Honestly, every time I see anything about Lily Orchard's Fan OCs (and a decent chunk of her actual Original characters) it always strikes me how Lily has clearly never moved past her Edgelord/Mary Sue phase.
There's nothing inherently wrong with having an Edgelord or Mary Sue (or combo) type character, mind you. I still have such characters cause they can be fun to have and use.
I just think its pretty interesting that Lily kind of exclusively makes those kinds of characters then dubs her own writing of them a masterpiece.
Second, imagine making a list of a buncha cool shit and then saying "yeah but my character was to cool to participate in any of these issues I spent time and energy making up"
Jesus fucking Christ, might as well just say you hate your wife at this point.
Imagine drawing the love of your life free art all the damn time and she has the fucking nerve to turn around and say “it’s not that hard, I could do it too actually, but what I’m doing is actually harder so I’ll leave it to you~”
Fuck off Lily, being an artist and writer are both equally challenging in their own separate ways and neither one is somehow better or more challenging than the other, and obviously you can’t fucking draw or else you wouldn’t constantly be stealing other people’s art for your videos.
Rare non-Lily post but lesbianchemicalplant being part of the isff clique is insane. A few years back she was pedojacketing Snapcube for making sex jokes about sonic characters. How the times change.
Just as a general reminder, don't be transphobic towards Lily Orchard/CD Call.
It genuinely doesn't matter if you doubt her status as a transwoman. It isn't some Gotcha to try and cast doubt on her being transgender, its just being transphobic and Lily has actively been able to use that as a defense for years at this point.
Just because Lily/CD likes to have no class doesn't mean you should match that.
CD-Call's Extremely Racist Take on Aliana Beniko & The Dark Side
⚠️ Trigger Warning(s):
racism, sexism, and sexually suggestive themes
---
CD-Call, when she was still going by [LO], wrote a Star Wars fan-fiction with her wife, Mikaila Orchard, known as The Sith Resurgence.
A brief follow-up was done, known as Scent of Engine Oil, which is a combination of Rey's gender awakening as a male and Aliana's sexual fetishes for engine oil on Rey specifically.
That last detail is ironic to me because of the multiple times Kylo Ren is referred to as "grease stain".
CD-Call would confirm the existence of both pieces of fan-fiction.
An Alternate Universe has been in the works for a while now, referred to as Jedi!Alie, where Aliana Beniko (also known as Darth Amorosa) was taken to a Jedi Temple and trained in the ways of the Jedi instead of being left behind to be raised by a droid.
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
The first image is, at time of writing, Jedi!Aliana.
Contrasting her against her debut in The Sith Resurgence, Aliana's hair is just the beginning of many contrasts between both versions. According to CD-Call, this is a deliberate design choice.
Yes, there is an in-universe reason why Aliana's hair behaves in the like of Pinkie Pie's hair, from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
The reason why Jedi!Aliana has straight hair...
is because she's miserable.
According to the original Tumblr post, CD-Call has established that Jedi!Aliana is naturally attuned to the Dark Side. Because the Jedi who are training her don't know this, and because she herself does not know this, this absence of knowledge is a huge factor into why she is so miserable.
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
She is miserable because her natural attuning to the Dark Side makes her a good Sith by blood.
This also means that Aliana's connection to the Sith is (at the very least) not heritage alone...
Taking this idea an interpreting it literally, it is biology.
Keep in mind what the Dark Side of the Force is: the corruption, destructive, and chaotic aspect of the Force, fueled by raw emotion, self-interest, and a drive for dominance.
Bring this back around to Aliana's physical characterization, real-life racist stereotypes, and the implications of this new characterization. CD-Call, whether she meant to or not, is writing Jedi!Aliana in a way that suggests she (a black woman) is corrupt (or evil) by nature, and not by culture, environment, or personal decisions.
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your
CD-Call's reason for giving Aliana a unique affinity for the Dark Side comes from the idea that the Dark Side can be seen in Star War's nature. With this assumption, CD-Call comes to the conclusion that the Dark Side as a corruption is a lie. The presence of something as a corruption in nature does not suddenly void the fact it is still a corruption.
