№18047012[Quote]
The sharty, as a cultural institution, has spent far too much time pretending that boymodders are somehow an unacceptable deviation from the natural order of the internet. This is a mistake. Boymodders are not a bug in the ecosystem. They are part of the ecosystem. They contribute to the ancient traditions of posting, lurking, schizoposting, and staring at the same character portrait for forty-five minutes while experiencing an emotion that cannot be adequately described in words.
The basic principle should therefore be simple: let boymodders live. Not every person needs to conform to somebody else's preferred aesthetic, presentation, or internet archetype. If someone wants to boymode, then congratulations: they have unlocked one of the internet's most time-honored character classes. The sharty should simply accept this reality and move on to more important matters, such as determining whether a fictional character qualifies as a gemmy.
And this brings us to the holy trinity: OMORI, TCOAAL, and Zellig.
These are gemmies.
There is no need to overcomplicate the matter. {"fallbackMarkdown":"OMORI","reference":{"alt":"OMORI","category":"video_game","extra_params":{"disambiguation":"2020 indie RPG"},"name":"OMORI","prompt_text":"OMORI","status":"done","type":"entity"},"referenceKey":"0","showLoginRequiredCard":false} has all the necessary ingredients: psychological suffering, strange little guys, aggressively memorable imagery, and enough emotional damage to power a small municipal grid. It is the sort of work where someone can say, “Hey, this is pretty cute,” and then discover approximately six hours later that the cute thing has inflicted permanent psychic damage.
TCOAAL occupies a similarly sacred position. Whatever one's precise interpretation of the acronym or its fandom terminology, the important point is that it possesses the essential gemmy properties: strange characters, intense emotions, deeply questionable circumstances, and the unmistakable sensation that you have wandered into a corner of the internet where everyone knows the lore except you.
Then there is Zellig.
Zellig is perhaps the purest expression of gemmy energy because it exists in that beautiful region between genuine artistic appreciation and the absolute inability to explain to another human being why you are looking at this thing. You simply point at the screen and say, “Gemmy.” The other person asks what that means. You have no answer. This is because the concept transcends language.
This is also why the sharty should be careful about gatekeeping. The internet has enough unnecessary borders already. We do not need another council meeting where twelve anonymous posters gather around a glowing Soytan Diaper and declare that someone's favorite character is insufficiently gemmy.
Indeed, the Soytan Diaper itself deserves recognition as a philosophical object. Imagine the ancient Greeks discovering it. Socrates would stand before the Soytan Diaper and ask, “What is virtue?” Plato would write The Republic of the Diaper. Aristotle would spend three volumes categorizing its metaphysical properties. Eventually someone would get banned from the Agora for posting it without context.
That is the power of gemmy humor.
At its best, this kind of absurdity creates a shared language between people who would otherwise have absolutely nothing to talk about. You can say “Soytan Diaper” and, if the other person understands, you immediately know that some deeply cursed portion of the internet has successfully transmitted its cultural heritage.
So let the boymodders boymode. Let the gemmies be gemmies. Let OMORI remain emotionally devastating, let TCOAAL remain whatever eldritch corner of fandom it occupies, and let Zellig continue floating majestically through the collective consciousness.
And if the sharty cannot accept this peaceful coexistence, then perhaps it should consult the Soytan Diaper.
The Soytan Diaper has seen things.
The Soytan Diaper judges no one.
The Soytan Diaper simply remains.