#I am unreasonably invested in this

[he1ian]

game night

[spending-life-pretending]

I have no idea what’s going on with the actual plot and lore of campaign 3 of critical role (moon’s haunted?? they’re either killing gods or saving them from being killed?) but I can confidently state that if the small angst-ridden widow man and his musical blue bestie ever kiss I wish to be informed of it immediately

[imaheroitsayssoonmybracelet]

[here-there-were-dragons]

just read the new hatchling skin rules and am having Some Type Of Initial Emotional Reaction and am now writing down said Initial Emotional Reaction uncensored as i currently Strongly Feel A Type Of Way and Require Venting. i cannot word this more politely. i do not have the capability to render this rage into polite borderline corporate-speak for the sake of the damn rules that act like anything short of apologizing for being alive to make up for having even the most constructive understanding friendly criticism or even personal mild non-critical dislike of something like a color or a breed is tantamount to personal targeted hatemail. i cannot wait until i cool into calm bitterness later because if i think about this enough to write about it again i will just go right back to being furious and the fact that everyone ielse who's complaining is focusing entirely on the lolita fashion thing and not on in my opinion the far more significant and offensive part is pissing me off even more. extremely angry unedited ranting ahead

fr having it's own "female presenting nipples" moment right now, not that i'm particularly surprised, they've been a prime example of "conservative protestantism in a lefty-language veneer" for a long while now.

"don't adultify" is such a fucking vague and easily selectively interpreted rule, not to mention insulting for a number of reasons,

but putting that part aside the whole idea of "nothing that suggests that the dragon is an adult in a young body" is. look, i'm not exactly fond of the "adult who looks like an anime schoolgirl" trope myself, but i fail to see how in the absolute FUCK having it be canon in-universe that it is both possible and legal for someone to be forced to stay as a child permanently, is somehow LESS creepy than just saying eternal youth dragons have dwarfism. also, fuck you to anyone with dwarfism apparently i guess?

and "no zombie baby dragons" is just stupid. even fucking minecraft has baby zombies, and microsoft has steadily butchered that game into one of the most t for toddler babymode things on earth this side of cocomelon.

and "no scars on hatchlings" so fuck you to any kids with scars too apparently, even though that's way more common than anyone seems to realize. you hear that, kids? if you're under 18 and have scars your very existence is too obscene for public view. 13+ year olds will be irreparably traumatized if they have to know you exist at all! fuck you disabled kids and fuck you amputee kids and fuck you any kids that have suffered anything ever at all for not appearing as a perfect unspoiled image of conservative christian child-doll innocent purity. flight rising staff says your body and existence is inherently too nsfw to even be acknowledged as existing much less visually seen. everyone knows REAL children don't get damaged at all, and if they do then they're too horrifying and defective at their job of Being A Child Properly to exist in public spaces! how dare ugly things that might make us uncomfortable with their existence by contradicting out ideals about aesthetic moral purity be allowed where good respectable normal people can see them!

i don't say any of these words lightly, and i'm very much not the type to go around calling people whatever-ists and in fact find that kind of thing extremely annoying, useless, reductive, and more or less only ever see it used as a blunt cudgel to shame people into line so they don't question you, and have historically found it especially annoying when people pull out the accusations-of-ism card on fr staff over things that are far more likely just completely understandable (if dubiously competent) issues of certain things simply not occurring to someone on code and design level due to lack of sufficient exposure to the idea, and have always been of the belief of giving them the benefit of doubt (even if often that just means i think they either most likely made an understandable mistake that i would likely also make, or, when i'm feeling less kind, that they're simply not particularly competent rather than actively hostile) so understand how much it means coming from me when i say- flight rising staff, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you, you ableist batch of pricks, so far up your own asses with your performative veneer of vaguely lefty-flavored language that you don't realize how fundamentally extremely conservative all of your actual beliefs underlying them are. for every update you make that i approve of there's another that does twice as much damage as the good update fixed (and i'm starting to wonder if you maybe know what you're doing with that too-always batching the fucked up shit on the tail end of some big thing you know people will be excited about, always hiding these controversial moderation changes under something shiny and new, to the point that now i dread any new good update that genuinely seems a step in the right direction and/or is something we've been wanting for awhile because i'm just constantly expecting the knife hidden behind the footnotes afterwards, the fucking "ban tiktok/gay marriage/strip rights from this population/end net neutrality/whatever/ect" clause stapled onto the end of a bill about something entirely unrelated functionally holding a change people want hostage until they allow the fucked up part through. i've been here most of the site's 10+ years and i've seen this sort of thing happen far, far too often.) and every year the shit that gets pulled on the management and moderation end of things makes me more and more almost glad i've never had an income to spend on this, and the fact that apparently the moderation behind every single other petsite in existence is somehow significantly worse fucking astounds me. the only reason i stay around here is because It's Free Dragon Pictures, because it's literally the only actually good petsite game i've ever played and not gotten sick of within a week or so (and really the only good low-energy game i've ever played in general, which i'm increasingly convinced is in spite of it's management), and because somehow, despite all of this shit, i still genuinely love the game itself, because unfortunately by some accident of creation it seems they apparently stumbled purely by coincidence into making an actually good game idea no one else quite has. and after all the fuckery that gets constantly pulled, i refuse to believe the game being good is anything other than, much like many of the of the incidents i think they're unfairly accused of malice and -ism over, an accident.

