#Then again this is me being a pedant about fucking everything

[prolibytherium]

Bagman is the best BCS episode to me by far. LOVE me a good tv episode where two guy's (gender neutral) struggle through a wilderness they are woefully unprepared for (where the wilderness also perhaps reflects an internal struggle through the wilderness of the self or Whatever??!!?!!) and the guys involved (for better or worse) learn more about each other in the process. AND he drinks his own piss

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

well hey there nhw trickster <3

[mythicmanuscripts]

OMG I saw ur aegon x vampire reader post and the note below it. I seriously need a vampire Aemond x reader!!!

Ps: UR WRITING IS SO GOATED I BINGED READ ALL OF THEM😭

Aw thank you anon!!! So the previous vampire!Aemond ask I answered was about how the relationship with Aemond started and I think I now want to spend some time on the actual relationship itself?

Anyway, enjoy my random babble about vampire!Aemond and let me know if you lads have thoughts! This will be the last vampire!aemond ask I answer without much info, if you want more of this then just be sure to put some more info then just “vampire!aemond”

Anyway once again, subby vampire!aemond below the cut! There’s no real coherence in this answer I’m just babbling about this so get ready for chaos

So as we’ve established, vampire!aemond won’t drink from any other once he’s fed off you. He will not touch another’s blood, he’d rather starve.

Also, I love the idea that this marriage wasn’t actually arranged? Or maybe you do have an arranged marriage but it’s with someone else at the red keep and not Aemond and well… those plans have to change real quick because once Aemond gets a taste of you he’ll burn down the whole fucking kingdom if anyone tried to get with you.

Anyway, I think what’s most interesting about this whole idea is that Aemond would seem to be the one in charge with how he behaves but then the moment you speak he’s practically curling up at your feet. He’s SO protective over you, but he’s protective in the same way dog would be? He’s always with you, always standing just a little behind you and keeping a close eye on whoever you’re talking to, he’ll attack if he thinks someone might hurt you, but at the same time he’s just so… obedient? You speak and suddenly he’s looking at you like you hung the moon and all its stars and waiting for bated breath for what you will say to him.

He’s well aware that he needs you far more than you need him, and no matter how many times you try to tell him that’s not true it doesn’t matter he won’t be convinced otherwise. He knows he will never be entitled to your body, and so he will cherish every second you do give him.

Needless to say, he treats you SO well. It’s not just about the blood either, he just gets along so well with you and he loves being around you and even if you said he could never feed from you again, he’ll starve without complaint and only ask that he be allowed to spend his last days with you.

So yeah it’s definitely not just that feeds off you, but I also think that because he feeds from you there are some things he does to try and look after you as best he can.

For starters, you will NEVER go hungry. I like the idea that vampires don’t eat normal food, but he still hires a servant whose sole just is to feed you. Aemond always enjoys you’re getting enough of everything you need like iron and calcium and that you have a balanced diet. But it’s more than just that, he also pays very close attention to the foods you like and the foods that you don’t so that he can relay it back to the servant.

He’s also pedantic about ensuring you eat enough and at regular intervals. It’s usually very rare for a vampire to only feed off of one person because one person losing a reasonable amount of blood regularly can cause fatigue and iron deficiencies and so much more.

He knows exactly how lucky he is to have found you and so he will not allow his feeding to cause any negative side effects for you. It’s not uncommon to be a big dinner or event of some kind and the servants serve you some foods high in iron and vitamin C that the other guests don’t. Of course you can also eat the normal food, but Aemond is very particular about ensuring there is always enough the beat possible food available for you to help with losing blood for him.

And lord help anyone who tries to mess with that, even if someone just asks to try something and you actually agree to it, he’ll still tell them off. Of course you don’t let him get away with this. You always turn to look at him and tell him to stop being so combative and to everyone’s shock he immediately nods and apologises because he hates seeing you unhappy with him.

I also think he gets VERY offended any time someone thinks he’s feeding form multiple people or offers to let him feed off them? Like I think maybe it would be quite common for neighbouring kingdoms to visit and bring their own people for blood supply and then as a sign of respect and trust, they’ll send one of their people to offer themselves to one of the vampires residing in the red keep.

More than once visitors have made the mistake of getting their people to offer a feed to Aemond. The first time they ask he just says no and ignored them. Then the second time he tells them to fuck off, and if they are come a third time then they’re getting kicked out.

It’s even worse if they try to make this offer when you’re there. You know Aemond will never do it and you don’t care how many people offer themselves to him, but Aemond sees them doing that as an insult to you? You’re sitting right there and they are to try to offer him another’s blood? Often you have to tell the poor human to scamper off before Aemond kills them.

And lastly, I wanna talk about Aemond after a feed? Well more specifically, Aemond after a bigger feed? He’ll drink from your neck for bigger feeds, and fuck once he’s had his full he’s almost blood drunk?

His head is all fuzzy and he’s so utterly satiated it’s like he can he can feel it in his bones. He’s so plaint then, will do whatever you say and often ends up more than a bit horny. You LOVE riding a blood drunk Aemond so much because he’s just completely blissed out the entire time, and when it’s finished he’ll just turn and hide in your arms, mumbling his thanks and promptly falling asleep.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

gax + corporate/law vibes + ‘The powerpoint was steadily taking over their relationship, something that Max was not willing to stand for.’

gax?? gax!!

power (you make some points): a gax ficlet

rated m, ~1.2k words now also readable on ao3

author babble:

bear in mind i wrote this before i knew more about the Gax Lore i.e. karting together, actually being nice to each other blablabla. you could also just retrofit the vibes and hopefully they still work. anyways!

will throw this up on ao3 when i’m not sitting bleary eyed in an airport

————

If there was one thing that Max Verstappen wouldn’t tolerate, it was George Russell having the monopoly on good PowerPoint presentations. Max had won all four years of debate in College, as well as the dubious title of “most radical deployment of Google Slides templates” at his MBA, and he was not about to be usurped by the other guy in his department who actually knew how to use an animate transition.

“You missed an indent there.” Max says, pointing at the monitor. Yellow and red lights wink at them from the outside, as if to say: you’re both in your mid-twenties, quit wasting it on a computer screen at 11pm on a Wednesday, maybe?

Max is not staring, very determined not to look at his teammate’s facial expression. But George is almost certainly rolling his eyes right now.

“Was coming back to that, alright?” George huffs back. Max is very professional most of the time. But something about how wound up George is, how insanely pedantic he is about everything from semicolons to coffee cup placement for the Directors to taking insanely detailed minutes that nobody except Max reads after the meetings – well. What is it that Nietschze once said? We hate in others what we most identify with about ourselves. Or was that from Twitter? Max does not really use Twitter except to look at Bloomberg News updates and cat videos, so he does not know. And anyway Nietzsche never made a six figure salary.

