#racism can be an important thing to address in games but only if everyone at the table wants to deal with it
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Gale’s Top Ten: Least favorite episodes of Miraculous Ladybug (as of season 5)
With Season 5 finished and my posting of my top 10 favorite episodes, it’s time I crank the meter the other way. Now some rules
1. Like always this is my personal opinion, and if you liked these episodes, that’s great. I would love to hear your reasoning
2. I will be judging them SOLELY of what was shown in the episode, not by any leaks that came out before or after. I’m solely judging on what is seen and confirmed
3. Word of warning, I will be pretty vicious with my critiques. Also profanities will be thrown.
Now before I go into them, I should give some congratulations to some episodes no longer in my bottom 10
Captain Hardrock: You are still a lame episode, but not the worst you are actually decent in comparison to some of these.
Stormy weather 2.0: Clip shows still are awful, but there are worst things
Frozer: In the grand scheme of things this episode really wasn’t important and there are worst character writing
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10.Sole Crusher
Revisiting this, it really isn’t a good episode for ML. I don’t know what was more Shoehorned in, Zoe’s character arc of replacing Chloé or the lucky charm.
It also makes little sense that Marinette would be the one pushing for Zoe considering her experience with Chloé and her family (especially after Season 5 revealed her trauma).
Now Zoe isn’t a bad character, but she will always be seen as the replacement Good bee, and she deserves better writing.
Honestly it could be argued Queen banana should be here, but that episode is too much of a s***post that I get more enjoyment out of it. This is trying to play this straight and it don’t feel right.
9. Qilin
This episode has a some things going for it, great akuma design, decent action. But it also has a ton going against it. It’s in a series of episodes I like to call “Thomas’ gets political” and I will tell you this, he sucks at it.
I would try and explain further but I am aware I would butcher the topic, all that should be said is, racism tackled poorly and Marinette says she will pay for a ticket that her mother didn’t deserve to get in the first place.
Also the animation looks off in the episode, it just looks so bleh. 
8. Migration
Remember that whole reveal that Luka knows both Ladybug’s and chat noir’s identities and how he kept that to himself?
Well that FINALLY gets addressed. And are Ladybug and chat noir mad at him? No. No consequences for him.
The whole episode acts like he is such an important character but this is one of 2 episodes he’s in where he has more than 2 lines.
Then he gets to travel the world with his dad because monarch found out he knows.
Kagami got akumatized twice and she knew Ladybug’s identity, step up your game Luka.
Also the fake out with Rose was bulls*** and everyone knows it.
Also the entire episode had everyone but Luka lacking brain cells.
I don’t rank it lower because while it annoyed me greatly, there are worse offenders on the list.
7. Animaestro
Astruc complains for 22 minutes that nobody cares about him anymore.
Also Marinette teams up with her bully which after watching Derision, WOULD BE THE LAST thing she would do.
This is the worst example of the Creator calling out the audience, There are other episodes like this but this one is the least entertaining. And if the ending of season 5 is concerned. “I’ve seen your writing, so I can FUCKING CRITIQUE IT YOU ARROGANT PIECE OF…”
Okay, I’m calm. Point being. It’s his call out the critics episode and it sucks
6. Furious Fu
I HATE Su Han.
He is a worse version of Fu in every stretch of the imagination.
The episode where Su han shows up and starts making demands is stupid. The only thing he has going for him is his fighting style which he never teaches the two people that could have needed it!
The episode isn’t lower because despite Su Han’s impact, he really doesn’t do much and he is just there to be a nag later on. Also Fu’s akuma looks dope as hell and gave Fu some slack.
5. Feast
So remember how Su han showed up in the last episode. Well he and all the other guardians were gone for over 100 years because they lost to a 4 Foot blue dog made by a hungry child.
This episode isn’t as bad as the others as a stand alone, but knowing the lore makes it sound so completely stupid. Like Fu was HAUNTED by his past and we find out it was because he was hungry when training and the guardians COULDNT handle that? All trained to fight miraculous users should they go rogue, couldn’t beat ONE DOG. The mysterious order is incompetent as heck.
It’s just so stupid. Also Fu was acting irrational af over all this didn’t help.
4.Reflekdoll
I want everyone to know how massive this is, Reflekdoll is no longer my least favorite episode.
For anyone that follows me, my SEETHING hatred of this episode is well documented.
I won’t go on about how the tropes were horribly done or ignored, how off the banter was, or even how stupid everyone is this episode. Because I’ve discussed it in length.
I will simply say, Thank God there is Passion, so if people want a GOOD kwami swap episode they can watch that one.
3. Miracle Queen
I’ve talked about this episode to death on here. But really the only flaws with it are the last half of the episode.
The drama of the first half is great. But the ass pull of a memory wipe, the clear degradation of Chloé’s character, and just the simple giving up of Hawkmoth, he could have easily still won if he pushed a bit longer. The ending was depressing but also a clear example of how the writers put themselves in a corner with no way out.
The only thing that makes it worse is Fu’s replacement (Su han) ends up being a worse teacher.
Also considering how they spent season 4 quickly getting Marinette and Adrien out of the relationships with the love rivals, even they realize it was a dumb call.
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2. Ephemeral
Hey, let’s make an episode to explain why Adrien can NEVER know his father is the villain.
This episode is the go to justification of the writers on why Adrien will always be sidelined. It was also the unofficial reveal of the sentimonster theory before it was said pretty much outright in season 5.
The worst akuma design. Marinette gaslighting, gate keeping chat noir at its worst.
Gabriel wins and gets his wish.
And none of it mattered and no one remembers it except I think Sass. So it was pretty much pointless.
Not even the ladrien and cute reveal could save it.
And don’t even get me started on how pointless and avoidable it is.
It’s almost funny because despite how pointless this was, it’s still better than number 1.
1. Re-creation
So many cool concepts, great designs. Marinette dropping a piano on Gabriel. So many great things. But it also had some flaws, like having Adrien sidelined, and the focus on heroes from the specials for practically no reason. But all of that could be forgivable if the ending lands…
It really shows how an AWFUL ending can fuck up everything.
Imagine having 5 seasons of fighting to stop a villain from getting the miraculous to make the wish only for him to WIN! Yes he wins. He gets to make the wish, you know the wish that was said should NEVER be used. Of all the stupid, asinine, Shark Jumping BULL SHIT. Who the fuck APPROVED THIS HORSE SHIT?!
So he gets his wish, and he gets a statue HONORING HIM. What the fuck? Adrien, who was ABUSED now sees his abuser as a hero and EVERYONE THAT KNOWS THE TRUTH IN HIS LIFE IS HIDING THE TRUTH FROM HIM. Nathalie, Marinette, Felix, Kagami. Even PLAGG!
And the whole utopia crap, everything is just perfect now, because the villain got what he wanted.
That’s a great lessons for kids! (Blatant Sarcasm)
But let’s really dig in, the ending left a LOT of things vague. And hilariously ALL OF THE POTENTIAL OUTCOMES ARE SHIT.
1. Emilie was revived and Nathalie got healed.
So Gabriel gets everything he wanted from the wish, justifying everything he did and he gets treated like a hero and another person hiding the truth from Adrien. Marinette knows everything that brought this about and is keeping that from Adrien, but is justified slightly because it could encourage Adrien to try and get his father back with a wish. Also brings up the question of who took Emile’s place.
2. Only Nathalie was healed.
Gabriel ended up with Emilie like he wanted, gets treated like a martyr, Adrien is technically an orphan, Marinette is knowingly lying to him about his father and Adrien continues to get Gaslit.
3. Emilie is revived, Nathalie is healed, and memories were altered
Gabriel’s wish basically shaped EVERYTHING how he wanted, meaning he is still in control of Adrien’s life even in death. Even his own wife. So while this removes Marinette covering for him intentionally, it just means Gabriel was so much worse.
4. Nathalie’s healed and memories altered
Gabriel gets to be with Emile and has shaped Adrien’s life even in death. Everyone basically puppeteer by him as he died. Sure he’s dead but he also retconned for his redemption, which is bullshit.
Now there are people that defend this ending/potential ending.
I’m sorry but, unless they revive Gabriel and he gets exposed, Adrien finds out the truth, and he gets held accountable for his actions. I can’t feasibly imagine this ending being good.
The writing staff aren’t going to do Anything about this, they are just going to move on to Lila as the main villain and say the Agreste plotline is over.
If they Do, do something, I’ll happily take back my words and alter my view of the episode but right now.
It’s one of the WORST season finale’s I’ve seen in my life.
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you know how. you know. you know in taz amnesty when justin just. made up npcs. made up parts of the town. made up details about life there. and griffin was so enthusiastic and let him do it and rolled with it and built the world around what justin built.
like, justin is the type of player i aspire to be and griffin (in many ways, but specifically that one) is the type of gm i aspire to be, and i know most mainstream ttrpgs (cough d&d cough) tend to have the gm as the be-all end-all worldbuilder god and like i sure do love worldbuilding but i feel so very gifted when one of my players does some Worldbuilding At Me*
and d&d is fun and taz graduation is fun and someday i’ll catch up with it but also i want the mcelroys to play more games with collaborative worldbuilding, bcos they’re so good at it, and yeah they’ve done some improv-heavy game and griffin tried to play monster of the week with collaborative worldbuilding but it’s not the SAME there are games that structure that so you can ask ur players questions and it encourages them to make up answers and i want to hear them play more of that!!
(i also want them to play blades in the dark or a hack of it specifically bcos while i love travis what i have heard of graduation had him doing some old-style d&d dming, and i feel like he would benefit from the radically different gming style of forged in the dark games. also bcos i love the failure system of fitd games gdi i want to hear the mcelroys play with that. i know it’s a p dark system so they prolly wouldn’t play it but it’d be FUN and there are lighter games.)
#*with the caveat that if i HAVE done some worldbuilding pls play within the world i've created#or at least acknowledge that you have read the world i built#i once had to spend a long time working with a player on her backstory bcos i homebrewed a d&d world to avoid fantasy racism#bcos i didn't want to do heavy fantasy racism in my game#and she made her backstory that her entire town had been killed bcos of fantasy racism in like. horrific genocidal ways.#that was before i was rly acquainted with ttrpg safety tools and like lines and veils and stuff so that would have helped#but i DID put a thing in the worldbook i made gdi that was the ONE THING#i left a lot of details very vague (altho i did set the bigger structure of the world in other ways)#u could have played with those details. pls i said to ignore that stuff in the d&d sourcebooks.#racism can be an important thing to address in games but only if everyone at the table wants to deal with it#it's a difficult subject sometimes u play a game for escapism#.......anyway that's not the point the POINT is that i love collaborative worldbuilding (if done sensitively with proper safety tools)
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«Poetry is not a luxury»: Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker and poetry as resistance
«Poetry is not a luxury»[1], Audre Lorde said. Poetry is not a game, another amusement to dampen the boredom of a humdrum life but it’s a need, a necessity as instrument to the battle against oppression, to self-determination and to identitary resistance because «poetry is power»[2]. And this is as much true and confirmed when poetry becomes activism, when lyricism expresses, and thus bears witness, a discomfort and makes it universal, fathomable through the poetic language; when writing in verse is the only way to express ideas and makes sure they’re recognised in their own dignity, thus it’s necessary in order to save and let respected the existence of that human being who has thought it, in order to this existence can be recognised as such, can arise from oppression and systematic hate, can give voices to those whose lips were ripped off, such as women, for whom «[…] poetry […] is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we [women] predicate our hopes and dreams towards survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought»[3], so, poetry’s place where they can expresses opinions, needs, dreams, hope, in other words themselves, where the cultural system gives preference to other voices, wherein censorship is not official, i.e. perpetrated by an organisation or a law, but it’s cultural because it’s the culture that systematically chooses (a given social class) what creative expressions are more or less are in line with its own values or strengthen them. That’s why for centuries poetry (but also the whole literature) has been place wherein affirm ourselves and the individuality of our own identity, or express pride for a communitarian identity; as it was for women, who found in poetry an instruments they can express their real self through, getting out of the patriarchal control and out of the role they were bonded to by society and came less to the expectations of this one. In this way, women could so analyse her being woman, dreaming to choose who are and what to do, self-determinising and exploring their femininity beyond believes given by a certain historical moment; as it was for black community, wherein black poets could express the a beauty, the varieties, the complexity of their subculture, their traditions, history and so express the pride of being part of this ethnicity, fighting against racism and networking against the oppression perpetrated by a system that privileges white citizens (and more often men). These two concepts converge into the poetic experience of black women poets, for whom poetry became a place wherein speaking of their experience as women and black citizens, wherein they can exist and affirm their existence, «The white father told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us – the poet – whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom»[4]. Let think of great poets like Maya Angelou, whose poems «often respond to matters like race and sex on a larger social and psychological scale»[5], or like Gwendolyn Brooks, whose poetry, especially the latest, is a political and civil poetry, taking as cultural reference heroes and subjects of the battle for liberation of black people (such as Winnie Mandela, wife to the anti-apartheid activist), but also like Margaret Walker who «through her work, she “[sang] a song for [her] people”, capturing their symbolic quest for liberation. When asked how she viewed her work, she responded, “The body of my work… springs from my interest in a historical point of view that is central to the development of black people as we approach the twenty first century”»[6].
1. Maya Angelou: I know why the caged bird sings
«The poignant beauty of Angelou’s writing enhances rather than masks the candid with which she addresses the racial crisis through which America was passing»[7]. That of Maya Angelou is a lively and melodic voice, her poems can talk even when there’s no human voice to give them sound, they have as mode,s the language of the intense, brave speeches of the great activist of the battle for black people’s rights like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Angelou was able to bring together all temporal planes in her writing: both in her poetry and autobiographies, she managed to give voice to the last, to make it a new present, part of the hic te nunc of the existence in action and not anymore as something disappeared with time, but as something that is still here partly, that is still a being. A past that is personal, her life, her youth, her terrible traumas, the beauty of growing before as a girl than as a woman; a pat that is of her community, the troubled story of afroamericana and who that the lyrical I becomes a We, the collectivity becomes a person. The personal experience is thus an exemplum for the common one and becomes even global. The present meets the past, that of when a given poems was born, that of readers, of the poet, it’s the daily battle which becomes memory, it’s the journey to the self-determination in a place where is hostility but also the future, it’s the caged bird that sings and whose song is heard by the free birds, the future is a song overcoming its own time: «The caged bird sings/with a fearful trill/of things unknown/but longed for still/and his tune is heard/on the distant hill/for the caged bird/sings of freedom»[8]. “The caged bird”, dr, Maya Angelou’s favourite metaphor, taken from Paul Laurence Dunbar, famous afroamerican author, is a symbol for the inner freedom that wins ones the oppression of the external, is an eternal song that’s heard until now and if it’s clearly listened, one can hear the thousand of voice from the past and here we can find the beauty in Maya Angelou’s writing: the ability to speak through not one but a thousand of voices, voices of both the present and the past, giving relevance to the last ones, and consequently she was able to tell the future, to be understood by who’ll be after her.
2. Gwendolyn Brooks: writing poetry that will be meaningful
The poetic voice of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first afroamerican woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, is raw, bitter when the language gets filled with political and cultural meaning, when brings a message without forgetting the sweetness, the beauty of a poised, refined style. Worked, studied poems, perfect verse and rhymes, but also intense, hard, which don’t take away to be tough, to tell the truth on oppression, pain, on the battle to re-humanise her own identity in a culture where it was deprived of its otherness, of being an Other Ego, an Other Truth. This happens especially with the her most famous poem collection, In The Mecca, a turning point for Brooks’s poetics. «I want to write poems that will be non compromising. I don’t want to stop a concern with words doing good jobs, which has always been a concern of mine, but I want to write poems that will be meaningful […]»[9] and this was so. Brooks managed to delineate a world, give multiple meanings to the words she used, to the poems, to speak with the voice of her great gallery of characters. In her poems, there’s her Lyric I, but also her characters. Such a polyphony that only few, even among novelists, can make it in such little verbal marks. «The words, lines, and arrangements have been worked and worked and worked again into poised exactness: the unexpected apt metaphor, the mock-colloquial asides amid jewelled phrases, the half-ironic repetition – she knows it all»[10]. A poetry that can speak to its people, community, that hopes, fights for a future where Gwendolyn Brooks «[…] envisioned “the profound and frequent shaking of hands, which in Africa in so important. The shaking of hands in warmth and strength and union”»[11].
3. Margaret Walker: poetry as hope, poetry for the people
Margaret Walker’s poetics is the voice of a whole people, is culture that becomes creative work of a lonely person for the universality and becomes bringer of values. It’s the song of a choir, a choir for the last, of the story of slavery, of that community that still fights for the right to exist; it’s a choir that still sings and never stops to sing the lines of this wonderful poet.
One of the most loved and praised poem of Margaret Walker is “For My People”, which contains all the characteristics that made unique Walker’s poetry and it’s an excursus through the past and more recent history of US Black community, from the tragedy of slavery, to civil battles still fought nowadays in the heart of the New World; «poems in which the body and spirit of a great group of people are revealed with vigour and undeviating integrity»[12]. She uses as reference cultural elements of her community, recalls heroes, events that form that culture as vast as unheard by those who spit poison to not lose the position of privilege, and if this culture isn’t heard, then Margaret Walker addresses also to the deaf. She speaks to them as well, making universal a history that’s particular. Walker speak to everyone through her rhymes, she speaks to the humanity; her poetry talks about tragedies but is full of hope because she knows there will be always someone who still listen, fight, defend, doesn’t forget, «[…] the power of resilience presented in the poem is a hope Walker holds out not only to black people, but to all people […] “After all, it is the business of all writes to write about the human condition, and all humanity must be involved in both the writing and in the reading”»[13]
Viviana Rizzo
References
[1] LORDE, A., “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, in Audre Lorde, Sister outsider, Trumansburg N.Y., Crossing Press, 1984, p. 371
[2] TODOROV, L’arte nella tempesta. L’avventura di poeti, scrittori e pittori nella Rivoluzione Russa, trans. ita. by Emanuele Lana, Milano, Garzanti S.r.l., 2017, p. 120 (iBooks)
[3] LORDE, A., “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, in Audre Lorde, Sister outsider, p. 372
[4] Ibidem
[5] EDITORS, “Maya Angelou”, in Poetry Foundation, web, 2021, (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/maya-angelou, retrieved on 24th February 2021)
[6] EDITORS, “Margaret Walker”, in Poetry Foundation, web, 2021 (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/margaret-walker, retrieved on 24th February 2020).
