanfic earlier this week that would meet that prompt exactly. Tags included whump, blindness, and angst with a happy ending. Now whump, hurt/comfort, and angst with a happy ending are tags I enjoy reading, but blindness as whump has a specific message to it.

To explain that message, I want to discuss what whump is. Many readers are already familiar with the genre, but I think taking the specific definitions and picking apart what it means and what expectations we carry when reading whump fanfiction

Urban Dictionary defines it as: taking a character and putting them through physical and/or mental torment and is typically followed by the same character being treated for their traumas. To indicate the characters place in the situation they’d typically be called a whumpee (the character being hurt/comforted), the whumper (the character that causes harm and trauma), and the caretaker (the character designated the helping/healing/comforting the whumpee).

Fanlore has a page for whump that explains it in depth, including where it started in fanfiction, examples of whump, and even a list of “popular targets” in different fandoms. (Warning: you might find yourself called out on the popular targets list)

“The term whump (or whumping) generally refers to a form of Hurt/Comfort that is heavy on the hurt and is often found in gen stories. The exact definition varies and has evolved over time. Essentially, whump involves taking a canon character, and placing them in physically painful or psychologically-damaging scenarios. Often this character is a fan favorite…”

To add to that, I think an important detail is the distinction Fanlore makes between hurt/comfort and whump:

“While some communities and fandoms may use whump as a synonym for hurt/comfort, there is still a recognition that whump refers to darker and more extreme scenarios. And there are still whump fics been written that have very little, or no comfort at the end of the story.”

The big appeal of hurt/comfort is getting to both explore the darker sides of pain and then experience the catharsis of being taken care of, of being supported by your loved ones as you recover from the trauma. The character is the proxy for experiencing those highs and lows while you yourself are safe at home.

I personally don’t read much/any whump without some h/c involved, but I’m happy there are stories out there for people who do enjoy it. I’m not here to judge what you like reading or what you do to your characters.

What I want is to express how blindness, my disability, used as a whump prompt personally makes me feel and what message it sends to me, to others, and how that message affects my daily life.

Whump undeniably involves watching a character suffer through something painful and traumatic.

My use of the word “suffer” is what I want you to focus on.

Vision loss can be painful and traumatic. I personally developed an anxiety disorder in response to vision loss. Others experience depression. For some it might result in relapsing into old, maladaptive coping mechanisms like drug use, self harm, or eating disorders.

A big part of my anxiety was how people reacted to my vision loss. It was a cause of their stress. They were worried because they genuinely believed I would never live a happy life without normal vision, and that my life would only be struggle and pain.

I recently saw an old friend who hadn’t heard about my vision loss. The conversation was awkward, but the worst part was how they reacted as though I had experienced an insurmountable tragedy. And even when I assured them I’m happy with my life, they clearly didn’t believe me. They acted like I was just lying or in denial.

I love that people want to empathize with my situation and ask themselves what they would do in my situation, but I hate when the conclusion they come to is something along the lines of “I could never do that, I’d be too miserable thinking about everything I lost, I’d never be able to do anything I enjoyed ever again.” But I did go blind. And I’m not miserable, I’m actually happy with the direction my life is going, and I still enjoy my hobbies, even if I engage with them differently.

I’m not suffering. My life didn’t end with vision loss. It’s not ruined, broken, or worthless.

I read a fanfic that was tagged with whump, blindness, and angst with a happy ending. A general synopsis of the plot: the whumpee had gone blind due to a curse. It was true love’s kiss that broke the curse. Even from the summary I knew it was going to end with whumpee being cured somehow and that I’d leave that fanfic vaguely dissatisfied no matter how good the rest of the fanfic was.

I can say this for the fanfic: the whumpee had already accepted that they would likely be blind for the rest of their life, but everyone around them was treating it as a tragedy that needed to be fixed, working tirelessly for a cure despite the whumpee’s protests that they didn’t have to.

It actually hit home to my personal experience.

I still left it dissatisfied with the ending. I might love curse fics in that fandom, and I love the “true love’s kiss” trope, but it wasn’t enough to distract me from the fact that: an actual person out in the world thought the best happy ending, maybe the only happy ending, would be if the character got their sight back.

(note: I clicked kudos and exited out of the story's page because no fanfic writer deserves unsolicited critique or hate, especially for content I consumed for free and at my own volition.)

Why read a story I knew would disappoint me?

Because blindness representation is so damn rare that I feel like I’m wandering in a desert, dying from thirst and desperate for that oasis. But sometimes that oasis is a mirage and the author is unintentionally telling you that your life is actually awful and you’ll never be fully happy like this. And that is a shit mentality to walk through life with.

I don’t appreciate blindness being a whump plot. I hate it. Hundreds (thousands?) of fanfictions featuring blind characters are about to enter the internet and the overall message is going to be “You poor thing! You must be in so much pain, you must be miserable! Who’s going to save you? Who’s going to comfort you? Wouldn’t it be terrible if there was no one in your life to take care of you? You poor helpless thing!”

And I feel objectified. I feel trivialized. The mirage in the desert is going to become a starch, empty room filled with dozens of water bottles, almost all of them poisoned. My representation is going to hurt me personally, and it’s going to reinforce that idea strangers have about how awful my life must be.

(I returned to school this past month, and every day I’m hesitant to tell someone I’m visually impaired because I don’t want to be treated differently. If I’ve managed to pass as sighted this whole time and then suddenly reveal “oh yeah, I’m visually impaired” I feel this instant silence, this pause of awkwardness as people suddenly question how they’re supposed to treat me. They treated me like a person, and now I’m something strange and unfamiliar.)

I’ve worked so hard to improve representation for blind people, to give internet strangers the exposure to a blind person they need to normalize blindness because I hope that if they’re ever so lucky as to meet a blind person, they’ll treat that person with respect. That hope that another person in the blind community will find a friend they feel comfortable and accepted with. I hope that I’ll meet people who accept my blindness as just another aspect of me (like being bisexual or gender fluid or a writer or a cat lover).

Please don’t turn me and my community into a caricature. Don’t erase everything I’ve worked for with this blog.

To be clear, this is not just me saying "I hate the cure trope" again. This is me saying "the purpose of whump is to painfully hurt your favorite character, and I hate that your idea of pain and suffering is my daily (wonderful) life."

/rp

Before I get into it, I want to state that is EXPLICITLY an analysis of the Characters, and is not intended to touch on how the cc’s played them in a meta sense unless specifically stated otherwise.

Also, this is technically a part two to my other post, which took a more in depth look at Techno and Phil’s reactions to Tommy’s death. It’s not necessary when reading this post, but I don’t address their reactions here.

So. The question must be asked.

Are we [the Syndicate] the baddies?

Yes.

The End.

 Why are the Syndicate the baddies?

They got damn logo is a wither skull.

The End.

That's not how this works.

Yeah, yeah. You’re right.

The Syndicate's goals as an organization are not inherently bad. They seem to have good intentions behind them, and the focus on the freedom of it's individual group members is important to remember when talking about it; It is not a government. There is no hierarchical power system. No one is forced to do anything against their will, or surrender any of their rights or power to remain a member. It is not a government.

