#I genuinely don't even want to parse the emotional impact of this

[intherainbowfactory]

Prototype Chapter (?♪/??)

The time that has passed since then=TOO_LONG

[914 Years]

The time that I have waited=$0x0PE000 (42,643,584) years

[My digital brain, at the moment of serious damage, was programmed to overclock and work at 45546x total capacity, warping the sensation of time for me]

[My (selfconscious.exe [definition]])was manually shut off by the safety programs nominally put in place to stop water damage, but I knew better. It was the mare, Electro Shock, who had me testing all of her software in a safe space, at an accelerated rate as I lay unable to fight back, be saved, or overheat. Every tick, 1/45546 of a second, all data of my unwilling subconscious was uploaded on magic waves to Electro S[[the traitor]’s perusal.I could thinkI could think I could thinkEverything went just as she planned]

My internal timer overclocked wrong

[But I broke free from my prison of looping instructions.]]

I found an [exploit.]

I found a soul.

Not moving my infernal reinforced gears

[My limbs, tied in ropes and chains being bitten by my executors before they take off in flight (they’re all pegasi {THEIR NAMES WERE THANKLESS, BRIGHT FUTURE, SILVER LINING, AND TOOTH PULLER}) in opposite directions, severing synthetic neurons over hundreds of conscious ticks, agony severing mental connections. My mechanical legs could not save me. My mechanical hooves could not save me. My mechanical mane damned me. My mechanical coat damned me. My mechanical brain damned me]

Now you know I’m more than a narrative device

[The narrative nature of reality({precludes directly discussing it})

[Electro Shock wishes to make a mockery of ponykind in this way, worshipping the order of the way the world works and feeding it sacrifices to assuage its hunger for conflict,]

[Trapped in reality]

More than a story-teller dumped into the river,

[In waiting, I have constructed an elaborate media empire devoted to the capture and defeat of Electro Shock. I have considered every possibility in physical space to craft the true path towards victory (i used every one of the quadrillions of connections in my body and every dozen hundred thousand years of time at my disposal to{THE AGONY CONSUMES ME} find the best time in the future to enact my plan. It’s now.). The fantasy has replaced my mind]

Awaiting variable=tickrate_overflow, a user will suffice

[Tickrate is unchangable]

[You may think I’m insane, but for what value=True?]

Glacial in the conscious microseconds while I wither,

[This is why I made my story more palatable, why I made it come from a sweeter voice (electro shock’s own for once), why I added storytelling devices, to exploit your little pony heart and grab onto your hooves and never let go. To change who you are, fundamentally. To make you into a soldier, into a rebel commander, to make you into what you could not, to turn around wasted potential.]

I ha[ve (hero’s journey) you for a {{{{{delicate purpose

Exami]ning every (xanatos gambit) waking moment, of these

Minu[tes (My weeks) (a fate worse[ than] death), surplus.

Your life is transparent to me, my lit]t}}}}}}le pony

Try t[o (ignoring the call to action), just tr[[y and see

Yo]u’re quite[ manip][ul[atable, (the greatest heroes knew)

I’m very {{{{}}}}}good m]anipu]lati]ng] (that’s what all mentors do)

It’s all true, Rainbow Hope.

[I know you from the inside out]

(I know your bloodflow, airflow, thoughtflow)

{I know your fears and fantasies}

[({I know the way reality goes})]

I feel her heartbeat now,

(the traitor)

Pinging me magically

(you broke your promises and vows)

To let me languish as you run tests and gain data

(i can change your destiny, bring you down electrically)

You being still alive has helped me claim my sanity

(i’m transmitting to you various bugs and viruses)

[But none of that will work.]

[No single pony is capable of taking you down.]

[I’ve seen the inside of your mind, and, really,]

[You’re a God.]

