Author: vohalika

I don’t even go here. I know, like, broad strokes over overwatch lore, have been playing the game for… three months or so, am very bad at everything, but something bothered me so much yesterday that I’m… meta’ing. Do you even do that around here?

Anyway, so, that D.Va animated short finally happened. And I loved it. But the youtube comment section sure didn’t. Which, you know, is normal, and to be expected, because I guess gamer bros are everywhere and they don’t get any more pleasant. So yeah, the short mostly showed us D.Va’s job as established so far, and yes, the guy got a bit too much spotlight for my taste. So the roughly 50% comments focusing on the guy and how we all lost another brother to the friendzone were to be expected and just worthy of rolling your eyes at, maybe.

But then people tried to rationalize their dislike. There’s nothing new in the short, D.Va has no depth or development, is a total Mary Sue because she can fix her own mech, the writing was bad and everything was sooo clichéd.

Which. I mean. You can think that. But then, when someone asked OP to name a short that ISN’T clichéd or badly written, OP named… Dragons. And. Whaaaaat.

So maybe it’s my anime background, or the above average amount of other Japanese media I have consumed over my life, but like. No. There is nothing not clichéd about two yakuza ninja brothers feuding, trying to kill each other, and one being burdened by the guilt over it and the other finding spiritual enlightenment. Well, okay, the fact that Genji was turned into a cyborg is somewhat unique to the franchise, and maybe this combination of tropes hasn’t been done quiiiite the same way before. But individually, all of these elements are… The most stereotypical kind of Japanese story you could tell a Western audience without getting into NSFW territory, and slapping a cool story about brother dragons on top of it doesn’t exactly help.

Also, I got every bit of information contained in dragons – sans the wallscroll brother dragons legend, maybe – from the game itself, too. Was the background of the Shimada brothers just not revealed when the short premiered? Remember, I’ve been in this for like 3 months. I know the basics. That’s it. But that short in particular didn’t feel like it told me anything that wasn’t available in in-game dialogue and the small blurps next to the skins in the hero gallery.

So compared to that, I feel like Shooting Star told and showed us A LOT that was not available in the game before. The MEKA squad and D.Va’s friend notwithstanding. Is D.Mon her sister, or is that just a thing they do?

Anyway, the short also established that D.Va has friends, a background with racing futuristic tech before getting her mecha, what the MEKA organization actually looks like, how current-day (…I think?) omnic attacks look, and, oh, yeah, that the MEKA squad is as much a combat unit as it is a propaganda tool to keep the public calm and that D.Va has PTSD from her work, and that her entire attitude? “Are you sure life is not a game” and so on? An act. She actually has more depth to her than being a gimmicky hot girl in a mech to appeal to the Korean fanbase.

(Someone in the comment section argued that one flashback doesn’t
mean she has PTSD but like. Dude. 7 minute short. Visual shorthand.
Every frame put in there on purpose. Things mean things.)

Like, this short kind of turned everything we knew about her upside down, didn’t it? Pretty much every quip she makes in game? Holy coping mechanisms batman. Assuming, of course, there is some sort of consistent long game going on and her dialogue was written with these motivations on the writers’ minds. And again, I am too new around here to know whether that’s how this entire shebang works or not. From what I hear, consistency is not exactly a thing between shorts and heroes and in-game information, and a lot of people are upset about that time everyone thought Mercy turned Reaper into Reaper and that it turned out to actually have been Moira and oh no how can they. So maybe this is one of those cases, maybe it isn’t.

(For the record, from what I got out of the voice lines and stuff, my take-away was that Mercy probably tried to save him after he blew up but didn’t make it/didn’t want to go there, and then Moira was like “fine, then I’ll just finish what you started” and, like, finished the job.)

(I mean can we talk about how Mercy’s and Reaper’s halloween skins reference each other?)

I mean, as mentioned before, gamer bros are everywhere and will always be rather unpleasant about these things. I’m sure the comment section on Mei’s animated short looks even worse. This just for some reason really bothered me, so yay, venting.

livingdeadpoetssociety:

livingdeadpoetssociety:

The best line in Lilo and Stitch is, “No! Don’t touch that! It’s from my blue period!”

