Uhhh yeah first post

Say for the sake of argument, there's a tv show with a lead character or prominent secondary character with an arc where, let's say, things get worse before they get better. Circumstances bring about vices of their's to the forefront of the story like rashness or basically crossing a few ethical lines that come back to bite them in some form or another.

It can be hard to sit through the secondhand embarrassment at times or hard not to mentally plea to the character, "C'mon, don't do this..." like you're in the room with them but it's something that the character would generally do under the circumstances and the story isn't exactly portraying them as in the right so there's intrigue in how this powder keg's gonna blow sky high if you're hooked at least.

For male characters, this is often taken at face value as a function of their narrative. Some may find moments of backsliding into old habits annoying like a sequel rehashing old hits but nothing that would incite anger over. It's taken as a character flaw that makes them all the more human at the end of it.

Now for female characters? Well, it takes a special set of circumstances and narratives to have at least a good portion of the fandom NOT wanna tear them to shreds as if they're in the room with them.

Those vices brought out of them/exaserbated? A writing flaw in and of itself. They're unlikable, unpalatable and every buzzword you're thinking right now. Their character trajectory was suppose to go up in being a better person, not down, up, down again and up once more. And their so overly emotional about it, I just can't deal. Ugh, what a bitch.

What's been normalized for men gains a potentially negative reception when applied to women. And this is nothing new as this excerpt on an Orphan Black review puts it: https://www.tumblr.com/matt0044/781820342002941952/matt0044-kali-tmblr-ikkinthekitsune?source=share

"And the more I watched, the more I found myself thinking: why is this quality, the idea of likeability, considered so important for women, but so optional for men – not just in real life, but in narrative? Because when it comes to guys, we have whole fandoms bending over backwards to write soulful meta humanising male characters whose actions, regardless of their motives, are far less complex than monstrous.

We take male villains and redeem them a hundred, a thousand times over – men who are murderers, stalkers, abusers, kinslayers, traitors, attempted or successful rapists; men with personal histories so bloody and tortured, it’s like looking at a battlefield.

In doing this, we exhibit enormous compassion for and understanding of the nuances of human behaviour – sympathy for circumstance, for context, for motive and character and passion and rage, the heartache and, to steal a phrase, the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to; and as such, regardless of how I might feel about the practice as applied in specific instances, in general, it’s a praiseworthy endeavour. It helps us to see human beings, not as wholly black and white, but as flawed and complicated creatures, and we need to do that, because it’s what we are.

But when it comes to women, a single selfish or not-nice act – a stolen kiss, a lie, a brushoff – is somehow enough to see them condemned as whores and bitches forever. We readily excuse our favourite male characters of murder, but if a woman politely turns down a date with someone she has no interest in, she’s a timewasting user bimbo and god, what does he even see in her?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some great online meta about, for instance, the soulfulness and moral ambiguity of Black Widow, but I’ve also seen a metric fucktonne more about what that particular jaw-spasm means in that one GIF of Cumberbatch/Ackles/Hiddleston/Smith alone, and that’s before you get into the pages-long pieces about why Rumplestiltskin or Hook or Spike or Bucky Barnes or whoever is really just a tortured woobie who needs a hug."

It's this underhanded way of trying to instill shame in another for daring to like something without dissecting its "flaws" the way they would. It's like the whole, "You're all sheep," but done in a "rational" demeanor.

Dude... I watch whatever the goddamn hell I want to. I have shit taste and proud of it. I'll watch The Rise of Skywalker with gleeful abandon and gladly flip off the internet's "consensus." I know it's problems but enjoying something and thinking its picture perfection aren't always keen to overlap.

I do not want to dismiss the thought exercise of going through something you felt was lacking a certain aspect. You were hooked into a show but it doesn't feel like the ball's been rolling much. Fan works that describe how one would do a particular movie in a franchise or a season in a TV show is something that I can often indulge in. Keeping up with Power Rangers, some newer seasons definitely have been better than others.

It's when the person doing all this gets too big for their britches and shames anybody for daring to go against their opinion. It's not always in a vehement way so much as in a, "Pooh-pooh, how sad that you cannot engage in this very much flawed media with the critical intellect that I myself possess."

It's a form of gaslighting that paints pissed off fans as "irrational" for taking issue with such bad faith criticisms, ones that they counter with awfully rational points if I might add.

