Actually I think we should all collectively work harder at misunderstanding TLoZ canon and simping for Ganondorf and I'm not even kidding.

Andor is honestly one of the only pieces of more mainstream Star Wars media (so none of the little comics and very very few of the novels) I've seen since the Prequels that REALLY encapsulates the themes of non-attachment and everything that means in the way George Lucas truly intended. The only other thing I've seen that is its equal is the Obi-Wan Kenobi show.

And this makes me want to discuss Timm Karlo.

Yeah, Timm, the character everybody remembers most from Andor right?

That's what I thought.

This is Timm. He was Bix's boyfriend in the first three episodes of Andor. He seems to be pretty normal but he gets jealous when Cassian shows up because Cassian and Bix used to date and he can tell the two of them are cooking up some kind of secret together that he's not involved in. He decides to cover up his jealousy with fear for Bix's safety because Cassian is clearly in some kind of trouble and eventually ends up ratting Cassian out to PreMor security behind Bix's back. This results in PreMor invading Ferrix and getting Bix captured and beaten. Timm himself is murdered when he tries to help Bix.

All we ever get to see of Timm is that he's an insecure little asshole whose actions nearly get Cassian and Bix killed. He's an antagonist in this story.

But Bix loved him. He seems like a fairly average dude before this and presumably treats Bix fairly well outside of this particular incident. He's not a villain, he's just... a dude who lets fear of losing the woman he loves consume him to the point of making a REALLY stupid choice and it costs him everything. But that choice turns him INTO a villain for Cassian. Cassian will now always remember Timm as the man who betrayed him and wanted him dead. Cassian will always remember Timm by the selfishness of his final choice. That's the legacy Timm leaves behind in the end. Bix mourns him, but even Bix recognizes that Timm fucked up and nearly cost herself and Cassian their lives.

And if any of that sounds kind-of familiar, it's because it should. It's Anakin. Timm makes the Anakin choice. He wasn't a villain by default. He wasn't a villain his entire life. He was a normal dude who made one really awful choice out of fear and it ended up being the choice that defined him. He had the capacity for both good and bad in him and he chose to act on the bad and it was the last choice he ever made.

And this choice is what really screws up Ferrix, it calls down PreMor security on them which is what causes the massive screw-up when they try to capture Cassian and Luthen and that gains the attention of the ISB agent in charge of Ferrix as well as Dedra Meero who ultimately brings an entire battalion of stormtroopers and officers to occupy Ferrix. Ferrix gets far far worse as a result of Timm's one choice made out of insecurity in his relationship.

But it also ultimately leads to Ferrix realizing that enough is enough and they rise up and riot and throw the Empire out of their home. It helps push Maarva into joining a rebellion at the end of her life and making that recording that inspires the people to fight back. Maarva says that the Empire has been creeping in like a disease while they slept. And if Timm hadn't made the choice that took their situation from tolerable to intolerable, maybe Maarva and the people of Ferrix never would've bothered to fight back. If Cassian had been able to just silently slip out of town with no one being the wiser, Ferrix would've just kept going on as it had been.

None of this means Timm gets to claim credit for Ferrix and Maarva's own choices, obviously, but much like Anakin, the selfish choices he makes lead to unintended good things happening down the line, too. Anakin's selfishness leads to his relationship with Padme which ultimately creates Luke and Leia who, together, are the ones that manage to bring down the Empire for good. Anakin doesn't get any credit for how Luke and Leia turned out obviously, or the things they do that cause the Empire to fall, but they wouldn't have existed without Anakin's selfishness.

Timm's choice makes Ferrix worse, it calls down the Empire, but it also leads to the push that ultimately pushes Ferrix into rebellion.

Timm makes Anakin's choice. He's the villain of Cassian's story, but he is not WHOLLY a villain because Andor tells us that no one is ever JUST a villain or JUST a hero. People will always be people and that means they all have the capacity for both selfishness and selflessness within them. Timm loses himself to his fear for just long enough to destroy everything he cared about. Maarva chooses to stand up rather than run. Bix chooses to persevere in the face of impossible odds. Luthen gives up his morals to try to create a future for the rest of the galaxy. Mon Mothma sells her family for democracy. Cassian has to give up his dream of a normal happy life and settle for taking control of his own life.

And this is what makes Andor one of the best pieces of Star Wars media I've seen in a LONG time. It doesn't have any Jedi in it, it doesn't have any Mandalorian super soldiers, it doesn't have any Sith or Inquisitors or witches. It's just a group of people from different walks of life all having to figure out what matters most to them in the end. Some of them make the selfish choice and some of them rise above and make the selfless choice. It takes all of the themes that we've gotten from Star Wars via the Jedi and Sith conflicts and applies them to the little people, too. It's not JUST the Jedi and Sith who have to abide by those thematic narrative rules. Everybody else does, too, actually. Timm would never have become a Sith because of his choices, Dedra Meero and Syril Karn are never going to be Sith, but they can still become villains in someone else's story everything they claimed to care about can come crashing down as the result of one selfish choice.

THAT'S Star Wars. THAT'S what it's all about. THAT'S why Andor feels like Star Wars should to me without a single Force user showing up while something like the Ahsoka show feels like the opposite of a Star Wars story despite all of its fan service and nostalgia bait. Andor gets it. Andor took the time to understand the core of Star Wars even when telling a Star Wars story in a very different way.

I saw this slightly-old post making the rounds recently by former alt-right memelord Walt Bismark, on how the alt-right "won" in the late 2010's - positing that as the cause of why it generally vanished. I agree overall with the vanishing part, its not gone-gone ofc but it waned as a cohesive movement. But I saw a lot of people (and generally not alt-right figures) agreeing with its conclusion and I am a bit more skeptical of those.

Its largely a personal essay so I wont address most of it, but it has a summary of five main points that outline essentially "the agenda of the Alt Right at the beginning" to evaluate success upon. Bismark thinks they won on all five, but overall I think this is playing a trick of inventing an enemy to claim you defeated. Anyway, the points:

1: Shift the “Overton Window” of acceptable public discourse to make it politically viable to openly discuss the interests of white people in mainstream politics, in the same way black people or Jewish people discuss their collective interests. 

This one I will grant a partial victory - there was a legitimate intensification of "white as identity" in politics, a making explicit what was implicit in the 2010's. Now ofc I consider this to be a classic horseshoe moment; the hard left at the time was also extremely interested in abandoning race neutrality and valorizing racial identity as an organizing principle, and did it in a very ham-fisted way that the right capitalized on, so it was an easy battle to win - but that is what it is, ofc the wider environment defined the goals & strategy. I mention it however because I do think this is only partial, and the gap between implicit and explicit isn't that relevant. He mentions as an example of this success:

Affirmative action was of course squashed by SCOTUS and the necessary legal infrastructure is being deployed to burn it down. Mainstream conservatives are mobilizing a lot of resources and energy to this end.

But conservatives have been fighting affirmative action for 20+ years, easily. Here is a 1999 article on precisely such a campaign, I literally just googled "conservatives affirmative action [year]" and I get results each time, 2003 had big cases (the Bollinger cases) on AA, etc. I remember "affirmative action bake sale" memes from like 2006 at my uni! What changed between Bollinger and 2023's Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard is that conservatives had just had enough time to stack courts, and wait for Supreme Court justices to die. That just...takes time to do! The strategy hadn't changed between 2003 and 2023. And meanwhile, did they win? They won that court case, sure. What do you...think the ethic makeup of the next Harvard class is gonna be? Wanna take some bets?

His other listed victories are things like:

"Vivek defended the Great Replacement Theory on national television and remained a major Trump surrogate. The SPLC would have marginalized him for that 10 years ago. Today because of polarization and MAGA closing ranks they can’t do shit."

And like, the Southern Poverty Law Center would have successfully marginalized a Republican politician in idk 2003 are you completely high right now? Strom Fucking Thurmond was an active Senator in 2003! This is the repeated tactic here, the imagined enemies - there was never a time where liberal institutions could consistently force conservative politicians to kowtow, so you can't claim it as a change.

This is why I mention the social justice horseshoe, because he has this point here:

These days you can complain about quotas etc. being unfair to you as a white man and it’s not inflammatory or low status among centrists and conservatives. Even non-woke liberals won’t really hate you for it, just quietly think you’re a bit of a chud. This was not the case in 2015. 

And this is partially correct, I agree there was some norm shift. But that is because in ~2010 there really weren't any quotas against white men, it wasn't a thing almost anywhere outside of university applications, so the complaint would make no sense. What happened was that starting in ~2012 a huge left cultural movement started that just openly supported active discrimination against whites, Asians and men. They were a small minority of course, and never had much power, but they got enough power in certain institutions like non-profits and universities that there was a string of just very obvious cases of clear racial discrimination against in particular whites & asians (both men and women, white women often got it very bad in this wave). And the large majority of people just saw that and went "uh yeah racism is still bad?" and so now you can say that because its actually relevant to say. From that lens, is this a successful cultural victory on the part of the alt-right? In some sense sure, but really its more a cultural failure of the hard left. The status quo just kept on chugging along.

