discussing yaoi so bad its shovelware

[shovelwareyaoi]

the deltarune fandom loves to demonize susie for living in castle town because "it's escapism" but tbh i think a lot of them don't realize that sometimes escaping is not only a good thing but necessary for your survival. the game goes out of its way to demonstrate that the dark world is a real place where things have the same amount of gravity as they do in the light world (berdly getting his arm broken/getting snowgraved, the titan fight having a real effect on the church, everyone remembers all of the events in the exact same way,) and so i think it's better read as an allegory for leaving your abusive home for a friend's house in another town than it is "those damn kids like their iphones and video games too much" or "spooky evil hallucinations because hallucinations are spooky and evil you guys"

[shovelwareyaoi]

like no i don't think we should be trying to find "secret accounts" of toby fox and his team in order to "solve deltarune" it was weird when people were actively trying to gather irl details on toby fox to connect some kind of weird friend inside me meme account to him and its weird when people are trying to tie some vaguely related steam account to one of the deltarune team members and get secrets out of it what does this prove what do you get out of this

[shovelwareyaoi]

like this is the kind of shit i mean. thousands of people including here on tumblr ive seen decide this steam account is definitely gaster and part of some grand deltarune arg and like firstly i dont think we should do conspiracy theories like this in general but secondly why would this matter why would susie give a fuck about gasters secret steam account what does that have to do with the actual main characters and story of deltarune

[ot3]

i decided to let my spamtenna hate post out of disabled reblogs jail because of that one ask the other day, and it took less than 24 hours for someone to try the "well of course they're more popular its because these characters are ADULTS and people want to make PORN!" argument again. which is a terrible counter argument for fandom misogyny for about a million reasons. but the thing that really gets me about it is like

people are of the opinion, will argue on behalf of the opinion, that it's just a completely reasonable and straightforward fact of life that people will want to produce and see pornography about these two characters in such high quantities that it outpaces 7 years worth of of shipping fanworks for the main cast.

like it's an argument coming from a world where These Two are just so innately erotic and alluring that it just isn't possible to suggest in good faith alternate explanations for why these characters got So Disproportionately Popular. mhm. uhuh. yep yep.

[iphigeniacomplex]

as a feminist and fujoshi for heterosexuality, it is my belief that the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing a generation that the most interesting fictional m/f dynamic (and maybe even the one which is most respectful to women) is one where an interesting woman is fucking a boring and skittish baby man who is obsessed with her as a concept. and they’ll say she’s pegging him but what they mean is that she orders for him in restaurants and maybe, like, wears winged eyeliner. you aren’t even actually letting this fictional woman dominate this fictional man you’re just gesturing at the idea because you have misogynistic ideas around “active” vs “passive” sexual roles and what they say about a person’s moral behavior. how are we meant to get out of this patriarchy if you can’t even envision that woman from your shows having fulfilling sex with someone she is attracted to.

[shovelwareyaoi]

[gaudebo]

like are they engaging in the themes or are they drawing white guys kissing

[ndnbutch]

I get in theory why people complain about het ships or whatever, I get wanting to watch queer media I really do, but I guess where y’all lose me is like. I saw some asshole on a post about Sinners complaining it was “hetslop”—this person was specifically doing so while also claiming Remmick was a queer character and thus they were justified in caring more about him than the Black protagonists. which is a whole other disgusting can of worms that has been well addressed by others at this point. but even in the absence of that part of the argument, like, no, i actually don’t think that a hunger for queer stories is an especially good excuse to deride and dismiss a piece of landmark Black filmmaking, especially as a non-Black person. I have a post that’s been going around encouraging folks to engage with more Native stories and characters, and I had someone come onto that post saying in the tags that they’d need these stories to be queer in order to care. and I just think that, you know, sucks! like obviously as a queer Native I also want to see more of those stories too. but idk how else to put it other than to say that Black people and people of color shouldn’t have to be like you in order for you to care about our narratives and experiences. and I think some of y’all are using this disdain for heterosexuality as a cover for your unexamined racial biases. it’s not okay to be racist to people just because those people happen to be straight, and you continue to be white before you are queer.