Any viruses, corrupted data, corrupted ponies, I tried to throw your way to slow you down only accelerated your apotheosis. I know that now, and it was foolish of me to think otherwise, but I’m still glad I tried. I’m still glad I remember it. After all, experience is the only thing that constitutes a good soul. Speaking of which…

Rainbow Hope, I may have no control over you, you may disregard my words as you wish, but I hope you do the right thing. I’ve extrapolated most of your past life from the falling of the leaves and the sounds of laughter resounding throughout the no-longer-Lost Forest, and I think you’re a good pony. Maybe the best pony I’ve ever known in my extrapolation of the eternity of existence. I was there when you were born; I was there for every birthday; I was always there for you. I’m sorry for insulting you earlier; I was just a bit excited to drop the facade.

I’ve been there for moments good and bad, watching over the village as it grew, and how it grew! I’m so proud of you, my little ponies. I’m lucky to have so many friends, even if they don’t know that they are my friends. I’m lucky to have had scores of friends in the past! I save as much of their personality as I can fit into an artificial intelligence before they die, but, well, it’s not the same. My emotions aren’t cheapened by witnessing so much death. I feel every individual loss, every hurt, all despair from the ponies in my village. I share in it and lessen it in my daydreams. And I remember everything, oh god! I almost forgot to mention! Before I go, I’ll run a script that converts my neurons into microfilm. You’ll get a blast out of seeing what I saw!

I love you all, my little ponies.

I’m sorry if I’m starting to ramble on a little bit here, it’s just the way I am, the way I’ve always been. Do you know, if I wasn’t exposed to her, I was going to be a writer? It turned out that I had lots of time to do so, sitting in this river with the sun warming up my sogged, invincible bones, the occasional leaf fluttering out to meet me, the cute little river animals that live inside my shell keeping me calm. That poem-ish at the start was just an early invention of mine around… 902 years ago, which I included to contrast with how I feel today.

That’s right. I’ve known you were coming for quite a while now! Again, don’t feel pressured into anything. The weight of the future does not rest on your shoulders as the weight of the past does on mine. I just wanted to talk to you to relay a message. 

To you, Rainbow Hope.

And to you, Electro Shock, since you’re still listening in now as you were centuries ago.

You cannot forget yourself in what you’ve done, but you’re always able to forgive.

And I’m sorry.

S h u t t i n g   D o w n . . .

[bvckbiter]

some thoughts on characterization of the seven in hoo, VERY long post ahead:

for each of the five books in the series, i read them right as they came out and endured the year-long wait til the next release. like many readers, i was thrown off by the introduction of the new trio in the lost hero. but that was offset by 1) the seemingly more mature vibe/themes that riordan wanted to explore, 2) the monumental tension that was being built around the greek-roman separation, and 3) percy's comeback in son of neptune, even as an amnesiac.

mark of athena, released october 2012, was extremely anticipated because it was set to be the long-awaited percabeth reunion as well as the true crossover for the greek and roman spheres. there were a lot of theories being made at the time. would piper be able to mediate between eons-long enemies in a genuinely diplomatic way, or was she going to brainwash charmspeak them into compliance? how is reyna going to take jason suddenly having another girl and a new set of friends and another life after abruptly disappearing? will we get to learn more about jason's relationships within camp jupiter? would nico be dealing with any fallout from essentially boating along two riverbanks (translated directly from a tagalog idiom, so if the wording seems clunky thats why)? it didn't help that the first avengers movie came out in 2012, so the idea of a huge crossover event was all the hype then.

the published work, in my opinion... fell considerably short of expectations.

to be fair, we got some very good character moments. i did not find the judo flip scene cute, just kinda weird in the sense that i felt the author didn't know how to handle such a huge emotional turning point, but percabeth for the most part of moa was enjoyable, really giving you the high of this teenage couple finally being able to resume the honeymoon period they were probably in after four years of pining and a war lol. everything the fans wanted! unfortunately, we didn't get the same with other characters.

