Episode 144: 呪われし機械仮面(ギアマスク) – Norowareshi Gia Masuku
(The Cursed Gear Mask)
When Yuya arrived in the Xyz Dimension, he did not find Kurosaki, but rather, Dennis. In order to heal the scars left behind by the Fusion Dimension’s attack against the Xyz Dimension, Dennis and Yuya start an Entertainment Duel to bring smiles back to the Xyz Dimension, but…
Summary:
When Yuya arrived in the Xyz Dimension, he did not find Kurosaki, but rather, Dennis. In order to heal the scars left behind by the Fusion Dimension’s attack against the Xyz Dimension, Dennis and Yuya start an Entertainment Duel to bring smiles back to the Xyz Dimension. However, Dennis is now wielding Antique Gears cards! What is Dennis’s motive…!?
Cast:
Sakaki Yuya
Edo Phoenix
Kozuki Allen
Sasayama Sayaka
Gloria Tyler
Grace Tyler
Narrator
Akaba Reiji
Dennis Macfield
Extras
“What are his motives… !?” sounds very repetitive.
the only thing that surprises me a little bit is that the Tyler sisters are in that episode, too. White Rabbit is missing, though. or he’ll be one of this Extras. and either is Reiji a little recap from the previous episode, a memory, or he’ll accompany Yuya to this journey.
Let’s talk about sharing information on the Internet. Some of y’all don’t seem to know basic Internet safety, and it shows. In the last two days, I have witnessed seven different blogs become the target of bullies, and what do they have in common? They have DNIs that include their triggers. Hell, even I listed mine at one point. While including those may seem like a good idea at first for followers so that they can tag continent that is particularly triggering toward you, it is a double-edged sword. Let us use an example.
You have snakes as a trigger warning. Your mutuals know to tag posts that include snakes so you can filter them. But the second that someone doesn’t like you, the moment you do something to piss them off, they can use that information to hurt you. Suddenly, your inbox is full of images of snakes. Even if you have anon turned off, it is so easy to make another Tumblr blog that isn’t blocked and you can simply dump shit on.
Another common thread between these blogs is that many of them had other social media accounts linked such as Instagram, which uses the location of their users when tagging photos. Boom. They have your location. And if you are a minor, you become a target of creeps. This is exactly what happened to a blog I was made aware of because it was getting so much anon hate and being doxxed.
Even though I have an extensive DNI, I am starting to wonder if they do more harm than good. If someone is pissed off at you, do you think they’re going to go to your do not interact and make sure it’s OK for them to send it to you? I have been explicit in saying that anon hate doesn’t mean anything to me unless it is said to my face, and yet I receive many anon hates a day. I am almost 26. I have dealt with bullying my entire life. That stuff doesn’t phase me, but when I joined Tumblr and I was around 16, and someone sent me anon hate, I would crumble.
Speaking of age, this is for minors: do not include your age. If you must, just state that you are a minor. Some people will act differently towards someone who is almost 18 as opposed to a 15 year old. If you include your zodiac signs, both western and Chinese, someone can pinpoint your general birthdate. It’s not smart.
So why do I care? Because after 10 years on this hellsite, I have seen a lot, and I would like to think that I have learned something. And as someone who has dealt with private security in a sense, I am increasingly concerned. It is not the fault of individuals who share private information when it is used against them. That is entirely on an abuser. But it does make it a hell of a lot easier.
Tumblr is horrible with its anti-bullying policy. Tumblr will not take down anon hate or go after people who send death threats. They don’t care. I wish that using anonymous was a privilege, and it was something that could be taken away. There should be more safety measures and reprimands for people who pull this shit. But until then, we can only try to be safe on our own.
For more unsolicited Tumblr vet advice, see my #tumblrvetadvice tag.
So, for years, people have asked me for advice on how to write disabled characters, and I’ve always faltered due to a combination of imposter syndrome and the thought, ‘I don’t know how to write your disabled characters; I only know how to write my disabled characters’. But, truth be told, I do have some advice, so…here’s some advice:
Tips On Writing Disabled Characters
By A Wheelchair-Using Author Who’s Involved In Disability Studies / Advocacy But Recognizes That She’s Just One Voice So Don’t Take This Post As A Word Of God And Listen To Other Disabled People Too.