Ugh that point went long, the others repeat so we will go through them quicker.

2: Elevate identity issues like anti-immigration and the promotion of traditional gender norms to the center of Republican politics. 

A fake enemy here - anti-immigration was already a huge issue for Republicans in the 2000's. It had a huge wave under Obama actually, it goes in cycles like that. And it responds to material conditions; it's a big issue again right now because the immigration numbers spiked massively under Biden, its just way worse of a problem now (primarily due to the booming economy of course). Again a partial victory for the first part, I agree its more salient due to Trump platforming it, but I'm skeptical that it is a big shift - people are memory-holing the Tea Party movement really badly here for example.

And the second point is just obviously false, Republicans always cared about that, and they care about it less now, giving up the ghost on gay marriage for example. The Alt-Right coincided with a decline of the influence of the Religious Right, and it shows on this issue, 0 points.

3: Make it socially acceptable to discuss HBD and the resulting moral implications for leveling mechanisms like affirmative action. 

Peak "log off" moment, it was always acceptable to discuss this outside of liberal/professional circles and there it still isn't acceptable to discuss it. Charles Murray wrote the Bell Curve in 1994 and his been an American Enterprise Institute Scholar for this entire span of time. This is confusing churn for change - the mid-2010's had a bunch of big, mainly online fights about HBD, and then everyone just sort of moved on with the status quo pretty much unchanged. Nothing like education policy, even in Republican circles, has shifted over this.

4: Convince conservatives to stop ceding moral authority to liberals and allowing them to determine who on the Right is verboten or beyond the pale. Make it unacceptable among conservatives to “punch Right” or purge people for wrongthink. 

Sigh, again when have Republicans ever ceded moral authority to liberals? Harvard University could not condemn Newt Gingrich in ~2009 and make him change his mind about anything. And "Republicans don't self-criticize while Liberals eat themselves alive" has been a complaint for literally decades, you would hear that as far back as say Clinton and things like the 1999 WTO protests. Its both true and exaggerated - the Tea Party primaried Republican candidates for wrongthink in 2010, and Trump did the same thing! With disastrous results for the Republicans in 2022. I really, really don't think you can look at Trump's Republican party and say they solved the Wrongthink problem.

5: Expose and dismantle the hypocritical attitude that allows neocons to militantly support Israeli ethnonationalism while brutally repressing any white identity politics domestically.

This one is just a lolwut moment, "brutally repressing any white identity politics domestically", like what does that even mean? Name the concrete policy proposals George Bush implemented in 2007 than Donald Trump didn't in 2018 around this topic. Again a fake enemy, they were never repressed by the right, and ofc are still hated by liberal institutions like universities.

Moving on from any specific point, I think its very telling that very little about free trade vs protectionism or isolationism/support of autocracy abroad enters this list. Because beyond immigration those are the big shifts the Trump movement (which is the mechanism the alt-right has to claim for making its impact) has ushered into the party. They didn't change its stance on sexual politics or "race & IQ" or anything, those haven't changed, but meanwhile the party has completely flipped on things like tariffs or opposition to Russian military expansion. But of course those don't align neatly at all with the issues the Alt-Right fought about in 2015.

The reality the Alt-Right can't escape is that they used Trump as their mechanism for change, and Trump never really cared about any of their goals beyond immigration. He used them and then pursued either bog-standard Republican policy or his own mercurial, autocratic whims, eventually channeling all of this energy into election denialism. I really don't think if you pulled aside frikkin Ryan Faulk in 2014, asked him to put down his graphs about Raven's Progressive Matrices of black Caribbean students, and said "Hey 10 years from now all of this energy is being channeled into pretending that a failed real estate mogul didn't lose the 2020 presidential election", that he would look at that outcome and think Mission Accomplished.

I don't want to fully oversell, there are for example wins Bismark doesn't mention (School choice comes to mind, the biggest conservative win of the past decade besides the protectionist swing). The Alt Right was an influential movement, it earned its place in history. But I do not think it is an example of being a "victim of its own success". I think instead it should be understood as part of the "radical froth" of the 2010's, that bubbled over and then evaporated like its more intense leftwing peers did. It made some mark and then got left in the dust.

Net ranking of the 5 points: 0.5 for Point 1, 0.25 for Point 2, 0 for the rest, 1.25/5.

The more I think about it, the more I do wonder if some of the source of the more problematic ships/fan headcanons surrounding Izzy is based in the concept of love/sex as a reward for service or suffering. (Note: I am not at all saying that what follows is 100% correct - mostly just proposing a hypothesis. I'm riffing on @naranjapetrificada's post here, but I didn't want to go off on a treatise on someone else's post that wasn't even directly about this.)

Izzy’s world is upended with Stede’s appearance. He goes from being the trusted second in command to Blackbeard to being thrown off the ship (by his own making, already). All of his suffering (in his own mind) can be traced back to Stede and consequently Stede and Ed’s relationship. The narrative forms him as an antagonist not just to Stede but to the narrative's central concern, the entire reason for telling the story: the Stede/Ed relationship. He is the opposition of the healthy, happy, queer couple, and at each turn, he suffers for it.

In Season 2, his suffering is compounded to the point that he loses his leg in a really traumatic way, at the hands of a man he claims (in the same episode) to love. This leads into his being offered grace by the crew and the start of some shedding of his toxic masculinity (which has been the real enemy all along). And this is where I hypothesize that some fans start shaping him into someone who is now deserving of a reward. Izzy has changed! He’s grown! He’s doing better! Doesn't he *deserve* a reward for that?!

One of the forms that this reward must take is love/sex - and since the focal point of the entire show, as well as the causes of Izzy’s suffering, are Ed and Stede (the happy queer relationship) then his reward must be one or the other, or both. Having suffered and having come to better terms with his gender and sexual identity, he deserves the reward of romantic love and/or sex.

This is all, of course, not right, and the show never even hints that love or sex should be treated as a reward. Neither Ed nor Stede show any desire to provide Izzy with this reward (and honestly, I don’t think that Izzy the character expects that either, even if his fans might). But I do think that some of the anger and some of the “fix-it” mentality of the fandom subsection comes from the fact that Izzy’s character growth is not rewarded by romantic love or sex. (This ignores as well that he does find love in other ways, via his friendship with the crew, but this is also not typed as something he DESERVES or is rewarded for his good behavior.)

Stede in particular, I think, becomes a focus of the combined fan ire and desire because (in their minds) he was the original catalyst for Izzy’s suffering, he has obtained the reward of Ed’s love (thereby depriving Izzy of it), and he can be fitted for the enemies to lovers arc (plus he’s white and there’s undoubtedly racism at play here, as many have discussed). This might even be extended to Ed's love for Stede: that Ed was in some way rewarded for becoming better, that Stede's love healed him and therefore Izzy—who is so much more deserving, right?!—should also be offered that love.

Again, this is all based in toxic, erroneous assumptions both about the characters, about the show, and about love and sex, but all those assumptions have been made by stories in the past and are baked into a lot of mainstream culture.

The "fix-it" nature of ships like Stizzy and Steddyhands come down to some fans believing Izzy is not being granted his just rewards for his suffering and character growth in the form of love and sex specifically from the lead couple who have caused his suffering.

At least, that's what I think is going on.

omfg so im reading your linguistics paper rn and im at the part where you talk about how its taboo to post abt the vday vid or dailybooths etc. but i feel like the chains have loosened over the years so to speak? cuz like, on twitter people have just. posted full dailybooth screenshots, or reference the 2009 phan song all the time which itself refs vday. and im wondering if thats like, because the community had gotten smaller after the dapg hiatus that ppl were more lax about it, or if it felt like dnp were more lax about it, or if these are all younger fans who werent aware of this etiquette at all but since so many younger fans have been joining like post coming out they just dont see it as taboo at all? some self-policing does still occur, specifically w ppl reposting dans nakedbooths, but its def not the case of YOU HAVE TO BE COMPLETELY SILENT ABOUT THIS anymore. i havent even finished reading yet but im enthralled

OOH thank you for the question i have so many thoughts on this actually. (context)

i think there's multiple reasons why the taboo on discussing the vday vid & other deleted social media things has grown lesser? under the cut bc i got wordy.

partially i'd chalk it up to the change in phandom demographics. like, there's a way lower proportion of us now who were around for the direct aftermath of the first major leak in 2012, or who even were a part of the phandom when a majority of folks had been present for that. things were so bad and painful then & in the era directly afterwards! people still learn about that but the knowledge of how bad things got is always going to be different from the lived experience.

so that's reason one: i think that within the fandom the strongest emotional reaction to the existence of the vday video & deleted social media posts will always exist in ppl who were around in 2011-2013 & similarly deeply ingrained in folks who joined right after that in 2014-15. and i think there's still a lot of us but there's also just like.. so many less of us now, too. the vast majority of my mutuals from 5 years ago have abandoned or deleted their blogs.