Disabled children too obscene to fucking exist. fuck you. good to know half the child population's existence requires a trigger warning to even be allowed to be acknowledged as existing to you. good to know if the heart surgery i had when i was 11 had left any visible external scars i would be considered inherently too obscene to exist to you. good to know if the overhealed and benignly potentially cancerous scar on my back from whatever actually happened when i was a toddler (i don't trust either of my parents to ever be accurate about something like that) was in a more visible spot you would demand i have a trigger warning to post selfies online. good to know if any of the shit that's broken me emotionally left visible physical marks you would think it was good and right for me to be forcibly hidden from good normal people's view and considered too taboo for even the slightest discussion without hiding it with makeup and lies, just so i don't make good, lucky, undamaged, normal people uncomfortable, god fucking forbid. should we hide the gays too, since they also make so many people uncomfy? i imagine it won't be long before disabled adults are too obscene for your polite societytm sensibilities too. i've had the feeling for a long time that amputee and disabled skins were living on borrowed time with your rules, kept technically not explicitly dissalowed where all other forms of injury and ""body horror"" are banned simply out of fear of the backlash it would cause to include them, and well. the doomsday clock on that one just got a little bit closer to midnight, huh?

the only reason i wasn't a (physically, visibly, externally) scarred kid was pure sheer fucking luck. the only reason you weren't a physically scarred kid too is pure sheer fucking luck. the only reason you're not some type of disfigured or ugly or amputated or visibly injured or whatnot is pure sheer fucking luck. you're lucky. nothing more. if having to contend with that fact-the fact of how easily it could have gone a different way and there is nothing they would be able to do about it- makes good normal tm people uncomfortable, then well, get the fuck used to it, other people children very much fucking included don't exist to cater to the aesthetic sensibilities of a lucky perfect few. the only thing that separates you from the damaged ones you find too obscene is a bad day and an unlucky hand. and one day, even if you were lucky enough to escape being damaged when you were young, you and i will both be just like them too.

more festival skin winners slots is good. elemental swords sound fun.

[exopelagic]

WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME BURROWS END WASNT FREE

[diseasedrat2000]

hi just a quick little friendly note: i have no problem with you not loving me, that’s ok, i get it, but hearing you say it and phrase it like that feels so so crushing and so awful, your feelings are your feelings but if they could not be expressed to me in that way that would be great. it’s totally ok for you not to love me but to hear you say it flat out like that is crushing. i like you lots, you’re not an idiot so you know how i feel about you but i can’t hear you say i don’t love you again, please. and i’m not trying to force you to say anything either way because that’s not who i am/want to be as a person, but when you ‘slip up’ like that, please please don’t say oop i don’t love you, just be like oh sorry, i like you lots,

is the message i’ve had to send to my partner tonight because when we were on a call (only a short one) he accidentally said i love you just as we were saying goodbye but then was like ‘oh sorry i don’t love you i mean i like you lots, just goes to show how easy it is to say that to you’ and i kinda had to be like yeah i like you too goodnight because it was my bedtime but like boy, BOY, don’t do that to me, please!! this is the fourth time it’s happened, my sister asked him if he loved me a couple weeks ago and he was like no i don’t but i like them (me) very much and i was like haha same but inside a bit of me died because it’s just not what anyone wants to hear. his hang ups about the word are his and i respect that, i haven’t said it either even though ive felt it since november, but i can’t keep hearing him actively say he doesn’t love me, even if he follows it with i like you lots. has anyone else experienced this? am i being unreasonable? please please tell me if i am, im autistic so i don’t know what a ‘normal’ relationship should look like and yeah

