#I have so much things to say on my criticism and so much things to say for memes and thoughts

[ann1eee]

Everyone will leave me behind, right?

You overheard Satoru talking to Yuji. Why did he always feel like he was unloved? You didn’t want to leave him behind, ever. You wanted to be a part of his love and his dreams, but you couldn’t muster up the courage to tell him how you felt. You were his fellow teacher, his confidante, his friend. No way you’d ruin the deepest relationship you’ve had with someone over your feelings, which may or may not be reciprocated.

The battle ended, and the King of Curses had been defeated. Megumi was back, courtesy of Yuji and Nobara. Satoru made it out alive, but just barely.

When you saw the world slash almost hit him, you felt your heart drop to your stomach. There was no way you could accept him being gone, and no way you’d let that happen.

You had launched an attack of your own to divert Sukuna’s slash, which prevented a critical hit for Satoru. This allowed the others to take over, and defeat the King once and for all, whilst you accompanied Satoru out of the battle.

Finally, after all was over, you didn’t waste a single second and spent the whole time by Satoru’s side. You stayed with him at Shoko’s clinic, took care of him and waited for the perfect moment to tell him how you felt.

You waited until he spoke to the students, tossing their letters away since they didn’t need to read them after all. He settled things with the remaining sorcerers, and finally found a moment of peace.

You found him that evening, taking a stroll through the beautiful gardens of Jujutsu Tech. He looked angelic in the soft moonlight, and you felt your heart skip a beat. He beamed ecstatically as he saw you come into view, and walked to you.

You smiled at him and held his hand, leading him to your favourite place in the garden, a secluded spot with a few stone benches and raking vines. You sat close to him and gulped.

“Everything is over now huh?” You whispered.

“We’re all okay. It’s over.” He replied, matching your octave.

“I know what you said to Yuji.” You felt your heart race as you continued.

“I don’t know if what I’m about to say means anything to you, but I want you to know that you’re always going to be a part of my life, Toru. Everytime I picture my future as a sorceress, no matter who else is a part of it, I know for certain you will be. All the uncertainty that we have as sorcerers means nothing to me, because I never considered that you wouldn’t be there. If everyone else thinks of you as ‘The Strongest’, just know that I always think of you as Satoru. I love you, and I always want you to be a part of my life, as I am of yours.”

You stared into his eyes, scanning for any change of emotion, confusion, sadness, maybe even anger. But there was nothing. He turned his head away and looked to the sky.

Confused, and still rattled from your confession, you got up and stood right in front of him.

Your eyes widened as you saw the expression on his face.

Big, fat tears rolling down his temples and into his hair as he stared into the sky. His lips, red with the constant assault of his teeth. My god, you made him cry. You had never seen him cry, and you never would have thought he cried like this.

Your face grew worried as you cupped his cheeks.

“Toru, I’m sorry if that was too much. Please don’t cry?” You tried to console him.

Suddenly, he stood up and wrapped his strong arms around your body. He buried his face into your neck and sobbed quietly. You held him tight, growing more worried by the second.

“Thank you, y/n. You truly don’t know how much that means to me. I want you to be a part of my life as long as I live. You’re my dream.”

You pulled away from him, eyes welling up with tears. You reached out to touch his face, and wiped his beautiful eyes. He smiled at you so softly you could swear he was an angel.

He bent down and kissed you, as if he was waiting his whole life for you. You wrapped your arms around him as you deepened the kiss.

“Let’s go home.”

@kalopsia-flaneur

[smews]

Re: The Veilguard worldstate and prior choices.

I know that we don't all have to have opinions about every little thing, nor do we have to share them but I just wanted to add one more voice in case others feel the same.

We haven't played the game. We don't know what the story is, not really. All of the marketing and communication from devs so far seem intent on stressing that the game will be about found family and your companions. I can see a case being made for characters being very focused on the task at hand. Harding might have opinions and stories all about every event in Inquisition, but will the events of The Veilguard present her with a situation where she would want to mention the Chargers? Would the narrative be served by it?

How much will we be interacting with Morrigan? Is she in a position where she would feel comfortable or want to mention having or not having a son when the gods are unleashing chaos? Will we get to really know her as Rook or will we interact once and then the rest of the time she shows up is just us observing her?

Will Rook even get to interact directly with the Inquisitor? Or will we only see them in Solas's memories?

What story are they really aiming to tell here? People who have gotten to play it say that it has more impactful choices and branching situations based on those choices than any other Dragon Age game. Did this branching mean that they couldn't incorporate prior decisions, or did they find that the story they wanted to tell didn't require input of previous decisions?

I'm disappointed, yes. But I'm not angry and I can think of potential reasons why they would go this route. My prior choices still matter to me and to my experience and personal narrative when playing the previous games.

My long-winded point is that we don't know. Play the game, don't play the game. Like it, don't like it. It is okay to be upset and to feel let down. I'm sure I will have some criticisms, but I can't criticize what I haven't played yet.

And for those who feel greatly affected by this, please remember that this is not a direct attack on you. The writers are telling the story that they want to tell, we get to consume it. Maybe we'll send it back to the kitchen, maybe we'll get some mods and add some salt and pepper if it's not to your taste, but please don't threaten or attack the chefs. This is not a waffle house.

[max1461]

I think that the average internet Marxist is actually not much of a materialist at all, in fact in their behavior and rhetoric they seem very concerned with moral purity, the redemptive power of suffering, and the ability of narrative to shape the actual world. As myriad as the senses of the word "materialist" have come to be, none of this would seem to comport well with any of them. This all feels very Christian.

In some cases I really do think there is a latent Christianity in it, but I think the stronger source of this trend is simply the leftist emphasis on sloganeering. Somewhere along the line, maybe with the Bolshevik policy of democratic centralism or maybe somewhere else, the importance of the slogan, the party line, the supreme power of the speech act seems to have been elevated for many leftists above all other concerns. From this follows the kind of disingenuous, obviously fallacious argument you so often see from the online ML left. The point is to say the magic words that have been carefully agreed upon, the magic incantation that will defeat all opposition.

Whether it's "I don't want to vote for a candidate who supports any amount of genocide" or "The Is-not-rael Zionist entity is on the edge of collapse!" or whatever else, a rational person can recognize the impotence of these words. They don't do anything. They're just words. But the feeling seems to be that once the perfect incantation is crafted—the incantation that makes your opponent sound maximally like a Nazi without engaging with their position in good faith, or the incantation which brushes aside all thoughts of defeat, or whatever else—once the perfect incantation is crafted, all that is left to do is say it and say it and say it, and make sure everyone else is saying it too.

This is not a materialist way of approaching politics. This is a mystical way of approaching politics.

I think it's also worth saying that this tendency in Marxism seems old, it certainly predates the internet. Lots of Marxists today are vocal critics of identity politics, of what they see as the liberal, insubstantive, and idealist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion framework. I share this criticism to a significant degree, but I'm not very eager to let Marxists off the hook here. The modern DEI framework evolved directly out of a liberal/capitalist appropriation of earlier academic ideas about social justice from such sources as Queer Studies, Black Studies, academic Feminism and so on. I say this as a neutral, factual description of its history which I believe to be essentially accurate. In turn, disciplines like Queer Studies, Black Studies, and academic Feminism each owe a great intellectual dept to academic Marxism, and likewise to the social movements of the 1960s (here in the Anglosphere), which themselves were strongly influenced by Marxism.

Obviously as the place of these fields in the academy was cemented, they lost much (most) of their radical character in practice. To a significant degree however, I think their rhetorical or performative radicalism was retained, and was further fostered by the cloistered environment of academia. In this environment the already-extant Marxist tendency to sloganeering seems in my impression to have metastasized greatly. And so I think the political right is not actually wrong, or not wholly wrong, when they attribute the speech-act-centrism of modern American (and therefore, online) politics, its obsession with saying things right above doing things right and its constantly shifting maze of appropriate forms of expression, at least in part to Marxism.

Now I should say that I don't think the right is correct about much else in this critique, and I also don't think this is wholly attributable to Marxism. But I think there's plainly an intellectual dept there.

More than anything else, this is my genuine frustration with both Marxism as it exists today and with its intellectual legacy as a whole. I fundamentally do not believe in the great transformative power of speech acts, I do not believe in the importance of holding the correct line, I do not believe that the specifics of what you say or how you say it matter nearly as much as what you do. I do not think there is much to be gained from playing the kind of language games that Marxists often like to play, and I do not think that playing language games and calling it "materialist analysis" is a very compelling means of argument.

[matchalovertrait]

Hmm, do tell.

Transcript

Lewis: Welcome to my humble abode. Make yourself at home.

Dulce: Oh. My. Gosh.

Dulce: I love these portraits of Devin Villareal! Are you kidding me right now?

Lewis: Ah, I had to put those up. She’s amazing in everything she’s in.

Lewis: You kind of remind me of her, you know?

Dulce: Makes sense. We’re both pretty amazing.

Lewis: [Laughs] You haven’t changed one bit, I see. Let’s have a seat.

Dulce: Thanks. How have you been, by the way? I saw that you won in an episode of Diced! Congratulations.

Lewis: Thank you. I wasn’t sure if I should do it. I was pretty mortified when I lost in Diced Junior, and the stakes seem so much higher in Diced.

Dulce: No kidding, that’s terrifying. I bet you almost wet yourself when you got Carlo Mancini as a judge again, huh?

Lewis: YES! I almost ran out the building. I am so glad I tried it, though. Makes me feel much closer to my goal of becoming a food critic.

