Thirtysomething from Michigan. Appreciator of stories, tropes, sincerity, Magical Girls, Kingdom Hearts, RPGs, narrative video games, and finding fun new hills to die on.
also we have GOT to collectively come to terms with the fact that me or any other stranger online disliking or even making fun of something you like is not saying “no fun allowed” “no one can ever enjoy this” you have simply got to grow a spine and be able to like the shit you like. you don’t even have to defend it! like 90% of the media i really enjoy is divisive and half my friends actively hate it. i really don’t give a fuck though because i like it. you can write whatever you want! you’re allowed! even if it’s MY least favorite genre or style of writing and i have active distaste for it!
i feel like it's absolutely crucial in the social justice world to take "he a little confused but he got the spirit" and similar sentiments/situations as a Win. intent is so much more important than saying it right the first time! if someone is approaching with scuffed language and incorrect terms but they're visibly being as polite as they know how, that person is a friend and should be treated better than what their words might invite in someone else's mouth.
someone who's confused but who's got the spirit has the best thing, which is respect. the other stuff is secondary. I'd take someone who's messing up but doing their best to treat me respectfully any day over someone who's using the right words to do me wrong.
It's OK to be young and scared, it's OK to be old and scared. It's OK to be scared of something big and bad happening and it's OK to be scared of something small and "insignificant" happening.
Right now, I'm scared shitless over something OCD related and a lot of people could see it as "dumb" or "weird" to be scared of but that doesn't take away the very real fear.
I'm 28 and I'm pretty scared right now over something that I DO logically know will be fine. That's OK! Be gentle with yourself too. 💛🌻
Okay it's a funny skit but I'm gonna be serious about this for a moment because I think it's interesting - the thing about this is it does actually make sense if you go back to the source material.
A lot of stuff that's considered canon in star wars is actually kind of ascended fanon. Like, if you really dig into it, it's remarkable how much of the lightsaber-juggling, movie-retreading atmosphere of pop culture/the expanded universe Lucas incorporated into the prequel trilogy, likely without realising.
Example: Strictly according to the original trilogy, does Master Yoda possess a lightsaber? I would say no. It is significant that in a film, where every shot is deliberately planned, we never see a lightsaber in relation to Yoda, and the one time he acknowledges Luke's it is dismissively; "Your weapons, you will not need them." By implication, Yoda is a Buddha to Obi-Wan's warrior monk. Yoda is a teacher and a mystic, but he is not a warrior.
Force lightning is another of these things. You go back to the original trilogy, and there's a sense that the Force and what you can do with it is very personalised. Nobody but Palpatine throws lightning, not even his apprentice, and in turn nobody but Vader chokes people to death. Luke does learn the mind trick introduced by Obi-Wan, but that's part and parcel with Luke's growth into a compassionate warrior-philosopher who tries to solve conflicts nonviolently. Force Choke is not 'a dark side force power', it is Vader's power, a manifestation of his crushing authority and smothering presence.
Likewise, Force Lightning is not 'a dark side power', and it is not generic lightning. It is the Emperor's power, characteristic of his cruelty, his sadistic delight in corrupting and hurting other people. We can see this in how it is used. Force Lightning does not split steel or blast people off their feet or blow things up, like a real bolt of lightning - it transfixes Luke in agony, sends him reeling to the floor with torturous pain until he screams for his father's help.
Force Lightning is not a power of clean, straightforward energy blasts. It's a torture power. It's the power of wielding your hate and cruelty against someone with the deliberate goal of setting fire to their nerves and killing them slowly and painfully. Shit yeah it's evil as all get out, way more than the power to convince guards to look the other way rather than have to fight them.
Yeah, thinking about it, it would make more sense and possibly could have been even cooler if Yoda had never needed a lightsaber and ridiculous flippy-dos to style on Dooku and had just implacably approached him like a goddamn Tonberry.
Imagine seeing Sir Christopher Lee shit his pants as the unstoppable Muppet of Doom slowly and calmly hobbles towards him with a little stick to give him a caning.
Imagine, if you will, a version of the Late Old Republic where lightsabers had largely fallen out of fashion because the Jedi Order hadn't had any Sith to lightsaber duel for the fate of the Galaxy for a few centuries. The Order still uses lightsaber forms for training, but it's like kendo; it's a martial art more than a combat skill, good enough for self-defense against undisciplined brutes, but the Jedi who actually carry lightsabers outside of the training hall and are adept enough to reliably parry blaster fire are a minority that gets rarer and rarer with every generation of peace in the Republic. The Jedi are still monks, but most of them are monks in a more conventional sense, and only a small subset of them are still warrior-monks.
Qui-Gon Jinn might not be the LAST lightsaber master by the time of The Phantom Menace, but he's only one of a handful, and there was definitely Subtext in sending him and his Padawan to Naboo. It was a very unsubtle declaration of how the Jedi Order felt about a bunch of money-grubbers trying to pressure an entire planet into an unfair deal, and a reminder that using brute force to get your way only works until someone stronger than you decides to put a stop to it.