[starfieldcanvas]

yes!!! as an exr shipper myself, can we please stop giving other people's plotlines to grantaire. if the two of them ever managed to get together it would be so, so much messier and less rational than any of those options

it’s so so funny silly. “grantaire is a working class person who inspires enjolras through new perspectives” so close, that is feuilly. “grantaire is enjolras’s intellectual equal who has complicated and conviction-informed feelings about revolutionary violence and his articulations of these feelings round out and supplement enjolras’s perspective” so close, that is combeferre. “If grantaire had joined in the fighting he would have been super awesome at it and earned enjolras’s respect and admiration” so close‼️‼️ that is MARIUS!!

[maximumzombiecreator]

My primary objection to the whole "5e as a containment game for bad players" thing is that, in my experience, the vast majority of these bad players are perfectly able to be good players, they just don't know that they're not. They think they're behaving in a socially normative fashion, and are often shocked and embarrassed to learn that you think they've been rude.

Like, when it comes to players not learning the rules, I don't think I've ever gotten pushback* when I tell people, "We're all spending our limited free time to be here, so to be respectful to everyone's time, please learn how your stuff works so that we're not bogged down." Sometimes people still struggle, but then I usually take from that that they need to be playing something simpler. Some players are just a bad fit for crunchy systems, but they are trying.

*(from people I'm playing with, not internet weirdos)

The thing is that, for most of these players, they think I'm hosting a dinner party when I'm actually hosting a potluck. They've absorbed a culture that leads them to believe that I, as GM, am putting on a big production for them, they're my guests, and all they're expected to do is show up and have a good time. Them investing time to learn the rules and systems would be like showing up to my dinner party with a side dish. Like, that's honestly kind of insulting? If your host has prepared a 5 course dinner and you show up with your own food, that's an awkward situation.

But once you tell them that, no, this is a potluck, and they were really supposed to bring, like, a green bean casserole or something, they're mortified. And some of them won't be comfortable doing that, and will choose not to participate instead, but honestly I've almost never seen anyone decide that the expectation is unreasonable.

[romanceyourdemons]

fantasy setting with powerful magic that avoids addressing the problem of evil question (eg at the end of the quest a wizard effortlessly conjures a massive feast in celebration. why didn’t they conjure a feast for any of the starving peasants they passed? oh that’s not important look the mysterious swordsman is dancing on the table): eh. medium brain. it obviously leaves a significant chunk of worldbuilding unrealized, but it also avoids one of the world’s biggest cans of worms, which they might not need skewing the tone of the story

fantasy setting that addresses the problem of evil question with ontological caps on omnipotence (eg due to the vague nature of magic wizards can only conjure feasts once a month or so and thus it’s unreasonable to expect them to feed all the orphans): SMALL brain. BOO. regina george voice so you agree? you think it’s fucked up that your wizards are adventuring and gaining glory while ignoring the vital drudge work of improving the world?

fantasy setting that addresses the problem of evil question with SOCIOLOGICAL caps on omnipotence (eg people who can afford to become trained wizards are generally bourgeoisie-aristocracy, the heads of the world of mystic arts even more so, and thus any “reckless behavior” that makes the bourgeoisie’s stocks and the aristocracy’s land less valuable, such as giving out food on a wide scale, will get the perpetrator disbarred, ostracized, and even unofficially hunted down): the BIGGEST brain. i am THERE i am INVESTED i have BOUGHT IN. sell me your story funny writer friend

[hasgavlebockenburneddownyet]

On the topic of the goat growing in popularity: I think that's absolutely true. I'm USAmerican and didn't know about the goat until last year, and promptly became obsessed. I would have the livestream on in the background of whatever I was doing and flip over to watch the birds eat away at it. My friends got sick of me talking about the goat and showing them screenshots. When it was declared dead by Wikipedia, I made a photoshopped "Gone Girl" poster for "Gone Goat". I was UNREASONABLY invested in that goat, and am greatly looking forward to this year's goat saga

Aww yay!

[paranoiddreams]

Creations of Mankind

✿ Ryomen Sukuna x fem!reader

✿ Warnings!! - very very brief mentions of beheading and blood LMAO, some swearing, fluffiest fluff, CRACK!

✿ A/n!! - idk my brainrot riddled brain decided to cook this up🫶🏻 also, any requests are appreciated, I have no ideas whatsoever 🙃

“What is that?”