Lewis: I’m more motivated now to finish my degrees in culinary arts and journalism. Two more years and I’m done! You’re finished with school, right? Ms. Santoro Academy of Culinary Arts.

Dulce: That’s right. Working on my first cookbook. I think I want to be a freelance chef and open up a cooking school for kids.

Lewis: That’s amazing, Dulce. I’m incredibly happy that you’ve been doing well.

Dulce: Same here..

[Silence]

Dulce: You know, I want to apologize for not keeping in touch. I’ve been a terrible friend.

Lewis: Hey now, chin up. I know you were going through some things. I’m sure Alex would want to catch up too. They don’t live very far from here. We’ve grown pretty close recently.

Dulce: No, I don’t think I should. I doubt they want to see me again. Either way, I’m with Caruso now. That’s all in the past now.

Lewis: Oh, no! You misunderstand me. As a matter of fact, I think you and Alex are better off as platonic friends. You two weren’t really meant for each other.

Dulce: What are you saying..?

Lewis: Oh dear, I might have said too much.

[terukotime]

You say you don’t like the killer reveal, why? I actually think dev made some great choices and I’d love to talk to you about your perspective.

i don't want to get too deep into it because, like i mentioned in my previous post, i don't want my criticism to come off as negativity towards the series or discourage anyone involved in the production of the show because it's honestly not a huge deal. like, it in no way ruins the show or makes it less enjoyable for me. and i don't think the choice of who the culprit is is a bad one at all, i'm mostly unsatisfied with the way the chapter handles it.

[spoilers beneath the cut, obvi lol. and please remember this is just my opinion. me having and expressing my opinion is not hate towards the series. i'm nervous enough as it is posting just this and not a bigger essay on all my thoughts because i really don't want to have this be misconstrued, nor do i want any criticism i have to give, regardless of how innocent and respectful my intentions, to make drdtdev or anyone who works on the series feel bad.]

i think Ace being the killer DOES make sense. i have no qualms with him being the blackened, in theory. do i think he could've made for a great survivor, or have really interesting growth throughout the coming chapters? yeah! i would have loved for Ace to be kept around for much longer. but him being the killer this chapter isn’t inherently bad. it's now clear that there's a specific direction Ace's character was meant to go in this story and i think that's fine.

my problem is with what *didn't* happen with Ace's character up to this point.

the chapter hasn't concluded yet so there's still a chance for my thoughts to change, though i don't think it'll make much of a difference. but i'm still waiting to see if it can stick the landing. and even if it doesn't, that's okay. i've already accepted it, i'm just still disappointed by it all the same.

Ace, honestly, hasn't played much of an active role in the story. he's been a source of conflict and comedic relief, and that's okay, not every character has to be as important as Xander or David...but he hasn't really gotten to *do* anything. this series is very character-driven, and thus is very focused on the relationships between other characters. Ace has only had one notable relationship (outside of his feud with Nico, but i'm not really including that as a "relationship" for obvious reasons), and that was with Levi. and that didn't even stay positive for very long. and we also know now that Levi didn't even care about him to begin with because he doesn't care about people in general.

not only did Ace never really get to establish any other relationships, no one ever LIKED him. of course a good portion of the fandom likes him, but in the actual story, no one cares about him. no one will miss him. his death is honestly kind of meaningless character-wise. does it serve as a lesson to some of the other characters? sure. but he's going to be dying here with no one ever liking or caring about him.

Min's story wasn't just a cautionary tale. people did like her, people did care about her. she was friends with a lot of characters, she got to have an impact in the daily lives of others. we got to know her better, the things she liked, her deeper thoughts and opinions on things. she got to do stuff, and we got to learn about her. her death meant more to the characters beyond just being the first culprit. she died as a person, not just as a character.

most of the stuff we know about Ace is surface level or things confirmed in Q&As. he doesn't get to contribute much aside from the aforementioned conflict/comedic relief. i understand where the show is going with that idea, and why him not being liked by anyone is a specific part of what led him to murder, but that's not really what irks me. it's that Ace never got to really be a *person.* he's essentially a plot device, serving the greater "good person" theme going on this chapter, and filling in the smaller roles in the story when needed, like an antagonist in a scene or delivering a gag. yes, his admittance to killing Arei and eventual post-trial trauma dump will give him a bit more humanity and character...but that's not really enough.

we only get to see Ace how the other members of the cast see Ace: his loud, combative, aggressive side. the side that makes people think he's nothing more than an angry meathead who can't do anything right. we never got to see much of his other sides, of a much more somber, melancholic Ace. receiving even a hint of the Ace we see in his confession of guilt beforehand would have given him the depth we needed before this point.

to explain what i mean: imagine how unsatisfying it would have been if we never got to actually see Arei's breakdown in the playground. if Teruko had left before it happened, and we only get to learn what happened from a flashback from David's perspective. we already feel the weight and tragedy of Arei's death when her body is discovered because we knew beforehand why she behaved the way she did, how she never even liked being the way she is, and wishing she could be a good person like Eden. if we didn't get to see that happen beforehand, Arei's death would feel very flat and detached. her character growth would've happened entirely retroactively.

that's how i feel with Ace. it's not like he didn’t get enough spotlight this chapter, he certainly did. but every scene he was in really didn't really add anything new to him. the only thing that "progressed" with him was his hatred and paranoia. we just see him descend with no uplifting moments, no emotional hook to make us feel anything for him. the closest we get is the scene where he's arguing with Nico and Veronika at lunch, ranting about how poorly everyone thinks of him and that they all assume that he's for some reason happy to be the way he is. but it's really the barest of scrapes towards the deeper layers of his character.

a big problem is that there were a lot of chances for his character to actively be *explored*, but instead, the narrative perspective of him stays completely stagnant. the time we get with him this chapter doesn't give him any greater focus. and sure, you could say that that might be a big giveaway to him being the culprit, but i think if the time between character spotlight is distributed evenly, that would be easily circumvented. there was a lot more time that could've been spent building Ace's character beyond his animosity and self-loathing tendencies. we could have had someone actually attempting to bond with him, even if it doesn't turn out well. even if all the characters distrust each other to varying degrees, there's still a lot of characters that like each other or have unique bonds with each other that make them stand out and feel worth remembering, because those bonds contribute something to their characters. but with Ace? he truly gets the short end of the stick, because this isn't just the characters neglecting him, it's the story itself. if Ace got to have a moment like Arei, maybe someone to confide in, even if he wasn't really friends with them or liked them at all, him being vulnerable just once and having a moment with someone else would have rooted him in more as a person who fell victim to what the killing game wanted from him and not just a fictional character fulfilling the purpose required of them in the story.

honestly, it's a bit of a slap in the face, the way the show goes about it. because in hindsight, Ace's whole character is *meant* to be wasted potential. after all, his related phrase on Mai's bio page is "a girl who had a bright future".

he was set up to have the potential to change, the potential to add more to the story, the potential to show us more than what we were given. and i think the show kind of knows that and specifically perpetuates that. the scene where Teruko tells Levi to give up on trying to apologize to Ace almost reads as the show itself telling you to give up on Ace. that, why should we care about him? he's not going to amount to what we want from him. there's no use in investing our feelings in him.

whether or not any of that actually was intentionally doesn't matter, unfortunately, because rewatching so many scenes having this new context really makes it all seem like Despair Time doesn't want you to care about Ace. that Ace is meant to be a waste, that that's the core of his character. him being the epitome of wasted potential could have been great, actually, if they chose to use even a slight bit of that potential to build him up more before his inevitable demise. instead we watch him eat shit throughout the entire show thus far only for him to get royally fucked at the very end in the worst way possible. Ace's theme of wasted potential is only wasted potential because nothing is ever done with him. not actively, anyways. whatever his post-trial confessional is like won't really give us what we needed from the start. Ace didn't just deserve better in his life. he deserves better as a fictional character. he deserved to be a person and not *just* a character. he deserved to have deeper, emotional character moments outside of the trial, long before his murder confession and rapidly approaching demise. he deserved to be 3-dimensional.

again, this is all just my personal opinion, and there's still a chance the show can stick the landing and make Ace as the culprit feel a lot more natural and deserved. i'm not really confident in that happening, but drdt is full of surprises as well as a lot of great writing. that being said, even though i believe they kinda fumbled the bag with Ace here, i don't hate this turn of events. although he's a big favorite of mine, i still wanted Eden to be innocent over him, because she's also a great character and her killing Arei would not only be pretty huge character assassination, but would also make Arei's death meaningless. and i also think there were other characters who could have been better candidates as the chapter 2 killer (not just Hu, i think Levi, Arturo, and maybe even J also could've made for compelling culprits with the right reasons).

i'm content with this. i'm heartbroken he's going so early and i wish the execution of his guilt had been a lot better, but overall it's not terrible. he just deserved so much more in many different ways.