Imagine if the Space-Wuxia level lightsaber masters in the Jedi Order at the start of the Prequels could be counted on one hand; Qui-Gon and Mace Windu were two of them, and one of them didn't survive that movie. Dooku, as Qui-Gon's former master, was of course another. But for the purposes of this hypothetical, let's pretend Yoda wasn't his master, or at least not his only one.
Maybe he was initially apprenticed to Yoda but was given a new master when he showed talent for the fighting arts. There was no prestige in this, of course, but the Order was practical enough to recognize that there will always be a need to have at least a few warriors on standby to defend peace when it's threatened.
Qui-Gon, of course, was not just a lightsaber master, he was also still a brilliant guile hero, because he was naturally the kind of master ass-kicker who knows when its better to refrain from kicking ass. And Obi-Wan, being the good boy he is, admired that side of Qui-Gon more than the "One of the Last True Lightsaber Masters" side of him, so imagine if Obi-Wan had focused even harder on being a tricky bitch and only became an okay lightsaber duelist throughout the Clone Wars. Anakin, of course, being who he is and being as fiercely protective as he is, still hones his skills as a combat prodigy.
I started writing this right after I woke up and then got sidetracked and now my mind is kind of wandering. I feel like there's a strong thesis for an alternate version of the Prequels to be drawn out of this, but I'll need time to let it cook.
But yanno if anyone else has any thoughts, feel free to chime in.
"didn't they already do this with—" no. put them in a slasher film. put them in a BLOODBATH. put this van full of weirdoes in a Texas Chainsaw Massacre scenario i have FAITH in them
not Saw specifically but a slasher with a legit body count. Summer camp slashers are overplayed but I think it really works because it's the type of thing the Scooby gang WOULD get caught up in.
like some of the counselors didn't show up (got got) so the head counselor calls his younger cousin to see if him and his friends can fill in last minute. They show up and they're a bunch of nerds, one of them even has an anxiety dog, and they don't have a big role at first. It seems like the movie is setting them up as cannon fodder.
and then the deaths start and suddenly the nerds are locked the fuck in. The little one with the glasses actually fixed the phone line and is taking stock of all their supplies in case the vehicles go out. The counselor's cousin who seemed like a himbo has set up a perimeter and made makeshift alarms for all the doors and windows, knows all the entry points. The anxious one and his dog are keeping the mood up with the snacks and activities that were supposed to be for the kids, making sure nobody panics and starts making dumb decisions. Somebody tried to grab the redhead and she flipped him over and had him zip-tied before anybody noticed. Weren't they a D&D group or something? What is happening???
don't infantilise yourself. you are not a child who needs an adult to make your decisions for you. you are a splendid and magnificent autocrat and you are consulting your trusted advisors. you are exercising great wisdom by inviting an expert to give their opinion before making your ruling. often the path of wisdom is to say "good morning, I'm trying to [perform task] and I have a question about [aspect], can you tell me who I should speak to for advice?" before you do it. sometimes the path of wisdom is to hire a plumber. there are times when you cannot do things for yourself but that doesn't mean you are not an adult. you don't need a grown-up. you need a specialist.
my controversial lois lane opinion is that i don’t think she’s bisexual. i think lois lane is a heterosexual woman who curses god every day for not making her attracted to women bc she knows she’s a lesbian 10 but every man she has ever dated pre-clark has told her she’s too intense and abrasive and needs to put more effort into her appearance. if lois was bisexual she would have dated a man once and never looked back but thankfully for clark she is not attracted to women bc he is the only man on this earth capable of truly appreciating her.
i do think she probably slept with a woman once in college though. just to check and see if she was into it.
The thing about Stephanie Brown is that she's the one that doesn't break.
Yes, she is the one that's cheerful and bubbly and decorates everything with assorted shades of purple. She is the one who's goofy and girly and makes an overabundance of spider-man style quips and engages in shenanigans. She is the one who's consistently energetic and idealistic and otherwise sticking out like a sore thumb compared to the angst that the entire rest of the family seeps in despite how hard they try to act in defiance of it (it's not all they are, it will NEVER be all they are, because they're heroes and heroes aren't held back by such things, but it remains something they can no longer fully escape). Stephanie does have quite a bit of complexity and depth, but when it comes down to it, her personality really is that simple. She snarks and she laughs and she yells "boom!" when she hits bad guys, and she keeps smiling even when nobody does.
But if you think that's "bland" or "one-note" or "reductive" or anything else, may I remind you that Stephanie's boundless cheer still exists within the context of everything that she's been through up to this point.
And she's been through a heck of lot.
No matter where they started, everyone else in the Bat family has broken, at least once. They've fixed themselves up, time and time again, but while kintsugi makes things stronger it also makes you very aware of the cracks. They wear masks. Facades. Slowly repairing the veneers of childlike joy that they lost. Irrevocably changed from who they were. Bruce is not the same Bruce he used to be. Dick is not the same Dick, Barbara not the same Barbara, Jason definitely not the same Jason, and so on. But even though she's grown and changed like the others, Stephanie Brown unabashedly and unrepentantly remains the same Stephanie Brown that she's always been.