Y/n cocks her head towards Sukuna, who’s currently draped over her couch as she texts away on her phone. He has a slight pout, one she knows he isn’t aware of because it’s something he only does in bouts of confusion or shock.

“What’s what?” Y/n quirks an inquisitive brow at him.

“That…device in your hands,” he grumbles back, “it is puzzling.”

Y/n looks down at the phone in her hands, a shocked laugh escaping her lips. “My phone?” She giggles. “You’re asking about my phone?”

Sukuna rolls his eyes, all four of them, and crosses his arms over his chest. “Do not think of me as a fool,” he demands. “I am simply unaware of the foolish creations of mankind.”

“Yeah I know, old man.”

The King of Curses, who once made people bow down at his feet, beheaded anyone who refused to acknowledge his power, and bathed in the blood of his enemies, marvels at the fact that a mortal woman is calling him an ‘old man’; and he’s letting her get away with it with a simple roll of his eyes.

“If you insist on being such a brat—“

“Sorry! Sorry!” Y/n barks out a laugh, holding her hands out to stop him rising from the couch and leaving. “A phone…well it’s an electronic devise most humans use for entertainment, or to communicate with others,” she explains to him, coming down from her fit of laughter.

Sukuna quirks a brow. “Communicate? Entertainment? I could have had those things, and more, in an instant with just one word in my day,” he says with a pompous grin, “and you humans need an unreasonably expensive device?”

Y/n feels her eyes roll to the back of her head, an ostentatious expression on her face. “Well, King Sukuna,” she says mockingly, “the world doesn’t work like that now. And sometimes people want to connect with one another online without…actually seeing each other.”

The curse lets out another huffy laugh. “Ahh, even more pathetic.”

“Okay, talk your shit, but I’m sure your royal servants and followers couldn’t do this back then—“ Y/n stands from her seat across from him, swiping into her camera app.

She moves in front of Sukuna and takes picture after picture of his face, each one showcasing his expression shift from smug, to confused, to slightly pink.

“Hey!” He growls, swatting at the phone as Y/n continues to snap photos. “What are you doing, woman?!”

After a few more snaps, she scrolls through the 50+ new pictures of Sukuna with an amused smile on her face. “Look!” She holds the screen up to his face, using her finger to swipe through the photos.

Sukuna’s brows raise in shock, his mouth agape in slight annoyance. “Strange,” he mumbles, lifting a single digit to swipe the screen himself.

Y/n smiles proudly as she watches him observe the screen of her phone, eventually resting it into the large palm of his hand. While he’s still completely invested in the photos of himself, she sits next to him, resting her chin on his shoulder as they both look together.

“That one’s cute,” she giggles softly when he comes to the last picture, his face struck with confusion, a rosy blush splayed across his cheeks, and the hand he was using to reach for the camera blurred across the screen.

Sukuna only grumbles incoherently in return, shoving the device back into Y/n’s hands before he stands and leaves the room. It’s only a few days later when he comes across her phone on the counter, her wallpaper one of the various pictures she took of him.

Maybe creations of mankind aren’t so useless after all.

[bonefall]

Is there any one particular bit in Ivypool's heart that really stands out concerning wanting to tackle it in BB (be it lovingly or with violence)?

I'll do you two; a loving tackle and a violent tackle!

VIOLENT TACKLE:

Dovewing and Ivypool do NOT have a good relationship in BB, and furthermore, I absolutely refuse to let Ivypool be a healthy and well adjusted individual at this point in her life. ABSOLUTELY not. The Erins have dropped a raw steak at my feet and given me an opportunity to display BB!Ivypool's Dovewing Derangement Syndrome on full blast and I am shaking it like Whistlepaw shakes a newborn baby.

I was really craving someone on this journey not being patient with Ivypool, and seeing her act unreasonably on her pain and loss.

I wanted to see her get nasty with someone, and have them fight back. I wanted to see someone get angry that she was insensitive towards them when they've ALL gone through similar things. It kinda felt like everyone on this journey was there to give Ivypool therapy, not work out their issues as a group.

For BB, I also want to give Dovewing and Ivypool some soft moments of mutual understanding, but... in the end, they do not reconcile because Dovewing does not want to.

And that's okay.

Ivypool will think she NEEDS her sister and her acknowledgement to move on, to have her accept an apology (which, truthfully, Ivypool doesn't entirely believe in) because it's SOME kind of closure when she won't get that with Bristlefrost... but she doesn't.

