#I'm a fundamentally uninteresting and evil person

[paynomind-iamnotreal]

They should invent a common app prompt for people who hate themselves

[inkskinned]

she's three years younger than i am, and i put on cascada as a throwback, cackling - before your time! i've been borrowing my brother's car, and it's older than dirt, so the trunk is like, maybe permanently locked. when the sun comes through the window to frame her cheekbones, i feel like i'm 16 again. i shake when i'm kissing her, worried i won't get it right.

in 2003, my state made gay marriage legal. where she grew up, it wasn't legal until 11 years later - 10 years ago. if legal protections for gay marriage were a person, that person would be entering 5th grade. online, a white gay man calls the fight for legal marriage boring, which isn't kind of him but it is a common enough opinion.

it has only been 9 years since gay marriage was nationally official. it is already boring to have gay people in your tv. it is already boring to mention being gay - "why make it your entire personality?" i know siblings that have a larger age gap than the amount of time it's been legally protected. i recently saw a grown man record himself crying about how evil gay people are. he was begging us, red in the face - just do better.

i am absolutely ruined any time my girlfriend talks about being 27 (i know!! a child!), but we actually attended undergrad at the same time since i had taken off time to work between high school and college. while walking through the city, we drop our hands, try not to look too often at each other. the other day i went to an open mic in a basement. the headlining comedian said being lesbian isn't interesting, but i am a lesbian, if you care. as a joke, she had any lesbian raise their hand if present. i raised mine, weirdly embarrassed at being the single hand in a sea of other faces. she had everyone give me a round of applause. i felt something between pride and also throwing up.

sometimes one thing is also another thing. i keep thinking about my uncle. he died in the hospital without his husband of 35 years - they were not legally wed, so his husband could not enter. this sounds like it should be from 1950. it happened in 2007. harassment and abuse and financial hardship still follow any person who is trying to get married while disabled. marriage equality isn't really equal yet.

and i don't know that i can ever put a name to what i'm experiencing. sometimes it just feels... so odd to watch the balance. people are fundamentally uninterested in your identity, but also - like, there's a whole fucking bastion of rabid men and women who want to kill you. your friends roll their eyes you're gay we get it and that is funny but like. when you asked your father do you still love me? he just said go to your room. you haven't told your grandmother. disney is on their 390th "first" gay representation, but also cancelled owl house and censored the fuck out of gravity falls. you actively got bullied for being gay, but your advisor told you to find a different gimmick for your college essay - everyone says they're gay these days.

once while you were having a hard day you cried about the fact that the reason our story is so fucking boring to so many people is that it is so similar. that it is rare for one of us to just, like, have a good experience across the board. that our stories often have very parallel bends - the dehumanization, the trauma, the trouble with trusting again. these become rote instead of disgusting. how bad could it be if it is happening to so many people?

i kiss my girlfriend when nobody is looking. i like her jawline and how her hands splay when she's making a joke. there is nothing new about this story, sappho. i love her like opening up the sun. like folding peace between the layers of my life, a buttercream of euphoria, freckles and laughter and wonder.

my dad knows about her. i've been out to him since i was 18 - roughly four years before the supreme court would protect us. the other day he flipped down the sun visor while driving me to the eye doctor. "you need to accept that your body was made for a husband. you want to be a mother because you were made for men, not women." he wants me to date my old high school boyfriend. i gagged about it, and he shook his head. he said - "don't be so dramatic. you can get used to anything."

the other day a straight friend of mine snorted down her nose about it, accidentally echoing him - she said there are bigger problems in this world than planning a wedding.

[dross-the-fish]

People read that Erik didn't know good from evil and they take that in the most literal interpretation and run with it because this hellsite's reading comprehension is a fucking joke.

Agreed. Sometimes I'm a little terrified that there are people on this site who pick up a book like "Lolita" and think Humbert isn't a disgusting piece of shit because he tells the audience he isn't. I also think it's fair to say that because of the format, with it being a journalistic retelling of supposedly "true" events, we can somewhat consider Leroux an unreliable narrator so there IS wiggle room for personal interpretation. That said the idea that Erik is completely unaware that killing and kidnapping is wrong is a pretty wide stretch. If Erik didn't have at least some concept of right and wrong he wouldn't feel guilt and he wouldn't try to lie to the Daroga and deny his crimes. He also wouldn't let Christine go in the end if he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong. He knows well enough what he did was wrong, his behavior when called out is evidence enough of that. Sometimes what the characters, and even the narrator say needs to be taken with a grain of salt in the light of how a character acts. Erik is complex, he can be childish, traumatized, warped, tragic and have a heart that could hold an empire and still be cruel, manipulative and villainous, he can be ALL of these things and his morality may be skewed but he has enough moral sense to have standards and to feel a need to deny what he did. It's the complexity that makes him compelling, the capacity for good and evil and what such a character does when denied the opportunity to be good for so long only to be given it again one last time at his lowest point, when you can argue that he's used up any grace he's owed. I love seeing "unredeemable" characters get a last minute saving grace. That character who has fallen so far over to the dark side get that one act of mercy that fundamentally changes them for good. We can find him sympathetic while still being horrified by his actions and moved by the tragedy he causes and is himself a victim of. That's what makes him a worthwhile character to spend time with. This idea of a woobified baby who doesn't know better and can't be held responsible for anything he does creates a version of the character that is, frankly, uninteresting and undermines the potency of his redemptive arc and I really wish people would stop doing it, because if we have to disregard his ability to do evil then we have to disregard his ability to do good too and at that point you've just thrown out the whole character.

[lunanoc]

are you surprised that I'm asking you to do Wu Xie for the blorbo bingo ?