We unfairly characterize her as the one that "isn't quite as good at" stuff. No matter how terrifyingly dangerous of a combatant she is (and she's really dangerous, she's been Robin and Batgirl, remember?), we can always point to another Bat as being more strong, or smart, or charming, or talented, or whatever else, in a way that overshadows her.
But everything and everyone else will break before Stephanie Brown does. And I think that means something.
“Okay, this is gonna sound crazy,” said Snap, “but hear me out.”
Ruby’s ears perked up at the sound of Snap’s voice, and she turned away from the thin piece of metal she was examining to look at her friend. Even though there weren’t any source of light inside the enormous cavern that was inside of the hutch, the sun’s rays could still enter through the jagged holes in the walls, through the thin, cracked layers of glass that the humans who once inhabited the hutch had presumably acquired somewhere. There was a rustling to Ruby’s side, and she absently noted Corner peeking his head out from behind the large wooden structure he’d been poking at to listen to Snap’s words.
“Humans,” Snap declared, spreading his forelimbs out dramatically, “are bugs.”
Corner burst into giggles, and he scampered closer. “What? I- pfffffft-” His squeaks were interrupted by even more laughing, his small chest heaving. “What -huff- what do you mean humans are bugs?”
Ruby sighed, raising a paw to her forehead in exasperation. This was going to be yet another one of those sorts of conversations, wasn’t it. Snap and Corner were her best friends, but it often seemed like most of the time neither of them had a functioning mind. Thus, it once again fell to her to be the bastion of sanity while they were still out here, scavenging in the abandoned hutch. It made sense to her, in a way. Snap was the largest, Corner was the smallest, and Ruby was the sanest. “Okay, Snap. Because you are my friend, my dear friend of many seasons, I will hear you out. But you’re going to need to work to convince me.”
“Oh, rest assured, I will put in the work,” Snap responded, his ears standing straight up with completely unhidden glee. “For you see, my friends, I have a hypothesis. Nay, I have MORE than a hypothesis! I have a theory.”
“You’ve performed experiments and collected a large amount of evidence that supports your idea?” asked Corner, ever the nitpicker. “‘Cause if not, it’s still only a hypothesis.”
Snap barreled on, undeterred. “I do have evidence! So it is a theory!”
“And this theory is that humans are bugs,” Ruby responded, flatly.
“Yes!”
“Okay. So where is this evidence?”
“Why, look around you, Ruby!” Snap swung his forelimbs around again, gesturing wildly. “What is it that you see?”
“A fawn-furred theater reject making a fool of himself instead of explaining his ‘theory’.”
Ruby’s bluntness naturally made Corner crack up again, though he hurriedly muffled his laughter with his paws before she could include him in her summary. “Er, hehe… Snap, d’you mean the hutch?”
While Snap’s expression had drooped at Ruby’s harshness, when Corner spoke his ears snapped right back upwards. “Yes, exactly! The hutch! Humans build hutches! Big, huge complex structures, to provide them with shelter.”
“Yeah, we know,” Ruby said, unenthusiastically. “But they do a crap job of it and leave scraps all over the place for us to find, like we’re doing right now.”
“Exactly! Building large structures is what humans do!” Snap seemed to be appreciating Ruby’s and Corner’s indulgence of his train of thought far too much. “But when you think about it, humans aren’t the only type of creature to do this, right?”
That was actually a question worth genuine consideration, and both Ruby and Corner stopped to think for a moment. “Well,” Corner began, hesitantly. “I guess you could say we do that. Like, not all the time because usually it’s better to build houses in underground burrows, but the Hayseeds' general store is aboveground. ‘Cause it’s built into the stump. And even the burrows still have walls and stuff to give definition…”
“Yeah, but we do all that stuff on purpose,” Ruby points out. “Our ancestors had to learn and figure out how to do all that, it’s not the same thing. We do it intelligently, humans build hutches like this and their other constructions instinctively, since despite being big they don’t have good fangs and claws to defend themselves with. I think Snap’s trying to get at something else…” her brow furrowed, before she remembered Snap’s initial premise. “Well, if you’re saying humans are bugs, it must be some kind of bug, right? Like… oh, like bees?”
Corner’s eyes widened. “Oh, right, beehives! I guess they’re kinda like human hutches, aren’t they? Just way smaller, and made of different stuff. Or… like ants and termites! They make big mounds, don’t they?”
Snap nodded rapidly. “Exactly! Other animals may make stuff on occasion, but the only creatures that make stuff like human hutches are bugs!”
“I guess so…” Ruby wasn’t convinced. “But don’t humans usually live in much smaller numbers? I figured they were more like those mountain lions, with parents raising their kids along but otherwise being pretty solitary. If they were like ants, wouldn’t their hutches be way bigger to hold way more humans?”
“They do make bigger stuff sometimes,” Corner pointed out. “Didn’t you say you have a cousin who went and saw that big hutch complex?”
