#TLDR i completely agree with everything in this post

[scribblespirit]

HONESTLY I'm already so sick of our society generally treating platonic relationships as less important/meaningful as romantic or sexual ones, but to me and many others (whether in the ace or aro community or NOT) the relationships we have with our families and close friends and non-romantic partnerships can hold just as much emotional weight as any usual romantic one, or sometimes can feel even deeper imo!! I hope people can get more used to such a simple concept someday

Signed, an affectionate aroace incredibly happy in a QPR with my beloved @rubinaitoart 💜

[bunnakit]

coming outta left field and talking about something that has nothing to do with me bc i don't have anything better to do with my time right now.

that whole fandom discourse was whack and i'm sorry @lurkingshan and @waitmyturtles had to deal with that. there's def been plenty of posts i haven't liked or haven't agreed with in fandom and you shrimply just have to scroll! there's no need to make a response unless you're coming from a genuine place and can have a respectful discussion. if you're coming from an emotional place you just have to say "people like different things" and move on.

i personally am not mutuals with shan because we have a lot of different opinions about things - this is not a dig at shan, she doesn't follow me either prob for the same reason! i think she articulates her posts incredibly well and comes from a very genuine place. i don't know turtles that well bc i haven't been in the space much these days but based on what i've seen she seems much the same.

media analysis is and should be vast and varied, that's what makes it fun, and not everyone is going to share your opinion and people will always interpret things differently based on past experiences, differences in knowledge, etc. they aren't evil for that.

this is what i think is one of the most important things from shan's post -

You don't owe anyone your presence here, and you don't have to express opinions on everything or respond to tags or asks if you don't have anything to say. Sometimes you might just want to take a break from posting, some things in the discourse might just flow right on by you, sometimes you will not have a firm opinion on a debate. You can post as much or as little as you want. You can suddenly decide you don't want to talk about a show anymore. You can not log into your tumblr for days or weeks at a time. Do you, boo!

to add to this, and i know this won't be a very well received statement, if you're finding yourself having these big emotional responses just because someone didn't like your fav it may be time to take a step back and reevaluate your priorities in fandom. as someone that took a break from fandom and dramas in general i highly recommend taking a second and finding your peace again. humans are emotional by design, it's what makes us great, but if you're getting violently wound up about someone else's opinion of a fictional piece of media created for entertainment purposes i think it's time to take a deep breath.

fictional media is art and people can and should always have different opinions about art. yes, even art featuring your favs.

i left the fandom for a long time because Last Twilight deeply hurt my feelings as a disabled person with an incurable disease - but that's on me. i'm sure many people found the message an uplifting one of hope (as i believe it was intended to be.) my personal experiences caused me to have a different take on it - but again that is because of my personal experiences and does not make my opinion of it right or wrong, it simply is.

tldr: i think it's important to remember that there are no correct opinions in fandom; if there were they wouldn't be opinions but irrefutable facts. you need to get used to seeing opinions and reads that differ from your own and embrace the art of filtering unless you feel capable of having a calm and respectful discussion.

i wanted to share my thoughts as someone completely unassociated with shan and turtles from a place of complete neutrality. if you're going to have a discussion have a discussion, if you're just gonna rag on someone because they didn't mindlessly jerk off your fav keep it to your group chat or something, don't be a tar pit.

this being said, get used to seeing things even if you try to filter! it's not perfect, i've filtered out spare me your mercy bc i haven't seen it yet and want to form my own opinions but things have absolutely come across my radar (either in my own tags, clicking links, etc.) it happens, don't be weird about it.

[fllnrdr]

I would really love for the rdr community as a whole to stop trying, (and failing), to defend Dutch, and shift the blame entirely onto Micah. Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II are both beautiful and well thought out games both in the gameplay and the storytelling. But I think a lot of people simply ignore those things, hence my long rant of a post.

TLDR: I think Micah was intentionally written to be one dimensional, and Dutch was manipulative from the start. Arthur is just a unreliable narrator.

We play through Arthur's eyes and see/believe what he does. We can see Arthur's loyalty blinds him (and by extension, us) to Dutch's behavior. I would know peace if some folks to took a media literacy class. Red Dead one & two are shining example of the bias in an unreliable narrator. Video games are not exempt from literary tools because you control part of the story. That control is limited to the actions of your bias protagonist, in this case John and Arthur.

The same applies to Micah. Arthur never trusts Micah from day one, and so we as the player don’t trust him either. It would be incredibly lazy on Rockstar’s behalf to created as one dimensional of a character as Micah. But the thing is, Arthur views him that way, a no good money-hungry thief from the start. Arthur is able to see through him, but he is blind to Dutch’s similar behavior because of his loyalty. It’s an incredibly smart tool to use in video games. Once you replay the game without the blinders on of your first playthrough, you’re able to see that Dutch has behaved the very same ways from Chapter One, all the way through Chapter Six. The only difference is that Arthur (and we the player) is slowly becoming aware of the patterns for the first time.

Now, for the blatant mischaracterization of Dutch entirely. To blame everything on Micah diminishes Dutch’s character to such an extent it completely disregards the decades long manipulation he inflicted on the gang, that is very real and very obvious. I won’t get into the way each individual character’s behavior was effected by this, but I will speak about Arthur and John briefly.

Dutch takes in people that are vulnerable and that he knows he can manipulate for his own gain. Children included. Multiple children, in fact. He always has a plan, not to keep folks safe, but to keep everyone comfortably under his thumb. It was always, "Are you with me, or against me" from the beginning. Everyone was either a means to his end, or they were worthless. The second someone did not agree, it was a betrayal, and an attack. I don't doubt he did some things out of kindness, but there's always ulterior motives. Dutch is nothing but a man of pretty words that hide his manipulation.

Dutch maintains an air of grandiosity amongst the gang. He obviously holds the belief that he is above them in all ways. He believes he is their leader because he is simply better than the rest of them. He’s smarter. He’s this god-like figure in his mind. He’s their savior. Hence his distaste for any doubt, or even being challenged.

Lenny and the conversation he has with Dutch about Evelyn Miller for example. Lenny indirectly call’s Dutch’s empty words out and points out that both Miller (Dutch’s idol) and Dutch himself hide behind their flowery words and phrases. Or Arthur and Hosea voicing their concern about robbing Leviticus Cornwall, it’s seen as a betrayal. Or when Uncle pokes fun at Dutch in camp and Dutch says to him, “I would really like to kill you right now.” Dutch may not be entirely self aware, but any attack at him does dig at him for a reason. And this is all from chapter two! There has always been a pattern.

Dutch says he "saved" them. He saved Bill, and John, and Arthur and Lenny and Javier. He saved all of them, and he is above all of them. Dutch sees people as nothing more as tools to meet his goals. There are instances where he does seem to genuinely care, but the ulterior motive is always there.

