#I have something to say but I shouldn't

[poolboyatthevampiremansionx]

Holy moly mamacita 🤤🤤🤤

[prouvaireafterdark]

listen I know it's heartbreaking that Claudia dies and it's understandable to wish she didn't, but let's please not accuse the writers of fridging her. to do so is a fundamental misunderstanding of the story and is frankly insulting to the intelligence and skill of the writers of the show.

Claudia's death, and the overwhelming grief and regret her parents experience because of it, is quite literally the point of the entire story. she dies because Anne's daughter Michele died of leukemia when she was five years old and there was nothing she or her husband could do to prevent it.

writing IWTV was how Anne coped with the unimaginable loss of a parent losing her child. she created a story about a little girl that could not die and then killed her anyway. Claudia's death is a senseless, unavoidable tragedy, just like Michele's was. the grief that haunts Louis and Lestat for the rest of their lives is the same grief that haunted Anne and her husband.

so when you're accusing people of killing Claudia off to benefit a story about two men, please remember that in real life sometimes parents lose their children. please remember Michele Rice.

she's the reason Claudia exists.

she's also the reason Claudia cannot be saved.

[raticalshoez]

Was thinking of my post about dream teams and got really invested in whatever Unrequited Hate has going on

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[seefasterdraws]

from the homumiko mines

[moistvonlipwig]

xander is a character i have many complicated feelings about, because on the one hand i think there is something profoundly harrowing about his deeply-rooted fear of both his abusive father and of becoming his abusive father, and his struggle with his own masculinity and insecurity and anger issues in light of that, and something profoundly beautiful about the fact that he does not necessarily achieve a unilateral victory over these more negative impulses but still makes a concerted effort to be better and always retains so much love in his heart for his friends especially his bff willow who he is toxically codependently platonically unconditionally obsessed with and loyal to. but then on the other hand. there is something so unbelievably grating about a man who hurts the women he's in relationships with and then has the gall to get mad at them for not wanting to be with him anymore. like his missteps are not unforgivable to me as a viewer but the way he reacts to cordelia and anya's reactions to his missteps is so deeply intolerable to watch. but then on the third hand. he is a fashion icon for the ages and this cannot be denied

[grandwretch]

i so badly want one of those fic examinations of steve's relationship with joyce and hopper but solely through eddie's pov like hear me out

steve and eddie chat a lot in the upside down (and later in the hospital, when they learn hop is alive). steve has taken charge of filling eddie in on the rest of their of-age crew without the kids butting in. he never mentions his own parents, but he talks about the rest of the party's a lot, especially joyce and hopper. eddie knows what it's like to desperately want someone to be your parent and trying to hide it from his own childhood, when he would try to be cool about wayne dropping him off at his dad's house. steve obviously adores joyce and hopper, thinks the world of them and legitimately looks up to them.

eddie isn't sure what he expects from a cop who came back to life and the world's most determined housewife, but he's excited to meet them as someone steve loves.

cue eddie's horror when he realizes that neither of them really feel much for steve rather than annoyance and vague distrust. that joyce trusts will with eddie, an accused murderer, in a heartbeat and still hesitates to leave him with steve. that hopper brushes off every ounce of steve's hero worship and joy.

he tries to broach the topic with steve, gently, and is heartbroken when steve genuinely has no idea what he's talking about. and not because he's oblivious, but because steve thinks that's what he deserves. he thinks that's the parental love that someone who was an asshole in high school needs, because that's what would make him a good person. he needs people to call him out constantly, obviously, because why else would they keep doing it? why would nancy? at least they're here. at least they're not ignoring him. at least they're not forcing him into a box. they just want him to be better.

like, this is the man who thanked a girl for calling him bullshit and telling him she never loved him. he doesn't Know that's not how you're supposed to handle things. no one ever taught him that.

and now eddie's gotta figure out how he can teach steve how to be loved the right way without outing himself and his huge crush on his love-starved dork of a friend.

[jingledbells]

Ford defenders like you are now called "Ford apologists": https://eeveelotions.tumblr.com/post/772624427048419328/hey-ford-apologists-dont-interact-with-my-stuff

i feel like. I can kind of understand where this person is coming from like yes he does have flaws and make mistakes and I acknowledge this but there's a difference between saying a character doesn't have flaws and defending them from fans who demonize/heavily mischaracterize them.

in fords case, there are so many people shitting on him for things that are false or misinterpretations of things he’s said and done. a good chunk of the fandom has an irrational hatred for him.

as well as this the fandom also waters down his trauma to make it seem like nothing compared to Stan's as well as making countless jokes about his trauma. for example, the thousands of jokes made about bills abuse of ford. I cannot count the times I've seen people look at this abuse and their only takeaway/only thing they have to say about this is 'haha he fucked the triangle.' as someone who's been in an abusive relationship in the past it is extremely tiring to see these jokes constantly thrown around about bill and fords relationship. either people are ignorant and cannot see that their relationship is textbook abuse or they do know but just don't care(what is wrong with you) and I genuinely don't know what's worse.