That was true, Ruby remembered the stories she’d heard from Bran about the massive steel hutch complexes humans had built in the distance. He’d said they were large and towering and full of many, many humans, all scuttling this way and that. Bran had said there was a huge danger of being crushed simply due to the sheer amount of humans, but it was worth it because of the amount of food and other scraps the humans had a tendency to produce.
“I guess you’re right, Bran’s stories do kinda resemble how it’d feel to be shrunken down to smaller than an ant and then placed inside an anthill,” Ruby reluctantly agreed. “But that doesn’t really explain this hutch, here. It’s just sitting here alone at the edge of the forest, by itself. Even when humans DID inhabit it there couldn’t have been more than, say, a handful of them.”
“Maybe they’re a different kind of human?” Corner theorized, though now that Ruby was paying attention she realized that Corner was probably just as disbelieving of Snap’s theory as she was, and was just playing apologist. “Like how some kinds of bees and wasps make smaller nests, with fewer bugs inside them?”
“Something like that!” Snap gleefully latched onto Corner’s suggestion, then forcibly kept talking before either of his friends could question the idea further. “But that’s not the only thing humans do! They also make traps.”
Corner’s ears flattened, confused. “Do bugs make traps?”
“Spiderwebs, Corner. Spiderwebs,” Snap explained. “Spiders and other bugs will make all sorts of traps for catching food, just like humans do! They’ll lie in wait, hoping something will fall for the trap, and then once something gets caught, they do something to their prey to make it easier to eat.”
“Humans don’t have webs, though,” Ruby pointed out. “And a lot of the stuff they do to food is only possible because the stars help them, not because the humans can do it on their own. And who knows why the stars do what they do.”
“I thought the logic was that human hutches are full of stuff that stars like living in,” Corner commented, gesturing upward to where some dark glass bulbs hung overhead, empty of the glowing stars they once presumably housed. “That was how the Hayseeds explained it to me. So the stars help care for humans like they’re pets.”
“First of all, humans don’t need help to build traps,” Snap’s voice sounded a bit harsher than normal, like it always did when people brought up the stars. “Remember that snapper trap that Mrs. Marsh has in her basement? The wooden thing with the metal wire? There aren’t any stars in it at all. And second, even if the stars DO help humans, that’s just another point in favor of my argument. People say the stars like riding on certain kinds of flies, too.”
“You’re saying… Humans and fireflies might have evolved from the same kind of bug ancestor?” Corner pondered aloud. “Both of them adapted in ways that made them more appealing to the stars as pets as a survival mechanism, but while fireflies stayed small and carry stars with them, humans got bigger and started altering their original nests into hutches that had things the stars could inhabit, meaning they became more and more reliant on the stars.”
“You’re definitely thinking way too hard about this, Corner,” Ruby refuted. “And none of that explains how humans and other bugs-”
“Other bugs?” Snap interrupted, mirthfully.
Ruby rolled her eyes and corrected herself. “None of that explains how humans and bugs look basically nothing alike. Humans are big and fleshy, bugs are small and have exoskeletons. Like turtles, but… more.”
“Worms are fleshy bugs,” Snap pointed out. “And we know bugs can get a lot bigger than we usually see them. Remember that… that centipede?”
All three of them shuddered. None of them liked remembering the centipede. But Ruby had to admit it was an excellent point. It had been a very big centipede.
“Hmm…” Ruby hummed, noncommittally. She was pretty sure all the stuff Snap was saying was nothing but badger dung, but his logic was just sound enough (and her understanding of animal biology just insufficient enough) that she couldn’t immediately reject him outright. Which was annoying.
“See? It makes sense, humans were bugs that made stuff, and they just got bigger, losing their shells in the process. Maybe that’s why they construct so much stuff aside from their hutches. The traps and constructions serve the same purpose as exoskeletons since they’re too big now to grow their own.”
“None of that sounds right,” Ruby complained.
“But you can’t find fault in it, can you?” Snap retorted, smugly. “You have to admit, it’s a viable theory!”
“I guess it’s a viable theory, but…” Corner’s ears and whiskers twitched mischievously as he spoke, and Ruby knew she was in for another headache. “Might I suggest an alternative proposal?”
Ruby groaned. Snap didn’t seem too enthused by Corner’s request either, since he had probably wanted the conversation to end with him sufficiently convincing his friends of his “humans are bugs” thesis, but he motioned for Corner to continue nonetheless.
“Humans are birds.”
“No, they’re not!” Snap immediately shouted indignantly. “That makes even less sense!”
“So you admit that humans being bugs doesn’t make sense too?” Ruby asked, seeing her chance.
“What? No! I just explained to you how it does make sense. How does humans being birds make sense???”
“Well… didn’t Mr. Gravel tell us in school that humans have warmer blood? As opposed to the colder blood that reptiles and bugs do?” Corner pointed out. “Humans can regulate their body temperature. Which means they’re either mammals like us, or they’re birds. And they don’t have fur, so they aren’t mammals, so they must be birds.”
“Now hold on! What do you mean humans don’t have fur?” Snap asked incredulously, his face reddening behind his fur in anger. “I’ve seen the pictographs they have in the library, don’t humans have fur on the tops of their heads or something?”
