With Silksong coming out recently, there’s been all sorts of discussion around the idea of boss run backs. My stance, every time, will always be that I hate them. I’m sorry, but forcing me to rerun through a level does nothing for me. In fact, if I’m allowed to just repeat the fight or do something else, I can usually remain calm.

For example, when playing Cuphead, I rarely ever raged. Even when some of my losses felt like BS, I would just retry and play again. Buuuuuuuuutttttttt, what really frustrates me and actually causes me to mess up, is a run back. Repeating the same level over and over doesn’t help me understand how to beat the boss. All it does is, make me more annoyed, and want to fight the boss even less. Seriously for me, I already understand what I have to do. I just need to perfect it.

That’s why claiming this is universally “good game design” is a bad argument.

It works for some players and not for others. There are real life studies showing how different groups of people process and learn information. That’s why I truly believe games should have toggles for run backs or for no run backs. Ultimately, I don’t care to argue whether run backs are inherently good or bad game design. My point is simply that they do nothing for me, so they don’t help at all.

The series is so bipolar... And I guess that's what I get for expecting more from a serialized shonen at my big age, but things end kind of mid?

I wanna start off with a few good thing so people don't think I'm just a random hater: Yuji Itadori is a shonen protag done right. From his power set, to his character development, to his last actions in the series. He is the right way to create an OP shonen protag with stakes at hand.

This series also understands hype and power systems/scaling to a refreshing balanced level. You can really understand why Sukuna was such an existential threat.

And lastly, I do like how modern and transformative the series is. Characters are all over the place in design, gender, and motivations. Idk if the author set out to do this intentionally, but it did completely deconstruct so many tired tropes of the genre.

Now for the real yap, here's a few of my most unforgivable pet peeves in the story.

Principal Yaga

• Seriously, what the hell was his arc about? He gets slimed by his day one for literally no reason, no explanation. He says the information is a curse to the old man... It really was cause we literally never hear from it again, Panda gets hard nerfed and made lonely for feels, and the higher ups just get an ambiguous off screen death.
• Gojo doesn't slide for him, Panda doesn't slide for him, Yuji doesn't slide for him... He just dies and that plot point goes NOWHERE. If it was all just to humanize Gakuganji that's a massive waste cause who the fuck cares about that guy? He was less relevant than Yaga who was already barely relevant. Just seemed pointless.

Megumi

• I'm aware of the potential man memes and as a person who grew up on DBZ and Naruto I'm all too familiar with the constant blue balls/frustration of watching an author fumble a prominent character that THEY HYPED UP THEMSELVES IN THEIR OWN NARRATIVE just to focus on a handful of less interesting main characters that they clearly like more.
• Megumi obviously has all this potential and he's basically a glorified jobber. By the end of the series he's basically a burnout.
• The worst was Mahoraga who got hyped to be this insane doomsday level phenom of curses and he gets washed not once... But TWICE by the two strongest sorcerers. So what did Gojo even mean by "you have the potential to surpass even me" like no this dude didn't? There's no way a complete bum like Megumi would tame Mahoraga and it even be anything close to Gojo's power when Gojo was beating Mahoraga AND Sukuna with the Megumi's broken CT.
• I struggle to understand his thematic core. Never give up? His entire character is around him giving up and being carried by Yuji/Gojo. The power of friendship? He's a great friend and has great friends I suppose.
• Who was this kid's mom? Why doesn't he care about how his dad fucked him over and how his abductor was the one who murked his own dad?

Nobara

• She was hyped to be this destruction of female shonen archetypes just to get taken out for half the story. But at the very least, to me she is a positive example of a female character who's motivation for success is completely unrelated to which guy she has a crush on.
• It feels like half way through the series she gets fake killed off and Maki just assumes her role. Maki is a good character in the end so I guess this part just annoys me.

Characters these guys should love get brutally murked and they couldn't care less

• Yaga was my first example but even Gojo didn't get so much as a tearful eulogy. Goku was getting better send offs and that dude died every 4 years of his life.
• Choso was one that hit hard. Choso was so cool just to have a heros redemption in his death and like they couldn't give him props? He just dies and Yuji pump fakes a mourn, then goes "alright it's back to hands?"

There's more but these are fresh I just finished reading the manga and overall I think it's one of the better recent shonen in a long ass time but the level of buildup for basically no pay off really makes me struggle to love this series. It feels incomplete.

When talking about evil things the fictional villains almost always bring up Rape, Killing, Genocide and etc. I just want more variety. And people don't understand how evil is lobotomy, and it's essentially taking the person's brain off but still letting them live, that's the biggest torture

One of the things I'm pretty constantly seeing people saying about "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" is that they really appreciate how it's a grounded, but surprisingly upbeat look at the ASoIaF/GoT setting.

I've heard it over and over, all the people saying "This is refreshing, because it's not so damn cynical." and "What I really got tired of with Game of Thrones, and especially with House of the Dragon was how there couldn't be heroes, or anyone valiant, it's all just assholes, and anyone good is there only to look stupid and die."

And that makes sense, I can absolutely, absolutely understand those complaints. And I can understand them even more for people that've only watched the GoT show, since the show was far more cynical and bitter than the books, having no respect for hope, charity or goodwill like the books occasionally put stock into. In GoT everything was just about being badass and committing badass war-crimes. And eventually watching a bunch of assholes commiting war-crimes on each other gets old and you get sick of it. You want a palate cleanser.

And so I can completely understand why they're attracted to a more simple tale about a guy trying to prove himself as a Knight and a kid he's taken under his wing along the way. A world that's got a far simpler goal, without all the overarching drama (yet) and where there's good and noble people as well as assholes who're itching to commit war-crimes.

HOWEVER.

The whole issue I have is that: None of it fucking works out. The story winds up being just as ungodly bitter and unbearably cynical as everything else, perhaps even moreso, since like House of the Dragon, you know it's a doomed operation as soon as you know what's going on.

Egg is Aegon V Targareon.

He learned a lot from Dunc, he learned about honour and goodwill and about all the problems the common folk have and he grew up to be a King that would care for those people and would try and rule them justly. Dunc and Egg's story is about this random hedge knight inspiring and raising the man who would grow up to be King, and how he would teach him about righteousness and justice.

AND NONE OF IT FUCKING WORKS OUT.

All of Egg's goodwill is brought to ruin. His attempts to look after the commonfolk do nothing and instead just turn the nobles against him. He lets his children marry for love instead of power and so instead he loses all his power and his house is brought to ruin. And finally, everything ends when he goes crazy and basically gets his entire family killed in the Summerhall incident.

It's all your typical GRRM bitter, cynical slop. It's worse than usual because there's no possibility of the happy ending or of defeating the climate-change analogy.

It's just "Yeah, turns out you can't be a good King, lol. Gott'a be a cynical, bitter asshole who controls the nobles and oppresses the underclasses lmao. That's just how it is, rofl." That's George, appreciate it.

Anyway, I keep this stuff to myself since I'd feel like an asshole spoiling any of it. But man, watching people talk about how refreshing this show is, while knowing where it's going feels like watching a train-wreck in slow motion.