i do think another part of why things have gotten less taboo is bc it's no longer something that has the potential to out dan and phil/how directly they've acknowledged the social media posts (& to a lesser degree the vday vid)?

like. dan literally used screenshots that he almost certainly got from the phan directory in basically i'm gay. they acknowledged that the manchester eye meant something to them in giving the people what they want/witl (watched them at the same time, can't remember which had that in it). i know they knew how people would react to them mentioning iconic teen dalien moments in the big wheel in the sims.

there's also the fact that like... angry phil DMs/copyright strikes are a thing of the past? i'm not going to tell people where to find the vday video but it's stupidly easy to locate on more mainstream platforms at this point in time. shit, that brings me to another point: fans who joined more recently weren't around for the era where blogs were getting taken down for what they were posting. another reason it's more chill now.

like, the openness of the secret is like, something that makes seeking out the taboo less of a thrill?

but on the other hand! learning in detail abt the vday vid and old social media posts is something i think people find less necessary now? that used to be the most concrete like... phan proof. proof they were queer. and now that they're explicitly gay and openly together to the degree that they are it's like. the value of the information has lessened.

to go in a different direction. i definitely wouldn't call it a formalized etiquitte that the youngun's just don't know, especially when it comes to the social media posts—they've always circulated and even 5 years ago when i wrote that paper they were more openly talked about even tho the vday video wasn't (though again: 5 years ago was still wayyyyy more lax than 2013/14).

ultimately there's always just been so much clout tied up to knowing about the vday video & social media posts? so even though being too blatant has always been a taboo transgressing that norm with skill has also always been a phandom value.

i'm not going to get too far into the ways that dan and phil's fandom literacy and the fan response of archiving everything play into things bc i think i covered that well in my paper but yeah!

i don't have a good conclusion but: less % of the fandom being present for the aftermath of dnp being outed by the leak + greater aknowledgement of these subjects by dnp + less value for the information in the vday vid & deleted social media posts = more casual attitude towards vday vid & social media posts and a healthier phandom overall

I'm interested in your Fire emblem essay and what you said about the story being a reflection of the SRPG gameplay

Looking over the essay I have saved in my drafts, what I actually talked about was the answer to the question "Why did Fire Emblem get popular?" Fire Emblem has been around since 1990 and has been localized since 2003, but the series never took off to truly mainstream popularity in either Japan or the rest of the world until 2013, when Fire Emblem: Awakening was released, at which point it meteorically rose to become one of the best-selling Nintendo franchises.

In my essay, I posited that there were two "obvious" reasons for Awakening's popularization of the franchise, but a third less-obvious reason that was even more important. The first "obvious" reason was the introduction of Casual Mode, which removed the franchise's signature permadeath feature and made it far easier and more accessible to a broader audience. As someone who was in the trenches of the Fire Emblem fandom from 2004 to 2012, I can tell you that the series heavily attracted difficulty junkies during this time. The demographic heavily skewed male, and the most popular topics of discussion were tier lists and debates on the usefulness of various characters in certain challenge run settings (such as Low Turn Count, or LTC, runs). Casual Mode opened the doors for, well, casuals to join in on the fun.

The second "obvious" reason was that Awakening was anime. While every Fire Emblem game has had anime character designs, past titles were often fairly reserved with these designs, featuring knights in full armor whose only distinctly "anime" characteristic was green- or blue-colored hair. Awakening, however, leaned into the significantly more absurd, flashy, and/or sexualized designs that are what people far more commonly associate with "anime." It wasn't just the designs, though. Awakening also took an "anime" approach to character personalities, often giving each character one or two traits that are amplified to extreme degrees. This change is easy to spot if you compare Awakening characters to similar ones from past titles. In Genealogy of the Holy War, Arden is an armor knight who is teased by his comrades for being dull, boring, and generally stuck on sentry duty. In Awakening, Kellam is an armor knight who is so dull and boring that characters cannot even see him when he stands right in front of them. Recurring jokes involve characters thinking they're being haunted by a ghost when he talks to them, or forgetting he exists entirely, because he is so unassuming and banal. It reminds me of KonoSuba, in which characters have a singular trait that is pushed to its utmost extremities for the sake of humor; this is a style of humor commonplace in anime, especially anime that targets a young teen demographic.

My argument, however, was that these "obvious" reasons fail to adequately explain why Fire Emblem got so popular so quickly. They may have been sufficient in 2013, but the popularity of subsequent titles has called into question how much these reasons matter at all. To be clear, Fire Emblem probably doesn't become popular without Casual Mode; the accessibility is just too important. However, simply being accessible doesn't mean people will access it. There are plenty of SRPGs out there, like Shining Force, that never had permadeath, that were even localized during the 16-bit golden age of JRPGs, yet never gained major popularity. So while Casual Mode was necessary, it wasn't the change that took the franchise from the edge of Underperforming Nintendo Franchise Hell (F-Zero, Star Fox, Metroid, too many others to name) to 17 representatives in Smash Bros.

And frankly, I think the anime argument isn't a factor at all. It was a tempting argument to make in 2013, when the anime elements of Awakening were the most obvious deviation from the franchise's past, but 2019 a little game called Fire Emblem: Three Houses came out that utterly decimated the thesis. Three Houses is, of course, by far the most popular Fire Emblem title, with double Awakening's sales (1.9 million vs 3.82 million worldwide, according to Wikipedia). Notably for this argument, however, is how un-anime Three Houses is both in character designs and tone. In fact, Three Houses narratively hearkens back to much older Fire Emblem titles, with a major focus on politics and serious worldbuilding, significantly less comic relief, and relatively "realistic" character designs that avoid absurdity and fanservice. In its tone and story, it is far closer to Path of Radiance than Awakening. So if we take "more anime" to be the root cause of the revitalization of the franchise, how do we explain Three Houses?

There needs to be another explanation. Something both Awakening and Three Houses did that previous entries did not.

My argument is that what the Fire Emblem franchise did to turn itself around was change from a focus on plot to a focus on character, with innovations to the gameplay that emphasized this change. This sounds a bit more esoteric than the other explanations so let me clarify. Awakening introduced a mechanic called pair-up, which allowed two units to join together to gain large statistical and combat bonuses. On top of that, Awakening emphasized the game's support system, which had been present in older titles but much more difficult to access and inconsequential to gameplay, not only making supports easier to achieve, but central to character building and recruitment in the form of child characters. This gameplay emphasis is mirrored in the story, with Robin's character arc being rooted in the "bonds" he forges with his allies, and the child characters also having a significant role in the plot. On top of that, the more "anime" characters have livelier support conversations, as opposed to past games where many supports often boiled down to very generic "You are my friend. I will have your back on the battlefield" sorts of conversations.

With this character-and-relationship-driven gameplay/story in mind, look again at Three Houses. While lacking the pair-up mechanic or child characters, Three Houses adds a Persona-esque social link system that is extremely extensive and probably takes up about half the total gameplay. Strategic battles are deemphasized in favor of running around the monastery, talking to your allies, going to teatime or doing activities with them, finding them gifts, and so forth. The central narrative gimmick of the game is the three Hogwarts houses, which give certain groups of characters innate bonds that the gameplay then allows you to explore thoroughly. Even the aforementioned political nature of the plot feeds into these relationships; many characters are defined by the political placement of their birth, and their attempts to balance their personal goals with the goals of their station leads to intense interpersonal drama. And the plot itself boils this drama deliciously when it comes time for the three houses to go to war with each other.

This thesis of mine also extends to the less-popular installments of the franchise in the post-Awakening era. Though all these games sold decently well (likely due to install base), they don't match the success of the other two, and are a lot less well-regarded by the fans. Fates nerfed Awakening's pair-up system and lazily tacked on child characters via an absurd "baby dimension" that was poorly implemented in both gameplay and story; Shadows of Valentia was a remake of an NES game that, despite heavily revamping the story and adding some support conversations, did not change the core gameplay of the original; and Engage put in a more shallow monastery-like hub world, with much more simplistic characters, and a core gameplay gimmick that involves making one character a God instead of combining your units together.

Indeed, Fates and Engage are probably far more "anime" than Awakening and Three Houses, which most fans consider to their detriment rather than benefit. Most damning of all, however, is that the story of these games heavily revolves around a singular self-insert protagonist, with other characters having a much less important role. This narrative focus deemphasizes character-bond-based gameplay, rather than emphasizing it like the other games do.

(I'll mention that I personally think Engage is an excellent game, though this is because I am one of those spreadsheet and tier-list loving oldheads and I appreciate the excellent map design, core gameplay, and higher difficulty mode that actually seems like it was playtested. In fact, it was my love of Engage and the relatively lukewarm response from the fandom that led to me asking why Fire Emblem was popular in the first place. I had thought the fans loved all the goofy anime stuff, so why were they pissed about it now? What was Engage missing that Awakening wasn't?)

