(Thread IKs:
Nuns with Guns)
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The Chad Jihad posted:You're right, Hades is coded as a 40 year old but is actually several thousand years old, and Persephone is literally just 19. I apologize for missing this important nuance But without that lovestory we would not have Winter!
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Jul 10, 2022 15:25
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| # ? May 31, 2024 03:00 |
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Let's be real, any adaptation that romanticizes a piece of mythology literally referred throughout antiquity as "The Rape of Persephone" is gonna suffer a bit from p̸̰̭̲͈͋̿́r̵̨̛͝͠͝ǫ̸͙̞̬́̅̓̈́b̷̤͠͝͝͝l̶͓̠͋͋ȇ̵͉̭̈͒̃m̵͕͛͛̂̚a̵̟̫͓̿͜͠t̶̗̪̀̔͠i̵̪̙̇͌c̵͙̍̉ ̸͖̯̲̒͒̑ì̴̬͙͍̼̒͂m̸͓̑̎́̕p̷̳̑̔ḻ̵̛̤͕̽̍͘i̵̢̙͉͎͊́̔c̷̱͇͖̝͋à̶̻̻̻̻̃̈t̴͍̬̀̉ĭ̴̢̞̝̞͠õ̸̠̫̚͝n̴̨̞̰̱̈́̾̌̈́s̷̥̐ but also like.............Who cares. Again, replace vampires with gods in this context: It's a fake story about fake things. At absolute worst it just ends up being standard bodice-ripper erotica trope where the power imbalance is supposed to be the draw, your rich older boss man sweeping your innocent helpless virginal self off your feet is supposed to be the fantasy. As long as people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality -- and literal decades of study have all concluded that most people can apparently do this -- honestly who cares?
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Jul 10, 2022 15:27
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I don't think it's, like, pro-grooming or whatever, I think it's just lovely writing that takes a tragic myth and makes it uwu cute for tumblr soft people to gush over and it's kinda weird how in doing that the writer chose to make Hades some weird older man when in the myth it really wasn't a factor.
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Jul 10, 2022 15:37
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Kaiser Mazoku posted:Megatokyo has the strange honor in my mind of being something I've been aware of for most of my life but know absolutely nothing about beyond the title and maybe one cardboard display in a Border's. Same. Even when it was “popular”, I never made the effort to read it or understand it. It was just on some weird permanent parallel track that I never bothered to try and jump to. Probably because it was written in l33tsp3@k for most of its early run because the author was kind a twat like that and even back when I was a teenager I despised that stupid twee bullshit.
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Jul 10, 2022 15:38
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BrianWilly posted:Let's be real, any adaptation that romanticizes a piece of mythology literally referred throughout antiquity as "The Rape of Persephone" is gonna suffer a bit from p̸̰̭̲͈͋̿́r̵̨̛͝͠͝ǫ̸͙̞̬́̅̓̈́b̷̤͠͝͝͝l̶͓̠͋͋ȇ̵͉̭̈͒̃m̵͕͛͛̂̚a̵̟̫͓̿͜͠t̶̗̪̀̔͠i̵̪̙̇͌c̵͙̍̉ ̸͖̯̲̒͒̑ì̴̬͙͍̼̒͂m̸͓̑̎́̕p̷̳̑̔ḻ̵̛̤͕̽̍͘i̵̢̙͉͎͊́̔c̷̱͇͖̝͋à̶̻̻̻̻̃̈t̴͍̬̀̉ĭ̴̢̞̝̞͠õ̸̠̫̚͝n̴̨̞̰̱̈́̾̌̈́s̷̥̐ but also like.............Who cares. Again, replace vampires with gods in this context: Rape in that sense refers to the abduction. It's an older form of the word, see also The Rape of the Lock
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Jul 10, 2022 15:46
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BrianWilly posted:As long as people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality -- and literal decades of study have all concluded that most people can apparently do this -- honestly who cares? the main issue is that while yes, most people CAN distinguish fiction from reality, that doesn't necessarily change the fact that there are still in turn some people who CAN'T (usually, but not always, pre-teens/teens who are still developing their sense of what's acceptable and what isn't), and if you're not careful with how your media portrays content like this it can be (and IS) used to groom people by being pointed to and going 'see, this thing is really popular and it contains that kind of thing, it's not as bad as you thought!'. Making content and putting it out into the world means you accept that your work will then be used in ways you can't really control, for better or for worse, and it feels sometimes that creators just are not interested in even acknowledging that they could be contributing to that kind of thing. (again. not even stopping the creation of said stuff, but at least going 'hm i should be a lil careful how i portray this' goes a long way lol) (source: i know people firsthand who were groomed as teens bc the predators used comics/doujins that portrayed teens hooking up w/ adults as evidence that it was less of an issue as long as they "were mature" about it (ick) and in retrospect if the media in question had been more vocal about it being fantasy and not something to be emulated it mightve been avoidable) obviously its a case by case basis and im not out here going 'any media that touches on sensitive material is bad and should not exist' that poo poo's just as stupid and avoiding the issue, but its just... there's nuance on both sides here. nuance that twitter is in a completely different galaxy from, lol