[scuderia-hamilton]

you're saying that Daniel didn't deserve this, but you're still hating on him for that shit he said back in february

make up your mind for fuck's sake

wow okay appreciate you being so civil and nice lmao

just so we’re clear, i’m upset about the principle of this situation cause i hate teams dropping drivers mid-season without warning and treating them like garbage, because they’re all human beings at the end of the day. ultimately they’re all risking their lives weekend after weekend and the teams not having the decency to at least give them a proper goodbye is mad disrespectful.

now that we got this out of the way, the truth is i couldn’t care less about Daniel leaving. it is what it is. i’m not a fan, i never have been and never will be. "that shit" he said back in february was him defending a sexual abuser and i don't know about you, but that's just not something i can easily forget. but what was i expecting from the same man who said that it's "not in his nature" to understand human rights issues and he doesn't watch the news because it's too much drama and negativity and it makes him feel shitty? his next adventure should be teaching weaponized incompetence to beginners.

i can feel bad for him, cause i (unlike him) possess empathy and compassion, along with critical thinking skills. i really tried to refrain from haterism, but i'm honestly so tired of trying to be the bigger person. fans like you (from this visceral reaction, i assume you're a fan) are part of the reason why DR is insufferable and trying to have a nuanced conversation is a lost cause. there is a middle ground between hatred and unquestionable support, i hope you know that.

i don't think he deserved that seat to begin with and i think deep down all of you know that, cause the only thing y'all could come up with to defend him was that he smiled a lot and had a great personality (which is honestly baffling to me, cause his personality is that of a high school bully's, but to each their own, i guess). but y'all are the same people who then turn around and call Checo racial slurs, say that he's washed and call him a pay driver. talk about your driver's skills, let's hear it.

and to make it clear i am over the moon happy for Liam Lawson, cause i think he actually deserves to be in the sport and i am happy that he was the one who replaced him. hating on him also says more about y'all, than him, cause that won't actually bring back your mediocre driver. log off, go out and touch some grass, cause it is never that serious. harassing a young driver who's just trying to do his job and achieve his life long dream over a poorly managed situation he had absolutely no control over is honestly crazy behaviour.

i hope all this is enough for you to know where i stand on this whole thing. if you would've been nice, you would've gotten a nice answer, but since you chose to be an asshole on my own blog, anonymously at that, you get what you came for.

have the day you deserve.

[euniexenoblade]

https://www.tumblr.com/spacelazarwolf/762656296882372608/httpswwwtumblrcomeuniexenoblade7625264206794

"B-But transfemmes are the ones who made the film into a cult classic! If you don’t like it, don’t watch it!! It’s literally that simple!!!"

First off, space laze deciding a long post I wrote about trauma is an "argument" is very telling, it's not an argument, the post in question even says that it's just thoughts. Hold on. Why am I saying this, I'll just screenshot it.

This is not an argument. This was never an argument. This is just digesting thoughts about how so many of us have trauma with a specific piece of media. The "transfemmes made it popular" thing, though silly and untrue, isn't actually addressing anything I said. My post can *still* be true while that'd be true too, the two don't contradict each other.

That said it's untrue. Transfems do not hold that level of social capital. The movie isn't a niche hit with trans specific crowds, it's a literal cult classic. The love for it is so much bigger than that. It's a bigger movie than that now. Are there transfems that love it? Yeah. Are there transfems that were involved in its uprising as "queer cinema?" Yeah. But to say it was only transfems is ahistorical and silly.

At the end of the day, it's once again just a guy mocking a woman for something they didnt even bother to read. It's typical anti-feminist methodology. The entire book about problematic media goes out the window. "Uh uh uh people can't be traumatized with the movie cuz ummm transfems like it!" That's not how things work and never has been. Liking a movie that is problematic isn't a bad thing, but if you're literally so resistant to any critical reading of a movie, you're just anti-intellectual.

"if you don't like it, don't watch it." Ok, but the thing is *I don't watch it* and I'm discussing why. Like, it's just misogynistic and dismissive. But also - just because a woman criticizes a movie doesn't mean you're not allowed to like it, spacey. This is the same response that my Barbie movie review garnered "UHHH why are you writing 8999 paragraphs just don't watch it" it's anti-feminism and anti-intellectualism. The dude did not need to be a douche about what is a personal post.

Speaking about *that*

The second part of this:

Anon, why are you sending my personal posts to a known anti-feminist/transmisogynist? Did you not think I wouldn't notice the ask that they received looks awfully similar to this one I got? Or did you think I'd be blinded by the specter of drama that I'd not notice? Why are you stirring the pot? Scroll through my blog, you'll just find me writing smut and reblogging art. Did that bother you? Did you *crave* me being in arguments? Why? Why are you sending douchebag MRAs I have blocked my posts?

I will not answer asks like this ever again. Stop being a coward and do it off anon you creep.

[spoilertheydied]

ugh I hate to be negative about things that I love but seriously DAV only referencing inquisition’s events (and even then only 3 choices) has hurt my excitement for the new game so much.

Even within the choices they give us it feels geared towards a sollavelan inky - I romanced Cassandra but she became divine and ended the relationship: none of that is going to be reflected in the game because the divine decision isn’t imported.

None of the characters who may have died in the other games can have cameos now (Isabela, Zevran, Fenris) no matter how much sense it would make for them to be in nothern Thedas - and even if they do what they did with Leliana no potential romance or history with previous characters can be acknowledged.

Even for the DAI characters - most of them could have left the Inquisition through DAI so any cameos from those characters are either cut off, or wouldn’t truly make sense (mainly thinking about Dorian here because he’s in Tevinter regardless but also could have left the Inquisition if he had low approval in DAI).

The two characters from DAO/DA2 that we have confirmed will feature in the game (Morrigan, Varric) won’t be able to reference any potential past with previous characters - I romanced Morrigan but didn’t do the ritual so Kieran was not an old god in my run and my warden died + Hawke was left in the fade - none of which can be mentioned because it isn’t imported - despite how critical both of those events were to Morrigan/Varric.

DAI was my least favourite of the 3 games and while I was interested in Solas as a character I wasn’t invested enough to truly care about whether I wanted to kill or redeem him - and yet the only choices that will have any impact on my game will be Solas related?

idk I want to be so excited for DAV - I’ve had other problems with things we’ve seen in previews but its never been serious enough for me to lose the optimism I had for the game - but I was *so* excited for the small cameos and even one off dialogue lines or codex entries referencing previous world events (and I knew they were going to be slightly more limited without the keep but I was still expecting something at least).

I don’t want to say the game won’t be *good* without them because I haven’t played it so I just don’t know - but I’m almost convinced at this point that any callbacks to previous games will only be fulfilling if i say I romanced Solas in DAI.

[razorblade180]

The Grand Bet!

March: Dan Heeeeeng! Can you make dinner tonight?

Dan Heng: You didn’t eat with your masters?

March: We cut training short today. But get this! I bumped into master Yunli on the way here and she confessed her and Yanqing have Cloud Knight business to discuss at his. I would’ve loved to try his cooking!

Caelus:Ah, so you weren’t invited.

Stelle:You two would probably eat his budget.

March:Like you aren’t any different!? I wouldn’t eat that much. Surly less than someone like Jing Yuan.

Dan Heng:Oh, he’s joining as well. That means it’s possible all the Generals are.

March:W-Why? I just said Jing Yuan because why wouldn’t he be there?

Caelus:Why would he be?

March:Because……why would he miss a home cooked dinner? I know he’s busy but eventually he’d go home to at least leftovers.

CSD:…..

March:Why are you looking at me like that?

Caelus:March, Jing Yuan and Yanqing do not live together. Yanqing has his own residence.

March:Really?! All by himself!?

Dan Heng:He gets paid a lieutenant’s wage. He can afford an apartment easily.

March:Well that’s weird! Yunli didn’t mention that at all. I think I even mentioned how fancy the general’s house might be. She could’ve spoken up!

Stelle:Or she was fine with you being wrong.

March:So what, they’re having a dinner together? I wouldn’t tease her about that. Is it that embarrassing?

Dan Heng: What do you think is going to happen?

March:Eating and talking! Maybe someone will say something ridiculous. I guess it could be a date. That explains not inviting me.

Caelus:If that’s the case-

Stelle: Why not go to restaurant instead of his place? For Cloud Knight matters of all things!?

March:….*red* I don’t like what you’re implying!

Caelus: You mean the truth?

March:Not my adorable masters!

Dan Heng:It adds up. Neither of them seem like the type to be okay sharing a kiss in public.

Stelle:Dan Heng, nobody needs an entire apartment for a single kiss.

Dan Heng:…But they’re responsible.

Caelus:Now since when does that matter around a crush?

March:I refuse to hear you slander them. They’re far too awkward to get passed a dinner and a movie.

Dan Heng: That is Jing Yuan’s disciple. A kiss is on the table.

Stelle:I think you’re both wrong. March, your masters are totally making out. I do believe they’re responsible, but not that responsible! 20,000 credits on it.

March:Well I know them better and I think you’re wrong! 25,000 on just a dinner plus confessions!

Dan Heng: I’m sticking with kiss.

Caelus: Make out session.

Stelle: You can’t steal my-

Caelus:AND….they will be dumb enough to leave evidence. Somehow, some way, they are going to mess up.

Stelle:…Can we be one team?

Caelus:Oh now it sounds appealing!? We split it 60/40

Stelle:55/45! I’m broke. I will do your chores too.

Caelus:Fine.

Dan Heng:If you’re both wrong then you pay March and I 50,000 credits each.

March:Oh I love these odds!

Stelle and Caelus: Deal.

xxxxxx

The next day came quickly. The four stooges all waited in the training garden as Yanqing walked in.

Yanqing:Ummm did I get more students? Wasn’t expecting so many faces this morning.

Stelle:We had nothing else better to do so we thought we’d hangout for a minute.

March:Where’s master Yunli? You both usually race here to try teach your swordplay before the other.

Yanqing:Oh, um she’s probably a little busy. It’s not long before she goes home after all.

Dan Heng:It is getting close to that time. I could imagine her trying to make the most of her time left now that things are getting calm,

Yanqing:That does sound like something she’d do. *rubs head*

The stooges:(He’s holding out on us.)