[7] HOLST, W.A., “Review of A song Flung up to Heaven”, in Christian Century (giugno 2002), pp. 35-36, cit. in EDITORS, “Maya Angelou” in Poetry Foundation
[8] ANGELOU, M., The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, New Work, Random House Inc., 1994, p. 194
[9] EDI TORS, “Gwendolyn Brooks”, Poetry Foundation, web, 2021 (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gwendolyn-brooks consultato il 24 febbraio 2021)
[10] LITTLEJOHN, D., Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes, New York, Grossman, 1966, p. 91, cit. in EDITORS, “Gwendolyn Brooks”, in Poetry Foundation
[11] EDITORS, “Gwendolyn Brooks”, in Poetry Foundation
[12] UNTERMEYER, L. “New Books in Review” in Yake Review, vol. XXXII, n. 2 (inverno 1934), p.371, cit. in EDITORS, “Margaret Walker”, in Poetry Foundation
[13] EDITORS, “Margaret Walker”, in Poetry Foundation
#Black women#literature#poetry as resistance#Maya Angelou#ethnicity#resistance#black history month#Margaret Walker#poetry#Black community#Gwendolyn Brooks#activism#people#Black people#battle for civil rights#black lives matter
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We’re all pretty aware that the tumblr otherkin community is at a huge decline; I was wondering if you have any theories as to why that is?
American Protestantism, the decline of queer oppression in North America and the AIDS crisis, helicopter parenting, web 3.0, morality politics, and Tumblr’s porn ban; roughly in that order and rolled up into one bombshell that was a few years in the coming but nobody really saw it and understood it until it was far too late.
That was a mouthful and probably only made sense if you follow current cyberpolitical theory. For some of you reading this, as with every other hot take I have this has a chance of being passed around, that alone is enough. But for others who had no idea what I just said and need the ELI5 version, let me explain that. Buckle up, this’ll be a long one, and will go into fandom history a bit as well because it is actually relevant.
As we know, tumblr is a very American-centric platform. Twitter is also this way, but less so, but tumblr has it bad. Now, I’m ‘lucky’ in the fact that I’m Canadian and a twenty minute drive from the American border, so that puts me in the ‘privileged’ majority. (I say privileged because I’m not really sure what else to call it. Most of the information going around about politics either directly affects me or indirectly affects me approximately one or two links of contact away. Someone who’s only influenced by American politics because it makes their sister’s online friends sad is not going to be privileged in that way.)
This means that American politics and their social climate overwhelmingly affects tumblr’s social climate. This also bleeds through into other fandom spaces, on twitter, instagram, and Pixiv to name a few places; but here’s where I spend the majority of my time so here’s what I’ve witnessed.
America’s main religion, as far as I understand (from the raised agnostic and currently neopagan view I have), is some weirdass capitalistic-Protestantism that is so many miles from what the actual Bible says that if I were a betting man and knew more about cults than I did, I’d say it’s some weird fucking cult and never set foot in the country again for any reason that isn’t gaming free shipping through a PO box. If you have no idea what I just said but are at least vaguely familiar with Christianity, this graphic explains it pretty well. So we can see there’s some glaring issues with that ideal.
The decline of queer oppression and the rise of queer rights in North America, which is to tenderly include my own country but we all know when people say ‘in NA’ they mean ‘America, and Canada where it applies because the right-wing Republicans are really good in the propaganda department to convince everyone that Mexico is a drug-lords-and-anarchy wasteland to the point where even I don’t actually know what’s down there other than bad drivers and heat’; means two things. One, it’s a good thing by a long shot and do not mistake this as me thinking queer oppression being lessened is a bad thing. But two, it means that thanks to the AIDS crisis, queer folks lost a lot of first-person sources as history.
The queer elders in NA who survived are typically either a) bitter anarchists who are often POC, probably still dirt poor and do recreational drugs or b) university-tenured TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists). Category A are the people who Republicans have deemed worthless in every way, because racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the other ways to be wrong and different and Evil that they can’t handle, because Jeezus would never want them to actually learn to love someone who wasn’t just like them, and they don’t have the compassion to do better. Category B are the people who want to be different in just a teensie little bit, typically with TERFs they want to be lesbians, but they don’t want to challenge the status quo. They’re fine with the way things work, they just want to be on top oppressing others over ripping the whole damn thing down and building a more forgiving system.
Now, due to all those ‘isms and the cheerfully malicious aid of the Republicans, pun not intended but drives home the cruelty of it all, we also see the rise of helicopter parenting. The invention of the internet did not really help this. Basically what you’ve got is a whole bunch of parents who saw the civil rights movement, just got access to the internet and things going viral, know the world is changing, and like all parents, they’re scared for their children. Now instead of parents knowing one or two people in their classes who just went missing one day and everyone assumed they ran away, they hear about eight homicides in the city of kids going to parks at night and dying. The Satanic Panic was another event around this time that contributed to that, but I’ll let you research that one.
This means that all of these parents, instead of doing what their parents typically did and let their kids wander off for the day so long as they’re back by sundown, they can’t let their children out of their sight. There might be a freak accident where their child is decapitated on the playground swing! Their baby might get murdered by an evil Satanist walking home from school! Their dearest darling might go online and tell their address to someone who’s got a 100% chance of being a pedophile who will show up and kidnap them in the night!
…You get the idea.
Combine those three things I just established, what we’ve got is a lot of queer kids who have a lot of internalized shame for being different and wrong, because they’re queer, and they can’t find spaces offline to be themselves, because all of the elders who would do that are dead and/or inaccessible and their parents won’t let them go to any clubs that aren’t school-related, which they’ll never find a GSA or queer club because Republicans, ‘isms, propaganda, and the war on Category A queer adults have all done their best to ensure that those spaces don’t exist.
So you have a generation of kids who I am the youngest of. The first generation on the internet. The late Web 1.0 (usenets and Geocities) and early Web 2.0 (livejournal was the big one, ff.net too, also 4chan but fuck those guys) generation. What we were taught was: trust nobody on the internet with your real info no matter how much you like them, this is a wilderness and any crimes that happen won’t be punished or seen so don’t put yourself in a position where you’re going to be the victim of one, and everything you put online is never getting taken down so don’t put anything up that you’re not willing to have on the front page of your local newspaper.
This worked out pretty well, actually! You had kids who knew that if they got in trouble, there was no backup coming to save them. Because the form that backup might take - parents and police - wasn’t going to help. Best case, they’d be banned from their friends and online support groups for being queer. Worst case, they’d be jailed and put in juvie and conversion therapy and turn to drugs and become evil Satanists just like everyone says they secretly are already. So they learned very quickly to take care of themselves. Nobody was going to save them, so they learned to not need saving.
And then, well, Web 2.0 shifted to Web 3.0. Livejournal died because parents - the Warriors for Innocence was the big name - went “gasp how horrible my children are being exposed to the evil pedos and homosexuals they’re going to do drugs and die of AIDS!”. Which is uh. It’s filled with a lot of bigotry, and I’m not excusing them - absolutely I am not - but you can kind of see where they’re coming from, if you tilt your head and squint.
Either way, LJ died, tumblr took its place, Facebook was fast taking off, and the fandom folks who had seen mailing lists go inactive, web admins take their fanfic sites down due to copyright, entire fandoms burnt to the ground in flame wars, said ‘fuck that we’re making our own place’ and that’s how AO3 got made.
That’s important. A lot of folks move to AO3, because well, the rules let them. The rules say ‘you can throw literally anything up here so long as it’s fan content and is not literally illegal, so we don’t get taken down’. It’s a swing for the first generation internet users, those kids who know this place is a wilderness and are carving out our own sanctuary.
But. The children under us. The children for whom AIDS is a nightmarish fairy tale, for whom the ghost stories are conversion therapy, for whom know they can’t really talk to their parents about being queer but can trust they probably won’t get kicked out over it. The children who haven’t spent ten seconds without supervision except online, and their reaction isn’t ‘oh thank god I’m finally free to express myself’ but ‘if I get in trouble, who will protect me?’.
And there’s nobody there. Because we went in knowing there was no backup. And that was fine. But now, the actual adults have figured out that hey uh, maybe we should make cyber laws? Maybe we should make revenge porn and grooming children over the internet crimes? And they grew up with that. They grew up learning that no, even if your parents are suffocating and controlling, they’re always be there for you! Some adult will always be there to protect you!
That isn’t the case. It’s not. But they expect it, because it’s always been done for them. They don’t really want to change the status quo, because that means doing it themselves. They can’t do that, because they don’t know how, they’ve been controlled for every single part of their lives thanks to helicopter parenting and without that control, they don’t know how to keep their lives together, and they demand someone come and control it for them, without restraining them.
Effectively, they want someone to ensure they never face the consequences of their actions. Helicopter parents will rescue you from whatever you did, because you’re their precious baby and it doesn’t matter if you punched a kid, you can do no wrong and the other kid clearly started it.
But being queer is doing wrong. Being queer is something Jeezus doesn’t approve of. So they want to make it something he could approve of! But if it’s too off what they consider to be okay, if it’s too different and weird and wrong and evil, that can’t do, that’s still bad, and they’re precious angels, and children, and minors, why are we the adults not protecting them and letting them see it? Why aren’t we being just like their parents but queer-friendly, why aren’t we protecting the children?
The adults who taught us were the children of those who died as a result of AIDS. The eldest of my generation knew some of them personally. My therapist’s younger brother died at 20 of AIDS, and she told me what it was like. But they don’t have that. These kids of web 3.0, they don’t have that. What they have is over-controlling parents, and the expectation that someone will always be there to protect them but hopefully in ways that don’t hurt them this time, no real understanding of why Category A queer elders are the way they are, and so much internalized shame that they have to do some pretty fancy logic-leaping to keep them from collapsing entirely.
They can’t turn into Category A queer youngsters, because they don’t know how to unravel the system around them, because they’ve never had to actually make choices in their lives and live with the consequences, because they don’t have the example of how to do it. They can’t unravel their internalized shame because again, that’s hard and they don’t have their parents to take away the consequences and pain. It doesn’t come easy to them, so it may as well not come at all.
But, you ask, if Category A queer elders aren’t around to teach the kids, then how are they learning anything positive at all? Well, Category B, our university-tenured TERFs, who don’t want to change the status quo but want to just be at the top of it instead.
For a lot of kids who don’t know how to make hard choices but want to be queer, this is an extremely attractive option. But when they go online to queer spaces, a lot of them say fuck terfs, we don’t support your hate, and they go ‘yeah okay that makes sense’. They can say fuck terfs without ever actually questioning why terfs are bad. They’re Bad and Evil, just like drug addicts, just like fairytale nazis, just like the evil homophobes.
And we saw them say ‘yeah fuck terfs’ and we were like, ‘aight you got it’ and we never questioned if they actually understood us. They didn’t. They didn’t, and we didn’t do enough to fix it, because not enough of us realized the problem. So terfs got a little sneaky. They hid behind dogwhistles and easy little comments, hiding their rhetoric in queer theory that you’ll absolutely miss if you just memorize it and never actually question it and understand why that point is being made.
This goes back to America sucking, because their school system is far more focused on rote memorization over actual logic and understanding of the text. They’re engaging with queer theory the way they’ve been taught, which is memorize and don’t think, don’t question. Besides, questioning and understanding is hard. Being shown different points of view and asked what they think is not only hard but requires them to go against all of the conditioning that says to just listen and agree and never question it, which goes back to tearing the system and internalized shame down, and we’ve established they can’t do that so naturally they don’t do that.
This begets, then, the rise of exclusionary politics. They’re turning into Category B queer youngsters, because we told them ‘hey that’s a terf talking point what are you doing’ and they never questioned why. They learned you can do all sorts of things, just don’t say X, Y, or Z, because they never thought deeply about it.
The children who have grown on Web 3.0 do not want to do any heavy lifting to make things easier for themselves long-run. They want to do as little as possible and have things get better for them. There isn’t enough of us left in Category A, because Category B terfs are very good at recruiting young folks and Cat. A is overwhelming poor, dead, and easily dismissed in the system as evil and bad, so we can’t exactly convince the young folks to listen. If all of the young kids could agree to tear down the system, a lot more older folks might listen. Change always starts with the young, and there’s a reason for that.
But Republicans have figured out, if you get people fighting, they never put together a force that can actually stop you. TERFs, who want the exact same thing as Republicans but with themselves on top, are doing this to queer youth, and Cat. A elders can’t fight back because there isn’t enough of them and the odds are against them, and the young folk like me who follow their lead.
People can kinda handle gay people. It’s not so far from the acceptable normal that it’s impassable. But you want them to handle kinky people? Gay people of colour? Kinky gay people of colour? Trans people? Those are bridges too far to step across. The original idea was to get the foot in the door with marriage equality and inch our way through with racial equality, sex positivity, dismantling ableism and perisexism (forgive me if that isn’t the word for anti-intersex ‘ism), and see if we can’t patch up the system instead of inciting a civil war over this and have to tear down the system entirely.
Well, we might’ve managed that if not for AIDS being the perfect ‘Jeezus is killing all the evil gay people for being sinners’ propaganda machine. As it stands now, not a chance in hell. So long as Republicans and terfs keep everyone fighting, nobody has the power to dismantle their empire, and they stay in power.
So then, you ask me, “Lu what the fuck does that have to do with the decline of otherkinity on tumblr???” and now that you’ve got all that background knowledge, here is your answer.
Those children who want their experiences curated for them and the evil icky content they don’t like to be gone because it disgusts them and anything that disgusts them is clearly sinful problematic and should be destroyed, are what we call ‘antishippers’, or anti for short.
They like being progressive. Sort of. They learned what Republicans and terfs have honed to a fine talent: keep people fighting, hold them to a bar they have to constantly make or risk being ostracized, and harass the people who don’t play along into getting out of your sight forever. Sound familiar?
They learned of otherkinity, and particularly fictionkind, because web 3.0 means if something goes viral on one site, it doesn’t just go viral on that site, it makes it to worldwide newspapers and twitter and nobody ever, ever fucking forgets it. They realized the following: “Hey wait, if I’m this character for realsies, not only does it help me deal with the internalized shame I’ve done nothing to actually fix because that takes work, I can also tell these people who draw gross content I don’t like they’re hurting me personally, and that actually sounds credible, and I can shame them into stopping”.
If this is your first time here and that sounds sickening, it damn well should, and I am so, so sorry that any of us had to witness this, and I am more sorry I and everyone else who personally witnessed this didn’t realize what was going on and put a stop to it. I answer asks and browse the tags and clear up misinformation and it isn’t just a genuine desire to help. It’s damage control, and my own way of trying to deal with the guilt of not stopping this. I’m well aware I couldn’t have seen it coming, I was a teenager myself still learning and no one person has that much power. I still feel like I should have done more, and I’ll do what I can to fix what’s within my power to fix.
So back to the story. This all culminates around 2016 or so. Trump wins the election, and every queer person ever knows they’re fucked, and the younger generation’s only ever heard horror stories, never seen actual oppression that this could bring. We’re all scared. We all don’t know what to do. Nobody has any answers or any control over the situation.
So they lash out. They attack others for drawing things they don’t like, for challenging them in literally any way, for asking them to reconsider the vile shit they just said, for so much as defending themselves from the harassment they just got. And when challenged, they yell “But I’m a minor! A literal child! How dare you attack me, clearly you get off on this, you evil pedophile!” and they sling around every insult in the book until one sticks. Pedophile is a pretty good one, so is abuser, and sometimes zoophile works out too. Freak is great, everyone gets right pissed off about it.
The fact that Category A queer elders were called pedophiles and freaks is not a fact they know or care about. The fact that they are quickly making every fandom community super toxic is also not a fact they care about. The fact that the ‘kin community has words and terminology and they actually mean shit, and the fact that they’re spreading misinformation faster than we can keep up with, are not facts they care about.
So they come in, take our terms, make it impossible for us to find new folks. They realize our anger is easily a power trip, because we’re already made fun of, so they get off on the little power they can find and make fun of us too, and then when we get rightfully annoyed and pissed off, they can hide behind being minors.
Then tumblr implements their porn ban, because nobody’s stopping them, because it isn’t profitable to have porn on here. Considering most of the otherkin community, and most fandom communities, are full of adults who do occasionally talk about NSFW things, and the fact that they’re just banning everyone who so much as breathes wrong, this begins the start of a mass exodus, scattering already fragile communities to twitter, pillowfort, dreamwidth, and a few other places. Largely, twitter, where you can’t make a post longer than a snappy comeback and where the algorithm is literally designed to piss you off as much as possible.
So community elders have largely left, because they can’t stand the drama and the pain of what’s happened, and that’s if they didn’t get banned for being kinky furries who do talk about how their kintypes merge with their sexuality. Most community members have also left or stopped talking about being ‘kin, because they get associated with antishippers and toxicity and it’s just not worth it. Those of us who are left get drowned out by misinformation and trolls and wishkin and antishippers who appropriate our terminology because it supports them getting a power trip, and whenever we argue, we get called pedophiles and freaks and worse.
And now there isn’t much left. I hope we get to find a better place. Othercon was a good place to talk about it, I did a whole panel (it’s on Youtube!) about what we want to do about it. But I don’t really have any answers.
But to sum it all up... America’s political climate ultimately culminated in destroying queer spaces, and we survived, and then people who wanted to destroy smaller communities to get on top showed up and we were all but defenseless against something we had never, ever dealt with before on this scale.
One of my twitter mutuals mentioned how kinning and otherkin are now completely separate communities. It’s really the best I can do to keep hoping that continues, until nobody realizes the words are at all connected to each other. It’s the best anyone can hope for, now. I hate it. I hate every part of this. But maybe we can salvage what’s left.