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Jul 10, 2022 15:49
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older, weathly men preying on naive and waifish teens is not a trope that exists in a vacuum; its tiredly perpetuating a 1950's level vision of the idyllic romance for women i which they are helpless, weak, fragile and in need of men to save them from themselves. all the pink one does is cry when exposed to stimuli until the blue one shows up to mope about how bad he feels for sexually pursuing someone who just got her braces off. it's an insulting regressive viewpoint to throw out into the world for young women; it fulfills the niche for trad-caths and other weird freak women who think they belong in a kitchen like twilight once did
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Jul 10, 2022 16:03
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i dont care about it directly influencing behavior 1:1 and that argument is so dumb, i care about this being deeply insulting and condescending to be a reading option for young women that warps their sense of what womanhood (a self defined sense of self and how it relates to sociery) is into stepford 2.0. when i was a girl and exposed to poo poo like this it used to drive me into wild despair that this was the only life i could look forward to. anyone else.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:07
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it's also really weird because that's not how the myth goes at all. Persephone is kinda 'tricked' yea but her entire story is pretty self-controlled, she chooses to go to the underworld, she chooses to talk to Hades, etc. She's ignorant of the rules but that's meant as a tragic thing not a 'silly naïve little flower girl doesn't know things'. Like, as cliche as it is to bring up for this stuff it kinda blows that the only mainstream media that doesn't portray Persephone as a near child-bride level helpless waif is a musical like Hadestown most people can't access due to musical theater being a classist hellscape. Even if you want to completely ignore 'it's weird how explicitly you're focusing on some imagined 'experience gap' between the two' elements it's just a really loving boring cliche based in lovely tropes that's papered over by a (mostly) good art style.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:10
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side note but the same people who want representation in media also will be the first to insist that media doesnt have an affect on reality.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:11
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fun hater posted:side note but the same people who want representation in media also will be the first to insist that media doesnt have an affect on reality. yea this is a really weird conflict too. It feels like you can't simultaneously argue media representation of non-majority cultures/groups/etc is a social good and also say that any critique of lovely tropes used is bad faith because the boring webcomic can't literally brainwash you into abducting a pink child bride, but a lot of folks sure seem to want both! Like, this isn't even some attempt at shaming, you can like ~problematic media~, you just have to acknowledge that yea media does influence people's outlooks on things.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:14
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sexpig by night posted:Like, as cliche as it is to bring up for this stuff it kinda blows that the only mainstream media that doesn't portray Persephone as a near child-bride level helpless waif is a musical like Hadestown most people can't access due to musical theater being a classist hellscape.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:20
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nine-gear crow posted:Same. Even when it was “popular”, I never made the effort to read it or understand it. It was just on some weird permanent parallel track that I never bothered to try and jump to. Probably because it was written in l33tsp3@k for most of its early run because the author was kind a twat like that and even back when I was a teenager I despised that stupid twee bullshit. The l33t thing seemed to last mostly until the original co-founder (and writer) left, where Piro was then able to focus on sad girls in snow and anime references with the odd attempt at 'humor.' I think Largo as a character still speaks in 'l33t' which is like speaking in Sumerian at this point. Largo the person tried his hand at a comic but it never went anywhere as I recall.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:20
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Out of curiosity how is it handled in the game Hades? tbh it's been so long I forgot so I'll leave that for someone else. I actually do think it's fairly good there though obviously Persephone is a rather secondary character compared to Hades himself.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:22