March:Oh! I almost forgot. You two had dinner last night. Did it get well?

Yanqing:..It was fine. My cooking was criticized but she still ate two plates. We got through Cloud Knight business pretty quickly. Sorry I couldn’t treat you as well.

March:Water under the bridge. I’m amazed you two got along well enough. I thought I would hear another fight.

Yanqing:We don’t always fight.

Caelus:Then what’s the bruise on your neck?

The boy immediately went to adjust his collar, only to realize it was still perfectly in place. Suddenly, his body froze as he felt mortified. How’d he fall for such a bluff!? March and Dan Heng felt their wallets start to hurt while Caelus and Stelle gained a grin that might as will belong on Aha.

Stelle:What’s the matter Yanqing? You look pale.

Caelus:Kindly pull down your collar and we will go in peace.

Yanqing:You all made a bet, didn’t you?

Dan Heng:If it makes you feel better, March and I thought highly of you both.

Yanqing:I’m so sorry.

March:Nooo! *drops to knees*

Stelle:For clarification, you didn’t didn’t…

Yanqing:*red* Of course not! We aren’t dumb!

Stelle:Yeaaaaah! I expect my credits handed, not wired.

Caelus:*pats Yanqing shoulder* I don’t think they’re arguing with the results. Don’t worry about the collar.

Yanqing:Thank you.

Dan Heng:So, where’s Yunli exactly?

xxxxx

Lingsha:Medicine that removes bruises?

Yunli: *in Yanqing’s clothes* Yes. That’s all I require.

Lingsha:….

Yunli:…..Please don’t tell grandpa.

Lingsha:You have my silence. I’m just a little annoyed I now owe Jing Yuan and Feixiao 50,000 credits.

Yunli:YOU MADE A BET ON ME!?

Lingsha:In confidence, and you failed me! Just like that, they got the money back from the medical bill! *sends money*

xxxxxx

Feixiao:And that’s why you’re the Divine Foresight! We drink tonight!

Jing Yuan:Please, I’d rather not pay property damages with this. I’ll give you my share if you don’t drink until you’re home.

Feixiao:Deal!

Jing Yuan:…Was this your endgame?

Feixiao:Perhaps. Don’t worry. This goes towards a good cause.

xxxxx

Moze:How’s it feel?

Jiaoqiu: *holding cane* Natural. It’s pretty remarkable actually. How much was it?

Feixiao: *smiles* It was basically free.

[pynkhues]

What do you mean when u say Lestat is a Milton’s Satan hero?

Ah! Okay! Going to try and keep this shorter than my Byronic Hero post, haha, but we’ll see how we go.

Before we start…

When we talk about Milton’s Satan as a character archetype, we’re talking about something that was originated in John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, which was published in 1667. This was before gothic literature was quote-unquote ‘invented’ (as I mentioned in my first Byronic Hero post, gothic literature is widely accepted to have begun with Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto – worth the read, even just for the bonkers prophecy-speaking skeletons and a character dying from a helmet falling on his head, haha), but had, and continues to have, an enormous impact on gothic literature and horror in general.

The poem is set across twelve ‘books’ (chapters, basically), and is effectively a re-telling of the Book of Genesis but with two narrative throughlines. One throughline is Adam and Eve who represent more conventional biblical heroes in the poem, and the other is Satan (also called Lucifer in the poem). We’ll talk more about them in a sec, but before we begin it’s important to note that Paradise Lost was never intended as a criticism of the church.

Milton was a religious man, which is a really important thing to note when we start talking about Paradise Lost, but he was also heavily influenced as a writer by King Charles I’s autocratic rule and the English Civil War which lasted from 1642-1651. I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of all of that, but what’s important to note is that he wrote Paradise Lost in a really increased period of anti-authority sentiment in the UK and believed strongly in rebellion against authority, which feeds into how he invented his Satan.

Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost

Lucifer’s arc in Paradise Lost is a relatively straight forward one. He begins as God’s favourite angel but his pride and his vanity gets the better of him as God starts to invent (and favour) earth and mankind, and he comes to resent God’s authority over the kingdom of heaven. He believes he deserves to be loved as God is, so he leads a rebellion against God, only to lose, and he and the rest of the fallen angels, get cast out of Heaven and into Hell.

Out of spite, Lucifer decides to make Hell his own, with the iconic line “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n” and to set his sights on corrupting God’s new favourite thing – Mankind (at this point, just Adam and Eve) – and he’s ultimately pretty darn successful. I’m not going to talk too much about the specific ways that he does that, but it’s basically a mix of deception and sowing seeds of lust, and the end result is that humanity’s corrupted, and God further punishes Satan by turning him and the other fallen angels into snakes.

The devil had been depicted a few times in literature and poetry before this time –most notably in Dante’s Inferno – but these depictions of the devil were always monstrous. Dante’s Satan is a three-mouthed beast keeping his sinner’s constantly in pain, trapped in Hell himself instead of reigning over it, and this is where Milton’s Satan hit the streets and changed character archetypes for good.

Because Milton’s Satan was hot.

Sure, he was evil, proud, vain, impulsive and did terrible things, but he was also charismatic, beautiful, graceful, funny, with all the best lines in the poem. He was “a lonely rebel…[and] an appealing, sympathetic deviant.”

And – I can’t stress this enough – nobody had ever done that before in Western writing.  “[Milton] transformed the way evil was depicted in Western texts and cultural imagery,” and also created the hero-villain archetype, something we now often refer to as an antihero.

On top of that though, Milton’s Satan was deceptive (literally a shapeshifter!), impulsive, had an incestuous family, and made sex sinful by making it lustful (Milton’s thesis over and over in his writing is that sex is great as long as nobody feels lust lol). He was also a loser, haha – he lost every battle he fought, and is in some ways regarded as a caricature of the epic odyssey hero, but look, I’m not going to get into all of that here.

Milton’s Satan is a tragic struggle between the entirely villainous and the entirely heroic.

Let’s just grab a quote from the excellent paper Miltonic Influences in Gothic Victorian Literature:

“As a rejected, troubled child of God, Satan decides to forcefully take what he thinks he should have by birthright. When he does not succeed, he decides to corrupt God’s new children…Satan is narcissistic, vain, proud and jealous. However, he is also remorseful and aware of the wrongness of his actions. He alone thinks he cannot be pardoned for the sins he commits so he forcefully pushes forward in his need for revenge. At the same time, Satan shows disturbingly human characteristics, but also inexplicable immorality. Just when one thinks one can reach a humane reason for Satan’s behaviour, one is left baffled by how evil he actually is.”

The important thing to remember about your Milton’s Satan archetype is that he was not just invented as a means of Milton’s grappling with autocracy and anti-authority sentiment, he was also really Milton’s way of grappling with humanity.

He leaves Adam and Eve as the Biblical heroes of the story, which makes them hard to engage with. What Milton wanted with Satan was to lean into the fallen angel element of him and show him as a character with the capacity for both good and evil, and the tendency to choose evil, thus making him both ultimately tragic, but also more human than the human characters. He was a way for Milton to explore what he felt were his own sins and moral failings, and in the process of that, became a way for readers to explore that too.

Evolution of Milton’s Satan

Milton’s Satan as an archetype has grown a lot over the years since his invention. Even by the time gothic literature started being ‘officially’ written a century later, the character archetype really existed on a spectrum, with some Milton’s Satan’s such as Ambrosio in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ 1796 novel, The Monk leaning more villain than hero, and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, who’s cast out by his maker and not given the chance he needs in life to be good. The Monster lacks a lot of Milton’s Satan’s typical traits like pride and self-love, but he continues the archetype’s throughline of being a cast out child who out of loneliness, becomes vengeful against the authority that rejected him and ultimately depraved/

Like I said, this archetype underpins all antiheroes today, and there’s a lot of writing about characters as wide-ranging as Hannibal Lector to Batman as being owing to Milton’s Satan, so there’s heaps out there to read if you’re interested, but yes! Let’s talk a little about Lestat.

Lestat as Milton’s Satan

Trying to keep this short(ish, anyway, haha): I really do think Lestat is born out of this archetype. Lestat’s an anti-authority character – an enormous part of which stems from his father’s autocratic and abusive reign of the household, and the feeling of abandonment by God when his father pulled him out of the church where he’d learn to be a priest only to continue his abuse. Lestat in that sense also faces rejection from three ‘God’s’ / makers not just one one – his spiritual God, his biological father, and later Magnus as his vampiric maker.

Interestingly too, Miltonic Satan’s remain heavily tied to their maker’s even after their rejection. In that paper above on Miltonic Influences in Gothic Victorian Literature, they note:

“The Satanic hero or the hero-villain is a dark, troubled and mysterious individual. He is shaped by life experiences and traits which he inherits from his maker.”

Something the show has reminded us a few times now. Lestat’s grounding in trauma and abandonment is steeped in the Miltonic trope of rejection by authority leading to rejection of authority, but even beyond that, Milton’s Satan is impulsive, morally weak, self-centered, proud, vain, lonely, beautiful but also, vitally, has a capacity for real good and an ability to love (and, more often, lust, haha). He’s a hero-villain that ultimately draws the viewer in because he’s exceptionally human in his monstrousness, and that is what is at the heart of the Milton’s Satan archetype. He’s evil but he’s human in a way traditional villains were robbed of, and similarly, he’s good but he’s human in a way traditional heroes weren’t allow to be, and to me that is Lestat in a nutshell.

[codename-adler]

when you cannot handle class discussion;

a non-aftg post still addressed to the aftg fandom because i know the aftg fam got me.