#luteia laments#otherkin#fictionkin#alth#alterhuman#asks#anonymous#long post //#discussions#on community history#on politics#on public relations#commentors feel free to add your own thoughts!#Anonymous
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scattered thoughts about patch 6.1 including msq and alliance raid
i cant believe tataru made a hyur sized outfit and expected me to put it on. also i lowkey wish that tataru had made a single outfit piece that’s suited any of my characters bc i feel bad not putting it on after she gives it to me but. tataru please
i do like that she n the wol just hang out sometimes tho. thats all i want
every time i stand next to estinien i say to myself “happy manlet monday” even tho he’s like 6′7″ or sth ridiculous
this game is always finding ways to stop krile from seeing combat. let her go apeshit just once i know she can do conjury let her do the blood lily or whatever it is that whm do idk ive only got it at lv 64 on sandrine
graha rlly gonna nut the second i ask him if he wanna go for walkies?? cmon man
yshtola asleep in the pile of books was so cute like. yshtola fans ate well this patch fr
yshtola misses runar.... she misses her house husband.... ok u know what like. i know that runar is very unpopular for various reasons but i liked him and i think that they were cute together and i hope she gets to see him again and he can make her some soup
cant believe niuwyb gets to go on an adventure with three of her lovers.... and graha is there too. cockblocked once more
urianger is so cute
i forgot i modded thancred’s ugly facial hair from hw back on and got jumpscared
btw after niuwyb sees thancred here he spends the rest of the time with roeh because he’s been dogging his drinking buddy since hw and she’s gonna make him do body shots now. i think its time for the return of thotcred. i want him and roeh to thot it up in taverns together again like only the best of bros can
when estinien said he wished the first boss of the dungeon was a squid. hes just like me fr
my friend warned me not to wall-to-wall pull just after the second boss so i did it just to see if i could and i could. warrior power. the thrill i get making urianger heal me thru the worst of shit
i think itll be rlly interesting to go into void stuff. im glad we’re like. addressing lil bits and pieces that havent been fully explored yet. i hope we address gridania’s racism eventually
vrtra is such a fucking sweetheart. fr. also sorry about that one time we broke into your secret dragon hoard that one time. we were gonna do the same thing with it that you were gonna i prommy
i made a separate post about this but i think that yshtola and nidhana should hold hands. my headcanon relationship chart grows more tangled by the day drawing it up would be nigh impossible
forreal i loved yshtola’s goofy lil summoning spell. that was so cute i really love when they have her be competent and cool and also an embarrassingly goofy nerd at the same time. charm point
nidhana is soooo cute. i love her i want the best for her
estinien rlly be like whatever. bye. and then goes and tells everyone whats going on and gets them to come convince vrtra. worlds biggest softie that goes about things in the most awkward and clumsy of ways
also hes actually rlly good with kids lmao
i rlly hope we can save this dragon
as for the alliance raid uhhhh im gonna need to practice it
but nald’thal had the best design of this first set
im glad it was a fake out bc if they made the twelve evil for no reason i woulda rolled my eyes big time
rlly excited to see llymlaen cause that’s roeh’s guardian
azeyma was technically niuwyb’s but on account of not having any memories she wasnt exactly devout so.
anyway im gonna have to think about what my other characters were doing but im glad to be able to immediately place roeh for the first time in a while even if shes just goofing off with thancred. their friendship is important to meeee
ok i have to get up in five hrs for work send help
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Van Zieks - the Examination, part 2
Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).
Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.)
- These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I'm outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I've missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly.
-The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred.
- I'm using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what's said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent.
-It doesn't matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.
It’s time to take a close look at Episode 3, The Runaway Room!
Episode 3: The Runaway Room.
We're skipping the first two cases, as they have no relevance to Barok van Zieks, and starting off here.
So Ryu is tossed into the deep. The Lord Chief Justice tells him that he’s basically the defendant’s only hope; if he doesn’t at least try to fight in court, McGilded will lose the trial and die for sure. (HAH… Good one, Stronghart.) So Ryu falls for this would-be motivational speech and heads for the courthouse where he finds out why McGilded doesn’t have a defense attorney to begin with; it’s because of the prosecution. No one dares to go up against Lord Barok van Zieks, also known as the Reaper of the Old Bailey, because all who he prosecutes are damned. This should sound familiar to anyone who’s played an Ace Attorney game before. ‘The prosecution has never been defeated before’ is the implication, which would initially lead us to believe Van Zieks is another one of those prodigies. Sure enough, Susato points out he must be very talented, to which McGilded replies that Van Zieks is not talented, rather, he’s cursed. This sets the mood even further. With words like “Reaper” and “curse” being tossed around, we’re sooner reminded of a prosecutor like Simon Blackquill, who was a convicted murderer wielding psychological manipulation techniques. Either way, with the grim atmosphere set, Ryu is ushered into the courtroom before he can ask any more questions.
As a sidenote, McGilded really scored some negative points with this remark:
Feels a bit softened compared to how fan translations tackled that line, but a nasty jab all the same.
So anyway, entering the courtroom we get our first look at Van Zieks and if the foreshadowing in the Defendant Antechamber wasn’t already bad enough, he honors his eerie reputation.
So far, he’s meeting the requirements then. He’s intimidating and as a wealthy white man, he’s perfectly juxtaposed to Ryu, the rookie from another country. Meanwhile, the first micro-aggression of this trial is actually uttered by the judge:
Which also makes narrative sense. Ryu’s more practical goal isn’t to win the prosecution’s trust. Heck, he could get through any trial just fine with Van Zieks’s dislike. No, what he needs is to win over the judge and the members of the jury. For them to also hold prejudice but put that aside in order to side with the truth is another important end-game here. So let’s continue. Van Zieks also has something to say here:
Initially, the remark about Ryu’s eyes might read as a typical racist jab towards someone from the East, but he is in fact referring to the way Ryu’s eyes are ‘swimming’ when he’s nervous, as evidenced by the next lines. “They shroud your fear, your doubt, your trepidation… They run wild, clinging to some phantom notion of courage.” Van Zieks is saying that while Ryu puts up a brave front, his swimming eyes betray just how nervous and unsure of his cause he really is. So really, he’s targeting the fact that Ryu is new to the courts. He did, however, make a point of tossing the word “Nipponese” in there when he didn’t need to, drawing attention to Ryu’s race in a derogatory fashion.
After the jurors are introduced, something else of interest happens. The judge points out that Van Zieks hasn’t been seen in the courtroom in a number of years. The judge had assumed that Van Zieks had renounced his fame, to which he replies with the following:
This is a very telling line. We learn several things. Firstly, Van Zieks had retired, and secondly, he doesn’t seem to think too highly of his title of Reaper. If he did, he would have gloated. To describe his reputation as infamy implies negative associations with this ‘curse’ that McGilded spoke of. Putting these two things together, one might conclude he retired because of this curse. When asked why he’s returned to the courts, he says that he’ll leave that to the judge’s imagination. So there’s hints of a backstory already being tossed in before the trial’s even properly kicked off.
Which it does now. So the opening statement happens as always and witnesses are brought in, but once it’s done Ryu interjects to say that he doesn’t understand the circumstances. ‘How could the witnesses have seen the inside of a moving carriage’? It shocks the entire courtroom and Van Zieks is the one to speak:
“-But you’re here in London yourself. Are you really so ignorant about our omnibuses? Tell me, my Nipponese friend… Have you even travelled in an omnibus?”
I have to be honest, I struggled to pinpoint just how I felt about these remarks. Sure, I can overanalyze this, looking at how the words “I’d read-” imply he doesn’t know the following sentiment to be true and therefore doesn’t feel confident enough to say something like “I knew-”... But it doesn’t change that he’s being scummy here. In a roundabout way, he’s still saying Japan is far less civilised than Britain and that Ryu is extra ignorant for not knowing about omnibuses when he’s in London. So basically, he gets scumbag points for this. But then there’s…:
Which is just a basic jab at Ryu’s intelligence. It’s the sort of remark we’d get from every single prosecutor. I think even Klavier would say this sort of line with a smile on his face.
But definitely more scumbag points here, because this was a direct attack in more ways than one. Particularly the word “stray” was uncalled for. CEO of Racism, indeed. Something very interesting happens when the knife gets pulled into the story halfway into the first cross-examination, though. When Ryu asks about it, Van Zieks replies with this:
He’s… actually being civil? (I doublechecked with Scarlet Study, and they are in agreement on the timid nature of this line, translating “yes, Counsel” as “Quite so”.) Instead, Van Zieks turns his attention to the fact that there’s an M on the sheath, directing all his offensive attitude towards McGilded. It gets even more curious when the last juror refuses to cast a guilty verdict, instead talking about what a good man she believes McGilded to be. Van Zieks says:
So he’s not only frustrated with McGilded now, he’s frustrated with the people of London for not knowing what sort of person McGilded really is. Van Zieks reveals he’s a dirty money lender who gained his fortune through corrupt means. He even takes the time to inform Ryu of this with the words “Your client is a shylock, sir!”
Edit: I feel a need to address this: shylock is a word with antisemitic roots. It originally came from a Shakespeare play involving a very bad stereotype. It later evolved to have a more broad meaning basically synonymous to loan shark and I think that’s the context the localization means to use it in. There’s absolutely no indication of McGilded’s religious beliefs and even if there were, I highly doubt the localization would use that sort of slur. Still, it’s a very unfortunate choice of words and is sure to accidentally sour Van Zieks even more with some players.
With that, the last juror votes, the scale tips towards Guilty and Van Zieks assumes the trial to be over. He thanks the jurors for their work. Unfortunately, once Susato brings up the Summation Examination, Van Zieks gets very frustrated again. This happens:
IIII don’t know what to do with this line. On first glance, I didn’t think much of it and was even willing to consider it was a compliment. Then I thought it must’ve been passive aggressive somehow; that it’s the sort of thing he wouldn’t believe until he’d seen it with his own eyes. A friend directed me to the notion that it might be referencing a stereotype that ‘Eastern women are fierce’ because they were associated with, well, certain ‘paid services’. I don’t think I need to explain, I’m sure you understand what I mean. And if indeed that’s what Barok is insinuating, that’s a new low I never thought he’d reach. However, when you’ve finished the games and know that Barok was friends with a married Japanese man, it’s entirely possible that he’s remembering a story once told to him by Genshin Asogi. So this is either a bittersweet reminiscence or the most scumbag association he ever could’ve made, but I’m not sure we can ever prove which it is.
Edit: As another option, it’s possible he’s referring to the Yamato Nadeshiko stereotype, if indeed it already held the ‘touch of iron’ aspect to it back in 1900.
He proceeds to toast his hallowed chalice to “the enigmatic East” and to be honest, I’ve once again got nothing. All I know is that he once again drew attention to the defense’s race when he didn’t need to, so… Scumbag point.
As a sidenote, in regards to the wine… I don’t count this as a humanizing trait. The same applies to the leg slam. These are animations meant to add some more lighthearted air and breathe more life into Van Zieks, so he doesn’t just stand there like a statue. They’re just quirks meant to have him stand out from other characters. So yeah, fun as the wine and leg slam animations are, they don’t count in the redemption requirements.
Anyway, Van Zieks mocks the age of Susato’s book, saying that judging by its bindings it must be fifty years old. Considering the context of the conversation, this isn’t out of bounds. The defense is using ‘outdated’ information on the law, so he points that out. Any prosecutor would’ve done it like this. Simon Blackquill likely would’ve offered to shred that outdated tome to bits for Susato. Van Zieks does toss in a “Hmph, typical Nipponese” later though, which earns him one more scumbag point.
Van Zieks continues to dismiss the Summation Examination, but the judge overrules him and allows it. Law is law, after all! And this is what I meant in my previous post when I said it’s satisfying to see Ryu use actual British law against Van Zieks. Ryu is using a perfectly legitimate technique to win the jurors over, and as Susato tells him, he can only do it by turning the jurors against one another with facts. He can’t appeal to them, he can only have them see sense. Which is difficult, because some jurors are more prejudiced than others:
… Yeah. Uh. Calling Ryu a “Dark Jinx” is pretty awful. Scumbag points for Juror No. 1! Meanwhile, Juror No. 4 keeps us updated on Barok’s actions throughout this trial:
Wow. Typical prosecutor behavior, though. Regardless, Ryu manages to win them all over in the end. With enough of the scales set back to not-guilty, the trial is allowed to continue, which leads to this:
Bye, hallowed chalice. A fun animation to keep things fresh and show us that the trial is about to take a turn. Once again, nothing new. We’ve seen prosecutors lose their patience before. What does interest me, though, is that Barok doesn’t direct physical frustration towards the defense. Remember: Franziska snaps a whip at Phoenix, Godot throws coffee at his head, Blackquill sends a hawk to attack the defense or uses that aijutsu slicing move, Nahyuta throws restricting beads… These were all direct physical attacks. Van Zieks, much like Edgeworth and Klavier, directs his frustration more inward and as a result he destroys his own property.
He succeeds in intimidating Ryu, though. Van Zieks explains that he kept silent, as is the norm during Examination Summation, but makes it clear that he considers it a charade all the same.
Van Zieks has been a pretty good gentleman towards the jury up until now, speaking to them politely despite that one remark about having their head in the clouds. Now that he’s seeing them ‘buy into Ryu’s stories’, as one might describe it, he’s getting frustrated with them. Maybe he’s even frustrated they’re choosing the defense’s side over his own.
He removes his cloak, entering what he says to be the next round of their ‘battle’. More typical prosecutor behavior, this. I’m not sure there’s an underlying thought to this, other than to indicate to the audience that ‘things have gotten serious’.
When the next bit of testimony is going on, I noticed something odd. Both Fairplay and Furst testify to having seen blood on McGilded’s hands, to which Van Zieks says:
“... Reported that there was no trace of blood on Mr. McGilded’s gloved hands.”
So in a way, by establishing this fact, he’s helping the defense and going against what the witnesses are saying. It doesn’t help the prosecution in any way at all.
The trial continues on, with Van Zieks uttering things like “My Nipponese friend” and “my learned friend from the East” and lord knows what else… I suppose to soften the harshness of the original wording a bit and make Van Zieks just a bit less dislikable?
Edit: Tumblr user @beevean has pointed out that “my learned friend” is an actual term used in courts of law. There’s a tradition (also employed in British courts of law) that when addressing either the court or the judge, a barrister refers to the opposing counsel using the respectful term, "my learned friend". Of course, it can be said with an air of passive aggression and pretending to be respectful to the court while shamelessly disrespecting it is something Barok has always done, so the addition of “my learned friend” to the localization text is amazingly in-character.
Then of course we have:
This is both a scumbag remark and foreshadowing. Naturally, those playing the game for the first time won’t recognize it as the latter and therefore take it as nothing more than a harsh blow. Things spiral even further out of control when he starts talking about how people who claim the island nations of the Far East have a learning and culture of their own use those terms ill-advisedly. He also uses the words “artless backwater” and really, this is the low point of the trial right here when it comes to prejudice. Van Zieks is just plain lashing out with these sort of jabs.
Eventually, McGilded is dragged onto the witness stand to testify about whether or not there was another passenger aboard the omnibus. McGilded admits that there was, and Van Zieks snaps at him some more for using convenient excuses. Ryu is forgotten here for a moment. The whole smoke bomb thing happens, Van Zieks confers with McGilded and Gina in his own chambers, then the trial resumes. McGilded testifies, then Gina testifies… The jury votes not-guilty, buying into McGilded’s story about protecting a poor young pickpocket and Van Zieks loses it. He slams his heel down on the bench, pointing out that this is why he doesn’t like the jury system; because emotions are ruling where evidence and facts ought to be paramount. He points out while the cubbyhole Gina had been hiding in was empty now, it had been full of the coachman’s belongings during the police investigation. Someone tampered with the omnibus. This is where things get interesting, because Van Zieks addresses Ryu:
He’s giving Ryu the benefit of the doubt here. He’s offering an option for Ryu to be truthful about this matter. And that’s curious, because any defense attorney would naturally say what’s best for his client- or so it’s assumed. It puts Ryu in a difficult position for sure, but for some reason Van Zieks put the question forward anyway. The game responds as follows:
For the sake of argument, I attempted all three options. So when Ryu says he didn’t look, Van Zieks says: “Hm… Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence.”
So when feigning ignorance, Van Zieks is kind of a scumbag about it. He is correct in his expectation that any attorney worth his badge would thoroughly examine the details of the evidence, but he didn’t need to be such a jerk about it. Now, when outright lying and saying it was empty, Van Zieks instead says:
The lines are very similar, which is an interesting note. It adds a feel of these responses being 'rehearsed', in a way. Just a default for him to fall back to. But the real kicker comes when Ryu tells the truth and says it wasn’t empty. Van Zieks is actually speechless at first with no more than a “...!” Clearly, he wasn’t expecting Ryu to respond like this. Everyone in court is baffled, McGilded gets angry… Van Zieks is a bit rattled now.
“Your task is to defend the man in the stand. Why would you say something to compromise his position?”
So really, it seems as if Van Zieks had only ever offered the question to Ryu with pessimistic intentions. He too had assumed there was only one answer the defense could give and was prepared for just that with his silly little wine analogies, only to be shocked when Ryu defies his expectations. Ryu confesses that he’s not entirely sure on where he stands in the matter, to which Van Zieks replies with “... Interesting.”
