Me and you riding scapegoat tokens

I had to Google these X3

I still have complicated feelings about trying to address antisemitism currently.

On the one hand, we aren't the main characters of Palestinian liberation, I can't center us, so I heavily limit how much I talk about it even though I see so much antisemitism.

On the other hand, I don't think it's fair to expect us not to address the hatred against us. I'm watching my friends deal with the fear and the hurt now, and it's all mixed up with other elements of this. Are we meant to watch the harm being done all over the world, violent ideas leading to violent actions, and, what, staying quiet hoping we can clean up after?

From the inside, I'm treated as a traitor. From the outside... someone said "as a Jew I'm either your scapegoat or your token, there's no in-between" and it resonates.

Can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this before but I have big big feelings about women and mothers within the Legendborn cycle.

Every woman that The Order touches is hit by some sort of tragedy. It’s part of the point. They’re not Supposed to be there, let alone in power.

“Nick’s mother, Sel’s, mine. How many mothers has the Order taken?”

Even Cestra as a Regent is outnumbered as one out of three. If you count the Seneschals it’s one out of 6. She is the token woman in a historically male power system. So historically male that any woman that rose to power in the earlier ages was killed.

The Order of the Rose exists to let women still pretend they have a hand in anything. But even then, they’re there to support chapter events rather than actually have a piece of anything worth something.

All of the trio’s mothers interfered, and they all paid for it. You can say this is just what The Order does to people who threaten their system, but even if you look at Martin - I genuinely think some action would have been taken against him for letting someone take his child without him noticing, if he were the mother.

I seriously doubt the council of regents actually believed Natasia opened the gates. She was absolutely just an easy scapegoat to cover up the actions of the scion of Arthur as a woman and a Merlin. Can’t even get into the way that The Order treats Merlins right now.

This is really long but. I hope the women of the Legendborn series all have some part in tearing shit down. They deserve it

As satisfying as it would be to have Sonic movie 3 stay faithful to SA2 regarding the death of Maria, I genuinely don't see paramount having the guts to write her being killed by government agents. Even by agents from a fictional military like G.U.N.

If they do touch it on anything more solid than just vaguely implying it happened, you just know the SA2 comparisons will be hyped up as much as possible until the last second, then instead you get to watch a "new but still just as cool!" take on the event where actually, a token scapegoat villian was responsible for her death! All the G.U.N. agents will get to stay part of the goofy comedic relief cast to fullfill the studio's "misguided :( but still likable" military propaganda quota.

Or, have Maria survive and play it as an amazing new "fix" to a plot point that doesn't need fixed. (Recent news about the new ATLA series Sokka comes to mind, where an embarassing effort to play it safe causes them to miss the point of his arc. Entirely.) Maria surviving is a fun concept to play with, but also a nuance-deserving change I would absolutely NOT trust in the hands of paramount.

I'm staying excited, but trying to keep my expectations in check. I honestly hope to be proven wrong.

Every marginalized group can be tokenized. Thinking a group you fall into is somehow so anathemic that it can't be tokenized is literally just setting yourself up for tokenization. It's like people who think they could never be recruited by a cult.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to tokenize Jews or trans men, you're misinterpreting what I meant by that statement. What I do mean is that the internet has certain marginalized groups that are tokenized more than others, and when the interests of one of those groups and another marginalized are or appear to be in conflict, the one that is less tokenized is used as a scapegoat.

Example: lesbians are a highly tokenized marginalized group in internet discourse. When trans men's interests (being included in queer spaces and given a voice) appear to be in conflict with lesbians' interests (seen often in discourse as being the most oppressed and having nothing to do with m*n, even though most lesbians do not actually want that), the internet jumps to accusing trans men of being oppressors.

This is what I mean when I say that in this context trans men can't be tokenized. Individual trans men often are tokenized by the neo-radfems I encounter but neo-radfems usually avoid tokenizing trans men as a class because part of their logic involves twisting around genuine class analysis to put trans men at odds with lesbians (who have historically been some of our greatest allies).

This is also true with Jews. Right now, the internet is tokenizing Palestinians as a class (and this does not benefit Palestinians, despite what the one or two popular Palestinian accounts they've gotten on board might say), and since people in Tumblr discourse tend to see issues as black-and-white, the interests of Jews and Palestinians appear to be at odds with one another. As the internet is already primed to hate Jews, this tokenization fuels further antisemitism because Jews are being used as a scapegoat for all racism.