(This is aimed at nondisabled authors, because disabled authors have their own rules; if you’re a nondisabled author and you think that’s unfair, you’re probably not ready to write disabled characters)
1.) Here, have some academic literature, which features the 11 negative stereotypes of disabled characters, along with some additional tips. (”That article’s long!” It’s worth it.)
2.) Why are you writing this disabled character? Why are they disabled? Make sure you’re not being tokenistic. Are you trying your best to show genuine representation? Constantly reflect.
3.) Are you writing a disabled character or are you writing a disabled character? Put simply: Take out the disability. What’s left of your character? Their personality, their wants, their favorite foods, etc. Disabled people are people, so your disabled characters should be people, too. Give them an identity outside their disability.
4.) Who’s your disabled character trying to inspire? Disabled or nondisabled readers? Aim for the former. Note: “What? My character’s not there to inspire anyone” is an absolutely valid response.
5.) Does your disabled character need to be oppressed? Mine do. All of my books are about disabled characters fighting ableism / disablism, whether systemic, interpersonal, internal, etc. I consciously made that choice, because I want to write those types of stories. That said, it’s perfectly valid to have, say, an autistic, crutch-using, pirate captain, whose disability is never questioned by the crew or their enemies. In fact, I daresay those stories are needed, just as much as stories about oppression are needed.
6.) On that note, suspension of disbelief is a tricky thing. Do you want your portrayal of disability to be extremely realistic or do you want to take some liberties? This depends on the genre and tone of your story. Jonah can only do what an average real-life wheelchair-user can do. Minnie can pull a sword from the scabbard that’s impossibly-situated next to her armrest. Frankie’s going to have a wheelchair-mech. My point is that certain genres lend themselves to certain realisms. Sometimes, it’s nice to have disabled characters doing impossible things because it’s Fun. Sometimes, it’s nice to have a grounded, realistic, portrayal.
7.) Magic. Superpowers. Let’s talk about them. Briefly. They should always be accommodations for your disabled characters. They should never cure them. Minnie has started using her magic to create ramps and elevators. Juniper telekinetically does similar things. In Avatar, Toph’s seismic sense is an adaptation with its own limitations. She can’t just magically see, like every other character. Adapt. Don’t cure.
8.) Don’t cure. Seriously, don’tcure. “But-” Nope. “I-” Nah. “You said this post shouldn’t be Word of God.” I say a lot of things. I’m saying this, now: Don’t cure your disabled characters. Put bluntly: ability is not a reward. By curing your disabled characters, often as a reward for their story-long perseverance, you’re saying two things: 1.) Life is better when you’re nondisabled. 2.) Real-life disabled people don’t have the perseverance, strength, etc. to cure themselves. | The trope is dripping with eugenics-based propaganda. Do. Not. Cure. This rule might not apply to disabled authors. Speaking of…
9.) Be really careful when you’re trying to write the personal narrative of a disabled character (i/e: a story that’s all about a character’s perception of their disability). When I say ‘careful’, I mean ‘careful’. You could potentially piss off millions of people and cause genuine harm if you try to tell a story that’s not yours to tell. “But it’s my book!” But it might not be your story to tell. Me Before You wasn’t just offensive to so many disabled people because the main character wanted to end his life; it was offensive because a nondisabled author who didn’t know, let alone listen to, disabled people had written the story. It wasn’t her story to tell. There are times when disabled authors get to tell disabled people’s stories. You need to understand that. You need. To be. Careful.
10.) Listen to disabled people. Not just me. Every disabled person who talks to you. Listen to them. That said, while most people hated Me Before You, some people genuinely loved it. Opinions differ, is what I’m getting at. Just because one disabled person likes / dislikes your story, that doesn’t mean the other nine hundred million will. But you need to listen. And if a majority of disabled people hate your creation, you need to do better. Don’t be Sia. Don’t be Sia. Listen to me, and I cannot emphasize this enough. Don’t. Be. Sia.
11.) Mind the terms. Throughout this whole post, I’ve been saying “disabled people”. Some would say, “people with disabilities”. That is valid. Some would say “people with different-abilities”. That is not valid. I can’t get into the deep complexities of disability-language, so do your research. For god’s sake, do your research.