Moving on and healing is about the life you make in the wake of that loss. It's not Dovewing's responsibility to give her sister what she craves, it's up to Ivypool to make meaning in her own life. It's about the friends she will find, the wide world there is to discover, and the ways she can make things better for the Clans in Bristlefrost's name.

Even when the bridge is burned... the river still runs.

(As a side note, I've also TOTALLY gotta work in a moment where Ivy and Dove come across their mom, Cinderheart, while she's out traveling with their aunt/stepmom Fallenleaf. This is the perfect opportunity for Ivypool to let out a bunch of anger she has towards them, but also have them get a little involved in the new supernatural stuff!)

Special mention to the Sisters stuff; in BB they are not Evil Neglectful Bad Moms Who Hate Men. Beach and Slate will be tweaked. I am already imagining a scene where Rootspring gets to have a Cool Older Brother moment and show off some cool tricks he figured out with his talisman.

(in BB, the male sisters don't genetically inherit the ability to see ghosts, they have a special necklace crafted for them that lets them call spirits without the need of a large group.)

(Slate also will not be needing a rename, because Slate DOTC has a full name now-- Slate Keeper. I'm still working on her, but she's essentially The Wind Runner's secretary.)

POSITIVE TACKLE:

DEFINITELY the "River of Souls," along with StormClan and the Wildcats. I'm still wary of the Wildcats and the way the Erins could possibly dip into some weird "genetic superiority" stuff in the future, but they actually did a pretty good job introducing them!

I love the way that Wildcat religion is essentially that everything is connected by three elements, and that their unique belief system allows them to travel between afterlives. I adore this so much that I'm going to start thinking of the various "afterlives" in BB as having a primary element which influences how they behave.

Silverpelt and Skypelt are primarily Wind-Element systems. This makes them mobile and powerful, but highly subjected to the whims of the living.

The Tribe of Endless Hunting is primarily a Water-Element system. It's a very present element, flexible and easy for individuals to access while also allowing spirits to interact with the mortal plane.

The Guardian's Firmament is primarily an Earth-Element system. They require setup and investment on behalf of their followers, in return for giving worshippers a very powerful and intimate connection to the land.

All afterlives contain a mix of elements, but have "affinities." I also immediately saw a juicy opportunity to introduce the idea that Wildcats dance around addressing "fire" as an element, considering it forbidden, or at the very least, wild and unpredictable.

One Eye, who created the Dark Forest as a curse, is a God of Summer. So the Place of No Stars is absolutely a Fire-Element-- and I'm going to keep it loose until I understand what that looks like better. I want to save a little bit of wiggle room for future Wildcat appearances.

I'm also warming up to the idea that the Sisters have some Wildcat influence. I'm probably going to adjust their lore a bit to make them a mixture of Tribe culture and Wildcat culture. I've got a budding idea that, because Wildcats are rare and their population is scattered, they have a sort of concept of like... "Making A Home Where You Are," no matter where that is, or what culture they become part of.

So I like the idea a lot that this "river" is part of that. They maintain a connection to each other, across distances. The Guide of a Wildcat kitten is their mentor, both in terms of spiritual and physical training.

I'll also be needing a new name for this rework. Part of me really wants to call it "Ivypool's Loss," both for the angle of grief and also for the meme lmao. But, "Ivypool's Catharsis" also works very nicely... and if I go with "Ivypool's Awakening" the abbreviation is IPA and I can make beer jokes.

[bengiyo]

Ben’s Big BL Blurb 2: Fall is Finally Here

I am simply too busy with worth, family, other hobbies, and life to write about every show in real time anymore. I’m sorry to all the Stray Thoughts readers who’ve reached out about whether I would pick that back up, and I simply just do not have the time to do them anymore. Instead, I’ll try to do one of these as often as I can to catch up on things.

First, let’s go over some shows I finished recently that I don’t think I wrote much about.

First Note of Love

I was so happy to see Michael back on screen, and I was glad to see that he’s still able to get great chemistry with his co-star. Unfortunately, I don’t think this show was very coherent, so I didn’t get a lot out of it emotionally. It was a pretty inoffensive watch overall, and thus an easy show to put on without having to work through too much. I liked the work between everyone, and Mei Lei was such a fun character. Probably won’t return to this one, though. 

Let Free the Curse of Taekwondo

This is probably the show of the year for me. There’s so much I loved about this show. I loved that the characters had sex, but were neither rewarded nor punished for it; their sex didn’t solve any problems. I also really love how this show explored how childhood trauma expresses in two different kinds of boys, and I love that we got to see a bully reckon with his actions and get closure. I love that this show ended with them being kinda poor, but happy together. I love how messed up they both were about everything. I loved that Juyeong wasn’t stupid, and could read what was going on.