(alternative offers if you want to do them: Li Cu, since you're finishing sha hai and/or Huo Xiuxiu)

i’m very late in replying to this sorryyy

absolutely not surprised but i appreciate the window of opportunity to let me *unintelligible noises* about wu xie <3

(for disclaimer purposes as always these are all just my personal opinions and aren’t pretending to be objective facts)

i’m totally normal about wu xie my beloved (who absolutely has pretty boy privilege that he definitely uses to his advantage whether he fully realizes he does or not, also this man is vain af in the most human way possible), he’s the ultimate blorbo and i’d be writing essays about him if i actually fully got into why i love him. wu xie is incredibly complex and goes through one of the most realistic and in-depth developments i’ve seen in a fictional character honestly. it says something that usually first person narration isn’t really my thing, but wu xie’s pov is so enjoyable and compelling you can’t put the books down. because of that unique perspective, we get wu xie in all that he is as he changes (though not quite as much as he himself thinks he does) throughout his experiences, the good and the ugly both, and while he’s deeply flawed, it’s because he’s deeply flawed and contradictory and so painfully human as a result that he’s as interesting and endearing as he is, i love him a very normal amount :))

the one maybe controversial opinion i have is that while not most because that would be exaggerating, i still find a number of popular fandom takes on wu xie, on the western side of the fandom specifically, are off just enough they bother me. it’s hard to narrow it down to a single reason because it’s a mix of different things that aren’t always objective (as in some things are just my preference vs someone else’s), but i would say one of the bigger ones is the sometimes gross misunderstanding of cultural backdrop and framework that have made him into who he is. you can easily extend this to pretty much all the characters, it’s just more noticeable in the portrayals of the main ones, but dmbj is a story deeply informed by its cultural framework, both in terms of narrative and in terms of the characters, how they act, their thought processes, and how all this impacts their interactions with others. so it’s not hard to understand that disregarding that would skew the characters on a fundamental level, which is something i find happens to wu xie more than it should. but that’s just me

next! li cu

i don’t have anything crazy to say about li cu really outside the fact i find him a little more compelling in the book than in the drama, mostly because you get his thought process a little more in-depth in the book, and he’s interesting as a contrast to how wu xie works. he’s clearly way in over his head and trying his best to cope with increasing trauma that just keeps heaping itself on top of itself without letting him really process it so yes he needs to stop being in situations (even if arguably being in situations is what ultimately saves his life). he’s also a teenage boy which just makes me want to fix him. just a little bit. i swear he can be better it’s not his fault teenage boys are a little dumb in the head! he does show up more in later canon post-ten years later, so it’s not like he completely disappears, but him and the desert triangle squad aren’t uninteresting characters so it’s interesting enough to keep up with them even if his strained relationship with wu xie hurts me for both of them (li cu using wu xie as a convenient party to pin the blame on for all his misfortunes vs wu xie perceiving li cu as the consequences of his necessary evils made flesh ouchouchouch)

aaaand huo xiuxiu

huo xiuxiu my beloved, best girl hands down, none can compare <3

when i say the writers dropped the ball on her, i mostly mean the dramas, although tbh more specifically lost tomb 2 and 2.5 that. yeah that’s not xiuxiu that’s all i’ll say. i find the closest to book version of her is in ultimate note, that still for introducing characters earlier than they should have been reasons couldn’t give her some of her coolest scenes. she’s intelligent, she’s skilled and cunning and pretty, yet in the beginning she also has that gap of practical inexperience that make her human. she’s the whole deal really. interestingly enough when they meet in the books, wu xie often finds he and xiuxiu are similar in terms of the way they think and react, which i find is interesting and pretty accurate. she’s also not in the story enough, so i’m happy that in current canon she’s been upgraded to one of the main squad and is down in dangerous tombs with the iron triangle and heihua. she’s also as unhinged as they all are i love her <3

[katatonicimpression]

How come you dont vibe with comic sambucky? I haven't read many comics with either of them so I'm curious

I guess it just feels kind of lopsided? But not in a fun way. And then sometimes it feels a different kind of lopsided but in a bad way.

Like, it's easy to read buck as being infatuated with sam. He's got his "I care about not letting him down" thing, and his "I can't shoot him, he's too pretty" moment. But from Sam's point of view, he's just a mate. That's the only way I see it idk. He likes him, but you don't get the impression he's a massively important feature in his life, unlike with the mcu where you can feel the attachment and reliance.

(sidenote: I actually think this is a good thing. The times when sam's personal life gets overtaken by steve's entourage (especially ian) tend to feel off - they often make it feel like Sam himself views steve's life as more important than his own. He has his own life, his own family and friends. His 2015 series understood this - i.e. that he needs his own supporting cast to feel like an actual protagonist, and not steve's accessory.)

But yeah this lopsided-ness isn't a bad thing per se, you could go somewhere fun with it. I actually think Cold War missed an opportunity here. By having Bucky be attached to Sam in a way that Sam doesn't really reciprocate could make for a really good showdown between them. You have bucky pretending to be evil in order to trick steve into going along with something, and he's expecting to fight steve. But no, he gets Sam instead. And sam is like "Bucky's being a dick, so I'll fight him." because he's not too emotionally invested here. But bucky is thrown because he's not emotionally prepared to fight someone he has all this admiration for and nothing but good will.

This contradiction in perspectives comes to a head. Boom. Emotional climax. Changes the course of the plot. Falling action etc etc

But no, they didn't do that. They just threw a fight between them at the end there with some dialogue that didn't feel meaningful to me at all. Sam came into the situation with no real emotional investment and left it that same way. Just clocking in and out of work at the Captain America factory.

So that's the first thing, it feels like Sam doesn't have these feelings, and they don't really do anything with that asymmetry because I don't think they realise it's there, because these writers don't think Sam needs a complete internal world.

The other lopsided thing is the Falcon and Winter Soldier mini series. This just gave me bad vibes sorry. It's a mini series about Bucky and his pain and his problems and his wacky antics. Sam is there to play the straight man to his antics, and to nurture and tend to him.

Sam should never be cast as the straight man. In any sense of the term.

I am fundamentally uninterested in a version of this dynamic that is primarly driven by Sam looking after bucky. So, for me personally, interepreting their relationship in this series as romantic would turn it into something I don't like. Sam looking out for a friend? Fine, good, in character. But make it romantic and suddenly it's wrong to me.

I am fully convinced that this is not an appealing dynamic to sam. Like, a person who's coming to him for comfort and help? Not his type. Look at the people he's drawn to: Leila, Steve, Thor, Misty, Kyle (ignoring jet because that's just so so so ooc and regretable). It's people who are dominant, maybe authoritative. People who don't need anything from him, but want him anyway. People who pursue him, not people he's chasing after. He's specifically into Thor, and not Jane. Idk I just think that this version of their dynamic is one which is hard to imagine Sam even wanting.

This is all just very subjective opinion. And I do think that it's easily possible for them to get some interactions that give them a tone that I am into.

Personally, I am very keen on having them interact more outside of Steve. I think they're relationship to each other is more interesting without him there (and certainly without ian there. why is ian always here?) Hell, like I said, Cold War absolutely could have given us a more intense vibe from them. But it didn't. So, as it currently stands, I just don't vibe with it.