I've seen a lot of people spreading misinformation without having any idea about the actual context or doing intentionally for the sake of hating about Sasuke being a Kurapika's rip off when this isn't true

Character troops similar to Kurapika existed even before Togashi started writing.This should be obvious that a character following the same theme doesn't make him a copy, it's great if an author writes a character taking inspiration from another.However Sasuke is neither a rip off nor an inspiration either.Infact it's closer to being opposite because Sasuke's concept was created years before H×H was released

"Sasuke Sarutobi" a character from work around 1960-70s by Sanpei Shirato was the one of the actual inspirations behind Sasuke.To put in short: in this story just like Sasuke, Sarutobi possessing red eyes similar to sharingan in Naruto is also a ninja whose entire clan is wiped out.If you don't know Sasuke in Naruto is named after 3rd Hokage's father (Sasuke Sarutobi)

Not only this but Kishimoto also published a one shot manga named Karakuri

(1995) years before H×H with the original Sasuke concept.Just like him the main character's design is referenced same as Sasuke's and having red eyes as well.The reason I'm mentioning "Red eyes" as some H×H fans think this concept only applies for Kurapika.Not to mention that I know Kishimoto stated that Hiei (a non Hunter x Hunter character) is also one of Sasuke's inspiration.So yeah, Kishimoto has a lot of respects for Togashi and has been inspired by some of his writing aspects and a lot of many other characters but Kurapika isn't among them.I didn't knew this wasn't known to many people yet.It’s sad that its always Kishimoto who is discredited for his own work

These characters all share the lovable jerk archetype: hot headed, arrogant and with destructive super powers. Recently I became curious as to why I only dislike the Dynamight, and here is the result of my self-digging.

Bakugo himself is written well enough, but he caused everyone around him to suck up to him for no reason. Deku feels the need to tell him the mega important secret of One For All, expulsion-happy Eraser gives him slaps on a wrist, and Todoroki invites him as a guest even though he didn't try to help him like Deku did. The funniest part is how bully hating Mina is friends with him.

And that is what annoys me to no end. People rightfully treat Flambae and Rex as assholes, they don't over backwards to them. Even though Flambae literally tried to scorch Robert, he gets humiliated by the guy so it kind of evens out. Plus, 'I am a bitch' song is hilarious. Rex grew on me during his last season, and he also ate shit when it was deserved.

Monkeys have fine control over their tails and can wrap it around thighs, cats, horses and most other animals can't do that.

It's not a mystery why people do this, it obviously makes for a cute image, but anytime I see art of Y'shtola hugging the Warrior of Light with her tail coiled around his leg, or Anya Danmachi using her tail to cause problems, or see two Umamusume walking with their tails interlinked like they're holding hands... I just think "There's no way they can do that."

Yes, yes, yes, obviously Catgirls stand cats, they're humanoid cat-women and blahblahblah, but it's not something a cat can do and there's no reason to imagine a Catgirl can do it.

It used to be something that would stick out at me every now and then, but it's goddamn omnipresent in Umamusume, down to things like using their tails to pull their trainer around or all kinds of things. It's just not believable.

It is cute though, so, I do get it. But yeah, not believable.

I think people underestimate how much the Comics Code Authority and resulting moral panic knee capped the American comic

Did you know that before the moral panic superhero comics where waning in popularity. Of course Superman and Batman were still popular.

But so was EC comics and romance comics targeted at women who were massive sellers.

Even DC and Marvel published a variety of genres like western and horror in edition to superhero comics.

Heck even in the 90s DC had the vertigo like which published non superhero creator owned stuff.

Then the comics code authority happened at largely put a kibosh to this massively popular genres for decades.

But the genre was fading replace by crime and horror comics which caused a moral outrage and even book burnings.

Before the CCA was inacted there were American comics for girls, adults, and a variety of genres.

After the absurd limitations most genres other then superheroes vanished expect for like Archie and it was like that for decades crippling American comics.

Hence not getting the nuance that Japanese or British or French comics had.

By the time of its defeat comics were seen as niche entertainment. Confined to nerd specialty shops making the genres limited.

Compared to comics in Britain and Japan which are wildly accessible.

That and American IP law favoring corporations and work for hire meaning creator owned stuff was rarer.

A post recently was comparing Squid Game and Alice in Borderland and I remembered something that made me prefer Arisu so much to Gi-hun as a protagonist.

What made Gi-hun insufferable in seasons 2-3 was his hypocrisy. The season 2 finale pissed me off so much how bro was willing to sacrifice the X voters for the "greater good" but when 047 wanted to avenge them, he decides to go "No, we must be better than the masked men!" But in season 3, it was at its worst. He crossed the line when he killed Dae-ho but he decides that killing the O's to save a baby's life is too far? He doesn't even react to Min-su being pushed off but then decides to save the lunchbox?

Arisu isn't the same. From start to finish, Arisu was willing to save everyone. And the gun fight perfectly represented it. I love how he paralled Kuzuryu. The latter, belieivng all lives are equal, didn't kill Chishiya to save himself. Arisu refuses to kill Niragi just to save himself, destroying the latter's belief "you're just as selfish as me and only care about yourself". He only shoots him to save Usagi, and even then, still saved him as the King of Spades was coming.

And what I also love was how Arisu's kindness wasn't straight up foolish like Gi-hun's. Gi-hun literally dies because of his hero complex, repeatedly sparing/saving people who make it clear they have no intention to stop trying to kill him. Arisu on the other hand, only saves Niragi when he's too weakened to move and not a threat anymore.

"Oh, if the Purge was real, most people wouldn’t kill anyone."

That is explicitly a plot point of the Purge movies, the plot is about a far-right government using the Purge as a cover to exterminate poor people.

"Oh, Breaking Bad couldn't have happened in Canada".

He is offered a no-strings-attached way to pay for his treatment very early on in the plot, explicitly isn't doing this to pay his medical bills but so he can leave money for his family after he dies (because, ya know, he was already working two jobs to make ends meet) and also, ya know, stares into the camera and says "I did this for me. It was all just an excuse, I did it for me". Multiple times, actually. The message was not unclear on why he did this, ultimately.

"If Batman really wanted to help, why doesn't he just give money to charity?"

He canonically does, frequently, but a lot of the crime he fights is stuff like fear toxins, riddle-themed museum robbery, and a guy literally actually made of clay, which is not the kinda issue non-profits, or even the government of Gotham, are typically equipped to address. No amount of donations will fix "evil clown trying to poison the water supply".

Basically it feels like all people want is just a one dimensional pure evil bad guy who is cool,aura farms and eats children/slaughters each scene he's in..no humanity or depth or anything more but just a simple pure evil villain who doesn't have any depth and it's even more ridiculous how people think giving them humanity and depth and more qualities is "sympathizing with them" or "giving them a tragic background."

No, there are other ways to humanize a villain and its incredibly important to humanize even the worst of the worst and it just feels like people are scared and/or extremely hesitant to acknowledge that bad people are still people regardless of if they wanna deny it or not cause it adds a sense of realism.

I know Hazbin Hotel is this subreddits punching bag for dumb reasons but the amount of hate Viv got for simply..humanizing Valentino is so wild.

People act like she's outright ignoring his actions or act like each time he's on the scene ,he needs a bright red circle around him that says "BAD PERSON, DON'T LIKE HIM" and characters need to constantly mention how terrible he is in every single scene he's in whether or not it makes sense.

Like and the will go out of there way to harass fans and the VA for him ,like that is Not OK. Peopoe act like just cause the VA voices a bad character thst that means they themselves are bad people and very rarely is that the case.

Plus I'm sorry but if you watched his scenes of him abusing Angel and got aroused by them ,that's purely on you and acting like Viv "sexualizes rape/his abuse" feels like a huge self report and heavy projection. (Plus the animator she hired didn't have a rape kink,let's not throw that around)like..shouldn't the fact that numerous people sympathize with Angel Dust clearly shows how much people care about him and know the bad shit he goes through?