as well as this, there is a tremendous amount of victim blaming being made towards ford when discussing ford and bills relationship. I've seen so many people straight up say it's ford's own fault for getting abused by bill and it was because of his 'hubris' and 'huge ego' and his 'selfishness', which is no thing to ever say about a victim of abuse. ive also seen people call ford 'stupid' for getting manipulated by bill, which is a) wrong, because bill has successfully manipulated and abused many others before for(have you read tbob), and has manipulated other members of the pines family shown in the show, and b) just victim blaming. I don't even know what else to say about this but many of you cannot be normal about abuse victims in media.

regarding his growing distance with fiddleford during portal construction era, this is caused by bill isolating ford from him, one of the only humans he's in contact with which is a technique often used by abusers. many people claim this is because ford 'views fiddleford as lesser', or 'has little respect towards him', which is straight up wrong. ford states in the journal that he is a great friend and a brilliant scientist and engineer, and his appreciation of him is shown through his excitement of his arrival and immediately gets to making him feel welcome in his home and gifts him with microchips and banjo strings. in fact, when they first met in college, ford was the only one who genuinely believed his theory and he immediately jumped to helping him prove it for 9 hours, despite barely knowing the man. their bond, whether romantic or platonic is strong and that's why bill's isolating ford from fiddleford is so vital to bills abuse of ford.

not only that but these people are obsessing over Stan's homelessness for ten years but don't dare acknowledge that ford has been homeless for thirty. they fail to acknowledge that both Stan and ford were being abused by filbrick even if it showed in different ways. ford wasn't favored by his mother(his mother favored stan) and his father didn't see him as anything but a way to make money for his family, providing him only conditional love and not seeing him as his own person aside from his intelligence and his hands. this is often something many immigrant children experience, having endless pressure to succeed and get top notch grades and choose a high salary career in order to raise their family out of poverty. and if they were to slip up, they would often get severely punished or even physically hurt as a result. so logically, ford being upset by this is very understandable, not to mention he was also a teenager when this happened.

i have more examples I could use, but tldr, defending ford from fandom mischaracterization, victim blaming, and from claims being made about him that are blatantly false is not equal to saying he lacks flaws or hasn't made mistakes.

[clarissaweasley-10]

This might be a controversial take, but l don't think Eve deserves or should get a redemption arc.

[shokveyv]

shut up

[welcometogrouchland]

I'm going to be so real I do not understand tim & steph shippers who feel that Steph dating Tim again would save her character. You can make an argument that giving Tim a more compelling love interest would be beneficial for him! And you can at least make an argument that the fujo mischaracterization of Steph would stop. However she'd still, inevitably, be treated as a prop character/extension for someone more popular 😭 it also wouldn't make her appear in more books! Tim doesn't have many frequent appearances at the moment either! You can just say you like the couple and want them back together without acting like you have some kind of moral stance

[cjlouwho]

is2g if we get tommy back (hell, if we get tim to have to answer questions about this) because you would not shut up about writing on instagram, facebook, and submitting to abc, I'm gonna kiss you directly on the mouth.

can we make sure tim knows it was 'loulovingho' that brought demand for answers? just so he has to say loulovingho

[thefandomenchantress]

We’re all familiar with the Xander-Ace arm wrestling scene. A lot of people cite it as one of their favorite funny moments from the series. And yeah, it is pretty funny when you don’t think about it too much.

The joke is pretty much, “Haha, Ace is such a wimp! He’s totally freaking out about a minor injury like it’s a really big deal!”

I don’t know if it was just me, but I sort of had this internal notion that Ace must’ve mentioned that his hand really hurt or something, and the joke was that he was wimp because it was such a minor injury, and it probably didn’t hurt at all.

But, uh. He never says anything about his hand hurting. Here are the lines he says (not all of which are featured in a text box, since Teruko and Xander are talking over him):

“AAAAAHHHHHH MY HAANNNDDDD!!!!”

*falls on the ground, gets up, screams again*

“OH GOD! You’re gonna put me down like a horse with a broken leg!!!”

“I’d rather die than not be able to eat cereal with my hand!!!”

“I’M NEVER GONNA BE ABLE TO RACE AGAIN!!!!”

Listening to all of the voice lines again, it seems less like Ace is panicking because his hand is hurting, and more like he's panicking because of what may happen to him if his hand is indeed badly injured. So it's less so about the injury itself, and more about what may happen because of it.

He first, of course, panics over Xander being a threat. That's completely expected, since making Xander angry just broke a table and assumedly hurt him in some way or another.