[theabstruseanon]

I'm so tired and I made the mistake of wading into 🎲2️⃣0️⃣ discourse posts so dont expect the following to make much sense LOL

I do get the narrative critiques of it not feeling like the themes of rage/interrogating rage/countering rage are being engaged with on a sliding scale from effectively to at all (idk if said interrogation of rage mechanically was hinged on only the rage tokens but thematically yeah I do get the critique re ep19 there).

For example it's like on one hand I did like how quickly they shut porter down because yeah his ideology is the kind that sounds justified on paper but then in praxis all he's doing is selfish destruction. On the other I really wish they had a philosophy-off with him about one of the core central themes of the season LOL. Also navigating the fandom balance between [it's interesting mechanically that trg fight was so one sided as commentary on how trg cut corners while still 'acting entitled' (tho tbf. This is really only kippelilly)] and [god I wish the fight had more juice or narrative payoff because of the role trg were set up to play as rivals and foils who gave into rage].

Re trg, Im just musing on how it feels like the banality of 'evil' is actually applying to them at this point. They were manipulated teens who were unfairly forced to accept a horrifying cosmic deal. Theyre characters who are selfish and jealous and willing to hurt others and gave in to these base emotions for personal gain which is the aforementioned banality. Their emotions are being heightened by the rage.... We're pretty sure? Again we only really actually see this in action with kpl, which is unfortunate and I think one of the main reasons why this is such a hot bed LOL (that BC they lacked on screen substance ppl are filling in the gaps with stronger narrative hc's that they're now attached to which makes sense. Fanon Buddy you will always be legendary to me LOL).

Trg really are in a strange narrative position to me too BC like ppl have pointed out even despite the bad rolls it wasn't for lack of trying that the players tried to engage with them earlier on before switching focus BC of a combination of bad rolls and the NPCs being rp'ed as hostile/uninterested. It's like how much of a role (not just plot wise but mainly thematically wise) were they actually supposed to play. So significant yet insignificant unfort.

But regarding the themes of rage yeah, it's been kinda all over the place to me narratively. I think the start of the end was when the players were like. Won over by Porter's teaching for a while like 'wow he did make sense' msmsmsm like noooooo 😂. The rage thing is so pervasive yet also feels so disconnected often which yeah improv hard to juggle themes and u can't edit things for clarity and adherence of narrative but overall I do wish they had more time to engage with this overarching season theme. It's certainly no TUC American dream for me.

I want to say that the diff btw Tbk rage and the general 'rage bad' is that we're meant to see Tbk rage as being protective, but that's just me projecting a layer of meaning on it 😂. I'm not as broken up about how the narrative theme feels kinda weak but I do see where this critique is coming from. It's like, on the meta narrative level it feels disconnected/unsatisfying that the rage of trg is narratively punished but the rage of Tbk is so far narratively neutral or rewarded when the theme specifically is /rage/ regardless of who has it, regardless of whether there is dnd combat going on or not, and BC trg were set up to be foils to tbk. The fundamental basis of the critique is different between the people using in-verse explanations and the ppl making observations about the overarching meta narrative. I know I reblogged posts that counter the critique (well mainly focusing on trg discourse) but personal enjoyment aside yeah. Things I would edit if this was a script LOL

The final thing is the perennial critique of the violence inherent to dnd and the more academic literary critiques of the fetishisization/glorification of violence but to that I am taking off my critical analysis hat because I like dumb shounen action violence in stories sorry for being a bad leftist 😔 (big neon sign that says: I am being tongue in cheek). I get that it's coming up a lot again esp for this season cause it's the "we should self reflect on the nature of rage" season but yeah.

[onaa-ohokthen]

Jesus fuck you people are dumb. One of these days I'm gonna have to make an actual post on the different types of feminism and their different analyzes but for now:

Radical feminism is per definition a feminism with a radical analysis of power, which is to say related to the fundamental structures of power as it relates to gender. It is not necessarily transphobic (or not necessarily not transphobic), depending on how you define gender; if one chooses a strict biological binary, then yeah it becomes transphobic but that's also fucking dumb in sixteen other unrelated ways. You can have a radical feminist analysis where you identify gender as social class and which includes trans folks without issue.

But most importantly, I'm tired of seeing people brought up indoctrinated with liberal ideas of individuals getting upsetti spaghetti because The Bad Radical Feminist said that my friend Bob is evil and bad for being a man but I know he's a a good person, when both them an Bob are uninteresting as individuals. Bob may be a good person. But ultimately patriarchy benefits his class of people more than it does theirs. The starting point of analysis is different.

Also: learn to differentiate "thoughts common among a certain tradition" and "ideas essential/fundamental to a tradition".

(do I consider myself a radical feminist? No, I have had 25 years to study this and still haven't fully picked an analysis that covers everything, but it's relatively up there with a few others. Which makes sense, I have a radical analys of society at large as well. )

[medicinemane]

Man... after looking through various videos about this and that horror thing I come back to the same stance as I always have... most horror sucks

Like these people put a lot of work into making it, like I don't want to be disrespectful, but they fundamentally miss what makes horror interesting and just kind of... go for making weird shit with a lot of glichy this and that, and it just ends up feeling so damn hollow

It's all weird faces yelling at someone from a CRT or spooky fucked up men standing in corners, or mundane shit like aliens crashing and it just kind of lacks substance

The best of the stuff I've seen was the DOOM map that was clearly inspired by House of Leaves (something I've never read, cause you clearly need a physical copy to really read it, but that I respect), and it was very much all about being a disquieting and disjointed experience of exploring a world that doesn't make sense

The best bits of it are stuff like that endless stairway SCP and just House of Leaves straight up being there. Extra bizarre and unsettling spaces

Also has stuff like a QR code hidden in it that leads to an obituary for the author dated before the mod was released, so nice bits of... what are they called? ARG? Anyway, nice elements of using more than just the map itself

Not exactly my thing, but pretty good

Next best is this living meat thing, but in the end it's like... yeah... this is kinda cool, but at the same time... it's just kinda meat men doing bad things. It's a lot more fleshed out than the others, but... just doesn't quite hold my interest as a whole. My mind comes back to the DOOM map more often than that

And like the rest, you can tell serious work was put into them but like... they're creepy pastas that someone bothered to throw a video together for; and by that I mean they have all the subtly and impact of your average creepy pasta