“It would just be easier if you would let me do it.” Max says.

“Fuck right off, mate.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like me to.”

“Not now.”

“Just share the link to this. I’ll do it.”

“We agreed to take turns on this.”

“Yes, Russell. But sometimes, the rules are meant to be bent.”

George swivels his chair to Max, then. Fully attempts to pin him with his gaze, commencing an awkward stare-off that lasts way too many seconds and makes Max once again realise that George’s eyes remind him of the expensive fish tank he saw at the Partners’ sushi dinner once. Max doesn’t think those same fish were the ones they ended up eating. But he does remember that dinner because it was the one where the Partners had dangled the promise of a huge promotion if they could help carry the company merger across the line successfully. The problem is, there was only one spot.

George’s distracting aquatic orbitals aside, fortunately, Max (i) never backs down, and (ii) has been told that he has the dead-eyed emotional stare of a robot missing an empathy software upgrade sometimes.

And clearly, the powerpoint was steadily taking over their relationship, something that Max was not willing to stand for.

Max leans back in his chair, stance all mock-relaxed. “Do you want to be out of here before midnight, or not?”

“We’re expensing the Ubers either way, so it doesn’t make a difference to me, mate.”

Fine. If George is so hyperfocused on The Tasks that he’s forgotten the fun part of being Questionably Close Coworkers, so be it.

Max deploys the nuclear option.

He sticks his leg out, nudging the toe of his Pradas onto George’s slacks. And strokes his foot halfway up to a sensitive point on George’s thigh. Max may even flutter his lashes a little.

To his credit, George does not react. Merely swings his eyes like a lamp to Max’s face again. His hand does, however, goes still on the mouse.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” Max feigns. He knows that George hates, more than anything, anyone getting dirt on his precious Ralph Laurens. But at least he has his attention now. “Was hoping we could move onto the more fun part of the typical evening activities. Maybe.”

“We shouldn’t be doing that again anyway.”

“George.”

“What?”

“That is not what you said the last, hm, fourteen times that we have done this, eh?”

“Who’s counting?”

“I thought you were the most careful of rule followers and data analysis, knapperd.”

George is a human being, but Max is almost certain the other man shakes himself like he’s preening right now.

“Well. It’s what the team likes me for, and it’s what I’ll keep doing.”

“Oh yes. Surely we must keep in mind the team. And the shareholders. They are very important.”

“Quite.”

“But should we tell them that you like it so much, George. When I do this.” Max says. Rising up, fully crowding George in, hands gripping the cool handles of the computer chair. Leaning in to nibble the side of George’s neck.

George swallows. Max watches his throat move.

Next, Max mouths the words onto the side of George’s jaw, stubble prickling his mouth. “And this.”

The click of the mouse continues steadily as Max moves his mouth to the shell of George’s ear. “And let’s not forget. This.”

Max tilts George’s face up fully, then. George’s face is flushed, eyes sparkling, all surprise at the sudden change of pace, but eager, too.

When Max seals his lips over George’s, George groans, and his hands shoot up to Max’s waist immediately. It doesn’t feel quite like winning a deal or a pitch does for Max, but the completion comes pretty damn close.

Max sweeps his tongue into George’s mouth. George opens willingly, like he always does. In the back of Max’s logical brain, a warning sign blares that the computer chair may not be able to support the weight of them both – because they spend a lot of time pretending they don’t work out together at the gym but Max knows exactly what George’s deadlift PB is and it’s pretty damn high for a scrawny looking dude.

And despite the keening protest of said chair, the two of them are both lost to it now. Max jams one knee between George’s legs, George nibbles hungrily at Max’s lower lip, Max thrusts his hips all needy, and maybe if Max is nice about it George might suck him off under the table, and–

Outlook chimes again.

“Blasted piece of shit.” George says, breaking away. His hands go still at Max’s waist. “Why we’re using G-Suite and Microsoft Office at the same time I will never know.”

George squeezes his eyes shut, as if making himself stop this is causing him physical pain. Maybe it’s that or the workflow incompatibility when George tries to move his custom Excel-Trello gantts into a third party API.

And Max won’t lie. He kind of likes it when George gets so irritated about these things. When he cares a bit too much. Because what is Max but exactly like that, too.

“Hazards of a merger, I guess. But without that, I would never have met you, no?”

George makes a noise like he knows what Max means. The other man straightens his shirt collar, and Max runs a hand through his hair. He’s been growing it out lately, because George had made a passing comment at the bathroom sink once about it looking good.

Sleeping with the person competing for the same Chief of Staff position is possibly the worst decision he could’ve made, and Max once dyed his hair platinum blonde. But, they’re stuck here together. Hell is a slightly more tolerable place when Satan’s right hand man looks this good. And knows his coffee order without asking.

Besides. Max is not bothered. He knows that the promotion is his. This is just a minor plot inconvenience.

Later, they will expense the uber back to George’s place, where Max will put his mouth on George’s arse, and give him a practical demonstration of the three different ways he’s learned to elicit pleasure from the male prostate.

George will whimper and whine the whole way through it, and after they’re both sated, they’ll both roll over to check their emails, barely concealing their smiles. They will pretend that what’s happening between them could be as clean as their zero-email inboxes. As if their connection is not violently seeping through containment.

All in the name of team bonding. For the firm. Yes.

(Or this is what they tell themselves, to maintain the illusion, anyway.)

[aihoshiino]

chapter 162 thoughts!

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 19

Aqua Hoshigan Status: uh oh, gamers

damn they dragged his ass right to hell, huh

I was perhaps overly optimistic in expecting an immediate resolution to last chapter's setup. It's becoming increasingly clear that this handful of chapters covering the Aqua-Hikaru confrontation are intended to be read in one go but because I am pedantic I will continue to review them one by one <3 This chapter very much has all the same issues as the previous chapter without quite as many of the things I liked pulling it up, but Mengo's art is back to going absolutely crazy and I got to see 2.5 new panels of Hoshino Ai so who can say whether it was a good or bad chapter.