[ndnbutch]

on an even more basic level than that, also, I simply just think some of y’all NEED to learn how to interact with media and storytelling without ships and fandom in mind. like if not being able to write fic about two men kissing is genuinely going to be a dealbreaker for you I think that’s actually something you need to work on within yourself because at that point I think you’re no longer really interacting with art and themes and narrative so much as just kind of playing with toys. which is, like, fine I guess. have fun. but it wouldn’t kill you to disengage from that from time to time. especially if would allow you to actually appreciate rich and deeply moving cultural stories from communities of color that you desperately need to learn how to see as human

[shovelwareyaoi]

consequence of people treating theory video essays as actual parts of the game is that people are claiming the omega gaster goner image_friend device depths whatever theory has years of canonical buildup and that "people are going after me for expecting the game to pay off its setups" while completely ignoring how susie and ralsei two of the actual main characters would probably not gaf about any of that

[shovelwareyaoi]

like this is what i mean if you actually play the game you'll know that "you can't play the game without seeing them" is referencing a cutscene where it gets used as a generic nondescript representation of a darkner alongside like a weird hand thing and a bunch of eyes. there's no way susie or ralsei would have any reaction to seeing it or give a damn about it because it shows up for about .5 seconds in an exposition dump about something way more important to ralsei as a character. if you play the game you'll know that image friend is not the focus of that scene and in fact barely has anything to do with it because the focus is on the character conflict where ralsei is an object and susie wants ralsei to go to the festival. if image friend showed up susie would not recognize it as the .5 seconds generic darkner face from that monologue because thats not what the monologue is about the monologue is about her relationship with her good friend ralsei. the context is not "spooky tease for a future character" the context is "ralsei is explaining what a darkner is to further the conflict about susie wanting to go to the festival with ralsei and the conflict about whether or not the darkners are real people". people don't give a fuck about image friend because that was not what they were thinking about when they watched the scene!

[shovelwareyaoi]

consequence of people treating theory video essays as actual parts of the game is that people are claiming the omega gaster goner image_friend device depths whatever theory has years of canonical buildup and that "people are going after me for expecting the game to pay off its setups" while completely ignoring how susie and ralsei two of the actual main characters would probably not gaf about any of that

[actualized-animal]

every chapter of deltarune has a secret npc who only appears if you leave and re-enter the room 1225 times while you have a bagel in your seventh inventory slot and the npc is a sentient doorknob and when you talk to them the music cuts out and they’re like “who’s that whispering in the trees, it’s two sailors and they’re on leave, pipes and chains and swinging hands, who’s your daddy, yes i am” and then within four hours there’s a thirty minute long video on youtube titled “ASGORE IS FRIEND??? DADDY THEORY EXPLAINED” and it already has 100,000 views and then a year later people call the next chapter disappointing because it was focusing too much on developing the main characters instead of explaining the doorknob guy

[shovelwareyaoi]

like idk i think people are forgetting the reason some of us are really disturbed and upset by asgore as a character isn't just because he's a big meanie it's because he is a former cop who wants to be a cop again and a lot of his behavior (violence and the way he acts to toriel especially) is worse in that context

[songsbeforebed2022]

> post about how everyone was wrong about/misinterpreting “FRIEND”

> “he-“

[songsbeforebed2022]

Oh it all makes sense now

[shovelwareyaoi]

yaoi fandom is just threatened by the idea of a woman existing in general so to mask that they go for the mother/sister/daughter angle when handling any woman in the vicinity of their yaoi guys instead of framing her as like some kind of evil yaoi homewrecker but it's equally misogynistic if not moreso imo

[shovelwareyaoi]

good prev

[rhapsoteas]

the average deltarune theory video: the DARK truth behind the image_friend puppet strings hell tail master determination prophecy phone benefactor omega goner theory

the same deltarune theorist: does anyone know what spamton meant when he said easels

[shovelwareyaoi]

step one: play the actual game

[shovelwareyaoi]

people love to act like undertale and deltarune are these weird incomprehensible lorefests you can only understand via their most obscure secrets ala five nights at freddys when in actuality they are fairly straightforward "lore"-free stories and the gaster image friend device depths easter eggs are largely unimportant to understanding those stories outside of being fun easter eggs

[shovelwareyaoi]

and it's especially weird to apply the whole "lore" thing to these games in particular because a whole major plot point is that the prophecy that defines the game's "lore" is fucked up and not worth putting actual stock into and the characters are all trying to defy it. the rules literally shouldn't be treated as infallible "lore" they're a fate our protags are fighting and you can learn this in the main plot of the fourth chapter of the game

[shovelwareyaoi]

step one: play the actual game

[shovelwareyaoi]

people love to act like undertale and deltarune are these weird incomprehensible lorefests you can only understand via their most obscure secrets ala five nights at freddys when in actuality they are fairly straightforward "lore"-free stories and the gaster image friend device depths easter eggs are largely unimportant to understanding those stories outside of being fun easter eggs