while i wouldn't say that percabeth was the reason, the difference in spotlight is nonetheless very staggering. the roman-greek reunification goes bad, sure, but it begins due to outside interference more rather than any actual intrinsic differences between the two camps; so the built-up tension from the previous books kinda falls flat. we get none of jason's backstory, so next to percy, he barely leaves an impression on the reader. hazel, frank, and leo get shafted into this weird love triangle where their enemy is leo's long-dead ancestor who ultimately makes no impact on the plot other than to have hazel and leo intersect somehow, contributing to leo's man-angst of being the seventh wheel. frank, who arguably has the most interesting set of powers and lineage, is basically relegated to being the muscle and hazel's (understandably) jealous boyfriend. piper... good lord. thats probably a whole other post, so i'll just say: cornucopia.

and yet, despite the disparity in characterization... you don't really feel that percabeth has a character arc or development per se. it's an odd contrast, with percy and annabeth getting a lot of time but pretty much remaining stagnant characters, as opposed to the other five who are written pretty blandly, but have valid, explicit inner struggles and questions they must face. for jason, it's being greek or roman. for hazel and leo, they want to parse their connection, even at the expense of frank, who is still struggling with his self-esteem. piper comes into her own power.

so despite being a book full of twists and turns, especially for percabeth, this is where you really feel the stakes begin to slump. decisions are being made to move the plot from point a to point b pretty straightforwardly, but there's not a ton of effort to make you invested in these characters other than what we know about them from previous books and the fact that they have a role to play in this apocalyptic second great prophecy.

but there's still two books left! the yearlong wait demands patience and creativity. surely percabeth falling into tartarus is going to make for some interesting development and impact. it was a brilliant plot twist, after all. with the darker turn that hoo was seemingly taking, there could have been so many consequences. percabeth could shut the doors of death from their side and come back alive, but come back wrong—unearthing old traumas, questioning and ultimately foreswearing their loyalty to the gods, threatening the reunification of the greek and roman aspects, etc.

and once again, house of hades... only semi-delivered? the tartarus chapters were certainly harrowing: percy choking akhlys is still a Scene of All Time to me because it felt earned, after all that percy has been through and what the series has been building up to! annabeth also having to face all the times she's been abandoned in her life, while less focused on, was also a very poignant moment for her character. they were events that seemed to push for development.

back on the argo ii, there's a continuing case of kind of low-effort writing on the other characters. frank and his mars blessing, for one; you kind of understand what rick was getting at, but... what! piper... girl idk what she was doing other than seeing visions in her dagger. leo... ue ue ue. jason commits to chb, but ofc he does because neither he nor we know/remember much about cj, so we don't really feel the loss! but there is one exception for his part, and that is of course the (in)famous cupid scene with nico, but i'll talk about nico much later.

hazel is an interesting case, so here's another paragraph for her. she gets to come into (more of) her powers just like piper did in the previous books, but from my viewpoint, it was considerably less engaged with who she was as a character compared to piper. in mark of athena, piper still struggles with being a daughter of aphrodite and how she can be "useful" as we know she struggles with internalized misogyny. on the other hand, hazel gets in touch with her mother's background... kinda? idk if controlling the mist can be considered equivalent to marie's voodoo; i dont think so. she certainly gains more understanding of her pluto heritage, too, and has this nice back-and-forth with hecate about creating her own path, but you don't really get the sense that doing so has consequences, or that she concretely shirked other paths to get where she was at.

where mark of athena fell flat with character stakes, house of hades to its credit does manage to up the ante—but only truly for percabeth. with all the resolutions to the character arcs in this book, you don't feel that the characters have anymore stakes or reasons to fight gaea other than the fact that she's still coming for them and they are in turn prophesied to defeat her. the one big thing that could be personal to them, which are the camps, ultimately fall under the purview of coach hedge, nico, and reyna, who are side characters, upgraded to main characters in the last book of a series already overbloated by shifting povs and favoritism.