The otherworld spooky man with the distorted voice is driving people to kill themself or is smashing people up in their room... oh no

Just kinda dull and... and then the youtubers it's also like... there's real work put in here, they're not bad, but they're so often like "oh my god, this was the craziest thing I've ever seen" when it's like... listen, your theory that this is about a guy who was murdered and is being forced to come to terms with it is compelling, it's just that's also a kinda fucking boring subject

"Man, the idea that something malicious usurped god and is running the universe to maximize suffering is the most terrifying thing I've ever heard"... I mean... I don't want to be rude, but like... that's just so basic. Like that's hardly even horror, it's just a shitty situation

I don't know man, I don't want to act like I'm the smartest person in the room... I can't even really tell you what I want here, but it's like I've said: I'm not sure if they're playing it up for the video or if they really mean it (probably both), but so much of this stuff it's just like... this is so fucking mundane. This is "there was a sewer man" levels of spooky (zero)

Maybe it's cause I grew up reading a lot of horror, but like... surprise me. Interest me. Give me something I haven't seen before

Signalis is another one of those games where I can't sit through a playthrough, but I adore it. It does something, something's going on there with the time loops and the breaking down of the androids filled with imprints of former human personalities. It doesn't feel like it's just being weird cause it thinks being weird is horror; it feels like it has depth

Where as a lot of this stuff feels like it has actually deeply thought out lore... but... but the lore is boring and I don't care. I think they should keep going and I think they should be proud of what they're doing, but to me it's just such basic uninteresting shit

I don't care if the mountain's spooky with ancient evil and if people's Jungian shadows as wreaking havoc on the world as people mutate into monsters; that's a lot of really cool ideas you've got there, but you blended them together in a way where they're a bland creepy pasta blend of flavors

Man... it's just so hard to find good horror, or horror that is good to me at least

I don't know, yes I would probably be scared if a monster was stalking me, but like... I'd also be scared if a bear was trying to break into my house, you know?

Yes dead people who let off toxins that made people decay around them would be frightening... but it would also be scary to catch something like TB and not be able to get treatment

Fantastic as this stuff is it's also mundane, and maybe that's what makes it so scary to these other people but to me it makes it... mundane

Horror either needs to be very very very short (what if there was a kid down in the street, and when you waved to them the waved back and started floating up towards you), or it needs to really have something more to it

I don't know, this is why I consider horror such a tricky genre, but man... I want some good horror and it's impossible to get (and often when people do recommend me something it's like... mhh... thank you, but also absolutely wrong for what I want)

[weekend-conspiracy-theorist]

a fanfiction I read the other day (this one, it was very fun) jokingly mentioned the concept of tim drake taking on the legacy of cassandra cain's black bat mantle, and I literally have not stopped thinking about it since.

I mean, it's a fun concept for tim, he's doing a bunch of soul searching and whatever right now in canon (handwave the continuities, DC certainly is), and if he was going to take on a legacy mantle, black bat's literally only been cass's mantle and it doesn't have Baggage™ the way another title might. and okay, we don't see a lot of cass as black bat, because that era of canon ended very quickly when she got erased in the new 52, and the creative direction within the batfamily books at the time was fundamentally uninterested in using her in any meaningful manner, BUT. given everything that happened with deathstroke and the evil cass era, it doesn't feel like a stretch to interpolate some points and say that black bat was explicitly a way for cass to redefine and rediscover herself; her own bit of soul searching, and that dovetails quite nicely with what's going on with tim. I also think it'd be nice for him to get given a legacy instead of chosing to take it on, too. so that's great.

but all day today all I can think about is what it would mean to cassandra. when she gave up batgirl, I imagine that she could have been heading towards making that decision regardless (again, what with everything that had happened to her, it's not hard to think she may have felt like that identity no longer fit quite right), and I even think that she probably would have chosen stephanie as her successor one way or another. but she didn't actually decide to stop being batgirl on her own schedule, and she didn't choose who was going to follow in her footsteps--bruce did. and cassandra has always looked up to bruce in a way that obviously she wasn't going to buck his "dying" instructions to her. so sooner than she was comfortable with, and with the next batgirl already chosen for her, she felt pressured to give it up. and that had to have stung.

and so I'm thinking about cass having the opportunity to organically step upwards and outwards from one of her identities (in order to become batman. let us be clear.), and I'm thinking about how wonderful it would be for her to get the chance to offer her costume to someone of her own free will. as mentioned above, tim makes sense for black bat thematically, and I also think that it'd be really lovely for them on a personal level, because tim was cass's robin, and she was his batgirl. and now she could choose to tie them together again, through a quite literal symbol, as batman and black bat.

plus, tim spent years wearing his big brother's old clothes--why not his big sister's for a change?

[cool-island-songs]

DO KYLE :333 for the ask game ;3333

Thanks for the ask, Rooster! :333

Sexuality Headcanon:

Open to anything. It's really dependent on the story/context for me, but I definitely saw him as 100% gay back in the day. I'm more open to bi Kyle now and also like the thought of him being a late bloomer or questioning things into young adulthood

Gender Headcanon:

Ok but fr usually cis. Trans masc Kyle is also interesting. I'm not rigid about any of this stuff tbh. No sexuality or gender hc is OOC to me in itself. I just like to be sold on characterizations, personally

A ship I have with said character:

Back in the day I was hugely into style, k2, and kystophe and I still like these though idk when the last time I read kystophe was (writing some rn though!)

These days, I'm mainly thinking about style, k2, and twyle dynamics but open to a lot of things

A BROTP I have with said character:

Not to be real boring but he comes with a built-in crew—da main 4! Occasionally estranged super best friend, bro he sometimes dgaf about, loathed frenemy. They're all there! Particularly interested in K2 atm, both ship- and BROTP-wise

A NOTP I have with said character:

I don't really NOTP anymore but I have specific conceptions of certain dynamics and then some I just don't think about

A random headcanon:

OCD and scrupulosity OCD in particular - Kyle's the most neurotic to me after Tweek

General Opinion over said character:

I never know wtf people are talking about when they do Kyle discourse. Fundamentally uninterested in the question of if Kyle good or bad. Kyle regularly enters situations wanting to be good and righteous, and yet he often does bad things (see also: virtue ethics). In my view, this is the defining function of his character on the show, so treating it like a binary when the cartoon's regular starting point already has more nuance than that is a step backwards