Like last time, we're starting with Hikaru again and… basically everything I said I didn't like about this handling of him is still the case but with this almost definitely being his final appearance with no more opportunities to explain anything about him, it really sucks that the note we seem to be ending on is just "damn, bitch be crazy". Given that Tsukuyomi mentioned his previously 'noble soul' last chapter, I was really hoping we might get some sort of flashback or Hikaru POV giving some proper context to his actions but all we got this chapter was him being like "ughh i miss ai. GOD i love killing people" which is, uh, underwhelming as a final note for an antagonist like Hikaru to go out on, to say the least

The thing is, I didn't need or expect Hikaru to be totes 100% an innocent bean or anything like that (ch109 looms large), but if he was going to be the final boss like this, I wanted his antagonism to come from somewhere, to have any kind of connecting thread with the story's themes or to at least tell us interesting things about him both in coming to understand where his behavior came from and why he went down this path. But we don't know anything about Hikaru, really - we know facts about his life but as person and a character in a story, our image of him is shockingly unclear. As far as the story seems to be concerned, he came into existence as an 11yo boy being abused by Airi, blipped out of reality when Ai broke up with him and then idk digivolved back into society into a guy from a yandere otome game when Ai died. Like, how in god's name did Hikaru go from the boy we see being broken up with as a teenager to… whatever the fuck this is? How did he start killing? Why? What is it about killing that makes him feel Ai's supposed presence? And most importantly - why does he pursue killing Ruby as his means of achieving this when the narrative is doing everything it can to convince us she's Ai 2.0 and therefore a living person in whom Hikaru should be able to feel Ai's presence the most strongly since her death? Hello? Can anyone hear me????

We don't get textual answers to any of that - hell, we don't even really have any textual confirmation that he is actually serial killer, despite it being something I guess we're supposed to assume at this point?? Like, whatever happened to Aqua seemingly crediting Yura's death to Nino's involvement? What happened to Aqua saying that Hikaru being the mastermind made no sense? Like, I guess he was right, but jesus

Even things I can take the time to try and infer (which, see last review's discussions on Inferring Things) just make me feel like I'm doing the work the story should have done in terms of trying to get his character to cohere. As it stands, Hikaru isn't in opposition to Aqua because he has harmful beliefs or behaviours born from his participation in society that stem from or are in conversation with the story's wider themes, but because he has one very specific unhinged belief totally disconnected from reality focused on one specific person and manifesting in such a way that caused him to just be Ontologically Evil And Broken.

And it's not like this would even be hard to do! Hikaru is literally, explicitly an affluent and powerful person in the entertainment industry despite being someone who was broken by abuse perpetuated by those very systems of power. Why not lean into that? Why not examine the ways in which Hikaru and Ai converged in their experiences of abuse - Ai able to truly sever the chain and begin healing while Hikaru ends up making Airi's mistakes and enacting abuse and control on people with less power than him to try and regain agency and dignity?

Ryosuke (even post retcon) and ch154 Hikaru work so well because their specific beliefs about Ai reflect real world misogyny and parasocialism that are rife in the entertainment industry (and even outside of it) so they're able to contribute to the story's wider themes pretty well. But as of this chapter, Hikaru's stated beliefs about killing and apparent overall worldview are so fucking detached from reality and so lacking any foundation or grounding in textual events or theming that it doesn't even feel like an exaggeration of real world issues to a logical conclusion like Ryosuke does. He just feels like a cartoon character.

Not only is this shallow in general and really a huge wet fart of an ending for a character who has been built up for 4 actual years and 150 chapters of manga, it's also just bizarrely inconsistent. There's no proper connecting thread in the text between the seemingly emotionally disarmed and remorseful Hikaru of 154-5 and fucking joker slenderman ass here. The story spent so long making Hikaru deeply and viscerally sympathetic through exploring his history of abuse and exploitation mirroring Ai's that I'm not sure of what the point of that was in terms of authorial intent if we were always gonna end at this point of "you are Ontologically Evil and must die". Movie Arc backstory Hikaru flows quite naturally into 153-5 Hikaru but these specific beliefs and fixations on killing almost feel like they popped up from nowhere to force this confrontation to happen.

Ultimately, despite being given ample opportunity to do so, it just kind of feels like Akasaka just kind of lost interest in trying to develop Hikaru into a fully fleshed out and coherent character. We get flashes and teases of what could have come together into a fascinating and compelling antagonist but he ultimately fails to evolve past a vague sketch of a character, full of unconnected ideas and loose threads. In the end, Hikaru is only ever a cipher for the story to enact tragedy through with no real interest in his own feelings and interiority in relation to it - not even his own.

To scooch back a bit into the chapter, I will say that him being dragged down specifically by Gorou is interesting, especially since he seems to have returned to his scary ass Tokyo Blade rage ghost form. This seems to represent Gorou and his rage being sort of 'exorcised' from Aqua now his revenge is complete (as I theorized might happen last week) - his memories and existence obviously live on in Aqua (F… FOR NOW…..) but as a character in a narrative, this feels like a fine enough place to leave him.

Anyway, speaking of Aqua! How ya doing, champ?

that bad, huh

The back half of this chapter revolves around giving Aqua some emotional resolution of his own and even though I've been kicking and biting to get some Aqua introspection for so long now, this one left me feeling pretty cold. After all this time of floating around the 'why' of his reincarnation, the answer we're finally given is….. just that Aqua was reborn to be Ruby's guard dog lol.

The idea that the twins were specifically reborn to be together has been imo pretty obvious for a good long while and I think it's a perfectly fine idea on paper, but this framing of it just kind of falls flat to me. I don't like that it positions Aqua's rebirth not as a second chance for him to love and be loved in a way he wasn't able to as Gorou, a gift from Tsukuyomi to two people who showed her a selfless, thoughtless kindness but as just yet more of the story using other characters and their stories to try and prop up Ruby or imbue her with more importance in a way that I think feels forced and does the characters who are used in this manner a huge disservice. I'm sure we could conclude that this is just Aqua's feelings on the matter and I really, really hope that Tsukuyomi fishes him out and gives him a slap while yelling YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF AND BE HAPPY IDIOT or something next chapter, but the extremely warm framing this is all given makes me think this is something the narrative both agrees with and approves of and as an Aqua enjoyer I just kind of hate that for him.

I also have to say that like… it doesn't not make sense for the story's finale and this aspect of the reincarnation plot to center Ruby specifically. She is one half of the titular Oshi no Kos and at least hypothetically the co-protagonist of the story. But suddenly making her the answer and central turning axis of basically the biggest ongoing mystery in the story like this feels kind of jarring when Akasaka spent a solid half of this entire manga not really doing her justice. This attempt to tug on our heartstrings via flashbacks to the twins' childhood also doesn't really do anything for me because as cute as it is, it's just disconnected flashbacks to brand new events in their childhood we never saw or heard about before. And it's weird because it's not like we don't have in-story examples of Aqua being over protective of Ruby, so why not flashback to those?