Dutch and Micah were written with the idea that we see the story through Arthur’s eyes. Arthur is blinded by his decades long to loyalty to Dutch and slowly coming to the realization of the truth. Micah is incredibly one dimensional cause Arthur sees through him and views him as a rat from the start. The truth of the story can be seen through repeated playthroughs. Dutch’s paranoia from the start, questioning Arthur’s loyalty from Colter. Micah sniffing around about the Blackwater money from the beginning. Arthur’s journal entries about the his biased version of the truth. Media literacy is necessary even in video games. God.

[gffa]

This is a long rant and I apologise if this comes off as too much 😅 I just want to let you know that I'm SO GLAD you're part of the star wars fandom. You're one of the few reasons my interest in this franchise has survived despite the toxicness that it has seeped into everything the past few years. Yes, star wars fandom has always been pretty much a mess but I feel like these days it's somehow gotten even worse. And there isn't even anything coming out that could distract everyone from the constant drama.

Your blog and your posts about the books are always a breath of fresh air in all this. I really appreciate that you take time to make all these long canon references and share them with us. And that you actually engage with canon content! For some reason that seems to be a tall order for most 'fans' these days.

It's exhausting seeing the ice cold takes about the jedi be repeated over and over again by people who seem to have barely even watched the films, let alone read the random book they're referencing to show how the jedi are So Evil and failed poor anakin by Forcing him to let go of his Attachments so they definitely deserved to all get massacred down to the last child!!! And if you push back by citing literally anything canonical to show how ridiculous their takes are they reference a random obscure legends novel (that they are often twisting and also usually haven't even read) And if you point out that, no, Legends isn't canon (and never has been) and we could discuss it as its own separate thing instead of dragging it into canon discussions, they completely flip and say they don't care and to stop taking star wars so seriously 🙄 ( u can probably tell I've had some pretty frustrating fandom arguments recently lol)

It does feel like groundhog day sometimes with the same arguments being repeated over and over again to villainize the jedi while absolving the genocidal mass enslaving space fascists that are Very Clearly the Bad Guys. And it feels pretty much deliberate at this point when people misunderstand star wars' canon definition of attachment and project all their issues in their own lives with their christian upbringing onto the space monks... This has only been exacerbated by people like Headland jumping onto the franchise and doing this with fuckass disney's approval, so now the racist anti jedi youtubers have started attacking this new anti jedi show so if I defend the jedi I get lumped in with them *sigh*

Anyway, I just listened to Padawan's Pride because of your posts and it was fun and a much needed palate cleanser for me after the months of anti jedi takes. I also started reading your jedi citations project and it's gotten me back into reading some other of my favorite jedi fics and maybe writing some of my own. So tldr; Thank You!

Oh, anon, I hear you and I went through a lot of similar feelings over the last few months. In between a lot of IRL stuff coming up and the fandom getting incredibly weird about Jedi fans (soooo much projection going on that it started getting unsettling sometimes) and the same old constant beratement on my posts, I was thinking that I was just too tired to deal with any of it.

It did get hard some days because it felt like no matter how hard I tried to be friendly and make a point to say that everyone needed to be allowed their space whether we agreed or not, that I would still get words put in my mouth or my posts misinterpreted or accused of trying to shut down other people's conversations, when I've never even interacted with that person, I've never reblogged anything from them, never talked about them, just made my own posts about the Jedi on my own blog.

That aspect of how, if we write posts that cite Lucas quotes or moments from the movies and shows, we're taking things too seriously (or the super weird one of how we're trying to "force" people to have to take Lucas' commentary as a holy grail or whatever), then we're taking it too seriously is SO REAL, I have been through that SO MUCH. And it's like, no! Nobody has to take authorial intention into consideration! But if you're going to say that I ~missed the point~ of what Lucas intended with the movies, I'm going to break out the Lucas quotes to show that, no, I didn't miss the point. You're still not obligated to agree, but the point is that I'm not coming out of nowhere with my views and deriding me as not a ~true fan~ or whatever is asshole behavior.

And it's hard to have that groundhogs day feeling, especially because you don't necessarily want to spend that time getting into arguments with people--they are allowed their own space, if they want it! But if they're coming into our space, then yes we get to respond with an essay if we like. (And, hey, some of us genuinely like writing essays, it's satisfying!) But I've found the best mindset for me to have when arguing is: I'm not going to convince this person in front of me and that's fine, they're not going to convince me, either. But there are other people watching this discussion and they are seeing which one of us is being a pill and which one of us looks kinda fun to hang out with.

Which is my way of winding around to what I really want to say--I'm so glad that I can help you want to have fun in this corner of fandom! There's always going to be times to respond with sharp edges to Jedi-critical stuff (especially when it starts dipping into the racist, xenophobic, bigoted nonsense)(not all of Jedi criticism is this, but it does happen all too often), I don't blame Jedi fans for having their nerves scraped raw by people feeling absolutely free to treat our posts like public property instead of them coming into someone else's lane to make a mess. (I've met some very nice Jedi critical people, this isn't about them, this is about the assholes.)

But is it really worth being in a fandom where that's all we do anymore? We can't avoid the negativity, we can't avoid people being assholes to us, but we can work on making the content we want to see at the end of a long day when we get home and log onto the computer and want to see something that makes us feel joyful.

I hope I'm doing my part to make it fun to stick around the fandom, to want to read some of the books or some of the fic, I love the artists who are drawing the cutest Jedi art, I love the fic writers who are writing great Jedi-positive stories, I love people who make silly shitposts about how funny the Jedi fan be, I love people who cry over the deaths of their favorite Jedi, they help make the fandom worthwhile.

It really does make a huge difference, I think! Whenever I need that same palette cleanser, I just take a week or so to push aside all discourse (don't even go look), just pick up some of my favorite Jedi fics, just go looking for some of my favorite Jedi art, reread "Padawan" or "Padawan's Pride" or "Obi-Wan & Anakin" or "The Living Force" or "Dark Rendezvous" and just spend time thinking about the things I love about the Jedi in canon, thinking up headcanons about lineages or nerdy Jedi philosophy arguments or adrenaline junkies, and it helps create the space I want to be in.

Hearing that I can help you with that is a huge boost as well--I hope you know that it helps me in return to know that we can help build something together here in our corner of the Star Wars internet. We're in this together and we can cheer each other up with cute content and I am getting out the pom-poms for you to have fun with that fic! <3

[victimcentral]

John's second victim

This is written super quickly and might be kind of long but bare with me! I think I found something regarding Mikoto's case! Theory under cut :D

Ever since the trial 2 ending video I been thinking non stop about the fact that seemingly it confirmed the theory that John was a serial killer, for context ever since Double released I was in the belief that John only killed one person (the blonde guy we see in MeMe) and that his memories were just fragmented (since he was still forming during the events of the murder) leaving him to believe he killed multiple people (especially considering how dismissive and well how he doesn't seem to recall much about it, only remembering the fact that he wanted to protect Mikoto). Of course now we know that Milgram basically told us Mikoto is one of the people in Milgram with one of the most kills (idk why they translated to “the most kills” when Shidou is right there, but in jp it’s more like “one of the most”). 