“Humans have hair, not fur,” Ruby pointed out, glad that she could actually remember such a small detail for once when Snap hadn’t.
She deliberately refrained from adding that she was pretty sure fur and hair were basically the same thing. A human could have sable hair just like she had sable fur, she figured, just with differing levels of thickness and density. But she figured that Snap would be too incensed to notice, and she was proven right, especially when Corner added “Yeah, I bet if humans let their hair get long enough they’d be pretty similar to feathers, but that’d just be cumbersome and heavy and leave them open to predators,” and Snap just made a frustrated sound instead of pointing out how that statement was nonsense.
“Additionally,” Ruby continued, raising one of her paws to stroke one of her ears thoughtfully, “Humans are bipedal. Birds are too. Coincidence? I think not.” She was starting to enjoy this.
“We’re bipedal!” Snap responded angrily.
“Not all the time,” Corner pointed out. “We swap between two and four all the time depending on what would be convenient.”
“Yeah, we’re adaptable,” Ruby clarified. “It’s what makes us and similar mammals different from other creatures. We evolved to be able to adapt and grow and advance, humans didn’t, so they stay on two legs, just like birds do.” Then a thought came to her, and she couldn’t help but brux a little in joy when she realized how annoyed Snap would be by her next sentence. “Maybe our adaptability is why the stars let us handle ourselves while they care for the humans as pets. We’ve got higher intelligence, after all.”
Snap growled, but neither Ruby nor Corner reacted to it. Instead Corner just nodded his head. “Yeah, humans are pretty stupid. And I actually had a thought about that. Birds are pretty stupid too, right? And they can fly up high, close to where the stars live, right?”
“Right,” Ruby nodded, excited to see where Corner was going with this.
“Soooooo…” Corner dragged the syllable out, enjoying every second of it. “What if humans are descended from a bird that was so stupid it thought it could fly even higher than the stars, and tried to fly to the sun? But that would be dangerous, because as we all know the sun is a huge ball of fire an indescribable distance away from the earth-”
“Obviously,” Ruby confirmed. Snap looked like his whiskers were going to explode off his face.
“And because the stars are wise and merciful,” Corner continued, “they grabbed the birds that tried to fly to the sun and put them back on the ground, plucking their feathers off so they couldn’t repeat their stupid mistake!”
“And since they couldn’t fly anymore,” Ruby added, struck by even further inspiration and barely holding back giggles. “The humans started building more complex and larger nests, instead!”
“Exactly!” Corner immediately pounced on that line of thought. “And it worked out for the best, because now the stars could have a place to live down on the surface too, while they kept watch over the dumb birds to keep them from trying to grow feathers and reach the sun again!”
“That doesn’t make any SENSE!” Snap finally exploded into a storm of furious squeaks. “That’s not how feathers work! That’s not how evolution works! And the stars?? The stars can’t- The stars don’t do stuff like that? Why would it work like that? It doesn’t- Is that some kind of mythology? You can’t seriously believe-”
It was too much for Ruby and Corner. They fell to the ground, laughing uproariously and shaking back and forth, unable to contain their amusement at Snap’s anger. Snap stiffened, his eyes wide, before he sighed and relaxed a bit. “Stop teasing me.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Corner apologized, pulling himself back upright and shaking dust out of his lilac fur. “But you put on such a show with your theory! I couldn't help but take the chance to ruin it a little.”
“And it is an interesting theory,” Ruby added. “I don’t think you’re right, Snap, but I can see the logic there. Once we get back home tonight we can visit the library and look into it a bit more.”
Snap huffed and rolled his eyes, but it was clear from his body language that he wasn’t too angry at them anymore.
“Speaking of which,” Corner said, glancing outside. “I think it’s almost dusk. We should get going if we want to be back under cover before the owls start coming out.”
The other two nodded, and the three mice gathered what various odd scraps they had decided to scavenge from the empty hutch into their satchels before slipping out of the large structure through a couple small holes in the walls, scampering down the grassy hill it was situated on and entering back into the forest. They ducked under some ferns to find the well-trodden pathway they’d used to arrive at the hutch to begin with.
As the sun dipped down into the horizon behind them and the forest started to darken, Ruby spoke up again, keeping her voice low. “You know, Snap, you talking about bugs has got me thinking about something. Not something related to humans, really, but something else?”
“Really? What?”
“You know how earlier we were talking about bugs and the places they live in, and how being shrunk down and living in one would be like trying to live in a big human complex? Well, like… what if we applied that to those stories we read as kids? Like, the ones where bugs are the main characters and act like people?”
“You mean like, uh…” Snap tried to recall a specific example. “Like those Jack the Cricket books? Or something like that, but taking place in some kind of… termite city?”
Corner’s eyes widened in interest. “Ooh, that’d be weird. Would it be like how we talked about it before, where you’re still a mouse but you’re shrunk down to be smaller than the termite people? Or… would you just be turned into a termite person?”