I also want to address Techno and Phil backing Ranboo into a corner – I see them getting a lot of flack for this, but I personally do not think it is relevant to the greater discussion, or necessarily representative of any contradictions within the organization. It was clearly played for laughs, and after they back off they clarify to Ranboo that they won't force him. Then later when Phil and Ranboo are alone, Ranboo feels safe enough to express that he felt like he was pressured into it, and Phil assures him he is allowed to leave whenever he wants; He is not being forced to do anything, and he is not being coerced or blackmailed.

None of the Syndicate members have done any wrongs against each other in the context of the Syndicate, OR gone against any of the Syndicate's core principles.

That, said, holy shit are they the baddies.

Listen, there's trying to telegraph a meaning or message to the audience and then there's having your logo be wither skulls on blackstone. That is straight out of the skit I keep referencing, seriously.

Okay, but, they laughed at it! It was played as a joke, just like the Ranboo thing!

The Ranboo thing was improv, the Syndicate's headquarters were planned – the artistic choices that they made reflect on what role they want the build and the organization inhabiting it to play in the future storylines.

Wither Skulls kind of have some CONNOTATIONS. Techno is an English major, I don't think he chose the most threatening imagery possible on accident, and then joked about the way people would interpret it just to stir the pot. This reads as hugely intentional.

And beyond that, the jokes they make during this part aren't “haha yeah, we look bad but we're actually good!” they're “you can tell by looking at these that we're the good guys wink wink, this is good guy stuff right here :)” It is a joke about how they are definitely not the good guys. This isn't even a case of unreliable narrators, this is one step down from flat out saying the meta intent.

But okay, I hear you, I'm talking about things that haven't happened yet. The Syndicate hasn't used any Withers, they could be an aesthetic choice.  Lets look at what they do in practice.

So, they barge into private property, assess Snowchester's right to continue existing based entirely on their own ideals of what Freedom is, and then only once Tubbo assures them that they have no standing leader do they grant the place their approval to, and I gotta stress this part, continue existing.

 In my Quackity meta, I already talked about how Government in the context of a M1necraft RP cannot be compared to IRL Governments on a one-to-one scale. They don't serve the same purposes or have the same type of power. What I didn't talk about was Agency in the context of m1necraft governments.

In an irl government, if you are born into one, you can't really leave without committing a massive overhaul on your life, which can be expensive and difficult, if not impossible for many people. Even in a “benevolent” government, the simple physicality of where you were born can prevent you from leaving it easily.

The same hurdles do not exist in the Dream SMP. People who join M1necraft governments choose to. They want to, either at the beginning when they form one, or later on when they join up. So far, no Government has just Sprung Up and forced the current residents of an area to become dependent on them, except maybe the Eggpire, who's status as a government is... shakey.

And even when people want to leave or separate from the government, they have been historically able to do so without any trouble or any effort from said governments to stop them. Jack Manifold emancipated from Manberg. Fundy and Quackity both left to start new nations. In all cases they were allowed to do so without any attempts on the part of the governments to stop them, either through force, or institutions preventing them from doing so.

The most anyone has lost when leaving a government is their house, which is still usually their property anyway, and is something that is easily rebuilt elsewhere and is inconvenient to move anyway.

The only exceptions to this might be Schlatt exiling Wilbur and Tommy - but even then, they weren’t trying to leave, they were trying to get back in, and of course the original L’manberg revolution, where Dream attempted to force L’manberg back into the Dream SMP, which wasn’t even a government at that point in time.

I don’t consider Phil’s house arrest an example of a government forcing someone to stay a citizen - that was treated less as a matter of a citizen wanting to leave the country and more as a threat to national security. Still pretty fucked up, but it’s a different issue.

What I'm saying is, If Tubbo wants to create a government out in the middle of nowhere, threatening no one, forcing no one to join either through force or desperation, and allowing people to join willingly because they want to, then he should be allowed to do that.

The Irony of the Syndicate, a group of people consisting of some of the richest, strongest people on the server, going around and enforcing 'Freedom' that entails no one person having more power than any other, is absurd. 

It shows an extreme lack of self-awareness and/or self-righteousness, as they seem to think that they deserve to be the ones who decide what constitutes a government.

Snowchester is a small independent nation - they shouldn’t have to live in fear of being obliterated if they don’t walk on eggshells to meet an arbitrary standard decided by people who’s only authority on the matter COMES FROM THEIR PERSONAL POWER. No one elected them! No one chose them! They were not “approved” by the server at large to enact this kind of law.

The Syndicate are not a government, but they are an unsupervised power structure exerting their ideals on a land that did not ask for them. Like, These people have invented an actual Authoritarian-Anarchist faction. How the hell did they manage this?????

Back on topic.

Tubbo shows them the crater left by his nukes. The reaction is oddly positive – the nukes are fine by the morals of the Syndicate, apparently. I'd argue that they come across as more impressed than anything else; they seem to respect Tubbo for having gotten ahold of “real” power.

(There's a few good memes out there about “We can excuse nuclear weaponry, but we draw the line at Government!”)

So. By the Syndicate's standards: A single person or group of acceptably equal persons with weapons of mass-destruction are only worth “keeping an eye on” because they might provoke other people.

Like, I consider Project Dreamcatcher to be one of, if not the most morally ambiguous thing Tubbo has ever done, largely because it was all on his own initiative. He holds some culpability for The Butcher Army and Phil's house arrest, but they weren't his ideas and he was mostly following Quackity at that point.

And Phil tells Tubbo, IMMEDIATELY AFTER SEEING THE NUCLEAR CRATER:

“Looks like you've reformed a little bit Tubbo, I'm proud.”

And it's fine. Crimes against nature? Fine. A sign of healing in fact!! Tubbo is having a sweeeelll time and he definitely didn't make these nukes specifically in fear of being attacked by these exact people! Tubbo is doing great. Tubbo is doing fine. Tubbo. is. FINE.

Anyway.

I don't think this presentation of the Syndicate was an accident. Looking at the greater lore of SMP right now, after the Egg is done, their list of enemies is slim, and considering that they seem solely invested in taking down governments, that leaves maybe Snowchester, Kinoko Kingdom, and Eret and the greater Dream SMP.

Snowchester has not been shown to be corrupt, evil, or have any intent to go down that route. The most ambiguous thing they've done is, again, is the nukes. Other than that, it's pretty much your average cottagecore snow village.

Kinoko is presented in an even more morally 'good' light, Karl having founded it specifically for his Time-travel library purposes, which are currently being treated by the narrative as a selfless act, if not downright heroic.

Eret is also a fairly 'good' aligned character atm. He's been on that redemption grind since the og betrayal, and doesn't seem keen on backtracking. He's actively tried to leverage his position as king to make things better, and hasn't been quiet about that. He was also 'validated' by Tommy*, a character who has been described both by his allies and enemies as “the hero,” so take that as you will.

What I'm getting at is, all of the current potential enemies for the Syndicate aside from the Egg, are currently being cast as 'good,' and if they were to be attacked, they would undoubtedly have the moral high-ground, unless something drastically changed.

The only potential shakeups I can think of is are a Dream escape and/or a Wilbur revival, both of which could draw the Syndicate's attention and ire, depending on how things go. That said, it's just as likely that either or both of them would join the Syndicate – Dream still has that favor, and Phil and Techno both seemed to think Wilbur would've agreed with their blowing up L'manberg.