12.) Mind the verbs. I’m forever amused by the fact that a sins-tallying Youtuber wrote a book where the blind character “looked over there”. It’s not offensive, per se; it’s just a disconnect, you know?
13.) If your disabled character can’t be put to an AMV of Fight Song or This Is Me, did you really write a disabled character at all?
Alright so if you’re a writer then you’ve probably familiarized yourself with plot…and the structure it provides to a novel. There are countless articles online on “how to plot a novel” or the like. Which is fantastic for you writers because it’s at a fingers reach from us. Not so great when there’s about…a billion ways one can go about plotting a novel. It can seem daunting and overwhelming and more important confusing!
I want to break down this massive task bit by bit. Starting with the very bare bones and working into more detailed parts. Making it more manageable.
Now, I know some of you might roll your eyes and say I know all there is to know about plot. I was you. I went into every workshop and craft class thinking the same thing. And yet, when I started plotting my recent WIP ( The Cost of Defeat ) I realized I didn’t know jack. I thought every story I ever wrote would adhere to my system of structure because of sheer will and blunt force. Yeah wrong.
It wasn’t until just recently I started diving into the structure ( because I like pretty diagrams and being organized way more than I should) that I discovered there are a lot of different Plot Structures out there. No one bothered to ever teach me let alone discuss these things. My mind was blown.
Some worked better for me than others. Some mesh better together than others. It’s all about experimenting and figuring out what works for you. And I’m hoping that this will also help others, or at least give a jumping off point. Now it’s not a whole list ( there’s a lot of elements that I could probably talk about by themselves) but it’s a good overview of the popular ones that reoccur a lot.
1) Freytag’s Pyramid
Freytag’s pyramid is the most basic plot structure I know. It’s the one we’ve all seen in school when we start learning about story structure and analysis.
This bad boy is the simplest plot structure used to dissect and understand Greek and Shakespearean Plays.
Pros x Simplistic. Makes it easy to understand x Great for those just starting ( or those who want to understand film and literature analysis. x Great for AP Literature/Comp papers
Cons x It creates simple stories x Not super awesome for modern novels or anything longer than about 25K words
Uses x Children’s Literature. Picture books mostly. Children are still learning to understand things like conflict effect on characters and having such a long falling action allows for that. x Short Stories. Since short stories are compact for punch, this structure allows you to get the most done without boring the reader in 25K words or less. x Analysis. This structure is the easiest and most common to apply to plays, film, tv and even in classic literature. It’s a great way to dissect plot and events in order to better understand the pieces working parts
Examples: Shakespeare's Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet Sophocles’s Antigone Henrik Ibsen A Doll House
2) Three-Act Structure
The Three-Act Structure is probably the most known. We all know this intuitively as storytellers. Everything needs a beginning middle and end, after all.
This structure is very similar to Freytag’s Pyramid but adds elements that beef up and create points of interest. Obstacles, for example, add conflict and build up suspense for the climax. It’s also important to note that the falling action and resolution is much more compact.
Pros x basic building block for all good stories x Roadmap-like so you can be systematic about things x Good “big-picture” visual
Cons x Pacing is super important for this x Bit rigid and formulaic
Uses x Literally anything. Because it’s versatile it works on a plethera of stuff, let your imagineation run wild. x Film analysis. This struccture is like the holy grail in almost any film class ( sometimes they call it the four act structure)
Examples: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice
3) The Fichtean Curve
The Fichten Curve Is really unique in that it starts right with the rising action. There ain’t no time to build up or nice slow introductions, you’re dumping the readers right where it hurts. But you make up that lost time with the small bits of exposition
This is one of the most popular plot structures for modern novels.
Pros x A lot of opportunities to ramp up the stakes, bit after bit x Good for pacing x Great for Overcoming Monster & Quest stories x Translate over almost any genre
Cons x Not a lot of time to slow down, breathe x Not suited for Voyage and Return, Comedy or Rebirth stories
Uses x Thrillers/Mystery novels. You need something to keep readers in the story, chomping at the bit. here’s the plot structure for you.
