#beta flash

Yup.

That's all I'm going to say. 

I'M FUCKING TERRIFIED.

Also Cronus is a class A dick wow.

And all in all this update brings a whole new level of fandom mockery with it. 

PLEASE TAG YOUR SPOILERS

A LOT OF US DIDN'T GET THE BETA

So I'm going through the beta flash

I enjoyed the beta flash immensely.  I kind of wish I'd gotten to play it before my dashboard exploded with hate for a couple things that happened, because it severely affected my ability to enjoy the game.  So just a big shout-out to everyone who didn't tag their opinions or put things under a cut, THANKS!!!! Because of you, I spent the entire flash over-analyzing everything and trying to figure out where these thoughts were coming from rather than just sitting back and enjoying it for what it was.

There are two big things I've seen targeted in these posts, so I'm going to split this analysis in to two parts, starting with the more non-sensical one and then going to the more serious one.

Mituna, Cronus, and Sexual Harassment

As a female, I've learned that basically everything can be sexual harassment.  That guy who comes to my cash register at work, puts his elbows on the check-out table and leans in real close, smiling real big, is sexual harassment.  The victims are the ones who decide whether they are being sexually harassed or not; a man saying "I wasn't doing anything!" after leering or making cat calls at a girl isn't the party who gets to make that call, because I am my own person and I decide what I'm comfortable with and what I'm not comfortable with.

However, given the context clues, I don't think Mituna was being sexually harassed.  He was just being harassed.

The thing that really riles me up about this is that it shows the clear bias the fandom has against Eridan and anyone connected with him.  Context explicitly states that Cronus has one hand resting on Mituna's shoulder and is giving him a "shoulder massage".  Sounds kind of creepy, I'll agree.  But Mituna and Cronus quite obviously hate each other, and Mituna reacts like a little kid does when someone they hate is touching them.  They freak out.

It made me think very clearly of my childhood when people I didn't like would obnoxiously put a hand on my shoulder or my back because their physical presence just pissed me off so much I would fall in to hysterics.  It wasn't overtly sexual, it was just a combination of someone I hated so much actually coming in to contact with my person.

Was it appropriate?  Of course not.  Is Mituna allowed to react however the hell he wants to if someone is laying hands on his person?  Absolutely!  Does laying a hand on someone's shoulder mean you're going to rape them?  No.

Ableism

There are bad people in the world.  While I regret that Cronus was chosen to reinforce the negative Eridan stereotypes (which is another post entirely), he's just a jerk who likes to pick on people he views as less fortunate than himself because of his own insecurities about his identity (he voices these concerns to Kankri after the whole debacle with Mituna is over).  Unfortunately, people will go out of their way to pick on people who are handicapped.  Mituna is one of those people, and Cronus is one of those people who just views him as an easy target.  It's unfortunate, it's inappropriate and absolutely uncalled for, but it happens.

Cronus displaying a negative character trait does not in any way reflect on the views of Hussie or constitute him genuinely making fun of people with handicaps.  You can write characters who do horrible, terrible things without it reflecting your own views.  Cronus is a jerk, plain and simple, and people who want to look at it beyond that are inventing reasons to be upset at something that was not meant to convey anything beyond the fact that Cronus is an asshole.

The other issue I've seen people take away from Mituna's disability is the attitude of Kankri and the reprimand we see Meenah give Cronus.  I'll go with Meenah first because she's the easiest to talk about.  Meenah is not a wordy girl; she despises the lengthy conversations she has with Kankri and Aranea.  Most of her interactions are just a couple sentences at a time; short and sweet.  So when she reprimands Cronus with just a few comments, it's totally within her character.  She's not going to start flipping out and going on a Kankri-style speech about how inappropriate his behavior is.  Her comments about him being a dick are exactly how we should expect her to react.  And the truth is, she's not super close to Mituna.  It doesn't make her a horrible person to not jump down Cronus's throat when she isn't close to the person he's attacking.  She recognizes that it's wrong, that she doesn't like it, but unfortunately that's just how Cronus is and any reprimand would be ignored so why waste her breath.  She's practical like that, I think.  So Meenah not culling Cronus for insulting Mituna does not make her a bad person.

And as far as Kankri goes, good lord, do you people not get the joke yet?  Kankri represents the social justice advocate who screams without really understanding the issue.  A lot of things go completely over his head, which is glaringly obvious when he says Mituna is giving the disabled a bad name by having something so iconic as a helmet to protect him from hurting himself.  The things Kankri says in Mituna's defense are almost as bad as the slurs Cronus is throwing around, but like I stated above, that's the point.  People in the social justice movement get upset about things without understanding the issue or the context or motivations of the people behind what they view as an "injustice".  Not that what Cronus says to Mituna is justified, but people can be attacked for having an inside joke with a friend of a particular race or orientation because the attacker thinks they have to defend the person of minority.

People getting upset over Kankri's handling of Cronus's attack on Mituna makes me literally want to double over with laughter, because the only thing they're doing is proving the stereotypes more and more accurate.  View the work of fiction for what it is and accept the fact that characters can display negative traits of certain groups of people without representing all of them.