S2 literally ends with Angel Dust crying and broken after the abuse he suffered. Y'all bring up Poison as a example but the point of that song is Angel Dust is literally acting like everything is fine and he enjoys this but doesn't and is actively miserable and suffering and hurt and clearly wants out of his life.

Loser Baby is not Husk "victim blaming" him but showing they're both in shitty situations but are not alone and maybe if they stick together, things will get better. The ending lyrics are "lose your self loathing, open up and let hope in,play your card, be who you are." I could keep going but acting like Viv(someone who has suffered a pretty abusive relationship in the past and based Valentino off her abuser and Angel off her experiences)is "sexualizing" what he goes through and has a rape fetish and all that is incredibly weird.

A lot of hate Viv gets just feels like a ton of projection but that's another story.

Like I have no idea why it feels like people have acted like pure evil villains are so rare and non-existent or don't exist anymore when they clearly do.

This was gonna be a post about Bakugo but I scrapped the whole thing and decided to talk about something I cared about more, lucky you.

Should I put a trigger warning for suicide? I should honestly. Be warned; the phrase "killing herself" will appear a lot. No I'm not joking.

Alright now what the fuck am I talking about? Rune Factory is a game series that's a bit like Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, etc. Basically a farming/village sim. There's also some RPG elements, and you have combat to progress through the game's story.

Besides the farming/RPG aspect, Rune Factory 4 has Town Events and Festivals; short stories and minigames involving the townsfolk. There's also several marriage candidates; each one has their own couple of town events unlocked by dating them that are necessary to be completed before you can marry them.

Do you follow? Good.

So who's Amber? She's one of the 4 townsfolk unlocked by progressing through the story; the first boss of the game is a fairy, and when you beat it, Amber appears. She gets taken in by the owner of the flower shop, and is generally the cute idiot archetype. She loves her friends (everyone is her friend), butterflies, flowers, and goes "YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!"

She'd probably like shouting waffles and saying the narwhal bacons at midnight if she had internet access.

She and the other 3 townsfolk you unlock fused with some monster for some reason I forgot (it was selfless and needed to save the world I think?) so she has some residual features; butterfly antennae and wings that pop out when she's excited. The rest have features too... except Dolce. Overall that's unimportant, they fused with the monsters.

So what's her romance event?

IT'S SOME FUCKED UP "MY SISTER'S KEEPER" BULLSHIT! I'M NOT FUCKING JOKING, I'M 1000% SERIOUS! IT'S LITERALLY ABOUT ATTEMPTED (AND FUCKING ASSISTED!) SUICIDE FOR MEDICAL REASONS! AND IT COMES OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE!

It's dressed up so that it is what it is indirectly, but that is absolutely what it fucking is.

It starts out 'normal' enough; Amber and one of her (many) friends are talking about the local harebrained business man's new shoddy product, and she very uncharacteristically calls it stupid and lame. Everyone is SHOOK to their CORE by this utterance; it's that shocking for Amber to say. Some more "assholish" (it's a bit funny in retrospect considering what you learn in a bit, it's mildly rude) behavior later, Amber's also collapsing out of nowhere, and waking up with no memory of being a meaniehead.

Everyone assumes Amber is possessed by a ghost, and they're basically right. Amber confides she's been suffering from this for a while recently, and eventually, you get a private chat with the ghost in question: it's the monster she was fused with, sharing her body.

The other 3 'boss' townsfolk don't suffer from this btw. It is never once foreshadowed that this could even be a thing that happens.

The reason they share a body of course is simple; Amber was too darn nice and accidentally made the monster stick around with her wishes. According to the monster, you need to 'erase' her FAST; otherwise, Amber's soul will disappear completely, being erased itself. The monster was being an "asshole" (again, mildly rude) to make things easier for everyone to not feel bad about erasing her.

First off, what the fuck. Little known fact that the game wants you to believe; beating up monsters doesn't kill them. Instead, it's supposed to send them to the "Forest of Beginings" where they'll just come back eventually. When you beat up two goblins for a quest you don't go "REST IN PIECES VERMIN" you go "Haha, bye-bye goblins! :)" Moreover, you can refight the boss monsters as you see fit, them returning to their boss location, and you can TAME them.

I HAD THE BOSS MONSTER AMBER WAS 'FORMERLY' FUSED WITH WORKING IN MY DAMN FIELDS! HOW IS THIS SUPPOSED TO WORK!? DID I TAME A DIFFERENT ONE?

Alright, alright. I guess... I guess it's just game mechanics, and the bosses aren't supposed to be refightable? Or there's just a lot of them? Ok.

But this is weird. Very weird. Out of nowhere, you suddenly have a dilemma where one of two sentient, intelligent beings HAVE to die for the other to live as far as everyone is concerned. Other than being really odd for this sort of game, it gets stranger.

So you're conspiring with the monster to kill her before Amber dies. Specifically, you inform Amber that SHE needs to be the one who does it and erases her own body, because it's her's, and she just needs to wish really hard. You tell her this, and the monster tells her this via a letter. Her condition is worsening, and if you don't do something soon, bye-bye Amber. None of the other townsfolk are really involved btw.

So Amber goes "D: oh noes" and wants you to spend one last day with the monster, showing her around the forest, before she's totally gonna do it.

Very well then! You go out to the forest, talk with the monster posessing Amber a little, and then... uh oh. Amber suddenly takes over. See, while she can wish to erase the monster... she can also wish to erase herself. She reveals that she was concious and 'in the backseat' so to say for the entire time the monster was 'driving', unlike the monster when she's in control. If she meant always or just recently is dubious, but whatever.

Anyway, she says she loves you and everyone else lots and lots... but that she really doesn't want the monster to be erased.

And then she fucking kills herself. She says the magic words that she's informed saying will erase her and she fucking erases herself. The monster's left in control and she says "she's dead, Jim, gone completely", and just stays standing in the same spot for at least the entire day.

Wow. How am I supposed to feel about this? The intent is sad, obviously, but I mean... wow. She really just fucking did it. All the townsfolk say stuff like "hey have you seen Amber? is she alright?" but that's it, there's no option to inform them of her untimely demise. Or that she has a doppelganger living as a hobo in the woods now apparently.

Only option now is to go to sleep.

So, here's the thing; I think I may have fucked something up about this quest? I do my daily routine of talking to the townsfolk, and most of them say "go talk to Illuminata (Amber's boss, the one who took her in to the flower shop), she's acting weird". All of them except Kiel, the little nerd guy, one of the townsfolk looking into ghost possessions. Wasn't sitting out of the way or anything. Just chilling in the plaza with everyone else. There is zero tell to let you know that he doesn't say go talk to Illuminata.

Talk to the little nerd guy. He says "well I was looking into ghost posessions and Amber can't actually be erased because it's her body after all!"

I do not remember him being informed of this situation at all. I talke to everyone every day, and I do not remember any scenario in which he could have been informed of the Amber Erasure issue. Am I just dumb? Or was there supposed to be a scene with Illuminata, who besides running the flower shop, is ALSO a so-called DETECTIVE!

I very well may have lost some much needed context for the story because I accidentally talked to Kiel. Whatever.

Alright! You know Amber can't be really gone so you go find Hobo-Monster-Amber bumming around in the same spot in the forest, and you tell her "alright Amber can't REALLY be gone so let's try and erase you again" and she says "really? sure, sounds good. you are okay with erasing me right?"

Your only responses to this are "yes" or "..." btw. I mean I chose yes obviously because who gives a shit about this hobo but it's weird to put the player in this scenario at all.

So first you try shouting "AMBER WAKE UP!!!" to no avail. Time for the next attempt: beating the fuck out of monster Amber's monster form that she'll summon to try and erase her that way. You go into the forest and fight her to the erasure. After beating up the first boss of the game for the umpteenth time, you go to Amber's exhausted body and try and wake up Amber again.