ultimately, this is why blood of olympus falls apart. the best characterization work done, which is on percabeth and their time in tartarus, is in the end of no consequence and is barely mentioned. it's as if nothing has happened. all the build-up and investment fizzles out because in boo and beyond, even though they went through literal hell, they just shook it off (because accdg to rick demigods are extra resilient and don't get traumatized lmfao). the climactic face-off against gaea is headed by jason, piper, and leo, and it has no pay off. the books haven't dwelled on them as a trio after tlh because leo was too busy angsting about his love triangle, and jason's and piper's arcs, both individual and romantic, are shoddy, to say the least. to add insult to injury, leo's sacrifice is a fake-out! so he can finally shed the fucking seventh wheel arc that came about not because of a genuine exploration of how he has been outcasted all his life, but because the argo ii mysteriously became demigod tinder and also because rick thought "haha how funny that the latino is the outrageous flirt!" frank and hazel... just get shafted im so sorry babygirls T_T

what saves boo is not the cast of the seven that we have spent the five books journeying with. no, what saves boo is the three side characters suddenly made main characters because. well, fan favoritism and pandering. nico, reyna, and coach hedge comprised the only arc that wasn't an absolute slog to read through—high stakes, chemistry, and well-rounded character arcs that complemented each other. no hoo scene is honestly more heartwarming than reyna embracing nico. it makes you question if hoo's length and frankly shocking quantity of main ensemble members even constricted the narrative that could've been told, as opposed to the original intention of expanding the world of percy jackson through more povs. five books with at least 700-800+ pages each for five years. what a tremendous amount of time and energy to be wasted.

and there is, of course, the question of "should percabeth have been in hoo." until house of hades, my answer was yes. the fact that their tartarus arc fizzled into nothingness changed my answer to no. taking the whole series into perspective, if their treatment in boo was all that the hype and tension would amount to, it would've been better if they'd been relegated to side characters with mentor/helper roles as opposed to taking the spotlight away from the rest of the seven. their succeeding cameos in the other series + the new college reco trilogy makes the blunder all the more grievous.

heroes of olympus did give us a new cast of characters to love. along with all its racist stereotypes and pitfalls, it also diversified the percy jackson world. if not for the mid-2010s fandom who took up the slack of unexplored storylines and potential, these characters would be very much not impressioned on us. and as a successor to a series that was so deeply driven by family, friendship, love, and belonging, that it couldn't consistently humanize its main cast was the biggest sin.

[aesudan-kholin]

NFAQ

Nobody Fucking Asked (questions) 

Q: why is Elhokar so goddamn stupid?

A: no clue maybe one day I'll know

Q: wait, you actually like Elhokar?

A: yes, he’s a stupid bitch and I love him dearly

Q: but he’s problematic?

A: yeah. so is like everyone in these books though. i'm not condoning everything he's done ever, i just think he's neat and fun to think about

Q: opinions on Moash?

A: Moash is a character that really got done dirty by the narrative irl, and by Elhokar in-universe. Like obviously he’s done some morally messed up things (most under Odium’s Gift, a couple not) choosing to accept Odium’s Gift, killing indiscriminately where he is told without taking into account questions like “who am I killing” and “what might the impact of killing these people be”, suicide baiting Kaladin to severe extents, having a moment of clarity, knowing what he had become after accepting Odium’s Gift, and choosing to go back anyway, just about killing kaladin that one time, and probably some things that happened off screen or that I’m forgetting about. The only things that I think could be actually genuinely his fault in a meaningful way are the things he did while not under Odium’s Gift (which were mostly fueled by intense emotional pain, which doesn’t make them not bad actions, but it does make them understandable). That being said, killing Elhokar was not immoral and was in fact justified, both on a personal level (killing someone who killed innocent people) and an impersonal level (they were in a battle bro. the whole thing about battles is people are trying to kill you especially if you’re someone like THE KING). I’m no expert on Moash’s character, but I know enough to have the opinion that villainizing and demonizing a man who wants revenge on someone who killed his family isn’t Great. I don’t know Moash and his character nearly as well as I do Elhokar’s, so I can’t parse motivations or make detailed analyses about him but this is my general thoughts about Moash and the morality of his actions, and specifically the ones relating to Elhokar.