Idk. It's hard for me to articulate why this left me feeling kind of cold, but it feels like a symptom of this being part of an ending that Akasaka set in stone too early on and hasn't compromised for he way the character dynamics and story that made it onto paper have shifted and changed in ways that don't one hundred percent line up with the ending he wanted. If the twins' relationship was going to be this important to the ending and be so central to Aqua's existence as a character, I wish we'd spent more time on it. One of the major critiques of OnK that people had from like chapter 12 onwards that I still agree with is that Aqua and Ruby's relationship doesn't feel like a close knit connection between two people who grew up together for 1X+ years, and that continuing issue makes it kind of hard for me to feel the warm and fuzzy sibling feels right now. Which sucks because I LOVE the Hoshino family trio and I love Aqua and Ruby's family dynamic when we actually get to see it - their chapter of interlude and some of the scenes in their home in early OnK are some of my fave parts of the story for that exact reason. But this just kind of whiffed for me.

It also isn't lost on me that Ai is basically absent from these flashbacks despite them primarily taking part in the part of the twins' childhood they spent with her. I get that the idea was to focus specifically on Aqua and Ruby's dynamic there but it still feels kind of…

I've already written a short essay on this topic as it pertained to the initial reveal of Tsukuyomi's role in AQRB's reincarnation and the TL;DR of that post is that early in the series, Ai is centered as a character of as much significance to the reincarnation plot as Gorou/Aqua and Sarina/Ruby are, with the togetherness of the Hoshino family as a trio and Ai specifically as Aqua and Ruby's mother being emphasized as having a great deal of meaning and importance. But this chapter doubles down on essentially erasing her as a figure of weight and consequence in the twin's reincarnation in a way that is both inconsistent and just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Like… I'm sorry, but given how much of Ai's character revolves around her being the victim of exploitation, of objectification, sexual and otherwise, of being forced to warp herself to response to the filthy desires thrust on her by the people around her, it's really just gross and a huge misstep for her to be reduced to a convenient walking uterus. It is yet another example of Ai being reduced to just a stepping stone in Ruby's narrative and part of a pattern in this regard I've come to really dislike. Framed like this, Ai's own act of bravery and love in giving not just herself but Sarina and Gorou the family all three of them were denied all their lives is now nothing more than a vessel for Sarina's wish fulfillment. As you can imagine, I kind of hate this too!!

Depending on if volume 16 follows 14 and 15's trend of being 11 chapters long instead of 10, vol16 will end on either 162 or 163 - based on how 162 ends, my guess is that this is our volume ender so I'm curious to see what form 163 will take - straightforward continuation of this scene or focus switch to other characters to maintain suspense? I guess we'll see in THREE FUCKING WEEKS……. Akasaka i swear to god……………………….

sidebar but tsukuyomi just out here floating is kind of wild. what happened to 'it's a normal child's body' ya little twerp?

[raining-anonymously]

this is pedantic as shit but those “all of you saying ‘i would not make the same mistakes as the tragic person in this myth’ are lying. yes you would” annoy me. you don’t know me. you don’t know my autistic decision making process. you don’t know my paranoia. if i were icarus, newly released from imprisonment and flying on fucking wings, i would be TERRIFIED. i would do everything my dad said. i’m not saying i am better than icarus, i am saying i can barely DRIVE without a panic attack and i constantly have to force myself to go fast enough on highways, and you think i’d fly higher up than what an adult told me was safe??? absolutely the fuck not. no.

as for orpheus, yeah idk. i appreciate those posts about how he looked back for LOVE and not out of stupidity or any other reason, but once again, i am AUTISTIC and PARANOID and probably got a bit of OCD as well, we’re still figuring that one out, but anyway, i would follow those rules to the LETTER. then if i’ve been tricked it wasn’t my fault! but if they told me the truth and i didn’t listen, that’s on me, that’s my fault. can’t take that risk. i am not saying orpheus was wrong (though, in a literal sense, he was), i am saying this is not how my brain works. i would not look back because my brain follows rules if they make sense. deals make sense. do this thing i tell you and i’ll give you what you want makes sense. i would not look back. i’m fucked up in slightly different ways than the gods and tumblr expected.

i would have eaten the apple in the garden, though (because that’s a rule that DOESN’T make sense and i have no proof consequences will occur).

i used too many words in this but i have to make sure everyone understands i am being literal here.

[mdhwrites]

The Stupidity of Claiming Heroes Push for Inaction

TLDR: It really sucks to me that 20 years after Superman: What's so Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way (adapted into Superman vs The Elite), the point that story made has been forgotten entirely just because of dickheads who keep saying Batman should kill the Joker.

That might sound harsh but I am deeply tired of the argument that heroes deciding not to kill is the same as them doing nothing. That just because these villains could kill again, it gives our HEROES the right to put them down like rabid dogs. The video that was shared in my Discord that sparked this claimed such lessons only existed to empower tyrants while being entirely uncritical of the fact that this sort of mentality is EXACTLY what tyrants use to get away with getting rid of dissenters. "They were clearly a threat to the state so before they could hurt anyone, I executed them."

But to get away from the politics, it's just an inherently flawed argument. The perfect counterpoint is just that old Superman comic. He's questioned what he'll do if the person breaks out of jail and tries to kill people again and Superman's answer is simple: He will stop them. And he will keep doing everything he can short of killing them so as to stop them whenever they cause trouble. That isn't selfishness or self righteousness or inaction. That is understanding that murder isn't just a narrative device but genuinely one of, if not the, worst things you can do to a human being. That in this situation it is the easy answer but that our HEROES should be better than that. That they should be able to change the world without giving into our worst impulses or by going with the easiest option at their disposal. They do MORE by deciding to shoulder this burden than someone who decides to simply remove it by taking justice in their own hands and being judge, jury and executioner.

These arguments though are always in bad faith. Or, well, they were originally. Some people genuinely believe these sorts of lazy takes, just like the lazy takes that complain about Disney movies being based on fairy tales essentially and don't take into account things like, I dunno, genre or thematics. Why doesn't Batman kill? Because Batman had everything taken away from him by callous, cruel violence committed upon his parents. If he perpetuates this cycle of violence, if he ever kills, he doesn't fix anything. He is only going to make more of himself and that is the last thing he wants because what he went through made him MISERABLE. So yeah, he could save more lives in the future by killing the Joker but you also throw the whole point of the character in the wood chipper with that argument. Good fucking job.

