#starbtag

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

while i understand that people are trying to fight back against a certain brand of fan entitlement when they say 'you can't possibly know someone's characters better than they do, they're the one who made them! if they say it's in-character for them to do that then it is,' it's one of those things i think is unhelpful to use as a blanket statement because a) it stifles important discussion, and b) outside of one very specific definition you could use, among multiple perfectly legitimate framings through which to examine art, it just straight up is not true. many such cases

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

it is both hilarious and deeply validating to me, in the face of fandom's tendency these days to concern-troll about how discussing things you don't like is ✨️self-harm,✨️ that like. a few months ago i started measuring my HRV and heartrate every day, for reasons unrelated to fandom, and lo and behold they have both not been in great shape, because i am very ill and under huge amounts of physical and mental stress.

(for those who don't know, HRV stands for heartrate variability, and refers to how quickly and efficiently your nervous system is able to signal your heart to speed up or slow down in response to stimuli. a lower HRV than usual means your body is struggling to pump the brakes and slow your heart down after a round of exertion is over or a stressor is gone; it's impacted by/an indicator of heart problems, acute illness, PEM crashes, anxiety, PTSD, lack of sleep, etc. and it's a good idea to keep an eye on it if you can.)

.....and recently i noticed. that i was starting to get better scores than i have been for a while.

like 'within the last week or so' recently. as in, after i took the plunge and started talking publicly and at length about starb, with an eye toward nuance and articulating what about it was so upsetting and how that differs from good-faith portrayals etc etc.

and after looking back over my records, i realized that every day i have done that--even with other major stressors still going on in my life, in the background!--my HRV has SPIKED, and my baseline heartrate has been like 10-20bpm lower than usual. we're talking levels of improvement on par with, or surpassing, factors like 'hydrating really really well' or 'getting enough sleep.' that is INSANE.

it's almost.... and hear me out here..... it's almost like hiding and repressing your feelings for the sake of ~building a positive environment~ is really really fucking bad for you. it's almost like it has an actual measurable lifespan-altering impact on your health, and insisting people cause themselves lasting harm to make your fandom experience more comfortable and convenient instead of having good-faith discussions about how to share your spaces is selfish, inconsiderate, and cruel.

anyway tl;dr i have a doctor's note that says i need to bitch about fictional media to live or my heart will wear itself out by the time i turn 30, shut up about self-harm and own the fact that what you're really complaining about is decorum and your own comfort.

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think one of the things that makes me feel so simultaneously saddened and rubbed the wrong way by how starb handles its continuity is that like. there are so many things about it that have what i can only describe as the air of Playing Toys. in ways that would be anywhere from 'mildly annoying, but harmless' to 'a necessary aspect of the medium' to 'actively part of the fun,' if they were being done with honesty in the right context and good faith.

(in particular i am reminded of the kind of grace and leeway you need to be willing to give the continuity of, say, a tabletop session/campaign, and the magic that happens when you strike the right balance of working with what you've got vs retconning or moving away from what doesn't work.)

but with starb they AREN'T being done in good faith, and they AREN'T an unavoidable necessary evil of the game's medium, and they AREN'T being honest about the fact that that's the approach they're taking.

starb isn't going 'hey so we're trying to find our footing here, and we might change things up a little if something fun occurs to us or we realize we fumbled the direction we were going, bear with us. :)' it's trying to pretend the things it retcons were The Plan All Along, either as a way to discredit criticism of its previous writing (see: 'noooooo you've got it all wrong that bit wasn't about hating jews, it was about hating capitalism!'), or warping the symbols it's using to obfuscate the nature of the commentary it's making on them (see: the constant, CONSTANT bait-and-switch between symbols of oppressors and symbols of the oppressed, in the style of 'actually the homeless guy this cop beat up was ELON MUSK IN DISGUISE planning to SIPHON ALL THE JOBS OUT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD, and the cop is Akshully a saint and tireless champion of queer and worker's rights who spends all his time off the clock running a soup kitchen, and he turns off his bodycam before beating up homeless people because he respects their digital privacy. bet you feel like a real idiot right now for jumping to conclusions instead of waiting for the information you didn't have (because i just now made it up to run PR for cops) uwu').

like. i cannot express how much this game's view of its ideal good-faith audience is 'gullible moron who will eat slop out of my hand and fawn over me for it.' it is a wildly insulting game that is oozing condescension out of every pore, and it tries to punish you for not being the gullible idiot it wants you to be by doing things that are actively designed to undermine your faith in your own judgment--make you look and feel stupid and hysterical--for not giving it the benefit of the doubt. it is one of THE most unpleasant fucking experiences i have EVER had playing a videogame and i hate that it weaponizes one of the basic pillars of multiple art forms i love, Playing Toys with Loose Continuity, to be like that

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

'just this once, rose, everybody lives!' except it's 'just this once, rose, everybody unanimously hates the writer's pet who exists to be a vehicle for horrid opinions about real world issues, despite the writers' desperate and disingenuous attempts to run PR for them!'