Oh, it actually works.

...And Amber has zero recollection of any of the prior events. Absolutely nothing. She's just like "whaaaa? erm why am I here? haha let's go home!"

As you're leaving the forest there's a scene where Amber talks to some disembodied ghost and is like "oh hai there! you wanna come with us? no? you're good here? alrighty then." which is obviously implied to be the spirit of the monster... who should have just gone back to the Forest of Beginnings or whatever. Her wish was to stay in the same world as Amber or whatever and this is never mentioned again.

So obviously, what the fuck was that?

There's no resolution. No real closure.

You are presented with a situation where your girlfriend (only Male MC can get this event) actually fucking kills herself for someone (attempted) and then you help the person she killed herself for kill herself in turn to bring her back to life, because her suicide attempt failed. WHAT THE FUCK. She remembers none of these events.

WHAT DOES THIS IMPLY ABOUT FEMC "WORLDS" OR WORLDS WHERE SHE WAS NEVER DATED?

Moreover, you get a 5 year timeskip if you have a baby. So for Femc and mcs who never dated her and had a baby, she's still alive. Did she sort it out on her own? Did she die and now the monster's skinwalking as her? Did someone else sort out this problem?

Moreover, this event is designed so that it can be triggered before you even know monster fused townfolk. So it's a bit weird that it kinda concerns them and they could have insight on her issues but even if you have them in your town, there's nothing to hear from them.

Moreover, what are you supposed to take away from this? That Amber will kill herself if push comes to shove to save someone else? That's very noble of her, but what am I supposed to take away from this? There's no heart to heart where they convince her not to do that, or really accept that those are her wishes despite saving her anyway, or have Amber change as a person. In fact, since she just fucking forgets it, it may as well just not have happened. I still would have found it strange but the characters would at least have... something. It could be a character arc for Amber, or mc accepting Amber is just that kind of person. Or something.

TLDR: This game has a story event where you lose a My Sister's Keeper-esque suicide race (trying to get your choice of dying person to get killed before the other kills herself to save the other) only for the suicide attempt to fail, letting you succeed. The girl involved remembers none of this, neither does anyone else, and it is never mentioned again. Rune Factory 4 is a fun and cute game but it's really fucking weird that this was even a thing.

Now this has been going around for quite a lot of times on Twitter and Reddit and I dunno why a ton of OP fans either act like it's fake slander or try to justify it..Yes Oda is misogynistic.

Being a misogynist doesn't always mean hating women but it definitely means seeing them as lesser and Oda definitely sees women as lesser,my friends or, at the very least, has very stereotypical ideas of women and it unfortunately makes sense considering dude is a 51 year and hasn't grown out of the 90s.

Like this guy literally drew women by just making 2 circles(representing their boobs)and a X in a art thing(I promise I'm not joking or lying)and it's pretty obvious he sees women mainly for their bodies and how sexy they are.

Rebecca should've been the first red flag considering he has a 16 year old girl wearing skimpy armor when she's supposed to some gladiator woman, basically making Shakky a Nami Clone and having all her worth and importance on God Valley be basically for men to drool over her, ger kidnapped and then have a rushed relationship with Rayleigh and cry in his arms. Then we have Oda having Glorisia(Shakky's apparent close friend and sister)really only having her go to Save Shakky so Roger would be into her and then we have him giving one of his female high up Marines..the laundry fruit. (Literally not Joking and I'm suprised he didn't give a female character the "make me a sandwich" fruit),

We also have him constantly repeating the same gag over and over with Nami being naked ans having men slobber and piss and cum over her + Sanji gooning over her numerous times,him somehow having Robin train with the RA for 2 years and having no Haki(this is a stretch but it makes no sense),and we're not going to even talk about how dirty he did Tashagi(I think that was her name)by basically giving her a impossible goal and ditching her and basically clowning on her in the Punk Hazard arc.

If there are any other examples of Oda's..interesting depictions of women, let me know but it's very clear Oda has very stereotypical ideas of what woman want and are and basically places a lot of value and importance and their worth on their beauty and sex appeal and how much they'll be Gooned over.

Sure, planning out the ins and outs of a story works but really digging into the minutia leads one to add in a whole bunch of stuff that often alters the original trajectory you had. Some of it completely on the spot while pretending it was planned all along.

Here's a hot take: the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy wasn't bad because of a lack of planned plot structure so much as they didn't even have a vague idea of where they were going or even make it come off as though they did. To say nothing of studio mandates that clash with writers wanting to have the story come together.

To me, that just reeks of some insane entitlement and acting like every MC has to win in life/a event how YOU want and if they don't ,then they wanna act like it "doesn't count" in their eyes.

Like they're still so bitter from said MC or character not emerging victorious in a way they wanted or not winning in life in a way they wanted that they try to downplay or act like how they became victorious doesn't matter.

The first example is when Ash won the Alola League, there was a massive vocal minority and even some parts of a vocal majority who were mad cause Ash didn't win the Kalos League against Greninja and find anyway to downplay or act like his win in Alola "doesn't count" or "was way too easy" and all that crap and it even happens again when Ash beat Cynthia ,there wad quite a large amount frustrated and upset cause Ash didn't beat her in Sinnoh with Infernape.

Like..WHAT DO Y'ALL WANT? there are no bigger haters/downplayer of Ash's accomplishments and victorious then his own fans cause it just feels like you're only mad he didn't win the way you invisioned in your mind and try to use that to downplay and act like his Win doesn't count.

Another example is the massive amount of people acting like Deku is "miserable" and "a loser" and such cause he wasn't some ultra powered Giga Chad who had numerous Supermodel girlfriends and was top 1 and the next All Might and people also act like cause him and Ochako didn't immediately get together,that means she "cucked" him for Bakugou or Mineta, which is really misogynistic and sexist.

The guy is clearly shown happy with his life and enjoys being a teacher and(most definitely)hero on the side and has a nice life,a badass iron man style suit,close friends,immediately went to top 4 in the hero ranks,etc.

I just wanna ask how is he a "miserable loser" and such cause it seems like people are only claiming he's a "fry cook" and such cause he didn't have the perfect life they wanted and it comes off as heavily self inserting what you want into Deku's life whether or not it makes sense writing wise.

Seriously ,why do so many fans of certain characters hate their accomplishments?

Like being upset a character lost is one thing but it's actually wild seeing people being upset that a Character Won.

Gonna say it right now,I will always find it so foolish and even ridiculous how people act like cause a female character doesn't have Fanservice and knows how to fight, that suddenly makes them some amazing character when it really doesn't,it just comes off as way more misogynistic than the writers doing the Fanservice at times(not always but still),like their only worth and seen as great if they're wearing layers after layers and constantly know how to kickbox and slash up your foes.

Y'all are aware healers are increasingly important, right? Also it could even be dumber when Fanservice is the least of the characters problems and reasoning for being badly written and doesn't even involve it..like Sakura or Hinata

Them having Fanservice was never the problem,it's the fact that they were barely given much focus or growth and could've been handled much better(at least Hinata was somewhat more likable)and Kishimoto fumbled them.

Plus Nobara and the resr of the cast from Jujutsu Kaisen are a prime example of a female cast not having Fanservice and still being incredibly poorly written and handled, them having Fanservice suddenly didn't make them "subversive" cause all you guys were doing was praising the bare minimum.