So now the jury members are doubting themselves again, with some offering guilty verdicts. Van Zieks decides to honor the ‘Scales of Justice’ once more now that they’re back in his favor, like the hypocrite he is. Gina testifies, Ryu points out an inconsistency, Van Zieks takes that opportunity to turn the tables back in his favor by implying Gina is a liar… He passive aggressively thanks Ryu for saving him considerable trouble and whatnot with some more “my learned Nipponese friend” remarks in there… Ryu turns the tables once more by insisting the victim came into the omnibus through the skylight, Van Zieks demands evidence and points out that furthermore, if indeed such a thing had happened, the witnesses on the roof would’ve seen it. McGilded hops into the conversation to imply that the witnesses themselves were the killers, which sends the court into a frenzy. Both Van Zieks and the judge shift the responsibility of the accusation towards Ryu, even though he never said a word to directly accuse the witnesses. Kind of a douchey move. Barok even states that Ryu’s ‘command of the English tongue must be wanting’, since
Yeahhh, that's pretty unfair. McGilded was the one who dropped that implication. However, since the judge basically accuses Ryu of the same thing, it’s a narrative choice to warn Ryu he needs to anticipate where his reasoning will lead him. Fairplay and Furst testify, pandemonium ensues. McGilded eventually gets what he wants when it’s revealed the skylight can open and there’s blood in there. Van Zieks once again turns his attention to McGilded:
He knows McGilded is at the root of all this tomfoolery and evidence manipulation. McGilded is the real enemy here, in Van Zieks’s eyes. The conversation shows this by having Van Zieks point out that he’s well aware of McGilded’s involvement in dubious matters and that evidence is often ‘adapted’ to suit this guy’s stories. And now, once again, he turns his attention to Ryu. Once again, he’s giving the defense the benefit of the doubt:
The game gives you the illusion of choice here. If you choose to say it’s ‘out of the question’ that the evidence was tampered with, Ryu will refuse to say it out loud. If you say it’s entirely possible, Ryu will admit to that.
This is probably baffling to Van Zieks. It would’ve been so easy for Ryu to insist the tampering couldn’t have happened, but he doesn’t. The game won’t even let him. No matter what you choose, Van Zieks is clued in on the fact that Ryu doesn’t condone the deceit that McGilded is resorting to. But it gets even better, because a short time later, we get:
Another option to either draw attention to forgery, or to feign ignorance. Once again, I chose both options for argument’s sake, but having Ryu say he has no idea doesn’t get us anywhere. Susato will instead object to say it for him. With “I have an inkling”, Ryu says it himself. Van Zieks once again confesses, in his own words, that he’s caught off guard.
Ryu clarifies that he thinks the blood stain inside the omnibus is decisive evidence, but he can’t say for certain whether it’s genuine. McGilded loses it and by this point, is outright branding Van Zieks an enemy. Since the player at this point doesn't know whether McGilded is guilty or not, it leaves Van Zieks in a bit of narrative limbo. One might think: 'if the prosecutor is so intent on taking down a murderer, shouldn't we be on his side? Is he perhaps not as bad as he seems?' Unfortunately, McGilded points out that recollection and memories don’t matter, only evidence does. And… Well.
Which means they can’t rule on a guilty verdict and will have to let McGilded go. Van Zieks admits that he has no more witnesses or evidence to present. He’s out of options. As a formality, the judge asks the defense’s closing statement and we get one last option. Do we believe him to be guilty or not-guilty? When claiming he’s innocent, Van Zieks says:
It seems he means “abject” in the sense of “without pride/respect/dignity for oneself”, which… You know, is fair. By this point it’s very clear that McGilded is guilty, and since Ryu has already admitted that the evidence may be forged, insisting otherwise is indeed pretty spineless. Scumbag points to Van Zieks for continuing to draw attention to the fact that Ryu is from Japan, though.
Let’s instead just admit that we can’t say for certain McGilded is innocent. Unfortunately, we don’t see Van Zieks react to this, which is a bummer because this could’ve been very telling. The judge questions Ryu’s sanity (no joke) and McGilded laughs because it doesn’t matter; it was just a formality anyway. The judge scolds Van Zieks, saying that his case was flawed and it was his job to keep the evidence secure. Instead of objecting, Van Zieks just outright takes the blame for this and apologizes. Very interesting reaction, here. He stops pointing the finger to McGilded, he doesn’t attempt to accuse anyone else… He just admits his performance was flawed. Ryu tries to interject here:
(A badly-timed screenshot if I’ve ever seen one.) Ryu is making an attempt here to defend Van Zieks, the guy who has built up like 20 scumbag points by now. Ryu sincerely doesn’t hold a grudge against him. That’s very interesting. It doesn’t matter, though. The judge won’t hear of it, Ryu thinks it’s unfair, Van Zieks warns McGilded that this isn’t over and then we get the not-guilty verdict.
Hurray??? Profit??? It’s a victory that’s bound to leave the player feeling conflicted and jarred.
But after all’s said and done, we get one last cutscene to establish just how ominous Van Zieks really is. The omnibus is on fire, someone is inside and we know McGilded went into the courtroom earlier to investigate the omnibus in question. So really, by putting two and two together we can already guess what’s going on here. Van Zieks approaches the scene and watches silently.
It’s a good reminder to us that every defendant he prosecutes is ‘damned’ and he’s called the Reaper for a reason. Really puts the finishing touch on the eerie undertones of his character.
All in all, a pretty typical first time against a new prosecutor. Now I just want to draw attention to the fact that the first time we face Van Zieks in court… he’s actually on the right side of the courtroom and Ryu is not. Van Zieks presumably specifically returned to the court after those five years to target McGilded, as he knows about this guy’s shady reputation when it comes to ‘adapting’ evidence. Barok is 'cursed' in such a way that every defendant he faces is damned. So long as he stands as the prosecutor, McGilded can’t get away with his crimes. No matter how much forgery is done, the Reaper will go after McGilded and it seems Van Zieks was banking on this happening.
He likely also expected Ryu to have been bought off by McGilded; to say whatever’s convenient for his case. Turns out, Ryu is actually a man of integrity who’s invested in the truth and near the end of the trial, Barok has seen evidence of this. So what will happen next? We’ll have to play The Clouded Kokoro and find out! Stay tuned!
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Conspiracy fantasy
When we talk about conspiratorialism, we tend to focus (naturally) on the content of the conspiracy. Not only are those stories entertainingly outlandish — they’re also the point of contact between conspiracists and the world.
If your mom is shouting about “Hollywood pedos,” it’s natural that you’ll end up discussing the relationship of this belief to observable reality. But while the content of conspiratorial beliefs gets lots of attention, we tend to neglect the significance of those beliefs.
To the extent that we consider why the beliefs exist and proliferate, the discussion rarely gets further than “irrational people have irrational beliefs.” This is a mistake. The stories we tell one another are a kind of Ouija board, with all our fingertips on the planchette.
The messages it spells out don’t describe external reality but they do reveal our internal, unspoken anxieties and aspirations.This is why we should read science fiction: not because it predicts the future, but because it diagnoses the present.
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/26/meaningful-zombies/#oracles
Sf is an ever-mutating ecosystem of fears and hopes, and readers apply selective pressure to those organisms, extinguishing the ones that don’t capture the zeitgeist and elevating the ones that do, a co-evolution of our fantasies and our narratives.
http://locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html
This is why Alternate Reality Games are so central to their players’ lives. They’re a form of narrative co-creation, with the players throwing out theories and the game-masters actually changing the story to incorporate the best of them.
ARGs are an environment where your coolest and most deliciously scary ideas become reality. It’s a powerful way to galvanize collective action.
As anthropologist Biella Coleman writes in Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy, it’s the organizing principal behind Anonymous.
Anon Ops begin life as victory announcement videos. If the vision of success captures enough Anons, they execute the op.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-anonymous-ghost-in-the-machine
In other words, the degree to which a shared fantasy of victory compels its audience predicts whether the audience realizes its fantasy. Long before the alt-right, Anons were memeing ideas into existence (no coincidence, as both were incubated on 4chan).
On the Conspiracy Games and Counter-Games podcast, three left academics — Max Haiven, AT Kingsmith, Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou — analyze “conspiracy fantasies” (as opposed to conspiracies, e.g. the Big Lie behind the Iraq War) for what they reveal about late capitalism’s anxieties.
As leftists, they naturally focus on the relationship between material conditions and people’s behaviors and beliefs. This is an important part of the discourse on conspiratorialism that’s often missing from liberal and right-wing analysis.
Conspiracists aren’t just “irrational” nor are they just “racist.” They may be both of those things, but unless you look at material conditions, then the surges and retreats of conspiracism are mysterious phenomena, strange tides raised by unseen forces.
A decade ago, then-PM David Cameron — the architect of a brutal, authoritarian austerity — dismissed the Hackney Riots as “criminality pure and simple,” and demanded a ban on discussion of the relationship between austerity and unrest.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2011/aug/09/david-cameron-riots-criminality-video
But without that discussion, there’s no explanation. Even if you believe that “criminality” is a thing that is latent within some or all of us, what explains a rise or fall in that criminality? Is it like pollen that alights upon some of us, turning us bad? Or the full moon?
Likewise the “conspiracists are just racists” or “they’re just deranged.” Without looking at the material world, there’s no explanation for why that racism suddenly became more (or less) important to how conspiracists live their lives.
We can’t talk about conspiratorialism without talking about material considerations, and we have to talk about the form and substance of the conspiratorial belief. The ARG-like structure of Qanon is a hugely important part of its popularity:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/05/behavioral-v-contextual/#adrian-hon
Memeing things into existence in a game-like way is hugely compelling. You can tell when a D&D game is hopping when the players and the DM start co-creating the story, with the DM slyly altering the dungeon and the NPCs to match the players’ super-cool theories.
A recent episode of the CGACG podcast present a mind-blowing analysis of the interplay of the material conditions, mythology and structure of Qanon. It’s a two-part interview with Wu Ming 1:
https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-1?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks
https://soundcloud.com/reimaginevalue/wuming-one-2?in=reimaginevalue/sets/unmanageablerisks
Wu Ming 1 is part of Bologna’s Wu Ming Collective, the successor to the 1990s Luther Bissett net-art collective. Bissett did many wild, weird things,including publishing “Q,” an internationally bestselling conspiratorial novel in 1999 (!!)
https://www.wumingfoundation.com/giap/what-is-the-wu-ming-foundation/
The plot of “Q” involves a high-level government official, privy to top-secret info about a state conspiracy. It closely mirrors Qanon beliefs, right down to a call for a Jan 6 uprising (!!!!). The major difference is that “Q” is set during the Protestant Reformation.
In the interview, Wu Ming 1 talks about the proliferation of conspiratorial, ARG-like 4chan hoaxes that predated Qanon, and hypothesizes that the original Q posts were plagiarized from the novel.
The strange experience of seeing a novel turn into a cult prompted Ming 1 to write “La Q di Qomplotto” (“The Q in Qonspiracy”), a book that defines and analyzes “conspiracy fantasies.”
https://edizionialegre.it/product/la-q-di-qomplotto/
Ming 1’s interview digs into this in some depth, including setting out criterial for distinguishing conspiracies from fantasies (for example, a conspiracy doesn’t go on forever, while a fantasy can imagine the Knights Templar running the world for centuries).
I was taken by Ming 1’s discussion of the role that “enchantment” plays in conspiratorialism — the feeling of being in a magical and wondrous (if also anxious and terrible) place. He says this is why “debunkers” fail — they’re like people who spoil a magic trick.
Ming 1 and the hosts talk about replacing the enchantment of conspiratorialism with a counter-enchantment, grounded not in the conspiratorialist’s oversimplification and essentialism, but in the wonder of reality.
Ming 1 analogizes his “counter-enchantment” to the “double-wow” method of Penn and Teller: first they blow you away with a trick, and then they blow you away with the cleverness by which it was accomplished.
He describes how the Luther Bissett collective performed a double-wow during Italy’s Satanic Panic, creating a hoax satanic heavy metal cult and a counter-cult, promulgating stories of their pitched battles, then revealing how they’d faked the whole thing.
The action was taken in solidarity with actual Bolognese heavy metal fans who’d been framed for imaginary Satanic “crimes.” Luther Bissett wanted to demonstrate how a panic could be created from nothing, to reveal the method behind the real hoax with a fake hoax.
The double-wow method reminds me of Richard Dawkins’ manuever in “The Magic of Reality,” his excellent children’s book about the virtues of the scientific world, revealing how the numinous wonder of faith is nothing compared to the wonder of science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_of_Reality
The idea that conspiratorialism is a leading indicator of capitalism’s anxieties is a powerful one, and it ties into other compelling accounts of conspiracy, like Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES, which discusses the importance of trauma to conspiratorial belief.
Like Ming 1, Merlan stresses the kernel of truth underpinning conspiracy fantasies — the real aerospace coverups that make UFO conspiracies plausible, the real pharmaceutical conspiracies to cover up harms from drugs that underpin anti-vax.
https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/
In the podcast, Ming 1 and the hosts stress the importance of identifying and addressing the kernel of truth and the trauma it produces in any counter-conspiratorial work — that is, a successful counter-enchantment must address the material conditions behind the fantasy.
I really like this approach because of its empathy — its attempt to connect with the conditions that produce behaviors and beliefs, not to be confused with sympathy, which might excuse their toxic and hateful nature.
It reminds me a lot of Oh No Ross and Carrie, whose hosts have spent years joining cults and religions and digging into fringe practices and beliefs in an effort to understand them; they laugh a lot, but never AT their subjects.
https://ohnopodcast.com/
But Ming 1 brings something new to this discussion: an analysis of the role that novels have played in conspiracy fantasy formation: not just the plagiarizing of “Q” to make Qanon, but things like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion plagiarizing Dumas.
The interview also brought to mind Edward Snowden’s recent inaugural blog-post, “Conspiracy: Theory and Practice,” which seeks to separate conspiracy practice (e.g. the NSA spying on everyone) from theories (what Ming 1 calls “fantasies”).
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1
Snowden connects the feeling of powerlessness to the urge to explain the world through conspiracies, relating this to his experience of revealing one of the world’s most far-reaching real conspiracies, and then becoming the subject of innumerable conspiracy fantasies.
Snowden’s perspective is one that has heretofore been missing from conspiracy discourse — the perspective of someone who has been part of a real conspiracy and then the central subject of a constellation of bizarre and widespread conspiratorial beliefs.
These different works, focusing as they do on the character of conspiratorial beliefs, the nature of conspiratorial practice, and material conditions of conspiracists, comprise a richer analysis of our screwed-up discourse than, say, theories about “online radicalization.”
As I wrote in my 2020 book “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism,” the “online radicalization” narrative requires that you accept Big Tech’s unsupported marketing claims about its power to bypass our critical thoughts at face value.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59
Claims to be able to control our minds — whether made by Rasputin, Mesmer, pick-up artists, MK-ULTRA or NLP enthusiasts — always turn out to be cons (though sometimes the con artists are also conning themselves).
But there’s a much more plausible, less controversial set of powers that Big Tech possesses. By spying on us all the time, it can help scammers target people who are ready to hear conspiratorial explanations.
By monopolizing our discourse, it allows SEO scammers to create default answers to our questions. By locking us in, it can keep us using a platform even if the discourse there makes us angry and anxious.
And by corrupting our political process, it creates “kernels of truth” for conspiratorial beliefs.
As with Scooby Doo, the monster turns out to be a familiar villain in a fright mask: a monopolist whose abuses and impunity create the anxiety that make conspiracy plausible.
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(Rabbithole Anon) Y'know, I was going to send in an ask about just they could have made a compelling way to show how some people may have become hunters through pressure rather than an age excuse if they wanted to say some people weren't ready (joining to protect a friend who wanted to be one, wanting to travel for a variety of reasons, it being a general expectation but the person being hesitant) but it led to me wondering wait, would certain careers require a hunting lisence?
Okay, I love this rabbit hole. XD It illustrates a couple of RWBY problems here and it's the fact that they often are lacking in the character development/character journey department, and that they're often lacking in the world building department.
We actually have plenty of characters that can serve as examples for people who maybe should've thought twice about entering the Academy (when they did.) There are people who entered the Academy for the wrong reasons/not noble reasons, people who entered the Academy during a time they might not have been ready, and people who would be full on dangerous with a Hunter badge, and most of our mains fall under one of these categories (though mostly the first two.)
Ruby - Two years below the standard age of her class. Whether or not she was at the skill level of a first year (she was,) and whether or not she'd received special training from Qrow (she had,) Ruby was still essentially a kid, and her mind and body both hadn't developed completely. Ruby should have been traumatized after the Fall of Beacon and been allowed to show that more as a character, she should've had straight up PTSD, she should've been allowed to have emotion in Volume 4 than Jaune's sidekick who makes sad eyes when she sees him grieving.
Weiss - Her main motivation for joining Beacon was to reclaim her family legacy. Yes, her desire was to reclaim it and use it for good, but it was still arguably more about personal and familial glory. On top of that, Weiss has been blatantly anti Faunus and has never so much as addressed that. Weiss's character journey should have reflected more personal growth, and either her unlearning much of her Faunus racism and clearly changing priorities from her name and family legacy and onto the actual people in need, or her flaws should've led her into being more of a morally gray character who displays her selfishness and pride (in a way that's actually addressed and treated like a flaw.)
Yang - She expresses admiration for people like Ruby who want to help people and be kind, but her main point in becoming a Huntress was getting thrills and going where the wind takes her. She didn't join Beacon for any sort of serious purpose, and even when she rejoined Team RWBY in volume five, it was to be with her sister and not because of her own morals (not that I think she's lacking in morals, just that her main motive was different.) This could lead to her having to figure out a lot of what she actually wants, being unsatisfied with being a Huntress in Atlas, being in over her head when things get serious, being more mentally exhausted than the others after long days, etc.
Jaune - Wasn't ready to enter Beacon. Idk if he just wasn't allowed to go to a lesser combat school like Signal or if he flunked out, but he wasn't up to scratch to get into Beacon and cheated his way in. On top of that, he lacked in the emotional maturity department as well when he entered. Jaune was a little more invested in his own appearance than Ruby was, but still seemed to have similar good reasons for wanting to be a Hunter. And he did grow a lot. But he was much less prepared, skilled, or equipped to deal with the training or the career and it's a miracle he didn't die in the initiation. Granted, Jaune was handled arguably better than anyone else, since a lot of this was addressed, but these days it feels like it isn't actually playing a part in his character anymore that he's way below the people around him, and I feel like it should still be impacting him.