Kyle was my second fave after Tweek back in the day—projected onto him hardcore, identified with his desire to do the right thing, and the struggle that comes with determining what that is and carrying it out. I don't understand when I see him deified and his faults elided because I think his flaws and failures are super interesting, relatable, human

No one is required to view him the way I do, though, and I always hope people are having fun and expending their energies in fulfilling ways in fandom. Would be downright evil to hassle people with different viewpoints! Especially when hearing different interpretations and headcanons can be so fun and stimulate creativity. It helps when people can stay respectful and self-aware that we are all ultimately working with our own subjective interpretations of fiction, all projecting and relating in our own unique ways

Because I'm tired of the same old discourses, here are my proposals for alternate Kyle discourses:

Kyle's actions having any lingering impact on geopolitics re: Cuba, Canada, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict

Kyle's ongoing health issues re: hemorrhoids, transplanted kidney, diabetes, does he have the human centipad scars i must know

Kyle's relationship with Kenny after he tells his mom he doesn't give a crap about Kenny, then proposes rounding poor people up into camps and exterminating them. Are they good???

Cucking?

[sor-vette]

four, circus!! (index/description)

☜ three, an all-out fight club!!

☞ five, dots!!

t/w: dead bodies, mention of overdose

"This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen," Yoongi thinks to himself as he blankly stares at Jimin, transferring the PPT file to the projector.

123 slides in "Reasonable arguments as to why we should date, _̵͚̾͌_̶̢̛̘̅͛̕_̶̡̧̝͗̒̋̌̚_̴̮̒̍̿̃͠ .

"Wrong PowerPoint bro," Jungkook grunts with closed eyes. No doubt the idiot had tried to stalk you throughout the night. It's been three days since Erik had officially enrolled.

Namjoon also has his eyes fixed on the projector, his expression giving nothing away.

"Resigned to death, poor bastard, as you should."

Jimin momentarily looks behind him to see why Jin had started to snort in laughter before scrambling to choose another file.

56 slides in "What do we know about Erik and what to do about it?"

"The title could be less verbose," Jin remarks, spinning his chair around the room.

"You're one to talk, literally," Jimin sneers but, there is very little malice in his voice if any. Besides Namjoon, V and Hope, who actually stuck to his word of minding his business, Yoongi didn't know anyone personally in the room. Though he sure has heard of the connections they had with you. Each weirder than the other.

Namjoon, the CEO, the one who went overboard in commitment and scared you off. Rumour was he offered marriage before the first "I like you." But that as well could be bullshit.

Hope, with the most cordial contact out of all. And also the most distant. You two had fundamentally different perceptions of how the world worked. Incompatible match, as the saying goes.

Jin. Despite the grandeur of his character, Yoongi knew very little of him. Even less as to why you left. He presumed the lack of commitment on both sides.

Jimin, the almost. For five months Yoongi had to hear nothing but coy whispers of just what good friends you two were. What good time you both had jumping back and forth from Paris and home. And then with zero explanation, you weren't. Every once in a while, he'd see the two of you in the hallway. Working hard to suffer through an exchange of pleasantries between long awkward pauses. The whispers had been effectively stomped to death, with no one the wiser as to what the hell had happened.

V, the one you hated and the one who hated you. How the two of you even met was beyond anyone's understanding. How you didn't rip each other's throat out even more so. Why he was here? God only knew.

And the last one, JK. Your trainee before Erik. The one who'd shamelessly bounced, leaving you in the dust when the enrollment came with a nary of thank you. After that, you officially joined the cleaner department and largely went missing from the public eye.

And, of course, Yoongi himself. The only official boyfriend. The one who officially broke both of your hearts.

"If all of you could please focus!" Jimin snapped, standing with a wad of paper in hand, waving it like a teacher in front of particularly annoying group of students.

"He even made notes," Namjoon whispered faintly.

"More like a manifesto," Yoongi snickered, letting his eyes wander over the sheer thickness of the file.

"Silence!" For a split second, Yoongi wanted to make a jab about a chihuahua being able to bark, but having considered his own height, he chose to be silent.

"So, let's start with basics. Erik Genyer. Joined two and a half years ago through a recruitment agent. He's 24, lived in Seattle before moving here. No known parents or siblings." Jimin recounted with ease.

"I hope you didn't look through his records," Namjoon frowned at the screen. "Because I did not authorize that."

"Does it count as looking if it's a brief glance?"

"Yes."

"And yet here you are benefitting from it." Namjoon could only breathe through his nose a tad harder.

"Why are you telling us this?" Jin interjected. "Mr CEO here could just give us his file - we'd read for ourselves."

"I will not. That's against company policy."

"And what you're doing here is completely legal and non - invasive." Jin raised his eyebrows, not phased even in the slightest that he was much below Namjoon's position.

"Silence!" Jimin yelped again at the front. "Has anyone here worked with Erik?"

"Hope definitely has," V piped up from his seat, looking as uninterested as one could. Yoongi narrowed his eyes at him. V took the piercing glare in stride, haughtily turning away.

"Well, yes but..." Jimin shuffled on the stage almost awkwardly. "He has strictly declined the invitation to our little... boy band."

"Wait does that mean he could tell _̸̢͉̦͔̣͈̱̅́́̓͊̇̂̓́̕͝ͅ_̸̨̙͚̻̬͖͉̻͔̑̓͐͜ - I mean R.D.?" Jungkook suddenly asks, eyes wide. Even Yoongi blanched at the thought. Everyone straightened in their seats. This was all fun and games until the moment you knew. Oh, you'd rip each and every one of them a new asshole. All of them could kiss goodbye to any attempt of trying to mend bridges. By that point, there wouldn't even be a river stretching underneath.

"I sincerely hope not." Jimin whispers and they sit in a moment of silence, weighing the risks.

"Heh, hope not." Jin suddenly gives a breathy laugh solely to be met by a general aura of disapproval.

"It's not funny." Namjoon scolds slightly but, Jin being Jin, openly looks him into eyes and goes -

"I know."

Amidst the banter, JK raises his hand shyly.

"I trained with him for a short while."

"And what is he like?" Jimin's eyes almost sparkled at anyone giving an actual insight.

"He must be wearing contacts or something," Yoongi mused, pushing the cap of his water bottle around the table. He knew Jimin to be attractive. No one in the entire company would shut up about it, nevertheless, something about him seemed almost supernatural.

JK shrugged in response.

"A bit rude and careless but talented. He finished training early."