CW below: Harry Potter and JKR.

TERFs et al. not welcomed, fuck off.

one of my uni classes this semester is called Children's Literature in English. i will abstain from relating my whole life background, but here is the issue: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is on the syllabus, due to be discussed for the next 2 weeks. other works on the program are: both Andersen's and Grimms' fairytales, Enid Blyton's The Twins at St. Clare's, The Catcher in the Rye, A Little Princess, Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese and Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls. (the latter is a whole other issue in itself that is not the point here)

the objective of the class is worded as followed by the professor in the syllabus:

This course will involve a critical study of children’s and young adult literature (in English) by analyzing historical and cultural connotations of childhood, adolescence, and related subjects. By analyzing a variety of texts students will explore several dimensions of children’s literature including children’s education, questions of race and identity, children’s understanding of abuse and trauma, young adult adventures and more. Literature in this course will range from the eighteenth-century concept of children’s texts, twentieth century popular school stories, as well as contemporary popular fiction including picture books and graphic novels. Students will be expected to critically engage with the texts and appreciate the sophisticated themes present in them. Children’s literature is often considered to be repositories of cultural values and deemed as agents of socialization—students will be encouraged to dissect these texts from their literary and political perspectives.

now. i've known about HP as assigned reading since the summer. initially i was very, thoroughly disappointed. and pissed. and helpless, because i did not know who the professor would be. therefore i had no clue as to how it would be handled, from what angle it would be approached. from the list of texts, i could assume a certain theme around school as a major setting for children's socialization and growth. fairytales is also always the starting point. but apart from that, no clue.

then the syllabus came, and it was grief all over again. because as you can see, nothing indicates that HP will be discussed with current events in mind. moreover, the thematic section under which it is to be read, in the syllabus, are: coming-of-age stories, adventure, YA fiction. so... nothing, you know. and so since August, i've been nursing this weird wound?

i'll admit, i was much, much, much more affected by the news than i ever thought i would. i haven't interacted with the texts and fandom for years. i actively avoid it. my ex-bestfriend who i've 'broken up' with in April was the only contact i had, because she is a die-hard fan that, although disagreeing with JKR, did not try to change the ways she engaged with the content. i rarely discussed HP with her, because i did not like it, and it was never as of major importance to me as it was to her; she has grown up with HP, whereas i only read the series around 14, never saw the movies in theatre, etc. that is not to say that i was not an ardent fan; i was immensely taken with the books, the world, that author herself. i was in awe of her genius. was.

all this to say, i have carefully curated what i'm exposed to and what i engage with. i've laid down pretty good boundaries. a little too good, perhaps, if my deep shock and perpetual grief are anything to go by. my surprise at my own feelings certainly does not help to lessen them and process them.

and now has come the time for discussion. i won't reread HP1, because i still have it pretty much memorized, and because i simply refuse to. i have so many other things to do and read and write for other classes and clubs, i cannot be arsed to give that book a single glance. but for the next 2 weeks, the next 6 hours of that class, everything will be HP and JKR. and i do not know how to handle it.

because. because the students of the class are, mostly, fans. still. and the professor too, i believe. i do not see a discussion on transphobia, homophobia, racism, antisemitism and misogyny in the cards. i'm really not getting the 'vibe' from the prof that there will be a portion reserved for those aspects. i hope i'm wrong. but i cannot prepare myself on hope.

just the discussion from some girls, during the break, about their favorite fanfics and eagerly and enthusiastically chatting about HP and the reboot and whatnot, i'm feeling awful. and, well, apart from me, these women are among the students that participate the most in discussion. (as it is, a discussion-/seminar- based course)

i understand, okay? i understand. that HP/JKR permanently changed the children's lit landscape and market. whether it was deserved/original or not, it remains that they have had a very important role in the history of kids' lit. it cannot be erased, though i wish it would. and that is, fine. nothing anyone can do about that. the mark (stain) is there to stay. i understand.

so i cannot change:

the syllabus

the professor

the students

history

i can only control the way i will handle this. i will try my very best not to engage in the discussion. though 15% of our final grade goes to participation, i have secured my full mark by now and know after HP i will pick up the work again. that is no concern to me. when i say try not to engage, i mean try not to waste energy and peace over whatever bs is bound to be said. i'm not afraid of outright far-right problematic 'opinions' or responding to them if be the case, but i doubt it will happen, which is a tiny bit of relief.

but i cannot skip those sessions. it remains that i must be present and actively listening. that is tiring and hurtful enough. and i do not know how to plan how to cope. i do have a dear friend i know i could talk to in person afterwards. and i have you guys.

so what i'm asking, after all this blah-blah, is advice, tips, ideas, to help me remain calm and well for the next 2 weeks suffering through the HP bs.

i sound dramatic af. i feel dramatic af. i don't understand why i am so affected. i don't even know for sure if the professor will skip over that crucial evil of JKR. i might be pleasantly surprised.

i'm happily open to provide any additional info if you have questions or need clarifications. i don't know how coherent i'm being. feeling real blurry rn.

yeah. that's all.

- Love, Adler xx

[sunnyshinesunshine]

Okay so I’ve finally solidified my opinion on The Rings of Power and given that it is my opinion it is therefore very important and I’m sure everyone is dying to hear it (this is sarcasm)

I’ll start by saying I’m not a critical person when it comes to things. I consume media to enjoy myself, not to pick apart its literary or thematic flaws. It’s fine if you do, but that’s just not me.

I will also say I’ve never read the Fall of Númenor as its own story, so any Tolkien primary sources I’m vaguely alluding to (this isn’t a research paper been there done that got the high school diploma I bake cookies for a living I ain’t citing shit thanks <3) are the Silmarillion, LoTR, and The Hobbit.

I didn’t like TROP for the first season, but after catching up on S2, I’ve come to enjoy it.

S1 is the full of world building, setting up the political stage and the relationships between the characters that lead to the creation of the rings and all the other bad hullabaloo that ends in the Last Alliance.

Safe to say, I spent the whole time going ‘what? why is he/she/them saying/believing/acting like this? why is it/this portrayed like this???’ and felt very irked by the whole thing.

S2, the rings are being created, familiar events start happening, the puzzle pieces from S1 that were so unfamiliar and bothersome to me then come together to create a picture that I knew.

Once I got to thinking I realized I actually know a whole lot less about the fall of numenor and the creation of the rings than I thought I did.

When Tolkien writes about those events, he gives the broad strokes in a very history-book way. Celebrimbor creates the rings because he is deceived by Sauron. Tar-Míriel is overthrown by Ar-Pharazôn and marries him against his will. Elrond is with Gil-Galad as his herald.

These are the things, amongst others, that we know. Unlike in the Hobbit or LoTR, we aren’t given any glimpses into the heads or relationships of the characters in anything other than what amounts to almost a timeline of events.

This, of course, leaves a lot of room for Tolkien fans to ask questions. Questions that can be answered through imagination. Imagination becomes ideas, ideas become discussions, discussions become a collective understanding of what happened (fanon*. I’m talking fanon. please read the note at the end because I think fanon is awesome and deserves to be defended)

For example. We know Celebrimbor and Narvi built the Doors of Durin together and added possibly the most ridiculous riddle password possible.

When the Doors are first introduced in LoTR, it is also in the middle of Gimli and Legolas’ semi feuding, and before both of them have some serious moments regarding their histories and cultures (Khazad-Dûm and Lothlórien respectively).

All of this to conclude that at some point between Gigolas’s inter-species feuding and the password to the damn doors being ‘mellon’, as Tolkien fans, we came to the conclusion that Celebrimbor and Narvi were close friends.

Celebrimbor and Narvi are not really much more than acquaintances in TROP. And that isn’t inaccurate. The source material doesn’t have an opinion on it really.

Fanon says Celebrimbor and Narvi were pals. TROP says they weren’t. Canon doesn’t care either way.

I mention this example to explain why TROP felt so wrong especially at the beginning. Essentially we, or at least I, had this idea of how things should be, and when TROP diverged from that I felt lost and annoyed.

Now, I find watching TROP to be honestly kind of fascinating, like watching someone else painting using a model and comparing it to the painting I had already created of that same model.

It’s kind of fun. And every Elrond deserves all of us cheering him on.

*about Fanon:

I love fanon it’s awesome and great and it’s fucking collective story telling in a way that hasn’t really existed in modern times. Thousands of people from all over the world create and agree and discuss and add on to stories. The marauders fandom is almost completely fanon and that’s wonderful. Every single one of you who share your ideas about characters or settings or clothes or even (especially) who create the elleths who exist in the Silmarillion but don’t at the same time, you are awesome.

You’ve created a story and world together. Without being paid. You’ve agreed and created simply for the love of creation. And that’s so amazing.

Fanon is awesome and I don’t care for anyone who calls it cringe.

[katyspersonal]

God, not to be one of those "hateful anons" but you really need to drop the "holier than thou" type thing on all of your lore posts. As much as I'd love to debunk why half your arguements are overused and don't work, I'll save that because that's not my point.

On almost all of your lore posts you mention at least once how "people aren't ready for stories of this level" or some shit along those lines, and let me ask you this: Why do you think people like you can digest these stories better? You would probably answer something like "Because I can understand these stories unlike these stupid from haters" or something.

You aren't digesting these stories better then anyone else just because you spend 1000 hours looking into what Morgott's moldy toe item description mentions. Like seriously, all this complaining about why the fandom sucks yet youre just like all those "holier than thou" people in the fandom who keep mentioning how THEIR perspective is better then someone else's.