I'll give one important example of racist stereotypes that fits into CD-Call's characterization of Aliana: the angry black woman.
CD-Call, a white trans-woman, wrote a black character in such a way, it's easy to believe that Aliana Beniko's negative traits (The Dark Side) are not only traits she was born with, but are also traits she must indulge, or she will be miserable.
That is more than childish, it is very racist.
It's a damn good thing that this isn't CD-Call writing about a trans-woman, or she would have different words to say.
I do not know why CD-Call thought it was a good idea to write a black woman this way, or suggest that people inside a group get special exceptions of how that same demographic is written... only to be guilty of writing a demographic she is not a part of in such a problematic way.
Okay, see, I thought she was making Aliana's hair straight because she wanted to paint the Jedi as horrible evil racists who forced her to straighten her hair. Because hair has historically been used as a point of systemic control and oppression against black people, especially black women. And LCD is obsessed with convincing her audience that the Jedi are inherently evil.
But I guess she's even too dumb to do that. Either that or her hatred of symbolism is too strong to go for the obviously more creative choice.
It's just, "her hair reflects her mood" to the absurd extreme.
Oh fuck that's a great laugh! Unfortunately I think she's serious. Debunking it isn't hard though, she is saying a lot but... well just watch.
First off, the bullet points. OBSERVE!
What Lily is writing is the Disney-fied version, it used to be very cut and dry. Also she fails to "de-game-ify" KOTOR so she thinks the press a button to le good boy points or le bad boy points is intentional. It's a game Lily, the game will kiss your ass no matter what you do, because game.
Extreme failure to recognize gamey elements, "muh horde champion is gruff an' tough an' don't take no shit from nobody!" That's nice ma'am get to the back of the line with the 4.5 million or so other horde champions that all say that. You ain't special.
There isn't a formula. Avatar is not a franchise large enough to have become formulaic.
From here it's basically using way too much to say far too little. Yapping that she's being deconstructive and lookit how smart she is!... Except she didn't and hasn't done a deconstruction of anything. This runs parallel to a Learning From Lorch I'm working on, but a key part of a proper deconstruction is knowing and caring about the original thing.
Lily does not. She likes things from them, but the unbroken whole can kick sand. There's no deconstruction unless we are talking entirely literally in that most of the vehicle that is storytelling just isn't fucking there. Niva is made to hard counter Ozai types... though ACTUALLY doing that implies Niva is active enough into politics to find and expose them before they gain political power, which uh
She talks about hating being the Avatar but in her entire tenure she's only ever beseeched about 4 times in her whole life to ever do anything, and it's always an Avatar level threat. Not even mentioning she accrued more raw bending power than any previous avatar! "I hate being the Avatar so I will now become the most powerful one to exer exist ever" logic checks out, yeah. Which fucking sucks because Aang is already a beautiful deconstruction of the chosen one archetype. Niva is in every way worse than Korra while falling into all the same traps!
And to address the asker, who claimed they're all just mean heros....welll...
It's that heroic deeds on paper does not equal being heroic. Niva again exemplifies the problem most, and boy do I have receipts!
Only truly tries against a terrorist group once her sister is at risk of being a casualty of war.
Lackidaisical attitude towards ARMAGEDDON.
Decides to make more statistics out of innocent people while demanding that the world leaders apologize for her HURTING HER FEELINGS...
Struggled for a THIRD TIME to account for innocent people in a crisis! This is no hero, this is a fucking psychopath.
I would avoid critical community tags that focus on a 20-year-long crusade against a trans woman who wrote pedo grimdark fan fiction for My Little Pony when she was 19-20 years old. You know exactly who I'm talking about. Stay out of those tags if you wanna remain sane.
that's the bad place, and it's full of toxic people who would rather make up shit about their accusers than consider that maybe the person calling them out has a point.
all they're doing is giving cd player cover.
We all know CD is a pred, pedo and an abuser. We know she's an abusive ex girlfriend. No one is learning anything useful from the blogs. They are too busy harassing some nonbinary neurodivergent loser who got on their queen bee's bad side.
Downplaying Stockholm aside... (seriously, whose side are you on?)