The cereal line is a bit confusing, especially considering his secret. A while back I came up with an out-there theory that he said that in order to try and deflect any suspicion about his secret, since an eating disorder can weaken your bones and if he got hurt too easily, people might begin to suspect something. So he rather clumsily brought up the subject of how he did in fact eat food. If we consider the fact that he's lying here, then him saying he'd rather die than do something makes a lot more sense, since we know he doesn't mean that at all. But in hindsight I may have been overthinking it...Still, I can't think of a better explanation, other than dismissing it altogether as a throwaway joke that didn't have much thought put into it.

The last line is what really makes this interesting. Ace hates his talent and anything to do with it. And yet one of the things he's panicking about the most is how he may not be able to race after sustaining an injury. And I think that this moment probably gives us our earliest insight into just how far Ace will go in order to race. In his first FTE with Teruko, he claims he doesn't do much work at all for his talent, until his performance anxiety forces him to. By saying that, it makes it sound like his talent doesn't completely dominate his life.

But this scene, in the same exact episode of his FTE, quickly proves to the viewer just how desperate Ace is to continue his talent, to the point where his own well-being becomes less important than it. Ace's extreme reaction to being injured isn't because he's a wimp that can't deal with pain, it's because he's spiraling about what this could mean for his career and, therefore, his status as a failure. "What if this injury prevents me from racing?" is the question that comes first, causing him to panic instead of being able to focus on how bad the injury actually is.

...I guess the thing that made me want to write about this scene is just how...Smart it is. It does so much at once. On a first viewing, it's really funny, and it still is on other viewings. Yet in hindsight, it's easier to notice just how distressed Ace is, and that no one is taking that seriously. No one ever takes his fears seriously, and in the end his fears drove him to murder, proving how important they really were. Even if his worries seem silly from an outsider's perspective, they're very real to him. And that's something that no one in-universe could realize until it was too late. This scene does an amazing job summarizing just how the cast's attitude towards Ace helped push him to becoming a culprit.

...Or maybe I'm taking the silly arm-wrestling scene too seriously, haha.

[geuretea]

New drawing!!! (Finally 😭)

Was going for a 5 point perspective practice and ended up doing this lol

[the-kingshound]

no, but you're real for that. I also don't like to play as a non-queer character. Like, I don't mind gender locked characters as long as I don't get both locked into gender roles and heteronormativity as well. Like, it's something that feels suffocating. It feels like getting stepford wifed or red pilled against my will or something. It feels disingenuous, like me and people like me don't have a place in the world and I find it to be... Dissatisfying.

Like, if a game is gonna genderlock me and only have opposite gender ros, that's fine, but let me be more than just a traditional convention. Let me break free, let me be gender non-conforming, let me subvert expectations while still embracing what I am, let me be

Thats not to say there's nothing of worth in cis hetero spaces, just that it's nice to not have to fold myself up into boxes I've already escaped.

(also genuinely believe everyone should make the games they want to see and play, and theirs and mine don't have to match for me to want them to succeed) 💛

100% I have the same issue being heteronormativity which makes it hard to stomach most hetero romances + gender roles and dynamics that make me uncomfortable and can sometimes be present in queer romances too.

I am so happy that there are more and more non cis hetero romances to play, it makes me incredibly comfy

[utilitycaster]

I really do dunk on villain stans a lot but the thing is like. I genuinely do not care on any sort of moral level if you love a villain, or villains generally. They are pretend. The murder and the war crimes aren't real. Do whatever.

The issue is that like, this is a person the narrative is telling you to root against, and that it's okay because they are pretend. That doesn't mean they can't have sympathetic qualities but it does mean that as a rule the story is telling you "hey, here are the heroes who oppose this person, cheer for them" and also "you should boo and hiss when this motherfucker comes on stage" and a lot of people who like villains will look at everyone else and go "why the FUCK are you booing and hissing don't you see they have TRAUMA" instead of acknowledging the big "TIME TO BOO AND HISS" signs being thrown out by the story and saying "bring it on."

And I suppose you can argue that this is an overly simplistic way of looking at it, but if we're dealing with a story with at least some reasonably clearly delineated heroes and villains you're not intelligent for trying to pretend it's more complicated than it is. I'm not talking about the gray areas of antagonist who could be persuaded otherwise, nor antihero but straight up "this is the bad guy, we all but have arrows pointing at them saying it". Like, really, a lot of people who stan villains don't seem to do it for the love of the game, which I would respect, but because of a sour grapes situation with the heroes, or because they're in their edgy "subversion automatically means you're the smarter one" phase.

Anyway my point is I don't care if you woobify a villain for any sort of moral reasons but I do think that if you do so, you're a coward and not terribly good at understanding stories. I also don't care from any sort of moral standpoint if you enthusiastically cheer on the villain, but if you act confused or mad that most people aren't with you on that, I think you're an idiot and not terribly good at understanding stories.