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nine-gear crow posted:Same. Even when it was “popular”, I never made the effort to read it or understand it. It was just on some weird permanent parallel track that I never bothered to try and jump to. Probably because it was written in l33tsp3@k for most of its early run because the author was kind a twat like that and even back when I was a teenager I despised that stupid twee bullshit. Even when megatokyo was "popular" it kept not following any kind of schedule, so it's not like there was anything to follow. It was one of the early webcomics who was on constant hiatus/delays which is probably why it's even still remembered, if it had just kept a schedule even a slow one, it would probably not have gotten as many jokes about it and been forgotten. As mentioned by others, inertia is a great way to keep readers but once you lose them they are going to start remembering the bad stuff you wrote.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:28
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sexpig by night posted:it's also really weird because that's not how the myth goes at all. Persephone is kinda 'tricked' yea but her entire story is pretty self-controlled, she chooses to go to the underworld, she chooses to talk to Hades, etc. She's ignorant of the rules but that's meant as a tragic thing not a 'silly naïve little flower girl doesn't know things'.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:28
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Tumblr and Twitter posts arguing "You think this is grooming? Well by those standards this OTHER thing is also grooming" arent really making a dent
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Jul 10, 2022 16:30
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Terrible Opinions posted:What makes this weirder is that in plenty Greek stories outside of the abduction Persephone is presented as a ruler and in charge. Like Odysseus takes it as a given that the god who would be siccing monsters on him would be Persephone. yea in a lot of legends and myths I'd say the fairly mainstream view of her was 'okay she didn't love to be tricked and abducted away but she's actually kinda killing it at this whole simultaneously representing nature and the underworld thing'. drat it...I hate that I'm saying it but it's true... give me girlboss Persephone.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:34
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Out of curiosity how is it handled in the game Hades? the biggest departure is probably how they first met. zeus handed over persephone to hades as an (unasked-for) gift, which made hades loving livid, caused a schism between the chthonic and olympian gods, and because zeus decided to make the handoff without telling anyone else, also caused demeter to blame the mortal world and seal it in permanent winter. persephone, for her part, was more sanguine about the whole situation and didn't want to be returned, but it still made their relationship awfully complicated she's fled the underworld (for reasons largely unrelated to her marriage) by the time the game starts and the protag, hades' son, is pissed at him for apparently not caring that his wife is gone, but it turns out hades' seeming apathy was partly based in shame for "abducting" her in the first place
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Jul 10, 2022 16:35
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Out of curiosity how is it handled in the game Hades? Hades doesn't really bother sticking to the myth too hard. Persephone wants to get off Olympus and Hades is lonely, so Zeus, without telling anyone, brings Persephone down to the underworld and sets them up with each other. They have a somewhat happy marriage for awhile but Hades is overworked and inconsiderate, so when their son is seemingly born stillborn Persephone leaves to the outskirts of the underworld on her own to get away from both of Hades and Olympus. She's presented as equal to Hades at every step so it doesn't really have that problem.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:37
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AMERICANS DON'T WANT STORIES ABOUT HUNGRY OLD GREEK BROADS
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Jul 10, 2022 16:42
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Alaois posted:AMERICANS DON'T WANT STORIES ABOUT HUNGRY OLD GREEK BROADS But superheroes are the modern mythology, which is why that Transformers movie with a scene about how Romeo and Juliet laws is just like Hades and Persephone.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:45
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Alaois posted:AMERICANS DON'T WANT STORIES ABOUT HUNGRY OLD GREEK BROADS Maybe we could tell them a story from Homer instead.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:49
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Arc Hammer posted:Maybe we could tell them a story from Homer instead. I mean we've had 30+ years of it now, I think even the most diehard fans would agree Simpsons is showing its age these days.