If I'm not mistaken, you're one of the people that got mad over being told to tag correctly in the first place.
And now you're telling people not to look in the crit tag because you'll find nothing new or you'll see infighting about unrelated topics.
A problem that if I recall correctly, you directly contributed to.
You and your little gaggle of friends were clogging the Lily Critical tag with grievances about Ant/Sai/Courtney/Britt/whoever else and then threw a tantrum when you were told to knock it off.
A tantrum that's apparently lasted about three months at this point, God.
You also seem to really love my phrasing of "giving her ammo". I've seen you and your friends parrot it a few times now.
Unfortunately you don't appear to understand what that phrase actually means.
And you and your friends keep framing this whole thing as some sort of mean girl hierarchy high school bullshit when no. None of that is happening.
You were asked to stop shitting up a tag that is used for documentation to help spread the word about CD Call's crimes.
That's it.
That's what you and your friends have been whining about for the past three months.
I wasn't going to get involved in this as I like to purely stick to Lily here but I did have a hand in telling people to stop clogging the tag.
Stop crying over a problem that YOU helped create.
I've made this same ask elsewhere, but I fear the real problem (ignoring all the "her heroes really are just monstrous" stuff, for the sake of intellectual discussion) is that Orchard's insistence to break the formula, while a perfectly inoffensive in-and-of itself, even a little admirable, is that all she's accomplished is omit perfectly decent tropes and plotline ideas.
The classic rookie mistake of thinking avoiding clichés is good writing. As a result, instead of breaking a formula, she's just... not writing stuff. Stuff that's not just there because that the writers can't let go from the original, but because that's EXACTLY the kind of stuff that one puts in an action fantasy for kids. Hell, you could say that's the reason why they were there at all.
In summary, Avatar Niva fails because it's all "subversion" but without replacing them with anything of substance. Hell, even the more laid-back, non-action story fails to come off as a genre shift, and more like vacuous stuff in service of nothing of purpose.
Yeah
I mean, yeaahhh, I touched on it a tad in the big ol big post I made
Typically a deconstruction starts with taking something away from a formula while keeping its identity
Watchmen: What if vigilantes were just flawed humans instead of paragons
Kingdom Come: What if superheroing was taken over by violent extremists
Third superhero deconstruction: I wanna say Dark Knight Returns but I haven't read that in years
Watchemen and Dark Knight are superhero comics but addresses what a lot saw as the consequence averse eras of comics as something they wanted to address
Getting heavily philosophical and melancholic at times while still touching on themes prevelant in most super hero comics like how our true identity is really defined by the masks we all wear or in kingdom comes case HOW violent and dower comics had become and how classic heroes would truly react to such a turn Read Kingdom Come (DC) its SO GOOD beyond its not even very heavy handed comments about the trends
Anyways CD doesn't really augment or touch on themes other Avatars didn't, she just writes it as if instead of an avatar who cares its one who doesn't and thats the fundamental difference really when you get right down to it. So it doesn't matter how powerful a character is if their just not invested in the conflict thats being thematically pushed, its even worse actually, cause at a certain level nothing and nobody can make them care, even an unwilling protagonist can be forced into a story by a stronger force (ideally not just random bias of the author) "I want to escape the slasher movie" isn't a bad motivation even if yes that is how you end the movie, presumably Farmer Shovelfuck is gonna burst from the wall and try to stop ol'protagonist.
This all ties back to her just not being able to conceive of satisfying conflicts or really know what a deconstruction is because in deconstructing the "formula" she got so hung up about having a main character be powerful and ruthless as to not be hung up by a main bad guy she missed having something so defining as that very power matter in the story at all
B must happen therefore A, form of story writing
Its almost like CD wrote 2 versions of the a character with the same name
There is "Character" Niva who is a person & loves her sister
Then there is "Avatar" Niva who is powerful and- a sith ig
Now here comes someone in the asks: Maybe thats the point the interplay to these to perceptions she puts on to live a normal life just like clark kent and superman
Ah ah ah, my dear strawman you forget that it is infact the interplay between clark kent and superman personas where a large part of the fascination begins but that is only the surface level meanwhile what Niva has is more like what happens with that trope of a superpowered darkside is an entirely different person which is the lamest version of that
I wanted to clarify, thats not aallll a deconstruction is its just a typical aspect, by removing something core to a genre "formula" you are able to deconstruct and really take a closer look at things that genre usually keeps sorta under the surface
For instance the Facist or Great Men ideas that is the background radiation of superhero stories for example
Lily is now apparently of the opinion that Irish people aren't white.