This kind of us-vs-them rhetoric and Tumblr picking and choosing which marginalized groups are more important than others is very unproductive and we should stop doing this. No marginalized group's struggles are so bad that it's worth putting down other groups who are also fighting for their rights. As people marginalized under the late-stage-capitalist, colonialist, cisheteropatriarchal framework, our interests inherently lie in the same place: liberation. Attempts to further divide us and break our solidarity are a psyop.

I made some scapegoat tokens for my Yugioh deck! I like the red one best :)

speaking as a black woman in the process of converting here:

kanye west and all these “black israelite” types really fucking annoy me because?? the way antisemitism and antiblackness blend together is so fucking uncanny, these things are genuinely almost identical, that this is how you know these people have fucking worms for brains

it’s like? we’re literally both groups that have been getting oppressed and genocided since day 1 for just existing

and historically the solidarity between us has been unbreakable

and some dumbass with a little bit of melanin calls himself enlightened because he found the 14 words

Yep....

And "X Israelism" isn't a new or unique ideology. There's British Israelism. Mormonism. Messianic "Judaism". The list goes on.

What makes Black Hebrew Israelite ideology even worse and upsetting is that it's not white people who think they're special. It's marginalized people misdirecting their anger at an easy scapegoat: Jews.

Jews have always been an easy scapegoat, all throughout history. Whether it's the plague, wars, capitalism, socialism, communism, you name it- it's easy to blame the Jews.

Because it's easier to blame a group of people who've been the natural scapegoat throughout history than it is to acknowledge and fight systematic white supremacy.

And if you decide that actual Jews aren't "real" Jews, and you instead are the "real Jews", well, then, you don't even have to feel guilty about being antisemitic. ('You' as in a BHI person, not you, anon)

And the way BHI and other similar groups fall so easily in with literal Nazis......if they didn't cause real world harm to my people I'd feel bad for them. Because at the end of the day if the white supremacists BHIs align themselves with G-d forbid achieve their goal of enacting genocide against the Jews, those white supremacists will immediately turn on the BHIs next.

Many marginalized groups have this issue, of people "selling out" and tokenizing themselves in order to appease the white supremacist, patriarchal dominant class. It's horrible.

Antiblackness and antisemitism are the pillars of white supremacy. White supremacists thrive when we don't unite against them.

I've been thinking about Edelgard's vulnerability is depicted.

The game initially depicts her as a cute girl who reveals vulnerabilities to the player. However, she is also a manipulative character and those vulnerabilities are supposed to make her moe. It's supposed to make the player want to protect her when she's revealed to be the villain, and if the player does so they end up leading Fodlan to tyranny while the ensuing route spells out how she's playing everyone. And, on top of that, the more players get to know her the more they see this hidden nature to her.

But by the same token, when the game wants the player to sympathize with her it makes her vulnerable. Said vulnerability is also, in part, because Rhea has been treated badly for the last five years due to protecting Byleth. At the same time, when she opens up while vulnerable what she reveals is supposed to be the truth according to the devs. Meanwhile, there's a lot of scenes that poke holes in the narrative gives: she knows it's the Agarthans who killed her siblings with Thales himself telling her what their goal was, she also supposedly knows her father was their puppet but will continue to spread the version of history he gave her even after the game revealed that fact, we also have Aegir being a scapegoat for Thales with there being no evidence he was involved with the experiments, she's ignoring how much influence the Agarthans had on the Imperial nobility while at the same time also ignoring how little the Church had.

There seems to be a difference here. That when Rhea opens up to Byleth, she's being truthful whereas when Edelgard does it, she's doing it with the ulterior motive of swaying Byleth to her side. It's that difference that makes what Edelgard does different from the rest of the cast, what makes it unacceptable.

And this makes my mind go to the idol industry, and how they sell people on the illusion of the girls. Japanese idols aren't at the same level of performance as Korean idols, and they use that unrefined image as part of the appeal. That they are just like your typical, normal girl and sell people on the dream of interacting with them through stuff like hand-holding events. But it's not a real relationship, as the girls are adopting a more cutesy persona and at the end of the day it's all about making money off their fans. And this is just an accepted part of living in Japan.