Penny: Honestly, Penny seemed very newly born during the Beacon Arc. She might have been combat ready, but she also started spilling secrets to the first person who was a little bit nice to her, and was clearly naïve and childlike. Imagine if it had been Emerald that had befriended Penny instead of Ruby. Penny dying and then getting resurrected should've been deeply traumatizing for her and it should've made her undergo some major changes and been treated with importance in the show.
Qrow: Literally wanted to be a Hunter in the first place to try and learn how to murder Huntsmen. He might have changed later and it’s not exactly relevant, but he arguably shouldn't have joined when he did either.
Meanwhile, Nora's just one big mystery, because we don't know why she joined, and Ren likely joined for good reasons, but neither of them have ever actually talked about their motivations.
The only character we can safely say joined for noble reasons and who was up to scratch and ready when she entered is Blake, who also had good reason to not fully trust the system she was working with, so there could've been complications and character interest there as well.
Please don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't think the others should've been in school, I love that they were! I just think the writers should've explored the various ways they might've been not fully ready, not completely well suited to the job they took. The characters are allowed to be flawed and to flounder and it'd make them more full, nuanced characters imo.
On top of that, we have other Hunters to look to as well, outside of our main cast. Cardin, for example, was a terrible person, still in school and already abusing what little power he had to target a member of an oppressed minority group and blackmail other kids into doing his bidding, while plotting revenge on someone for correcting him on his anti-Faunus answer to a question. People like him should not be Hunters, and he was arguably our first sign (of many signs) that the position of Hunter can and will be taken advantage of and misused by bad people. And although the After the Fall/Before the Dawn books aren't canon, while reading BTD (I haven't finished it yet,) Coco and all her team members but Velvet also struck me as people I wouldn't want to be Hunters and wouldn't want to wield any sort of power. Coco is proudly described by one of her friends as sadistic, lets her unfounded opinions of people cloud her judgement, shows respect and admiration towards criminals, and enjoys her classmates being afraid of her. Fox is self-described as sadistic as well and is a bully who tried to use a classmate's phobia against them in a brute-like interrogation. And Yatsuhashi is leagues above the two of them, but also bullied Neptune despite saying the words 'I don't want to be a bully' and threatened him.
There are so many ways the writers could've explored people who went to Beacon too soon, weren't ready, or entered for the wrong reasons. Instead, outside of one conversation in season two about the girls’ motivations and Ren exploding that Jaune cheated his way into Beacon all the way in season eight, it seems like the only take away we're supposed to get is 'all these kids are officially the thing they wanted to be in the beginning and they're all amazing at it, woo!' No acknowledgement of the fact that they could use higher education still, that some of them are still immature or naïve, that some of them are still below the combat level they should be in, that some of them kinda haven't done super well since they left Beacon (cough Ruby cough.) It's all just... Flat, lackluster. And meanwhile, characters like Cardin were written out of the show easily. We've had plenty of examples of corruption in the Hunter business, but the show hasn't paid any attention to that and still is treating being a Hunter like the only true noble goal and the only good and non-corruptible way to defend people, despite the fact that it clearly isn’t. Being a Huntress is not better or safer or more noble in-universe than being an Atlas soldier/Ace Op/Atlas hunter. I’m not saying that all of this needed to be featured, but exploring the differences in motivation and how the Hunter lifestyle affected the various mains could really flesh out their characters. Instead, by the time everyone is heading to Atlas in volume six, they all pretty much have the same reactions to everything and the same motivations and the same beliefs. The rare deviation - like Ren in volume seven and eight - is treated as bad and a mistake that must be rectified, rather than... A natural consequence of the group being full of different people with different upbringings and different motivations that result in different opinions. That sort of thing is only ever explored as a problem that makes someone lacking, and it’s really weird and it makes the show feel... Juvenile, and lacking in nuance or depth when it comes to the characters, which is a really big shame, since the characters have a huge amount of potential and exploring the differences between them and their reactions to being in way over their heads would be - I think - the natural place to take their characters? Especially because so far their storyline has been... Not the highlight of the show.
But, as for how semblances and Hunters should impact the world building, there’s a lot to say about that! They don’t explore a lot in RWBY outside of what’s relevant to the mains, leaving the world building feeling flat and like the world itself doesn’t matter much. RWBY often feels more like a video game world than anything else, which I believe @why-i-hate-rwby-now has pointed out, so credit to them for helping me realize it. There’s one large location per continent and a couple small villages where they only really talk to a town leader and village blacksmith, or encounter a fight, relevant NPCs and characters only going to certain locations that can further the plot, characters only mattering through the ways they interact with the protagonists and seemingly getting benched with nothing to do if they aren’t currently plot relevant, health bars that can be monitored over scrolls, every weapon and semblance has a name even if that name isn’t ever mentioned in show or might not really make a lot of sense, frequently encountered enemies of various threat levels who the characters can plow down without remorse because they’re not sentient or don’t have souls... The list goes on. But one of the ways that it feels very video gamey is that the magical powers actually don’t seem to impact the world.
We know people can have auras even if they don’t have semblances (Mercury, Torchwick, Watts,) and we know lots of even grown people don’t have auras (the citizens of Mantle in danger of dying of cold while our aura having mains aren’t,) but also that auras can be unlocked, by well trained seventeen year olds (Pyrrha,) and we also know that semblances can be unlocked from a very young age due to trauma (Ren, Neptune in EU) but some people are born with their semblances (Qrow and notably Blake use language suggesting they were born with their semblances,) and some semblances are passed down or hereditary (the Schnees.) Semblances can be passive (Qrow, Clover, Ironwood in word of author,) and uncontrollable, or active (almost everyone else,) and some semblances have carried personal negative effects like in the case of Qrow who was even named for being bad luck and Robyn who said people were on edge with her because she can sus out the truth via skin contact when she wants to. Also Mercury’s father was able to somehow take away his semblance.
That’s... Pretty much the extent of our knowledge and it doesn’t tell us much. What RWBY does is give each character abilities that make them iconic and different from each other as fighters, with a shield function that wears down slowly to explain how they can take certain hits and keep going while also allowing them to eventually suffer higher damage when that shield wears down. They had a character get this shield ability unlocked to explain the existence and function of it, and featured some characters who didn’t have the super powered abilities like Roman, an early enemy meant to herald in new, harder enemies who are more plot relevant, and Mercury, who makes up for it by having higher speed and functions exclusive to him through his prosthetics. And then they seemingly built a regular world unaffected by these powers. It sounds like a video game. Civilians just don’t have this power or the shield because they act as non-playable characters. In a way, it almost makes sense to me in conception, because when RWBY was originally created, it was high on visual appeal, fight choreography, and character design. The plot elements were small and the character stories seemed to be pretty simple, the only real complication to this being the White Fang plot, which has always been a major blight in RWBY. But one of the reasons why this video-game feel kinda worked at the start of RWBY was because the story and characters weren’t meant to be the focus of the story, so although the world building at the start was definitely lacking, the audience knew that things like auras and semblances were meant to hype up and add interest to the main highlights of the show: Design and fight choreography. At least that’s what I assume. But in volume three, they started to lay the groundwork for more, bigger plots, more focus on the story, the characters journeying to the outside world, undergoing personal arcs, and that’s what V4 and onward started focusing on.
To be clear, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I started really liking RWBY for its potential and concepts after getting through the first couple episodes of V1, but I actually really enjoyed quite a bit of V4 and V5 even though the design drastically changed and the fighting had gone way down in quality because I found some of the new focus on characters and the plot to be compelling, interesting, or to also have a lot of potential (though I was let down over and over in regards to pay off later.) However, with the new focus on the characters and storyline rather than design and fight choreography, they really needed to do some legwork on fixing the aura and semblance systems and paying attention to world building and making sure the world felt well put together, nuanced, and real. And I don’t feel like they ever did that.
Why is Pyrrha able to unlock auras? Well, because the writers wanted to explain the concept of auras and used Jaune - the unprepared - to do it. But now, auras are actually an important part of the story - for example, the people of Mantle don’t have unlocked auras, so will die of cold, but it doesn’t affect our heroes because they do have unlocked auras. So who can unlock auras? Is it a learned skill or is it hereditary? If it’s a learned skill, why isn’t everyone eager to learn it especially in places where it’s life or death if they don’t like in Atlas? If it’s a hereditary skill, why aren’t the people who have that skill put on a pedestal and being pressured into using that skill to save civilians in places where having an aura is the difference between life and death? In either case, why aren’t there people who professionally unlock auras? Why aren’t they on the pay roll in Atlas and Mantle? If it’s a skill that all powerful hunters have, why aren’t our heroes (who we’re supposed to think are now more powerful than Atlas’s best) unlocking auras for dying children in Mantle? Why don’t specialists and longtime fighters with Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James have this ability if it comes with skill, time, or talent?
Why are semblances unlocking or morphing in times of trauma so rare? Why didn’t the Fall of Beacon unlock loads of new semblances and new semblance abilities? Why didn’t Ruby get a new semblance upgrade when she saw Weiss getting stabbed? Why didn’t Weiss unlock a new semblance ability when her plane was crashing? Why didn’t Pilot Boi unlock his semblance during the same occasion? Why is it that Jaune didn’t get a semblance upgrade when the light bridges were disappearing? Why didn’t Blake get a semblance upgrade when Yang fell into the void? Why did Ren get a semblance upgrade because he was upset while with the Ace Ops after Oscar got captured, but Nora doesn’t get an upgrade while she’s electrocuting herself? If semblances sometimes unlock in times of truama, why is it that some characters like Oscar and Torchwick and Jaune pre-V5 who we know have encountered lots of trauma just still don’t get semblances? If you can train your semblance into upgrading, why is it that we don’t see long time hunters and fighters unlock more semblance abilities, like Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James? It just doesn’t make any sense! And I get that stories always have things happening just because the writers want it, but in RWBY, the hand of the creator is so obvious that it’s ridiculous.
And then there are other questions. Do people avoid bad labor practices out of fear of causing a semblance awakening? Well, from what we see of the SDC, the answer is no. So why not? Why weren’t they worried about an uprising? Work rights becomes a lot trickier when you have to add in tons of qualifiers. Maybe it’s illegal to use a semblance at work, but the SDC also has a history of child workers like Adam who can’t always control it (like Neptune couldn’t control his,) so are there laws protecting child laborers? Perhaps not, since you know, they were already child laborers, so were already suffering unchecked. Are there laws forbidding the use of semblances in government buildings, non-combat driven schools, or parks and libraries? And meanwhile, how would any of this apply to people with a passive semblance? How do you figure out that someone has a passive semblance? How do people know if they’re born with a semblance? Are there people that spend their whole lives having semblances that never get discovered? Do people have semblance detection... Semblances, that they get paid to use or do so out of charity? Did the Schnees rise to power due to their powerful and hereditary semblance, perhaps? Are people discriminated against if they don’t have semblances or pressured to become Hunters if they discover they do have semblances? Shouldn’t civilians in Mantle and Atlas be joining combat schools in droves in the hopes of unlocking an aura so they can better survive? And shouldn’t there be discrimination against people with certain semblances? Outside of Robyn saying she’s personally experienced mistrust, and Qrow’s self-hatred, we don’t see any real prejudice against certain semblance types, or for that matter, any praise or extra significance pointed to certain other semblance types. It would go a long ways towards world building if there were things like people having to divulge their semblance or lack thereof before entering Beacon, or for people to have to register a semblance evolution, or for Emerald to have lied about her semblance because “everyone knows illusion semblances automatically draw suspicion,” or for Qrow to comment that he’d never seen Clover in a Vytal Tournament, only for Clover to say his semblance was deemed ‘cheating’ back when he was in school so he hadn’t qualified. And on the flip side, you could have things like semblances being judged as better and more powerful based on how useful it might be, Pyrrha keeping her semblance on the DL because it’ll just bring more unwanted admiration on her, Sun keeping his own semblance on the DL too because it always make people put a lot of expectations on him, while Neptune’s semblance leaks and he deals with people treating him like he’s selfish and cruel for not wanting to use his own “gift of a semblance.” And people like Jaune could be bullied extra because he doesn’t have his semblance yet, and people in the stands at the Vytal Tournament could be chatting about “when are they gonna pull out their semblances?” and get annoyed and pouty when people don’t. To be fair, we do get things like Mercury’s father having declared his semblance a crutch, but... Still. why isn’t there more of this?
And we see the need for Hunter protection in villages like Kuroyuri and the village that Team RNJR stops to help on the way to Mistral. Small villages outside of the four kingdoms fall to Grimm, or are in danger of falling to Grimm. Ships get attacked by large and dangerous Grimm, we see (corrupt) Hunters on the train to Argus, accompanying for safety, and we see that with a rise of Grimm activity in Mantle, Hunters are dispatched to help kids travel to school. In a world like RWBY, fighting is essential for survival outside of the Kingdoms, and became very essential in the kingdoms as well once schools started going down. You’d assume there should be Hunters accompanying everyone traveling outside of the Kingdoms, resident Hunters living in villages outside the Kingdoms as their on-hand protectors (and more than one Hunters seems to be needed.) Hunters also could be extra protection for anything that’s definitely going to increase negativity, like hiring Hunters to bodyguard funerals seems like something that could be normal in the world of Remnant, and for visiting graveyards (we see Ruby get attacked by tons of Grimm when she visited Summer’s grave in the red trailer.) On top of that, celebrities and rich people hiring Hunters seems like it’d become pretty common. But all that we see outside of Dee and Dudley are traveling Hunters stopping to help people out of the goodness of their heart while they go place to place, and Kingdom Hunters who are assigned to things like border control, clearing out Grimm near or in the Kingdoms, and things like that. What we see is a Kingdom-centered morality complex our protagonists are one hundred percent invested in, Hunters are Kingdom driven and anything outside of that is a kindness, a job they can take or leave in passing. And on top of that, it seems like there aren’t a lot of people in the Hunter profession, and I feel like there should definitely be more. There are people like Jaune who didn’t make the cut but accepted that, we can only assume that there are drop outs too, so like... How many kids are there actually in a year at Beacon? I mean, look at where the Relics were found in the forest during initiation at Beacon.
This gives us a rough idea of how many people are in each year at Beacon. Assuming everyone graduates school and there’s no drop outs and no deaths, that’s a graduating class of twenty. That’s a very small number, comparatively. The job of a Hunter is dangerous. We know of Hunters that died (Summer, Pyrrha, Amber.) We know a lot of Hunters that have other jobs that take a lot of their time (Glynda, Ozpin, Robyn,) and lots of people who quit being Hunters too (Maria, Tai, Raven,) and Hunters who aren’t always on the field like Qrow who was a teacher for a stretch and acted as Ozpin’s spy, the Ace Ops who became part of Ironwood’s inner circle and therefore had a bigger picture, and even all of Team RWBYJNR, who got their Hunter licenses but are also more concerned with bigger picture stuff (if you don’t believe me just look at volume eight where JRY stopped defending Mantle to go rescue Oscar, and Team RWBN + Penny, who were involved in big picture stuff like launching Amity and then saving Penny the Maiden/their friend.) So out of a class of twenty, how many of them are even staying on the field? For a show pushing the narrative that Hunters are the ultimate saviors who are the only true good defense for the world, that condemns even the notion of an army... Like they villainized sending Team FNKI onto the battlefield while also treating it like proof of Ironwood’s evil when he didn’t want to stay and fight when Team RWBY said to, and also made Ironwood’s desire to move into having a robotic army to get soldiers off of the battlefield part of his... Over reliance on machinery, which is full on suspicious considering their ableism towards Ironwood and the fact that he literally has to rely on machinery, but that’s a topic for a different post and this one is already so long. But yeah, my point is that we’re meant to see the army as bad. So if we’re meant to see Hunters as the only true and pure form of defense (which is already off because we know it’s corrupted,) there ought to be way more people in the Hunter field.
As for the schools, we only know of a couple of schools that exist outside of RWBY as combat schools that seem to act as basic training before people go to Beacon. We know of Signal, the school Ruby and Yang went to that Qrow was a teacher at for awhile (I have lots of teacher Qrow headcanons, but sadly Qrow being a teacher wasn’t very well explored,) and we also know of Sanctum in Mistral and (in the EU) Oscuro in Vacuo, presumably one of these existing in Atlas as well. I personally headcanon that there are a lot of these smaller combat schools littering the whole of Remnant (but then again, I also headcanon that the Kingdoms of Remnant are bigger than just one very large city, lol) and that a lot of people attend these schools even if they don’t go on to join one of the Hunter Academies, but this isn’t necessarily supported by canon, I think. But as for other schools...I think it’s fair to assume that there are at least elementary schools, since everyone can read, write, and presumably do basic math, and what we do know is that Ilia went to a prep school in Atlas (which was info dropped in Blake’s pre-V5 trailer, not even stated in the show proper,) so we can probably safely say that people who don’t go to the Huntsman academies go to some form of high school, but you’re right that we don’t see this actually in action. I personally always headcanon that Whitley had a tutor, since Jacques wanted to avoid too much outside influence.
I am so sorry that this response got so away from me and I myself got into so many rabbit holes as well. XD I just have a lot to say about the world building in RWBY (or sometimes lack thereof.) Although I admit that I’m not as into or as good at analyzing as blogs like why-i-hate-rwby-now, but yeah, this is... A very long post. Sorry!
#rwde#anti rwby#rwby bashing#rwby hate#this post includes some#pro ironwood#pro james ironwood#also it's not like I've done a lot of extensive research so please be kind#if I missed something#IW antis please leave me alone
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I would like to say my piece here about schmico, grey’s anatomy, and the fandom and it’s really for my own self-indulgence and benefit. I’m not asking for you to agree with me or even begin to understand what I’m going on about. I don’t even think half the things that I think about for this fandom exists on an important level. I fully believe in just ~vibin’~ to your own tune when it comes to participating in fandom spaces.
so this post is gonna be my way of getting stuff off my chest so i can continue to ~vibe~
First thing I’d like to address is: I know. I know the Nico Kim that I love and adore is not the Nico Kim in canon. He is who I hope he is in canon. But there’s not much to combat or support that he is or isn’t. He really could be who we’ve made up in fanon for him and at the same time, he really couldn’t. Grey’s created this character that is as blank as a dried piece of toast. So forgive me if I spread a bit of spicy jam here and there so I can swallow this bland shit down a little easier.