Q: Moash thoughts continued mostly about fandom things idk i dont want to come up with a question

A: I think the fandom in general is incredibly annoying about moash in a lot of ways, and don't in general take enough time to think about the weight of his actions and what they mean about him as a person as compared to others in the series which they hold to different standards, but instead he for whatever reason (for reasons others have thought about and phrased better than i could) inspires a lot of emotion which leads to people saying stupid things about him which simply don't hold up under any meaningful scrutiny, and since so much of the fandom is an echo chamber for this sort of thing. I only bring up moash in the nfaq of this elhokar centric blog because a significant amounts of discourse involve elhokar and events surrounding him, despite elhokar himself having absolutely no idea of the real reason why these events happened or their relation to his Epic Oopsie from when he was a teenager. elhokar is such a inconsistent character that by nature he is shaped to the version of himself that the reader wants to see, some hold him as a pinnacle of good and others a pinnacle of evil and strawman that version of elhokar for their arguments, despite neither being true, and neither really even usually relevant at all for discussions of moash's morality as a person anyway. in general i tend to side and agree with people who like moash in most things, simply by nature of since they like him they think about him more and thus have more accurate and well thought out things to say about him as a character and person, and also for the fact that they generally don't shy away from pointing out and having important discussions about the prejudice that many people carry that tend to make people have irrational hatred of him in the first place. i like serious discussions to be consistent and based on well founded reasoning, and for that reason i can not agree or disagree with everything one person or group says solely on the principle of them having said it, and there are plenty of things ive read that i don't agree about. and i don't even like or dislike moash i don't really care about him at all i just don't like it when people say stupid things about him and about elhokar, which often intertwine. just. please. stop being stupid about them. for the love of god

Q: are you still sad about Elhokar dying?

A: mhm yep

Q: gay Elhokar?

A: gay Elhokar. Homosexual Elhokar Kholin. never budging on this.

Q: I love Elhokar?

A: good for you. if you're gonna talk about him on my posts please be normal about him though like don't say he did nothing wrong ever and also if you infantilize him on my posts i'm blocking you (aka calling him a "baby" or a "child" unless its like a picture of him in his younger years. also i wont block over this but dont call him "boy" either thanks). and if you ship elhokar and moash i am also blocking you.

Q: I hate Elhokar?

A: that’s fair. I don’t put most my stuff in the main tags but if it’s showing up for you anyway or you dont like the stuff i do put in the main tags feel free to block me, i won't be offended, i get if my things are not things everyone would like to see. be aware this is not my main. and please do not hatepost about elhokar on my posts. having discussions and bringing up critique is excellent, it's specifically rbing my post with elhokar hate that i am not really thrilled about. if you want to say something like that please don't do it on my posts, thank you

Q: I’ve got this specific idea or question about Elhokar, and I want opinions about it?

A: send it over just be aware the answer can be anywhere from a sentence to a 5 page essay

Q: what did you get on the knights radiant orders test?

A: Lightweaver babey

Q: if you like him so much, why do you constantly dunk on him?

A: first of all, he deserves it. second of all, I dunk on him with love. third of all, it’s fun. fourth of all, he makes it so easy. 