It's also a pedant's argument and the counters to it are also pedantic. "If Batman kills the Joker because of the fact that he might kill people in the future, instead of believing the system can function at all, does that mean Batman needs to kill every villain?" "Well, what is the line between saying that a person is or isn't capable of incredible cruelty? Should he kill everyone with a gun and make sure no one but him can have weapons so such violence is hard? What does that make him? Why should he stop with only supervillains for that matter? The cops of Gotham are often crooked and trained to kill. Even if they're good today, who says they'll be good tomorrow?"

It's almost like building an argument with a flawed base leads to nowhere good. And again, this is not me pushing for inaction. Batman doesn't hear that the Joker is loose and goes "Alfred, I have a no killing rule so I guess I have to just let him do what he wants." No, he goes out and does quite literally everything in his power besides killing so as to stop the Joker. So as to minimize how many people die. So as to save as many people as possible. That's not pushing pacifism, complacency or any of the dozen other bullshit claims you want to make about what having heroes who don't kill implies. It is just pushing the idea that we should still have, you know, ANY sort of moral code. That there should be limits in place for solving problems because an eye for an eye makes the entire world blind.

Or beheaded if we go by literal history. Hi French Revolution and the extreme turmoil caused by opening the Pandora's Box that was executing nobility at that time. That's not a joke either. The guillotine is so famous for that time period because it wasn't just one round of nobles. Once they opened up the idea that someone in power could just be thrown under the blade by mob rule, a LOOOOOOT of people died as the mob tried to find someone they were willing to let rule them.

Violence begets violence. Some media can explore when that's necessary, a lot of it has examined that really well even, but you know what those stories aren't? They're not stories targeted at kids and young teens who probably shouldn't be told to try and gouge out the eye of their schoolyard bully just because then they won't do it again. I feel like trying to teach kids to do better than that is extremely important in fact, especially as the uncle to a nine year old nephew who still gets physical with others way faster than he should.

I want him to grow up to be kind, not cruel. To not think he can do whatever he wants so long as he can claim to be 'right'. That's never been the mentality of a hero after all, only of monsters. See you next tale.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[wanderingblindly]

hello again :) can i please request a directors cut of love is killing me? specifically anything and everything about the brocedes + charles situation <3

oh my god ok so about Love is Killing Me i have thoughts and none of them make sense:

Charles and uh. Brocedes + a Deleted Scene

Yes, they fucked BUT HEAR ME OUT --

this was not meant to happen the way that it did. In my original outline, the one that I made in January and completely ignored until October, the whole "teehee make Max Jealous so he makes a move on Charles" thing was meant to be Charles's idea. At the time, my reasoning was that Charles didn't want to make a move on Max while he was working, because that felt too much like cornering him/taking advantage of him being professional at work.

So he was going to convince brocedes to dance with him during Jenson's set, tell Seb to make some comment about how he saw them "sneak off" to the bathroom or something, yaddah yaddah jealous make out session in the bathroom yaddah yaddah Seb ruining the moment by knocking and telling Max he didn't want to work the bar anymore.

Here was a deleted snippet of Charles bringing it up to Jenson during their conversation along the wall:

"What if," Charles's tone makes Jenson freeze, suckered back into the conversation. "What if I had an idea." He leans back against the wall, closer to Charles this time. "An idea?" "For my friend." "Drop it, mate." "…For me." "A plan to get with Max?" Charles bites at his lip, finding the strength to say it. He does, quietly. "Yes." "Is it a good plan?" "Not really, no." Jenson sighs. "Go ask Seb –" "But Jenson," "Bad ideas go to Seb, mate. It's in our vows."

THAT DIDN'T END UP WORKING BECAUSE I ACCIDENTALLY MADE CHARLES SUCH A SAPPY ROMANTIC THAT LIKE. HE WOULND'T DO THAT! HE WOULDN'T SET UP A SCHEME WHEN HE COULD JUST PINE LIKE A LOSER AND WAIT FOR MAX!!!!

Which brings us to the current version:

"Room for two?" Nico slides behind him, voice low in his ear – hand slipping alongside Lewis's, finding home on his hips. Charles turns his neck to look at Nico with a raised brow, uncertain what's gotten into him. Nico just smiles back, something sharp and a little predatory, something that reminds him of the earlier days of their acquaintance. He'd accidentally gotten in the middle of one of their little spats, which was.... interesting, if not slightly formative.

Ok hear me out again: the bar kind of has this semi-platonic semi-not platonic polycule sort of vibe. Like, does Jenson probably have a bit of a crush on Charles? Sure. Does Charles also have a bit of a crush on Jenson? Also sure. Obviously nothing between Charles and Seb because they're more brotherly than anything, but like, you get it.

As for brocedes, this is what I've pictured:

One of the earlier times that Charles came in (not his first visit, but he wasn't fully A Regular yet), Nico and Lewis were having a tiff about something pretty pedantic. It wasn't enough to actually worry Seb, it was -- as Charles would later come to learn -- more foreplay than anything. Cue Nico spotting Charles, spotting Lewis looking at Charles, and having a bit of an idea.

After all, Lewis loves pretty things -- and what's better than one? two?

Nico slides down the bar, flags down Seb to bring them a drink (who definitely knows what's going on but doesn't mind watching), Charles gets snagged hook, line, and sinker.

I'm now ruminating on the expression CX brought to my attention; he was their 'get along hole'. I think.

But they all had a good time so what's the harm.

[thethrobbingmembers]

THE THROBBING MEMBERS REVIEW: The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley

Why does the pro-LGBT regency piss me off so bad? -Sarah

They could've lived a lie, and it would have been great. -Catherine

Where have all the good sapphic books gone and where are all the toxic queers? -Smurf

I was too busy getting straight married to finish this book. Love Loses. -Margo

Was unable to finish this book due to morning sickness from being PREGNANT!!!! Congratulations!!! -Cindy

Dream Cast

Philippa

Tommy

The Wild Wynchesters

Summary:

Philippa is a rich Regency lady. Her parents want her to get married, but she just wants to read books. In an effort to help one of her book club friends, she recruits the Wynchester family, including Tommy Wynchester, who has secretly been in love with Philippa for years. Cue disgustingly cutesy shenanigans. 🤮

Review:

I mean this ending sucked right? Just gotta get that out of the way. Most of it was fine, but god that ending. Every twist and turn was so contrived.

"I’m a wallflower. I receive marriage proposals everyday, but somehow I’m still an underappreciated wallflower who everyone hates." God, stop whining.

In theory, I should have enjoyed this book. It had all my favorite things: absurd shenanigans, costumes for plot reasons, and poorly defined historical periods. This is also to say that it had my least favorite things: absurd shenanigans, costumes for plot reasons, and poorly defined historical periods. Depending on the author, these are all either fun beach reads, or infuriating. Unfortunately, and mostly due to the Wynchester family (spelled that way surely to avoid admitting taking any inspiration from supernatural, which yeah, fair), this book falls into the latter category.