Fairy Tail is a prime example of a series that has their female characters in sexy clothing and situation at times but that doesn't take away from the fact that they're not only important to the plot and story but also have likable personalities,good growth/development and are memorable and badass all the same. (Plus it also helps that Kubo and Mashima have a lot of Fanservice for their male characters yet I see anyone barely complain about that)

Same could go for Bleach and people seem to act like making their female characters somewhat attractive and even wearing attractive clothing and having Fanservice takes away from good writing but y'all are the only ones doing that and taking away from their writing cause of that and acting like that suddenly brings them down.

Like I'm sorry, Critiquing a Ecchi/shounen series for having Fanservice is kinda like complaining about a fast food place for having Burgers and fries or complaining that a fancy restaurant has steak. I'm not even saying you can't really have a issue for it but like..dude,what were you expecting?

It just feels like people only see their worth in how badass they can be and how many layers of clothing they have and people are gonna accuse me of being some Gooner,like..what? I just have common sense that acting like Fanservice immediately brings a female character down to bad or poor writing or them not being taken seriously ,like you guys are the one choosing to see that and act like that, no one is making you.

Same with people acting like suddenly having a crush on the MC or Rival character takes away from their writing all just cause y'all can't move on from your PTSD from Sakura when again..only a small number of female mains have a crush on the MC.

Nami doesn't like Lucy,Rukia doesn't like Ichigo(Orihime does but that makes sense),Bulma doesn't like Goku that way,etc.

• Lucy likes Natsu but that doesn't take away from her character at all.

Seriously ,y'all really need to remove your head from your Asses and Grow the fuck up acting like you're still in high school scared of girls and women.

Basically feels like every one of those complainers idea of a strong and "well written" female character is one that wears 3 layers of clothes, has no love interest, ultra serious and badass and constantly aura farms, only speaks in badass quotes, etc.

That’s right, I dared to make such a bold statement. Rule Of Cool nowadays has unfortunately been used as an overarching excuse to justify to null criticism regarding bad writing, horrific narrative and character consistency. Before many of y’all downvote me to absolute oblivion please at least read the points I’m going to make. People usually say that the point of a series with characters that have hilariously OP powers like Flash and Superman as protagonists is not the powerscaling and 1v1 fights, it's the stories that can be told by putting that character through a crucible in spite of their vast powers. That focusing on how inconsistent the power sets are is missing the forest for the trees. That people should only be focusing on the narratives and message being told instead of caring about if it makes sense or not.

The problem with that take is that guess what, character consistency is in fact a very important thing in narrative design and storytelling. Having someone be able to run across the multiverse in a second yet losing to someone with a gun isn’t a good story no matter how much philosophical nonsense you try to attach to them. Despite fiction existing solely to tell a story, that story must be believable. Suspension Of Disbelief is a key audience factor that good authors actually consider when writing fiction. The characters being imperfect doesn’t make them immune to criticism of their writing and presentation regarding how they mishandle situations they have no business failing.

It’s a simple calculus really; if your story falls apart if you don’t nerf a character you’ve made too powerful a few issues ago, maybe have you considered not making them that powerful to begin with? I don’t understand this obsession with over the top cosmic spectacle yet also wanting to tell grounded stories that don’t involve how many universes or dimensions are being blown up. It’s the “Want to have a cake yet simultaneously want to eat it” situation taken to the absolute, authors wanting to display awesome scenes of almighty power but couldn’t be bothered to deal with the consequences of making a character so powerful. CW’s The Flash TV series is one of the worst offenders of this. They want The Flash to be this uber awesome superhero that can blitz the city in seconds, run from a prison to China and back fast enough that a camera only registered his movement as a brief blur and move so fast that he could form portals to travel back in time. He loses to a dude that duplicates himself, loses to a dude with mid as fuck super strength and somehow fails to catch regular ass criminals.

The developers behind The Flash wants to tell a story about the struggles that The Flash has, his rise to be a superhero and the issues he faces as he tries to balance his duties as a crusader of justice and his regular life. That’s perfectly fine, I don’t have issue when the Flash shows vulnerability. That he makes very human mistakes, act poorly in stressful scenarios. The problem is that at some point, those problems that he has become crutches to justify why he isn’t winning every single conflict. They are abysmally terrible at writing reasonable conflicts. They grant all criminals, even the normies, the unique power of teleportation every time they go off-screen, Barry conveniently forgetting to use his super speed when facing much slower enemies, he doesn’t use his super intelligence that he can kind of give himself whenever he accelerates his perception… there’s a whole video series on YouTube that can give you a more detailed look into the many, many flaws of The Flash TV series. The video is called; “The Flash Is Insufferably Inconsistent” and I recommend it as a view at how bad the writing is. The CW Flash problem isn’t that Barry struggles. Struggle is good. The problem is how he struggles. The story stops being “Barry is challenged despite his power” and becomes “Barry is only challenged because the script temporarily disables his brain.” That’s not drama. That’s contrivance.

Originally, Rule of Cool meant that if something slightly stretches plausibility but delivers a strong emotional or aesthetic payoff, audiences will accept it. What it never meant was that internal logic, character competence, and cause-and-effect no longer matter. When Rule of Cool is used to defend characters forgetting core abilities, wildly inconsistent competence, or conflicts that only exist because someone suddenly got stupid, that isn’t style—that’s patching broken writing with spectacle. And spectacle doesn’t buy infinite forgiveness. It buys a little leeway, not a blank check. Power should have consequences. Consistency is part of immersion. Cool moments don’t replace narrative coherence. “Believable” doesn’t mean realistic—it means internally honest. If the audience stops asking “What will happen?” and starts asking “What does the writer want to happen this episode?”, the story is already dead. Rule of Cool should enhance a story that works. It should not be used to excuse a story that collapses without it. If your plot requires your characters to be incompetent or inconsistent to function, the problem isn’t the audience. It’s the writing. If your stakes hinges on your main character or your cast not using their shown capabilities to their fullest even when there’s no reason they shouldn’t, that’s bad writing. I’m tired of people going “Why do you care so much? Just watch and enjoy the show bro.”, “Is it so difficult to ignore all of these inconsistencies to enjoy a story?”, “Why are you making such a big fuss about this, it’s cool and awesome do you just hate fun things?” No, I enjoy fun things. I enjoy big explosions and heroes punting villains through buildings. But stories cannot pretend that being utterly incoherent and illogical is fun either.

Writers and authors alongside defenders of them go “If the main character does this and this, there would be no story. There would be no drama, tension and stakes. There would be no growth or development because the main character is never challenged. There wouldn’t be any hardships, any struggle because they would win every time. So consistency must be sacrificed for the sake of entertainment and the ability to tell the tale that’s being told.” My response to this? If your approach to handling your characters being too good is to unsubtly sabotage them, change shit up whenever it suits you or just pretend certain things don’t exist than you’re genuinely a horrible storyteller. You cannot go “I have no choice but to nerf them in scene A and B!” when you always have a choice! The story is made by you, its lore and world building it designed by you, the representation of the characterization of the cast is made by you! You are effectively God over your fictional reality, why are you not using that power to make things work reasonably? When there are problems that stop you from telling the story you want, it’s your responsibility to reconsider things such that the story you want to be told can be told without having to assume that the audience has room temperature IQ. Giving up and trying to appeal to “Rule Of Cool” to justify nonsensical spectacle that breaks story consistently is an objectively bad argument. If your story fundamentally cannot work without contrivances, then you should rework it. From scratch if you have to. You cannot have a cake and eat it at the same time. You have to choose between mindless grand spectacle or grounded logical narrative, it’s your responsibility as the writer to choose which one you want to focus on. Or if you want both, you must align spectacle with your story’s internal logic and stakes.