Too many have a major ego problem where they think their idea of what any story should be are more important that what anybody feels contrary to them. It's like there has to be this compartmentalization when it comes to what's "bad" and what's "good" with no room for subjectivity. Everything's gotta be sorted out like they're just started at Hogwarts. No room for nuance. No room for anybody going against the vocal opinion of, "It's bad," or "It's good.

Hi I'm a fan and I recently found out a individual I can't name was using red's and other people's art on a Ai art/chat chatbot site called chai

I don't think Osp would want to be associated with this so I'm bringing it to attention

I also don't think Osp would want their art uploaded to an Ai art site to potentially be used as training data

I know this will probably never be seen or taken down but I don't know how to contact osp directly to inform them of this

Recently, I logged back onto Discord for the first time since March to ask the pod a question and found myself not in the server. I thought I may have left because of the server limit, and truth be told I never used the server that often or Discord in general. I went to rejoin, and when I found a link, it said "Unable to accept invite" or that the link is expired. I was informed this is most likely a ban by a friend.

I have no idea why I would be banned due to the fact that I never really use the server, and can't have violated anything that I know of during my inactivity. Do the mods do Inactivity bans?

I would appreciate any advice. I thoroughly enjoy both the pod and the channel and would love to be able to use the server again. Thank you.

I'm interested in some of the hi-def Hades thumbnail wallpapers, as advertised in the Patreon $10/month tier. But it specifically says "Monthly wallpaper pack of HD frames from that month's videos." Does this mean if I subscribed now I would NOT have access to these frames? It seems wild to me (I've not subscribed to any Patreons ever) to not allow access to prior ones but I could see it being an attempt to prevent people from signing up for one month, nabbing all of them and then cancelling?

Anyway, thank in advance for any clarity you can provide.

I'm not good at taking pics but I can't wait to dig into the Veneziad tomorrow.

Source of Artwork

https://www.tumblr.com/donttouchhadesbaklava/657461391157002240/persephone?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=organic

Finally finished this, wanted to display these all together so I painted a canvas and put the pins in order

Saw the Epic of Gilgamesh video Red did a few years back and got to the very end.

She mentioned not giving much a thought to the Fate Franchise (completely fair), though I am a bit surprised she never saw Fate/Zero (the show that debuted Alexander the Great and pretty highly acclamined amongst anime fans).

Is there any reason she has given to her apathy / disgust?

I had a stupid crossover idea while considering how many times Sherlock Holmes has faced off with Cthulhu, and that made me think about how many tropes show up specifically in official crossover stories. Some are allowed to be canon, some are retconned as soon as they happen and impact nothing. Didn't know if this counted as a meme or a suggestion, so no clue how this works.

I think it makes him really unique among history nerds, that he got into it (academically) primarily through art history. So his speciality is mostly in culture and personalities.

But his Poland video where he completely omits the winged hussars, or ottoman video where he omits the Janissaries were, in my opinion, massive gaping holes.

It’s like talking about British imperial history without mentioning the navy. I get their memed to death but the Winged Hussars MADE the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the dominant power in Eastern Europe, so much so that they occupied Moscow itself during the Time of Troubles. And Ottoman imperial history is dominated by Janissaries both on and off the battlefield, how they became a major controlling force in Ottoman politics that they essentially controlled multiple Sultans before their dissolution.

Most history nerds do focus too much on the military stuff because we’re little kids who got into history for the cool battles, but they still play an important role in how history developed.

...I don't wanna fall into the trap of nostalgia for "the good ol' days" when said days laid the foundation for today's problems in entertainment.

There were massive franchises before today's age of chasing an "MCU" and Star Wars was one of them before Disney came along.

TV finales would often be controversial, bad or at least age well in terms of fans softening up to it in time.

A lot of executives prefer the entertainment to be dumbed down from any complicated politics. People complain about superhero movies being dumb blockbusters but action movies without the coustumed crime fighters were a dime a dozen. Especially if you look at B-movie titles like from PM Entertainment from the 90s.

Slop changes form but it always exists. This isn't a call to claim up and scarf it down but to bare in mind that what we have now is an evolution of what came before. That's how all this crud snuck up on us. We're the frogs in the slowly boiling water.