Both of those characters are currently **villains – the fact that they're both prime candidates for the Syndicate is a huge indication of the direction it's going to go as the plot moves forward.

((*I know some people are gonna come at me for painting Tommy as the “deciding factor” of what is morally good, so lemme just stop you there. I'm not talking about Tommy somehow having the 'right' to decide who is and isn't good, and definitely not the right to decide who should and shouldn't be king. I'm saying that Tommy, a character who the narrative treats as, if not a good person, then a person who is trying to be good, was in support of Eret, a character who has also been trying to be good.

Eret doesn't gain the moral highground because Tommy said so, he gets it because a character who the narrative treats as trying to do better, acknowledged Eret's earnest attempts at doing the same.

**I'm referring to Wilbur here as a villain because Tommy seemed convinced he would be if he were to be brought back. There is always the possibility that he's wrong.))

So, to summarize this: I read the Syndicate as being intentionally positioned as future antagonists, if not outright villains of a future arc. They are NOT a Government but their goals are contradictory with their means, and it is important to keep in mind that they plan to enforce their own brand of freedom on people who did not grant them either the authority or permission to do so.

So, uh. Can you tell I loved these streams? They were seriously so good. I kept switching between Ranboo and Techno's POV's trying to keep up with everything. I still have to watch Niki's!

All in all, I'm super, super excited for whats coming next, egg stuff, Syndicate stuff, Tommy stuff, all of it.

Picture is unrelated to the topic of this post and is only here to slightly undercut the seriousness. Do not worry about liking/reblogging/whatever this post. While I personal think it's good general advice, it is intended for a very specific audience.

Friends. Family. Enemies. Lovers, perhaps? Let's sit down and have a chat about the birds and the bees. Or something related to it. We'll see.

I will preface this by saying that nobody is specifically in trouble for any causes I bring up in this post, because it's a freaky little murky area in the server rules which may not be immediately intuitive. But moving forward, please consider it to be an official ruling. I know I will! I’m updating the rules to cover it!

There's a lot of internet talk about why kink shaming is bad. But let's summarize: People have very little to (significantly more often) no control over their kinks. People like what they like. It causes some fairly serious anguish to be told that something you cannot control makes you a bad person. Remember, kinks are not necessarily behaviors. They are a part of who you are.

And yes, there are some kinks that should never be acted upon and for that reason it might be good to see a therapist about them. As adults we all know what they are and why they are that way. If you need them spelled out for you, you really shouldn't be here.

Therefore, don't shame someone for their kinks. It makes you a shitty person.

With that as our background, we gotta talk about being horny on main with our kinks, and how it has potential to be a problem.

So, we shall first reiterate the great Rule 8. Being an NSFW, adult, smut-centric server, with certain specific exceptions, we talk sex. We talk kinks. Dog-gonnit, we be some lusty folks around these parts. And we're mature enough to know when to walk away from a conversation when it's within the rules but we're not necessarily comfortable with it on a personal level.

What this does not mean is that it's cool to hijack someone else's conversation to inject your kink into it and expect everyone else involved to be chill with or otherwise suddenly be a fan of your kink. It is not someone else's responsibility to walk away from a conversation they're uncomfortable with because you inserted yourself and made it so. That is one of the many reasons that Rules 3 and 4 exist.

If you see someone talking about tentacle sex and you burst in to say, "Excuse me yall, but I'm SUPER into leather," then when they say, "Um, this wasn't a convo about leather," they are not kink shaming you. They are subtly trying to tell you that you're being an ass. And you are. You are absolutely welcome to discuss your leather fetish, but maybe try letting the tentacle people talk about tentacles, and take your leather fetish to another thread/channel.

Now, that is in fact a general statement. If you feel that it's applicable to you no matter what kink you've done it with, then thank you for being self-aware and mature about it. But I'm gonna bring up a very, very specific example now, and it's going to look like I'm calling out a few individuals. That would not be incorrect, but try to take it in the same mature stride that the leather fetish tentacle-hater just did.

Consent.

We are all extremely aware of the importance of consent. It is one of those things where, if you don't agree on its importance or understand its significance, you should really not be here.

At least, that is the case with real life. In the context of fantasy, however, consent is effectively just another kink. One might get off on the explicit mention of consent while another might not. We should treat it as such in our conversations about fantasy. If the tentacle people and the leather people are discussing the supple tenderness of tentacles made of leather, that is not the time to say, "Excuse me yall, but I'm SUPER into consent." It kind of makes you the ass.

I know. I repeated myself. But there is another layer to this "consent is a kink" cake, and this layer is gray. Like, there's a vanilla layer and a chocolate layer, but this layer definitely isn't one of those, nor is it mint or red velvet, and we're gonna have to taste it to figure this shit out.

Certain kinks come with moral bloatware, which we have already touched on. The most relevant example here would be a noncon kink. If someone's got a noncon kink (and they are a reasonable person, such as we would like to think we have on this server), they are no doubt painfully aware of the fact that this kink, developed likely through no intentional fault of their own, is an obviously morally fucked up part of themselves. If you have a consent kink, on the other hand, similarly developed, then you are in a fantastically privileged position.

So, then, interrupting conversations with your consent kink accomplishes more than just making you the ass who injects their kink where people don't necessarily want it. It also serves as a reminder to the interrupted, and anyone else who reads the interruption, that you are better than them. Doesn't even matter what they were talking about previously. They could have been talking about leather tentacles, and your injection of consent chatter could immediately be taken as a comment on it. Are you telling me that leather tentacles are morally wrong? Who the fuck knows? All I know is that I was imagining being caressed by the smooth, lukewarm, flailing touch of an octopus that appreciates a good rawhide when suddenly someone is reminding me to ask for consent.

Heaven forbid noncon is the kink getting interrupted, because injecting a consent kink there is just straight up kink shaming, no ifs ands or buts about it.

But think about it even more critically now. Imagine you're just casually saying, "Damn, I love me some good consent," in public, even where there is no existing conversation. No, you're not interrupting people or directly kink shaming them, but let's take a look at another example.

"Wow. I didn't kill anybody's grandmother today. I'm on a lifelong streak!"

Sound irrelevant? Try again. In real life, nobody in their right mind is going around merking grandmas. And if they don't, you don't fucking question it. Perhaps because the act of merely not committing grandmicide is merely the societal expectation. (At least, it should be. Certainly, there's something to be said for the societal expectation of obtaining consent, but that's a whole different, important conversation. An appropriate place to discuss consent, perhaps?!)

Getting consent for sexual activity shoulddoes not make you special. Much like not murdering someone's grandma, it is merely part of not being a absolute psychopath. So when you, on a regular basis, keep reminding people, without being prompted, that your favorite thing in the world is consent and you would never do anything without consent, it starts to create a weird environment. Are you so desperate for everybody to know you have the moral high ground? Are you making up for something? Maybe I should call my grandma to make sure she's okay.

If someone has a noncon kink, and they are restricting themselves to exploring that kink entirely within the realm of fantasy and stories, but continuing to ask for consent in real life because they recognize its importance, then that makes them... Breaking news. This just in: Just as fucking morally neutral as you.