I clearly need to write a separate post to unpack everything I felt in this show.

Let’s move on to what I’m watching currently, in no particular order…starting with the lesbians, and then the worst BLs.

Apple My Love

Genuinely having fun with this GL. I like how quickly most of the drama plays out. It’s giving me quite a bit of secondhand embarrassment, but I like the characterizations in this show. This new production house brought us Knock Knock, Boys! and Monster Next Door this year. We need to keep an eyes on them. 

Haunted Hearts

I’m so fascinated by Oxin Films teaming up with Regal Entertainment. The leads are very attractive, but the cinematography is really boring. I’m trying to stay invested, but it’s kind of a sleepy watch. Also amused that they started airing a ghost romance right after Halloween ended. I’ve kind of moved on emotionally from the season.

My Damn Business

This show could be good, but it’s not. I struggled with episode 5 because our lead looked more relaxed and happier with his senior than the guy he’s getting into a romance with. There’s something missing here in this one, but I can’t exactly put my finger on it. I think it’s primarily a side effect of the short run time, but I think the boss’s interest isn’t landing properly for the employee to respond to. 

Eccentric Romance

This show could be good, but it’s not. Still, I am obsessed with a murder mystery being the primary source of confusion between our leads. I was willing to forgive this show a lot of its rough edges, but it failed to handle the turn from friendship to sexual/romance really well. I feel like our guys just started dating and having sex, and I’m a bit frustrated that they didn’t talk about it really at all, particularly since this show features two different languages spoken on screen. Genuinely looking forward to seeing how this one finishes. 

See Your Love

I’m not sure this show is exactly working that well, but everyone is very pretty and I’m having a decent time watching it. I like the way Shao Peng stands up for himself, and I like that nothing that’s happened has been totally unbelievable or unreasonable (at least with the mains). I’ll be curious how the hard of hearing and deaf viewers respond to this one once it’s complete. 

Love is Like a Poison

This show is actually so funny. I love that Shiba is in his own lawyer genre separate from everyone else, and I really like how the two of these guys have become a team. I’m curious how they manage to resolve the scamming next week, but this has been the most unexpected dynamic of the year. 

Love in the Air: Koi no Yukon

MAME won this year, y’all. We all have complicated feelings about her, but she’s secured a loving adaptation from a Japanese team that’s put solid effort into bringing her characters to life. Every character feels correct compared to their Thai counterpart we saw on screen, and that’s a strong sign that the writing behind MAME’s work is strong, even if we all have issues with the way she tackles certain themes. I’m really impressed with this adaptation, and really like this version of Rain.I also feel like this show is doing a better job blending the forthcoming couple focus shift.

Our Youth

We just got this show, but damn does it feel sharp! I’m always going to be a sucker for a cinephile character, and I’m so compelled by the way Minase is drawn to Hirukawa. The scene in episode 2 where Minase has to leave Hirukawa’s house might be one of the most impressive sequences we’ve had in a while, requiring a great deal of choreography and effort from the actors and the camera crew to pull off, and I’m excited to see how these characters split and then come back together. 

Smells Like Green Spirit

Let me just say that I need another Abe Alan appearance when he isn’t playing a character doing horrible things to his students. I’ve enjoyed meditating on the 90s with this show and what that era felt like. I’ve liked how the show has tried to focus on how different parents (especially the moms) have responded to their kids coming to terms with themselves. I’ve also really enjoyed the friendship that’s grown between Mishima and Kirino. I’m struggling with Yumeno a lot, because I’m really not a friend of bully romances. Still, I feel like this is one of those shows I’ll remember for a long time because of its focus on the 90s. 

Blue Canvas of Youthful Days

I think @lurkingshan covered reactions to episode 5 and episode 6 better than I could, and I loved @twig-tea giving context for the film history moment in episode 6. I remember screaming into the chat for friends to show up for this when I got to that moment. This show has two great pairs of dynamics going on that mirror well. It’s got such a strong handle on its characters’ motivations and how they would respond to the actions from each other. It’s probably the tightest thing I’m watching now, backed by extremely dialed-in performances. I will be thinking about Qi Lu organizing his potential first kiss with Qin Xiao, and how unapologetic he’s been about the entire affair. He’s being selfish here, but I kinda like it. I’m so thankful that we are somehow still getting this show, because goddamn do the Chinese actors deliver on chemistry sometimes.