This led me to question, how and who. For John’s blonde victim who for now I will call Blondie, I had a pretty good idea on how the murder and everything happened, I won't get into detail since it would take a lot of time to cover, my oomfie made a post that I agree with. Tldr Annoying coworker Mikoto was not very fond of, pent up rage for this person led to John killing him to get rid of this “stress” that was causing Mikoto (maybe someday I will go more in depth with this idea). But then there was the problem that, ever since the trial end video, I started to notice that MeMe in fact does show two victims, Blondie (the train murder), and… another person. 

From the framing of everything, John wearing the same clothes during both murders, and that it’s shown that it happened on the same night, I concluded John killed two people in the same event, but… my main question was, who was this second victim, I had a pretty solid theory on who Blondie guy, but this second person was a complete mystery to me, I reread everything to try and see if there were other clues but really I had nothing, we don’t even have a design for this person, but we know it exists because of the Undercover crime location, it matches up pretty well with where we see John kill this second person.

(Especially the wires)  Meanwhile we know Blondie died by the train, so no doubt about it. (I mean he died in a sort of tunnel place, where we can see here clearly they are more in the open, we can see the sky..!)

While talking to my friends about it this night, rewatching MeMe on loop to try and see something, I spotted something interesting: In the scene that we see Blondie crawling away, the screen has like the same effect on the edges as when we see a person walking towards Kayano at the start of MeMe, this effect is supposed to resemble the inside of an eye, as if we are seeing from the point of view of a person.

In both of these scenes we can see that the “screen” blinks, making it obvious we are seeing from the perspective of a person. 

And it’s not just some visual effect of the scene, as we can see when the scene zooms in, the effect is nowhere to be found.

But look, during the murder, this eye like effect is on full display

This person is no other than the second victim. And this shows that victim two witnessed the murder of Blondie, they saw John kill, and once John noticed he killed them to keep away from anyone knowing. Basically victim two is just a witness who saw the first murder, ran away, and got killed. We can tell they ran away since the crime location in MeMe is noticeably somewhat close to where the train station is. (Credits to Doctor Bunny, I wouldn't have been able to notice this haha)

in here I will lay out how I think the events happened, because my wording probably doesn’t make any sense lolll

also this could explain all the imagery of Mikoto feeling “observed” in both MeMe and Double images here

(in fact, we even see the same effect on the edges as the victim two pov in here lol)

(All the eyes… he is being observed)

And to add last, it would make sense of John’s statement of “killing whoever was passing by”, because truth be told, that second victim truly was just a random person that was passing by, who just happened to witness the murder. 

Thx for reading! This probably makes no sense since I literally just noticed this and wanted to talk about it! In the future I may rewrite this honestly… this is prolly written like shit LMAOO, just wanted to spread the idea around :D! And if someone came up with it before and I never noticed it, let it be known :o !! Sorry if that’s the case haha ^^’ And if I explained somth awfully and want me to elaborate let me know pls!! I love rambling bout Milgram haha

[jodoesnew]

On the other end (my version)

The background ramble and other stuff tldr at the end

My version => because if you like the concept I introduced in that post you are free to use it! In anyway you like, because everyone has their own way to tell a story and if you have your own ideas now and my little prof of concept helped you find it, I feel more than honored for it. And maybe send me a link if you ever do sth with it and want to share it.

I myself will do a few posts about this idea. Most likely in the same style that the first one was. Illustration just is more my thing and writing a fully fledged out fanfiction.

I just love to explore to many ideas. And I have two more I want to share with all of you.

But thats for a later date. Back to this idea.

--------------------

First I want to explain how Sun and Moon operate in this story.

Sun is the instigator. He really just wanted a friend and had the strong believe that Y/N and them would get along great.

So after getting the idea from one of the kids that a friendship does not require ever meeting in person (The kid was talking about a pen-pal), Sun sets out on his quest to become your secret friend.

But he needs Moons help for that. Altering their living-conditions (their code) needs both of them to work together. Moon who is bored with his daily routine obliges and helps sun out. But not without whining and teasing the sun constantly along the way.

>>here I should explain that Sun and Moon in most of my interpretations are more like unwilling roommates, that start to act like an old married couple because they are stuck with each other forever<<

And then Y/N calls them. Which puts both attendants on the spot.

Sun really wants to talk to you. But after a long debate with Moon they decide he should be the one to call you. Because you don't work during nap-time and never stayed long enough to meet Moon in person. So you had no chance to know how he sounds like.

>>What a great plan right? Would be a shame if it went wrong wouldn't it<<

Well after Sun started talking to Y/N through Moon. Moon himself started to warm up to you. He is not as used to human contact as Sun is. So he really says things without a filter sometimes and makes Suns life harder. And the fear of giving themselves away getting worse everyday.

On the other side is Y/N that just meets this mysterious person that does not turn out to be a complete weirdo but someone that really just wants to get to know them and is considerate and caring. And like anyone else in this situation they want to at least try to make it more then a phone friendship.

And The DCA is so well versed in excuses that they totally not just freak out about the fact that Y/N wants to meet them in person. Moon stays strong with his believe that a human would not want to be friends with a machine. Sun just starts to overthink everything and they both agree on the that they have to stop talking to Y/N.

To protect themself form hurt and Y/N from being disappointed.

>>How noble of them<<

So TLDR

Moon dislikes the whole thing at the start and then gets addicted to attention

Sun is desperately lonely and wants someone to appreciate him for who he is and would go way to far for that

Y/N is desperately lonely and meets an amazing person through mere chance over a wrong number that they want to be together with more than anything. But which out of nowhere starts to ghost them.

[hey-its-danny]

Alright you finished Azran Legacy? Okay. Answer this question: what are our thoughts on Emmy Altava?

alright listen and listen close. she had a fantastically strong introduction in spectre’s call, i LOVED her in the movie, he was serviceable in miracle mask (though i blame that completely on the narrative not compensating for her so she got sidelined) and also she was so cute in the door to st mystere and monte dor content. i actually have a google doc describing my deeply intricate reading of her character, and i hold her dear to my heart.

sadly, her treatment in azran legacy was the narrative equivalent of a pile of dookie ass farts, and i’m so sorry for her.

1. her playful banter with luke was almost completely missing despite it being the highlight of her dynamics in the previous two games. and like, as far as dynamics, there was so much potential for her relationship with sycamore!!! god they wouldve fucked it up crazy style!!! they even implied it, but refused to back up the notion with meaningful interactions between the two. even after the end game reveals. its almost like the game wasnt paced to compensate for that, crazy.