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Jul 10, 2022 16:53
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Hel posted:Even when megatokyo was "popular" it kept not following any kind of schedule, so it's not like there was anything to follow. It was one of the early webcomics who was on constant hiatus/delays which is probably why it's even still remembered, if it had just kept a schedule even a slow one, it would probably not have gotten as many jokes about it and been forgotten. I lost track of its core of defenders (that has shrunk over time) springing forth with the "you should feel lucky you're getting anything at ALL" chestnut.
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Jul 10, 2022 17:30
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BrianWilly posted:Again, replace vampires with gods in this context: You know, there have been plenty of times where paranormal romance with vampires or other undying/immortal beings ruminated on what it means to be dating someone who is 1/3, 1/1000, etc your age, but as far as selling it to audiences there's two pretty consistent lines for most people: 1. everyone involved in the romance is consenting and 2. everyone involved in the romance is intellectually on the same level. Like there's a reason people are completely fine with Bella dating Edward and/or Jacob, but Jacob falling in love with a baby caused an intense amount of revulsion. I haven't read Lore Olympus but the myth of Persephone has a lot of compounding issues that makes it really difficult to adapt. For one thing, it's not a romance, Hades kidnaps her and steals her to the underworld. There is a massive power imbalance in the myth, both with Hades being the lord and representational adult and Persephone being a pure maiden. They're also blood relatives. Hades is Persephone's uncle. The ancient Greeks didn't give a poo poo about incest, rape (both in the sexual context and kidnapping context), or women's rights, but those are going to be big issues for modern audiences. You can address those issues head on, but it'd be a pretty drat hard sell to turn the myth into a modern romance with those conceits on them. Or you can skate around the problematic stuff and smooth over all the issues Hamilton-style and deal with people being pissed off at you trying to whitewash a very messy ancient story. Just from being adjacent to Lore Olympus discussion for a long time, it sounds like it tips in to the second camp more often than not, so I can't really blame people for not liking that.
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Jul 10, 2022 17:42
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Have a Persephone video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac5ksZTvZN8
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Jul 10, 2022 17:50
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Kennel posted:Have a Persephone video: this is making it sound like Hades the game is a lot closer to the original myth than i gave it credit for
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Jul 10, 2022 18:21
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Recently I've seen an interpretation of this myth not so much as a story of Hades and Persephone, but rather the story of Demeter coming to terms with her daughter's death. If death is personified as male, and in Greek myths it is, then a young woman dying could be seen as being 'kidnapped' by the lord of the Underworld. I think this is where I saw it:  But I'm not sure if I like this interpretation because Demeter eventually strikes a deal with Hades and Persephone comes back to her for some time. I don't see how a story about death taking away your loved-ones would make sense with them coming back. It fits something like Orpheus and Eurydice more, imo. Still, Persephone plays a secondary role to Demeter in the original myth. And so does Hades, really.
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Jul 10, 2022 19:00
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yea obviously at that far of a distance it's hard to say what the 'mainstream' myth was but tbh your description of the Hades story was kinda closer to what a lot of the original recordings of it show than most media depictions. Hades never really 'abducted' her (as the Greeks would call it) in the old story and yea the pomegranate seeds were more Hades taking advantage of Persephone not fully knowing that the seeds would bind her than poor silly Persephone wanting a nibble and, yea like she says in the video the titles Persephone is given in the myths really...don't fit 'spring time sweet flower baby' and more 'the grim queen of the underworld judging souls and reaping people' which...is so much loving cooler than a glorified kidnapping victim! Hell you even have the whole 'dark romance' element too if you lean hard into the later Greek stuff because Hades is a fuckin Wife Guy, my dudes. It wasn't some silly little innocent virgin stolen away by spoopy death god, they were like the ancient Greek Gomez and Morticia!
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Jul 10, 2022 19:01
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BrianWilly posted:Ooh I have a tweet for this one! Just swap out "selfcest" with "are literally immortal Greek gods" How do we get all those people and their discourse back into the pandora box of tumblr
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Jul 10, 2022 19:05
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I guess I mainly get bugged by it because there's no way a comic about Wife Guy Hades and his grim queen bonding over a shared fascination with the underworld (like she says in the video the likely origin of the myth is just Persephone deciding to venture into the underworld since that was a super common trope at the time in myths of the area) wouldn't be way more fun than 'old man Hades accidentally kidnaps a doe eyed hippy kid and...just kinda keeps her?'
