Can we stop acting like everyone who doesn't immediately agree is committing a federal crime against media literacy?
Because apparently we've reached the point where saying "I don't personally consider that canon" gets you treated like you just kicked a puppy.
Here's the thing: People keep throwing around the word canon like it only has one universally accepted definition.
It doesn't.
Never has.
Fandom has been arguing about "Word of God" versus "Death of the Author" since fandoms exist.
Some people believe that if the creator says something outside the work, it's canon.
Some people believe the only canon is what's actually in the work itself.
Neither side invented this debate.
This is not a brand-new TADC-exclusive phenomenon.
It's literally one of the oldest fandom discussions on the internet
"But Gooseworx said—"
Yes.
I know.
Some people count creator statements as canon.
Some don't.
Congratulations 🎉 , you've discovered that fandom philosophy exists.
Now let's look at the actual show:
Where does anyone say Jax is trans?
Where does anyone mention transitioning?
Where does anyone reference another name?
Where does anyone use different pronouns?
Where does anyone say ANYTHING that explicitly tells the audience this?
...
Exactly.
So maybe, just maybe, the people who watched the show and concluded "Jax is a another gender than transfem" aren't actually delusional.
Maybe they just …watched the show.
Wild concept, I know.
"But the art!!"
Do you know how many artists post doodles?
Alternate universes?
Jokes?
"What if" scenarios?
Character redesigns?
Concept sketches?
Congratulations.
You have discovered artists 👍
When an artist posts an illustration, people asking "Is this canon?" is a completely normal question.
Not every drawing uploaded to social media is automatically in the show.
"But the VA said—"
Cool.
Voice actors are awesome.
Voice actors also aren't automatically the final authority on lore.
Sometimes they know everything.
Sometimes they know almost nothing.
Sometimes they joke.
Sometimes they accidentally spoil things.
Sometimes they misunderstand things.
It's perfectly reasonable for fans to ask where information comes from instead of treating every convention quote like it's carved into stone tablets by God.
"But it was supposed to be subtle!"
Okay...
Then why is everyone acting shocked that people didn't notice?
If your audience needs Bluesky posts, screenshots, Tumblr essays, reposted Discord messages, fourteen YouTube breakdowns, and a PowerPoint presentation to understand something...
...perhaps people missing it isn't the moral failure everyone keeps pretending it is.
The funniest part of this entire situation isn't even the discussion.
It's the absolute Olympic-level mental gymnastics some people are doing:
Person A:
"I personally don't see it as canon."
Fandom:
"So you hate trans people."
HUH???
How did we get from discussing fictional clowns to assigning strangers entire political identities because they have a different opinion about storytelling?
Do you know what's actually exhausting and maddening?
Watching people use "canon" like a gun.
Watching people tell artists to change fanart.
Watching people correct pronouns on fanworks that were made before any external statements.
Watching people dogpile someone because they said "I only follow what's in the show."
Watching people tell writers to change their fanfics
Watching people act like every disagreement is malicious.
You know what this fandom used to do?
Debate.
Now apparently every discussion has to end with someone getting called media illiterate, a bigot, or "problematic."
Can we maybe...not?
You think Trans Jax is canon?
Awesome.
You think creator statements count as canon?
Awesome.
You think only the episodes count?
Awesome.
You think the reveal should've been clearer?
Also awesome.
Those are all completely normal opinions to have about fiction.
The only opinion that isn't normal is deciding someone deserves harassment because they interpreted an intentionally subtle character differently than you did.
Touch some grass.
Drink some water.
Go draw your favorite rabbit
The internet will survive if some people says "I still read Jax as another gender."
Your definition of Canon is so narrow that by that standard Queenie isn't canonically Kinger's Wife nor are Gangle and Zooble a couple by series's end.
My little sister thinks that Jax could still plausibly be a man. I say to her: "SHE WAS LITERALLY SO HAPPY WHEN RIBBIT PUT THE BOW ON HER HEAD!!!!" And ykw this little shit says to me? She says, "He could've been blushing from Ribbit!"
I mean I read it as both, because Jax also seems to be a lesbian. But yeah being acknowledged as a girl for the only time in her life was the bigger factor.