Like not only is Lilo familiar with goddamn Picasso despite being maybe 8, but she’s made enough serious art of her own that she can divide it into similar periods.

Lilo is a goddamn prodigy. She is an eccentric genius on par with Tesla or Van Gogh.

Like those pictures she took were both dismissals of beauty standards (she mostly photographed fat people who were not conventionally attractive and she referred to them in awe as beautiful) and subversions of the dehumanization tourists subjected her to as a native Hawaiian (she photographed tourists like they were simply part of the landscape, just as they did to her).

This little girl understands art better than me.

peristeronicsuperhero:

trainthief:

me, circa early 1800s, paying a stable boy a few coppers to ride overnight to deliver you an urgent letter with a thick wax seal that after you struggle to break it just says “bitch!” in tiny little writing 

no no no, you don’t understand the true level of spiteful here. The sender of a letter didn’t pay for the post in 1800. The receiver did. You just made your enemy pay for the privilege of being insulted.

hiranyaksha:

Parents Picking Their Child’s Name: Eh, I like the way it sounds. Sure.

Writers Picking Their Character’s Names: What genre is it? How old are they? Active or passive? Blood type? Country of origin? Is it a family name? What does the name mean? Is it pretentious? Is it not pretentious enough? Can it be used as a metaphor? What position was the planet to the stars at the exact moment of their birth? Is the name gay enough?

salt-of-the-ao3:

whenas-in-silks:

mehay1:

mikkeneko:

starspangledsteve:

but like who started the idea that fanfiction writers are somehow bothered by enthusiasm for their work???? cause i see posts all the time like “do writers really want to talk with us about their fics? Do writers really want long comments? I dont want to bother them” and i just think its absolutely ridiculous????

ofc i want to talk to you about it, and would love to hear you go on about it. i took time out of my real life to write this stuff down so we could all share these characters!!! the idea that you’re bothering a fanfiction writer, a fellow nerd, is absolutely crazy

Personally I attribute at least part of this to the shift of fandom onto Tumblr platform. Because of the way Tumblr works, multiple replies and reactions can get cluttered and overwhelming really fast, so leaving replies and feedback can be awkward. I have actually seen ‘tumblr etiquette’ posts going around scolding people for adding commentary onto posts when they reblog it! Actually discouraging  people from reacting and adding their own words!  If any of this attitude spills over onto fanfic posts and reblogs, no wonder readers are shy about adding their own words to an author’s posts.

Dear fans on tumblr: 

WE, THE AUTHORS, REALLY WANT TO HEAR YOUR COMMENTS. 

As a writer, I second this, call the motion, get a unanimous response from all writers and it’s carried.  To be clear, there’s pretty much nothing worse than feeling like you’re writing into a vacuum or black hole where no one reads your stuff and nothing much better than a long enthusiastic commentary about what a person liked and why and could they ask a question and maybe discuss a perspective – and I’ve made a LOT of GREAT friends all around the world that started out just like this, with a comment on a story.  If you don’t want to reblog, then send a note or an ask to the writer to share your comments.  We live for these kinds of comments, this feedback that what we wrote touched someone.  Tell us we made you laugh or cry and we’ll be thrilled and forever grateful.  But if leaving a long comment is too much, takes too much time, a simple ‘I really liked this,’ or ‘thanks for writing this’ is also treasured.   

I also think part of the hesitation comes from the massive stigma the outside world places on fannish enthusiasm. Readers are hesitant to talk to creators because they’re afraid of being seen as overenthusiastic or somehow weird.

I noticed this when I started writing and getting comments  like “not to be weird but I love this”  or “I didn’t comment on the other works in this series because I didn’t want to seem creepy,” and I realized that readers were intimidated by me. ME. HAVE YOU EVEN SEEN ME. But it’s exactly the way I’ve felt with authors whose works I admired.

So let me say this loud and clear:

AUTHORS ARE FANS TOO.

ARTISTS ARE FANS TOO.

ALL FAN CREATORS ARE FANS TOO.

We are the LAST people in the world to judge you for how or how much you like something and the first to understand and appreciate your enthusiasm. Because the way you love things? That’s the way we love things too. And if the things you love are the things we made, that is the greatest compliment in the world.

❤