You can see how this shift from plot-based story and gameplay to character-based story and gameplay has affected not simply the raw number of fans, but the demographic makeup. In 2011, the fandom was nerdy dudes who liked to compare stat growth rates. In 2023, the fandom is far more evenly split between male and female players, and the fandom is a far more robust space for fan fiction, fan art, and other creative endeavors. It's characters who drove that change, not a more anime tone, not even a reduced difficulty. And after the relative reception of Three Houses and Engage, I'm extremely interested to see whether Intelligent Systems realizes this point, and what the next Fire Emblem looks like.

I am, admittedly, very, very tired.

Fandom was a safe space for me growing up in the 2000s. I turned 14 in 2003, and I was spending a lot of my spare time online at the time because it was a place that people accepted me. I liked that it wasn't too fast-paced, and I liked that I was allowed to be weird there. I got to just be me, no judgment. For an undiagnosed autistic kid, that was revolutionary. It was a subculture, to be sure - we had to keep things quiet because in real life we were mocked for liking things, and this was an era where people sometimes did get fired for writing fanfiction off the clock. But it was safer than my real life, where I was being bullied constantly to the point of permanent trauma.

Fandom isn't like that anymore, because capitalism found us.

At some point, people realized they could make serious money off of fandom, and it became an industry. Fandom changed with it, and not necessarily in good ways. There were, of course, some good things - it was easier to get good merch for a lot of things, for one - but the cultural shift from smaller, more subcultural spaces into the mainstream has ultimately changed the culture of fandom in ways that have harmed creators. Fandom went from being about creating to being about consuming. Things are now moving so quickly that fic writers and artists can't keep up with fans' demands. If you're late to a meme by a week, you're "too late." And it's not a subculture anymore, either - it's mainstream. The things we were actually made fun of for liking are now cool to like, which in some ways is nice but in other ways feels weird, because now our safe spaces are dealing with an influx of people, many of whom were actually the people who made fun of us in the first place.

This isn't to say that fandom was all rosy when I was a kid. There were a lot of issues, it could get really cliquey, and there was a lot of drama, as you'd expect from fandom spaces. But it was still more of a place where you could explore yourself and who you were instead of a place where you had to police your own behavior because people were watching and waiting to go after you for any perceived mistake. You didn't have to be pure and perfect. You didn't have to keep up with trends constantly. You were allowed to go years between fic updates, and people were just excited to get an update instead of acting entitled for one after a week of no updates.

I love talking about things I like with my friends, and I generally do so in small Discord servers these days, because it's the closest thing to what I grew up with. In those spaces, we can discuss things seriously and in funny ways, and we can safely be critical of trends in fandom spaces, like racism and ableism, that have permeated modern fandom more than ever. They were always there, but as fandom becomes more of a reflection of mainstream society than ever, prejudices become more and more obvious in these spaces. People don't like it when you point these things out, though, because they're stuck in that idea of having to be perfect, because they don't want to be called out.

The fact of it all is this: fandom is now just a reflection of mainstream culture, because that's what it's become. It isn't a subculture anymore. And it looks just like regular culture, with all the sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, ageism, etc. that you'd see there. These are all topics worth going into in depth, and they're all things to be aware of. Depicting things and characters thoughtfully goes a long way for people - even if you're fixing canon because God knows canon itself is also deeply reflective of these things. Stories are a product of the society they're written in, after all.

I decided to start looking into ableism in fandom specifically because I'm autistic and certain tropes actively harm people like me and perpetuate prejudices against autistic people, but there's so much to be gleaned from disability and fandom beyond autism. If you're disabled yourself or have disabled friends or family members or other people you care about, you've probably seen something that rubbed you the wrong way or felt uncomfortable at some point (mental illness is especially deeply stigmatized in society and is treated accordingly in both canon and fanon). There's just so much to talk about and this is only scratching the surface.

But right now, I'm tired and I'm angry that the space that has been there for me my entire life, the space that was a place I could safely be myself, has become what it has and has essentially pushed me out - of a space I was helping build in my younger years. That shit hurts. I can't go home anymore, and it really, really stings. I'm building new homes with new, safe friends, of course, but to know I can't go back to what I had just...it's really hurting me right now.

I know I just have to move forward, but I think it's important for me to acknowledge the anger and mourning I've been dealing with, too.

Your analysis has been really interesting to read through, but ngl the whole mess around text interpretation has led me to ruminate on the fandom's doings a little. This probably will turn into disjointed ramblings, so please bear with me.

What I think is causing this cognitive dissonance is exactly that cutesy framing of some of Eggman and Sage's moments. Like, I don't believe that Sage was intentionally made to soften Eggman up or something, I believe that he can play the "family" act to keep her loyal to him. However, I won't deny that during my watch of a friend playing it, this specific framing left a slightly weird aftertaste, which I now see is what can easily cause so many misinterpretations of the scenes. Like, for example, the memo with Sage's pronouns. After seeing a lot of talk around the memos in general, what seems to throw people off from thinking that Eggman could be just using this as yet another play into her view of him as her father to keep her loyal is "why does he suddenly care about endearing himself to his own creation when he freely disregarded his previous creations". It can be interpreted in character, but there's just a smidge of off-ness that can be hard to wash out for some.

Not gonna lie, I kinda envy the ability of people like to at least mostly ignore the majority of the fandom's shenanigans and drama, cause I think that also plays a part imo, specifically this weird need to somehow ingratiate Sonic as a series to the mainstream, generally non-fan crowd. Like, the onus obviously should be on the people who misinterpret the text and see what's not there, yet these people also tend to be the loudest. And most non-fans seeing it just assume that's what the fandom as a whole thinks, and that's what the text actually is about. After all, nowadays Sonic is all but advertised as "its a kids game for babies so don't think about the story too much, it doesnt make sense in the end anyway", even by fans trying to genuinely recommend the series sometimes. And you'd think that there'd be pushback against this sort of mentality, but somehow, a majority of the Sonic fandom remains almost... defeatist? Like, either they can't argue to save their lives or just passively accept the misinformation. The people actually doing the analysis and all get disregarded as no-life nerds and are told that "no amount of analysis can make a product worth the money".

It's just... I dunno how or why or when it all started going like this, but at some point, the way people talked about media in general just caused immensely screwed. Discussions only seem to happen when someone wants to further validate their pre-established biases about a thing and it all just feels wrong.

Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to read and consider my analysis.

We seem to feel quite similarly. I'm not a fan of the cutesy framing of certain moments because it's not my thing and definitely makes it easier for fans to misinterpret. The casual fan, especially if they don't catch all context in the memos and apply them to the scenes to notice the undertones and understand Eggman's side of the dynamic, or if they're the kind who that stuff can appeal to and affect emotionally/they'd rather ignore the more unsettling aspects in discomfort, they're going to get it wrong.

I think the cutscenes mostly have the issue of focusing too much on Sage's side of the dynamic over Eggman's. A bunch of most important details of Eggman's side comes from the memos, which is great from the standpoint of being right from his personal perspective and words, so we get to know exactly how he thinks and feels- but not so great for those who won't listen or piece together what they learned from them with the scenes for needed context.

But Sage wasn't supposed to soften Eggman up. In the story he's still a bad guy wanting to do bad, wishing he could get out of Cyber Space to, and Sage appeals because of what she can do for him, how she's crucial to his survival, supports his desire for world domination and shows undying loyalty. The way some moments are framed as cute doesn't take away from it, a unhealthy dynamic can appear as cute and wholesome with unsettling undertones.

Ian Flynn pretty much describes it that way by saying you're supposed to feel happy for Sage but Eggman is a bad person and warming up to it for all the wrong reasons. It's intentionally more complex than what the loudest people who love and hate it are saying. I can see what Flynn means because all the pieces are there in the actual game for me to point out and analyze. They just could've been emphasized a bit more.

All you need is the memo where he talks about liking how Sage is loyal and efficient and accepting the father role because it can emphasize his genius and the pride he can take as her creator, then apply it to every interaction and you can see it. Eggman can play the act to appeal to Sage's desire for that dynamic and praise her actions as a way to further encourage her for her loyalty and efficiency, all for those selfish benefits.

It's how manipulation works and Eggman absolutely can and will play up the part with these conditions for the benefits, he's done similarly in the past. It's intentionally not done in the common verbal and physical abns!ve way like he does most commonly with his other creations, it's more emotionally manipulative. It makes the most sense for how he wants to further encourage her good work and loyalty, not lose it.

I can get why you felt that way. It's part of why I had the wrong idea of Frontiers Eggman's at first and it ruined my first experience playing it. The cute framing of certain moments, combined with fans taking these scenes and latching onto the misinterpretations from the moment it dropped and drilling into your head how they think we should think and feel while ignoring key details that disprove it, made me believe it for too long.

But had I not seen the misinterpretation and paid attention and did my usual analysis, which I closed my mind to in my first playthrough in ignorance, I would've caught on a lot faster. Just like how knowing what I know now after properly analyzing it then going into Final Horizon and avoiding what fandom was saying, made my experience more pleasant and let me think and interpret for myself. The fandom is still mostly to blame.