Genuinely kind of hate the transfem Jax headcanon…
Ok so for the rest of this rant there’s ep 9 spoilers read at your own cost or however the saying goes
Fym ‘Jax is a transfem’. The flashback in the movie is of him and Pomni. WHO’S THE GIRL THERE. Pomni. ‘Isn’t she lovely’ (imo) SOUNDS MORE AIMED TO BE JAX REALIZING HE HAS A CRUSH ON POMNI OR SOMETHING. NOT THAT HES TRANS. If the lyrics are referring to a girl, and there’s a girl in the flashbacks, wouldn’t the pronouns be referring to the girl in the flashbacks…?
If I sound upset or smth mb gang im not that mad it just doesnt make sense to me
Also imo, back to that one post in the past I made, out of EVERYTHING, Jax seems like he’d be more transmasc than anything even though his backstory his mother refers to him as a man (I mean if Jax was transmasc at least his mother isn’t homophobic). Like uh… why would he try so hard at proving he’s masculine if he was really transfem? That just seems like a BIT of a mischaracterization…
But then again I think he’s just cis
Also I’m not telling you how to headcannon, you have fun, take that big ol lollipop and go frolic in those fields of headcannons, but I’m just saying…
Isn't She Lovely Isn't a romance song, it's a song written by Stevie Wonder for the birth of his daughter. The clip of the song used they keeps the line "Less than one minute old" which would be the time from Ribbit put ths bow on her head to Kaufmo knocking on the door.
It's a song about the wonder of birth recontextualized to be the requiem a girl that never really got to live at all.
Deltarune is a game about transgender dykes. You take away transgender dykes and the main cast is gone. All you have is Berdly. And even that's a maybe.
I imagine that they're mostly still wearing Asriel's hand me downs, and the implication from chapter 3 is that Kris is transfem nonbinary, so the presentation they have may not be thier choice.
I used to be a hero academia fan. When I was a teenager and stupid. I really really liked Uraraka. She was awesome. A working class girl with relatable motivations. And she was one of the main characters, so I was excited for her to get lots of development. And then it just kinda never happened. She lost her only major fight. And after that she just faded into the background. Any screentime she did get only seemed to be about how she was in love with the MC. I stopped watching when I realized the series just didn't give a shit about any of its female characters. I never really stopped being angry about it.
I used to be a hero academia fan. When I was a teenager and stupid. I really really liked Uraraka. She was awesome. A working class girl with relatable motivations. And she was one of the main characters, so I was excited for her to get lots of development. And then it just kinda never happened. She lost her only major fight. And after that she just faded into the background. Any screentime she did get only seemed to be about how she was in love with the MC. I stopped watching when I realized the series just didn't give a shit about any of its female characters. I never really stopped being angry about it.
it’s very special to me how colopale made mizuki trans and then they narratively paired her up with ena, a certified misandrist lesbian (to me). in a way i think the mere fact that ena loves mizuki so much and she feels so comfortable around her is in and of itself a dismissal of the misreading of mizuki as a just another “otokonoko”. ena’s clear disinterest in men (see sanrio comment) and antagonism towards them (she legit very very rarely interacts with a man who isn’t her father, and we all know what their relationship is like, or her brothers, whose head she chews off 24/7) are narratively poignant for both ena’s character (her art is put down by a man who believes her weak, she objectifies herself in an attempt to achieve agency etc.) but also her relationship with mizuki. tbh we can even imagine that ena’s dislike for / disinterest in men might have also had a role in mizuki’s fear of things changing if she came out. there’s some angst potential there. but the truth is mizuki is a woman and ena sees her as such and loves her the most so jot that down
it’s very special to me how colopale made mizuki trans and then they narratively paired her up with ena, a certified misandrist lesbian (to me). in a way i think the mere fact that ena loves mizuki so much and she feels so comfortable around her is in and of itself a dismissal of the misreading of mizuki as a just another “otokonoko”. ena’s clear disinterest in men (see sanrio comment) and antagonism towards them (she legit very very rarely interacts with a man who isn’t her father, and we all know what their relationship is like, or her brothers, whose head she chews off 24/7) are narratively poignant for both ena’s character (her art is put down by a man who believes her weak, she objectifies herself in an attempt to achieve agency etc.) but also her relationship with mizuki. tbh we can even imagine that ena’s dislike for / disinterest in men might have also had a role in mizuki’s fear of things changing if she came out. there’s some angst potential there. but the truth is mizuki is a woman and ena sees her as such and loves her the most so jot that down
Oh yeah. I have been fighting this fight for over a decade. I consider it up there with the likes of Evangelion and Utena but its reputation as the Dumb Fanservice Show will never leave. People see bare skin and their ability to consider whether the media has anything to say goes right out the window. Everything is about something, except nudity, which can never be about anything. It drives me up the wall
I like how the key turning point in Sastuki's arc is nearly handing the world to her mother on a silver platter because she convinced herself she could reform fascism from within.