"Did it seem like he was particularly going after her?" Namjoon interrogated further. There was a deep scowl of resentment on his face.

"Uhh, no. I think he was interested in the cleaner department in general. Apparently, he spent most of his orientation there."

"He also spent a month in surveillance. Did you speak with him...V?" If V was surprised by Jimin addressing him personally, he didn't show it as he continued to inspect his nails.

"Didn't even know he was there."

"Why did he stay so long in the cleaner department?" Yoongi asked as he ran over the information on the screen. Besides the already mentioned month in surveillance and a week in networking and relations, this Erik hadn't even tried to apply anywhere else.

"Poor communication skills. I had to throw him out. That's why he was only there a week." Jin explained.

"So you spoke to him?"

"Well, no, Irina," he was interrupted by a hollow thud. Without prompt V had dropped his steel thermos onto the desk, tea splattering everywhere and staining JK's jacket in the process. Both of them fumbled to clean it up with anything they could. V dabbed the desk harshly, the wood creeking at every aggressive wipe. Yoongi saw Jin looking sideways, the same confused expression echoed on his face.

"Well, as I was saying, Irina, R.D.'s friend, I'm sure you're familiar, came to me, said he was causing trouble and asked to refer him."

"And you sent him to R.D.?"

Jin gave a deeply suffering sigh.

"No, I did not send him. I referred him to general management and they gave him to the cleaners ."

"Ok, I get all of this. But what are we supposed to do about him?" Namjoon interrupted, jaw set in a tight grip.

Jimin fell silent at the front of the room.

"Yeah, this was the main question." Yoongi thought bitterly.

It was all a question of ethics, wasn't it? JK could pretend all he wanted to be above it all, to be respectful but then he trailed secret circles around you. Whether from guilt or perhaps a sense of entitlement. Yoongi didn't know or really care. Nevertheless the kid clearly had a hard time differentiating between what he said and what he did. Yoongi was however surprised to see Namjoon be so eager. He quite fancied making himself bald from worrying about the nature of evil. Just how easy it was to hide it behind big aspirations of providing aid. But it seemed as of late all of that was tossed aside.

Jimin was the one who orchestrated this in the first place, and so naturally, everyone looked at him for guidance. He was still shuffling around, nervously fiddling the blue pen.

"Well, first of all, I think we should talk more to R.D." A huff passed around the room.

"Talk to her?" V asked sceptically, mouth set in a straight line and heavy wrinkles carved between brows.

"Do you have any idea how difficult that would be?"

"Certainly it would be for you," Yoongi snarled, earning a harsh glare.

"Listen, at the end of the day, it's not really about us trying to force her into something. It's just to make sure... she's living a safe life. Well, the safest that's possible." Jimin said with enough sincerity to trigger certain insecurities within Yoongi and by the look of it also Namjoon.

It was no secret that between the seven, they were the most possessive over you. Both having the wrong idea that you were theirs. Which is why you left and why you probably were so caught up in Jimin. The purity and sheer selflessness of his sentiments acted like a punch to the gut. The genuine care that he reflected like a sun made the raw wound in Yoongi's chest seep even more. To be loved like that would be a dream come true. Yoongi shifted his attention to the laminated floor.

"We talk to her, find out what her life is like, keep a close eye on what Erik does. Talk to other cleaners about him, and once we find out, she's happy. That's. The. End. Of. That." There was no uncertainty. Jimin was dead serious.

The meeting was adjourned, quite amicably actually, but Yoongi knew that the rest of them had ulterior motives and plans. He had them too.

Jin and JK were no threat. Both were too uncertain of what to do with you.

Jimin had some deep-seated self esteem issues. Despite his 123 slide presentation, the way he spoke made it clear. That's probably why the abrupt parting, Yoongi mused. Both of you most likely shared the same anxiety about not being good enough for the other.

V was just V.

Namjoon was the only one Yoongi was truly worried about. Even from looking at his back, walking headstrong up the stairs, Yoongi could see how stubborn Namjoon was. In a way, it was like looking in a mirror. The possessiveness, the mulish mindset. They'd saw you, all of you and had decided that this was it. Yes, Namjoon would certainly be the toughest rival. However, Yoongi was very good at playing the long game. Especially if he wanted something so bad it felt like his thorax slowly being ripped out.

All that was left was Hope. But he wasn't even a viable player. After all, he hadn't even shown up.

***

"Why the fuck is he so heavy?" Erik grunted, swaying left and right and holding onto his dear life to the bagged pair of legs.

"Rigor mortis...set in," you huffed in answer, from the upfront of the body. "At least he wasn't rotting already. That's just nasty. 1, 2, 3."

Both of you lift the body into the van and let the poor bastard drop with a soft thud. Sweat pooled underneath your white hazmat suit with plastic glasses digging straight into your brain. You banged hard against the "EMT" van, and it drove away, carrying Dr. Martin Leyster to the morgue.

Should the neighbours see anything, it was a sad story of a depressed psychiatrist accidentally overdosing on his own meds. The evidence of him manipulating his most vulnerable patients into bankruptcy erased in you any stray feelings of sympathy though.

"You have the peroxide?" You rifled through the cleanup bag, but instead of answering, Erik began to actively point somewhere behind your back. A cold chill ran up your spine as you realize someone has been watching you stuff the body in the trunk. It quickly dissipates when you see a familiar smile.

"Hard at work, I see," Hope whistled, bounding towards you more like a kid on a school trip, rather than what the reality was.

"May I borrow your mentor for a bit?" He asked politely, still smiling up at Erik. There was no warmth in his expression.

"You are after all now an official member of the cleaner crew. Surely you can handle this on your own."

Erik looks at you for a moment before giving a loud sigh and trudging back to Leyster's office, the white toolbox angrily swishing back and forth in his hand.

Without hesitation, you remove the glasses from your head, revelling in the ease of pressure. Hope had stopped smiling altogether, looking quite pensive.

"What brings you here?" You ask lightly. To see him here is not worrying per se, but certainly interesting. He gives a quick shrug.

"Nothing much. Wanted to see how you were doing after that runt's little stunt." You only laugh at the shallow animosity. Erik's talent to drive people out of their patience was truly remarkable.

"I'm doing fine. You know... working. What about you?"

"I've been working as well."

You both fall silent.

"You ever thought about leaving the BH?" He suddenly asked, and you quirk a brow at the question.

"Not particularly. Have you?" Hope focuses a blank gaze at the grey walls of the multi-story apartment complex.