Examples: Max Brooks’s World War Z
4) Plot Embryo/Hero’s Journey
The Hero’s Journey is also super common in the literature (namely western literature) With this plot the protagonist ( the hero of hero’s journey) undergoes a literal or figurative death-like transformation that changes him.
The protagonist must venture from one state into another. To take it a step further there’s a variation called the Ploy Embyro. Dan Harmon takes the hero’s journey a bit deeper and modernizes. [ here’a great video on it by youtuber Rachel Stephen x]
As you can see, the Hero’s Journey and Ploy Embyro are both cyclical. This baby comes full circle in both plot and character. They have similar plot points. But if I were to gush about this the post would be waaay longer than it already is. This is one of my preferred methods because it just makes sense for me and allows me to have some freedom and wiggle room while still adhering to the 3 acts.
Pros x Character development holla, cause this is where it’s at. x Visually appealing x Simple 8 point outline ( for those who might not enjoy long-winded outlines) x Works alongside A beat sheet ( if you use that sort of thing) x The holy grail for myths.
Cons x Overdone ( but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing) x Not suited for those who really detailed outlines
Uses x Adventure Stories. It is all about the adventure and journey with this x Myth Retellings. I mean it’s based on the myth structure of the Odyssey and the like so it makes sense
Examples: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief J. R R. Tolktien’s The Hobbit
5) In Media Res
A literal translation to “In the Middle”. This plot structure dumps you right in the middle of the story. Think if you were to open a story on the second of third crisis/pinch point. there’s still a lot of upward trajectory to go before the climax.
Don’t confuse this with simply opening a story mid fight/action. Media Res starts well deep into the story itself, close to the climax but with enough room you can still build up to it.
Pros x High Actions x Simple and fun to play with x A good use for flashbacks x Hell of a hook for readers
Cons x Can be confusing for reader’s if not done right x No build up x takes some finessing to get just right
Uses x Mysteries. This is a great plot if you want to start a story perhaps where the killer has already committed the murder. x Epic Poems. Maybe you wanna write the next epic poem, this is great for that.
Examples John Milton’s Paradise Lost Homer’s Illiad George Lucas’s Star Wars
Now I could go on and on but this monster of a post has carried on long enough. If there’s a certain structure you’d like me to go into more detail about feel free to leave a comment on this post and I’ll be sure to add it to my line up!! As always happy writing/creating!
Me being traumatized and not wanting that to happen to other kids makes me a bad person now :)) I’m disgusting :)) and horrible :)) and it’s my fault that happened :)) and everybody hates me more now :)) cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.
You are not horrible. And I do not hate you. It is not your fault that it happened. But things that are marked as adult very clearly are not for kids, and if you read it anyway it is on the people who should have been supervising you and did not intervene, or, assuming that you were old enough to know what ‘adult content’ means and chose to engage with stuff produced by adult fans for adult fans, on you for ignoring the warnings.
If a ten year old child goes to a library right now, and walks to the romance section and pulls down a book, that child’s guardians are responsible for saying “Hey now that is not for you.” If that same child comes back at thirteen and, knowing there is content in that book that adults do not want them to read, furtively hides away from guardian’s eyes and reads it anyway, that is not the fault of the library for having that book, or the author for writing it.
I am very sorry you’ve been hurt. But adults are going to produce content for adults, and if you ignore the guidelines set in place to keep kids out of that content, then that’s not the fault of the adults who wrote the stuff.
I do not understand this new generation of kids doing the internet equivalent of going into a clearly marked strip club, showing a fake ID to the bouncer and then being shocked and appalled by it being full of adults and strippers.
like i get this argument, i really do, and there really is only so much content creators can do to try and stop children consuming content not suitable for them
BUT we cannot trust a thirteen year old to have the maturity and foresight to know what is and isn’t good for them. Yeah, their gaurdians should be the ones looking out for them and trying to stop them from getting hurt, but in your library analogy, when the library chooses to have that content it’s also somewhat responsible for restricting access to it - whether that’s putting those books somewhere the librarian can monitor most of the time, or having a slightly restricted sentence you need to be registered and have a verified age to go into, but there needs to be something - if you knowingly let unmonitored kids into your buisness, but especially if you encourage them like libraries do, you are responsible for their safety- it takes a village to raise a child and we are all responsible for their safety
that said it’s deffo not the authors responsibility, but the host, tumblr, ao3, where ever. they gotta do something
They literally already are. Rating and tagging everything as mature and clearly marking content is the barrier. This isn’t a movie theater or a library. None of those websites are KNOWINGLY allowing children into their business, because EVERYONE IS INVISIBLE.
