Samediankh - Lazy Bear

whenever i see that post about swapping female characters with male ones in video games i always think about this

I’ll forever love Nico for handling his gun like a magical girl

He really makes me miss Sakura

YES

I didn't even notice until op said it!

When I was watching that one scene in Avengers it felt so gross, I was immediately disgusted and had such a strong urge to turn it off and forgetforgetforget and pretend I didn't see anything. I guess it worked cause op made me remember it, but if I was asked out of nowhere what the worst show off feminism have you ever seen in cinema I wouldn't be able to tell. The Trauma. Ugh.

Anyway, again, I didn't really see that as something exceptional. It felt so normal and natural to me.

Usually I do pick up on BAD performance and all this bullshit female characters just for check. They don't have a story. They feel empty and unnecessary. The only quality that is important for the story with them is their sex/gender. Or there is nothing important for the story at all.

The point is the Mandalorian did a great job. Its female characters never felt bad like that. That fight included. The performance was good as expected. Therefore it never clicked as something special in modern social media. WHILE IT CERTAINLY IS. It is special!

Because right off the bat I can only remember Hannibal was such quality female writing where the were just right. Tbc it also depends on shows writing and perfomance level in general, so there are some more, but imho they are written less great in general.

And the amount of good female writing is truly saddening yet the good news are it grows! With time there is and will be even more great stuff!!

Non-performative inclusion and “The Mandalorian”

This post contains minor spoilers. Proceed with caution.

In the season two finale of “The Mandalorian” there is a scene near the beginning of the episode in which a strike team (minus Mando himself) storms onto an Imperial ship, blasts stormtroopers, etc. It’s an extended action sequence. Two of the characters are helmeted.

I was well into the scene before it hit me that all four of the characters on this strike team were women.

The fact that there was this all-female action team wasn’t new. I’ve seen that before. What was new about it was that this was the first time I’d seen a team of women that didn’t feel performative.

Remember that scene in “Avengers: Endgame”, the “she’s not alone” scene where All The Lady Characters Assembled, and you could tell the filmmakers were getting some kind of weird boner of “looooook at how many Strong Female Characters we have, let’s put them all together and have them be Strong Female Characters at the same time” and it felt super gross? That was performative.

I’ve heard and used that term before but I’m not sure I really grokked what it meant until I saw what its absence looked like, in “The Mandalorian.” 

It didn’t feel performative because each of those characters had been part of the narrative in their own time over the previous two seasons, with their own agencies and backstories. They were characters in the story as it needed to be told, they weren’t Strong Female Characters introduced for the purpose of being that (in a sexy way, of course). There was never a sense of ticking off the “kickass lady character” boxes. When Cara Dune is introduced, or Fennec Shand, or Bo-Katan, there was never that subtext of “Okay here is our Lady Character, isn’t she such a great Lady Character, look look we’re Doing the Thing you want us to do with having Womens in our Boy Stuff.”

No. It was, here’s a Rebel soldier. Here’s an assassin. Here’s a Mandalorian exile.  Here’s a Jedi. Here’s a magistrate. They have functions to perform and stories to tell in this narrative. Those functions and stories happen while these characters are women, not because they are women.

And it’s so, so subtle, the difference. It’s hard to put your finger on how it’s usually done wrong until you see it done right. It’s not just the writing although that’s a big part of it. It’s in how they were filmed, framed, shot, costumed, and lit. It’s in how they were directed, how the camera treated them - i.e. no differently than the male characters. None of these women were sexified, either. Not that they weren’t being portrayed by attractive women, but that wasn’t remotely played up or displayed in how they were styled, costumed, and made up.

Unfortunately now that we’ve all seen how non-performative inclusion of women into a narrative can be done right, everything else is going to seem that much more insufferable.

Learned how to edit just so I could make this

I found this wet floor sign with some suspiciously dna looking writing on it

String identified: CAT CA TAGCT T A t t g t c a g tg t

Closest match: Sphaeramia orbicularis genome assembly, chromosome: 4 Common name: Chubby Cardinal

(image source)

Best Man-Tits of One Piece - Grand Finale

Submitters' motivations under the cut.

Motivations for submitting Franky:

His pre timeskip booba… the swag….. massive honkers. Hell yeah brother. (Mod: sorry I picked a post-timeskip pic)

Nipple lights

you hAVE to respect a diy boob job w all the extra features.

Motivations for submitting Brook:

sexyman don’t need skin to be sexyman

Please it would be hilarious if he won

big tit energy. if he had any yohohoho

To be quite honest (and adding this to the post I just reblogged) the only thing that sets Nero and Dante (and Sparda) apart from the other demons (and Vergil) is just that they have someone / something they care about.

I mean, look a bit closer:

You have this inhumanly powerful guys, who likely will get shunned by humans usually because they stand out, are different, are scary… who live a much more dangerous life in general because every damn demon is gonna be after them… who live much longer than a human (at least in Sparda’s case)… who lost their family or never had family to begin with…

That gotta break even the most positive and kind person down some day.  

Look, I would totally get if those guys just stopped caring about the world at large at some point. Because this “shitshow” called life keeps repeating itself. Because no matter how much you try, the next demon follows up the one you just cut down. Nobody ever thanks you for helping them out. It’s infuriating. It’s exhausting. Because sometimes humans are just as bad as demons, in their hunt for power (and, especially, the power of Sparda).

They don’t want anything to do with it anymore, just give them a break.

 You see it in Dante’s attitude back in DMC 3 – that’s not just snarky banter and witty comebacks, he seems downright bitter and pissed a lot of the time. “I don’t have a father, I just really don’t like you.” – “You show your thanks by shooting me? Whatever, do as you please.”

Because at this point in time, Dante’s been alone for years, and there’s nobody he openly cares about anymore. He climbs Temen-ni-gru because some part of him thinks it’s his duty to clean up Sparda’s mess and stop Vergil, but he’s neither enthusiastic nor passionate about it.

There’s only a change in attitude, a hint of care the moment Lady is open with him after their fight and then keeps standing by his side after everything is over.

That later extends to Trish, Lucia and Morrison (and, if they keep her, Patty Lowell). Dante doesn’t fight for humanity as a whole – he does his job, takes out demons (especially those after his father’s power, because he sees that as his duty) and apart from that, will fight for the few people who earned his respect and love.

It’s the same for Nero – orphan, not welcome in the Order at large, likely eyed suspiciously in the whole city because he is a stranger to them – he only cares about Kyrie, whom he loves, and Credo, who was brother and friend to him. Nobody else. He doesn’t show any hint of care for Sanctus getting shot in the head in front of everyone, he only moves to kill the demons attacking people when Kyrie throws herself in front of others…

Basically, the Sparda descendants don’t give a damn about saving the world (despite Dante’s grand speech how you don’t get the opportunity to save the world every day) or humanity at large – they only fight and care for a selected few people. That’s their whole driving force. They are not heroes with a large heart who would sacrifice themselves selflessly at every turn – nope, especially Nero would likely have walked away if he didn’t know the victim of an attack.

Doesn’t mean they are not good people! They are, once you get the honor of being important to them. Then they would do everything for you.  

It’s just that they are so used to being alone, being damaged, that it takes a while to even get a place in their heart, you see.

(Not to mention that they are also part demon, which is a race not exactly known for love, care and selflessness. We probably can’t even fully measure them with human standards and morales.)

Also swearing and not instantly sister-zoning all women in his life.

The real reason why DMC Reboot Dante never felt like Dante is because he never got impaled.