"A little bit. Last few days especially." You stand in muted shock. Hope was the last person you thought would quit. He was, without doubt, the most devoted, the most passionate out of all the hundreds of employees. He lived for the cause, he himself said so. And yet now he stood uncertain in front of you. Not really the bright and friendly Hope everyone knew, not really the strict and somewhat terrifying training teacher. He was just...quiet. It was an upsetting scene.

"Do you want to go for a drink or a lunch, maybe?" You offer, reaching for the zipper of the white suit. Yes, Erik could handle this on his own. He was a big boy. Hope hastily placed his hand atop of yours, pausing the movement. Even through the fabric, it radiated warmth. No wonder people called him sun. He frowned at the conjoined hands, lightly stroking his thumb over your knuckles before lighting up like a Christmas tree.

"No, no. I don't want to burden you with my problems." You didn't believe his smile for a second.

"Well, I won't steal you away for much longer, the pup might get anxious." He turned around, by the looks of ready to sprint off.

"Hey, wait!" He paused, not looking back.

"Do you why JK has been stalking me?"

"He has?"

He had. The first time you noticed a shifting figure in the background, you wrote it off to the combination of hangover and exhaustion. The second time he'd run off into the night faster than you could catch up. The third time you nearly flung yourself off the roof when seeing a pair of doe eyes staring back at you from an empty apartment building.

"There isn't like an alliance going around between some of my... acquaintances?" Truth be told, you found the very idea ridiculous, but it had wormed its ugly way into your brain and was now near impossible to get out. JK, Jimin, Yoongi and Namjoon wouldn't even get along with each other. Even though those four were most likely to meddle in your business. However, if looking realistically, it was probably just your paranoia taking an intensive round. Seeing suspicious cars, watchful eyes and snooping noses where there were none. Hope threw you a sardonic smile.

"That would just be stupid."

(a/n)

In this story people have their names and codenames and will be often used interchangeably. It all depends whether in the story the POV character knows the names of others or not.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Hello! I'm pretty sure I saw you mention a while ago that you were disappointed by confessions of the fox, would you mind explaining why? I've seen mostly good things about it myself. If I misremembered then I'm sorry and I hope you have a good day :))

I think this is one of my less popular opinions. And I understand - we so rarely get historical fiction with trans folk as the titular character (indeed, we rarely get any fiction what that). So I get people’s desire to laud it. 

For me though? It fundamentally didn’t work as a book. As a story.  

Let me count the ways. (Apologies in advance for the length of this.)

First: If you’re trans-ing someone who was historically cis instead of seeking to find a real, historical trans or gender-nonconforming person, I have questions. 

Most of the questions can be summed up as: Why? 

I struggle with historical fiction that takes a cis person and re-imagines them as trans as if there aren’t already literal historical, real trans people out there whose stories can be told. It smacks as (unintended, well meaning) erasure of lived experiences. 

Jack Sheppard, to the best of our knowledge, was a cis dude. There were trans folk in London in the 1710s and ‘20s. You might have to dig a bit for them, but they’re there. Because trans folk have always been there. 

Second: Characterisation 

This is more personal taste, but I found Jack and his girlfriend Bess to be inexcusably boring. How a trans, thief and gaolbreaker in 1720s gin-soaked London can be written as boring is anyone’s guess. But he was. 

Jack had no real personality and I found his story to be uninteresting. Oh, he’s the world’s best thief and gaolbreaker, that’s nice. But on its own it isn’t enough.

He had few to no faults. Childhood trauma isn’t a personality. Nor is being trans. And the author relies heavily on gender + occupation (thief-ness) to equal personality. So it falls very flat.  

Bess, his girlfriend, is a mixed-race sex worker from the Fens (even though actual real-Bess was from Edgeware). She seems to only exist to demonstrate that Jack is good at sex. She also veers a little into the Mystical Woman of Colour Healer Who Aids The White Person on their Journey of Self Discovery trope. 

Neither Bess nor Jack undergo any real change in the book. They exist in a weird stasis and experience no development, despite living through some harrowing things. They’re wooden dolls who move through the story without really engaging with, or being influenced by, the things around them. 

The other “main” character is a modern Academic who “found” this supposed “manuscript” of Jack’s life and is annotating it. His story unfolds in the foot notes and it’s just so messy if not a bit contrived. It didn’t make sense. I think the author was trying to convey that the Academic was in a sort of dystopian future, but if that’s the case it didn’t work. And if that’s not the case, the entire inclusion of the Academic’s story served only to annoy and take me out of the reading experience. 

E.g. There’s a scene where the Academic is being taken to task by the Dean for playing stupid games on his phone during office hours and like honey, lapsed-historian/academic here, trust me the Dean doesn’t give a fuck what you do during your office hours so long as you’re in your office and students can come bother you about their poor marks. 

The manuscript is supposedly being sought after by this pharmaceutical company for nefarious reasons that never struck me as being entirely realistic/believable. Also, the university was spying on this non-tenured, slightly useless Academic as if he somehow mattered? Which made zero sense. Anyway, it was stupid and should have been ripped out of the final version. OR changed substantially. 

Jonathan Wild, the thief taker (main antagonist to Jack), is probably the only interesting person. 

Third: Lack of Follow Through, or, the Fabulism Was Not Used Well 

The book tries to blend in some fabulism to the world by giving Jack the ability to “hear” the thoughts of inanimate objects. This could have been fun and gone to some interesting places, but it failed to deliver. 

I personally found the shoe-horning in of “capitalism commodifies everything” to be sloppy and heavy handed. It was done with little grace and didn’t sit right given that we are dealing with the early modern period. Yes, you can use the past to critique our modern woes, but do it intelligently. Don’t slap modern points of view and understandings of things onto the past and expect them to make sense. 

Anyway, Jack spends the book hearing inanimate objects talk to him, asking him to “free” them, or something. And uh .. .it doesn’t go anywhere interesting after that. 

Also the correlation one can draw from these objects to, you know, slaves, is uncomfortable. Especially as it’s the cargo of the EIC ships that Jack hears. I don’t think it’s intended in any sort of malicious way, but the allusion is there and I always found it to be distinctly uncomfortable. 

Fourth: Misuse of Marxist Theory, or, More Heavy Handed Moralizing that Annoyed the Dear Reader because it wasn’t subtle and, more importantly, it wasn’t done intelligently. 

