Mad Bombers, Matchmaking, Magic Spells—what’s A Butler To Do?

Fandom sucks.

More than normal, I mean.

While fandom has always been a little bit crazy, it’s hard to deny that it has gotten exponentially worse in the past few years.

From the simple toxicity in fandom discourse increasing, to death threats made towards creators if they don’t toe the line the fandom wants, to groups of fans creating little brigades to ‘protect’ their fandom (see: harassing anyone they don’t like under the guise of morality), it’s gotten pretty bad.

The question is, why?

Well, if you read that headline up there, you’ll know I’m about to tell you why.

The answer is religion, or specifically, the lack of religion in the lives of millennials and the new generation.

Now, before you close this tab, lemme clarify: this isn’t about how the downswing of religion has corroded the moral fiber, or anything. It’s more interesting than that. And complex.

Religion has a function in society. It serves a purpose. This is true regardless of ones own beliefs. Unlike the existence or non-existence of any sort of supreme deity, the functions of religion have been thoroughly documented and studied. If you want a more thorough breakdown beyond the summary I’m about to give, go read Émile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.

Religion acts as a support system and a shared moral system. As a result, religion is something of a ‘cultural shorthand’. Finding out someone’s religion quickly tells you a great many things about them. This is useful in social interactions, as it quickly tells you who you’re more likely to get along with. To put it in a bit of a primitive way, it makes it easy to find one’s ‘allies’.

If one is Catholic, and meets another Catholic, they instantly know they share a great many beliefs about life, justice, morality and the like. If one is in an entirely new place, finding the local congregation of their own religion is a fast way to build a support network from zero. These are important functions.

And with religion out of vogue, especially among the youth, something had to fulfill that function. It’s important and necessary. One of the things that has usurped this function is incredibly specific political labels. While highly specific terms for one’s political beliefs have always existed, they broke into the mainstream far more than they ever had before in the recent decade. They usurped that function of cultural shorthand, one’s own specific political identifier essentially became a flag one waved while attempting to find like minded people. That’s fine.

What isn’t fine is that fandom has also usurped the function of religion for a large amount of people. Fandom is, frankly, not capable of acting in this manner, and the result is the explosion of atrocious fandoms full of toxicity and at times outright criminality and violence. Most works of fiction have something to say, but few if any present an entire system of morality. Yet despite this, many treat it as such. Therein lies the problem.

Religion inherently has a barrier to entry. It’s (often, not always, it varies by religion) a simple barrier, but a barrier nonetheless. You have to live by the religion’s rules and moral system. In a way, this can be considered payment for the support system the religion offers. If you’re not a believer, you don’t get in. Pretty simple. That’s how it retains it’s usefulness as an identifier. Knowing someone was a Catholic wouldn’t matter if they didn’t have to follow the rules.

(And yes, many religions do charitable work even for those outside their faith, I’m well aware, this is all in the abstract.)

Fandom doesn’t have any such barrier. You like the thing, you’re in. It ultimately has no use whatsoever as a cultural/societal identifier. If you like the same TV show, or anime, or video game as someone else it means….well. Basically nothing. There’s no guarantee you share anything else with them at all.

As a result, people who attempt to use fandom in this way ultimately get a rude awakening, and end up encountering someone they dislike. Or hate, even. And that’s where the problem starts.

The revelation that their fandom do not uniformly believe the same things is not often taken well. Rather than realizing that one’s choice in media is no guarantee of anything else about them, they develop the belief that this person they dislike is not a real fan. They’re fake. They’re seeking to harm the fandom. They’re the enemy. And if it’s the creator? Oh boy, does shit go off then.

Ultimately, these people project their own personal beliefs and morality onto a work of fiction that doesn’t, and never did, support them. They adopt the completely ludicrous expectation that any other fan they meet must be just like them, and believe all the same things as them. Anyone who doesn’t is a real fan, and has to be destroyed. And that person is now a toxic fan, the kind that’ll harass, send death threats, and blackmail or threaten the creators.

And the problem is only going to get worse. Online communication and support is only going to become a bigger and bigger part of people’s lives going forward. That’s why there’s a clear level of escalation in ‘bad’ fandoms. People who are more and more ‘online’ are making up the majority of these fandoms, and lacking any other traditional support network or thing to identify as, become these toxic fans.

So the question becomes; how to fix it?

Well, like any widespread sociological problem, there isn’t an easy answer. Lord knows I’m not smart enough to figure one out.

But most of these people are children.

Adults reading this do have some degree of responsibility to try and guide them into more responsible and healthy behavior, and criticize them when they fall into toxicity. Will all of them listen? Of course not. God knows I never listened to adults when I was a teenager.

But some of them will, and if the toxic cesspool that is modern fandom can be even slightly purified, it’s worth it to try.