Now, having gotten all of that out of the way, to tie the knot back around to the original concept of the post: If consent really is your kink (implying that you get your jollies from the act of consenting, and not simply what follows), try to be aware that making a big deal out of that kink in public is a very grey area when it comes to whether or not it is inherently kink shaming others. Somebody reasonable with a noncon kink would certainly recognize your discomfort with their conversation and will likely change the subject out of courtesy, or even avoid talking about it publicly altogether. Maybe try to extend that same courtesy to them.

Anyway, this has gotten much longer than I initially expected, so I'm probably going to put this on tumblr and link to it. But for those in the back who weren't really listening, here's the summary:

Don't kink shame.

Don't force your kinks onto others.

Don't flaunt your moral superiority, especially when it's not really all that superior.

These are now added to the server rules (just Rule 8, even though they could totally be part of Rule 3) and will be enforced as such.

youtuber au hcs [sfw] pt 1

anime: attack on titan

characters: Yelena, Levi, Mikasa

a/n: I love the idea of aot characters being youtubers so I might write a oneshot too…..we’ll see hehe

Yelena:

Didn’t even watch YouTube/twitch before she started streaming, Zeke just begged her to do it so he would have some quote on quote youtube mutuals, whatever that was

Blew up quickly, didn’t understand why because they would just play the game and occasionally make a comment. Quickly understood people were thirsting after her, because she made a comment on how she was 6’7

Now constantly posts thirst traps on her social media, flirts with the audience (Zeke is pressed she got more popular thanks to her height)

“Maybe show your abs and you’ll get more than just me as a viewer” “fuck off”

Gatekeep, Gaslight, Girlboss

Does everything in her power online to remind men she hates them, Did a hot tub stream just to piss men off and had their partner join them (got so many subscribers from it was tempted to do another one)

Plays video games, doesn’t have a specific game just plays mostly first person shooters (like Valorant) and whatever game is trending.

Hates peggle

Loves meeting her fans and their astonished faces when they truly see how tall she is

This woman is addicted to praise and reads every single comment, hate comments do not bother her she’s just too confident to ever care about an anonymous opinion

“If you really have a problem with me, let’s meet I can assure you if we do there will no longer be a problem :) ”

Levi:

Partner suggested they start streaming to develop a hobby and it surprisingly worked

No face streamer, thinks his face and scar would scare viewers away

Channel growth was slow and steady, but what brought them a lot of fans was their voice reveal. The internet really loves deep voices 0-0

His dry humor and sarcasm really appealed to people as well. He doesn’t consider himself funny at all, but his audience loves how unintentionally hilarious he is

“ I’m enjoying the character development in the game so far, but shit would It kill them to include a shower feature, I can see all the shit stains from here I don’t care if it’s the zombie apocalypse or not”

Nocturnal streamer, streaming gave him something to do when his insomnia won’t let him sleep

Extremely aesthetic layout, think study aesthetic, very pretty, dainty and organized

He streams horror games. He plays practically but also has a severe lack of priorities in the game (looking for the windex rather then freeing himself from the prison)

People dislike him due to his vulgar and upfront nature, they deem it rude he doesn’t put on a fake smile and act like the world's butterflies and rainbows

Despite that he’s never been in a scandal, has no racist past and is fairly unproblematic

Is not afraid to call big creators on their predatory/bad behaviors. On the same note cuts anyone off who exhibits that

Mikasa:

Her scarf is an iconic staple to her persona, sells merch of red scarfs

Started because Eren wanted the trio to have an activity they could do as a group

Got “cancelled” because people thought she had a boyfriend, but ended up getting a ton of support from other female streamers and her channel grew

Her partner comes into her streams to bring her hot chocolate, during these breaks she chats with her audience, she calls it chocochat time

Her office/computer space has the ac on at all times so besides the scarf she’s wearing a very comfy onesie, it changes every stream

Doesn’t like getting recognized in public as she is very socially awkward, makes her partner buy her all her necessities, and never leaves the house without them

took a break from her streaming after her partner was revealed and harassed online :(

“If you guys can not respect my partner, who’s apart of me, you do not get me. Learn to behave because she is not going anywhere, while I can go from you guys anytime”

Did not move to LA after fame, doesn’t like the city gives her bad vibes

Does a lot of YouTube collabs and only collabs with female identifying streamers on her YouTube channel. On twitch she collabs with men (Eren and Armin lol) but not on her YouTube channel.

Broke the internet after accidentally posting a bikini pic on her Instagram ( an anomaly to her usual aesthetic posts that don’t include her)

About the Adventure: reboot, the likely reason why it exists, the question of target demographic, and whether I would recommend it or not

I think this reboot has been kind of a strange outlier in terms of Digimon anime in general, in terms of...well, just about everything. I also feel like everything surrounding it has kind of been giving us mixed signals as to what the intent and purpose behind the anime is -- well, besides “cashing in on the Adventure brand”, but looking at it more closely, that might be a bit of an oversimplification.

I’m writing this post because, having seen the entire series to the end for myself and thinking very hard about it and what it was trying to do, I decided to put down my thoughts. This is not meant to be a review of what I think was good and bad, but rather, something that I hope will be helpful to those who might be on the fence about whether they want to watch it or not, or those who don’t want to watch/finish it but are curious about what happened, or those who are curious as to why this reboot even exists in the first place, or even maybe just those who did watch it but are interested in others’ thoughts about it. I'm personally convinced that -- especially in an ever-changing franchise like Digimon -- how much you like a given work is dependent on what your personal tastes are to the very end, and thus it’s helpful to understand what kind of expectations you should go in with if you want to watch something.

With all of this said and done, if you want to go in and best enjoy this series, I think it is best to consider this anime as a distinct Digimon series of its own. The relationship to Adventure is only surface-level, and by that I mean it’s very obvious it’s doing things its own thing deliberately without worrying too much about what prior series did. Of course, I think everyone will have varying feelings about using the Adventure branding for something that really isn't Adventure at all, but we are really talking about an in-name-only affair, and something that’s unabashedly doing whatever it wants. So in other words, if you’re going in expecting Adventure, or anything that really resembles Adventure, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you’re able to approach it like yet another distinct Digimon series, and the other aspects of it fit your fancy, you’ll probably be able to enjoy it much better. And, conversely, I think it’s also important to remember that this series seems to have a writing philosophy with a fundamentally different goal from most Digimon series, and since it’s understandable for most long-time Digimon fans to have their tastes built on those prior series, it’s fine and completely understandable that this reboot may not be your cup of tea, for reasons that probably don’t actually have much to do with whether it’s an Adventure reboot or not.

There are no spoilers in the following post. (Although I use some emphatic language for the duration for it, these are mostly just my personal thoughts and how I see the series and the overall situation.)

On what exact relationship to Adventure this series has, and why it’s an “Adventure reboot”

If you ask why they did an Adventure reboot, the easiest answer to come up with is “Adventure milking, because it’s profitable”, but that’s kind of an oversimplification of what the issue is. This is especially when you take into account a key fact that official has been very well aware of since as early as 2006: most kids are too young to have seen Adventure, and therefore have no reason to care about it.