Snap’s expression looked like he’d swallowed something nasty. “Turned into a termite? Gross.”
“Well…” Ruby thought about it. “It’d be weird, but for the termite people it’d be normal. And they wouldn’t know how to react to a tiny mouse, so it might be to your advantage to be turned into a termite person, just so that you can blend in and not get into any problems.”
“So you’d really have no choice but to just roll with it and be a termite person, then,” Snap concluded. “Because… well, how would they react if they found out you were actually a mouse, instead of a termite?”
“Honestly? I’d think it’d depend on what they think of mice in general,” Corner pointed out. “I never read Jack the Cricket, but aren’t the mice in those books kind of… non-entities? Like, Jack and his friends just kind of avoid them. Do they even know the mice are also people? Just larger, not-bug people?”
“They do,” Ruby confirmed. “Mice don’t show up a lot, but Jack and Antony have to sneak around what’s very clearly a normal burrow-village. Since they don’t want the mice to know about them they have to sneak around, but they’re clearly aware that the mice are people, just a different kind of people that eat bugs because the mice in those books don’t know bugs are sapient. Bug society is specifically being hidden from mice society for, uh. Some reason. I can’t remember why, exactly, it was just sort of how it worked.” She shrugged. “Like it’s obviously a plot device but I’m pretty sure there was an in-universe reason too.”
“Though, now that you mention it, how would it work the other way?” Snap asked. “Like, how would the bugs not be able to see the mice as sapient. We’re pretty obviously advanced, aren’t we?”
“Maybe the bugs wouldn’t be able to see that the mice are people for the same reason the mice don’t see that the bugs are people?” Corner tentatively suggested. “Like, with how sophisticated bug society is in those stories, you’d think they’d have been caught by the mice already.”
“Hmm…” Ruby thought about it some more. “You’re right, honestly. When I was little I read Jack the Cricket, and then the next time I saw an actual cricket I tried to chase it back to its little cricket house. Obviously it didn’t have one, but if I’d lived in the world of Jack the Cricket I would have found one. Maybe it’s some kind of… magic?”
“Magic, really?” Snap rolled his eyes. “What, so the mice and the bugs just… magically don’t see that there’s an entire other civilization?”
“That would probably have to be how it works, though,” Corner commented. “Like, some kind of ‘one rat’s trash is another rat’s treasure’ sort of deal, but to the extreme. Or like… that fairy story?”
“Which fairy story?” Snap asked, but Ruby answered before Corner could.
“You mean like the Tale of Lillianna? Where the flower fae were invisible to mice because they could camouflage against the flowers, so the mice would look straight at the fae and not realize they were even there!” Ruby had loved that story as a kid. “So you’re thinking it’d be something like that, but two-way?”
“I guess that could kind of make sense…” Snap assented. “But… then if you were turned into a termite, you’d find out about termite society anyway. That… hmm… that’s kind of discomforting to think about, to be honest. You’d suddenly realize that what you’d thought were just mindless creepy crawlies were actually sophisticated and civilized.”
“Yeah, there’s definitely a sort of horror aspect to it,” Corner confirmed. “I know I’ve eaten tons of bugs, so that would really freak me out. Especially now that I’d be on the other side of the divide.” He paused. “What if, now that you’re a termite person, you’re subject to the same problem the rest of the termites have, and now you can’t see the mice as people anymore? Because now you’re a termite.”
“Oh, that would be messed up,” Ruby said. “Like, I’d know I’m a mouse, and I’d know that mice are people, but since termites don’t know mice are people I’d be affected by that?”
“Yeah, like that,” Corner confirmed.
“Stars, I’d hate to end up in that situation,” Snap decided.
“Language,” Ruby chided on impulse, and Snap just stuck his tongue out at her. “But yeah, I’d hate it too. It’d make for a really interesting story, though. It raises a lot of questions about how we’d know there isn’t a weird magic that keeps us from realizing bugs are actually people. It’d be fascinating.”
“I think I’d definitely want to read a story like that,” Corner said, thinking aloud. “Give me some messed-up bug world isekai.”
Ruby went to respond, but then her mind processed what Corner said and she paused.
“Sorry, a bug world what?”
“What’s an isekai?” Snap asked.
“I, er…” Corner’s ears flattened against his head in embarrassment as he realized his mistake. “It’s uh, a word I read somewhere once, I think. You know those stories where a mouse pup falls into a hole into a tree and ends up in a magic fantasy land? That’s kind of what it means. Uh. If I recall correctly.”
“Oh. Huh.” Snap nodded slowly. “Cool.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know there was a specific term for that genre,” Ruby added. “Good to know. I wonder if other recurring kinds stories have names like that?”
“Probably,” Snap shrugged.
As the three mice continued onward, their conversation moving in the direction of lighter topics as they got closer to home, Corner briefly glanced behind him.
The sun had fully set by now, and dusk was giving way to night, but in the distance behind them Corner could just barely make out the silhouette of the house through the cracks in the trees.
The house.
The house.
…The hutch.
Corner sighed, then turned forward again to scurry onward and catch up with his friends.