Yeah, the cute moments can give the wrong idea when you don't have all the context. But the context is in the game to piece together and understand why it's happening in a way that works for Eggman's character. I also think while he is of course playing the act, it's also framed cute as it is because we're seeing it more from Sage's side in the scenes, as it's a very different vibe in the memos where it's actually Eggman's side.

Maybe always being able to see the worst in Eggman (positively and affectionately lol 🥰💜) helps but I only see the memos as unsettling now. His creation starts to appear as more of a person to him so he thinks about how he can use it to his benefit by taking pride in his impressive scientific ability to create something so life-like as an artificial creation over the unimpressive traditional organic way he scoffs at and expresses aversion to.

He says if he created life it'd be "loyal and perfectly effective", which is fucked up thing to look for in your child, and says it's specifically because he's the genius creator/father, giving himself all credit and taking pride in her accomplishments as a reflection of his genius. It's selfish, egotistical, creepy, everything a parent shouldn't do. I can see what makes it unsettling in all his words. So many things are wrong with him I love it 😋💘

I really don't have much of an issue with that memo. It's one of the most misinterpreted but it's simply where he starts to realize that almost the whole time he's been calling her a "she" instead of an "it" like the program she was created to be. He actually starts just five after first mentioning her, in memo 13. He subconsciously sees her as a person and refers to her like such that fast due to how human and life-like she is.

Three memos after he's like wait why am I calling it a she? And wonders whether to call her an it like the program she was created to be or a she like he's seeing her as instead. Then another three after comes the disturbing memo about him creating life, so him establishing whether he's going to call her "she" or not leads to him thinking about how he can take pride and credit in her by establishing himself as her genius creator/father.

It's another of those cases where if context is removed it's more likely for people to get the wrong idea, especially if they're the type to be blinded by the cuteness factor but when you have the context of before and after and considering the important terms of why he values her at all with the she's an impressive life-like loyal and efficient creation and her dad is a genius memo, again it makes sense and is in character.

The "she's the best" line is one of the only parts I'd change, he's far too egotistical to say that about anyone else. It doesn't make sense because the whole reason he values her is what she does for him and the pride he can take in her, literally because he sees himself as the best person ever lol. Just specifying what she's the best of, like of his creations or something would've worked, not making it sound like he's saying in general.

But guess what? Apparently it was changed in Japanese in the translation I saw, to say she was just doing great or something lol. It's a case where I can make sense of it in English as her being the best in a specific area can again give himself credit as the creator as he's intentionally supposed to but the word choice was poor. But every time I felt a line should've been changed a bit, the Japanese version had me covered. XD

Back to the point- it's also important to consider that he's praising her in this memo with the important preface of saying that Sage has been crucial to his survival in Cyber Space and listing the ways she has served him well. It's on the condition of him getting something out of it every time. And in memo 19 we know he wants to take pride in her skill and accomplishments and take credit as her creator, so any praise is self praise.

So I can't be mad at the game, I think even in moments that had some level of cuteness factor to appeal to those into that which certainly worked on them, there was established context that made it work and in character, enough to piece it together and understand it. But some people's minds go blank with the "aww so cute" reaction and desire for it to be simply pure and wholesome so they don't think about it any more to do so.

I've been learning to avoid it just by stepping back from fandom because I'm less interested the more I see the drama and bad takes. Now I only see things if I'm forcibly subjected through someone else putting it on my dash/it's recommended/etc. A large majority of fandom is anti canon and literally admit it so I feel like I don't belong in it as a huge fan of it that enjoys celebrating it in my fan creations and discussions.

It suffers from the simplification and sanitization that modern fandom tends to do now, so they can fit all characters and stories into certain boxes and use them as bases to project fan character traits and concepts onto instead of celebrating canon. It makes it more appealing and mainstream and easier to consume by the crowd that stuff succeeds in appealing to. It's to the point it replaces people's memory/idea of it.

So of course from the outside looking in especially, non fans are going to believe that's what the text actually contains, especially since they get exposure to the fandom's twisting of canon and it's drilled into their heads how to think and feel about it by them, before they've even seen the games themselves. Then they find it hard to shut that out and look at the games alone for what they are. That happened to me with Frontiers.

Then of course you have people acting like the series "is just for babies and inconsistent and not good anyway you shouldn't think too hard about it", as if Sega JP especially haven't shown themselves to be incredibly passionate about the stories and characters they write. It is supposed to be that deep lol. And thinking that deeply is a good thing, as if it's better than just shutting our minds off and consume product.

That's why I've allowed myself to think as deeply as I want about Frontiers. I love analyzing every moment and line down to the last word and detail. Regardless of opinion on the concepts and how they were executed, it was intended to be thought about. I don't think it should be considered micro analyzing and thinking too hard about something ever. I'm looking at it in ways official writers have described it to be anyway.

The mentality is popular so there isn't much pushback. Plus I'm starting to see it in both people who say they don't like the games and those who say they're fans so I feel alienated for wanting to think deeper and seeing there can be more than meets the eye with characters and scenes. While clarification can be important so things aren't misinterpreted quite as easily, it's nice for there to be stuff to think about.

Nobody really wants to debate and discuss now. A majority intentionally oppose learning more about the media or hearing out other people. They take the challenging of one's perspective or a disagreement as an argument and act like it's intended as hate from the other person when that's not the case. They're like "I don't want to change my opinion, nobody can convince me, let me enjoy things how I want", etc.

I myself was a bit ignorant at first on the topic of Frontiers. I was convinced I didn't like Eggman's portrayal but it was all based on what fandom was telling me it was and how to feel when the actual game was actually way different. When I finally took suggestions of new perspectives, then shut fandom out and focused solely on canon with my mind open and willing to analyze it again, I saw it in a new light and enjoyed it.

Now some certainly think I'm a low life nerd, as I've been told "it's nice to be a fan until it "becomes serious" and by people saying they don't care what I have to say as if I have to do exactly what they want- because it's bad to be passionate and wanting to think deeply about something I guess. :P I'd rather be doing that than shutting it down. Canon is cool, analysis is good, being passionate and thinking about stuff is fun.

You really hit the nail on the head with that. I've always enjoyed being open minded, analyzing media carefully, hearing out different perspectives, and having discussions. But I made the mistake myself at one point with Frontiers and I regret it because as soon as I realized I almost became what I was against and changed it for the better, it became a lot more enjoyable again. It's always good to stay open minded!

still on my byler bullshit and I've had something that's really been bothering me and I kinda want to put it out there.

so I've seen a lot of... aggression towards the idea of stranger things having mostly queer characters. it's so new to me and something I had never seen in fandom before. It got me thinking "why are there so many people dead set on mileven being endgame?"

I loved season 1 and 2 mileven, it was sweet and Mike looked at El like she was his world. Now though, it seems less real, Mike seems very disengaged, much more engaged in preserving some sort of relationship with Will (and trying not to seem gay).

This post really got me thinking. Stranger Things, through it's entire run time, has been about not conforming and sticking behind the people who matter most to you.

We all know the eyewitness byler reference, but eyewitness isn't very mainstream, it's another one of those shows catered for the queers, it's a gay show! That reference being made in Stranger Things was targeting a specific demographic; queer people (or fans of queer media).

I propose this goes a bit deeper than that one reference, I propose this show wasn't made for the straight people at all. You may think it sounds crazy, but it really does irk me to even discuss Stranger things with people who aren't fellow "freaks and weirdos." The conversation is typically frustrating, these people just don't understand.

Like with my brother! My brother is my best friend but this instance describes my point well. I was talking about my current DnD character and my brother said "DnD? Like the stranger things board game?" Uh.... no?? I think you mean DnD like the biggest RP table top game ever created??? He just didn't know it! And why would he?! I'm the nerd in this family, not him! But something about him saying that rubbed me wrong.

What the hell am I getting at? I'm saying that Stranger things wasn't for my brother, just like like how his sports documentaries aren't for me. I think that stranger things is one of the most extreme cases of media going outside it's demographic. It was supposed to be a sense8, or a heartstopper, but it went too far outside it's intended audience.

So I guess that's why some mileven fans are viscerally upset by the progression of byler. I think this sort of feels like a reverse queerbait, a hetbait if you will. Straight people usually just get what they want, super popular shows don't have gay main characters! But I don't think Stranger things was wrote to be popular in the first place! It was for the weirdos, the nerds, the gays. Hell, one of S4s villains is a white Christian basketball captain, I really don't think the show was made for other white Christian basketball captains to watch!

Just, I don't want to gatekeep, I hate that shit. But I know that if byler had be advertised from the start so many of the fans now wouldn't have even touched it. So I guess I just feel like these people that weren't even Invited need to calm. Down. You weren't even supposed to be here, don't blame us for you not figuring it out sooner, I've shipped byler since season 2 idk where you've been!

TL;DR:

edit: this is sort of mileven neg but PLEASE mileven shippers give me your thoughts, I would genuinely to hear your perspective!