That’s the thing: Adventure milking only works so well on today’s children, and Toei and Bandai know this. This is also the reason that the franchise started going through a bit of a “split” starting in around 2012 (after Xros Wars finished airing), when the video game branch started making more active attempts to appeal to the adults’ fanbase with Re:Digitize and Adventure PSP. (Although they were technically still “kids’ games”, they were very obviously aimed at the adults’ audience as a primary “target”.) The generation that grew up with Adventure and other classic Digimon anime was getting older and older, and targeting that audience would require tailoring products more specifically to them -- ultimately culminating in 2015 and the solidification of “very obviously primarily for adults” media in the form of both games (Cyber Sleuth and Next Order) and anime (tri.). Note that Appmon ended up getting its own 3DS game, but since it was targeted at kids, it seems to have been developed by a completely different pipeline/branch from the aforementioned adults’ games, so even that had a split.

So if we want to talk about full-on nostalgia pandering, that’s already being done in the adults’ branch. In fact, Appmon development specifically said that they felt free to not really care about the adults’ audience because that was tri.’s job. Of course, the hardcore Digimon adults’ fanbase is still keeping an eye on the kids’ shows, and it’s good to not upset them -- and, besides, even if we’re all suffering under the hell of capitalism, people who work in kids’ shows still tend to be very passionate about the content and messages they’re showing the kids, so they still put an effort into making good content that adults can enjoy too. But, nevertheless, adults are still the “periphery demographic”, and a kids’ show is not a success if the kids (who have not seen and do not care about Adventure) are not watching it or buying the toys. Appmon ended up being extremely well-received by the adults’ fanbase, but that all meant nothing since the kids didn’t get into it.

Most kids are not super incredibly discerning about so-called writing quality (it’s not like they don’t at least unconsciously know when something is good, but they’re much less likely to be bothered by little things adults are often bothered by), so there’s a certain degree you have to get their attention if you want things to catch on with them. Critical reception does matter a lot more when we talk about the adults’ audience, but for the kids, the more important part is how much you’ve managed to engage them and how much fun they’re having (especially in regards to the toyline). Moreover, there’s the problem of “momentum”; Digimon’s sister shows of PreCure, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai have sometimes had really poorly performing shows (critically or financially), but have managed to recover it in successive years to avoid getting cancelled. Digimon never managed to get to that point, with sales nearly dropping to half with Tamers and again with Frontier. So in essence, Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon were all attempts at figuring out what was needed to just get that “kickstart” again -- but things just never lined up for it to work.

So if kids don’t really care about Adventure, why would they do Adventure nostalgia pandering? The answer is one that official has actually openly stated multiple times: they want to have parents watch it together with their children. Both Seki and Kinoshita said this in regards to watching the reaction to Kizuna, and it was also stated outright as a goal for the reboot, but, believe it or not, there’s reports of this having been stated back as early as Savers (followed by an admission that maybe 2006 was a little too early for people who grew up with Adventure to be old enough to have their own kids). So the little nostalgia references in Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon aren't really meant to magically turn the series into Adventure as much as they’re supposed to be flags waved at the parents to get them to pay attention, so that they can introduce their kids to Digimon and watch it together with them, until the kids eventually take an interest on their own and they don’t need to rely on that kind of standby as much. (I say “as much” because of course PreCure, Rider, and Sentai all are still very indulgent in their anniversary references, but they’re not nearly as reliant on it to the point of life-and-death.)

This is also why Kizuna’s existence and release date two months prior to the reboot is a huge factor in this. The reason tri. wouldn’t have done it is that it never actually reached a properly “mainstream” audience. It’s a huge reason I keep emphasizing the fact that tri. and Kizuna are two separate things with completely different production and release formats, because tri. being a limited OVA screening released in six parts over three years means that, although it was a moderate financial success that did better than the franchise’s other niche products, in the end, it didn’t actually reach the “extremely casual” audience very well. We, as the “hardcore Internet fanbase”, all know people who watched all six parts, and the difference between tri. and Kizuna’s release formats doesn’t hit us as hard because of international distribution circumstances, but even on our end, if you talk to your casual friends who barely remember anything about Digimon except what they saw on TV twenty years ago, you will almost never find anyone who got past Part 1, maybe 2 at most. (That’s before we even get into the part where a good chunk of them got turned off at the character design stage for being too different.) Sticking with a full six-part series over three years is a commitment, and if you’re not someone with a certain level of loyalty to the franchise, you aren’t as likely to put aside the time for it!

Kizuna, on the other hand, was a full-on theatrical movie with full marketing campaign that was aimed at that extremely casual mainstream audience, including a lot of people who hadn’t even heard of tri. (due to it being too niche) or hadn’t bothered to commit to watching something so long, and thus managed to “hype up” a lot of adults and get them in a Digimon mood. (Critical reception issues aside, this is also presumably a huge reason Kizuna isn’t all that reliant on tri.’s plot; Adventure and 02 both averaged at around 11% of the country watching it when it first aired, but the number of people who even saw tri. much less know what happened in it is significantly lower, so while you can appeal to a lot of people if you’re just targeting the 11%, you'll lock them out if you’re overly reliant on stuff a lot of them will have never seen in the first place.) We’re talking the kind of super-casual who sees a poster for Kizuna, goes “oh I remember Digimon!”, casually buys a ticket for the movie, likes it because it has characters they remember and the story is feelsy, and then two months later an anime that looks like the Digimon they recognize is on Fuji TV, resulting in them convincing their kid to watch it together with them because they’re in a Digimon mood now, even though the actual contents of the anime are substantially different from the original.

So, looking back at the reboot:

There’s a huge, huge, huge implication that the choice to use Adventure branding was at least partially to get Fuji TV to let them have their old timeslot back. Neither Xros Wars nor Appmon were able to be on that old timeslot, presumably because Fuji TV had serious doubts about their profitability (perhaps after seeing Savers not do very well). This isn’t something that hits as hard for us outside Japan who don’t have to feel the impact of this anyway, but it’s kind of a problem if kids don’t even get the opportunity to watch the show in the first place. While there’s been a general trend of moving to video-on-demand to the point TV ratings don’t really have as much impact as they used to, I mean...it sure beats 6:30 in the morning, goodness. (Note that a big reason PreCure, Rider, and Sentai are able to enjoy the comfortable positions they’re in is that they have a very luxurious 8:30-10 AM Sunday block on TV Asahi dedicated to them.)

Since we’re talking about “the casual mainstream”, this means that this kind of ploy only works with something where a casual person passing by can see names and faces and take an interest. This is why it has to be Adventure, not 02 or Tamers or whatnot; 02 may have had roughly similar TV ratings to Adventure and fairly close sales figures back in 2000, but the actual pop culture notability disparity in this day and age is humongous (think about the difference in pop culture awareness between Butter-Fly and Target). 02, Tamers, and all can do enough to carry “adults’ fandom” products and merch sales at DigiFes, and the adults’ branch of the franchise in general, but appealing to the average adult buying toys for the kids is a huge difference, and a big reason that, even if they’re clearly starting to acknowledge more of the non-Adventure series these days, it’s still hard to believe they’re going to go as far as rebooting anything past Adventure -- or, more accurately, hard to believe they’ll be able to get the same impact using names and faces alone.