So when people come to me to say, “Y’all are delulu and out of your mind to love this guy this much.” PLEASE, I know. This isn’t news, honey. I am well aware.
But I will continue to justify, romanticize, and put this boy on a pedestal for as long as his existence in canon continues to remain arbitrary and vague. And it makes me very biased to a fault but I have put too much time and energy into this character NOT to be.
And then you might ask, why have I put so much of my time and life (THREE YEARS!!!! I’VE BEEN IN THIS FANDOM FOR THREE YEARS!!!!!!!!!!) into this character that has all but said maybe like a PAGE of dialogue at most?
Because I was conned into it. Because they marketed the shit out of him when Alex Landi got the part. And I, as a casual viewer of Grey’s since I was in high school (I’m in my late 20s now, dawg) and of Asian descent was promised representation. Not just Asian rep, but queer rep.
So naturally, I got extremely attached. It's not everyday a major Western mainstream prime time medical drama chooses to create a character as unique as Nico's.
I spent so much time here. I was here when fandom decided Nico would call Levi “babe”. I was here when we all clowned that Nico didn’t know Levi’s first name. I was here when Josh died and the fandom went up in arms with pitchforks and stakes against Nico. I was here for all of it. I've seen it all.
And unfortunately, seeing it all, makes me tired. Grey’s is time and time again proving to me that they don’t give a shit about the development and well-being of their existing characters at all. The show only cares about collecting diversity points and performing their wokeness to the general masses. (I talk a lot about how grey's is plot-driven vs. character-driven.)
I will still get frustrated and annoyed at Nico’s lack of character development. But I mostly just laugh at the fandom nowadays. I know you guys want to fight the fight, tell everyone Nico is not toxic!!!!!! But bros, friends, lovers, it’s a tried and tired fight.
Grey’s wants us to think Nico is a Bad Boyfriend. It’s as clear as the stench one comes across when they step on dog shit. That’s why I think it’s useless to fight people about Nico. Grey’s gets amnesia all the time. Grey’s forgot the whole season and half they invested in creating a loving boyfriend for Levi and up and changed Nico’s personality to fit a new narrative (that they, quite frankly, failed to even follow through because of covid and other filming hoopla hula hoops they’ve had to jump through that I’ve been informed of and which I simply don’t care for).
So all this ~schmico is endgame!!! we deserve it!!!~ Binches, I have better things to fight for than schmico endgame. What’s the alternative? Levi lives in Jo’s closet forever? They’re going to be together in the end no matter what. Nobody on that show cares enough about Nico OR Levi to set up new relationships and stories for them. So don’t fret, my friends. They’ll be together in the end. It just comes down to the question of what stupid story they’re going to come up with for them to be together. (And might I argue that they already are together???)
Speaking of the bogus story they’re going to write for schmico: you bet my rice eating, Chinese-speaking ass, that it’s not going to be a story written from a queer and poc perspective. It’s going to be some gag-worthy straight het story but made gay. (How many times do I have to hear, "I hope Nico comes out to his parents!!" NO, HE DOESN'T! Do you know how VIOLENT coming out is sometimes?? It's not a solution to Nico's problems with Levi. It's an introduction and invitation to problems over being queer -- but why would I expect anyone, let alone Grey's, to understand that prepetuating these types of stories is inherently damaging to queer people? They wouldn't know. The cishet fandom wouldn't know. Because no one is writing grey's in a queer, poc centric way.)
Which drives me to the next point: you know why Nico doesn’t get character development even though he showed up at the same time as Link? Because of ✨racism ✨. Because Link is a more conventional character (read: white) that is easier to write because nobody on this show knows how to write an Asian character anymore, let alone a gay Asian character. So of course, nobody wants to touch that shit even with a pogo stick. (Argue with me that Cristina exists and I will tell you, yes she did, but they RARELY touched upon her cultural and ethnic background. Also it was the early 2000s. Cristina was as ground breaking as it got for us Asians back then.)
And then because Nico isn’t developed enough, we have the weird phenomenon of people shipping everyone and their dog with Levi and it’s like, y’all know you got played by the racism game, right? You are hostages to this system that has taught you that white men are more desirable and deserving of story and humanity than a poc character who is instead, reduced to nothing but sex appeal and if he’s not doing well on that front, then he’s useless.
How many times does Levi say: Nico is so hot! Sex with Nico is so good! He’s a roman statue!
All!! the!! time!! Nico's worth to Levi’s character is to be the sex object that Sets Him Free.
Which plays into the sexualization of Asian people which all comes from, you guessed it! Racism! (Levi really compared Nico to a fucking lifeless slab of stone.)
(Side note: I do think talking about how racism plays into Nico’s character and the fandom space is important and probably a separate post. I’m happy to write my opinion piece on it if it’s something people want.)
But anyway, those are just some of my qualms with schmico, grey’s anatomy, and the fandom. I do not expect anyone to fully agree with me and I’m not asking the fandom to change or apologize or whatever. I’m just already grateful if you took the time to even read this post.
I’ll leave with some parting advice: fandom is what you make of it. We won’t all agree with everyone’s hot takes, but that’s the beauty of it, yeah? So I chose to create this version of Nico Kim that brings me IMMENSE joy. Like, A LOT!!! I love this fandom for these reasons. I’m grateful everyday for the friends I’ve made and the works and creations I’ve created and I’m honoured to be able to consume other works made by fellow fans.
I might hate a lot of things about grey’s and schmico, but I really owe a lot of myself to this fandom.
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Tbh until I played azure moon, I thought I totally agreed with edelgard's meritocracy, if not her methods of achieving it. But then azure moon dropped the whole parley scene along with the line, "It is the path of the strong, and so, it could only benefit the strong." And then claude said if people don't band together to find a solution, any change will only be temporary. And then I married yuri in my verdant wind playthrough and the ending plate said yuri worked hard to establish supports and education for the impoverished instead of just expecting them to rise themselves. And it just... got me thinking about it all
On the broad strokes, I still see where edelgard is coming from and her system is still better than what's currently in place. But, now that I'm revisiting crimson flower, I find that I do see the holes I didn't before. Namely, that the merit-system edelgard speaks of accounts for equality.... but not equity. She would open the doors to allow everyone the same opportunity but fails to account for those without the strength to take it. It's all well and good that now people like ferdinand or constance with their education and connections can contribute to society and rise by their own ability, but what about the poor farmer in a now-wartorn land? What can he contribute at this time? Can a society really be complete if it doesn't give their most vulnerable populations a chance? And I think that's where dimitri comes in. The story repeated in azure moon is that sometimes, people are gonna need help. Dimitri's focus as a leader is still rooted in protecting and serving his people. While less of a visionary than edelgard, he is more of a public servant for his people—both are important aspects of leadership. Azure moon also isn't a perfect ending. Something something the inherent eroticism of changing the structure of your government to mirror social change. You can't just do one and not the other. It's no good if you only give everyone an equal chance but put an unyielding focus on every man for themselves and fail to serve the needs of the vulnerable. But setting up social supports for those populations without giving them an opening to rise and take power for later generations will only work so long as the leader remains benevolent
Claude's methods don't clash as directly with the other two, but it does come with its own set of problems. Claude's main focuses are promoting freedom and dismantling ignorance. He believes in freedom of information, open borders, the right to live without unfair judgement, and a community focused way of living. He wants to dismantle ignorance in order to challenge social practices and norms. That means opening borders, promoting trade, educating the public... and leaving what that life looks like to the people to choose. The problem? This plan puts almost all the power in the hands of the public. There is, of course, nothing wrong with letting people decide their own future,,, but there is something to be said about the benefits of having guiding principles and rules to refer back to even while attempting to promote open-mindedness. His plans ultimately do account for both social and political change, the issue here boils down to the rewards vs the classic pitfalls of freedom and idealism within society. Educating people and promoting choices for all within society is what I'd consider the most sustainable plan BUT having a society that can't unite under anything is how the alliance became what it is. As good of a concept as it is, even claude knows slamming people with information and freedom without some guidance is asking for chaos
To their credit, all of the lords are able to acknowledge the fallacies in their way of thinking. Edelgard addresses it the least, but even she admits that she's always been aware that her path will crush people who need the current system for support—that people like manuela or catherine may end up crushed in the world she creates. Dimitri is much of the same, expressing contempt for the kingdom's politics and strict class culture. He is well aware that it cannot stay as is forever. Claude openly admits to needing people like byleth and lorenz to pave the road and guide the people in the beginning so that change doesn't become chaos and to ensure that greed doesn't ruin everything. His A-support with balthus confirms that the possibility that he'll lose control of the aftermath weighs on him and his C-support with cyril opens his eyes to a situation where a leader should have stepped in and taken control.
Basically, no matter what route you play through, the ending could be seen as just the beginning phases of social change and are not a perfect result. Hell, it's not even the finished product any of them imagined yet. And who's to say one is better than the other? Whose to say even the tightest authoritarian control could stem the chaos that follows drastic change? How can you be sure that releasing information will really encourage people to correct the crest system? Will correcting the crest system do anything to help a millenia of racism or will war just drive people inward? What if too much aid does make one class totally dependent on the other? What if failing to support the vulnerable just perpetuates the environment of the strong ruling over the weak but now under the guise of equality? How do you make people more open minded without forcing their hand? How are you sure that's the direction it'll go in? How do you account for the sudden lack of an organized religion which previously was the one thing tying three very different countries together? Especially when the only thing connecting them now is war? So, essentially, there is no golden route. It's a feel good game so we can generally infer that these issues all get addressed eventually no matter what route you pick, but you can't really say for sure that any one choice is all encompassing. We'll all have that one route we think did more right than the other two, but there are holes in each one
#edelgard von hresvelg#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd#claude von riegan#fe3h meta#fe3h#fire emblem three houses
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I don't generally make this kind of thing a habit, but I think if you happen to be on the Crystal RP Discord, aka @crystal-rp-ffxiv, you should probably be aware of this kind of behavior, so here goes.
If you're on Crystal RP and the admin team decides they don't like you, you're going to be living under a microscope while they wait for you to mess up, if not bait you, probably while making up conspiracies about you as well. As for how I know this, I was a moderator for about a week's duration and saw it first-hand.
Unapologetically lengthy post. Receipts in the link above, long version below the cut.
From the first time I looked in the mod chat I knew something was wrong. I read backwards in the channel, thinking I'd acclimate myself and see what kind of rules precedents had been set and that sort of thing. I mostly just found out that they had it out for a particular member (at the time using the name Jericho) for not much reason. They'd spent a troubling amount of time over the past few months watching him and another member like vultures, believing them to be the same person and waiting for them to make some kind of mistake that would justify banning both of them...despite keeping different schedules, having different personalities and typing habits, and visibly being two different people. The admin team had come to the conclusion that Jericho was a troll who wanted to make them look bad, and anything he said or did was scrutinized to a ridiculous degree for evidence that would corroborate their belief.
Except none of the things they believed at all were true: he'd had a minor argument via DM with the head admin Benjimir Thursby's wife, Tessariel Aerlinn, who had made an overly broad statement about anime and Asian culture. Jericho had told her that overgeneralization about 'Asian culture' is potentially racist, and she became extremely angry, saying that because she's Asian, she can't be racist against Asians. After that, it seemed that Jericho was considered fair game for whatever retaliatory actions the two of them could justify.
Even a cursory glance at actual racism in Asia pokes Tessariel's statement entirely full of holes, and having personally read the conversation I didn't see anything actually inaccurate in his statement even if she believed it didn't apply to her. I asked what he had done that would merit such a response, because it felt very disproportionate to anything I'd ever seen him do publicly, and that was what I was told. The exchange via DMs had been screencapped and kept in a channel for evidence, and while I didn't get a copy of it, I did read it, and I said that I thought it sounded awfully one-sided and punitive and would have been much better as an actual conversation. I also expressed that I was concerned how much of the channel had been solely devoted to what was basically a witch hunt, considering that some of the server members had over the course of the past couple of months commented that the admins' behavior towards Jericho seemed biased.
I basically got a pat on the head and told that my opinion was "valued" but wrong. This would happen a lot over the course of the week.
Shit continued to escalate. Their favorite punching bag, who was acutely aware of the grudge by now and probably trying to be nice and discuss something that he thought they could all talk about, brought up some articles that stated that LOTRO might be having a graphical overhaul. This actually ended in him being put into some kind of time-out mute, because "everyone knows those articles are debunked already" despite them still being hosted on reputable games news sites. Back-channel, the admin consensus was that he was in fact trying to bait Benjimir and Tessariel into somehow looking stupid in public, because [paraphrasing] 'he knows how important LOTRO is to them.'
Benjimir in fact went off publicly about how he knows the dev team and they sent him 'personalized swag' for 'being himself' and that everyone should just listen to him because he's right. Someone else made a reasonable request for sources on statements that Benjimir made about the LOTRO improvements not happening, and they immediately became the team's private #2 punching bag.
The whole time I reiterated that this was really uncomfortable and I had serious concerns about the way they were handling Jericho. And as always I received a pat on the head and was told to not worry about it, there were really good reasons for it, really. He was 'bringing down the quality of discourse' on the server somehow. Benjimir decided that the only way he would unmute Jericho is if Jericho talked directly to him, and that Jericho tried to talk to any of the more level-headed members of the team first was taken as obvious evidence that he wanted to evade rules and create problems. I asked when we planned to unmute him, and Tessariel immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had messaged me, which wasn't incorrect but the way she worded it felt highly accusatory and I was beginning to feel that I was also in trouble somehow for not agreeing with the rest of the team.
Things came to a head quickly when I woke up and looked at the mod chat and they were having an animated conversation that started with Benjimir asking if it was 'bad that he was laughing at Jericho' and most of the rest of the team talking about how he was stupid, uninformed, a troll, etc. for the sin of having some misgivings about cryptocurrency, of all the things. One of the mods self-described their behavior as bullying. I said that this was extremely unprofessional and that I thought they should keep conversation to actual moderation matters, and if they had a personal disagreement with a server member they should handle it in a personal venue, not via official server moderation channels.
I was, for the final time, patted on the head, and told that this was not something they would consider, because the moderation team 'needs to be able to vent for their mental health' (never mind that the job was not stressful except for the rest of the team committing worse behavior than the server members) and that maybe I was in fact too sensitive for the job. Benjimir heavily implied that I had become too close to Jericho and was being manipulated, managed to misgender me somehow despite my having used solely male or neutral pronouns the entire time I'd been on the server, and after relating a story in which a couple of years ago a well-liked moderator left after having the same complaints as I did (which he saw nothing at all troubling about), suggested that I should be demoted to babysitting the lore channel.
So I took some time to collect receipts, which are linked at the top of the post, and told him where to shove it.
Since that time, things have actually somehow gotten worse on Crystal RP. Benjimir posted an entire page screed vaguely talking about "rampant negativity" that stated anyone with questions should DM him.
Upon DMing him with questions, Jericho was banned, the only reason given being that he was a 'poor fit' for the server in some vague way. I was immediately banned afterwards for calling out this decision as being driven by a personal vendetta in the feedback channel and let him know afterwards via DMs in no uncertain terms that I had logged everything I needed and would be building my case (and that he is an asshole). Jericho was reinstated, though I'm not sure what the conditions of his return were as that was after my ban and I didn't ask since I didn't want to stress him out further. Benjimir also reprimanded someone for discussing asexuality, stating in a DM to them that the conversation was somehow ERP related. I called him out on this via DM as well. Tessariel was not much later caught posting my last DMs to Benjimir in an entirely unrelated server, though she didn't include the part after that where I brought up his aphobia (during Pride Month, in a server with a rainbow icon no less). Benjimir for some reason decided to suddenly start following my FC's Tumblr well after our falling-out.
And as of today (6/24), Crystal RP now has seven pages of draconian rules, because it wasn't micromanaged hard enough before or something. Notably, a lot of these rules describe behaviors that they wanted to punish Jericho for but couldn't at the time justify, or that they'd like to punish me for but have nothing they can do to me. Or they exist to justify their own behavior, as now seen in the very beginning of the channel:
"This approach also provides our volunteers with leeway to act in good faith without the burden befitting a professional occupation."
"So we afford them the means to speak openly, vent, lament, candidly and yes, sometimes crassly and raw about everything and one."
Not only did they behave unprofessionally and shit-talk before, they have now encoded in the rules that this is acceptable and even good moderator behavior, because they saw someone else do it so it's fine (a lot of this wording is very similar to what I was told when I protested it). So rather than address anything I ever said past or present, Benjimir is choosing to double down and giving himself and his team explicit permission to be shitty, right in the opening paragraphs where you'd have expected a mission statement or at least some sort of welcome.
Which is about all you need to know about that server and its owners, in my estimation. I'd considered not even posting to Tumblr about it, but given that it's only getting worse, I think it should be generally known that this is how you can expect to potentially be treated.
#FFXIV#FFXIV RP#Crystal Data Center#Crystal RP#Balmung RP#Mateus RP#on one hand it's drama on the other I can and will call a spade a spade or in this case a douchebag a douchebag#this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who knows me even a little
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Let’s talk about the old Techno tweets
For a week now, I’ve been sitting on this ask that linked me to a Twitter callout thread on SBI. Although I have many thoughts about the entire thread, I’ve since only had the time and will to respond to the Techno part, and I figured instead of keeping it in my drafts and waiting to gather the energy to write the rest, I’d just post what I have.
Here is the thread, for reference: https://twitter.com/burner0321/status/1379103348364865536?s=21
Trigger Warnings: anti-semitism, mentions of genocide, racism, n* slur, r* slur, ableism, lesbophobia, racism
Please prioritize your health and safety, and do not engage with this thread or this post if you will get triggered by any of the aforementioned. I love you, please take care of yourself, first.
