Quartz-Rose and not-owned Pearl

[farla]

The new Steven Universe episode seems to be contradicting all the Pink Diamond stuff I hate and also the basis for evil Rose stuff too! Best episode.

I am full of so much gleeful schadenfreude I might end up posting on tumblr, even! We'll see.

Comments

Re:

[(Anonymous)]

Oh no, I'm talking about Chara. I actually haven't seen too much crazy around that one yet, just a few people who are like "oh obviously they get back together because love is eternal!!! :D :D :D"

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

...Okay, definitely baffled by why anyone would call Chara "affable" when everything they say onscreen is either cold and terse or creepily precocious eloquence punctuated by weird inappropriate laughter and "jokes" that are only funny to them. I guess they're pulling in their stupid theories about narrator!Chara and knitting!Chara and whatever else, and treating those as unquestionable canon so they can use them to make points they wouldn't really prove even if they were true. Brilliant.

[(Anonymous)]

They never explicitly called Chara "affable", but... well, I'll just provide some excerpts:

[Chara doesn't kill anyone in the game. That's something that you have to acknowledge, just as it's acknowledged in the game on numerous occasions. Frisk doesn't kill anyone. Chara doesn't kill anyone. You, the player are the one making the decisions.]

[If you look around New Home, there's PLENTY of evidence that suggests that Chara, for all their emotional damage and psychological pain, loved their family. The hand-knit sweater that Asgore has, implied to have been made by Chara. The fact that the only thing they have on their side of their room is a picture of the family, facing the head of their bed. They weren't perfect. They were manipulative and bore psychological scars from what was clearly a past of abuse.]

[It is EXTREMELY rude, however, to waltz in and start telling someone that their interpretation is obviously wrong, that the character they strongly interpret as redeemable is clearly an evil p.o.s., and implying that they didn't understand the game and that they're absurd.]

Remember a while back when I was so confused what Soft Chara was and why it pissed you off so much? Now I know.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

"The hand-knit sweater that Asgore has, implied to have been made by Chara."

This is one of my favorite things that softcharas say, because they are SO insistent on it and it has no basis in fact whatsoever. All we know is that Chara remembers Asgore having the sweater, which, duh.

Fun fact: I am currently backseat playing an indie RPG by one of the leaders of the Soft Chara camp. It is exactly as preachy and as bafflingly backwards in the morality it is using that preachinesss in service of as you would expect, if not moreso. The really delicious irony is that my friend who's playing it and I are stanning for the villain-ish character we're clearly supposed to hate, in part because she is the only one in the party who never wanted to destroy the world and eradicate humanity. I'd like to coauthor a review for Dragon Quill when we're finished, if Farla's cool with publishing it.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I don't understand why it never occurs to anyone that Asriel could have made it. Even if Chara did make it, they clearly don't love their family in their current incarnation, so I think it's reasonable to say it no longer counts.

Personally, the thing that annoys me the most is when people insist it's wrong to hold Chara accountable for anything just because they had a tragic backstory. Like, no, Freudian excuses can EXPLAIN bad behavior, they don't EXCUSE it. It might be an extension of Tumblr's bizarre black-and-white worldview where everyone must be perfect or irredeemable with no middle ground, but just, gah, these people have no sense of scale.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I arrive in the future to say I am very interested in that RPG.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

It's called Uncommon Time, and I'm pretty sure it's actually a large part of the origin of Soft Chara. Feralphoenix, the creator, was on the ground floor of that interpretation, you see. The protagonist of "antai" (Feral calls it that because Feral insists on acting like she is Japanese a lot) is clearly her self-insert Mary Sue she over identifies with, and Chara is in a lot of ways reminiscent of said protagonist, so Chara has become her self-insert Mary Sue via transitive property.