I know we like to dunk on Van Helsing for taking so long to tell anyone that there's a vampire out there, but you gotta remember, he doesn't know he's in the novel Dracula. He walked into this story knowing about the vampire myth, but believing that it's just that, a myth.
His knowledge and interest in the occult comes from a place of absolute intellectual humility. He knows (and modern research has verified) that many traditional remedies are actually effective. It might be because of some microbe in the local mud, or some unexplored properties of a common plant. He refuses to dismiss these so called mystical remedies because there must be some strand of truth to their effectiveness, otherwise they would have been long ago abandoned for their ineffectiveness. Yes, they may have mistakenly attributed both illness and cure to the supernatural, but that does not mean the illness was fake nor does it render the cure inert.
I can imagine the process he approaches Lucy's condition with is a process he's used in the past. He looks for similarities between the symptoms of the current patient and those of the legends he's studied. He administers the old remedies as prescribed, supplemented with modern treatments where needed, and carefully observes to try and uncover the precise element of the remedy that is effective so that he can isolate, distill, and magnify that element. Usually there's never a one to one match for the case he's looking at and the legend.
Untill Lucy.
Everything matches the vampire myth.
EVERYTHING.
The symptoms match exactly. The cure works precisely as expected. When Lucy's condition gets worse, it is tied directly to things the old myths warned about.
It never matches so perfectly. Usually there's some element of exaggeration or mythologizing. The symptoms aren't as bad as the stories say, or the cure isn't as immediate. It shouldn't match this perfectly, because if it matches this perfectly that means it's not just some natural disease called supernatural by people who couldn't have known better.
And Van Helsing is worried. First that he's just experiencing confirmation bias. He knows the old myths and so he's seeing them everywhere. That's why he keeps Seward in the dark, he's praying, hoping, begging for Seward, with eyes and mind untainted by visions of ancient monsters, to make some modern, rational diagnosis. Something that proves that Van Helsing is just a crazy old man. Because to Van Helsing being committed to an asylum for the rest of his days is preferable to the alternative, that the myth is true, the vampire is real, and true Evil walks unchallenged among men.
But day by day, hour by hour, the myth proves that, in spite of all logic and reason, it is real.
A fun but admittedly petty thing I do is when I see a post on social media where someone is saying “God bless Trump!! Pray for Trump!!”and suchlike, I comment, “Amen! Psalm 109:8-17!” And depending on the platform I’ll get likes/hearts/prayer hands emojis etc. but I’ve been doing this for months and so far no one has actually read the verse, I don’t think. Lol.
if you wiped every ICE agent off the face of the earth, a hundred million people would become safer overnight. if you wiped every furry off the face of the earth, the entire internet would collapse for good in a matter of hours. i know where my allegiances lie.
In time travel movies, when the time traveler asks 'What year is this?!?' they're always treated like they're being weird for asking.
When in reality, if you go 'What year is this?!?' people will just say '2024. Crazy huh.' and you go 'Wtf where has my youth gone.'
And if you ask 'And what month??' people won't judge you, they'll just go like 'SEPTEMBER!!! Can you believe it?!?!' and you go 'WHAT?!? Last time I checked we were in May?!?'
Stumbling into a diner and asking "What town is this" isn't weird, the workers will think you're on a road trip
If you ask them "Where's the nearest Nano Deck?" they'll assume it's a shop they've never heard of and say "Sorry, I don't know where any of those are"
Going into a store and telling a cashier "I need pods for my comm device" will just get you a "Never heard of those, maybe try Radio Shack?"
I think the problem is that people who create sci-fi movies have never had to work customer service jobs
if thought crime isn’t real then what about people that fantasize about doing nasty things to kids whether fictional or not?
How heinous it is to equate these two. Would you go up to a sexual abuse survivor and tell them that you understand exactly what they're going through, because someone you saw on the internet is a proshipper?
Do not dare to call yourself someone who cares about rape or abuse victims if you think actually experiencing incredible violence at the hands of someone who took advantage of your helplessness and/or trust is the same thing as a random person somewhere at some point thinking thoughts.
Do you also go to war victims who lost their homes, their families, their entire lives and say "yes I know what you're going through, I watched Avengers End Game and it made me sad."
I don't care what people are thinking. It doesn't affect me. It doesn't affect you. It doesn't affect actual children. It doesn't affect actual adults. It doesn't affect anyone except the assholes who spend all their time and energy being angry that someone out there might be thinking something instead of ever putting any of their energy or resources to use to make the world a safer place for literal abuse victims.
If someone can't understand the importance of the distinction between Reality and Not Reality, they have a substantially bigger problem than someone who has naughty thoughts sometimes :p
And before anyone says "But fiction can influence reality!"
Yeah, sure, an impactful story can affect a person, that is in fact what it means for a story to be "impactful", but it doesn't work the way the censorship fetishists seem to think it does. Let's take Doom, for example! Famously blamed for influencing the guys who did Columbine. Rob Lieberman's favorite punching bag.