There is literally no way to effectively bar children from accessing content they shouldn’t have access to, that doesn’t involve gross invasions of privacy. You can ban all children from a website and that STILL won’t work because there is no actual way to accurately determine who is and isn’t a child. In a lot of cases the bare minimum you can do is just outright ASK if they are a child, but then they LIE and there is no way to STOP them from lying or even figuring out IF they are lying. Hell, not even outright banning all icky things will work, as Tumblr’s disastrous NSFW ban has shown us.
‘We all have a collective responsibility to protect children’ only goes so far. If all children are invisible and can be literally anywhere at any point, ‘collective responsibility’ ends up meaning ‘in your day to day life, you must always act under the assumption that there MIGHT HYPOTHETICALLY be a child in the room’. We can’t help raise a child if we literally cannot see them and don’t even have any way of confirming their existence. And it is going too damn far to tell adults they are not allowed to do adult things with other adults because a child MIGHT POTENTIALLY be able to see them do it, even if they’re not supposed to, especiallyif they’re not supposed to. It’s also going too far to tell all websites that they are responsible for keeping track of legions of invisible, hypothetical, lying children.
All methods of reliably confirming people’s age online are immediately gross and dangerous invasions of privacy. All measures to try and prevent children from seeing things they shouldn’t are flimsy, at best. The MOST EFFECTIVE thing is the thing we are doing already: meticulously tagging and archiving content with extensive filters and multiple warnings, so that every potential viewer can make an informed decision about what they choose to look at.
Which means that, at the end of the day, dumb 13-year-olds and the few people in their lives who can see them as Not Invisible are going to have to take responsibility for themselves, and potentially each other.
Hey so also, just to address part of what lnalovegd said, that thing about libraries being somewhat responsible for restricting access to certain materials…
No, actually.
That is the opposite of what libraries are supposed to do.
Public libraries do not–and CANNOT–restrict materials. At all. You hear every now and again of some that do. It is not a good road to go down. I live in a city with a lot of conservatives (the attempt at a drag queen storytime nearly got the library defunded by a lot). Whose judgement do you use? How do you determine that?
You could say “ratings” but honestly, that’s still not great, since LGBTQ things get rated higher than hetero things. Books don’t really have ratings, and they shouldn’t.
When I worked at the desk of the public library, one thing we HAD to practice was impartiality. It meant handing people hateful books like Anne Coulter’s drek without a side eye. It also meant that if a kid showed up at the desk with a library card and, say… Saw or the Godfather… well. I was going to check it out to them. That’s how public libraries run. Anyone can check out anything, and parental approval is not needed (for us. Parents might have other ideas. I still get mad remembering this woman who wouldn’t let her son check out Calvin & Hobbes or certain other books. But again, I did not say a word. Neutrality).
It’s crucial to a public library that we operate like that.
Libraries do not restrict material. We can organize it. Kids sections, teen sections, adult sections. But no librarian or library tech is going to monitor what children are checking out.
Yeah, kids won’t always know what they’re picking up. The first romance I ever picked up had sex and graphic medieval torture in it. I sure wasn’t expecting it. I stopped reading it. Then when the internet happened…hoo boy, you kids should have seen that wild west.
Comparatively now, I see folks really make every effort to use tags and warnings. Maybe you know what it means, maybe you don’t. But they’re there. They’re the best method we have for keeping content away from people who would be emotionally harmed by it, or who just plain don’t want to see it.
At the end of the day, if you’re old enough to go looking for content on your own, you’re going to have to accept that you might see things you don’t want to see. Yes, even as kids.
There are kid-friendly websites and forums where you can go if you don’t want to deal with that.
The fact that so many people just blithely go ‘oh, well of course libraries restrict what content they’ll allow minors to access and monitor what they check out and notify their guardians if they’re reading something (that the librarian deems) inappropriate’ always makes me want to scream.