So, let’s talk Technoblade’s history of making “edgy” jokes. When CCs tend to use edginess as a cover for offensive humor, they tend to do so to cover up the fact that their humor involves taking shots at minorities or employs harmful stereotypes, without addressing why people get offended by such jokes. However, when I call Technoblade’s old humor edgy, this is not what I mean. The reason I do not think people are justified in demanding an apology or addressing of the jokes in the Twitter thread is because they do not use the minorities or horrible things they address as the punchline. A joke can be in bad taste, without being malicious. This is edgy humor. In explaining my point, I want to address as many of the specific things in the thread as possible.
1) I don’t fully understand the “was Hitler a lesbian?” tweet or the title of that video, so I won’t address that. If someone has something to say about it, feel free to reply to this post, I’d love to see what you think of it.
2) Next, we have the, “titling my next video ‘mvp++ is worse than nazi germany’” tweet. What is the joke in this tweet? The joke is that the comparison between a Minecraft game and a fascist regime that caused genocide is ridiculous, and as such, would be effective clickbait, and draw people into the video. The joke is not that Nazi Germany should be taken lightly; it is actually the complete opposite.
3) Next, “#askpewds do you have any constructive criticism for Nazi Germany.” Frankly, without the context of timeframe or what the hell was going on within the Twittersphere at the time, I can only make a reach as to what this joke meant. I assume it’s in reference to the time period during which Pewdiepie was being framed as a fascist by several media outlets, and could either be a joke on the fact that people believe Pewdiepie to be a neo-Nazi, or a shot at Pewdiepie himself, by playing on the fact that he actually does espouse neo-Nazi beliefs. Again, the punchline is far from, “Nazi Germany was good,” or anything along those lines. Edgy, not anti-semitic.
4) The vampireZ tweet. The joke here is, “why did vampireZ think this was a good idea,” not, “haha get it, black people kill people.” As with many of these kinds of jokes, the existence of the word, “black” in the joke makes people think he is insulting black people. In reality, the tweet points out that the game is fitting into the history of media portraying black people as the more aggressive, violent, and/or murderous characters, and is like, “hey, isn’t this kinda fucked?”
5) This tweet actually does make an offensive joke that is malicious in its intent. Congratulations, we are five tweets in, and we finally found a joke that makes minorities the punchline. I completely understand people’s criticisms of this one. The punchline here is, “haha, I’m one of those entitled people who claims that racial profiling is the reason I was wronged,” and this minimizes the fact that racial profiling is an real, serious, and widespread problem. This tweet makes it seem like people claim that racial profiling is the reason they are excluded from spaces or that punitive actions that were enacted upon them are doing so unjustly. This can be extrapolated from the fact that it’s ridiculous to think that a) a Minecraft server would racially profile someone, and b) that a white person would be racially profiled.
6) This tweet literally just seems like a sarcastic response to someone who was accused of being a white supremacist and/or racist. Presumably, SealPlays was defending himself of not being racist, and Technoblade responded sarcastically that he was "totally” trying to recruit him to the KKK. I literally see no reason someone thought this was malicious? This does not make light of the KKK, and it doesn’t make black people or any other group or individual victimized by the KKK the punchline.
7) The slavery jokes. Presumably, the slavery jokes are in reference to the times on his Skyblock, SMP Earth, and/or Dream SMP streams and videos, during which Technoblade has done bits about making some of his friends slaves for him, so he has to do less work. Again, slavery jokes might be in bad taste, but there was literally no racial context to this, given that he wasn’t make jokes about any black CCs being his slaves. This is not to mention that he always played up the role of the one telling the people what to do, making it out to be a very negative role that only an arrogant, selfish, and/or callous person would fill. Think, Alec Baldwin playing Trump. This part of the thread is, however, so vague, that it’s hard to know exactly what instances the OP is even talking about.
There are several reasons I am personally angered by this section of the thread, but in an effort to make this post shorter, I’ll only discuss two:
One, there are genuinely things that CCs, including Technoblade, have said, that carry ignorant and malicious connotations. The racial profiling joke is just one example. To create a thread where most of the examples are absolute bullshit, lack context, and/or were misinterpreted on your part is a disservice to minorities who want to have productive conversations about genuinely harmful things. I want to talk about this idea that minorities who talk about their experiences with microaggressions, such as racial profiling, are seeking attention/using an excuse/lying. But that one tweet is so buried under this mountain of bullshit that has everyone talking over each other and screaming, that the one conversation we should be having cannot be had.
Two, I am utterly exhausted at watching people misinterpet jokes. As I have already said again and again, just because a joke mentions something horrible, does not mean it is malicious, or that it even harms anyone. A joke needs to make light of something horrible and/or make minorities the punchline to cross the line from “edgy” to “explicitly offensive.”
I would like to make a disclaimer: there is always two sides to a CC doing something wrong. There is the CC, who may or may not have had malicious intent, and there is the audience, who may or may not take offense to what was done or said. Both of these are separate, and I will treat them as such. What I am examining in this post is mostly the first thing - were the things said or jokes made meant with racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, etc., intent, or are people unjustified in stating that they were? That being said, and this is important: anyone is allowed to take offense to and not forgive a CC for making a joke or saying something, no matter what. Even if a joke was meant satirically or does not actually offend minorities, if you, as an individual, take offense to it and were deeply hurt by it, that is fucking valid. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. A CC can apologize for something, and that can mean that objectively, they are not a bad person and/or have grown, but that does not mean you have to forgive them. There are two sides to this coin, and they are not inherently dependent upon each other.
If someone is offended by any of the jokes Techno made, that is perfectly valid and understandable. Even if I or anyone else comes to the objective conclusion that any given joke doesn’t have malicious intent, that doesn’t erase minorities’ very real feelings about such.
#i wrote all of this a few days ago#the only thing i wrote just now was the first paragraph#just wanted to put that out there#techno critical#mcyttwt#racism#anti-semitism#lesbophobia#mcyt#.txt#/neg#discourse
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A Note from Fansplaining
If you’re subscribed to Fansplaining on iTunes or another podcatcher, you’ve probably seen that we put out a short statement this week in lieu of a new episode. Because we’re committed to making all audio we release fully accessible, we’ll transcribe the clip at the bottom of this post, below the cut. But fwiw, it’s mostly just explaining what’s in this post:
Black lives matter. We condemn white supremacy in all its forms. We believe the police should be defunded and dismantled. And we want to make sure everyone who listens to our podcast knows about ways they can contribute to this fight, and ways they can support the Black community (please note that these are U.S.-centric). We’ll be back with a new episode soon, but this is more important than anything we could say right now.
Places to donate
If you’re out of work or have lost hours in the past few months, you may not have money to spare. But even small donations—$5, $10—add up. A few organizations we recommend:
House of GG, a Black-led organization, is fundraising to build a permanent home in Little Rock, Arkansas where trans and gender-nonconforming people can both be housed and receive leadership training.
G.L.I.T.S. is fundraising to buy two buildings to create a permanent place to house and support Black trans people in New York City, as well as sign leases for space to use in the interim.
Sista Afya, a Chicago-based organization, is fundraising to keep its therapeutic services, social events, and wellness experiences under $15 and to hold large scale events like a free arts festival.
For a larger crowdsourced list, see suggestions here.
Ways to get involved if you can’t physically or monetarily participate
If, like us, you live in New York City, here’s a great resource for actionable things you can do from home. Here’s a national list, though for more granular detail for your town/city/region, you should search social media. Some great google doc action happening right now!!
As a reminder, when contacting elected officials:
Always write your own email, rather than use a form. People who work or have worked in these offices strongly advise this, and report that form emails are regularly filtered out, often directly into the trash.
Always write a postcard rather than a letter. Letters are scanned for things like anthrax and can get held up for days; postcards go straight through.
Ensure you know the official’s position on whatever you’re asking about before you call or write. If they’re already supporting or sponsoring a specific piece of legislation, call them anyway and thank them. They use constituent numbers to show that their positions have a lot of public support.
Particularly for white and non-BIPOC: reach out to your family members, as much as you feel safe doing so, and speak with them about Black Lives Matter and the issues of the day. If you have language barriers with your family members, or just need a place to start, Letters For Black Lives is a great resource that includes material in many languages.
Stream this video—all ad revenue will go to bail funds, families of victims of racist police brutality, and other Black-led organizations.
Resources on anti-Blackness and racism in fandom
Because we are a fandom podcast, we encourage white fans in particular to continue to listen to Black fans and other fans of color when it comes to racism in fandom. If you’re new to the podcast or haven’t dug into the full back catalogue, we recommend prioritizing:
Our pair of episodes on race and racism in fandom—especially anti-Blackness in fandom—featured eight different guests. Episodes 22A and B: “Race and Fandom Part 1” and “Race and Fandom Part 2.”
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas was one of our earliest and one of our most recent repeat guests. You can listen to her talk about race, children’s literature, and fandom in episode 7, “The Dark Fantastic” and episode 120, “Ebony Elizabeth Thomas.” Once you’ve listened to these episodes, buy or request that your library purchase a copy of her book, The Dark Fantastic.
Tanya DePass is the founder of I Need Diverse Games. In episode 42, “Fresh Out of Tokens,” she discussed fan/creator interaction and intersectionality in the context of games specifically.
Rukmini Pande is a well-known scholar of race and fandom. She first joined us in episode 29, “Shipping and Activism,” to talk about the ways that ships intersect with politics; then, she returned in episode 89, “Rukmini Pande,” and discussed her academic work. Once you’ve listened to these episodes, buy or request that your library purchase a copy of her book, Squee From the Margins.
In episode 48, “Con or Bust,” we interviewed Diana Pho and Mark Oshiro, two board members of Con or Bust, an organization that raises money to help fans of color attend conventions.
For further reading, Fan Studies Network North America has put together a great list of resources.
Transcript
[Intro music: “Awel” by stefsax]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish.
FK: Welcome to not an episode of Fansplaining. Um, we almost completely canceled recording at all, but we decided that we wanted to record a short thing, because we know some people only receive us through their podcatcher or whatever and don’t ever go to our website or our social media. So it felt important that we actually record something short today.
ELM: All right. So, just off the bat, at the risk of sounding like a terrible brand black .jpg with white letters, I think it should be obvious to everybody right now but it’s always worth restating—Black Lives Matter. We strongly support everything that is happening right now. We both strongly believe that the police should be…what word are we gonna use? Dismantled?
FK: Yes.
ELM: Dismantled. Like, we, like, you know—and like, strongly condemn white supremacy, which is the foundation of our country and much of the world.
FK: Right. So…
ELM: Very broad statement here, but like, you know, it’s definitely worth stating in explicit terms and not couching it around, you know, just to outright state support for Black people and the fight that is going on right now.
FK: Completely. And we really struggled with whether or not to record an episode because, on the one hand, there’s a lot of topics that we think would be really good to talk about that are within the purview of this podcast—stuff like the way people are using social media to organize, stuff like the entire conversation around K-pop fandom and the way that’s been going down. There’s like five things.
ELM: Spoiler, spoiler: It’s been going down poorly.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Wait, side note: just anyone, please please please, cause I know a lot of people listen to this podcast and are in fandom but are not in K-pop fandom, if an article that you’re sharing about K-pop fans mobilizing doesn’t acknowledge the, like, rampant anti-Blackness happening within those spaces right now, they haven’t done enough research.
FK: Correct. And also, it’s both that and also if you see the narrative that K-pop fans are only bots, that’s also the other flip bad side of the coin.
ELM: Well, we should—now we’re gettin’ right into it. We’re not actually doing an episode. We’re not actually doing an episode. Yes.
FK: We’re actually gonna talk about this at some point in the future. Right now it feels like, you know, just being two white women talking about this stuff feels like not the thing to do right now? And we also don’t want to right now ask Black people to come on to our podcast and talk about things in a deeply traumatic and horrible moment. So we’re going to put a pin in the podcast and we’re gonna come back with all of those topics and a bunch of guests and basically begin to address this stuff, hopefully in a moment that’s less fraught. Is it ever gonna get less fraught? I don’t know if it’s gonna get less fraught.
ELM: That being said, let’s play it by ear! Because I could not tell you what’s gonna happen two weeks from now, but like…
FK: [sighs] Yeah, I really don’t know either.
ELM: Just, we’ll see. So in the meantime, we are going to put a post on Tumblr so it’ll be shareable, and we are going to include resources—places to donate, in particular places that aren’t getting as much attention. More grassroots stuff that we’re seeking out right now. And also ways to be active and involved for people who don’t have the money or physical ability to be protesting right now, because I am very aware of the narrative of “You should be in the streets! And if not then you should donate!” And it’s like, well, what happens if you are unemployed and also physically unable to get out there? There are so many ways that you can really be, actively lend your support right now.
So we’ll put those in there, and then also, we shared on Twitter a thread of great resources about anti-Blackness and racism in fandom, and since this is a fandom podcast we’ll be sharing some of those in that post as well, because it’s all connected.
FK: Absolutely. All right, everyone out there, stay safe, stay strong, if you’re in the streets stay in the streets, and we’ll be back when we can.
ELM: OK, bye Flourish!
FK: Bye, Elizabeth.
[Outro music: “Awel” by stefsax]
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BTS Reactions – You’re dating another idol
You laugh kindly as your boyfriend speaks casually with the reporters lining the red carpet. It’s nothing you’re not used to – you’re well used to the limelight by now, by way of your famous boyfriends both past and present. You’re not some kind of fame hunter, you don’t dream of being adored by everyone, you don’t even particularly like going to coveted events like this. But you do it to support the man you’re with. At some point, you become aware of somebody watching you with intense eyes. Although you’re no stranger to being watched, this feels… different. More accusatory. You know without looking back who’s glaring at you and the hand your boyfriend has wrapped around your waist.
Jin
“Jimin, stop staring,” Jin whispers gently to Jimin, guiding his groupmate away from the sight and towards the next red carpet interview, “It’s just going to cause a scene, and I don’t think we really want that kind of publicity,” Jin’s voice is controlled and calm, as he flat out refuses to let any of his emotions bubble to the surface. With years upon years of practice, he lets his eyes pass right over you and your new boyfriend without even a hint of recognition. Jimin shakes his head in wonder and Jin elegantly dodges a few questions regarding your presence here, acting as if he hasn’t seen you yet – but must find you for a brief catch up, surely.
You and Jin seem to keep brushing shoulders all night, but he makes no move to acknowledge your presence if he can. As he walks up to the table where his group and a few others will be seated and sees you there, he stalks straight past to where some of his idol friends are sitting, naturally integrating himself into the conversation while Namjoon rushes to make quick amendments. It’s all sorted by the end of his conversation.
Jin holds onto his composure all night, smiling and waving and cheering as if there’s nothing wrong. Even his groupmates wonder what’s going on, why he isn’t bothered by it at all. It’s not until much later on that Jin’s true feelings show. The van doors have just closed, and everybody is inside. It seems like all the air is let out of Jin, and he crumples forward, his first few tears slipping out as they’ve been threatening to all night.
Yoongi
“I can’t believe she has the nerve to show up here! It’s barely been 6 months and she’s already got somebody else draped over her. Who even is that?” Yoongi mutters to Namjoon as he glares at you. The leader tries to discourage his staring, knowing that the press will just be eating Yoongi’s horror up, as disgustingly predatorial as that is. Nothing sells like rivalry, and if Yoongi doesn’t stop staring and muttering, that’s going to be what happens,
“Look, I know. I get it. But unless you want this to be front page news, you’ve got to stop this,” Namjoon pushes gently, trying not to be too harsh. Your breakup really did affect Yoongi, so it’s not fair to expect him to be okay with this,
“I just feel like I should say something, you know? It’s obvious some reporter is going to ask me a question about it, but maybe if I go over there then that will be a story enough and they won’t have to,” Yoongi tries to control his voice and convince the leader that him going over there wouldn’t end in a fight. However, his voice betrays him and Namjoon is forced to quickly drape and arm over Yoongi’s shoulders to hold him in place for the next bout of pictures. He wouldn’t be surprised if Yoongi bolted at any moment. It’s been a long time since any of the group has seen Yoongi in this much pain and turmoil. Namjoon silently curses you in his head. How could you do this to him? Showing up here after everything… yeah, in Namjoon’s opinion, Yoongi has every right to be mad.
Hoseok
“Should I go over and do something? Maybe act all happy, like I support the relationship? Might be good for our image, especially with our upcoming album being what it’s about,” Hoseok asks Namjoon under his breath. He likes to think his leader will always know what to do, but Namjoon just shakes his head and shrugs. There is no right way to act when your ex-girlfriend (who you had been with for years) turns up at an awards show you’re about to sweep clean ay with a new nearly-as-famous idol boyfriend just a few months after the public announcement of your break up. Not exactly any manuals based on the correct etiquette. Hoseok swears softly and decides it would probably be best. If he’s lucky, it might make him feel better.
The rapper walks through a crowd that parts like the Red Sea for him, and he approaches you and your new boyfriend with bated breath. You catch sight of him first and try not to show how much you’d been dreading this. You couldn’t avoid coming, but you knew that he would do this. Hoseok was always a sociable person, wanting to appear as good-natured and as friendly as possible. After so long together, you know him like the back of your hand,
“I hope I’m not interrupting!” Hoseok says brightly, giving your boyfriend a friendly smile as he shakes his hand, “Just thought I’d come over and introduce myself, make sure nobody feels awkward,” His smile widens externally as a few reporters catch wind of the situation and hurry over, but inside his dread multiplies. He’s sure this is the right thing to do in this situation, but why does it hurt so much to see you so happy? He swore he would always support you, but he can feel a green-eyes monster stirring in his belly. It’s ugly.
Namjoon
Immediately upon registering your presence, Namjoon straightens his back, squares his shoulders and sets his jaw. He is not going to play into whatever kind of sick game is at play here. He’s certain everyone expects him to react in some way, maybe even go over and try and say something. Some fans are probably even hoping he’ll start a fight. No. He will not stoop that low. He bites his tongue and decides who he is going to be tonight. He won’t be the cheap headline of some failing tabloid. He’ll be the front cover of MTV and Billboard after cleaning house at yet another top-flight awards show. That’s who Kim Namjoon is.