It feels like there's something there to me. That this game tells us in VW to get to know others by spending time with them (and clearing up misconceptions and assumptions by doing so), to form relationships in this manner. But at the same time, it also wants us to see people for who they really are and, owing to the Buddhist symbolism, not letting our attachment to them cloud our judgement when they do bad things. And at the same time, the game is also saying that this trust you put into other people can be abused and exploited by them for their own gain. And Houses is full of parasocial relationships for the player to form, but at times we need to know that sometimes, no matter how painful it may be, we need to put aside relationships in order to do the right thing otherwise you end up promoting a moral that negatively impacts society.

I guess you can say the ultimate moral with Edelgard is that you shouldn't take people solely at face value because the image they put out might not match who they really are inside. It's just the persona they project to the world, but by getting to know people you make them open up. They reveal their vulnerabilities, and at the same time it's good to help people with their problems. We all have to support each other. But at the same time, people may reveal themselves to be toxic individuals who use their personas to assert dominance over others and when that happens it's better to distance yourself from them. Not hate them, but to just take a step back and see them for who they really are.

Treat people like people, not cardboard cut-outs. Sometimes they need your support, other times they need a hard lesson and for you to call them out on their bullshit.

But this kinda message is always going to be undermined by the dating sim aspects of Houses, as well as IS milking the parasocial relationships people form with characters in this franchise. And these characters, themselves, aren't real people. They can only show us what the staff decides to show us.

Round 4!

If you recognize the movies hiding behind the decoy titles, please do not give identifying details about them in the notes.

Movie n°1: Eagles and Fishtanks

A group of employees finds themselves jobless after their boss retires and dissolves the company.The boss recommends them to another reputable workplace and they all transfer there.Upon arrival,they are greeted by their new employer who introduces them to their new job requirements and such.Other senior employees of the place are also there,and tell them they're like a family here.The protagonists see nothing wrong with this,since that genuinely what they had at the previous company.After starting their new jobs,they discover that the job environment is much more hazardous than what they agreed to.Upon confronting the employer about it,he says if they want better working conditions they''ll have to climb their way up the corporate ladder.The protagonists do not agree to this,and are put in jail(their boss is also the head of police). To get out of jail,the token hot girl of the group seduces,restrains and psychologically tortures the enemy to get information and special benefits.She eventually frees the others and they leave the company,but not before leaving their boss to a fate worse than death.

Movie n°2: Adfree Suscription

An adopted child has been told his whole life he was not good enough but the only reason is that he was adopted. His brother is the golden child, he's the scapegoat child, despite him being much better-behaved than his brother (probably as a result of neglect tbh). And so at some point the brother tries to do something stupid and the adopted child saves him by anonymously telling on him to authorities, but then he just realizes anonymity gives him a lot of power over his bullies, including his own abusive family, and he spirals into auto-destruction while his brother, forced to spend time away in a small town to let people the time to forget about him, actually falls in love and amends himself

if you think i perhaps post a bit too much about this whole ‘drizzt kind of gets an unfortunate reputation it doesn’t deserve’ thing that’s entirely fair 

but i am still mad about expecting trashy 80s fantasy series #49372905 and getting a fantasy series that caters to me in surprisingly thoughtful ways and the only reason i didnt fucking pick it up before was because drizzt was a laughingstock and meme’d to death as a character at BEST in the wider circles i frequented and was blamed for the gameline’s worst excesses and liberties for drow being a Token Evil Race at worst so you’ll have to excuse me for being bitter that these novels do a lot of interesting, nuanced things and then get used as a scapegoat and lightning rod for other writers’ shitty-ass takes on drow lore

(Kannagi AU: Part 1)

Aoi had considered taking her own life many times, particularly resentful towards the village, sure her death should be something she decide, not a safety token for people that always treat her as if she was another species.

Teru beat Akane until he is unconscious cause the boy doesn’t know how to give up. He would be fine with letting Akane sleep in the bloody grass, sure kindness won’t give him a wake up call to their situation, but Aoi looked so worried when she asked to take care of him, not let him die, that Teru let her clean his injuries and personally carried him somewhere more comfortable to lie down, making sure Aoi is within his sight when he does so. Teru pretend is all for her, but he grows to care about Akane too, trapping him when Akane comes back ready to begin a fight he is in no condition to start, and letting the unconscious boy sleep in his bed while he takes Aoi out on flower field walks. 