Almond Breeze undeclared MILK recall

Thousands of cartons of Vanilla Almond Breeze are under recall for containing undeclared milk. I don’t care what you think about vegans, nondairy milk, whatever… This could kill people if word doesn’t get out fast enough. Here’s a link to the recall. It covers a lot of states:  Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin Please share this. Dairy allergies can be fatal and many people with them choose to drink almond milk.

Mad bombers, matchmaking, magic spells—what’s a butler to do?

Meet Bostwick von Dogsbody, a sardonic door-to-door magician, and his white rabbit, Emmaline, who just happens to be a cursed human princess. The two are traveling through the goblin-run continent of Ataxia in search of the legendary Domino of Nonpareil—a mask that allows the wearer to become anything he desires—in order to return Emmaline to normal. Their journey has finally led them to Styx Castle, where they meet Millicent, a human maid who wound up in Styx due to mysterious (and embarrassing) circumstances, and Delilah, a goblin queen with a taste for the chaotic.

But Bostwick’s theft of the Domino does not go unnoticed. To avoid a harsher punishment, he agrees to be Delilah’s butler for a hundred years. Before he can escape the queen’s clutches, he’ll have to face mad bombers, an all-bugbear police force, romantic schemes gone awry, and a mysterious goblin-turned-cat named Sebastian who also has designs on the Domino. And as if that wasn’t enough, he soon learns that Millicent is also a magician—and needs him to teach her!

Read more at rosecorcoranwrites.com

judging by fan fictions, the only jobs in the world are being a teacher, lawyer, waiter, or working at a coffee shop

Something I wrote ages ago about villains and motivation from the Super Mario Games. More a meditation than a straight-up essay.

On Villains and Motivation

Since Cleanup Crew obviously isn’t written in the gag-a-day format like many if not most other webcomics, it’s given me a lot of opportunity to think about storytelling. And since I realized I have a ready-made blog for the comic here, I figured I’d file some of my thoughts here as they occur to me.

Having played every Mario Bros. RPG through Bowser’s Inside Story, I’ve come to the conclusion that one of the big flaws of these games is the villains.

More specifically, their lack of motivation.

Now, we can talk entertainment and characterization until the cows come home, about how much fun they are to watch, but the simple fact of the matter is that a villain needs a WHY, and no amount of plans or goals, the how and the what, will make up for the fact that there’s literally no reason for any of these villains to do what they do. This failure of characterization steals context and meaning from their actions.

Take Grodus, of The Thousand Year Door. As impressive as his organization is, as clever as the plot and storytelling are (that game does such tricks with the fourth wall that the couple of times it breaks it directly just barely limp along), it’s really hard to get invested in the villains because Grodus simply has no -drive- to accomplish his goals, no reason to do what he does. Given the fact that he’s a robot with a noble title and a pretend magic staff, his lack of even a token backstory is rather jarring.

On the other hand there’s Count Bleck of Super Paper Mario (which we will pretend is an RPG for conversation’s sake), who suffers from a broken heart and intends to solve that problem by committing a rather exagerrated form of suicide. THAT is a motivation, something Grodus is severely lacking. In fact, Super Paper Mario gives a lot of character to its villains, judging from what you can dig up about O'Chunks and Nastasia. Now, Dimentio hasn’t got any stated motivation, but this is deliberately done to emphasize his mystery – the game very obviously knows what it’s doing as far as the villains are concerned. (On a side note, the only real problems I have with Super Paper Mario are that it’s just a little too impressed with itself – to start with, the story is addicted to waxing melodramatic – and that it’s not actually a Mario story. It’s really about the game’s original characters – Mario has literally nothing to do with anything, Peach and Bowser are involved only for the sake of a joke, and Luigi has more involvement with the plot than all three combined, only because he’s the villains’ patsy).

But the rest of them, Cackletta and Fawful and the Shroobs (we’ve already discussed Grodus, and you could say the same about the Shadow Sirens) are devoid of motivation. You can see this in how they’re remembered less for their stories and more for their gimmicks. Cackletta is remembered primarily for being 50% of Boobser Bowletta rather than her desire to screw around with the all-powerful Beanstar; Fawful is bonkers and has a speech impediment, and “crazy narcissist” is not a decent motivation any more than “evil” is one, and then there’s the fact that the guy has no real plan except to set himself up as the local bigshot until he decides to destroy absolutely everything just for the heck of it. The Shroobs almost have a motivation that you can reverse-engineer by studying their actions (do they *need* to prey on the Mushroom Kingdom?), but putting the burden on the audience like that is bad writing for lazy authors.