I am way too tired right now to be coherent about all the ways that it is bad, but probably the most relevant one is that there's a bad end where instead of using her special unique power to save the world, Alto decides to instead use it to hasten the world's destruction. This could be fine. Characters can have dangerous and unpalatable sides and still be sympathetic and even heroic. Only, it's not treated like that, because the only character in the party who has a problem with this is Teagan, the Traitor we are supposed to view as Alto's horrible and deeply abusive former friend despite what we see on the screen looking an awful lot more like mutual toxicity (and despite the fact that at one point Teagan TRIES TO END THE AWFUL RELATIONSHIP BY LEAVING and is forced back into the party by Alto rounding up her friends to chase her down and beat her up until she agrees to come back and stop ever questioning anything Alto says, which we are supposed to view as a powerful and cathartic moment of Alto confronting her abuser - but I digress), and all of the other party members call her awful and controlling for trying to interfere with Alto's autonomy (to destroy the world) and beg Teagan in their suicide notes not to blame Alto because their choices (to kill themselves to avoid suffering through the process of Alto destroying the world) were their own, and Alto had a right to her choice (to destroy the world) too.

And this is only a small sample of the massive levels of WTF.

[farla.livejournal.com]

...so I'm guessing the Soft Chara went past "tragic pasts justify anything and everything!" into "precious cinnamon bun did literally nothing wrong ever!"

Has anyone managed to make goatkid the REAL villain who bullied Chara into it only to betray him, or does fandom still have a few grains of sanity left? And if so, which character is it actually all the fault of?

and is forced back into the party by Alto rounding up her friends to chase her down and beat her up until she agrees to come back and stop ever questioning anything Alto says, which we are supposed to view as a powerful and cathartic moment of Alto confronting her abuser - but I digress

I feel like this is like this is the result of people's understanding of all human interaction being shouted positivity slogans.

Like those warring messages about how YOU MUST BE CONSIDERATE OF ALL MENTAL ILLNESS OR IT'S ABUSE and BEING FORCED TO BE CONSIDERATE OF OTHERS WHEN YOU'RE MENTALLY ILL IS ABUSE and so on, and it seems like people just pick the one that validates them best and act as repeater, so you get the Victim-Tyrant who is the only one who ever suffered and the world's refusal to remake itself around their problems is inexcusable malice.

and beg Teagan in their suicide notes not to blame Alto because their choices (to kill themselves to avoid suffering through the process of Alto destroying the world) were their own

But maybe catharsis can be healthy? Maybe getting all of it out in one burst of madness could let them move past it in their actual life? I've been mulling over if people vomiting out their id unexamined might still help them work through it, and if it's right to worry about it just passing along the same damage to those consuming it. And maybe the sheer madness of it makes it less likely to be passed along than if they were being kept in check by a partner or publisher and had to sneak it in or justify it better.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

"Has anyone managed to make goatkid the REAL villain who bullied Chara into it only to betray him, or does fandom still have a few grains of sanity left? And if so, which character is it actually all the fault of?"

Not exactly, but Feral's "Asriel saved Chara from poisoning themself and now they get to grow up together" series is quickly turning into "Asriel is a horrible, borderline abusive boyfriend who needs to make himself into a better person to deserve pure angel woobie Chara".

Also, it is Society's fault. Obviously.

"I feel like this is like this is the result of people's understanding of all human interaction being shouted positivity slogans."

Based on the evidence of the whole game, I can confirm this is exactly what's going on.

[farla.livejournal.com]

That seems legit. I mean, the fact he didn't respect Chara's original poisoning wishes is the sort of boundary-ignoring thing an abuser would totally do. He cared more about what HE wanted than what CHARA wanted.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Wait, wait, no — I forgot! Chara's crimes are THE PLAYER'S fault. In universe, they are literally being controlled and made to kill people against their will by the malevolent god that is you at your computer. Sure, they may smile creepily every time they spot a new victim, but you can be sure they are crying on the inside.

Which completely ignores that time they tried to murder a bunch of humans way before the start of the game, but, hey. SOCIETY.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Killing people is okay because they were ALL ABUSERS and anyone mean to Chara has to die. ^_^

I feel like there really ought to be more to Chara than just the personification of RPG dickery, since they were willing to die to accomplish freeing the monsters and they probably could've shanked Goatdad if it was just about killing all humans, but also, it was definitely an awful lot about killing all humans.

Arg, that's why I want to meet them for myself to try to get a better handle on it but genocide run slog.....eurgh.