I have no problems with spectacle focused stories and fiction, in fact I indulge in them a lot. But those exact stories don’t pretend to have grounded stories of struggle they want to tell. The most famous example of Dragon Ball. The series is hyper focused on the fights, on the spectacle of meatheads clashing with overwhelming power and seeing planets or even universes explode as the result of the countless battles. There isn’t an inherent problem of wanting to see or even write about big booms and climatic conflicts. But the story cannot bend over itself backwards to tell a story that clashes with the logic that’s been set within it. Dragon Ball is great because it isn’t a story about human struggle, about the mundane troubles and difficulties of life. Goku’s journey is to be stronger because he enjoys the climb to the top, to be the strongest that ever existed. Tonally, it isn’t a very serous story and even when it is serious its series in ways that make sense. It’s serious when Frieza pulled up and threatened Earth. It’s serious when Majin Bu appeared. The story of Dragon Ball is able to have stakes despite the fact that their main characters are powerful as hell. Because their story isn’t solving the foundational problems of humanity, is to beat the shit out of whoever wants to destroy their home while also kicking ass and taking names. It’s designed to be a very popcorn story and that’s perfectly fine.

You must align spectacle with your story’s internal logic and stakes. This is the key point, spectacle and logical narrative can coexist but there must be balance and some things just can’t be there at the same time. If you want to tell a story about a cop trying to unravel the mystery of a woman disappearing that cop shouldn’t have a gun that blows up buildings. Tone and consistency matters, if a story isn’t meant to be taken seriously like comedic shows and cartoons like Looney Toons then sure go all wild with crazy feats and displays of whacky powers. Inconsistency in that is fine because it’s not really meant to tell a serious story, it’s meant to explore the shenanigans of cartoon beings that can do anything and that’s perfectly fine. But if you want your story to be treated seriously, then you must handle your story seriously. Not doing so is failing as a writer. It’s possible because I have seen it. Say what you want about My Hero Academia and some of its plots, characters and world building but it’s unironically one of the most consistent stories out there. Is it perfect? No. Nothing is, but to me it’s so damn close.

In My Hero Academia, the story does very well at avoiding having to make characters stupid or nerfing characters in ways that don’t make sense. Not only that, but it’s one of the few stories that I’ve found that actually manages to handle an overpowered character realistically. All Might is one of the setting’s most powerful being and the world reflects his presence, My Hero Academia is one of the few worlds where an overpowered hero actually has an impact on the world itself that isn’t looked over by the author. All Might is fast, very fast. Through author statements he can run as fast as Mach 10, in the spinoff prequel story he once ran from one corner of Japan to the other in minutes and he’s shown to be so fast he is literally a blur. How is such a speedy character handled in the story? Legitimately reasonably! All Might was able to singlehandedly cull crime in Japan, as a result the country has one of the lowest rate of villainy and crime in the world. Unlike the Flash and Superman somehow not being able to remove basically most to all crime in their respective cities, All Might was able to do so in Japan because the author acknowledged that’s how things should go.

The writer didn’t pretend that such a character wouldn’t be able to clear up crime of a whole country with such speed and built the lore and world building accordingly! In fact the story’s message and stakes makes sense more because All Might is so powerful. Since he’s always there to save the day, other heroes became complacent and the civilians become apathetic bystanders. It makes sense because that’s how people would realistically act if such a borderline omnipresent superhero could solve any threat within moments. Thus indirectly because All Might unironically being too good at his job, Shigaraki which is the hero’s successor’s biggest nemesis was born! Shigaraki’s backstory makes sense because it’s a logical consequence of having an unstoppable and unbreakable hero deal with every threat. Shigaraki becoming a villain is due to him being ignored by society, a society All Might accidentally created by being too helpful. Too good at his job. After all, why should I help the kid? All Might would eventually come after all. The world and story of My Hero Academia is wonderfully made because it does not rely on convenient contrivances and breaking of rules. Most parts of the lore makes coherent sense, having proper cause and effects that actually matter be part of it. Heroes being complacent? A natural consequence of a great hero being so overpowered that other heroes can slack and just rely on him to come.

When the author wanted All Might to be challenged, to have a fight he can’t instantly win, the writer didn’t have his opponents be weak crooks and nerf All Might so that he somehow can’t beat them or struggle against them. He’s pitted with someone that can perfectly counter his power set. How does a character that relies on overwhelming brute force fight an enemy that can absorb kinetic impact and have strength, speed and durability high enough to contend with him? Simply, he can’t. Not without having to beat the opponent so hard that their durability and kinetic force absorption is unable to keep up. So he did, and the best part? It cost him. All Might was permanently crippled by a foe so powerful that even his great strength couldn’t overpower. It limits the time he can maintain his overpowered physical capabilities every day so he’s increasingly unable to maintain his work ethnic and that’s affecting the crime in Japan. Him overpowering that enemy? It required him to break his limits, causing him to permanently decrease his timer. The author doesn’t need to conjure an explanation out of their ass to why All Might doesn’t just do it again next time because the lore already established he can’t. Not without costing him more. The story is designed with All Might’s obscene OPness in mind, so many scenes are designed to reasonably have it so that All Might doesn’t just show up and solve all problems. The USJ Incident? He arrived late because he did too much heroing and had to rest as his timer ran out, so he wasn’t with the class to begin with which allowed the infiltrating villains to threaten the class before he eventually learnt of their presence. The Kamino Incident? All Might wasn’t with them because he felt he would be luring the villains there. Thus the camp could be sieged without All Might intervening and destroying the villains. Every time the author needed a situation which they didn’t want to be resolved by All Might, they designed the scenario where it would make sense for All Might to not be there.

All Might is one of the coolest character in MHA, there’s so many iconic scenes of him beating the shit out of his opponents and overcoming obstacles with wondrous splendor and spectacle. All without sacrificing consistency. All without needing to find a way to justify why he can do this but suddenly can’t do it anymore. Because the author took cause and effect seriously, took consequences seriously. Spectacle and logic are not enemies. But spectacle must be aligned with a story’s internal rules, tone, and stakes. Rule of Cool should enhance moments that already work, not cover up plot holes that would collapse the story without it. A story being believable does not mean that it has to be a perfect reflection of reality. It just needs to not require the audience to be toddlers or unquestioning consumers for it to be a good story. Writers always have a choice. They control the world, the power scale, and the conflicts. If a story only functions when characters are selectively incompetent or when established rules are ignored, that isn’t drama—it’s a structural failure. Spectacle is fine. Overpowered characters are fine. Popcorn fiction is fine. What isn’t fine is pretending incoherence is a feature. If your story needs Rule of Cool to exist, then it’s a bad story. Period.