So, the author is an academic - studies 18th century lit. Which is readily apparent as his Academic (self-insert) character is, I believe, supposed to be a historian and uh ... you can tell that the author doesn’t know enough to wing that. E.g. How he interprets some of the laws and customs of the time. Instead of understanding the social, economic and, most importantly, environmental issues that gave birth to laws like “the corporation of the city of London owns the streets so you can’t muckrake” he chooses to understand them through a very 21st century lens (and a Marxist one at that. I know I’m perhaps a bit uncool for this, but I find the application of Marxist theory to the early modern period to be ... not useful). 

Do you know why, mid/late 17th century London passed these municipal laws? Because of the god damn fucking plague you numb nut. You absolute buffoon. It had nothing to do with “oh the City/government is evil and wants to own you” it had to do with the fact that no one cleaned the goddamn street. So the city took over doing it. 

Prior to this, in London, you were supposed to keep the street in front of your building clear of waste, debris, refuse etc. No one did this, of course. I live where it’s cold and snows a lot and people can barely shovel the 2 sq ft of sidewalk in front of their driveway in the winter. I dread the idea of an average homeowner being expected to keep the street clear and clean. 

Anyway, guess what dirty streets attract? Vermin. Guess what comes with vermin? Plague. Guess what happened in 1665/66? The great plague of London! 

17th century England might not have understood germ theory, but they did understand correlation. (Also, the population of London was doubling at the back half of the 17th century and streets needed to be reliably cleared for through-traffic reasons etc. etc.) 

ugh, sorry, that one in particular drove me up the wall. Not everything is a capitalist conspiracy. Especially when we’re talking about municipal by-laws from the 17th century. 

And I understand the temptation to read a lot of modern interpretation of words like “corporation” and “company” onto bodies that used these same words in 17th and 18th centuries. But the weight, meaning and connotation of “the worshipful company of merchant adventurers” is different from, I don’t know, “the tech company google” or whatever. The early 18th century is when we start seeing the birth of the stock market, of “venture companies” (i.e. merchant adventure companies), of a lot of the language and proto-iterations of what will grow to be economic institutions of our time. But it doesn’t mean they’re the same and that difference is important. Because Jack Sheppard is a man living in 1720 he’s not going to be having our modern 21st century critiques of capitalism because his engagement with the economic systems of his time would have been radically different to our own experiences. 

Fifth:  Unbelievable Top Surgery & Recovery 

So, Jack gets top surgery. In 1720s fever-ridden London. While quarantining in a brothel. 

And he lived! No infection! No tearing! He was up and about in a matter of days. I don’t remember if his nipples survived the operation or not but somehow Jack did. Without anesthetics! Or you know, any concept of hygiene. 

His Mystical Girlfriend Who Exists to Show How Good Jack is at Sex is also somehow Magically Very Literate and also Magically a Surgeon? and performs this surgery on Jack in the middle of a plague. 

The entire ordeal was so poorly handled in terms of believability that I literally set the book down and said “what the fucking fuck” to the empty room then drank wine before finishing the chapter. 

An aside, it is funny thinking about the quarantine chapters at this point. I read COTF when it first came out a few years ago. Sweet summer children, we none of us had any idea how to write quarantine scenes. 

That reminds me: the entire quarantine thing was presented as the government trying to control movement and take away people’s rights etc. instead of a very normal, typical response that cities had been enacting since 1350. Samuel Pepys, who lived through the 1665/66 epidemic, barely even notes the restrictions. He’s like just “hmmm I’d love to go to the pub but I also don’t want to die. so. *shrug*” 

At the time of the author’s writing, most of us in the western world had no idea how normal and day-to-day disease was for our ancestors and yes, sometimes there would be crackdowns to try and curb it if an epidemic hit. That was part and parcel of life. So again, Jack and Bess wouldn’t be like “ooooh we’re 21st century slightly libertarian lefitsts who think the government is doing this to control us and for nefarious purposes”. Much more likely, they would have been like Pepys and viewed it as nuisance, albeit a necessary one. 

Sixth: Overall Lack of Realism 

I think I’ve noted the big moments where I was like “no one in the early 18th century would think that I’m pretty certain”. This isn’t to say people didn’t grouse, complain about London government (and the king etc.), critique or question the world they lived in. They absolutely did! Regularly. With great verve and gusto, if the broadsheets are anything to go by. But their critiques, their complaints, suggestions for bettering life, are not the same as ours. Because how could they be? They lived in a different world, were responding to specific things, grew up hearing and believing certain things etc. 

Jack, aside from having minimal to no character, really did read like a modern slightly-libertarian leftist who was plunked into a novel that takes place three hundred years ago. 

In addition to unrealistic political views, his understanding of body, gender, sexuality and identity also read as incredibly modern. Now this is harder, because we have so few extant sources from that time on those who lived non-gender conforming lives, and from their point of view, so yes creative imagining and interpretation is the rule of the day for writing that. 

But, we do know how in general the average person engaged and understood gender and sexuality and that would, naturally, inform anyone whose experience was different. And that base line of “probably what a typical cis Englishman or woman felt about their body and identity” wasn’t present. At all. 

Indeed, gender engagement at that time was interesting. The concept of the body, the role of the physical body, how it was interpreted is absolutely fascinating and the author could have done some really cool things with that. But he didn’t. He went for slapping a modern interpretation onto the past. 

At this point, write a dystopian novel and make Jack a fictional character. That probably would have gone over better, for me at least. The conceit can remain the same: It’s the year 4056 and an Academic found a manuscript from the year 3045 when the Dystopia Was a Thing - and go from there. 

--- 

I think part of what made this very popular and why people seem so taken with it is that it reads smart. It reads like someone who has immersed themselves in that world etc. because of the slang and language used. 

Yet, for me, as someone who has studied this period extensively, especially queerness in London in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, it read flat and unrealistic. 

I was initially very enthused when I started it. There are some posts to that effect on my blog. But it very quickly went south. It tries very hard to be Radical and Smart and Subversive and Critiquing Everything and so I think it fails at the fundamental thing it should be doing: telling a good story. 

(Note: The book does try and address racism in London at this time. It also felt a bit forced. And Jack seemed to have no prejudices or preconceived notions about Indian and Black folk which isn’t realistic. Like, it might make him #Problematic but my dude, you’re writing a man born in 1702. He’s going to have some iffy views. That can be challenged! Absolutely. But they still would have existed.) 

---

Thank you for the ask! I again apologize for the length of the reply.