Interview With the Vampire Season 2

I finished this with a friend last week, and holy fuck is this show still so, so good. We watch a lot of gay romance because of BL, and I am having so much fun watching the show about gay divorce. I loved the time we spent in Paris, Daniel’s shifting role in the narrative, and the new insights we got into Lestat this season. I will miss Claudia so much, and I have to give a standing ovation to Delainey Hayles stepping into the role of Claudia and doing the damn thing this season. I just love seeing my little fucked up gay people torment each other on screen.

I'm still thinking about Louis and Lestat reuniting in a hurricane after Claudia derided this as yet another chapter in their stormy romance.

Dropped Shows

Unfortunately, everyone can’t win. Some of these shows are just too long for me to keep up with them, and oftentimes I get bored. I’ve currently dropped:

Lovesick 2024 - I may go back. We’ll see

Jack & Joker - It’s just too long, and they just killed Jennie and a kid. I’m good.

Fourever You - I’m bored with Earth always playing this character type.

Pluto - Namtam and Film are beautiful, but this looks too messy right now.

Every You, Every Me - Wasn’t intrigued after episode 1, but the commentary may draw me back.

Kidnap - Ohm is not enough to keep me invested in this show. 

Uncle Unknown - How did they make a 6 minute show feel slow?

I’m genuinely not trying to be harsh to Thai shows out here, but I just do not have the time to keep up with all of them when they’re this long and dragging.

Thanks for stopping by, and let me know if there’s something I missed that I should check out.

[wastefulreverie]

my main character trait is that i am unreasonably invested in the 2004 hit nickelodeon cartoon danny phantom, it is all i think about and all i breathe, and if you mention this to me irl i will gaslight you into thinking that there is no cartoon called danny phantom

[saintsenara]

Thoughts on remadora?

thank you very much for the asks, anons!

while they are by no means my otp, i really enjoy remadora as pairing - and i think they’re fully up there among the canon couples in terms of being an amazing vehicle through which to explore all sorts of questions about life and love - which i am aware is a sufficiently controversial statement that it involves an immediate engagement with some discourse…

because remadora girlies [gender neutral] get an enormous amount of shit within the fandom, particularly from fans who consider wolfstar to be a more plausible pairing for lupin than tonks. i have seen remadora shippers called homophobes for simply enjoying the couple, justified with the bizarre idea that it disrespects remus' relationship with sirius [so... the non-canon one?] to put them together. i have seen tonks turned into a pathetic shrew who is trying to keep remus from the real love of his life by trapping him with an unwanted baby. i have seen remadora shippers get a lot of the usual stuff that people who prefer the canon-endgame couples do [that to ship a canon pair is boring, that it is indicative of a lack of talent, that it indicates an uncritical support for jkr] magnified to eleven because tonks has the temerity to be a barrier to remus’ relationship with the fandom’s favourite hot and brooding man.

obviously, this is bullshit - primarily because its unreasonable and cruel to invest so much time and energy being mean to people because of their harry potter shipping preferences [fandom should never be that deep].

but it’s also a disappointment to me personally because it means that it can be very hard to find the sort of remadora i like without looking like i’m coming to contribute to the pile-on. because where many remadora fans and i don’t see eye-to-eye is that i have absolutely no interest in thinking about them as a relationship which is actually functional. and, all too often, i find myself sifting through fics which do prefer to interpret them like this - as romantic and passionate and stable - largely, i think it’s fair to say, as a defensive move against the tide of “urgh, imagine shipping that” nonsense - even though all the evidence of canon is that they are… very much not.

i am aware of the pottermore article which smoothes the edges of lupin’s canonical reaction to tonks’ feelings for him in half-blood prince - but, while i read this as something of a retcon to make the relationship more palatable, i also don’t think that assuming that both tonks and lupin’s attraction to each other was sincere precludes them being as dysfunctional as they canonically are. i don’t go in for the common anti-remadora argument that tonks “forces” him into a relationship with her - it’s clear in half-blood prince that it’s not only her who has discussed her feelings with molly and arthur weasley, lupin is definitely flirting with her when they pick harry up in order of the phoenix, lupin is an adult man [no matter other power imbalances between him and tonks - such as the fact that she is an agent of the state which oppresses him] who possesses the capacity to refuse her advances, and - since teddy’s conception is not immaculate - he has no issue with enjoying a sexual relationship with her even if he then wants to run away from the product of that.