Every Record I Own - Day 800: The Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers

There's a bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn called Moonlight Mile that my husband and I went to all the time back when we lived in New York. It was just a block or two off of the East River, so we would often walk to a nearby park to watch the sun set over Manhattan then head to the bar for a drink or two. It was a mellow neighborhood spot with a well-curated free jukebox. I felt like a bit of a dork for it, but I put on "Moonlight Mile" off of Sticky Fingers pretty much every time I went in there. Maybe it was a bit too on-the-nose, but fuck it... it's exactly the kind of song I wanna listen to with a beer in my hand as the night creeps in.

Like Let It Bleed, I picked up this cheap copy of Sticky Fingers at some point in the '00s because it's considered to be one of the Stones' best albums (if not THE best). And like Let It Bleed, I wasn't all that enamored with it at first. Sure, I knew the hits off the album. "Brown Sugar" is a classic rock staple (and a frequent topic of discussion when it comes to the more problematic aspects of the band) and "Wild Horses" is great (thanks in large part to involvement of Gram Parsons), but there wasn't much else that leapt out at me. It just sounds like the stereotypical sleazy, bluesy sound I associate with '70s classic rock.

But individual songs began to grow on me. First it was "Dead Flowers"---a defiant country tune that drops a very unsubtle heroin reference in the second verse ("I'll be in my basement room / with a needle and a spoon"). Combined with the slavery and sadism references in "Brown Sugar" and the cock bulge on the album cover, I'm surprised Sticky Fingers wasn't the subject of a massive boycott. How was this considered mainstream material back in 1971?

The slow-burn ballad "Moonlight Mile" was the next song to win me over. For years, I'd play "Dead Flowers" and "Moonlight Mile"---the closers to the album---while I was showering in hotel rooms on tour. They were the perfect length and the ideal way to gauge how much time I was taking getting ready in the bathroom while one of my bandmates waited for their turn to shower.

Other songs started luring me in: the primary riff of "Bitch," the dueling guitar line verses and gospel chorus of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," the wistful soul of "Sway" and "I Got the Blues"... it's as if something else grew on me with every listen.

That might explain why initial reviews of Sticky Fingers were mixed while the album is now considered to be one of the greatest rock records of all time. Stones records aren't immediately rewarding. They're loose and unrefined. They aren't burnished to shine. Instead, they sound like fleeting moments. More than one studio engineer mentioned that the Stones seemed like they were barely a functional band when they were writing and formulating songs together in the studio, and then at some point they would all lock in and magic would happen.

Many years ago, an old band of mine recorded with Jack Endino, the engineer behind a bunch of quintessential grunge albums. Jack didn't care much about fixing our minor flubs. "People still love Rolling Stones albums," he argued, "and those performances were sloppy as hell." His reasoning was that the small imperfections in a song---the slightly flat notes, the fluctuations in tempo, the not-quite-together accents---kept the brain intrigued. Even if the listener isn't 100% aware of the errors, the subconscious keeps trying to make sense of the flaws, and that keeps the music interesting.

There's so much music out there vying for our attention these days, and it could be very easy to give Sticky Fingers a cursory listen and shrug it off. But how many albums somehow manage to get better with every listen? Maybe it's the slop factor. Maybe it's the quality songs glimmering in the dirt like diamonds in the rough.

Whatever it is, I love Sticky Fingers a little more every time I listen to it. And I still throw "Moonlight Mile" on the jukebox when I'm in NYC and visiting my old neighborhood bar in Greenpoint.

Season 1. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Season 2. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Season 3. Part 1

Mike Character Analysis: Season 3 Part 2

I'm going to go off about Dawson's Creek in general for a bit before I get to the relevant plot point.

A bit of background for those of you unfamiliar with Dawson's Creek. It was a teen-angst filled soap opera drama from the late 90s-early 2000s that scandalized many people because it covered some pretty dark topics that most teen shows shied away from (teen suicide and drug and alcohol use being some examples). It's funny in retrospect because most teen shows now cover all the complexities of growing up in a pretty realistic way. But at the time they got a lot of backlash. Now this show was incredibly popular with teens during this time because it was the first time people saw anyone discussing and addressing a lot of the uglier, darker aspects of growing up. It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it. But one of the things it did that was radical was have one of their characters be openly gay - a thing that did not happen on teen shows at the time. And yes they got a lot of backlash and homophobia for this. But what they also got was people being incredibly grateful that they finally saw someone struggling with their identity in a way that was relatable. And not only that but it showed how straight friends can help support their friends who are questioning their sexuality. So this show that most teens were watching decided to suddenly in season 2 make one of their characters gay. People were already invested in the show and the characters when this happened and this wasn't labeled as an LGBTQ friendly show because that label didn't exist. So it wasn't just people who were apart of the queer community who were watching. And the thing is - even after this gets revealed, people kept watching. Because they were invested in the show and the characters already and the coming-out storyline was written in a way that people could understand and empathize with even if they weren't gay. Which brings me back to Stranger Things and Mike and the impact this story could have on mainstream media. Because while LGBTQ friendly shows have come a long way since then (they are often better written and less stereotyped now) they are still labeled as LGBTQ friendly shows which makes straight people not watch them because they think that content isn't for them. So people who don't have first hand experience dealing with homophobia or internalizing that hate have a difficult time understanding it and it's why we are seeing such a disconnect with audience and Mike. But here's the thing - Everyone watches this show. Everyone on the goddamn planet. And everyone is invested in the plot and the characters. It is not labeled as an LGBTQ friendly show, even now that we have 2 characters openly gay. It is not just for a queer audience and it shouldn't be. Because this implies that straight couples are the norm and mainstream and that if Stranger Things went and did the crazy, radical thing and made byler happen it would alienate the audience. But we have seen this isn't true. Because Dawson's Creek wrote a well-written and relatable coming-out 20 years ago when this was just not ever done, and it didn't alienate the audience. It was well-written so people could understand it. That's really all that matters here. It needs to be done right. Stranger Things has the potential to change the game again and make this kind of storyline more mainstream. And I think that they will because they have already been writing it this whole time. It's been there in the show already, people just don't know how to recognize it. But once they do I think it will help them to reconnect with Mike and understand him better and maybe be more comfortable seeing this in the future. Of course there will be backlash, homophobes aren't going anywhere. But I don't get the impression that they care or that Netflix does. Because again, they are already doing it. It's already the story.

So now back to the relevant plot point for Mike.

On Dawson's Creek, Jack moves to town and he starts dating Joey (Josephine). They date for a couple episodes and do all the normal teen dating things- they kiss and hold hands and at one point almost have sex. But then Jack's asshole English teacher makes him read a poem he wrote in front of the whole class. And this poem is about his attraction to men. Jack starts getting bullied for being gay and Joey is confused and asks him about it. Jack denies it and Joey is relieved but it's clear to the audience he is lying. But we don't understand why or have context for it until he has a break-down at his father. He talks about how his father recognized he was gay when he was little and he tried to fix it and all it did was confuse him and make him hate himself and it's his fault he's insecure. He is correct and it's a pretty emotional moment that allows for the audience to not only understand him better but understand why he is dating Joey. Because he was ashamed and afraid. Because Joey is a girl. How could he date her and kiss her and almost have sex with her if he knew that he was gay. And the answer is this - he was trying to be normal. He was trying to fix himself the way his father told him to. And the audience understands this because of the way it is written. Jack, like anyone else, is fully capable of dating, kissing, and/or having sex with someone he isn't attracted to because being attracted to someone is not required for any of those things. Does this sound like Mike yet? It should, but here's some more. After his revelation, Jack goes to talk to Joey. At this point she realizes that he's gay and is basically just waiting for him to tell her. He talks about how he cares for her so much (Michael in season 4 not being able to tell El he loves her - I care for you so much. It's the same damn thing) and how she's been such a good friend which is why he didn't want to tell her. He didn't want to hurt her. But she is grateful for the truth. She remains a good friend to him through the series (albeit not his BFF like Jen becomes). Jack also struggles the rest of the series with internalized homophobia even though he's openly gay. I will fully admit that this part of the story isn't always well-written and is at times cringey. But the gist is this - even though he accepts his sexuality he is still struggling with his identity as a gay man and this is shown through his discomfort with being around other gay men. Especially gay men who are feminine and stereotypically gay. Because Jack isn't like that nor does he want to be associated with that. He even goes as far as joining a fraternity to prove how manly he is even though he's gay. So here we see what happens when people are presented with one type of person. That person - in this case feminine/stereotypically gay men - are treated as embarrassing when there is nothing actually wrong with this. But the other important thing is that it makes it difficult for people who aren't this to understand their own identity. They have no frame of reference. Because Jack is gay and masculine so it's hard for him to come to terms with what his identity as a gay man means because he isn't seeing anyone else like him do it. And this also provides a nice excuse for Mike, because he also isn't a stereotype (neither is Will). He likes video games and nerdy things so internally he can tell himself easily that he isn't gay. Because he doesn't act like he is in the way that he knows gay men to act. He isn't feminine. He only has the one frame of reference. So it makes it very easy for him to tell himself that he isn't gay. And it's the same reason the audience can't recognize him as gay either. Because he kisses a girl and he doesn't act like a stereotype and they don't have many other references in media (at least not ones that they aren't avoiding watching).