You also keep acting like personal interpretation doesn't exist on some note. Saying how [X] is actually what happened and that people are denying [X].

I looked into your blog because I thought some of your posts were interesting, but it turns out youre literally just like all the other fromsoftware fans you complain so much about. Hopefully this gives you some perspective, I guess.

Nah, it "didn't give me the perspective", because you are the one seriously misunderstanding here. I say that we as a fandom are not ready for Fromsoft stories SPECIFICALLY to criticize fandom behavior.

We as a fandom are not ready for Fromsoft stories because there are people who claim that "Miquella's character was assassinated by bad writing because in the base game he was hyped up to be kind and compassionate", when his arc was a fall from grace. How falling from grace equals writing him to never have had that grace to begin with? We as a fandom are not ready for Fromsoft stories because whenever Fromsoft does not directly state something, fandom splits into two hostile groups each accusing another of media illiteracy or even various -isms and -phobias. (I advice you to ask Gehrman fans from Bloodborne fandom for extra insight on this one) We as a fandom are not ready for Fromsoft stories because when they DO state something directly, the "cool kids" of the fandom decide it was either a bad writing or that they know better, and start to side-eye everyone who prefers canon over their """improved""" fanon. We as a fandom are not ready for Fromsoft stories because Miyazaki's brand of moral ambiguity, admission that there is no clear solution to world's problems and questioning the nature of humanity itself OFTEN falls on the deaf ears.

Like... you do realize that I still consider myself part of the fandom, despite not engaging beyond what is on my feed? That I do not claim that /I/ am ready for Miyazaki's writer genius? Just like everyone else, I can only do my best to TRY to understand him! Nonetheless, I am trying my best to be mature, and encourage maturity in others. It is hard to remain always calm and nice in a fandom that feels like a battlefield, everyone will get a bit rude! The point is to TRY to be better, which most people don't see the need for! I am calling out fandoms bad behavior and refusal to look deeper into story and characters than their habits and preferences, especially because these preferences often lead to conflicts and toxicity, not claiming moral superiority over my headcanons!

Personal interpretations are fair. What is NOT fair is when someone harps on a very well-researched post with easily debunked arguements, basically doing the "your post is nonsense because in my fanfic things are different" on them, and then another person that did not even read the post nor actually researched the lore beyond their preferences passionately agrees.

I'll have you know that I never spent "1000 hours on analyzing". I am autistic, you goddamn coward. I understand some obscure detail in a flash by just looking, or suddenly come up with an insight while busy at work. Sometimes I literally dream a theory or observation! I do not understand where the misconception that everyone needs to spend a lot of time to be hyper-observant about their special interest comes from. However, you believing that about me makes your claim even worse. You seriously just said that analysis of someone who.... well, analysed the lore, is not as valid as analysis of someone who just took scraps of lore they personally enjoyed to create their own thing. How does this make sense, exactly? Again: you'd have SOME point if you spoke against a stuck-up Reddittuber who makes it their daily mission to ruin someone's joy if their headcanon is not 100% accurate to the source, however, so far the inverse has been happening. People who decided something about lore just because it appealed to THEM will go and be rude to people who are trying to be objective. Not only this; I've had my headcanons (!) "corrected" multiple times because they were different from popular fanon!

.........speaking of certain people who think it is okay to harp on someone's lore post to downplay it when they are not even lorediggers themselves.... -_-

The way you glazed through my blog and jumped into an extremely inaccurate conclusion about my personality and attitude reminded me of the same impulsivity when someone took "stop treating Marika as noble hero against Hornsent evil, here are bad things that happened during her reign" as as "just another poorly researched Marika hate 🥺". 🙃 Your obvious vitriol for thorough lore research, your poorly disguised manipulation (you clearly did not think my posts were "interesting" with how much disdain you just expressed FOR them, but you wanted to wound me by faking "disappointment"), and above all, timing. My tone in yesterday's Marika and the fandom rant was in no, NO way different from how I usually speak in my blog! My mutuals (all 8 of them lol) can confirm! Yet I've never received (inaccurate) anon hate for this.. until now. Until recent very unfortunate encounter with extremely shallow individuals that started a debate yet refused to finish it when hypocrisy of the both was pointed out. 🌛

I think I know who you are. :/ 🤔 I'll keep that in mind, and being "prepared" will definitely lessen the effect if you try anything of the sort again, be sure of this.

(At the same time, IF I am wrong and you are just a fan that found me through that interaction, I'll have you know that your lowly cowardice by using anon instead of showing your face has put someone else under suspicion, and it will remain so unless you show yourself. In which case, hope you are proud of yourself. 🤦‍♂️)

[fionaapplerocks]

The Long and Winding Road That Leads to Fiona Apple

By Tyler Coates 2012-05-31

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” So goes the oft-quoted line from William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun. Time is circular, and our relationship with our own personal histories is ever changing. This is a concept with which the enigmatic Fiona Apple is deeply familiar.

The 34-year-old singer-songwriter is about to release her fourth album—the first in seven years—aptly titled The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do. The spinning wheel of time cranks back and forth for Apple, who continues to re-examine her past while trying to keep up with the present. Like most artists, however, Apple finds that her fans cherish the past more than she does.

In 2000, a 16-year-old fan named Bill Magee approached Apple after a show in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania with a request: he told her he was a member of his high school’s gay-straight alliance and hoped that Apple could write a few words of support. “[I] was much more interested in interacting with a celebrity than building an alliance between gays and straights,” he admitted on his blog 12 years later where he posted a scanned image of the letter he received less than a week after requesting her response.

Apple wrote: “All I know is I want my friends to be good people, and when my friends fall in love, I want them to fall in love with other good people. How can you go wrong with two people in love? If a good boy loves a good girl, good. If a good boy loves another good boy, good. And if a good girl loves the goodness in good boys and good girls, then all you have is more goodness, and goodness has nothing to do with sexual orientation.”

“My brother was the one who told me about it,” Apple tells me just weeks after Magee posted the letter on his Tumblr, which was then picked up by various sites like Jezebel and Pitchfork. “I was like, ‘A letter I wrote to someone when I was 22 has made its way online?’ That’s the scariest thing I could possibly hear in my life. And the subject matter was so important—I know how I’ve always felt so I knew it wasn’t going to be a bad letter, but I was like, ‘What did I say?!’”

The letter’s sudden popularity online is indicative of how much has changed since Apple released her debut album, Tidal, in 1996.

For starters, she was then a 19-year-old singer-songwriter signed to a major record label and churning out emotional and dark odes at a time when her contemporaries were singing bubblegum-pop love songs.

She made headlines after appearing in the video for “Criminal.” Shot in a seedy apartment, the video featured a scantily clad and emaciated Apple, sparking criticisms of the exploitive quality of the images (and suggesting that she had an eating disorder). In 1997, when accepting her award for Best New Artist at the MTV Video Music Awards, Apple infamously shouted into the microphone, “This world is bullshit, and you shouldn’t model your life on what we think is cool, and what we’re wearing and what we’re saying.”

While the speech was replayed and parodied on TV for years following, Apple was lucky enough to have said those words before the days of blogging and YouTube; had she given the speech 15 years later, it may have turned into a career-damaging viral video and sparked a few thousand snarky tweets.

She also has the luxury of being a successful artist who doesn’t need to promote herself online. “They want me to tweet now, but I don’t,” Apple tells me of her label reps. “It doesn’t feel natural to me. But I do find it actually more interesting to see people posting ridiculously mundane shit. I like to hear about what people had for breakfast or what they did all day. It’s interesting because I don’t know how other people live.”

While Apple is hardly a recluse, she’s made few public appearances in the seven years since the release of her third album, Extraordinary Machine. The excitement following the announcement by Epic Records of the late-June release of The Idler Wheel speaks to the loyalty of her fan base. (And as for that long-winded title, it’s a callback to the much-maligned 90-word title of her acclaimed sophomore effort, universally shortened to When the Pawn…)

The Idler Wheel does not deviate from the familiar sounds of Apple’s earlier records; the songs are still layered with complex instrumentation, and her reverberant voice still takes center stage in each tune.

The album was produced nearly in secret over the last few years—a surprising move from an established artist with the resources of a major label at her disposal. But Apple explains that her experience with the label system is what allowed her to feel free to work on her own. “It was very casual, and I wasn’t fully admitting that I was making an album,” she says. “I got to use the time in the studio to inspire me to finish other things rather than feel like I was finishing homework to hand in. It wasn’t a lot of pressure. And the record company didn’t know I was doing it, so nobody was looking over my shoulder.”

Most might take that mentality as a reaction to the restrictions of her record label, especially after the drama surrounding the release of Extraordinary Machine. After collaborating with Jon Brion (who produced When the Pawn) to create an early version of the third album in 2002, Apple then decided to rework all but two of the songs with producer Mike Elizondo.

The original version of the album leaked online, and Brion suggested in interviews that Apple’s label had rejected the demo and forced her to rerecord the songs (a claim that Apple later denied). Still, it incited an uproar among her fans. An online-based movement called Free Fiona organized demonstrations outside of the Sony headquarters in New York, and protestors sent apples to the label’s executives.

The final version of the album was released in 2005 and received positive reviews and earned Apple a Grammy nomination. “I ran into the guy who started Free Fiona after a show in Chicago,” she tells me. “He apologized to me! They didn’t get the story quite right, but they did help me get my album out. I felt so bad that he had spent all this time thinking I was pissed at him—I had a physical urge to get down on the floor and kiss his shoes!”