instead, what i like with remadora is that they reveal something which goes against the grain of the rest of the series: that love is not always enough. throughout the seven-book canon, we see time and time again the idea that love - and, crucially, love-as-noble-suffering and love-as-sacrifice - is enough to overcome any problem. entire civil service collaborating with a terrorist regime? don’t trouble yourself, love has won. your mother dying in childbirth leaving you to be neglected in a state institution? your own fault you’re not interested in love.

i understand the genre reasons for this, but i also love the way in which lupin especially exists on the margins of these genre conventions [just as he exists on the margins of wizarding society!]. i’m always struck in deathly hallows that he’s the only person who’s actually realistic about the demands of war - particularly when he tells harry that it is breathtakingly naive for him to think he can get through the fighting without having to shoot to kill - and that part of him having to be shuffled out of the way when harry tells him to return to the pregnant tonks is because, were the story focused on realism, the idea of a wanted man who is considered an unhuman by the state fleeing in order to guarantee the safety of his wife and unborn child becomes eminently reasonable and harry's defense of the nuclear family embarrassingly unradical.

and so i like the idea of lupin seeing tonks - and tonks seeing lupin - initially as just a bit of fun, as the two of them being just two chill single people who think the other is hot and interesting and want to bang because of it.

[which is something fandoms in general really struggle with as a concept. we like epic love stories - and you won't find me objecting to that! - but we're less good at thinking about casual sexual attraction or transient friendships, and how these can be transformative and meaningful without having to end up going any sort of distance.]

and i then like the idea of the relationship being forced into a profundity it doesn’t really have the juice to sustain by the sheer avalanche of grief which besets the two of them - sirius, dumbledore, mad-eye, ted - and by the pressure of the war and the fact that the order is scrambling and the hangover of remus' self-destruction in half-blood prince which makes each cling to the other as a life-raft. i like remadora as something codependent and messy and strange and sad, and i don’t think this prevents it being sincere and fun and based in mutual attraction, but instead that these positive qualities can exist in conjunction with the fact that, without the war, it would have been a summer of fucking and that was probably it.

on tonks herself, i don’t think i can say it better than @evesaintyves in this meta on her character. i’ve been really uncomfortable with quite a lot of stuff i’ve seen recently which has taken against the idea that tonks can be meaningfully read as queer on the basis of what we find in the text, above all because it so often comes with the implication that one cannot imagine her in her canon endgame pairing and presume that she’s something other than straight or cisgender. eve sets out an excellent case for tonks as bolshy and liberated and in tune with herself and fun and confused and in flux and still figuring stuff out about who she is and where she’s going - and this translates, may i say, to an astonishingly beautiful way of writing her, lupin, and the dysfunction inherent between them which i highly recommend you read.

[hymnsofheresy]

Hello, I hope you're well. If it isn't rude, I'd like to inquire as to how you might go about reconciling your negative feelings with your faith. I've lived a particularly difficult life, and now my health is poor—enough for it to give me all the trauma of an incurable, fatal illness, despite not actually putting me out of my misery—and I don't know how to live anymore, but we all know the only way out is a "sin." I just feel abandoned by God: I did so much trusting and investing in faith so this wouldn't happen, and now that it has, my life has come to an end, without me actually being able to let go of every day. Nobody understands, either, and when I talk about my feelings about religion I'm dismissed (e.g., "you aren't the only person suffering" "God isn't done with you yet" "God doesn't give us more than we can handle). I still feel inclined to turn on a sermon or read my sister's daily devotionals, but I can't face God—I can't *forgive* God and this feels like Hell.

I am so deeply sorry to hear your life is miserable right now. People often give these faith-based platitudes because most of the time they don't know what else to say. They often don't know how unhelpful or insulting they are.

As a Christian, I believe that God is a suffering God. I believe that God isn't some man on a throne making us all suffer as punishment, rather came down on earth to suffer with us. The world is fallen and broken, and all of us suffer, and some suffer more than others (I'd say you have been handed a much worse situation than most).

That being said, I do recommend facing God, whether in anger, frustration, or fear. Come to God with all of those messy burdensome emotions. You don't need to forgive God or thank God for giving you these hardships. The truth is this: you can be angry at God. God is waiting for you no matter what you might feel at the moment.

Hopelessness can be very overwhelming and know that it is not unreasonable to feel this way. I pray the hopelessness is washed away you receive the love and peace that you deserve despite the suffering.