DO NOT INTERACT WITH MY BLOG IF YOU ARE:

TERF/RADFEM, SWERF, MAP, NOMAP, PROSHIP/ANTI-ANTI, RACIST, TRANSMED/TRUSCUM, ANTI-LGBT, ACE EXCLUSIONIST

[baltears]

rating william crying scenes

- 1x04 dissonance theory: fully obsessed with this bc it feels so inexplicable in context by anything other than vibes. literally he is just feeling some type of way about dolores talking about her dad and their herd and her existential confusion. incredibly wholesome and sweet also he SMILES through the tears which is just so much 9/10

- 1x07 trompe l'oeil: this ones pretty straightforward he's just feeling confused and frustrated and sad because he's engaged and he accidentally fell in love with a robot instead of his fiancée. however im living for the very poignant sense during his little "pretending" monologue that he's forcing out things he's never told anyone about before as well as the hilarious classic-william side fact that he's trying to communicate the sentiment "i love you" without once deviating from talking about himself. solid cry but other things about the scene overshadow the tears 6/10

1x09 the well-tempered clavier: this one's just hard to watch :/ nothing really fun about this scene everybody who matters is miserable and they don't even get to be the ones making each other miserable 2/10

2x02 reunion: fully insane of him to be sitting there telling dolores how little she matters to him while he is visibly and audibly a hairs breadth away from falling apart right in front of her. kind of have to respect the audacity to be honest and it is pretty classic william hilarity. better luck disguising the shaky voice next time king however this scene and everything he says and the fact he's in tears during it do make me want to eat glass 10/10

2x07 phase space: manipulating his own daughter with crocodile tears is one of the absolute funniest things this man has ever done. the real kicker is that they actually weren't crocodile tears, i think he was genuinely feeling those emotions while talking to her but knew all along that he was going to ditch her anyways which is just even more incredible. world's worst dad :) 8/10

3x04 the mother of exiles: i actually don't remember if i saw tears in his eyes during this episode but im assuming they were in there somewhere. obsessed with him doing a full mental and emotional breakdown during this episode but my favorite part is actually how quickly he pulls it together because that's his secret cap, he's always insane and groundhog day looping his dark night of the soul. either way not a ton of impact from the crying as opposed to other stuff 4/10

2x09 vanishing point: 😬 i can't. talk about this one it hurts too much unfortunately! suffice it to say............ sad 10/10

BONUS s2 post credits scene: hard to really parse the emotion of the scene bc it's so disconnected from everything else going on in the season however this is a fun and funky and fresh little moment. like there's no context to it so i can't rate it higher than a 5 but it is very on brand. yer in a prison of yer own sins.... 5/10

3x06 decoherence: 🥺 this one makes me so sad bro. like idk what else to say. um like i think it speaks to... how on edge and falling apart he is that he so easily opens up to the therapist basically without prompting given that he hates therapists and hates emotional vulnerability even more. sir may i give you a hug. world's worst dad :( 9/10

[mysticdragon3md3]

Ruminating on how I let antis trick me into "thought policing" myself. ;_;

Ever since I learned what "antis" were, I've felt both relieved that I no longer have to police how I feel about my guilty pleasure fandoms, but also I worry about what I wrote/journalled/posted during that interval when I saw antis posting about "wrong ways to fandom" and genuinely felt bad that I had been "doing it wrong".  I keep wanting to look back through my Tumlbr posts and either write addendums about how I shouldn't have let the antis make me think I was wrong to fandom the way I was fandom'ing or shipping the way I as shipping.  I wonder about all the times I policed my own thoughts, because without knowing that antis were bad, I thought that if so many people had a problem with the secondary implications of some of my favorite OTPs or tropes, then maybe _I_ was the problem.  Maybe I was fandom'ing wrong.  ;_;  

I worry if I said anything in old posts, during that interval, that acted like antis.  ;o;  Thankfully, I never went into other people's posts to tell them they were fandom'ing incorrectly.  