This advertising with the Adventure brand goes beyond just the anime -- we’re talking about the toyline that has the involved character faces plastered on them, plus all of the ventures surrounding them that Bandai pretty obviously carefully timed to coincide with this. One particularly big factor is the card game, which is doing really, really well right now, to the point it’s even started gaining an audience among people who weren’t originally Digimon fans. Part of it is because the game’s design is actually very good and newcomer-friendly, but also...nearly every set since the beginning came with reboot-themed Tamer Cards, which means that, yes, those cards with the Adventure names and faces were helping lure people into taking an interest in the game. Right now, the game is doing so well and has gained such a good reputation that it probably doesn’t need that crutch anymore to keep going as long as the game remains well-maintained, but I have no doubt the initial “Adventure” branding was what helped it take off, and its success is most likely a huge pillar sustaining the franchise at the current moment.

Speaking of merch and toys, if you look closely, you might notice that Bandai decided to go much, much more aggressively into the toy market with this venture than they ever did with Savers, Xros Wars, or Appmon (Appmon was probably the most aggressive attempt out of said three). They put out a lot more merch and did a lot more collaborative events to engage the parents and children, and, presumably, the reason they were able to do this was because they were able to push into those outlets with the confidence the Adventure brand would let them be accepted (much like with Fuji TV). Like with the card game, the important part was getting their “foot in the door” so that even if it stopped being Adventure after a fashion, they’d still have all of those merchandising outlets -- after all, one of the first hints we ever got of Ghost Game’s existence was a July product listing for its products replacing the reboot’s in a gachapon set, so we actually have evidence of certain product pipelines being opened by the reboot’s precedent. (The word 後番組 literally means “the TV program that comes after”, so it’s pretty obvious this was intended for Ghost Game; in other words, the reboot’s existence helped ensure there be a “reservation” for this kind of product to be made.)

I think one important thing to keep in mind is that Toei and Bandai have as much of a stake in avoiding rehashing for their kids’ franchises as we do. Even if you look at this from a purely capitalistic perspective, because of how fast the “turnover” is for the kids’ audience, sustaining a franchise for a long time off rehashing the same thing over and over is hard, and even moreso when it involves a twenty-year-old anime that said kids don’t even know or remember. Ask around about popular long-running Japanese kids’ franchises and you’ll notice they practically rely on being able to comfortably change things up every so often, like PreCure/Rider/Sentai shuffling every year, or Yu-Gi-Oh! having a rotation of different series and concepts, or the struggles that franchises that don’t do this have to deal with. And, after all, for all people are cynical about Toei continuing to milk Adventure or any of the other older series at every opportunity, as far as the kids’ branch of the franchise goes, this is only capable of lasting to a certain extent; if they tried keeping this up too long, even the adults and kids would get bored, and there is some point it’ll be easier to try and make products directly targeted at the kids’ audience instead of having to rely on the parents to ease them into it.

So it’s completely understandable that the moment they secured a proper audience with the reboot and finished up their first series with this, they decided to take the risk with Ghost Game right after. And considering all that’s happened, this is still a risk -- they’re changing up a lot (even if not as much as Appmon), and there’s a chance that the audience they’ve gathered is going to shoot down again because they’ve changed so much and they no longer have the Adventure branding as a “crutch” to use -- but they’re taking it anyway instead of going for something at least slightly more conventional.

Which means that, yes, there’s a possibility this will all explode in their face, because the Adventure branding is that huge of a card they’re about to lose. But at the very, very least, Ghost Game is coming in with the “momentum” and advantage that Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon all didn’t have: a brand currently in the stage of recovery, all of the merchandising and collaborative pipelines the reboot and Kizuna opened up, a fairly good timeslot, and a premise somewhat more conventional than Xros Wars and Appmon (I’m saying this as someone who likes both: their marketing definitely did not do them many favors). There are still a lot of risks it’s playing here, and it’s possible it won’t be the end of more Adventure or reboot brand usage to try to keep that momentum up even as we go into Ghost Game, but it’s the first time in a long while we’ve had something to stand on.

Okay, so that’s out of the way. But the end result is that we now have 67 episodes of an Adventure “reboot” that actually doesn’t even resemble Adventure that much at all, which seems to have achieved its goal of flagging down attention so it can finally going back to trying new things. This series exists, we can’t do anything about the fact it exists, the period where its own financial performance actually mattered is coming to an end anyway, and we, as a fanbase of adults hanging out on the Internet keeping up with the franchise as a whole, have to figure out how each of us feels about this. So what of it?

About the contents of the reboot itself

One thing I feel hasn’t been brought up as a potential topic very much (or, at least, not as much as I feel like it probably should be) is that the reboot seems to be actively aimed at a younger target audience than the original Adventure. It hasn’t been stated outright, but we actually have quite a bit of evidence pointing towards this.

Let’s take a moment and discuss what it even means to have a different target audience. When you’re a kid, even one or two years’ difference is a big deal, and while things vary from kid to kid, generally speaking, it helps to have an idea of what your “overall goal” is when targeting a certain age group, since at some point you have to approximate the interests of some thousands of children. Traditionally, Digimon has been aimed at preteens (10-11 year olds); of course, many will testify to having seen the series at a younger age than that, but the "main” intended target demographic was in this arena. (Also, keep in mind that this is an average; a show aimed at 10-11 year olds could be said to be more broadly aimed at 7-13 year olds, whereas one aimed at 7-8 year olds would be more broadly aimed at something like 5-10 year olds.) Let’s talk a bit about what distinguishes children’s shows (especially Japanese kids’ shows) between this “preteen demographic” and things aimed at a much younger audience (which I’ll call “young child demographic”, something like the 7-8 year old arena):

With children who are sufficiently young, it’s much, much more difficult to ensure that a child of that age will be able to consistently watch TV at the same hour every week instead of being subject to more variable schedules, often set by their parents, meaning that it becomes much more difficult to have a series that relies on you having seen almost every episode to know what’s going on. For somewhat older kids, they’re more likely to be able to pick and pursue their own preferences (the usual “got up early every week for this show”). This means that shows targeted at a young child demographic will be more likely to be episodic, or at least not have a complex dramatic narrative that requires following the full story, whereas shows targeted at a preteen audience are more willing to have a dramatic narrative with higher complexity. This does not mean by any shake of the imagination that a narrative is incapable of having any kind of depth or nuance -- the reboot’s timeslot predecessor GeGeGe no Kitaro got glowing reviews all over the board for being an episodic story with tons of depth -- nor that characters can’t slowly develop over the course of the show. But it does raise the bar significantly, especially because it prevents you from making episodes that require you to know what happened in previous ones.

The thing is, the original Adventure and the older Digimon series in general didn’t have to worry about this, and, beyond the fact that their narratives very obviously were not episodic, we actually have concrete evidence of the disparity: Digimon has often been said to be a franchise for “the kids who graduated from (outgrew) a certain other monster series”. Obviously, they’re referring to Pokémon -- which does have the much younger target demographic. That’s why its anime is significantly more episodic and less overall plot-oriented, and Digimon wasn’t entirely meant to be a direct competitor to it; rather, it was hoping to pick up the preteens who’d enjoyed Pokémon at a younger age but were now looking for something more catered to them. This is also why, when Yo-kai Watch came into the game in 2014, that was considered such a huge direct competitor to Pokémon, because it was aiming for that exact same demographic, complete with episodic anime. When Yo-kai Watch moved to its Shadowside branch in 2017, it was specifically because they had concerns about losing audience and wanted to appeal to the kids who had been watching the original series, but since they were preteens now, they adopted a more dramatic and emotionally complex narrative that would appeal to that audience instead. So you can actually see the shift in attempted target demographic in real time.