Aoi told Teru he is one of the kindest persons she have met after he helped her take care of a sick Akane. Teru told her he feel the same about her, and both felt a strange mix of disagreement with the other judgment, appreciation, and even a bit of joy.

Akane was conflicted if he should help a village willing to kill Aoi, but despite making his dislike clear all the time he could tell people wanted to guarantee the safety of their loved ones, which he could empathize with, even if he despise their approach to use her friend as a scapegoat. Anyone that dared to say something bad about Aoi or imply she should die already would be beaten with no mercy even if Akane get punished for his violence after.

Akane used wooden sticks as a weapon at first, too young and weak to be trusted with a sword, but he slowly grew into the best non exorcist fighter in the village. Lack of spiritual energy make it so he can’t destroy monster's souls, but he can make them feel pain, buying enough time for the exorcists to do their job, which saved more than a few people.

Teru gave him the same protective bracelet he had given Aoi when he got hurt by a monster, greatly confusing Akane, who has no idea how to feel about the demon that stand in the way of Aoi rescue yet makes sure she is happy, looking after her better than anyone in this village and randomly helping Akane too.

Aoi still winces when she hears Teru land a hard blow on Akane, or when Akane manages to hurt Teru, hating how they both can smile kindly at her despite their lives being ruined by her, but she grows to feel some twisted sort of appreciation when she takes care of their wounds. Teru notices this, and she explains that it is the only thing outside her plants that make her feel like she has some worth alive too, that prove she is capable of good of her own. (Even if deep down she can't fool herself and know they are hurt in the first place because of her, that she just likes the feeling of being trusted with their very lives.)

Aoi asked Teru if he would like to escape with her and Akane, and while Teru had smiled at the tought, he had said no, spending the rest of the night talking about his dear family, which he haven’t been allowed to visit since his duties with Aoi.

A week before her death day Akane grows visibly more desperate and Aoi talk with Teru, making him promise to take care of Akane when she is gone, “He will be sad, but make sure he isn’t alone. Keep him company, as you’ve done to me” which Teru agree.

One of the main reasons she doesn’t want to die is beacuse they’ll be sad, and the other is that they might move on. (She felt awful for hating the idea of them being happier without her, aware once Akane and Teru move on from her she will have nothing, but she keep these feelings to herself.)

On his quest to find a powerful supernatural, Akane nearly dies a few times, spending far too much time with nothing to give him hope. When he desperately wish he had more time, he is found by an old man that reek of supernatural energy. The old man offers him a heavy wood clock that he claims can stop time: For every minute Akane stop time, the old man will steal one year of his lifespan. If the clock breaks, Akane will die.

Akane accepts the old man clock and hurries to the village as fast as he can while carrying the weight of his life in his hands, he reaches Aoi’s house at night, a few hours before her sacrifice. He isn’t surprised to see Teru and Aoi awake past midnight, but he doesn’t expect Teru to rush toward him with rage when he notices the cursed clock.

He stops Teru’s time before he can do anything, already very familiar with all his tricks and strategies after fighting Teru for most of his life. Akane uses 15 years of his lifespan, unaware the exorcist has resistance to any supernatural power and will not stay frozen in time for 15 minutes.

Aoi is horrified by the turn of event, she had yelled for him to let go and had to be dragged out, even if she didn’t resist nearly as hard as she could, part of her still wanting to run away with him. Far far away from this dreadful life (even if she wanted Teru to came too)

Teru only stays frozen in time for six minutes, but he is panicked to not see either Aoi when he is able to move again, expecting Akane to pull something crazy after abruptly stoping his rescue attempts so close to Aoi’s death day, but not that he would sell his soul for power.

Lesbophobes won't shut up about the apparent massive plague of political lesbianism (which, to be clear, I'm not found of, but it's also nowhere near as big as you all pretend it is lol) and its connection to TERFism, but will simultaneously refuse to acknowledge that a big portion of "lesbian" TERFs are just straight and bi women LARPing as lesbians through total celibacy or celibacy regarding AMAB people respectively (because then you couldn't paint TERFs as an exclusively lesbian issue ☹️).