2. her character was stunted until the last cutscenes of azran legacy (like the rest of the cast, though it was obviously most egregious for her, hershel and sycamore). for my thoughts on that, i’d need a whole post, but i do just wanna say luke was great in the final moments of the game up until the final cutscenes. even with emmy, who like. i could feel the desperation as she had to abandon luke without answers, i again wish we could explore that but okay. whatever. im not mad

3. everything in hoogland. i might dedicate another post to that alone but for now just know i thought her behaviour was childish and ignorant, as well as somewhat out of character. i would’ve been more fine with it if hershel stepped in to stop her, but he didnt, so i can only assume level 5 wanted me to agree with her actions which 🤷‍♂️ nah i dont.

TLDR; emmy rocks, i love her, hoogland never happened

[sammygender]

hi.. erm im back (anon from the last 2 asks) (im too scared to un-anon sorry) i want to ask (another) genuine question abt wincest because ur the nicest person ive ever met who's willing to talk abt it from both sides.

i guess i just don't get why people ship wincest? background: im aromantic and have a hard time understanding certain shippy stuff, but i do notice alot of arophobic statements in regards to the evidence given as to why people ship. ex: a lot of "brothers don't look at each other like that." type things. (which i know is not wincest exclusive and is often used by destiel shippers too)

also i notice alot of people being quite amatonormative (definition: the assumption that all human beings pursue love or romance.) so it's hard to even take wincest shippers seriously when all their evidence tends to be perpetuating arophobic sentiments and stuff.

we can all agree that their relationship is seriously unhealthy. but i just have a hard time with it being even borderline incestuous. i also really like the idea of relationship anarchy (definition: relationships within this structure are fluid, and therefore have no solid differentiation between sexual, romantic, or platonic relationships.) so to me it's like. well it's platonic because they say it is? only the people within a relationship can determine what that relationship is and they have?

anyways i know im throwing a lot of words and definitions at you. you're just extremely helpful to talk to and i like what you have to say, so id be extremely interested in your opinions about this.

hi anon!!! im so sorry i literally yapped like crazy in response to this. had no idea i was capable of this much thought on this topic. everything is under the read more

TLDR for the TLDR: for me the 'borderline incestuous' nature of their relationship isnt actually the way they act with each other cause i do think boundaries of romantic/platonic r weird and fake (tho by normal 'societal standards' sam and dean r strange). its more the framing of it by the narrative and genre conventions of spn as a horror. i think. <3

everything im abt to say has been written on at length by much smarter people than me - if ur interested i probably have reblogged other peoples posts on similar topics and tagged them somewhere under #poison in the water and maybe #she walked in on us. i am SO sorry for the mountain of yap you have unleashed.

before i rly start, re: talking abt the concept of wincest from different angles/sides - its honestly so totally beyond me why people dont actually DISCUSS this stuff more. ofc wincest shippers are sometimes obnoxious when they go ‘NORMAL BROTHERS DON’T ACT LIKE THIS!!!’ over anything (like i personally don’t like the whole ‘sam and dean are OBVIOUSLY in love because they bring each other back from the dead!!’ thing. like why is that romantic. i’d try my hardest to bring my siblings back from the dead too.) but like u said pretty much all shippers do that. i think people are (UNDERSTANDABLY) squicked out by the idea of incest, even fictional, and have an immediate kneejerk reaction when people ‘corrupt’ their favorite characters by talking abt it in relation to them. and i completely understand just not wanting to engage with readings you find uncomfortable or odd!! TV can just be escapism there’s nothing wrong with that!! but i tend to find immediate negative reactions against anything that even ACKNOWLEDGES the incestuous subtext in spn uncharitable and annoying. for one, incest is a real thing that happens and its not shipping goggles or creep behavior to look at fiction through the lens of it, just as its not whatsoever unreasonable to look at, for example, the azazel demon blood storyline as a CSA allegory (again of course all this is real heavy and just one interpretation and absolutely no hate for fans who like… just don’t want to think like this <3). for two, i do think there is an undercurrent of it written into supernatural with intentionality to further the themes of familial horror.

so to kind of…. explain i guess… why i say i can see canonical backing for sam and dean’s relationship as incestuous or incestuous-adjacent (lol), i have to go back to the general incest subtext in supernatural as a whole, from a completely academic-interest and not at all shippy way. like i said ofc SPN is primarily a show about FAMILY HORROR - ‘family is hell’, to quote eric kripke in the pilot commentary. or at least this is how i view it; a lot of destiel fans, for example, tend to see it more as…. idk really, i don’t claim to have much contact with them, but certainly not usually a horror. an action-adventure. a western. a story about a Tragic American Hero (sorry im being tongue in cheek and bitchy). i think viewing the show with a sam-focused lens tends to make you view it as horror for… a lot of reasons which i won’t get into here. but i PERSONALLY - getting off track here, sorry - view it as horror. that’s what he originally intended, and it’s what supernatural is most successful at doing. and incest in horror, especially gothic horror, especially gothic horror about the family and the home, is well-trodden territory (where’s my essay from last term about incest in wuthering heights where i somehow ended up, while researching, on an essay about wincest itself). - and supernatural is full of allusions to it. azazel’s silhouette in the pilot as intentionally strikingly similar to john’s, when he first feeds sam demon blood (framed as a CSA allegory, whether intentional or not). then azazel actually possessing john later. mary making the deal that dooms her family for years after via kissing her father on the mouth. hunting portrayed as something abnormal, irregular, taboo in direct opposition to a ‘normal family’ (tho abuse also comes from the nuclear family etc etc). then you can look at sam and dean specifically….

from the pilot, you have the woman in white telling sam, who has just left to go on a roadtrip with his brother, that he’s about to be unfaithful to jess; even if this could technically be said to be about the fact she then attempts to assault him (tho that doesn’t really fit with woman in white lore?? she goes after people who have already cheated…), it’s still portraying jess and dean as innately in opposition, just as jess has to die in order for sam to join dean. all the loaded lines about ‘the way they were raised’ - dean telling sam he can’t escape it. supernatural is clear: the rot is IN the family.

OF COURSE all of this can equally just be about familial abuse!! and IS about familial abuse!! but the way the story unfolds DOES position sam and dean in…. shall we say Roles. sam is the feminised ‘bitch’ to dean’s ‘jerk’; they’re mistaken for a couple in 1x08, in 1x18, in 2x16, in s8; they’re compared to bonnie and clyde, to mallory and mickey, serial killer lover duos. crowley tells dean, ‘you’re lying to sam like he’s your wife’. dean says, at a later opportunity, ‘what about sam? does he want a divorce?’. an ANGEL tells their HALF BROTHER that sam and dean are ‘psychotically, irrationally, EROTICALLY codependent’. dean himself is unable to name what’s between them, explicitly saying ‘love, family, whatever it is’ (which is just SUCH an odd line. Like it’s love and family between you two Dean is it not??? Why are you acting like neither of those words describe it???). then there’s the way jensen and jared act it, their physicality, eg. sam looking genuinely like he’s about to pull dean in for a kiss during playthings 2x16… i also find the whole ‘brothers don’t look at each other like that!!’ annoying, but tbh, they do give each other wild looks sometimes. the end of wendigo sticks out to me whenever i watch it as a genuine ‘why is jared/sam looking at jensen/dean like that… what possessed him…’.