Just to add on: a small town in Wisconsin went through this ~10 years ago, when local conservatives tried to get YA books with LGBT content moved to the adult section and labeled “sexually explicit” to try and deter children from accessing them. Librarians refused, and in retaliation the town council refused to renew the contracts of four library board members for supporting them.
Yeah, I just want to say as someone who works in a library, that it’s absolutely NOT my job to smack books out of kids hands? Sometime last year a 12 year old girl wanted to read YA books and her guardian was down for it so we handed her The Cruel Prince, Children of Blood and Bone, and Eragon (likes fantasy series) and like all of those contain content that I might cringe to give my own 12 year old niece–but dad was okay with it. She decided for herself that she wasn’t about that Cruel Prince vibes and put it down before it got to the sex and “adult man on teen girl” action–which has always been the goal.
Libraries want children and adults to monitor their own consumption of materials, children with the guidance of their parents until they can make that decision for themselves.
“whether that’s putting those books somewhere the librarian can monitor most of the time, or having a slightly restricted sentence you need to be registered and have a verified age to go into, but there needs to be something”
^^^^ This?? does not exist. Especially not the bolded part. There’s actually more monitoring in children’s areas for children’s books that are made for children than there is in the adult section. We barely watch those books and if a 8 year old wants to read The Shining? Holla. Mom signed off on his card, she better be watching.
This scene here with Matilda could never have happened if Libraries required matilda to have a “rated access” on certain books. Charles Dickens, at the lowest, is usually sorted into YA. Remember, Matilda is going into kindergarten.
I was ten or eleven when I started pulling books off the romance novel shelves. My dad saw, took me aside, and told me the books had some parts that might make me uncomfortable, and if I was uncomfortable, that it was ok to skip a few pages and get back to the story.
He didn’t bar me from reading or censor my chosen content; he gave me the tools to make my own decisions.
When I was ten or eleven, I read all of my dad’s Stephen King and John Grisham books, because they were books and they were in my house and I’d run out of new things to read.
Were they appropriate for me? No.
Should my parents have noticed me reading them, and stopped me? Probably!
Is that the fault of anyone outside my house? also no.
The thing is, a couple of years later when I started reading fanfic, I knew, from that experience, that I did not want to read fiction with a lot of violence or explicit sex, so I avoided fic labeled as such and back-buttoned out of a lot of stories as soon as the kissing started.
My 12 year old is a voracious reader. We talk about book series she’s interested in. Sometimes I google the ones I’m not too sure about and sometimes I know them already - but I’ve never outright told her she couldn’t read a specific book or series of books. We talk about the content and why I think it might not be age appropriate (she reads at college level) but she gets to make those decisions for herself.
This year she discovered ao3 (please god don’t let her find me I’d never recover from the embarrassment and neither would she) and we talked about what the ratings and warning tags were about and for. I don’t police her reading but I give her the tools and information to make informed and (I hope) good choices.
As a parent that’s my real job. To provide tools and guidance, not police her content consumption or hide things from her.
Don’t make fandom censorship about “but think of the childrenz” becayse that’s not what it is. It’s not really about children - it’s about virtue signaling.
Parenting is about thinking about the kids; fandom is about making content you enjoy creating and enjoying the content that’s been created. Properly tagged fanfiction is probably safer for kids in that regard than wandering unaccompanied around the library and picking up, for example, Clan of the Cave Bear which triggered me so hard (at 11) that I’ve never fully recovered.
I’ve been intentionally cultivating yellow jacket nests in my garden for years now and can vouch that they are both exceptionally chill and A+ pest control.
In the US they are not allowed to charge an individual for this vaccine. They are allowed to bill your insurance. Whether you have insurance or not, you will not pay anything.
i know that “don’t harass people for being weird, they might be autistic!” is a fairly popular take on here. but as a Certified Autist, i’d like to add that harassing allistic and/or neurotypical people for being weird is also bad, and should not be done
and before you come in with “yeah, you never know who is and isn’t autistic, and you shouldn’t force people to out themselves!” i want to say two things: one, i agree. and two, even if you could magically avoid ever harassing a single autistic person, it still wouldn’t be okay to go after NTs for being weird. they’re people, janice. they’re allowed to be really invested in naruto