Adventure through Frontier were aimed at 10-11 year olds, and here’s the interesting part: those series had the protagonists hover around the age of said target audience. We actually have it on record that Frontier had a direct attempt to keep most of the kids as fifth-graders for the sake of appealing to the audience, and so that it would be relatable to them. You can also see this policy of “matching the target audience’s age” in other series at the time; Digimon’s sister series Ojamajo Doremi (also produced by Seki) centered around eight-year-olds. Nor was Seki the only one to do this; stepping outside Toei for a bit, Medabots/Medarot had its protagonist Ikki be ten years old, much like Digimon protagonists, and the narrative was similarly dramatic. The thing is, that’s not how it usually works, and that’s especially not really been how it’s worked for the majority of kids’ series since the mid-2000s. In general, and especially now, it’s usually common to have the protagonists of children’s media be slightly older than the target age group. This has a lot of reasons behind it -- partially because kids are looking to have slightly older characters as a model for what to follow in their immediate future, and partially because “the things you want to teach the kids” are often more realistically reflected if the kids on screen have the right level of independence and capacity for emotional contemplation. Case in point: while everyone agrees the Adventure through Frontier characters are quite relatable, it’s a common criticism that the level of emotional insight sometimes pushes the boundary of what’s actually believable for 10-11 year olds...

...which is presumably why, with the exception of this reboot, every Digimon TV series since, as of this writing, started shifting to middle school students. That doesn’t mean they’re aiming the series at middle school kids now, especially because real-life 13-15 year olds are usually at the stage where they pretend they’ve outgrown kids’ shows (after all, that’s why there’s a whole term for “middle school second year syndrome”), but more that the narrative that they want to tell is best reflected by kids of that age, especially when we’re talking characters meant to represent children from the real world and not near-immortal youkai like Kitaro. In fact, the Appmon staff outright said that Haru was placed in middle school because the story needed that level of independence and emotional sensitivity, which is interesting to consider in light of the fact that Appmon’s emotional drama is basically on par with that of Adventure through Frontier’s. So in other words, the kind of high-level drama endemic to Adventure through Frontier is would actually normally be more on par with what you’d expect for kids of Haru’s age.

But at this point, the franchise is at a point of desperation, and you can see that, as I said earlier, Appmon was blatantly trying to be one of those “have its cake and eat it too” series by having possibly one of the franchise’s most dramatic storylines while also having some of the most unsubtle catchphrases and bright colors it has to offer. Moreover, one thing you might notice if you look closely at Appmon: most of its episodes are self-contained. Only a very small handful of episodes are actively dependent on understanding what happened in prior episodes to understand the conflict going on in the current one -- it’s just very cleverly structured in a way you don’t really notice this as easily. So as you can see, the more desperate the franchise has gotten to get its kids’ audience back, the more it has to be able to grab the younger demographic and not lock them out as much as possible -- which means that it has to do things that the original series didn’t have to worry about at all.

Having seen the reboot myself, I can say that it checks off a lot of what you might expect if you tried to repurpose something based on Adventure (and only vaguely based on it, really) into a more episodic story that doesn’t require you to follow the whole thing, and that it has to break down its story into easy-to-follow bits. In fact, there were times where I actually felt like it gave me the vibes of an educational show that would usually be expected for this demographic, such as repeated use of slogans or fun catchphrases for young kids to join in on. That alone means that even if the “base premise” is similar to the original Adventure, this already necessitates a lot of things that have to be very different, because Adventure really cannot be called episodic no matter how you slice it.

Not only that, even though the target audience consideration has yet to be outright stated, we also have interviews on hand that made it very clear, from the very beginning, what their goals with the reboot were: they wanted the kids to be able to enjoy a story of otherworldly exploration during the pandemic, they wanted cool action sequences, and they wanted to get the adults curious about what might be different from the original. Note that last part: they actively wanted this series to be different from the original, because the differences would engage parents in spotting the differences, and the third episode practically even goes out of its way to lay that message down by taking the kids to a familiar summer camp, only to have it pass without incident and go “ha, you thought, but nope!” Moreover -- this is the key part -- “surprising” people who were coming from the original series was a deliberate goal they had from the very beginning. They’ve stated this outright -- they knew older fans were watching this! They were not remotely shy about stating that they wanted to surprise returning viewers with unexpected things! They even implied that they wanted it to be a fun experience for older watchers to see what was different and what wasn’t -- basically, it’s a new show for their kids who never saw the original Adventure, while the parents are entertained by a very different take on something that seems ostensibly familiar. 

On top of that, the head writer directly cited V-Tamer as an influence -- and if you know anything about V-Tamer, it’s really not that much of a character narrative compared to what we usually know of Digimon anime, and is mostly known for its battle tactics and action sequences (but in manga form). In other words, we have a Digimon anime series that, from day one, was deliberately made to have a writing philosophy and goal that was absolutely not intended to be like Adventure -- or any Digimon TV anime up to this point -- in any way. And that’s a huge shock for us as veterans, who have developed our tastes and expectations based on up to seven series of Digimon that were absolutely not like this at all. But for all it's worth, the circumstances surrounding its production and intent don't seem to quite line up with what the most common accusations against it are:

That it’s a rehash of Adventure: It really isn’t. It’s also blatantly apparent it has no intention of being so. The points that are in common: the character names and rough character designs, some very minimal profile details for said characters, Devimon having any particular foil position to Angemon, the use of Crests to represent personal growth, the premise of being in the Digital World and...that’s it! Once those points are aside, it’s really hard to say that the series resembles Adventure any more than Frontier or Xros Wars resembles Adventure (which are also “trapped in another world” narratives) -- actually, there are times the series resembles those two more than the original Adventure, which many have been quick to point out. The majority of things you can make any kind of comparison to basically drop off by the end of the first quarter or so, and trying to force a correlation is basically just that: you’d have to try forcing the comparison. The plot, writing style, and even the lineup of enemies shown just go in a completely different direction after that. So in the end, the base similarities can be said to be a marketing thing; if I want to criticize this series, I don’t think “lack of creativity” would actually be something I would criticize it for. (Of course, you’re still welcome to not be a huge fan of how they’re still guilty of using Adventure’s name value to market something that is not actually Adventure. We’re all gonna have mixed feelings on that one.)

That they don’t understand or remember Adventure’s appeal: Unlikely. All of the main staff has worked on character-based narratives before, which have been very well-praised while we’re at it. The producer, Sakurada Hiroyuki, was an assistant producer on the original series, and I would like to believe he probably remembers at least a thing or two about what they were doing with the original series...but, also, he’s the producer of Xros Wars, which definitely had its own individuality and style, and, moreover, was more of a character narrative that people generally tend to expect from Digimon anime. (Still a bit unconventional, and it has its own questions of personal taste, but a lot of people have also pointed out that this reboot has a lot in common with Xros Wars in terms of its writing tone and its emphasis on developing Digital World resident Digimon moreso than the human characters.) All signs point to the idea they could make a character narrative like Adventure if they really wanted to. It’s just, they don’t want to do that with this reboot, so they didn’t.