wait another addition - when i first wrote this i also totally forgot about 4x14 sex and violence, which iirc has dean’s siren, originally described only in terms of sex/romance, literally telling him ‘i should be your little brother’. of course the concept of a siren that isn’t really about sex or even romance is really interesting and one valid reading - and also lends itself to a reading of dean as aro which i rly like. but i don’t think that reading is any more or less valid than the more obvious one. (irrelevant side bar but there’s a 2003 sociology book about sibling incest that i read for an essay on wuthering heights called ‘Siblings: Sex and Violence and that makes me go ??? every time i think about the episode. Literally what. That has to be a coincidence. But??)

i think in regards to why people ‘ship’ wincest, a lot of it is of course just that they just kind of See It, for whatever reason. whether it’s the thematic (which i talked on at length already sorry <3) or just the way they look at each other or just because jared and jensen are hot or just because they think it’s really interesting to explore an added dimension to sam and dean’s already messed up relationship. same with destiel, same with sastiel, same with whatever, like u said. shipping culture in general IS hugely amatonormative - people love to declare wide statements about what people who are In Love do and don’t do, which are always silly and shallow. partly why i don’t really consider myself as someone who ships things in general.

i also totally agree w u that only people within a relationship can determine what that relationship is. im not aro but i also really like the concept of relationship anarchy. however, when i see the incestuous subtext between sam and dean, it’s more in a media studies way than in a way of analysing their actual Relationship (though to be fair i’m not a wincest shipper); eg. asking the question why is their relationship portrayed ‘like that’, and what does that say about the themes of spn itself. also it is just an interesting concept to a lot of people.

TLDR the reason i can view sam and dean’s relationship as borderline incestuous isn’t due to their codependency, or dean’s intense possessiveness, or how close they are, or because they spend all of their time together, or because they’ve brought each other back from the dead multiple times and get suicidal without each other. this is even though in our society all that together IS often coded as romantic/sexual and is definitely acknowledged in that lens by the writers (hence constant comparison of them to married couples) - because it could also just as equally be completely platonic and completely insane and the result of the world’s worst trauma bond (the latter which it CERTAINLY is <3). when i talk abt canonical backing for their relationship as borderline incestuous, it’s more about the narrative framing and context surrounding it. at the very least, their relationship is ‘abnormal’, deviant (meant in the most literal meaning as an digression from social norms); different from accepted ‘sibling relationships’, pointed out by the characters around them. <- none of this makes any sense but its 3am and im on tumblr so its ok.

feel free to dm also if u want to or just send an ask back!! and also ofc feel free to argue with/disagree with me in any way u like. or ask wtf i mean by anything cause i talk too much. tbh from what u say it sounds like u just don’t really vibe with shipping culture in general (might be an assumption sorry if so) which i totally understand/agree w. but i hope i answered ur question in some way somehow

[proxiimitysky]

I've been heavily considering moving my account and starting over. This post will be very long so if you don't wanna read it that's fine (I'll add a tldr at the end)

I started this blog back when i loved sky and just wanted a specific place to talk about it. It took me YEARS to slowly realize that i don't have the same love for it like i used to. Ever since season of moomin was announced i thought of it as an opportunity to just take a break and only play the game if i genuinely want to, and not just for the purpose of getting candles. I wasn't really that excited for the season to begin with probably because i dont know anything about moomin and i know i can just learn about it through the season but ehh idk man. Just my personal opinion i already thought the first quest was super slow and tedious as hell

Also not to mention some big criticism within the community is how expensive things are in sky and i agree. I think they're right when they say iaps are getting more and more expensive (inflation amiright) and they keep locking the cooler items behind the pass. I know the pass (for 1 person) is generally pretty cheap for what you're getting but i just don't think it's fair for people who simply don't want to spend money. Majority of the good stuff this season is behind the pass and i know the purpose of this is to convince players to buy the pass but it's just. Man i would love to enjoy a season and buy cool clothes without having to pay real money for it AGAIN

And before you say "sky is a social game. No one is forcing to buy anything stop complaining", i know no one is forcing me to buy things, but it sure feels like it. I've already made an ENTIRE other blog about this complaint and you can probably go look for it but can you think of anything in sky that's fun without spending money? That doesn't include talking with friends (which BY THE WAY still costs money just to unlock chat if you didn't friend them with a qr like? Why tf do you need to SPEND MONEY just to talk to someone???) almost everything in the game needs money to be enjoyed. You can enjoy the story sure, but you can't express yourself in a way that doesn't require buying SOMETHING

Also why does sky have so many bugs all the time. There is not a single update where something wasn't fucked up in the making. I know sky isn't perfect and I'm nowhere near a game development professional but how do you even do that

Anyways.. i just want a tumblr blog to start over completely and gain an audience that isn't so restricted to one interest. I like art, and that's way more broad than just sky art only because i VERY VERY VERRYYY rarely draw sky art. I for some reason don't find it super enjoyable to draw skykids (unless I'm getting paid for it which is why the majority of my sky art are commissions lmao)

Just judging by the attention my blogs and art received on here, i assumed the algorithm was a lot better than other apps. I felt like maybe doing an oc blog too would be beneficial since its something i actually enjoy and WANT to talk about instead of just. Occasionally mentioning sky just to complain about it lmaoo

If you made it this far thanks for reading!! Also if you're here for the tldr: i don't love sky as much as i used to. This blog is very restricting and i wanna start over with an art acc in general

Btw i may still blog about sky on my new blog (if i do make it) but i would more likely just blog about games i like in general when i feel like it. Only talking about sky is just... Ehhhh..

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

A Comprehensive God!Reader Lore Guide

a/n: with the sumeru storyline completed, i finally decided to create a comprehensive list of lore surrounding the god!reader au. if you’re new here to the god!reader cinematic universe, you can take a look at this masterpost of that compiles everything surrounding god!reader. but tldr, the name god!reader is referred to by mortals is ‘amur’ and they are a dendro deity associated with death.

General

Rukkhadevata, Nahida and Amur are all avatars of Irminsul, the only difference being that Rukkhadevata and Nahida are branches of Irminsul while Amur is a root of Irminsul (1)

As an avatar of Irminsul, Rukkhadevata/Nahida and Amur are two sides of the same coin as Life and Death respectively as such they have similar abilities in terms of Dendro and Dreams but with the gnosis and a higher number of followers, the Dendro Archon’s abilities outpace Amur’s

Amur’s epithets include “God of Festivals” and “Soother of the Dead”, Amur is a god in Teyvat associated with death

A friend of Rukkhadevata, King Deshret and the Goddess of Flowers, Amur’s history dates back to the days of Ay-Khanoum which the four friends ruled together with all of them having their own ideas of wisdom and how to pursue it (2)

Historically had the fewest amount of followers among the four gods and in modern day Sumeru, Amur is not a heavily worshipped deity only really worshipped by a few select tribes in the desert and very few individuals in the rainforest (3)

While their abilities have weakened over the years, Amur is still a god and weak by divine standards are substantially different than the standards of humans

Pre-Rukkhadevata’s Erasure from Irminsul

When posing as the mortal [First], Amur drifts back and forth between the desert and forested halves of Sumeru taking up odd jobs ranging from assisting the desert dwellers with their crops to extra dancer for the Zubayr Theatre

As a god worshipped by few and mostly forgotten and disparaged by many, Amur’s standing and abilities are low and any plots to disrupt the Sage’s control over the nation had to be thoughtful and done at the right time (so thanks for that, Traveler & Co.)