Every third or so book I read for this club I go this was fine, whatever, I probably won’t remember anything from it. And then we screech about it, and get pedantic over a bottle of wine and I suddenly remember everything that annoyed me while I was reading. Something, I think, must be fundamentally broken within the historical romance publishing world, because it seems like it modern ones are worse than ones that came out just a few years ago? This wanted to be a fun beach read, but the author just couldn't help herself, and had to keep making sure that chronically online queer people on twitter (you can't make me call it X, Elon, fuck you) wouldn't pick a dumb discourse based fight with her. This has all been litigated over and over again and shouldn't have been included in this book.

I know I ask this every single review I write, but seriously, why are these people allowed to publish these books unedited. Not to give myself away as a millennial, but is this is the recession’s fault? Like people were fired and then the roles were never filled again? I know its deeply hypocritical of me to complain about editing or lack thereof considering my writing style is to drink too much wine and/or smoke a little weed, but I’m not claiming to be a professional am I? As Catherine wisely said, this "mystery" was dumb, for a wide variety of reasons, one of which being the actual history of manuscripts.

This book was fun, assuming I read it in one sitting, and never thought about it ever again. And also, skipped entire sections of the book, especially when the truly insufferable found family was on the page. Who fucking asked for this. Why were there so many, and why were they all so annoying?

This entire book should have been just the two people, whose names I immediately forgot because tbh, this book wasn't very good, masquerading as straight people in public. That's when the book was the most fun. AND YET!! That obvious solution wasn't good enough or morally righteous enough for the rich woman. THIS IS HISTORICAL!! Please at least pretend to act like it.

3/10 stars

Theme Song: Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko

Additional Ratings

Historical Accuracy: 2/10

They do say stays instead of corset, and that's all I can give this book.

Sexy Sex: ?/10

The sex scenes certainly happened, but no one remembers them.

Trauma Score: 2/10

Tommy had some trauma about people leaving her. YAWN.

Mystery: 1/10

The entire mystery hinged on Erica Ridley fundamentally misunderstanding fore-edge painting.

Notes: Free Tommy's brother's hedgehog from the Wynchester's loudass house!

[szalonykasztan00]

There is something so incredibly unredeemable to me with priests/priestesses that were spouse to be these pineculs of morality but are doing disgusting things instead, even in fiction. I can enjoy reading about Beron's or Amaratha's horrible things because it's for the plot but as soon as Ianthe steps on the scene I want to murder her. She sucks up all the joy out of it. And it doesn't really matter that she is a priestess in the story. She could be Tamlin's childhood friend who was married to some dude on the continent and after the curse was lifted she returned because her husband "mysteriously" died like a decade ago and nothing about her story would specify change from the perspectives of the plot, characters, and narrative overall. Ferye after becoming fae does not have a religious crisis (because for example, she sees The Mother instead of looking through R/hys eye on her resurrection and starts questioning her atheism) or religion is not part of her healing (religion can help some people to make sense of what happened to them and of the world in general, some people find peace in the repetitive motion of prayers or closeness and support of the religious community, etc). She doesn't even attend or need to attend many religious ceremonies or anything. Neither Tamlin nor Lucien are religious people. Not ONE (1) character has any religious subplot or even bloody characteristic. Religion in courts or in that world in general DOSEN'T MATTER. And making Ianthe a priestess instead of a power-hungry courtier doesn't matter either. Like her plan to make the priestess important again? They shouldn't stop being important in the first place. Fae should be crazy religious with Calanmai and shit. They should follow strict rules and be very pedantic about their tradition. It not only makes it easier for the author to explain why slavery was, how it happened, and why it lasted so long especially if fey are so superior to humans and don't need them because they could make everything better anyways. And the second why was she the only one who was thinking that way? There are no others? If she had such a BIG desire and this GENIUS plan, why she was working alone? No disciples, no big sponsors across Prythian or from the continent? No mentions of religious movements or anything? It may be my catholic trauma speaking but it's not only a mountain of wasted potential but also just disrespectful to religions/religious people. Mostly because her being a priestess

DOSEN'T FUCKING MATTER.

[simonlynch]

drabblecember day #21 - a walk down memory lane

ship: dewmav

word count: 1097

summary: dewey and maverick reminisce.

“‘Member when we met?”

“Course I do.”

The bar is loud, crowded, but clearing out quickly after the show. Dewey shoves his guitar into the back of the van, playing his own roadie as he fits everything with pedantic precision into its place, drumkit, bass, shit he was sure the band hadn't even used in five years, all loaded up and raring to go.

Go home, that is. He sighs, leaning against the doors as he slams them shut, closes his eyes, imagines a future where people are begging, pleading to be able to shove all this shit back into the tour bus for him, “Sign my guitar! Sign me!” and a crowd cheering his name as he walks off stage…

But when he opens his eyes to the back of an empty lot of a dive bar, his smile becomes longing. Everyone else had already hiked it out, either with their one-night stand, or just so they wouldn't have to assist him, he figures.

A drink would be more help than them, anyways.

He trudges back into the bar, pulling the hoodie he'd changed into closer to his shoulders. He walks the clear path to the counter, and slides onto one of the peeling leather stools; He turns his head towards one of the mounted TVs, a replay of some college football game that he couldn't care less about being still the most interesting thing in the room.

A voice draws his attention. It's smooth, calm, even over the ambient chatter and blown out jukebox speakers, quiet somehow above it all. That's the first thing he notices, and not them asking him if “Hey, you're the guitarist that played tonight, right?”

When he turns his head, then it's their eyes. The way their makeup emphasizes them, dark eyeliner making the pale green pop, jet black hair and vibrant ombré mesmerizing him for the moment before they speak again.

“You looked pretty cute on stage, earlier.”

“Uhh…” he trails off, pauses, blinks slowly. He tries very hard not to notice the tight leather and lace that hugs the bartender's skin so tight, surely they weren't talking to him? He realizes then he has to say something, anything -- No way they were talking to him, right? His brain’s a scrambled mess of panic and awe as he dumbfoundedly stares back at them, and what a sight he probably was, mouth slightly agape as whoever they were began to worry. Just ask them if they liked the show! Ask them if they really noticed you! Literally anything!

One thought in his head screams out over the other clutter, "For fuck’s sake, Finn, answer them!"

His words come out in a jumbled mess, some mangled combination of every question he actually wanted to ask, but before he could stop it he was already speaking:

“Do you like me?”