I'm sure you people's brains would explode if you were to be told that even outside of that, the majority of TERFs just don't even identify as lesbians at all, but as straight instead and another large portion of them identify as bi. Many of those openly straight and bi TERFs don't practice any form of celibacy at all, by the way. Plenty of those bitches are happily married to men. They just also tokenize the lesbians that do exist in TERF communities because they're politically useful to them, it's useful for them to pretend that they're fighting for the liberation of lesbians instead of admitting too openly that they're actually fighting for the extermination of trans people with a major emphasis on trans women.

I've also heard PLENTY of complaints by lesbian TERFs that straight and bi TERFs are, indeed, lesbophobic as fuck to them all the time and I'm not shocked at all because have you heard how TERFs talk about lesbianism and lesbian sex? LMAOOO. This is me laughing both at lesbophobes pretending to be anti-TERF and lesbian TERFs btw.

Why the fuck do any of you expect TERF communities and politics to not be ridiculously lesbophobic when they often refer to lesbian sex as a fucking contraceptive so women can still get off without having to get abortions/be on the pill, and to being with other women as something you do exclusively to piss off men/the patriarchy? Have you not seen the way TERFs police how wlw have sex even when it's two dyadic cis women not using any phallic toys? The sex can never be pure and sexless enough to them.

These are people who pretend to care about sex-based oppreshun but will celebrate gay male TERFs expressing good ol' Homeric misogynistic disgust at vulvas in detail. These bitches don't give a shit about anyone! They're just a hate group, but you're all so ready to use lesbians as a scapegoat/hate transfems so fucking much that you'll pretend lesbian self-interest exists only in TERFism. All of you are idiots.

I

In the Sado-Ritual we find, first, an obsession with purity. This obsession legitimates the fact that the women who are the primary victims of the original rites are erased physically as well as spiritually. These primary victims are often killed, as in the case of the rite of suttee. In other cases, such as Chinese footbinding, as we shall see later, they are physically and psychically maimed. This original erasure obviously keeps the primary victims from being witnesses. In the name of "purity," they are effectively silenced. Thus the widows' sexual purity is "safeguarded" by ritual murder. In preparation for this ultimate purification they are ceremoniously bathed, and care is taken to kill them at a "pure" time, that is, when they are not menstruating or pregnant. Thus "society" is purified of these "wicked" widows and also of all traces of female re-belliousness, for the women and girl-children who witness these events or hear of them must be perfectly brainwashed with terror of the same fate.

II

Second, there is total erasure of responsibility for the atrocities performed through such rituals. Those doing the destruction commonly have recourse to the idea that they are acting "under orders," or following tradition (serving a Higher Order). This allows the self as role-carrier to commit acts which the personal/private self would find frightening or evil.

III

Third, gynocidal ritual practices have an inherent tendency to "catch on" and spread, since they appeal to imaginations conditioned by the omnipresent ideology of male domination. Moreover, since the patriarchal imagination is hierarchical, there is a proliferation of atrocities from an elite to the upwardly aspiring lower echelons of society.

IV

Fourth, women are used as scapegoats and token torturers (for example, by the "setting up" of mothers-in-law as to blame for the widows' doom). This masks the male-centeredness of the ritualized atrocity and turns women against each other.

V

Fifth, we find compulsive orderliness, obsessive repetitiveness, and fixation upon minute details, which divert attention from the horror. In short, attention is focused upon what is proper and ceremonial, rather than upon the woman's horrible suffering and death.

VI

Sixth, behavior which at other times and places is unacceptable becomes acceptable and even normative as a consequence of conditioning through the ritual atrocity. Such value judgments are easily interchangeable in the swinging-pendulum society characterized by consciousness split into false opposites. Thus it is not surprising that the practice is desired and sometimes continued even after it has officially/legally been terminated, as in the recurring instances of "practical suttee."

VII

Seventh, there is legitimation of the ritual by the rituals of "objective" scholarship—despite appearances of disapproval. The basic cultural assumptions which make the atrocious ritual possible and plausible remain unquestioned, and the practice itself is misnamed and isolated from other parallel symptoms of the planetary patriarchal practice of female maiming and massacre. Jan Raymond has suggested that such scholarship could be called meta-ritual. The name is accurate, for this kind of writing not only "records" (erases) the original rituals but also provides "explanations" and legitimations for them, purporting to see beyond their materiality into their "soul" or meaning. This legitimation by the Rites of Re-search is an extension of the primordial gynocidal acts. The practitioners of these Last Rites re-enact the original rites by erasing their meaning and by effacing those Searchers who did weave their way through the mazes of re-search with integrity, dis-covering the forbidden fruit of their labors, that is, the facts.

-Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology

The thing I hate about every side of shipcourse is the constant use of disabled people as tokens.

For some they use schizospec people and those with paraphilia-OCD. For others they use paraphiliacs (Speaking in this case of disordered ones) and trauma survivors. It's all very belitting to someone who is disabled and it is really a display of their comfort ableism when they go "You're just (opposite side)" when you say you don't like being tokenized or used as a scapegoat for their views.

Both sides have unironically spouted ideas that will get people like me killed (Using the "censorship" (These people have a very loose definition of censorship, like alt-right people do) argument to claim that censorship of media that fetishizes topics like rape, child predation, incest, and beastiality will always lead to censorship of queer identities. On the flip side, that there should be no representation or commentary on these topics through media unless through specific views.) if shipcourse was taken more seriously offline. I'm only marginally more acceptable to the "kill all pedos" crowd due to being a hybristophiliac and disordered incestophile from child abuse and trauma and I am aware of this. There's people that already do think all paraphiles should die and it is an alarmingly common idea despite being so fascist in nature.

Stop fucking tokenizing disabled people. We are not your gotcha in an argument or your "I know a paraphile and they agree with me so any others are evil and wrong" argument. Doing this can actually get people killed. Disabled people are not your discourse pawns and if you think it is acceptable to use us as such you need to go learn about how ableist you are being.

I’m gonna post my infodump here because I figured maybe someone would find it interesting. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the Cambrian Explosion YuGiOh card post, specifically the card that someone made about it. I decided to remake it, and I’ll tell you why.

Left: Original card. [ID: Cambrian Catastrophe / Summon up to 5 different ‘Cambrian’ type monsters in defense mode]

Right: My errata. [ID: Cambrian Catastrophe / Once per turn: Special summon up to 5 level 4 or below “Cambrian” monsters with different names from the Main Deck in face up defense position. Monsters special summoned by the effect of “Cambrian Catastrophe” cannot be used to XYZ summon.]

heres what i had to say: If this (the left orginal card) were a real card it would have to be structured and worded entirely differently because todays yugioh errata and just the game in general is so heavily focused on semantics that if they didnt errata this card it most certainly would be banned instantly.

to start, the first thing i noticed is that it just says summon. if it were to be a legit card you would HAVE to say “special summon,” otherwise it would be up to the player’s interpretation what kind of way each monster was summoned. lets say in this fake archtype theres an incredibly op Cambrian that could be flip summoned, and lets say that when this monster is flip summoned it destroys all monsters on the field and inflicts 500 lp of damage for every monster destroyed in a “just deserts” style effect. because the card didn’t specify on what kind of summon was or can be used when the spell is activated, that means the player of this card can easily say that they flip summoned that op Cambrian flip effect monster; but the more likely possibility is that the player can say all 5 monsters were normal summoned, and since a lot of effect cards in specific archtypes work on when cards are normal summoned, immediately thatd be activating 5 effects. so yeah, the first thing that would need to change is definitely that this card needs to specify that each cambrian monster is being special summoned.

the other reason this card would need instant nerfing is because, again, due to the lack of specifics, the card simply saying “summon” and not elaborating what kind of summon or where youd be summoning from, the player would be able to summon from wherever they want (graveyard, banished cards, hand, extra deck, etc.) and however they want. in the absolute worst case scenario, they could summon 5 cambrian monsters from the extra deck, which is a huge problem. the player would be able to summon 5 fucking syncro xyz fusion link etc whatever monsters of their choosing and i know this archtype is made up but as a rule of thumb most of the time extra deck monsters are the endgoal; having high attack and defense and incredible effects that can make or break a game, and which usually signal that the purpose of the deck is meeting its endgame— so five of them would just be disgusting.