So when people say they'll never do Byler, it's too crazy and out of no where and it'll alienate too many people. I'm assuming these people are either very young or they have been living under a rock (or deliberately avoid content not about them personally). Because of course they will. They have no reason not to. They are already doing it. And there is also precedent for it. So back to season 3 and Mike. Part 3

if you ever feel like talking about ao no flag id love to hear it <3 i read it but hated some parts

mmmmm tbh i can't be very specific about the aspects i didn't like bc i read ao no flag in one sitting like 2 years ago so i don't remember much but i'll try 😭 i think my main problem was that back then everyone talked about it like it was the second coming of shimanami tasogare (i saw it get compared to it so much. seriously) and it wasn't like that..... at all. instead of recommending it for being a good drama or romance or whatever, people were saying (and said to me!!!) read for the lesbian rep! read for the bi rep! and when i finished i was like. is the lesbian and bi rep in the room with us rn.... i think i wouldn't have been so disappointed if my expectations weren't so high and that's on me 👍 when i read stuff i don't like i usually forget about it the next day but imagine seeing a series get compared to one of your favorite manga for months and months and when you read it it doesn't even get close 😭 i liked some aspects of ao no flag! i really liked the characters (which was one of the reasons why the way they got treated made me so mad, touma get behind me), it was a good drama, i just think it didn't really do a great job with the lgbt rep. i feel like if the manga was a few chapters longer and tried to solve all the issues it introduced i would've liked it. but instead it tried to deal with all these issues for so many chapters with no resolution on sight and then out of nowhere it was like time skip! this character's not at a lesbian! the mcs are together for some reason! which i understand, i do, i think it made sense, but taichi's feelings were not explored that much and yes i could see that maybe deep down he had some feelings for touma but. it's not about what i can perceive bc i'm a queer person who's used to finding queer subtext in everything. to be good queer rep it has to be more explicit, at least to me. And. oh my god. they didn't even show up together at the end bc of that whole 1st person pov chapter idk it makes me so mad it's the bare minimum come onnnnnn. at one point the manga even started discussing homophobia in such a weird way like it's just a different opinion guys live laugh love ♥️ HELLO???????? (not even gonna start talking about how dangerous it is to say that stuff when you're publishing a famous manga in a mainstream magazine like shonen jump). anyway i don't think it's the worst manga on earth or that people can't like it or relate to it or anything, the things that bothered me might not be a deal breaker to other lgbt people which it's ok you do you. it's as i said in my post, it tried and failed. anyway this was mostly me complaining, sorry i didn't articulate my thoughts better but as i said i don't remember much hehe. and just in case, i think it's great queer stories are being featured in magazines like jump, don't get me wrong. here's an article i read a few years ago and really liked!!! it discusses these issues i mentioned way better than i do. and in a less bitter way as well lol

Wait I think I figured out the subculture thing in the shower and I think the answer is capitalism as per usual.

So, teens are rarely the spark of the subculture. Not never, but rarely. If anything, it's the college students and some young adults who are very visible or aquired certain popularity to be accessible to the teens. But teens are certainly most important carriers of any subculture, teens are the ones bringing the loud statement of the subculture to their conformist homes and, well, distinguishing themselves from whatever is the 'norm', not even neccessarily the 'accepted' (hipsters rarely struggled with that other than at the hands of other subcultures) but the 'mainstream'. Hipsters were actually very particular about NOT being mainstream even if entirely inoffensive about their demeanor.

The problem I think now is that whoever might be the spark for any new hypothetical subculture, has to go viral or likely goes viral due to increasing prevalence of social media (which was NOT the case with hipsters who despised facebook - too mainstream - and maybe dabbled in twitter but likely just hung out on pinterest and select few on tumblr).

Subcultures I think are incompatible with going viral in approval. If everyone likes this and wants something similar or to emulate it – it's not 'sub', it's culture, it's mainstream. And the companies know that. Clothing and decor and 'lifestyle' companies have harnessed this and now that I think of it, it started precisely around the hipster era, heralding the end of it.

So if any personality teens like – musician, actor, artist, writer gets enough likes on twitter, thus securing the teenage working bees will start carrying their style in a little flock – companies also see that and start producing and advertising exactly that style of clothing, decor and lifestyle. Everything that is different get's glossed and castarted and thrown on shein, thus becoming mainstream immediately.

Especially if you pair that with the book bans, the 'unalived' and the 'seggs' and the sanitisation of internet and social media, rebranding tough questions as 'too difficult', when 'Huckleberry Finn' is seen as ~problematique~ for depicting racism, the whole deal of booktok, and this insufferable, gagged and castrated media as the main source of this kind of inspiration for kids – is it a wonder anything dostinguishable and even mildly offensive struggles to be born?

So if you can't discuss death - how can you be goth? If you can't discuss suicide - are you even emo? If you can't talk about vandalism or post even a measly 'ACAB' without getting banned - what hope is there for punk? If you can't access or discuss controversial ideas some would consider offensive – how can you build a loud identity around (the lack of) such ideas? Even the fucking hipsters had this controversial idea of 'I liked it before it was mainstream'- yeah, it wasn't a good idea, but I disagree with emos on several points as well, yet I will always applaud their commitment to the point of view. Giving your philosophy a dresscode is a ballsy move that requires questioning authority even if in the end that philosophy is reconsidered.

Subculture is a community, communities (based on common interests) are now formed online more than in person, under the watch of companies who do not want any controversy near their precious ads, teens have not known topic-centered forums, just the algorythm spoon-feeding them 'content' and shein advertising 'aesthetics' one can change daily with enough products, all while maintining the most generic preferences and opinions, not backing up those aesthetics with any controversial worldview or philosophy or idea, juat making playlist after playlist for every aesthetic out of the minstreamest spotify top 100 artists, claiming taylor swift has goth songs or something (she doesn't. ABBA is more goth than taylor swift).

So I think to form a proper, healthy subculture, teens need to leave social media, tiktok and instagram particularly and read a bunch of banned books about death and suicide and capitalism and worker's struggle and sex and gender and stuff. But they can't because those books are banned or overshadowed by booktok friends-to-lovers-YA, and they've taken their spaces away and instead put up H&Ms selling them aesthetics.

re: meta again (again) - about old fandoms with no/little new input - do you think that there's a point where even though there's kinda more time for meta, the fandom becomes a bit detached from the canon material, maybe partially?

also, you made a really interesting point with developing confidence in one's own taste - I think I (and many others) are used to being graded on media analysis in school, so you'd have to find the 'correct' angle instead of finding the angle that works for you. it feels like it should be obvious that it can be different but I did kinda need you to write it down to get it, so thank you :) also, thank you for the discussion in general - I have actually started to grab screenshots of the comic panels that I've been having thoughts about, but here comes the final boss of writing meta (to me): lack of time, haha

I think it can vary enormously depending on the fandom, honestly. Some fandoms are built up around folks who are there to do textual analysis and as a result, I find that you don't tend to get that kind of "canon drift", because constantly revisiting the text is a large part of the communal fandom experience. (Again I invoke the daddy of all Western acafandoms- book-Tolkien and especially Silmarillion fandom spaces tend to go this way.) They can wind up in their own recursive interpretive bubbles in other ways, mind, but it's in no way a sure thing. I do think fandoms where it is possible to remain engaged without needing to revisit the source material can be prone to it, though. Transformers fandom (including e.g. specifically IDW1 fandom) gives you a lot of avenues for creative fannish outlets that don't need you to revisit the canon material for reference, so it's very possible for fanon environments to... drift away. (I'm thinking of drift here in a way that's a little like semantic drift, honestly.)

I think the idea that it relates to experience with media analysis in school- and I assume you mean school and not higher education here?- is interesting. While my time before dropping out of university wasn't spent in a literature course (I studied linguistics), it was adjacent enough and I spent enough time trying to self-study in it academically that my default understanding of this stuff trends towards my experiences there rather than high school, where I feel like the "right vs wrong" dichotomy is at least less emphasized. But of course those bad educational settings where the idea of "right" analyses are taken for granted bc Teaching To The Test must loom large in most peoples' memories bc it's, you know, the default for most people- like they exist ofc. All I can say to that is that a majority of high school/etc experiences with "media analysis" are so far from what it looks like everywhere else that you deserve to feel comfortable punting it into the fucking sun. Not just in the sense that "academic analysis" doesn't do that in higher education environments (though it shouldn't! i swear to god it shouldn't be like that!!!) but also because so much exciting analysis of art is done fully outside academic environments. ...I just realised that my longstanding investment in artistic analysis of video games as a medium probably helps me here because it ranges from "academic analysis is rejected by the mainstream as Not What Real Games Are About so gamers hate it" to "academic analysis of video games has no room for most indie work and neither does pop culture so it has to exist independently without following convention so academics dismiss it", which means I'm just. Really used to analysis of non-prestigious media that is fully outside "the academy", haha. If you want to get comfortable analysing art when you haven't done it since high school handed you a stupid letter grade, peruse Critical Distance for media analysis that is largely divorced from the idea of consensus among Important People TM, genuinely; critical artistic analysis of video games is a great place to find intelligent, interesting work that ignores a lot of what is conventionally considered "obligatory" for Real Art Criticism TM. (video game crit is like, my default mileau, ngl.)