Well that's not what he meant to say. Holy shit, you dumbass.

They tilt their head, unsure if they'd heard him right. Probably not over the crowd.

“What?” they ask with a laugh.

“Did you like the show?” Dewey quickly corrects his tongue-tied thoughts, and confidently raises his voice to beat the noise.

“Oh! Yeah, I did.”

Dewey tries to hide his chuckle in a cough, playing it cool as he crosses his arms and leans into the bartop. He looks them over again, and as his eyes meet their gaze he realizes their stare -- it's a hard kind of stare, analyzing him, squinting in contemplation.

“I know you!” they finally relent, pointing towards him with the hand they weren't leaning on across from him, “You work at the record shop down on Barrett, don't you?”

He nods, “Just a dayjob. I prefer this to that any day.”

“Playing a show? Or chatting up the wait staff after?”

“Well, if they were all as hot as you, I guess it'd be hard to say.”

They share a laugh, and Dewey takes in the way they toss their hair gently over their shoulder, eyes flicking up towards him after.

“But...I did mean playing. Nothing beats it.”

“Well, you look good doing it, too.”

They crack open a drink behind the bar, and pass it over, “On me, for putting on such a great show.”

Dewey grins, lingering his hand over theirs on the bottle before pulling it towards himself, “Do I get a name to go along with that pretty face?”

“Maverick.”

“Maverick…Different. I like that.”

“And what can I call you, Rockstar?”

“Dewey.”

“Mm, fits you, I think.”

He takes a sip from his beer, watching carefully as they wipe down the metal countertop. In a rushed urge to keep the conversation going, he clears his throat. Maverick beats him to it.

“What happened to the rest of the band?”

“Probably all headed home…Or, out.”

“Left you behind, huh?”

“Nah, I mean -- you know how it is. Play a show, go home with a groupie…”

“And leave you behind to clean up the mess. I get the feeling.”

Dewey takes a glance around the bar, and notices the distinct lack of servers. Maybe they weren't so different. There was something comforting about the idea.

“I’d, uh, ask if you come here often, but I think I know the answer already.”

Maverick giggles, tossing the towel they hold over their (bare, as Dewey was very much aware of now) shoulder. 

“Too much, maybe.”

“I know a couple different gigs we can hit. Real lowkey places, maybe I can show you around sometime, if you like.”

“I’d like that,” Maverick grabs two small glasses next, pouring a shot for either of them.

“To a great show?”

“I’ve played better, but…” Dewey shrugs coolly, “Sure. What the hell.”

They both take the drink, both of them taking it in stride, despite the strong stinging flavor of the tequila.

“Can't do too many of those, or else my ass will never make it down the sidewalk.”

“No way you're walking home,” Dewey states matter-of-factly.

“I do every night.”

“Not today.”

“I’m off in thirty,” Maverick replies without hesitation, “If that's an offer.”

Dewey panics for a second, exhaling slowly to calm his anxiety. He feels the warmth of the alcohol dull his nerves well enough despite being clear-headed still, and he takes another drink to hide the way his lips curl into a smile. 

Well, that was certainly one way to get a pretty girl to agree to go home with you.

“I made you breakfast the next day, too.”

“Mhm,” Dewey presses a kiss to their forehead, “Think I fell in love with you right then.”

[eternitylarva]

okay, so uh. danbooru anon. deciding not to be anon now. it's me! here's the full story, as much as I think I can remember and tell, at least. buckle up?

so this all started, I think, back in like... I wanna say 2018? we were having a hell of a bad time in our life because of being trapped in Mexico by our parents who were very insistent upon us learning Spanish and refused to recognize that we were horribly mentally ill (their fault mostly) and that spending months in an unfamiliar country when we were already scared to talk to people in the language we already knew, was, like, not helping anything, at all... Long story for some other time.

so while being there, lonely and shit, we started looking at various anime images when not, like, watching anime. Partially on twitter, partially on pixiv, and partially on deviantart. We were, for the record, like, 19, not yet egg cracked, not plural cracked, not any of these things yet. Nonetheless all these things were making us very hyperaware of our kinks and making us wonder what the fuck we even were. Our egg cracked after about a year of exposure, to which I credit a lot of things in hindsight, but they're all of or related to anime. Monogatari, houseki no kuni, Madoka, FLCL Progressive, that one scene from the second-to-last chapter of Bloom Into You being circulated online with a fan coloring and extremely confusing us and making us dysphoric, and the nail in the eggshell was joining The Pedantic Romantic's discord server and the many other trans people there making us wonder if maybe this trans of gender thing was how everything could be made some fucking sense of.

But also one other very important contribution to our Extreme Aaah Gender Feelings was one specific image of Nagisa Madoka Magica groping Mami's breast and nomfing her hair. We found this on deviantart, and, at some point, it went missing, the artist's account got nuked, and we were not able to find it again.

Except we were! thanks to danbooru! someone had saved it there. Here it is.

So, this particular experience convinced us that danbooru was instrumental in archiving anime fanart. Eventually we came across some different more active artists whose yuri shipping works were giving us more different gender euphoria, but no one was uploading it there, so I decided we'd best be the change we want to see. etc

Anyway this is where the problems start. Because it turns out danbooru is not an archival site. It's not run like one, it's not intended to be one. (or if it is intended to be one, then it fucking sucks at doing that.) It's a closed community of people (seemingly mostly lonely cis men) who want to maintain an ongoing gallery of the hot anime girls they like.

Consistent with this apparent aim is their (frankly fucking stupid) system of upload limits. You can read how that works for yourself, if you want, but in a nutshell, it means that as a new user you have to get your posts approved in the moderation queue before they're visible, and you can only have so many uploaded to the queue at a time. The more pictures you get approved, the more you get to keep uploading, and if your uploads go unapproved by the moderators, you get penalized with less permitted uploads. If enough of your images get approved and few enough of them are deleted (they're not really deleted per se, just, banished to invisibility in the site's search unless you specifically search for the deleted images), then, eventually you become a "Contributor" which basically means you can bypass this nonsense system and upload however much of whatever you like whenever.

They claim that this system is to prevent people from spamming the site with too many low quality images. But the thing is, the moderators aren't actually obligated to approve images, and most of them only approve an image if they like it. So, this results in a dynamic where, rather than uploading something that meets a reasonable standard of quality and being sure it'll go through, you have to guess what the moderators personally like, and hope to god that you're correct. If your tastes align with the mods, this is probably a cakewalk. If not, then, well, you have to fuck around.