This failure to motivate the villains is especially notable in Smithy, who argues with the heroes as if Super Mario RPG had an Honest to God *theme*. Smithy’s got enough going on that you can almost piece together the motivation that should be there. He wants to take over the Mushroom Kingdom as a stepping stone to ridding the world of wishes (which suggests that it’s no accident that Exor broke the Star Road on the way in, nevermind the fact that his minions have all been collecting the pieces), but why? Well, for most of the game, all the information on Smithy is at best second hand, suggesting he’s taking a leaf out of Orcus’ book, but when we get to finally meet him face to face, we realize he’s been busy the whole time. Smithy has been building his army piece by piece, by hand, and then delegating responsibility so he can keep building. Smithy is a craftsman, achieving his goals through the work of his hands, definitely -not- making wishes to get what he wants the easy way. All this together suggests that Smithy has some kind of enmity with the stars and their habit of granting wishes, a hatred so strong that he’s willing to conquer entire planets to get a shot at completely shutting them down. But after that, everything else would be pure speculation.

Now, I admit that this sort of thing’s not easy. Bowser’s generally easier to write than coming up with new villains wholecloth, insofar as he comes with the motivations built-in, like “FINALLY succeeding where he’s failed so many times before” and “sticking it to Mario once and for all”. I generally tend to ignore the “romantic interest in Princess Peach” motivation that he’s occasionally saddled with, because the implications are creepy in ways that make “Asmodeus covets Sarah” look Appropriate for All Audiences. I’m generally more favorable to the idea that Bowser takes an interest in the Mushroom Kingdom because he’s spent his whole miserable life a corner of Hell and the Mushroom Kingdom is a place of beauty and plenty and Her Highness may figure in his eyes as an emblem of all things beautiful, hence his fascination with her, since he only knows ugly things. You could get some serious mileage if someone spent five minutes figuring out a halfway decent motivation for the King of Awesome.

Something like, say, “somebody invaded his castle and stole something from the treasury, so now he’s driven to get it back and punish whoever had the gall to penetrate his fortress security and make a goon of him and his forces”.

And now I have spent entirely too much time writing about Mario characters.

URGENT

I’m honestly in tears. I am incredibly upset, I am shaking, I am furious. I need this post to reach as many people as possible, because I want everyone to be aware about this and we need to work together to help bring this young girl home safely. I have a lot of followers so I’m hoping this will spread quickly so more people are aware of this.

This is Kennedi High. You may have seen her circling through your dashboard. She’s 16 years old and she has gone missing, and so far everyone has pieced together through her snapchat story that something is really, really wrong. She’s acting funny, and recently her snapchat story has been updated: “I’m with this other man and he telling me I’m never going back home to see my family.” A lot of people think this may be a case of sex trafficking, and it most likely is, and I’m honestly terrified for her. 

She’s originally from Baltimore, MD, though it’s said that she may currently be in the Mountain View California region. Please spread this if you can, reblog any other posts you find about her and get this story out. I’m absolutely sickened and shaken and I just want her to be safe. This is so important to me.

Not to mention, there’s been reports of over 64,000 black girls missing across the United States, and it’s most likely due to sex trafficking. 64,000 black girls. That’s just crazy. This is terrifying and needs more media coverage, this needs to be spread everywhere. We need to protect black girls. They need our help.

If you guys have any more information to add to this post or correct, please please feel free. I’ll try to add any other updates I find on the situation. In the meantime, if you can, please this reblog or any other posts relating to Kennedi and spread the word. Tell everyone about it. This needs everyone’s attention.

Happy 30th Anniversary! This is the linework I did for @rockmiyabideusexmachina and his Mega Man 30th Anniversary collab event. My partner was the inestimable (and inestimably patient) @ingopotato, who did some marvelous color work with the pieces (and helped shore up those positively barren buildings). The premise of the piece is a riff on the aerial chase segments of both Mega Man 8 and Mega Man X8, swapping in the flight crew from classic in for X and company on their air speeders as they hunt down Gigabolt Man’o’War. This was a fun piece for the sheer novelty of some of these character designs and poses -- mostly I draw from other sources of inspiration, so I’m not used to playing with the classic or X characters. Not since a certain Dr. Wily Sand Castle Contest anyway.

Luna Shirogane is officially meganneko. I have such happiness.

Does Tom King hate Superman, or something? I don’t read the guy’s work regularly, but between this and Batman scoring a home run against Superman’s pitch a few months ago, I can’t help but notice some definite Supernerf in King’s work.

muthafugga replied to your post: You, Tom King: Harley Quinn could take out the…

Are you fucking serious? Is this a thing that actually happens in that comic?

Hidden landscapes the heatwave is revealing

Imprints of old and ancient settlements not seen in known memory are emerging from the soil as the heat takes its toll on greenery.

Britain’s warm mid-eighties temperatures dredge up old baggage.