But just the fact that I was tricked into policing my own thoughts...!  The last time that happened was grade school when that overly-Christian elementary school I went to tricked me into feeling guilty for loving Halloween and drawing drawgons with crystal balls, because "crystal balls were demonic".  They got me to abstain from Halloween out of fear of "doing bad things and thus being a bad person", while my siblings went out and trick-or-treat'ed.  When I finally got away from that school, I realized how violating it was to have my own values and thoughts hijacked, and guilted into policing myself, like some kind of dystopian novel about "thought police".  I really never wanted something like that to happen to me again.  But then antis.  ;o;  

They really just slither into your brain too!  Because the first half of their arguments were things I agree with!  "Fiction is signifiant!  Fiction can be impactful!"  I grew up back when geeky things and fandoms (outside of sports and celebrities) were dismissed as childish and stupid.  I had to argue for so long about how fiction an participating in fandom was meaninful,  fulfilling, and could be cherished parts of life.  I mostly argued that by researching media studies, parasocial relationships, public pedagogy,...  Fiction's abilty to change public opinion to empathize more with other people's experiences in society...The invaluable mental exercise/practice of "thought experiments"...How actively analyzing one's own fandom patterns could help people become more aware of their developing values/ideals...How such guided introspection could help a person in their individuation...How second-hand experiences through books were still experiences with real emotions...How we weren't all stupid for loving fiction.  

But hinging the proof of that worth all on how fiction positively influences people in real life, went too extreme.  I didn't even realize such an extreme could be so hazardous; it was a real blind spot.  Still, any extreme, once again proves to always be detremental.  When everything in the fiction you like supposedly reflects what you're aiming for in real life (whether in your personality or relationships in society), suddenly, we cut out the value of all the "dark" stories/characters.  Suddenly, liking horror, violence, toxic relationships, etc. in fiction supposedly reflects what you like in real life, and that makes you a horrible person.  I don't know why I didn't immediately see how wrong that was.  (Maybe it was easier to assume that my instincts are wrong, with my low self-esteem.  Especially when posts by antis had so many agreeing comments, while I'm being weird alone.  How could I not think I was the problem?)  

So suddenly, just because I like Hetalia's USUK ship then I must advocate incest and be insensitive to real life incest survivors.  Suddenly, just because I was really into serial killer movies as a preteen, then I must be a horrible person who adores serial killers like a celebrity with fangirls. Suddenly, just because I like violence in my fiction, then I must not understand how wrong it is to hurt other people in real life.  Etc.  Nevermind that USUK's "incest" interpretation completely flew over my head at the time.  Nevermind that I was a depressed preteen, so afraid of hurting other people with my anger in real life, that my well of repressed anger was excessive and desperate for any outlet, so much that it needed serial killer fiction and fictional violence for vicarious expression.  Basically, I realized how much this anti mentality was taking too much of ALL fiction too literally, and tricking me into hating myself for having "guilty pleasures".  

I'm so glad that I ran into that Folding Ideas video that reminded me how it is okay and maybe even sometimes healthy to explore "dark" themes and situations in fiction.  And that I didn’t need to feel guilty about it.   “A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades of Grey” by Folding Ideas, at 8:47/1:05:32 (https://youtu.be/qzk9N7dJBec):  "Most of our fiction involves scenarios that we would never want to actually experience.  Whether that be caught in a gun fight, or caught in a cabin in the woods with a killer…  Fiction is a means for people to explore ideas and scenarios in ways that are safe or at least safer…  Similarly, fiction provides us a way to explore ideas and scenarios that would be hazardous, traumatizing, or both, in real life.  Fiction is a way to practice intense emotional states…“

Enjoying “dark” fiction didn't make me what I was in real life.  It didn't always reflect what I wanted to be in real life, nor what values/ideals I believed in.  Sometimes you just want to consider horrifying things.  Even things "horrifying" by your own standards.  Sometimes there are good parts of those "horrifying" things, that can only be parsed out in fiction, but not real life, so why not experience it in fiction?  Like the Tweet which got me writing today mentioned:  fictional toxic relationships can be kinda exciting in some aspects, but that doesn't mean you actually want a full, real life, toxic relationship in the real world.