Here's the thing: MILLIONS of people have played Doom, some of them (like me!) had cool enough parents that they got to play it as one of their very first computer games. And less than a percent of that many people have committed mass shootings in real life since Doom was released in 1993.
Fiction does not make people do horrible things. Undiagnosed, untreated, and unmanaged mental illnesses, horrific amounts of stress, and Being a Bad Person are the kinds of things that make people do horrible things. The people who say they did something horrible because of a video game or a book or a movie probably would have done something horrible at some point anyways, because...they were sick and didn't realize it and didn't have the resources to do anything to manage it.
Censorship isn't going to stop people from doing bad things, MENTAL HEALTH CARE will. Unfortunately, for reasons I cannot comprehend, some people feel much more comfortable fighting against "problematic media" than doing anything helpful for people who are suffering from unmanaged mental illness or whatever their personal problems are.
Everyone becomes so distracted by Zim’s age and what situations they are allowed to put him in that they miss the fascinating dynamic of an ageless character. Zim is both childlike and naive and trapped in a very dark adult world. Zim has done awful things that he does not fully grasp or understand much like I imagine child soldiers would do. Zim is consistently confronted with things he cannot comprehend and he is expected to act like an adult who knows what to do.
Within the Zim x dib ship, if and when dib grows up and how does that change his relationship with Zim? Does Zim feel like dib is leaving him behind? Does Zim grow up emotionally as well? Does dib realize that Zim’s immaturity seems off? Does dib realize Zim is a victim too? And if he does not realize any of this because remember, dib was not exactly raised in a house full of love, understanding, and emotional intelligence, does this newfound adulthood that dib has, fuck with his relationship to Zim?
Also the implications of this and how it relates to irk. What if Zim is a kid. What if all the irkens are kids or teenagers who don’t fully grasp the extent of the damage they have done. This idea of course loops in with the control brains having more power than initially believed by other aliens, and irkens themselves.
When you remove the morality contest from it all, you gain this wealth of interesting and thought provoking situations you can place characters in.
People may ask: why are you so obsessed with putting child/childlike characters in adult situations?
The answer people do not want to explore is that it is very relatable. Kids are forced into adult roles all the time and every day. They are forced to confront harsh truths, react to the dysfunctional adults around them. These kids grow up and think back on why that happened the way it did. Why did my mom take me to a bar? Why did my dad think it was okay to hit me? Why did my aunt abuse me?
These adults (such as myself) find problematic themes in fiction to be a way of exploring themselves. It can be cathartic, it can be challenging, it can even be weird and fucked up kinky. (Not in like a pedo way but idk if that makes sense)
Traumatized people will find themselves replaying the events that hurt them over and over and over again in their heads with questions like, why??????? How? And who tf thought this was appropriate????
What’s even more fucked up but also interesting that these kids who have been in adult situations will frequently grow up and end up feeling like children. Much like a certain ageless character I’ve been talking about.
It’s important to use common sense when identifying whether or not someone is making weird content to be weird or if there is a deeper meaning behind it. And obviously don’t engage with content you find upsetting.
OP is spitting hot facts, people need to be learning which kind of discomfort they're dealing with.
See, there are two kinds of "things that make me feel uncomfortable"
There's the kind where you already know that further examination is only going to make you feel worse and therefore it's in your best interest to avoid them. BUT it's dangerous to just dump everything you don't like into this category because that robs you of opportunities to introspect and grow as a person.
The other kind of "things that make me feel uncomfortable" are the things that-
grabs the reader's face in both hands and leans in really close so they can't tune me out because this is the really fucking important part
-YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT AND FIGURE OUT EXACTLY WHY THEY MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE.
I don't care if it seems obvious to you, almost everything seems obvious in your own head. You need to be critically examining your feelings about shit so you can recognize when you have a problem with something and when you are the problem. This is how people stop being homophobes or realize that the gender assigned to them is the wrong one or that the parent they've looked up to their whole life is actually maybe not the best role model.
Covering your eyes and ears and screaming "THAT MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE" is how you kill your own critical thinking ability and turn yourself into a puppet for people who want to exploit your morality to further their own agenda.
If you've done the examination and verified "Yes, this just hurts me and I understand why, I gain nothing by engaging with it" then that's fine, you have every right to avoid it as much as you for the sake of your mental health. BUT EVEN THEN, that doesn't give you any right to try to scrub that subject off the face of the creative community and make it impossible for anyone else to engage with it. What's best for your mental health isn't necessarily what's best for everyone else.
TL;DR: If you have really strong feelings about something and you have the time to do so, examine those feelings before you act on them. You'll save everyone in your life some grief and you might learn a valuable lesson about yourself. Controlling other people doesn't make the world a better place, developing yourself does. And you'd be surprised how useful "problematic" media is for self-examination.
(And to OP: sorry I pivoted hard from the Zim conversation, you were making very good points and it inspired me >.>)
i wanna note this isn’t about “queer media”, though undoubtedly queer people are overwhelmingly affected by this
this is about even the cishet kinksters who make a living out of this stuff, you do unfortunately need to care about games called shit like “succubus big sister booby blast”