Was unable to alter the Akasha Terminal created by Rukkhadevata with their own abilities.

Kept Nahida company in her dreams alongside the Aranara as a companion and playmate throughout the centuries

Post-Rukkhadevata’s Erasure from Irminsul

Like all beings in Teyvat, Amur’s memories of Rukkhadevata are gone and all memories they have of the previous Dendro Archon are believed to be Nahida prior to becoming a young child

The days of Ay-Khanoum are long gone and Amur poses no threat to Nahida whose domain is the whole of Sumeru, they simply act as counsel from time to time and indulges Nahida in stories of the old days she ‘no longer remembers’

Wouldn’t mind traveling and visiting the other nations now that Sumeru is back in the control of its Archon

Relationship with the Seven

Barbatos: ballads and festivals go hand-in-hand, and with mutual respect for each others philosophies, Amur and Barbatos get along pretty well with one another.

Morax: Due to geographical proximity, the two have had their encounters in the past. Amur finds it a relief that he has become a lot more relaxed over the centuries as they couldn’t stand Morax back in the day.

Beezlebul: Doesn’t agree with the methods she took after the death of Baal. But since it is apparent that the Electro Archon is taking steps to change and release her reins on her people, Amur has a tinge more respect for her.

Folcalors: Acknowledges that the present Hydro Archon is an eccentric, but Amur is fond of eccentrics.***

Murata: A feisty deity, Amur has no complaints.***

Tsaritsa: no comment.***

Trivia Notes/In-Depth Explanations

(1) Historically, branches tend to be associated with life and roots are associated with death. In a specific instance, in Ancient Egypt the Tree of Life’s branches were associated with the heavens and abundance while its roots were symbolic of death an. With Sumeru being a nation based on African, South Asian and Middle Easter geographies and mythologies, I figured this would apply to Irminsul avatars as well seeing as in artifact lore Rukkhadevata’s domain was considered to be life.

(2) Amur’s wisdom concerns death and the cycles surrounding itー No one is above death, not even the divine. Whether mortal or god, plant or insect, death comes for all and that is a truth all must come to accept in order to truly live. But acknowledging that even with that knowledge death would still be considered a grim and taboo subject among mortals, Amur’s epithet concerning festivals came to be shortly after.

Life is a grand festival and should be celebrated thoroughly before one’s end. In Amur’s mind, that would surely make the inevitable end easier to digest by mortals.

(3) Between the four deities that once led Sumeru as a collective, Amur has always had the fewest amount of followers and there are few relics in history associated with them that remains. As such, there is a bit of a divide between those in the rainforest and the desert. In the rainforest, Amur is more well-known for the God of Festivals title and in a land of wisdom like Sumeru, folly was spurned by the Sages that remained in control of the nation for 500 years. As such, a god like Amur was often disregarded by many Sages, leading to dwindling numbers in their following.

A small handful of tribes in the desert worship Amur as a god of death, however, but are often at odds with researchers in the forest about their interpretations of Amur as a whole.

(***) Opinions on the remaining members of the Seven are subject to change as Genshin updates and we get to know them

[skele-bunny]

I seen on an older post about Special headcanons, and I need to know more about him and his motorcycle!

EEEEEEE OKOKOK for those who are curious about the post, you can find it here but tldr; Phil has a Kawasaki Ninja 650R with chameleon purple/red fairings (IM NOT PROJECTING MY DREAM BIKE LEAVE ME ALONE!!)

Phil got his bike when Terzo was still a cardinal. That thing is his BABY. Sure, Nihil had a few Harley Davidsons, and was taught how to drive them, but he didn't like that brand. Wanted something that matched him, and FUCK when he laid eyes on it in a store display he knew it was his. Bought it secretly.

Cowbell was the first "backpack" to get on it with him bc they just wanted to go riding for a bit! Cowbell loves doing maintenance for it as it's identical to her firearms in a way.

Fucked both Phantom and a Brother of Sin on it, and got fucked over it by Agni.

When it's just him, he usually just rides around back roads and it's a great time to just chill out! Usually ends up over a ridge that overlooks a nearby city.

When Dewdrop found out about it, it was a joke war between them that if Phil didn't take him out on it, he was going to tell Nihil. (Wasn't actually gonna.) But! He agreed. Dew has never been out of the abbey by himself until that point, just holding so tightly onto Special's torso and looking around with eyes just full of wonder. They made a full date out of it, and Dew started developing his one sided crush the moment Special put a helmet over him and flicked the visor up to check on him.

Wrecked it once and was the angriest anyone had ever seen him. His clutch was faulty and caused him to jerk, and just laid on the road cursing at everything. He was okay!!! Just really upset his baby was completely fucked :( the whole frame bent, exhaustion and chain thrown off, the front of the left just smashed in and in shambles. Terzo owed him a favor so he called the youngest just in tears, whispering to keep it between them but please to pick him up.

He missed his bike SO bad it was unreal, just frustrated with himself. Special got surprised the next month with his entire bike repaired and he was over the moon, just so fucking happy to have his baby back!!

[daughter-of-sapph0]

watched the first episode of the acolyte, and god it's stupid.

my thoughts below. spoilers or whatever...

okay so positives first:

>live action high republic is cool as hell. finally, something that isn't original trilogy or post empire, the most oversaturated and overrespresented eras of star wars. I'm not the biggest high republic fan, I've only read light of the jedi. but I think the setting has potential for some amazing stories.

>the character designs are also amazing. everyone looks super cool. also nice to see people of color given representation in star wars. it's so cool to finally have a black woman as the main character.

>...

>that's it

.

okay now for negatives:

>it looks fuzzy. idk how to describe it, but it looks like there's a layer of static over everything. this is really obvious with solid flat colors, especially in background shots. it just looks blurry. I've seen supernatural gifsets from 2012 with less grain than this high budget star wars show.