So she claims jews are white--Irish people are not. It's fine for an Irish person to hate English people because they're oppressed by them, but jews can't even call out antisemitism because they're, white, liers.
What the fuck?
Anon, I had the exact same crash out in my group chat.
I was reminded that Irish, as a nationality, doesn’t necessarily mean white—but that anon Lily got specifically explained that the friend they were talking about was white.
So this wasn’t even a case of Lily trying to be politically correct, she just straight up said that if you’re Irish you can’t be white. 😭
Behold, who Lily thinks counts as people of color, I guess:
I've made this same ask elsewhere, but I fear the real problem (ignoring all the "her heroes really are just monstrous" stuff, for the sake of intellectual discussion) is that Orchard's insistence to break the formula, while a perfectly inoffensive in-and-of itself, even a little admirable, is that all she's accomplished is omit perfectly decent tropes and plotline ideas.
The classic rookie mistake of thinking avoiding clichés is good writing. As a result, instead of breaking a formula, she's just... not writing stuff. Stuff that's not just there because that the writers can't let go from the original, but because that's EXACTLY the kind of stuff that one puts in an action fantasy for kids. Hell, you could say that's the reason why they were there at all.
In summary, Avatar Niva fails because it's all "subversion" but without replacing them with anything of substance. Hell, even the more laid-back, non-action story fails to come off as a genre shift, and more like vacuous stuff in service of nothing of purpose.
Yeah
I mean, yeaahhh, I touched on it a tad in the big ol big post I made
Typically a deconstruction starts with taking something away from a formula while keeping its identity
Watchmen: What if vigilantes were just flawed humans instead of paragons
Kingdom Come: What if superheroing was taken over by violent extremists
Third superhero deconstruction: I wanna say Dark Knight Returns but I haven't read that in years
Watchemen and Dark Knight are superhero comics but addresses what a lot saw as the consequence averse eras of comics as something they wanted to address
Getting heavily philosophical and melancholic at times while still touching on themes prevelant in most super hero comics like how our true identity is really defined by the masks we all wear or in kingdom comes case HOW violent and dower comics had become and how classic heroes would truly react to such a turn Read Kingdom Come (DC) its SO GOOD beyond its not even very heavy handed comments about the trends
Anyways CD doesn't really augment or touch on themes other Avatars didn't, she just writes it as if instead of an avatar who cares its one who doesn't and thats the fundamental difference really when you get right down to it. So it doesn't matter how powerful a character is if their just not invested in the conflict thats being thematically pushed, its even worse actually, cause at a certain level nothing and nobody can make them care, even an unwilling protagonist can be forced into a story by a stronger force (ideally not just random bias of the author) "I want to escape the slasher movie" isn't a bad motivation even if yes that is how you end the movie, presumably Farmer Shovelfuck is gonna burst from the wall and try to stop ol'protagonist.
This all ties back to her just not being able to conceive of satisfying conflicts or really know what a deconstruction is because in deconstructing the "formula" she got so hung up about having a main character be powerful and ruthless as to not be hung up by a main bad guy she missed having something so defining as that very power matter in the story at all
B must happen therefore A, form of story writing
Its almost like CD wrote 2 versions of the a character with the same name
There is "Character" Niva who is a person & loves her sister
Then there is "Avatar" Niva who is powerful and- a sith ig
Now here comes someone in the asks: Maybe thats the point the interplay to these to perceptions she puts on to live a normal life just like clark kent and superman
Ah ah ah, my dear strawman you forget that it is infact the interplay between clark kent and superman personas where a large part of the fascination begins but that is only the surface level meanwhile what Niva has is more like what happens with that trope of a superpowered darkside is an entirely different person which is the lamest version of that