It’s an intense reaction (she admits she didn’t bow to her fan because “it would be weird if I did that”), but Apple is still a very intense person. Dressed in a flowing skirt paired with several layers of spaghetti-strapped tank tops that reveal her slender frame (which seems healthier than in her early days, giving the impression that she must spend most of her downtime on a yoga mat), Apple fidgets in her seat during our conversation, often giving off an infectious giggle.

But she is surprisingly comfortable to talk to, not much like the somber young woman who sang of heartbreak and disappointment. “I don’t think I’ll ever have an idea of what I look like to the rest of the world,” she replies when I ask if she ever worries that her lyrics, which are sometimes in stark contrast to the up-tempo, progressive sounds of her songs’ instrumentations, give off the wrong impression of her personality. “It’s all your own perception. I could easily be concerned with how I’m taken and then have all the good stuff filtered through to me and choose to believe that. For the rest of my life it’d be the truth for me, but not the whole truth.”

Born Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart in New York City to Brandon Maggart and Diane McAfee, Apple’s musical destiny was settled at birth. The McAfee-Maggarts are, while not reaching Barrymore-level name recognition, an entertainment family; Apple’s father was nominated for a Tony for his performance in the Broadway musical Applause, both her mother and sister are singers, and her half-brothers work in the film industry—one an actor and the other a director.

She’s a third-generation performer, as her grandmother was a dancer in musical revues and her grandfather a Big Band-era musician. While Apple’s auspicious introduction to the pop world had critics calling her a prodigy, she crafted her early songs as a cathartic necessity. (“Sullen Girl” from Tidal, in particular, is about her rape at the age of 12.) “Over the years it’s transferred more into a craft,” she says. “I use myself as material because that’s what I’ve got. But these days I write less than half of my songs to get myself through things. I have to find other things to be meaningful— otherwise I’d just be miserable all the time.”

Her songs are still extremely autobiographical, which is perhaps their charm. Following in the footsteps of other singer-songwriters, especially women who emerged in the early ’90s and expressed their emotions in particularly vulnerable ways, Apple’s openness has always had an empowering appeal. Her songs seem to suggest that feeling a variety of emotions—sadness, glee, despair, insanity—is not only normal, but, like those self-reflective musicians before her, she also gives permission to her listeners to feel the same way.

Even for Apple, her older songs are relics of another time, and she now makes them applicable to her life in the present. “They all kind of become poems after a while,” she says. “You can take your own meaning out of them. It’s been a very long time [since my first albums], and I can apply those songs to other situations that are more current in my life.” She admits she has changed greatly since she started writing songs in her late teenage years, especially when it comes to how she portrays herself. “I don’t feel comfortable singing the songs that I wrote. I used to blame other people and not take responsibility. I thought I was a total victim trying to look strong.”

And she is much harder on herself in the songs on The Idler Wheel than she ever was before. Sure, she admitted to being “careless with a delicate man” in “Criminal,” arguably her most famous song, and in When the Pawn’s “Mistake” she sang, “Do I wanna do right, of course but / Do I really wanna feel I’m forced to / Answer you, hell no.”

On The Idler Wheel, Apple examines her own solitude and neuroses as well as their effect on her relationships with others. “I can love the same man, in the same bed, in the same city,” she sings on “Left Alone,” “But not in the same room, it’s a pity.” On “Jonathan,” a somber love song layered with robotic, mechanical sounds that’s presumably about her ex-boyfriend, author and Bored to Death creator Jonathan Ames, she urges, “Don’t make me explain / Just tolerate my little fist / Tugging at your forest-chest / I don’t want to talk about anything.”

But performing, as a central requirement of her career, still takes precedence. “Some nights I’m very, very nervous, and some nights I’m not at all,” she tells me. “I think, ‘This is ridiculous. I’m not a person who does a show, I’m a person who should be on a couch watching TV.’ But then it’s like I get knocked into another state of consciousness, and then I’m left behind, and the person that’s doing the show is there and there’s nothing else in the world existing other than the note she’s singing. It’s such a joy to do, but I forget about it until I’m on the stage.”

Apple has lived in los Angeles since Tidal’s release in 1996, although she admits that she’s “not an L.A. girl.” “I was supposed to stay in New York,” she tells me. “I remember being 17 and asking if I could record in New York. How did I end up here? It’s 15 years later… How did that happen?” Apple doesn’t seem to process time like other people. When I ask when she began recording The Idler Wheel and when she knew it was ready, she has a complicated answer. “It must have started in 2008. Or 2009. I don’t know! I have no idea. It’s weird to think that there was 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011.” Her big blue eyes suddenly look to her right as she furrows her brow. “Where’ve I been? What was I doing? What was that year about?”

Maybe the solitary nature of living in L.A. contributes to her aloof tendencies. “I’m not a social creature,” she says, “I don’t go to parties all the time because I’d probably just wonder why I’m there in the first place.” Her preference for being alone may also stem from the kind of personal criticisms that people tend to throw at female musicians. “I’ve gotten so used to being misunderstood. Nobody’s ever really said anything bad about my music, but when I’ve had albums come out there are always people making fun of me. ‘Oh, she’s back?’” She didn’t even expect the comments (mostly online) when the full title of The Idler Wheel was announced. “I didn’t stop to think that anyone would call it ridiculous, but people did. I thought, ‘Ahhh. My old friends.’ I’m not sure what’s ridiculous about it, but that’s what they’ve got to say.”

I cautiously mention the infamous acceptance speech from the VMAs, a moment early in her career that defined the public persona of Fiona Apple as an angry, ungracious woman. “I’ve never been ashamed of that,” she replies immediately. It was the first moment, she says, in which she felt like she could speak up—to break free from the shyness that defined her childhood and early teenage years. “I genuinely, naïvely thought that I was going to put out a record and that was going to make me have friends. I expected to give it to people and they would understand me; no one would say to me, ‘We don’t want to be your friend because you’re too intense or too sad all the time.’” It wasn’t necessarily the case.

“Do you still think the world is bullshit?” I ask when we talk about the VMAs. She laughs. “It’s not the world!” she exclaims. “Of course people think that ‘the world’ is the whole world. I felt that I had finally gotten into the popular crowd, and I thought, ‘Is this what I’ve been doing this for?’ I felt like I was back in the cafeteria in high school and still couldn’t speak up for myself.”

These days, Apple spends more time focusing on her own art rather than the reactions to it. With age has come calm and decreasing desire to pay attention to her detractors. “I’ve decided it takes too much energy to try to avoid it,” she tells me, brushing aside her freshly dyed crimson hair. “I’m not going to hide from the world.”

Source Archive.org:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120603033544/http://www.blackbookmag.com/music/the-long-and-winding-road-that-leads-to-fiona-apple-1.49114

[diamondcitydarlin]

Alright real talk now without sassiness bc the whole anti thing against beetlebabes has me thinking about self-indulgent fantasy as a literary/storytelling device and it's something I've been thinking about with different medias lately, so this is topical ig for my current hyperfixation. Specifically I've been thinking about fantasy disavowal and the role that plays in self-indulgent/self-insert type fantasy stories, whether canon or extrapolated within fanfic. I first really learned about this concept in name from this video from contrapoints, so I have to give her credit for discussing this and explaining to me how it works in a way that blew my mind apart at the time, and I think it's the sort of thing that puts a lot of what goes on in self-indulgent fantasy stories into a different perspective, particularly when we're trying to evaluate said stories under an IRL moral microscope (and is why that approach pretty much never works or applies within this kind of story)

(Semi-long post under the cut where I mention Harry Potter as an example of a literary device- as I say within the writeup, I do not condone or support JKR or her beliefs and this is not an endorsement of her but rather a well-known example I think most people will recognize. Be aware if it's triggering for you. I also mention Twilight lol, incase that's an issue. It takes me a minute to get to Beetlejuice/Beetlebabes but I promise this is all relevant to my point, your honors)

Recently I saw a discussion within a Twilight fan group I'm in (yes I'm a Twilight fan and a rattie iykyk) about how toxic certain characters behavior would be IRL, particularly in the way several of them have a habit of making choices for Bella against her will, gifting her with things she's said she didn't want and insisting she use/wear them, etc etc. As a former Twilight hater (cuz I used to be that too many years ago!!!) I knew where they were coming from in being critical of these characters and calling them toxic, because in any other setting that would absolutely be true. Within fantasy disavowal, however, these 'toxic' behaviors are actually a way for the reader/writer (who is living vicariously through the main character) to have the main character get what they think she should have and want her to have without compromising her character or the integrity of the fantasy. Bella Swan, for example, is meant to be modest, selfless, 'not like other girls' and usually uncomfortable with bringing too much attention to herself (which makes her relatable to those who would live vicariously through her story), but of course many of those reading WANT her to have a big wedding and traditional dress anyway so that's where, for example, Alice's insistence she have those things comes into play. Yes, IRL that would be controlling, obsessive, weird, and a complete disregard of someone's wishes and boundaries but in a self-insert fantasy that tactic serves an important role to the purpose and point of the setting. WELL if you INSIST, Alice, I guess I'll just take your very generous and expensive gifts and deal with it, sigh, oh WELL!!! /s In that sense it's less demeaning and more empowering, if you're viewing it from the pov of someone wanting to immerse themselves in the fantasy.