>the plot is incredibly stupid. Osha (yes, her name is osha, like the occupational safety and health administration) is framed for the murder of a jedi, but she says she didn't do it. it turns out that it was her twin sister Mae who everyone thought was dead but is secretly still alive. evil twin is literally the oldest most cliche trope ever. and of course they made a point of giving mae and easily identifiable mark on her forehead so you can tell her apart from Osha

>the dialog is so unnatural. "okay, so we need the audience to know more about Osha so they sympathize with her. how can we do that? let's have Yord explain oshas backstory... to Osha!" okay? Why The FUCK Are You Explain Oshas Own Backstory To Her?! "your family died in a fire, and the jedi order took you in when you were 8 years old" She Literally Knows That Already Because It HAPPENED TO HER!!!! In What Universe Would Any Person Speaking In A Natural Way Talk Like This?!??!?! you know that meme of the guy screaming about megamind 2 for megamind to use the dehydration gun? that's me right now about this fucking scene

>everyone is so bland. you can tell their personalities immediately. Osha is kind and helpful. Sol is loving and a father figure and has attachments to Osha. Yord is a himbo. Jecki is as close to a "mean girl" as a jedi can be. and Mae is just pure evil.

>like, incredibly evil. holy shit. Osha has a dream sequence / force vision and sees a young Mae and Mae is singing a creepy rhyme about how they're twins and inseparable and shit and when Osha asks if she killed the jedi Mae goes "yes! I'll kill them all" and her eyes turn fully black and I'm not even making that up!!! I actually laughed out loud at how stupid it was. I know star wars is goofy, but holy shit

>Yord is naked for a short scene for no reason other than comic relief. Jecki makes a marvel quip about it.

.

I want to like this show, mainly because I know the fandom menace hates it. like, having representation of people of color, and having a black woman as the main character is great! but it literally feels like some corporate executives are trying to check all the diversity boxes, and then forgot to write an interesting show.

and I know that if I give any valid criticism about the show, stupid idiots on twitter will go "yeah! and also it's too woke!" and think I agree with their horse shit opinions.

but like legit, I was sorta excited for this show, and now I'm just too tired to even care. it's not often that a show loses my interest completely after the first episode. and I'm pissed, because high republic star wars has so much potential to be cool.

.

tldr, star wars would be so good if it was good.

[astroninaaa]

Hello! Non-ptbr speaker here. I’ve only seen Cellbit through QSMP and I hadn’t really understood the gravity of the situation until early this year when Cellbit released a statement talking about everything about the situation. 

But that’s beside the point. I wanted to clarify a point of contention that I've seen around Twitter about this. 

So this is in regards to Br accounts who claimed that either:

(1) Cellbit is only pursuing those who have tweeted maliciously against him after January 10 (the date when the PDF (which I assume is the response document to the incident 7 years ago) was published);

(2) Or that it is unfair for Cellbit to pursue the case before he published the mentioned PDF. (As there are apparently tweets from before January 10 included in the released links.)

I know very little of the law, if not nothing about the Br Law.

But I had initially assumed that regardless of whether Br accounts tweeted before or after January 10th, it wouldn’t really matter as a felony (as you mentioned, is likely the crime of calúnia) has been committed. So whether or not there was proof or not of the crime they accused Cellbit of committing, they still damaged Cellbit's wellbeing and reputation.

But I could be wrong especially because I can’t read ptbr and I'm relying on the Google translate function in twitter. So I'm trying to grasp the situation better especially within the realms of the Brazillian judicial system.

tldr: Are tweets made after January 10 weigh heavier than those before? Are the tweets before January 10 dismissible for the case of calúnia? Does the date of the tweets matter at all?

(If you've already answered this, I'm sorry for having repeated the question. I'm also not an English-speaker so I apologize if this is a little confusing in structure.)

hi anon!!! you bring a really really really good point here!!!

as you said yourself, since calúnia is a matter of accusing someone of a crime they didn't commit, no, the date of the tweets technically don't matter at all. even tho he hadn't released his statement and his proof against the accusations yet, there was still never any proof that he DID commit the crimes - there wasnt an official investigation, there wasn't a judicial action by his ex against him, and there wasn't even proof released "extra-officially" (like, not by a court/investigation but by the supposed victim herself) that could support any of those claims.

therefore, regardless of if the tweets were made before or after he released his statement (and a lot of them were), there were made without any proof.

however, here's the thing: i think the people who posted the tweets before his statement was released are the ones who have a stronger line of defense. he had never denied anything, he had actually implied some of the accusations (not all) were true before. ive been following this guy since i was 10 and i genuinely believed some of the accusations to be true because he straight up agreed that he had made mistakes and had to go to therapy to better himself.

it makes sense for at least some of these people to claim they had no way of knowing or that he complied with the accusations, and i think, depending on the judge, this might be a strong enough defense to get them to have a lower condemnation or to not be convicted whatsoever, specially since, as has been mentioned before, a lot of these people are kids.

i don't think everyone will escape from it because, at the end of the day, there was LOTS of nasty stuff being said and some of it didn't even come from his ex - when did she call him a pedophile? still, some of the tweets mentioned on the lawsuit call him that.

i can't give you a completely certain answer because at the end of the day i'm just a law student and it's a fairly new sort of action, so there's no way of knowing how it will be taken by the judge, but i do think he'll get some good money out of it, i just think he might not be able to get ALL the money out of it, you know?

[a-frog-in-a-bog]

You guys know that you should be fact checking and reading sources for everything and not just takes you don’t agree with right? The number one way misinformation spreads on this site is people reading something that validates their feelings and slamming reblog without any second thought. And this isn’t me preaching on a high horse I am also guilty of this.

For example a long time ago I saw a post that said “Fox News just published an article calling all aces and aros pedophiles!!1!1!” And while it was believable that Fox News would demonize any sexuality that doesn’t fit their narrow definition of normal what tipped me off is that most conservatives don’t know what ace or aro means much less have an opinion on them. 30 seconds later I found the article and lo and behold that is not remotely what the article was about. The actual article in question was essentially a callout post for Washington post for being a cringey liberal newspaper and one of their points was “they ran an article on Valentine’s Day about what people who don’t feel romantic love are doing instead of going on a date” and in a completely separate point said “last month they published a review about a play where the main characters are all pedophiles”. The author surprisingly didn’t even pass any judgement on EITHER point, like it literally was just “haha look at this liberal newspaper and their dumb articles” (btw all the comments were either “lol I thought this said aromatic as in smelly” or “this isn’t a new identity I know many couples at my church who feel this way”). Not even the most bad-faith zero reading comprehension could produce the earnest belief that this article was calling aces and aros pedophiles, the op was genuinely just trying to fear monger and spread misinformation and scare naive people for no reason. Or maybe for discourse reasons which imo is even worse.