as a quick intermission, i want to note that while i was discussing this, a friend of mine mentioned that the main problem with this card is that theres no consequence or payoff, and that a simple fix would be establishing that for each monster summoned, lp, or another monster would have to be tributed. while a good idea in theory, this, unfortunately, doesnt fix any of the problems with the cards. like ive said, the issue is always the semantics:

lets say we did go with the idea of tributing 1 monster from the field per card summoned with cambrian catastrophe as a means to give the card some consequence. if someone has tokens on the field that’s no consequence whatsoever ultimately. if cambrian catastrophe was errated to have the sacrifice 1 monster per card summoned that can easily be resolved using scapegoat, or even just kuriboh & multiply, and the same goes for lp; there are dozens upon dozens of cards that boost lp, and even more combos that grant thousands of lp at a time. in the end, there being no tribute isnt the problem.

so, to recap: if this card were to be erratad, the first things that would have to change would be it going from “summon” to “special summon,” because, like i said, if a cambrian monster has an effect that activates under certain summoning conditions then the player would be able to activate them all at once because the summoning condition is up to interpretation as the players so choose. the second thing that would have to change is where the monsters are being summoned from, and the most likely option is the main deck or hand, because extra deck/gy/banishment pile could prove to be a problem (unless we’re okay with this deck being insane meta.)

the next thing that would have to be specified is the level of the monsters summoned, because if this fake archctype has insane level 8-10 cards then girl now there are 5 of them on field. this card gave me the impression that its a card played for defense similar to how scapegoat is, so i imagine the monsters summoned would be level 4 and below because thats usually the like rule of thumb for when cards are mass summoned by 1 effect.

next up, this card only says that the monsters summoned by this effect are in defense position. it doesn’t specify face up or face down and henceforth that would be up to player interpretation as well, which would also be a problem if any of the cards summoned are flip monsters, or monsters that effects activate when theyre in a face down position, similar to “kiseitai.” so, again, depending on how we’re perceiving this fake archtype, we would also have to specify that theyre likely in face up defense position.

as a second intermission, and just because semantics do get crazy with the yugioh ocg: the card says 5 different cambrian monsters, and i know what they mean by different is varied monsters, but someone can easily interpret this as individual monsters— meaning they can summon 5 of the same 2 types of monster. (for anyone who doesnt get this particular bit, you can only have up to 3 of 1 non banned card in your deck, so yeah, 2 types of monster.) so i want to establish that what konami does when they mean ‘different as in varied’ rather than ‘different as in individual’ is that they say “monsters with different names.”

it was at this point i realized two things: 1) that depending on how we’re perceiving this fake archtype, we might want to specify if the cards summoned this way can be used as material for tribute summoning or summoning cards from the extra deck, because summoning 5 lv 4 monsters is also an easy way to just fuckin xyz an op freak onto the field, and 2) that this is a quick play card, meaning it can be activated from the hand during either player’s turn. this means my hunch about it being a defensive spell was totally right and an important footnote.

from that point on I ultimately decided that the best bet would be that monsters summoned by this effect cant be used to xyz summon, because if 5 level 4 monsters are summoned, unless your opponent has 5 attack position monsters, being able to xyz summon is guaranteed no matter how many monsters are destroyed— which is just too op— while synchro summoning is fair game if you can get the right levels on the field without them being killed due to this being a defensive quick effect

maybe the biggest and most important change though: there needs to be a hard once per turn on this card or else we’re all fucked. thats a hard being able to summon 15 monsters per turn otherwise and even though people with maxx c would have a blast it still wouldnt look too good for anyone in terms of what the player may plan on doing with the monster.

So yeah that’s about it! let me know what you guys think

What do you make of the fact that JGY and NMJ are parted from LXC and end up in a coffin together for at least 100 years? What was the point of it thematically/narratively?

ooh, what an intriguing question!

honestly.... I think it's that MXTX doesn't see 3zun as a unit as all that thematically important. LXC is our token Sad Nice Man Left With Unresolvable Questions, JGY gets devoured by his own works a la OG!WWX, and while both of those things touch on the novel's broader interests about how society makes scapegoats and cycles of destructive revenge, as well as MXTX's recurring interest in how other couples/types of love can't match her protagonists for both fanatical loyalty and luck, I don't think there's actually a cohesive thematic statement being made in the breaking up of the trio in this way

also, she'd gotten all the way to the end of the book and nobody had ended up stuck in a coffin together yet despite ample previous opportunities, so