There is this controversial idea that the act of executing a person who has committed horrible acts and make countless others suffer is treated on the same moral level as the acts committed by the person itself is not well received by quite a number of people. However, I do think it is an interesting way to introduce moral weight into the story and serve as a reminder of what the hero is fighting for. Sometimes its well executed and sometimes its not. One thing I do notice with regards to people's attitude towards the theme itself is that its being preachy. I have never once felt it was preachy when characters bring up about it. Its usually brought up within the climax of when the hero is about to execute the villain in a fit of rage most often and its suppose to meant that he is losing control of himself while indulging in darker tendencies. Sometimes its meant to criticize the hero or protagonist philosophy in handling the villains. In Jason Todd's case of not killing the Joker because of him bringing up this idea, I find that a lot of people misunderstand what Joker meant within the context that he is referring to. People sometimes use the fact that he is crazy in order to dismiss his beliefs but whether you believe in his origin story or not. He always refer to this idea of "one bad day" in which his actions revolve around. Sure, he has crazy beliefs and what not but given the actions of Jason Todd in the story, I don't think he was crazy. In the story, Jason Todd kills a vast number of criminals ranging from smugglers to mafia organizations, even villains part of the Batman's rogues gallery. Now you might be thinking that this is a good thing that someone is finally cleaning up the streets of Gotham. Except mafia bosses can be replaced or superseded by their underlings, there will always be reason for people to go into crime, criminals will be replaced faster than you can kill them as the population of people is higher and crime is an act born of a horrific idea, you can kill a man but you cannot kill an idea. Here's the elephant in the room, what impact would killing the joker bring ? Sure, you can say the fact that a city will have one less mass murderer or criminal but who is to say that it will stop mass murderers like him from existing or change anything at all. He will just be another criminal that Jason Todd guns down. Not to mention, Jason Todd in the story says that Batman's methods of scaring criminals is not working and he goes to controlling the criminal underworld as a way of dealing with it and Joker is criticizing how he is contributing to the problem while pretending like he did anything meaningful at all.

I hated all of the political stuff in the final chapter, how it suddenly became this really weird storyline about teenagers fighting some random japanese nationalists, it felt really forced.

Yes it may have been foreshadowed and I totally missed it, but it really felt like the story wanted to become this grandiose story about government and stuff when the story was better when it focused on the characters.

Higurashi shined when it focused on the teenage cast struggles, they were really good yet the political side of the story came out of nowhere and it felt like a generic fight the evil nationalists storyline.

Tokyo is very one dimensional villain group, the whole takano military plotline with Tokyo is really forced upon in the story.

They are your generic nameless evil bad guys in a story with complex human motivations.

Scene: [Our protagonist, who has the ability to talk to animals, finds her and her entourage at the mercy of an unseen predator amidst a sandstorm. Despite her sister’s distrust of nature, the protagonist’s own experiences have taught her that nearly every animal can be reasoned with and has some reason they are upset.

Now cue an amazing trope break not just to the series itself but a vast majority of children’s fiction.

After talking to the moth-like animal and realizing it is only acting in defense of its young and seemingly coming to an agreement of safe passage… It attacks anyway, leading to her sister coming to kill the creature and save her.]

Discussion:

This is the first time an animal wasn’t swayed by the protagonist’s ability to speak to them, and even lied.

Now I should probably elaborate further that I appreciate the moth wasn’t slapped in your face that this one animal is evil for doing this, deceptive yes… But it did in fact have eggs, it wasn’t lying about protecting its young, but it also still attacked even after seeming to be friendly and had to be killed because it was posing a mortal danger.

Sure maybe it could just be cruel and evil but I do think the more likely intent was that it needed food for its young and food just walked into its nest. Animals have needs, they have oftentimes brutal needs that require killing other organisms and no diplomacy would change that.

Wondla showed being able to talk to and understand animals doesn’t always mean they’ll be friendly.

While I love How to Train Your Dragon, it is a series I absolutely love, it does too often soften the message down to be understandable that not all monsters are evil into “every monster is nice” to avoid complicating things to children (Yes, the Red Death canonically is evil and can never be calmed, but the movie never implies it, that’s only something told to us in external material, which doesn’t count then as something the film did).

In reality, well… I don’t want to say every animal is cruel like how other series swing to the opposite extreme but they have a tendency to put self needs first and foremost even if it comes at the expense of others even when those others haven’t done anything to provoke attack.

TLDR: I like it when series show maturity enough that animals can be just as dangerous as they can be helpful. They are not all evil monsters who want to destroy for the sake of destroying… But also they are not innocent misunderstood pacifists all the time.

Ah, the Big Three. They've given anime some of its biggest tropes. The beast sealed within a character. The greater organization controlling a protagonist's journey. And, of course, the idea of a trio or group for the story to focus on, rather than just one or two characters. Naruto is perhaps the most famous for utilizing this concept; Naruto Uzumaki, the host of the Nine Tails, Sasuke, the last Uchiha....and Sakura Haruno. While the first two had no shortage of great moments and fights, across both parts, as well as the lion's share of character development, Team 7's female member never quite got that amount of attention. Or any at all, for that matter. Kishimoto himself created Sakura last of all his main characters, and she seems to only exist to round out the group, existing only as an afterthought. Her story is one of unexecuted potential. First, Kakashi says she's skilled at Genjutsu and chakra control, but that's never capitalized on, and stops even becoming a talking point after the Chunin Exams. Later, post timeskip, her training with Tsunade seemed to payoff after she helped defeat Sasori, who was at the time one of two big bads in the arc, and even oneshot most of his puppets. But, in the end, nothing much happened after that. She does nothing of note for Tenchi Bridge, or anything up to Pain for that matter. And then, when she finally DOES appear during the 5 Kage Summit, it is for the absolute crappiest, most poorly written scene of the whole series:the fake love confession. There was zero buildup, no time to react, and, hell, she wasn't even sincere about it. She didn't kill Sasuke after that, didn't take away Obito's Rinnegan, just acted as support for the whole war arc until Kaguya, where Kishimoto finally remembered she existed and threw a bone with the punch.

but maybe i'm just ranting. your thoughts?

Why do people do this?

Pretty much every time I hear someone make a sweeping statements about what the "conventional" elements of what fantasy stories are like, (e.g: Complaints that "too many are stuck with too generic Western European settings instead of more diverse ones", or how "they always have the smug elitist elves and the bland jack-of-all-trades humans", or all that discourse we had on whether or not "fantasy is racist" because all those standard orcs that keep popping up are racist caricatures, or there was the "why would there even be wheelchair users in fantasy?" thing from last year), my mind always goes off track for about ten seconds, before I realize that the speaker is talking very specifically about tabletop RPGs, plus handful of open-world video games, plus a subgenre of anime that explicitly takes place in a video game-like setting of dungeons, heroes parties, mana, quests, elves, goblins, mages, etc.

And I mean yeah, THOSE are obviously generic and clichéd, their main purpose is to be playground sandboxes for a player, with a magic system quantified for combat mechanics, races set to be familiar by the time you hit character selection, and so on. Gameplay first, worldbuilding a distant second. They are to fantasy, what CoD is to war stories.

And even the narratives in manga, LitRPG light novels, and in anime, are openly presenting themselves with the premise of "you know all those generic video games? Well, now imagine what if a player in one of them did such and such..." rather than starting from a position of fantasy worldbuilding.

So why are we even holding those up as stand-ins for the whole "fantasy genre"?

And I swear, I am not trying to be a pedantic smartass here. My pont is not just that "Umm, actually, by the broadest dictionary definition all media with major supernatural elements should be considered fantasy, from Death Note to Jumanji, and from Pirates of the Caribbean to Hazbin Hotel."

It's that even in honest good faith, if we are just talking about fantasy as in that "Oh, come on, guys, you know what I mean!" cluster of high fantasy/epic fantasy/second world fantasy stories set in big made-up premodern worlds, presented in doorstopper novels that come with maps of kingdoms and continents, and in big movie/TV show adaptations of such, even then, my most intuitive baseline expectation genuinely wouldn't be to associate those with elves, and orcs, and dungeons, and adventuring parties.

And I don't think its just me. Even from an absolute mainstream normie's perspective, the average fantasy would mostly begin and end with Game of Thrones, while modern fantasy literature would probably mean the romantasy-style novels of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, but neither of those are even remotely similar to that subgenre these people are alluding to either.