As for time, I personally write most of my work while doing time theft (this is why you see me on here less at the weekends), but regardless: recommended post on one (excellent) fandom-writer's process. also, take as long as you need. take months if you have to. it's good and fine. write three words a day. write one post a year. or post seven a day, whatever. i will say that folding meta-writing into my 'reading for fun' time helped me a lot, though- meta as an extension of re-reading for fun, rather than something in addition to it, was very helpful to me! don't re-read in addition to planning meta, basically; try and meld the two into one experience. you aren't doing an academia, and you can go off the cuff as you read! make meta into a liveblog, and get meta out of livetweets! same hat!!! etc. but also it's just fine to. take time. yknow.

HOLY SHIT I just stumbled into a Tweet by Cindy Yamauchi pointing out, when Brawler's backstory came out in the manga, that Brawler wasn't "the black guy dying first" because he's in fact Japanese

(Roughly) "There were some people from overseas who were upset that it was racist for black characters to be the first to die... That's right. Brawler is Japanese. Or rather, they are all Japanese. It's Kansai. It's an anime."

I don't really have the tools to host that conversation, but I was in fact just re-reading my old posts and reblogs about Akudama Drive, including very in-depth discussions of Brawler's characterisation as a black-coded man. Even more mainstream critiques, that I remember paraphrasing in the "reception" section of the Akudama Drive page on the Wiki, were largely positive about the anime despite pointing this out.

I can't make a good analysis of her phrasing either, since I'm not familiar enough with the language. Being that overseas fans were overwhelmingly positive about the anime, I think it would be appreciated for the creators to open their minds to unexpected critique and how things may have come across to different viewers.

(By the way, this debunks the random asks I've sometimes gotten about "I read Brawler was this or this." Word of God says Japanese.)

I definitely appreciate Cindy Yamauchi's design work, but I'm tempted to question her takes on Brawler's. After all, his final design matched the sketch we know to be Komatsuzaki's a lot more than it does hers, which was... a lot lighter, although it still sported locs (and may have introduced the binders in his hair).

(White Brawler incoming 😭)

I wish I had a better idea what the timeline was for the designs, why we have a Cindy and a Rui version for each, chicken or the egg.....?

This is leading me to wonder if there weren't miscommunications in Brawler's design and characterisation, leading to his origins being... vague. I think you'd be hard-pressed to pretend Brawler's final design doesn't have foreign (from a Japanese point of view) influence. To claim Brawler's is "just Japanese" and there's nothing else worthy of note is a bit... out there. Just because "it's anime" doesn't mean his appearance isn't recognisable.

It's important to note that Brawler having Japanese origins is totally legit and even... to repeat myself, important! But it would be in good taste to acknowledge different influences, the inspirations behind his design, and so far we have very little information on the matter. In the event that there are different influences I'm missing out on, this would have been a good opportunity to point them out, clarifying that overseas viewers were misunderstanding because of their own biases/ignorance.

Like there's a non-zero chance Brawler's design was a bad game of telephone. It's still weird not to accept what the final product comes off as.

Of course, this is confirmation that there were no ill intentions behind killing him off first, but I don't think most people assumed that was the case. It often comes down to either ignorance or internalised biases, or both.

THE DISCOGRAPHY PRINCIPLE, Episode 5: Fugazi, or: People in high places are in on the kill taker

This is the first and only episode of the series that has a subtitle actually originating within the discography of the band it's discussing. More precisely, this sentence is in the packaging to a 1993 album called In on the Kill Taker, originally meant to be an EP produced by Steve Albini, local hero (you may recall him from Episode 2 of this very same series). At one point the band simply couldn't seem to stop producing new material, and collectively decided the new songs needed a more "produced" sound. So they split ways with Steve Albini right before his big breakthrough producing Nirvana's In Utero. The reason why I picked a sentence within Fugazi's work instead of turning to the usual postmodern shortcircuiting techniques is that Fugazi exist outside of any other reasoning, exclusively and crucially on their own merits and terms. There is no other band like Fugazi.

Think about it: upon reviewing any post-hardcore influenced band, no self-respecting professional reviewer after 1998 will ever compare them to Fugazi directly, even when they'd be right in doing so. There are a number of euphemisms to soften that comparison: maybe At the Drive-In (whose best record by far also happens to be their most Fugazi-inspired, as well as one of my favourite records ever), perhaps Refused if we're feeling exotic and we forget how firmly their tongue is lodged in their cheek at all times. Nobody touches Fugazi unless it's about Fugazi, and even then it's basically a given — they are either the best band ever or somewhere up there. If you don't know Fugazi, that might sound a bit too heavy-handed, and perhaps even get you to feel some aversion to Fugazi, until you listen to the records and realize "oh God, they were right". Here is where I, personally, realized that was the case for me:

Fugazi's superiority, at first, seems to lie within their internal policies and politics, their choices to sell any of their work and tickets exclusively below a certain price and to specifically push for all-ages shows, their strict code of ethics concerning relationships with fans and recorded music producers: no merch, no branding, no nothing, the point was first and foremost to make punk music with an attitude for research and dynamism and a social/political edge that wasn't afraid to tackle any subject matter in any manner that was felt necessary, all the while remaining firmly against (against discrimination, against violence, against a number of mainstream ideal models of conduct and thought). All else was window dressing and as such to be avoided. The Steve Albini debacle, if we want to call it that, ended up with Steve Albini's respect for the band skyrocketing — their ability to make such a decision with a producer already in ever-growing demand (who was himself eager to work with them) meant they were for real, they cared for the music much more than they did the publicity, and plain and simple had thought about what they did hard enough to know how to serve the songs. But that's exactly the main point: there's plenty of bands who don't care about the publicity and there's plenty of bands who try to make socially engaged music and there's plenty of bands who don't do social media. But how many of these bands are Fugazi — that is, how many have a track record this good?

I keep thinking back to this one thing that Francesco Farabegoli once said about Waiting Room in this here piece (Italian only, but I'll translate the relevant part, don't worry). For reference, Waiting Room not only is the first song on Fugazi's first EP, it's also the first song Fugazi ever wrote according to internal chronicles of the band, so it's got to sound a little bit surprising to those of you not in the know when FF writes that the song "lives within this paradox by which despite it not being the best song ever recorded by Fugazi, it's still the best song ever recorded by anyone". Hard to believe until you hear it, then you'll know what I mean. If I had to pick a favourite Fugazi song, that'd probably be Instrument, which I conveniently linked up at the beginning, and which neatly lines up with the fact that In on the Kill Taker is the one Fugazi album I have personally spent the most time with. In case you're wondering, a couple other picks might be Caustic Acrostic and Cassavetes — another cool thing about Fugazi is that they love their cinema. This might be the place where I first heard the name of John Cassavetes, as a matter of fact. But Waiting Room? There's simply no way to beat that as a first impression, and I get the feeling they might have known.

But by far what drives me to Fugazi the most is the very clear sense of linear, constant progression you get listening to their music in the release order. There is a core concept ("like the Stooges with reggae", in the words of Ian MacKaye) and then there are innumerable applications of said concept: its most stripped-down variant — of course the most solid, because it's the most rehearsed and strongest rooted — gets progressively more articulate and confident; but it reaches a breaking point, which the critics usually correlate to Steady Diet of Nothing; the band is able to rebound by slowly exploding that form, making it somewhat more articulate and chiselled; from In on the Kill Taker onwards everything turns more dynamic, the arrangement finds a community of intent and expression that transcend the base form and culminate of course into a record that simply chooses to refuse all further articulation. Ironically enough, that record is titled The Argument, it came out in 2001 after three years in the works — a very long time, the longest in the band's history — and then the band were so forward-thinking as to pioneer yet another dearly-beloved of post-hardcore bands all around the world: the term "indefinite hiatus".

It's much easier to say this than it is to split up for real, but what else were Fugazi supposed to do? They are still friends, they simply don't feel the band has anything more to say at this present time. Plus it's not like they stopped making music altogether — everyone of them has their own projects, their own things and most importantly their own life. I guess it's a matter of realizing that at one point you've reached an end, or that it would take too long for something to actually carry on in the proper manner. And I get it. Shutting up sometimes really says more than a hundred words, in that even absence implies non-presence (or past presence, in this case), it creates longing, it creates an empty space to be filled by whoever feels up to the task. In other words, I'm pretty sure something as big as Fugazi never really dies, and I think they too think so. "That is not dead which can eternal lie"…