I feel like every year the girl names get more boyish like what do you mean you are a teenage girl named Ian??
And this leads to an escalation on the boy name front where like, once upon a time shit like Hunter was something parents in the Bush era made up to reassure ppl there was no fag shit going on with their kids and now the most famous trans woman in country is named Hunter so p soon we are gonna need to call the boys shit like Blade and Laser
Imagine a peace movement yeerk accidentally ends up in the head of a Very Important controller
Okay. In this scenario, let's say Aftran cuts Visser Three in line as he's on his way back to Alloran, and gets into Alloran's head instead.
The question for me becomes: how long could she keep it up?
Optimistic answer: three days. And then once she's back in the yeerk pool, all her fellow yeerks will go "hey, you don't look* like Esplin 9466-prime" and she'll be killed on the spot. But you can do a hell of a lot in three days, if you're pretending to be the head of the invasion. Come up with excuses to get all V3's lieutenants killed. Open peace talks with the Animorphs. Promise all the yeerks voluntary hosts, or morphing power, or both. Just... open the cages, and mime shock that oopsie, the hosts escaped. Like, Aftran could totally win the war that way. Especially since she'd have Alloran on her side from the moment she revealed her mission, and Alloran's a one-man army.
Pessimistic answer: five minutes. And then the real Esplin 9466-prime, still in the yeerk pool, will go «HEY LOSERS. IT'S ME. SHOOT THE IMPOSTER.» and anyone with a modicum of self-preservation instinct will jump into the nearest host, grab a dracon beam, and start blasting.
*we don't actually know how unhosted yeerks recognize each other, but we know (from Visser) that they do
Imagine a peace movement yeerk accidentally ends up in the head of a Very Important controller
Okay. In this scenario, let's say Aftran cuts Visser Three in line as he's on his way back to Alloran, and gets into Alloran's head instead.
The question for me becomes: how long could she keep it up?
Optimistic answer: three days. And then once she's back in the yeerk pool, all her fellow yeerks will go "hey, you don't look* like Esplin 9466-prime" and she'll be killed on the spot. But you can do a hell of a lot in three days, if you're pretending to be the head of the invasion. Come up with excuses to get all V3's lieutenants killed. Open peace talks with the Animorphs. Promise all the yeerks voluntary hosts, or morphing power, or both. Just... open the cages, and mime shock that oopsie, the hosts escaped. Like, Aftran could totally win the war that way. Especially since she'd have Alloran on her side from the moment she revealed her mission, and Alloran's a one-man army.
Pessimistic answer: five minutes. And then the real Esplin 9466-prime, still in the yeerk pool, will go «HEY LOSERS. IT'S ME. SHOOT THE IMPOSTER.» and anyone with a modicum of self-preservation instinct will jump into the nearest host, grab a dracon beam, and start blasting.
*we don't actually know how unhosted yeerks recognize each other, but we know (from Visser) that they do
The fundamental problem of spellblade characters in all fantasy media, games or otherwise, is the conflict between "this fucks tremendously" and "there's no practical reason to do this if there are balanced caster/fighter mechanics"
Why dual wield a sword and a spell? Because it's incredibly fucking cool. Is the tradeoff from being in close combat casting spells, and less specialized in actually using your weapons, worth it? No.
It's an overpowered main character-coded skillset, which means that if the rules are fair it's going to be sort of mid, always. It's incredibly cool for something mid as hell.
for those who don’t remember, “mole interest” was an experiment I did 2 years ago because I wanted to test what causes tags to go trending on tumblr. My hypothesis was that all it takes is one (1) post blowing up in an established tag to make the entire tag trend.
I had randomly generated 2 words, which is where “mole interest” came from. I failed to consider that by generating a new tag, it wouldn’t have had enough posts already in it to prove what I now call “the mole interest effect”.
But now it does.
In 2023, we said “fuck it” a la mythbusters and ended up doing whatever it took to get #mole interest to trend. And it did. And it happened to be September 11th that day, and we managed to get #mole interest to trend ABOVE #9/11.
So, in the name of science, I ask you to reblog just this post. Let’s put the mole interest effect to the test.