But a quick glance in the notes proved that not one person had fact checked this claim, or even questioned it. This post had over 10,000 notes when it came across my dash!! And everyone fully trusted that op was being honest bc it aligned with their beliefs!! And they were understandably terrified about the implications of this nonexistent article!! I debunked the post and linked the actual article as proof but I have limited reach and clearly damage had already been done. Ok I’m done rambling sorry

tldr fact check everything, even claims you believe and agree with bc some people are stupid and some people have malicious intent

[thisloveforyourmom]

SMITH COLLEGE GIRLS FOR ID MAGAZINE 2004 2003

OKAY SO.

the reason this took so long is because i'm compiling all info from previous posts into a masterpost, but tldr back in february i, being a smith alumn, set out on a quest to confirm the veracity of Smith College Girls for ID Magazine 2004. here's how it went:

- Image ID: anonymous user asks sun-bees 'hey, if it’s okay to ask, where did you find that pic of the Smith College girls?’ sun-bees responds 'it was posted a while ago on the instagram account junyawannabe, so I looked up the image and found a bigger version of it!'

this image is not on junyawannabe’s instagram. reverse image searching this image does not provide a bigger version of it, only the version spread initially by tumblr user sun-bees. searching 'smith college girls for ID magazine 2004’ does not provide any other versions of it, only the version spread initially by tumblr user sun-bees. neither junyawannabe nor sun-bees reply to queries about the topic. in fact it’s unclear if junyawannabe even is involved. I-D magazine’s media has no record of this photoshoot ever being done.

literally DAYS into my initial investigation, on february, richard kern posts the full (ETA: NOT FULL!) photoshoot on his instagram, confirming both the image’s veracity and source. junyawannabe comments “I have gotten multiple emails about this photo lmao” (no other information) (she did not reply to our email). comments are limited (randos can’t comment). there's still 0 information as to how sun-bees got this image considering the listed avenues Do Not Work. this allows us to get some info on the casting director eléonore hendricks, but her website lists nothing about this photoshoot or anything in that general date range. at this point i've also trawled editions of ID magazine from 2004 to try and find any that reference richard kern, smith college, eleonore, etc and come up utterly completely empty. i would have to buy all 12 copies from ebay to try and find it, and these are just too expensive for all that.

important: richard kern ALSO refers to it as 'smith college girls for id magazine 2004.' an insta comment also implies the existence of sarah lawrence girls for id magazine 2006, but that's neither here nor there

trail goes cold for a while. ive exhausted all my leads and am too broke for much more.

BUT THEN, IN AUGUST: i-d magazine ITSELF picks up the trend!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by i-D (@i_d)

This provides one EXTREMELY important piece of information that everyone up until now had excluded: the issue number! smith college girls for ID magazine was a photoshoot for their August 2003 issue, The Straight Up Issue. which means the reason the trail went so cold is because we were looking in the wrong spot!

Smith College Girls for ID Magazine 2004 is actually Smith College Girls for ID Magazine 2003!

and there was a copy on ebay for 30 GPB. So i bought it. while i was waiting, eleonore hendricks also posted it, tagging a few people involved in the shoot, but ultimately it's not much new info.

photoshoot here.

disclaimer: there's eight portraits in the photoshoot. only 7 have been revealed and i won't be posting number 8. i'm not trying to gatekeep, it's just a frontal photo of the casting director wearing only panties and yes it's artistic and pretty but i figure if that was the kind of thing she'd wanted to publicize heavily she or richard kern would have posted it themselves. you don't always agree with the choices you made at 21 and you don't always make them assuming in 20 years the photo will go a type of viral that doesn't exist yet.

also it goes against tumblr TOS. buy the magazine if you wanna see it that bad, i'll show you everything surrounding the photo itself. im not posting the titties.

[discjude]

What are your reasons for liking Japeth and hating Rhian II? I'm just curious because Japeth seems to be a hated character in general.

So i pasted what i wrote before into a google doc and it was over a page long so here is a very condensed version, including my original preface. there’s also a tldr at the end if you don't have half an hour

quick preface just in case people get mad at me for this (dovesso stans are gonna hate me after this one):: I am not trying to convince anyone of anything here,,, this is entirely my opinion and I'm absolutely not trying to insult anyone that doesn't like japeth!! I completely respect it if you like rhian, there's a lot of good reasons to like him and as I'm writing this I realise I don't hate him as much as I thought I did. once again this is my opinion and it's alright if you disagree :)))

My reasons for liking Japeth mostly come from how complex his character is and what role he serves in the story. Though rhian is also very complex and i’m a very big fan of him being everything tedros isn’t as a king, liking japeth is mutually exclusive to liking rhian. Other than that, my two other solid reasons for disliking rhian is the way he treats kei (neglecting everyone else who tries to get close to you because you’re prophesied to marry Sophie? Dick move bro) and the fact that he’s ever so slightly homophobic which is neither here or there

Every other reason comes from me liking japeth, which is because::

1) japeth is very very complex and mostly very well written. Chapters like flesh and blood are very clear on what he’s got going on emotionally, he’s got a very solid motivation, and if you’re really looking for it he’s a clear parallel to Rafal. If you have read any of my other posts you will know i am a sucker for parallels

2) also speaking narratively, i think him being the culmination of every other villain in the series is Very Clever!! He’s evelyn and rafal’s child, rhian’s brother, a parallel to sophie and yknow the other one!! It’s very important to me

3) (this is the big one) i think he’s quite misunderstood and i don’t think a lot of his actions were his fault??? Obviously there’s some unforgivable stuff (if you saw what soman posted last week on tiktok you know) and he’s genuinely quite insane by book 6 but it’s made clear in chapters like Rhian and the Real Thing that there is Some Shit Wrong with him, notably issues with anger and becoming too attached to people. Sort of leading on from this, I don’t think that he’s the one solely to blame for his involvement in Camelot years: i think the two main villains of the last half of the series are Evelyn Sader and Aric. 

I Do Not Like Aric and I believe he’s almost entirely responsible for Japeth’s actions: because of Japeth’s over-attachment to him, he internalises a lot of Aric’s beliefs (the misogyny and only referring to them as “friends” are my best examples) and this ultimately leads to some sort of dependency, which kinda fucks japeth up a lot when aric dies.

Similarly the same sort of thing happens with evelyn and rhian. Evelyn forces a lot of prophecies onto Rhian, and that led to his delusions about becoming king which ostracised him from his brother and gives him this idea that anyone who stops him from being king is automatically wrong. 

It’s worth saying that i Do Not Like Everything About Japeth. Some of his writing and dialogue really falls through, and maybe having your first canon queer couple both be absolute psychopaths isn’t a good idea?? While I don’t think the queer rep done through Japeth isnt horrible, it's. Yknow. Not good. It’s also worth saying that i don’t hate everything about Rhian!! I do think he’s also cleverly written and, again, works very well as a parallel to old rhian. 

I think that’s about it and i don’t want to write any more so if you have any further questions (or if you agree with me somehow) please let me know!! It’s also worth noting that i just really like snakes and went a little wild in 2020 when i read about cool snake villain

TL,DR: japeth’s nicely written and i think he’s generally misunderstood, he’s also got some nice parallels going on, I don’t explicitly hate Rhian but i don’t like him because he treats people around him like shit. I also think that Aric and Evelyn are more responsible for the twin’s actions then the twins are themselves. I condensed this all and it's still so long

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