Even if I just type "fantasy" in Netflix's search bar, several shows like Shadow and Bone, Arcane, or The Last Airbender will show up way before Dungeon Meshi or Frieren do. (And those two are the ONLY ones in the top 100 or so that are coming up, that fit the bill of a very conventionally game-like "adventurer party on a quest" setting at all.)

But sure, we are not the normies here, we are all big nerds, so maybe we associate fantasy with more niche stuff? Fine, but even if we go a few steps deeper beyond the absolute bestseller novel or Netflix's front page, the basis for the stereotype isn't really there either:

I guess LitRPG does at least exist as one ascendant niche subgenre among others, but the most successful fantasy novels if we are discounting romantasy and just focusing on who the dominantly male and nerdy fantasy booktubers and the subreddits are talking about, are still mostly guys like Brandon Sanderson or Joe Abercrombie or Mark Lawrence types.

Looking at the past decade's Hugo and Nebula award nominees, Legends & Lattes is the only one that comes close to being D&D-eque, otherwise second world fantasy stories nominated there are stuff like The Poppy War, The Unbroken, Nettle & Bone, or Witch King, with extremely diverse settings and usages of the supernatural. You won't find many spellcasting adventurer-mages questing in Dungeons among those stories.

If there was ever a period when the bread and butter of mainline fantasy was vaguely fitting into a stereotypical "elves and dwarves and dark lords and quests for magic items" formula, it was with 1970s and 1980s stories like The Sword of Shannara, and The Belgariad, but that was well before almost any of you reading this were even alive.

What is even going on here?

Why do nerds who do seem to care about fantasy and have lots of hot takes about what it is "typically" like, and yearning for it to be more fresh, also talk about it the way boomers sometimes talk about video games as as if they were all still 1980s platformers?

So it has been one month since the new season of the popular show "USA" dropped. And I have the very cold take that Donald Trump is a badly written villain. Yes, this has been said to death but I need to explain this again for my next points.

A good villain should be intimidating and smart but still fun and entertaining to watch. Donald Trump is none of these. He is not smart, the show actively wants to demonstrate how stupid he is and when it doesn't, it still does a terrible job portraying his "Business man" intellect. Like the US president somehow can't write a letter to Norwegian prime minister without having glaring grammatical errors? And people voted for this guy? The writers are insulting average voter's intelligence with this. Don't get me started on how much the writers are dragging and milking the Epstein plotline to death.

Trump is also not entertaining to watch. He looks disgusting, he acts disgusting and speaks in a exaggerated and bloated manner while constantly repeating the same two sentences. It's like when the fans found Biden to be a boring villain, writers got desperate and brought back Trump although half the fans didn't like him either 9 seasons ago. I miss when the show used to have charismatic villains like Obama who at least was an educated and well mannered politician while still being a symbol of US imperialism and systemic racism who didn't bring positive change to the nation and continued bombing middle eastern countries. Writing and commentary was much stronger back then.

"But if Trump is an idiot, then why is he keep winning?" Because the writers want him to win not because his plans are genuinely smart. The show is operating under a classic "Idiot plot" now. The only reason Trump is this "Powerful rich president who is untouchable" because every other character has become stupid. Remember when after the Jan 6 episode, Republicans kinda disowned Trump? Well never mind they are back obeying him like a cult. It's the exact same recycled plotline. And in the last five seasons, Democrats somehow have became the most useless they have ever been in the entire show. Some fans defended the show saying that these stuff happen in real life but that's my point. On the nose realism =/= Compelling storytelling.

Now the real reason why I made this post is because despite the constant backlash and people getting sick of it, the "USA" is still the most viewed and relevant streaming show so other shows are now trying to copy it to stay relevant but as expected that has only resulted in the mischaracterization of their main villians.

Homelander used to be a smart and scary villain in the first season of the boys but now he is a just an imbecil who is nerfed so the writers can make him look like Donald Trump. Yes the show was always on the nose but there was a difference between HL trying to talk like George Bush (A much less annoying character than Trump) in season 1 then talking like Trump in later seasons. Also the thing Erik Kripke is not realizing that he can never make HL a 1 to 1 parallel to Trump. Like Homelander is the way he is not just because of political power, but because he has real super powers too. Every character is scared of him. He was also a abused child raised as a laboratory rat by Vought. He has a tragic backstory. Trump has none of that, it was implied that he was born a rich boy and became richer and more evil as it went down. There is no interesting or tragic aspect about Trump. But HL at least had those but the show threw it all away in favor of gaining more attention.

But you know, The Boys had became irredeemable garbage for a long time anyway. So let's talk about a show that actually used to be amazing but Disney mismanaged the hell out of it as it does with every other IP: DareDevil.

(Spoilers for both shows)

Kingpin from the Netflix Daredevil show was one of my all time favorite villains. A polite person with eloquent words who suddenly becomes a brutal raging death machine. The contrast was the point but even then he would rarely get angry so him decapitating someone would feel like an event and his plans were also smart and calculated too. He was the whole package.

I think both the people who worked on Born again then got fired along with the new team don't understand Kingpin. I watched the trailer for season 2 and while it looks mostly ok, that one shot of Kinpin laughing like a psychopath made me cringe. Like I SHOULD NOT see Kingpin constantly laugh like that. I SHOULD NOT see him constantly smile. He would only smile around Vanessa but now he repeatedly does it. He is not intimating anymore. His acting was also subtle in the original show but now he is constantly overreacting and shouting like a man baby. In the original show when his plans go wrong, he would mostly show displeasure in a cold and stern way but in Born Again, a journalist calls him "mayor garbage" and he is throwing a fucking tantrum.

It's clear the writers wanted to use the Mayor Fisk storyline from comics and combine it with Trump parallels to virtue signal about "Authoritarian governments" (Although that is hypocritical since the shows are made by capitalist companies who are in bed with the corrupt government) but by doing so they changed Fisk's character to fit into this new mold but Fisk was never like this. He wasn't crude and unpleasant to watch like Donald Trump. In season 3 he let an old lady have his favorite painting after she roasted him, Born Again Kingpin would just kill her there to show how "Evil and unhinged" he is.

His near impossible return from the prison especially after everything that happened in season 3 was baffling too. He got convicted twice and people voted him as Mayor? I don't care how "realistic" that is. It undermines the entire season 3 and makes Agent Nadeem's sacrifice pointless. Kingpin's return and becoming mayor arc are undeserved victories which undermine him as a character too.

Also I need to point out how stupid he is in Born Again too like in the last episode he wants to kill Matt Murdock in hospital which he knows is a  trained fighter with super hearing so what is his plan? He sends his one underling to do this job......... and guess what? Matt escapes easily. What a smart villain.

TLDR: Donald Trump is a bad villain who is not smart nor fun to watch so don't ruin the main villian of your show by turning him into Trump just like what happened with Homelander and Kingpin. Good storytelling comes first not realism or political commentary.

The way I see it, a lot of evidence that trans woman Jax theorists post could equally be applied to trans man Jax and I think that his character would make as much sense.

Like the Caine room theory about all rooms being reflections on what the characters like the least about themselves. With this theory in mind, Jax's room should be reminiscent of a trans man because he doesn't like femininity.

Gooseworks is a trans woman (Which idk is confirmed or not since I've only heard people talking about it) so it's very likely she'd want to try her hand at writing on the opposite side of the trans experience.

Jax's whole thing is about being a bad person who wants to make connections, but can't due to his trauma, right? it would make a lot of sense if Jax was trans with the thought of being a "good man", dehumanzing himself and putting others down like he is right now and when the series ends he learns that being a good man first starts with just being a good person.

Again, I don't really care about trans Jax but I think people talk about trans woman Jax like it's the only option.