Another example of where this is kinda used in self-insert fantasy is Harry Potter (and many others like it, and this isn't to condone JKR's terfism, this is just the example I think most people will recognize), wherein the children reading are meant to want to live vicariously through Harry and his friends and their adventures. For those children reading (and I know bc I was one once lol) the idea of being in a dangerous environment that the adults don't really shield them from entirely is very cool, it gives them a sense of independence and self-sufficiency and a sense of 'trust' from the fictional adults in their abilities to take care of themselves. From an adult's perspective now, particularly one with a child of first-year age, it's seemingly horrific how neglectful and reckless the adults in that series are with the wellbeing of the children they're responsible for (like, idk, sending a bunch of 11 year olds into the known death forest for their first detention sentence, at night, while knowing some beast is eating unicorns in said forest). But of course, within the story this constant, casual endangerment of children is never really brought up as an issue or as a reflection of some kind of immortality in the adults responsible for them as it would IRL, because it serves the purpose of self-indulgent fantasy for the children reading. It's not MEANT to be seen as a moral failing or child endangerment AT ALL so much as just the adults characters getting the fuck out of the way so the kids can have fun- unless it's like Umbridge doing it, who is established as an villain and immoral even in that setting from the jump. (And again this isn't a defend JKR post, just an explanation/example of what I'm talking about) IDK if this qualifies as fantasy disavowal perse, but it's a similar phenomenon of how behaviors -particularly those of supporting characters- can seem immoral/toxic under a real world lens but within the story serves a purpose to the reader living through the fantasy.

The way this relates to Beetlebabes for me is mostly fanon focused, but I think there are elements of disavowal in the canon as well. A lot of us who ship beetlebabes feel a kinship to Lydia in some way or another, especially those of us who watched the first film and cartoon as we ourselves were coming of age (and also probably weirdo goth kids too at the same time, I definitely was lol) and while it obviously isn't a fantasy for everyone, for a lot of us the idea of a 600-year old demon choosing and becoming obsessed with our weirdo asses BECAUSE of our weirdness is really cool actually lmao. To others, Beej pursuing Lydia so ardently against her outspoken disavowal can only be seen as intentionally toxic because they're not part of the fantasy, nor do they want to be, so seeing the merits (and empowerment) of his pursuit within this setting is beyond them. And of course, there's something to be said for the inherent nature of gothic romance as a setting, as well as the fact that movieverse Beetlejuice isn't really meant to be the pinnacle of moral direction in real life, it's meant to be a creepy, kooky dark comedy that pushes the boundaries of societal norms (not unlike what we do in the shadows). As others have said, this also isn't unlike the film Labyrinth much at all, though I RARELY see anyone coming after the Jareth/Sarah ship despite Sarah being a child in the film and Jareth being, yknow, also an ancient spirit of some kind. Perhaps because most people better understand how Labyrinth functions as a self-insert fantasy, that Jareth's obsession with Sarah is meant to be an empowering thing within that context for the young people like Sarah watching it, not an endorsement of IRL predatory behavior (ofc, Jareth being mostly a creation of Sarah's might aid with the sense of her power over the situation).

Honestly, I think it's also true for a lot of people against Beetlebabes that they identify with Lydia too, but in a way that doesn't include wanting a 600-year old demon to be obsessed with them (you do you boo, more of him to go around ig lmaooo), but instead of seeing and accepting the merits of Beej's obsession in this other kind of fantasy, they instead choose to apply real-world morals onto not only the story but the people who enjoy this story as well as their personal discomfort demands. For as much as they want to accuse others of 'not having media literacy' for shipping it, they sure jump right over the point of this literary/storytelling device. And to that end, I can't wholly blame them, because it was only within the last few years that I really realized and accepted how this works too- but I'm doing my best to explain it now, for whomever is interested.

I guess what I'm ultimately trying to say is that self-insert/self-indulgent type fantasy stories are, by design, not meant to be viewed through a real-world moral lens. The entire point of them is to transport a reader/viewer into a world where real-life doesn't apply, where someone like them is loved and obsessed over for the things that they are often disparaged for IRL and within a context where they (and the main character) still hold the reigns of control, as Lydia does over Beetlejuice time and time again (despite being a powerful 600 year old demon Beej sure lets his wife kick him around a lot, doesn't he???). It's not meant to be an endorsement or romanticization or even a depiction of IRL immorality either, as that would ruin the effect of the fantasy.

So yeah, I feel like trying to evaluate most of these stories in a real-world moral context is a fundamental misunderstanding of how this kind of storytelling works- that's not to say one can't evaluate them that way if they want, and sometimes (like other things used within the HP series) it's due, but I think it definitely becomes an issue when this 'moral evaluation' turns into one of the people who enjoy the fantasy too. The fictional flights of fancy that people like to immerse themselves into are just that; fantasy. And what's more, different people like living vicariously through different kinds of fantasies, different people are going to find different things empowering in said stories and just because one thing feels empowering for one person but demeaning to another should not mean the former person is immoral and gross in real life or would even want these things to happen in real way.

I keep trying to wrap this post up and failing, but that's basically it. I'm posting this because I know others will probably have way more intellectual insight and feedback to add about this kind of storytelling and I just think it's really fascinating to talk about. What do yall think?

[longing-for-rain]

Just so you know, some of your anons are coming from a blog called @mal3vol3nt

I do not know if you’re aware, but she’s chronically obsessed with you and has also been sharing your ao3 on Twitter and inciting harassment there too, saying you’re “racist” and a “degenerate” and accusing you of writing underage. Her blog lately is mainly posts about you and it sounds very similar to some of your anons

I had to check this out for myself and...wow. All I can say is just...wow 🤣

No, I actually had no idea who this person was but from the looks of it she's been obsessed with me for months? I guess that explains the anons, I knew these people were mad, but apparently they've been over here steaming over my takes and are legitimately terrified of me. And I didn't even know them! Didn't realize I've been doing numbers on Twitter (or X whatever it is now) despite never having an account.

(The rest is below; please don't click if you do not wish to see insensitive discussions of rape or if you are not in the mood to read opinions so malformed they will melt your brain)

I guess I have another angry little troll who doesn't know what a captial letter is obsessed with me. Wish I could say it was the first time, but alas. A lot of particularly funny things here though.

> Advertising your terrible ragebait Twitter like anyone finds you important

Lmao.

> "write fanfiction of katara being raped so zuko can save her"

What a terrible misread of the point of that story, but then again, I don't expect much else from a terminally online crybaby who exclusively consumes media for children. If you can't handle adult discussions about adult topics, maybe don't read stories that are clearly marked 18+ and with far more extensive trigger warnings than any mainstream media will give you.

> "measuring the size of her breasts and hips"

Lmao. I said she is drawn differently in different scenes. That's it. You guys are another level of unhinged.

> "obviously fetishes and racism"

It's kind of creepy how they sexualize Zutara, while simultaneously accusing us of doing that. Why do you assume a fetish is the only reason behind someone liking a ship? Why would you say this about a group of people including many black, brown, and indigenous women? And minors? And if you want to get into the whole fetish thing, don't even get me started on the shit I've seen from the kataang fandom. Hint: when I say some of you have a "mommy fetish" I mean it in a very literal sense. Not to mention the whole kataang rape discord debacle.

> "sick fantasies about these minor characters"

I have never depicted a minor in a sexual situation. I make a point to explicitly avoid doing that, and all characters are depicted as adults. Your lack of media literacy isn't an argument. If you're going to criticize my writing, at least read it, which you clearly didn't. And if the content is too upsetting for you, you clearly lack the maturity to engage in these kinds of discussions.

Imagine treating ship discourse this seriously, actually unhinged. Who said that Ember Island Players is the real Katara? What? She talks a big number about coke-fueled rants, must have given it a try herself. How do you expect to be taken seriously when you never say anything of substance and screech "racism" or "colonizer" every other word but can't even articulate the significance of those terms? Honestly, at this point you sound like a right-winger who thinks saying "but I'm [identity] and I agree with [opinion]" is a golden ticket to winning every argument.

And look at this: apparently I deserved all the things she and her friends sent me? Actually I respect this take, at least she's honest about it unlike the people who cry and backpeddle when they get caught red-handed.

I'm actually cackling at this one. Genuinely laughing; my neighbors are probably concerned. It's like you took every single Bad Person Allegation and threw it into a blender. And to top it all off, apparently 24 is "pushing 30" now LMAO. And apparently I, a lesbian, could only possibly like Zutara because I think Zuko is hot. Not to mention the way they entirely miss the point of Zutara, but ATLA itself, by insisting that Zuko is a "violent imperialist" who is apparently unworthy of love by anyone who does not share his skin tone. Kind of ironic coming from the people crying that I'm a racist who doesn't understand the show. Next level clownery.

This is so funny. These people are absolutely terrified of me, no amount of unhinged anons will hide that. It's fine for men to tell me I deserve rape and death, that I'm a dirty pervert for daring to speak out about sexual trauma, and that women's sexual trauma is nothing but a fetish, but if I respond to that man telling him he should die for being so disrespectful and misogynistic to rape victims, I'm the monster? I stand by it. If you think what he said about rape and rape victims is acceptable, especially if you're a man, die! Hang from ropes, as I said.🥰

I guess I should be really scared though. This is clearly a very influential figure in the fandom who is renowned for her enlightened wisdom on the plight of fictional cartoon characters against evil imperialists like me (adult with job).

...oh wait. I was excited for a minute, I thought I was dealing with a celebrity. But even the "callouts" struggle to hit 20 notes :/

And to everyone sending me positivity during this time, thank you very much! But I wanted to show you this to assure you I'm doing just fine. People can act as weird as they want behind a gray face, but after seeing the kinds of whiny little brats they are in reality, it's pretty hard to take it seriously. "I got my plane ticket" my ass, that would require you to leave your decaying, trash-filled apartment.