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Jul 10, 2022 19:05
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fatherboxx posted:How do we get all those people and their discourse back into the pandora box of tumblr That reminds me that a lot of myths have a lot of 'local woman ruins everything for everyone' aspects. Even when its the first (second) woman in existence.
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Jul 10, 2022 19:47
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fatherboxx posted:How do we get all those people and their discourse back into the pandora box of tumblr tumblr has been much better since all these dweebs went to twitter, don't gently caress it up
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Jul 10, 2022 19:56
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fun hater posted:i dont care about it directly influencing behavior 1:1 and that argument is so dumb, i care about this being deeply insulting and condescending to be a reading option for young women that warps their sense of what womanhood (a self defined sense of self and how it relates to sociery) is into stepford 2.0. So like it absolutely is horrible that this was the only life you could look forward to then, but I feel like that's more a reason to have a wide variety of stories available, rather than saying "This kind of story isn't allowed because it Has Problematic Roots." Everything has problematic roots, that's how culture and art work. It's pretty similar to people calling to ban shootman video games because school shooters: Sure, the games can be an influence. But the fact that they were isn't an indictment on the games themselves, it's a problem with the setting the shooter was in that led them to decide that mass murder was a cool and good idea. Getting rid of the story isn't going to get rid of the people who use it badly, it's just going to get them to use a different tool for the same end, because they didn't do this because of the story, and they're still going to find victims because young people tend to be dumb, and a lot of young people were raised in an environment where they were taught to be obedient and ignorant. It's a stupid, overly simplistic solution to attack stuff that's gross or problematic on the basis of "this is bad because it influences the influenceable." That's the whole reason behind the bullshit censorship of movies in the 30s, comics in the 50s, and now youtube and other social media stuff. It's a convenient way to make people feel better while not actually addressing the problem, or acknowledging that "I don't like it because I think it's gross," and instead turning things into a morality argument. Like, I don't like slasher movies, I think they're gross and unpleasant and have a lot of bad messages embedded in them, but I also understand that a lot of people enjoy them and somehow we're not seeing a rise in real life creative murders, so I think it's safe to assume that gory slashers are fairly neutral in terms of psychological impact, and it costs me nothing to just sit back and be baffled that people enjoy them without making a whole Thing about it.
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Jul 10, 2022 20:03
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Puppy Time posted:"This kind of story isn't allowed because it Has Problematic Roots." i didnt say this. wtf. what i want is to see this discussion in a larger context rather than not at all. why did you assume i wanted to ban it?????? based on literally what?? e: lmfao the rest of your post is predicated on the idea that i wanted to ban something instead of. you know. challenge it.
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Jul 10, 2022 20:16
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the Persephone/Hades dynamic has two principle fan demographics: people into being swept away by an older goth man, and the people who dive into earlier, dubiously-cited mythologies where Persephone is a girlboss.
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Jul 10, 2022 20:18
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It is weird that LO got rid of the whole aspect of incest with Greek Mythology and treats the subject of rape better than most of this kind of ficiton; like a lot of the problematic stuff could have been avoided if she was aged up like 4 years. Having caught up with it seems they did a 10 year time up at least
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Jul 10, 2022 20:23
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im honestly astounded at how your entire post assigned the stupidest possible argument and solution to me appropo of nothing. im a little insulted to be spoken to like im a teenager or the suggestion that i have the mindset of a pearl clutching suburban mother. even censorship were somehow the topic of the conversation we were having, in what universe is "sorry you experienced misogyny but some people like it so we have to keep it around" a satisfying conclusion or answer to come to. i just want people to acknowledge it and talk about it, without immediately being talked as though i have terminal fandom brain e: this goes for the stupid loki selfcest post too. like wtf. im talking about a real phenomenon and not loki jerking himself off or whatever fun hater fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Jul 10, 2022 |
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Jul 10, 2022 20:30
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| # ? May 31, 2024 03:00 |
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Hey so the latest two parter of Flash In The Pan has special guest Brian Clevinger on to talk cartoons and webcomics! If anyone's into those things here.
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Jul 10, 2022 20:46
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