That they misinterpreted or misremembered the Adventure characters: There’s been accusations of said characters being written in a way that implies misinterpretation or lack of understanding of the original characters, but the thing is, while I definitely agree they have nowhere near the depth of the original ones, there are points that seem to be deliberate changes. (At some points, they’re actually opposites of the original, and certain things that operate as some very obscure references -- for instance, Sora complaining about having to sit in seiza -- seem to also be deliberate statements of going in a different direction.) The lack of human character depth or backstory doesn’t seem to be out of negligence, but rather that this story doesn’t want to be a character narrative to begin with -- after all, we’re used to seven series of Digimon that are, but there are many, many kids’ anime, or even stories in general, where the story is more about plot or action than it is completely unpacking all of its characters’ heads. In this case, this reboot does seem to have characters that are taking cues from or are “inspired by” the original, but, after all, it’s an alternate universe and has no obligation to adhere to the original characters’ backgrounds, so it stands to reason that it’d take liberties whenever it wanted. (Again, the head writer outright stated that he based the reboot’s Taichi more on V-Tamer Taichi than the original Adventure anime Taichi. He knows there’s a difference!) Even more intriguingly, the series actually avoids certain things that are common misconceptions or pigeonholes that would normally be done by the mainstream -- for instance, the Crest of Light (infamously one of the more abstract ones in the narrative) is fully consistent with Adventure’s definition of it as “the power of life”, and, if I dare say so myself, Koushirou’s characterization (emphasizing his relationship with “knowledge” and his natural shyness) arguably resembles the original far more than most common fan reductions of his character that overemphasize his computer skills over his personal aptitude. In other words, I think the staff does know what happened in the original Adventure -- they just actively don’t want to do what Adventure did, even if it’s ostensibly a reboot.

That it’s soulless or that there’s no passion in its creation: Well, this is subjective, and in the end I’m not a member of the staff to tell you anything for sure, but there are definitely a lot of things in this anime that don’t seem like they’d be the byproduct of uninspired creation or lack of passion. It’s just that those things are all not the kinds of things that we, as Digimon veterans, have come to develop a taste for and appreciate in Digimon anime. That is to say, there is an incredible amount of thought and detail put into representing Digimon null canon (i.e. representing special attacks and mechanics), the action sequences are shockingly well-animated in ways that put most prior Digimon anime to shame, and the series has practically been making an obvious attempt to show off as many Digimon (creatures) that haven’t traditionally gotten good franchise representation as they can. Or sometimes really obscure “meta fanservice” references that only make sense to the really, really, really, really hardcore longtime Digimon fan (for instance, having an episode centered around Takeru and Opossummon, because Takeru’s voice actress Han Megumi voiced Airu in Xros Wars). If you follow any of the animators on Twitter, they seem to be really actively proud of their work on it, and franchise creators Volcano Ota and Watanabe Kenji seem to be enjoying themselves every week...so basically, we definitely have creators passionate about having fun with this, it’s just that all of it is being channeled here, not the character writing.

So in the end, you can basically see that this series is basically the epitome of desperately pulling out all of the stops to make sure this series lands with the actual target demographic of children, dammit, and gets them into appreciating how cool these fighting monsters are and how cool it would be if they stuck with them even into a series that’s not Adventure. The Adventure branding and names to lure in the parents, the straightforward and easy-to-understand action-oriented narrative so that kids will think everything is awesome and that they’ll like it even when the story changes, and the merchandise and collab events booked everywhere so that they can all be reused for the next series too...because, remember, they failed with that during Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon (I mean, goodness, you kind of have to admire their persistence, because a ton of other kids’ franchises failing this many times would have given up by now), so it’s a bit unsurprising that they went all the way to get the kids’ attention at the expense of a lot of things that would attract veterans, especially since the veterans already have a well-developed adults’ pipeline to cater to them. This does also mean that this series is more likely to come off as a 67-episode toy commercial than any previous Digimon series, but it’s not even really the toys as much as they’re trying to sell the entire franchise and the actual monsters in the hopes that they’ll stick with it even when the narrative changes.

Nevertheless, here we are. The series is over. Ghost Game -- which, as of this writing, is looking to be much more of a conventional Digimon narrative, complete with older cast, obviously more dramatic atmosphere, and pretty much everything surrounding its PR -- is on its way, presumably thanks to the success of this endeavor. It’s hard to gauge it; we have it on record that they also intend it to be episodic, but remember that this doesn’t necessarily prevent it from having an overall dramatic plot or nuanced drama (especially since the abovementioned Appmon and Kitaro were perfectly capable of pulling off this balance). Nevertheless, it seems to be a lot more of the conventional kind of Digimon narrative we usually expect, so, as for us, adult long-time fans of the Digimon franchise (many of whom don’t have kids anyway), what exactly should we make of this? Well, as far as “supporting the franchise” goes, you’ll get much more progress supporting Ghost Game than the reboot; I highly doubt view counts and merch sales relative to an already-finished series will do nearly as much for the franchise’s health as much as the currently airing series, and, besides, it’d probably do us all a favor to support the endeavor that’s actually new and fresh. So when it comes to a “past” series like this, it’s all just going to come down to a question of personal preference and taste: is this a series you, personally, want to watch, and would you find it entertaining?

For some of you, it’s possible that it just won’t be your cup of tea at all -- and since, like I said, the majority of us here have based our expectations and preferences on up to seven series of Digimon that were not like this, that’s also perfectly fine, and in that case I don’t actually recommend you watch this. Of course, I’ve never thought that it was ever fair to expect a Digimon fan to have seen all of the series released to date; the more series we get, the more inhumane of a demand that’ll become, and I think this franchise becoming successful enough to have so many series that most people won’t have seen it all is a good thing. (It’s actually kind of alarming that the percentage of people who have seen it all is so high, because it means the franchise has failed to get much of an audience beyond comparatively hardcore people who committed to it all the way.) But I think, especially in this case, with a series for which adult fans like us were probably lowest on the priority list due to the sheer amount of desperation going on here, it’s fine to skip it, and if you’re someone who lives by a need for character depth or emotionally riveting narrative, the fact this series is (very unabashedly and unashamedly) mostly comprised of episodic stories and action sequences means you won’t have missed much and probably won’t feel too left out of any conversations going forward. That’s before we even get into the part where it’s still completely understandable to potentially have mixed feelings or resentment about the overuse of the Adventure brand for something like this, especially if Adventure is a particularly important series to you.

But for some of you out there, it might still be something you can enjoy on its own merits. I’ve seen people who were disappointed by the limited degree of Digimon action sequences in the past or the fact that the series has gotten overly fixated on humans, and had an absolute ball with the reboot because it finally got to represent parts of the franchise they felt hadn’t been shown off as well. “Fun” is a perfectly valid reason to enjoy something. It’s also perfectly possible to be someone who can enjoy character narratives like the prior Digimon series but also enjoy something that’s more for being outlandish and fun and has cool Digital World concepts and visuals -- and, like I said, it does not let up on that latter aspect at all, so there’s actually potential for a huge feast in that regard. I think as long as you don’t expect it to be a character narrative like Adventure -- which will only set you up for disappointment, because it’s not (and made very clear since even the earliest episodes and interviews that it had no intention of being one) -- it’s very possible to enjoy it for what it is, and for what it does uniquely.