It gets really hard to be Kim Namjoon when you and your boyfriend end up sitting right behind him, talking in such a soppy way to each other. He’s forced to sit there and listen to the two of you simper and kiss each other for the sake of the cameras all night. Namjoon refuses to even flinch, just playing his role in these shows. To be fair, it’s not like he spends long sat down anyway. Award after award is given to them, and he receives a few on behalf of his company as well. This is who Kim Namjoon is. Untouchable. Unfazed. He will not let this get to him. He will not let this get to him. He will not let this get to him. He will not…
The mantra starts to break down towards the end of the end, when he catches fragments of a conversation that he wishes he was having with you. Talks of going home, of cuddling, of having breakfast together. A single tear escapes Namjoon’s eyes, and he hopes deeply that if a camera did catch it, they would assume it was the emotional video being shown on stage to support the ending of racism.
Jimin
“Jimin! How does it make you feel that your ex has a new boyfriend already?” A reporter shouts over the din of voices in the red carpet area. Jimin rounds on them with a dark expression, staring directly into the camera as the question registers slowly in his brain. A deep frown settles on his face as he considers how best to address this question he knows is going to be screamed and shouted at him all night. He might as well get something out now, and stick to it,
“I think that’s a really personal question. I’ve already spoken with ARMY about how I feel, as you should know. What others do doesn’t affect me. I’ve been on a journey with my group, my brothers, to learn to love myself. The first lesson is not to let things you can’t control upset you. I’m happy for her. I hope she finds what she’s looking for,” Jimin’s teeth are clenched together as he speaks, but he knows his voice sounds as melodic and as friendly as always. The reporter nods in thanks and is about to call out another equally intrusive question when Taehyung tugs his best friend forwards for an important photo with a big artist also attending,
“That was a pretty good response, hyung. I wonder if it’ll keep them happy for now,” Taehyung states absent-mindedly as he gets into a memorable pose. Jimin does the same, pulling on his most endearing smile. Inside, he doesn’t know what to think. He knows the answer to Taehyung’s thought – no. The media are never happy unless Jimin is crying on his knees, in pain and suffering. That’s the only way half of them will sell a story. They want to see him hurt. It’s all he can do to swear he will never let them see the truth. How it feels like you’ve got his heart in that little clutch of yours. Like you’ve stolen it. Like he’ll never get it back.
Taehyung
Taehyung’s face falls as your new boyfriend tightens his arm around your waist, tugging you into his chest for a cute couple’s picture. Your smile looks so radiant and overjoyed. He can’t remember when you ever looked at him like that. Maybe you never did. Taehyung tried so hard, day in and day out, to be good enough for you, but he never was. You still decided to leave him just before he went on tour. He was devastated. None of the group look fondly on you after you left him in such a sorry state,
“Come on, we’re moving on now,” Jin whispers in his ear, trying to be subtle as he moves Tae along. The eldest of the group doesn’t want to be harsh, but if Taehyung doesn’t get his expression under control then they’re going to have front page news on their hands. And not for the right reasons, “Hey, isn’t that Seojoon over there? I haven’t seen him since you went on your Hwarang promotions with him!” Jin exclaims a little louder, trying to draw away the attention of reporters on Taehyung and Taehyung’s attention on you. It seems to work, even if Taehyung’s enthusiasm is a little lack-luster,
“Woah! Hyung, you’ve gotten taller,” Taehyung marvels, bounding straight past where you’re stood to hug his actor friend, “Thank you for the food truck you sent me last month, me and my members really enjoyed it,” He continues, beaming up at Seojoon, trying his best to fulfil his happy-go-lucky image. All he can do is pray it works as Seojoon does his best to pick up the slack for his hurting friend.
Jungkook
“I’m going over,” Jungkook huffs, and before anyone can grab him, he’s broken off from the group and elegantly stalked over to where you and your new boyfriend are stood, recounting for the hundredth time how the two of you met – well, his version of it anyway. Your boyfriend’s management had been eager to leave out the part where you met through your ex, Jungkook. But the singer has no intention of letting that fact remain buried, “I think you two have missed a detail in there,” Jungkook interrupts casually, giving the camera his most innocent smile. He gives off the aura of an old friend, a hint of a laugh in his tone,
“Jungkook?” You gasp, not quite as well-practiced in acting unbothered by things. Your shock (and horror) is evident on your face for a split second, long enough for everyone to notice, before you’re able to rearrange your features into something more pleasant, “What were we missing? I’d hate to not be giving the full story,” Your smile is strained, but only Jungkook and your boyfriend really notice that tiny detail,
“I feel the same. The fans need to know the full story, how else are they supposed to love you like you love each other?” He lies tactfully, “I believe the part where you actually met because I was mentoring your lovely young man at the time. Did that part slip your mind? It was a little after he debuted, he reached out for some tips on how to be on the camera. We worked closely, and clearly you did too,” Jungkook amends, looking directly into your eyes as he sees you panic. Good. Jungkook bids his goodbye as naturally as he gave his hello, and sweeps off back to his group. He hopes it hurts. You cheated on him; you deserve it.
#bts#bts angst#bts reactions#bts jungkook#bts taehyung#bts v#bts jimin#bts hoseok#bts jhope#bts jin#bts seokjin#bts yoongi#bts suga#bts namjoon#bts rm
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What would u do if u could change anything about anything in the series?
I’m gonna assume you’re talking about Hero’s Of Olympus, since I want to talk about it. Let’s start with the relationship each of the 7 had with one another/character dynamics.
Percy. We know who he is, we’ve met him before, we’ve lived through his adventure with him. He’s a shithead, we love this about him, but he’s also kind and loving. Percy would’ve made an effort to get along with everyone, to be friends and goof off to help everyone feel better. Which is why all of this shit Rick created with Jason being his Roman counter part and them being rivals, the two “macho men fighting for power to lead the pack” makes NO goddamn sense. And quite frankly smells HEAVY of toxic masculinity the entire series could’ve gone without. They would’ve been friends. Maybe not the best of friends because Jason has Leo but they would’ve been those two dumb jock friends and that narrative bettween them would’ve made the story so much more fun and interesting than pitting them against eachother.
Annabeth. The trope Rick created with Annabeth being a know it all, smartest person in the group is a disservice to her character and makes her shallow. She’s the daughter of a goddess of wisdom, wisdom recognizes intelligence when it sees it, and the fact that all Annabeth thought about Leo during the entire book was that he was annoying is VERY dumb. They could’ve had a really good friendship, two nerds playing off of one another’s intellect to create things that could benefit everyone on their journey. Or even Leo just convincing her to help him make stupid shit like a toaster that can toast eight pieces of bread at once. I would change how rigid Annabeth is, loosen her up just a little bit and make her friendship with Leo the type of thing where they constantly feed off of one another.
Piper. Her entire character arc revolved around being beautiful, being Native American, and Jason. Firstly, we’d have to throw away all the stereotypes and general horrible things that Mr. Rick Ross (read: Rick) did to her character. Like the whole feathers in her hair thing. There are better way to incorporate Piper being Native American, there were so many missed opportunities to intertwine Greek mythology and Native American beliefs. Secondly, in order to get rid of the. Frankly, shit, way Piper dealt with beauty is to first address the way the Aphrodite cabin as been treated through the entirety of the PJO universe. Instead of writing Aphrodite children like frilly little things that can’t stand to get their hands dirty and Piper being “not like other girls uwu”, I would’ve written them as deceptivly beautiful. Deceptive in the fact that no one expects them to be strong, cruel, to be able to hold their own. Knights you mistake for damsels in distress, and before you realize you’re wrong they’ve already defeated you. You can be strong and feminine, and femininity isn’t the only way to be beautiful, so I would’ve explored that too. And Pipers arc on beauty would’ve been different in the sense that she realizes she doesn’t have to like pink and glitter in order to be beautiful, and that even if she did like those things, that’s okay. Let girls be feminine without demonizing them for it.
Hazel. God Hazel was done so dirty. First, she’s thirteen, so no Frazle shit, jot that one down. Her and Frank being really good friends would’ve been so much better and allowed her to grow as a person without throwing her into some serious romantic relationship so young with someone so much older. I would’ve written Hazel as very cautious, specifically around her white friends. She comes from the 40’s of course she wouldn’t be buddy buddy with them immediately, and I think that would be a valid concept for the books to explore. And besides, her realizing later on that things really are different and times really have changed would be such a heartwarming thing to experience. Her breaking out of her shell and leaving that shit behind her to be unapologetically her. Actually exploring the racism and prejudice in the world instead of ignoring it and erasing the experiences of black people and black youth in this world is problematic and we won’t be doing that here smh. I wouldn’t make it the core of her character because that’s wack but it also wouldn’t be something that’s just never talked about. That being said, I would’ve made her relationship with Leo SO GREAT. They could’ve been dumbasses together running around the ship playing stupid games like hide and seek. Once again, instead of that romance shit, I would’ve built their friendship. Let the girl have fun, she’s 13 for gods sake.
Jason. The essence of his character was to be Percy Jackson’s Roman counterpart, which IS WACK. It made him VERY boring and one sided, so away with that! The Jason I had hopes for and wanted to see was, in simple words, a blond Himbo Jock!!! He loves his found family (Piper, Leo, and later the rest of the seven) and he PROTECT!! He and Percy would get in mock fights and wrestle sometimes because Percy says something very stupid and Jason simultaneously wants to laugh and shake him and he and Leo have the type of friendship where even the last few barriers come down and they are unapologetically themselves with one another. Jason learning that he doesn’t have to be a grown up and that he doesn’t have to have such a rigid sense of responsibility and that it’s okay to have fun sometimes, things Leo and Percy teach him. He grows into himself and realizes that he’s not JUST a son of Jupiter, and he doesn’t have to be a leader all the time. It’s okay to let go of the reins, and be stupid.
Frank. Rick made him... so forgettable. Firstly, the fatphobic blessing of Mars shit. We can hit next on that shit: the blessing of Mars but Frank goes from chubby to chubby with muscle because believe it or not a lot of fat people have muscles!! The arch with him wanting to be a child of Apollo is VERY interesting and something that should’ve been played up more within his arc until he realized he didn’t have to prove to anyone how manly he is, that you don’t HAVE to be aggressive and manly to be a child of Mars. Once again: Rick was on some toxic masculinity shit. Frank being okay with being a big teddy bear is enough for me. Also fuck the burning stick of life things stop putting a time limit on teenagers lives that’s bullshit. His relationship his Hazel was rushed and shallow, and quite frankly (ha) they should’ve just been friends.
Last but not least: Leo. Leo’s relationships with EVERYONE could’ve been better. He was treated as the comic relief, an annoyance, someone everyone could barely stand to be around, and instead of bettering his relationships with everyone Rick thought killing him off and then bringing him back with a love interest was the best thing to do. He was the treated as an emotional whipping board and then gave his life to save everyone on some sacrificial lamb shit which is a fucking cop out. In my head, Leo would’ve remained single, he would’ve felt like an outcast in the beginning, yes, but his friends would have actually noticed and reminded him that they value him as a person. I would’ve also built Leo’s arc so that he realizes the only validation he needs from anyone is himself, and that he wasn’t responsible for his mother’s death. I would’ve also written him realizing he has a support system amongst his friends, and he doesn’t need to overexert himself trying to fit because he’s already one of them. Leo has an inferiority complex and that was the core of him sacrificing himself, he felt like, if anyone, it would be him. He felt that he wasn’t as important as any of the other 7. He wouldn’t have died so other people could live, his life would’ve mattered to everyone including himself.
#wow this was long sorry#lmao Iiiii think i forgot to answer your question oops#i shouldve just answered simply: i would change the dynamics the characters have together#heros of olympus#percy jackson#annabeth chase#piper mclean#jason grace#frank zhang#hazel levesque#leo valdez#long post
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Lin-Manuel Miranda: I’ve been writing in lockdown
In his head, Lin-Manuel Miranda has an alternative timeline of what he would be doing right now. The 40-year-old would have recently finished filming his directorial debut, for one, the Netflix adaption of the Broadway musical Tick, Tick... Boom!, which survived just ten days of shooting before everything shut down. Right now, he says, he should be in the edit.
Instead, he’s on a Zoom call, talking to GQ from his home about a filmed version of Hamilton, which wasn’t due out for another year, and he’s apologising for the fact that it doesn’t say “Lin-Manuel Miranda” on his screen, but “Lin-Sebastian’s dad”, as it “defaults to the time I did a parent-teacher conference”.
...
So, Hamilton is coming to Disney+, which is incredibly exciting – and a year earlier than planned. Talk me through how that decision was made.
We realised pretty early, even when the show was off Broadway, this is going to be a tough ticket. And we sort of realised there’s value in capturing what it feels like in the theatre with this company. And the three days we shot this film was the week before the principals started to leave. We all left the following Friday. So it’s the best rehearsed cast maybe in the history of movies – we were performing and what we’d spent a year doing. When lockdown happened we had around 75 per cent of it – enough of an original, a rough cut, to be able to sell it to Disney and partner with Disney. We didn’t have a final edit. We didn't have a sound mix, which in a musical is pretty important. But once it became clear there was not going to be any theatre for the foreseeable future, we all kind of pivoted and said, “Oh, this is actually an opportunity to remind people of the power of theatre when there is none.” And so we got to editing and then it just became like racing. We turned in the final cut, like, two weeks ago.
How do you feel generally about the future for Broadway? Are you optimistic that it’s going to bounce back?
I’m optimistic. I’m not optimistic about any kind of timeline. Like I don’t know what theatre looks like on the other side of this, particularly in the absence of a vaccine. One of the books I've been reading during this lockdown is Will In The World, the biography of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. And I read it because I wanted to know what did Shakespeare do when the plague shut down the houses? Because there was that sort of meme going around, you know, “He wrote King Lear, what the fuck are you doing?” It’s not entirely accurate. He did write some sonnets. Those are pretty good. But it's, you know, that uncertainty. When we make our calling where people gather, it’s a real one. And what I'm encouraged by is honestly the fact that given that there are no shows right now, it’s actually a time to tackle some of the more systemic issues with our theatre we need to talk about. How to get an audience for Hamilton that is as diverse as the cast on stage. We're in talks, just for ourselves in this moment – at a time where we're talking about systemic racism in the United States – on how to make backstage look more like on-stage; how to address some of the inequities when it comes to black folks and people of colour in the theatre industry. It’s still so predominantly white backstage and at the top, so I think we're seeing people getting their houses in order because there's time to do it and no one has the excuse that we're very busy programming our season. So I can only speak for the Hamilton company, but we are hoping that when we come back, we come back into a world where we're addressing some of these issues and we're having the tough conversations.
...
Yourself and Hamilton are natural kind of bedfellows with the Black Lives Matter movement. But you did take a bit of criticism for not maybe speaking out early enough? Was that just an oversight?
Yeah, absolutely. And I called it a moral failure. And I stand by that, you know. I had been tweeting about Black Lives Matter since 2015. I remember us rehearsing “My Shot” for the first time when we heard the there was an acquittal for the police officers who murdered Eric Garner and how heavy that felt in the room and how we cried in the room. But for some reason, the moral blind spot is not bringing Hamilton and its social channels as a brand in alliance with that earlier. And so, you know, I think we're making up for lost time in that regard. And you're right, there are natural bedfellows. We are a company made up of black and brown actors who reckon with the origins of our country every night on stage.
...
Something that always stays in my head is when you hosted SNL just before the 2016 presidential election and you sang at a picture of Trump in the corridor “Never gonna be president”, which was so funny at the time but is hard to watch now. How do you look back on that?
The night before we'd heard the Access Hollywood tapes. I don't think we've ever heard such vulgarity from a presidential candidate full stop. The fact that that was not career ending, I don't know what that says. But whatever it says ain't good. But, you know, it is unprecedented that a moment like that happened. And still millions of people said, “This is our guy.”
How are you feeling about the upcoming election?
I am feeling… I don't know. I'm feeling uncertain, as everyone else is. I think people are certainly energised. I think there is a lot of… I think a lot of what you're seeing in the streets and in the world is the country really loudly saying, “This guy does not speak for us” and “The integrity of our voting system is more important than ever.” And that's a big concern of mine. But I have no doubts that the majority of this country does not believe that this president speaks for them. It's just a matter of that being reflected in the voting booth or in the mail and voting situation that we will probably find ourselves in. We've seen there's no bottom. There's no bottom to the guy's actions. I feel positive that more people are speaking out. I feel positive seeing that the overwhelming majority of these protests have been powerful and peaceful and, like, with masks and people handing out sanitisers… I've seen the peaceful protests myself in my own neighbourhood. And none of that changes unless we actually dismantle the systems that set them up. You know, it has to be followed – the lip service has to be followed up by meaningful change. I'm encouraged when I see that Minneapolis is looking to reallocate those police funds to the community. I'm encouraged when I see action. It’s very easy to tweet, but much harder to dismantle these inequities.
...
I guess everyone would want to know if you’re working on another stage show. Any ideas in the locker for that?
Yeah, but I can't tell you. I mean, it's weird, because I kind of messed it up because Hamilton had such a public birth, right? Like, I didn't know the Obamas would call and say, “Do you have anything about America and can you perform it at this podium?” But I did. And so that that was the most public writing I've ever done, because I kind of showed everyone the ultrasound in 2009 and then I didn't finish it until 2015. So I can't write that way again, because the scrutiny on me is so much greater now. And, you know, the best idea to kill an impulse is to talk about it. But, yes, I'm writing some new things that I think would work nicely in the theatre and I have some time to do it.
OK, so without asking you to give the game away, can I ask how far you are through the writing process for it?
I'm writing the first three or four songs, which I'll rewrite once I find out what it's really about. You know, because you start thinking you know what it's about and then if you get lucky in a place, it starts to tell you what it's about. And you go, “Oh, shit, I thought I was writing it for this reason, but I'm really writing it for this reason.” So I'm writing the initial impulse songs right now and it'll tell me how much I did.
#lin manuel miranda#GQ#representation#hamilton#politics and advocacy#hamilfilm#unnamed new theatrical project#unnamed disney project#interviews
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