I eventually noticed that there's a discord server, so, in an effort to get an edge in this piece-of-shit mind game, I joined there and got friendly with the regulars. Asking them and the admins for help helped me figure out what to put up there, and, it turns out, that if you're willing to talk there, you can just, like, share the image you want to upload and ask if it's likely to make it through approval. Sometimes you get lucky enough for a moderator to say "go ahead, I'll approve that". Easy win! kinda. if you ignore the having to join another goddamned discord server.

...still, for a little bit, it went fine, they seemed nice enough, I was open about my queer identity and none of them gave me shit about it, so I was like... this is fine, right? they're fine. they seem fine. There were at least a couple who seemed like good people, and I thought, yeah. Fine.

It was all going just fine and dandy, except that I didn't like having to talk to people, I found the whole process of getting approved tedious, and I was also noticing some of the site admins talking about how the immense backlog created by the general inaction of most of the mods was causing problems for like, the one or two moderators who actually try to keep up with the backlog and approve everything that's basically fine, and also even the regulars really don't seem to like this system, but not one person questioned... the need for the upload limit system in the first place? or why they couldn't just... delete spam on a case by case basis (I've looked time and again; it's really not that common, most of the shit that gets uploaded is just, fine), instead of screening everything for possible subjective spaminess?

Like, if Wikipedia, instead of reacting to vandals after they've done things (like they do here in reality) went and manually reviewed EVERY SINGLE EDIT for possible vandalism, and then y'know, a bunch of the Wikipedia admins took this as license to just, delete edits that say true things they don't like? And then everyone had to like, carefully police their edits to ensure that they fit with the personal views of the admins most likely to approve them? Like... that would suck for editors, and also would not fucking work and make a lot of unnecessary bullshit busywork for everyone involved, and also is basically exactly how danbooru works.

Honestly I am still flabbergasted that they just run the site this way. Like how has no one stopped and questioned this. Why the fuck are they still doing this. Sincerely: danbooru admins, what the fuck is wrong with you? You don't have to do this! I-agh. I didn't even get to the transphobia. Okay. uh

So anyway at some point in the discord server I took a swing at suggesting a more inclusive approach to tagging the genders of characters who appear in images (another questionable system that maybe doesn't need to exist, but whatever), Bridget Guilty Gear came up, many of the regulars openly complained about how a flame war over her gender tag starts any time anyone uploads a picture of her, and eventually, one of the admins responded to me like this:

I saw right then that there was no way I was winning this discussion, so I left an :| emoji on the message to express my disapproval and promptly exited the discord server. I then spiraled a bit for a few days, had an internalized transphobia panic attack that I manifested in a vent thread on bluesky, and then talked over my feelings on the situation with our girlfriend who expressed sympathy but also said "i told you so, y'know" and also emphasized to me, "you need to accept it's not an archival site. it's a closed circle of assholes" and I said, "yeah, I know"

Anyway, I uploaded a little bit more after that, and eventually got promoted to "Contributor" status, after which point (this was back in November of last year) I have uploaded a total of... maybe 60 times? give or take. The fact that I no longer need to go through the approval queue means that I do not need to fuck with the mods in any way shape or form, and, y'know, I prefer that. I do not like the site's community, but like, it's a thing I use, and I'm gonna keep making use of their servers to host my particular special little girls for as long as they keep the servers online, I guess. And I mean, also, I guess everything I post there is inevitably getting mirrored on some other site, so. Yeah

...I mean I guess it also helps that I know nothing about guilty gear and don't follow any artists who draw Bridget. At least not currently. so

I hope this has answered all of your questions!

Thank you very much for writing all of this up. It was a fascinating read! I've been a casual Danbooru user for over a decade at this point, just using it to search for art of characters I liked or posing/framing inspiration for my own creative outlets. I too treat it like an archival site, but I've always got the vibe that it was mostly run by what I can most charitably describe as weirdos -- and it's eye-opening to hear just how backwards their systems are. I'm sorry you had to endure all of that over the years.

As for Bridget, I was pretty dialed in to the discourse on the site when it cropped up. Though I don't ever interact with the community, there was so much debate about her on the comments of some pieces that I was compelled to seek out the forums to see what they were talking about. It was largely the same as the experience you had with that Discord mod, I'm afraid. Supposedly, you tag what you see, unless you know the character is a "trap", then you tag what you know, unless that character is Bridget and she doesn't have visible breasts, vagina, or trans colours/themeing in the art. Yes, that seems to be the current compromise as of time of writing. The 1girl/1boy/2girls/etc. tagging scheme is really bizarre and they really need better solutions. Penises are considered a boy-only feature in their tagging system, but "futanari" exists and it gets the girl tag still. Is that tagging what they see or what they know? But every so often the discussion comes up on the forums again and the regulars defend the status quo because, well, to them it's a "ain't broke don't fix it" sort of situation.

Anyway, thank you again for this. It's not a website I get to discuss often or think about much, but since it's been in my life for so long, it's been rather interesting to get another side of it. Keep up the good work on archiving your special blorbos! o7

[snaggletoothedbastard]

While I was in the shower earlier, I realised that Kitty's relationship with Eleanor is surprisingly similar to my relationship with my best friend in primary school. I was Kitty, if you filled Kitty with extraordinary amounts of rage, and my friend was Eleanor. I must admit our friendship wasn't very healthy. I simultaneously idolised and resented my friend because she made me feel inadequate, like I had to prove I was worth spending time with. She was cool, she was trendy, she was sarcastic, she was judgemental, and she always seemed to have the upper hand. I would try to tell her about something I was interested in and she'd tell me it was stupid and boring. I would suggest a game to play and she would ignore me. I would be having a conversation with her and she would get all pedantic and argue with everything I said. She would randomly go off with someone else and I'd be left with no-one to talk to because I was terrible at making friends. I felt like I had to live up to her ever-changing standards and we'd both get angry when I couldn't.

I didn't realise that she was hurting me until Year Six, when things escalated dramatically and the mild teasing turned into active bullying. It went from "I'm cooler than you" to "I want you to be miserable" very suddenly, and for no apparent reason. We stopped being friends and I avoided her like the plague, but that was difficult to do because practically every girl in our class was at least well-acquainted with both of us, and I was scared I'd be ganged up on so I avoided the rest of them too. Then I got an e-mail from my friend. She was hugely apologetic and wanted to be friends again. I can't actually remember what my response was. I don't think the drama ended there, because the passive aggression and the snide comments and the poking me in the back when we were lined up continued almost until the end of the school year, but eventually the resentment faded. In Year Seven, my friend left school and moved away, and before she left she hugged me. I was honestly happy that things were changing, like we were being given a clean slate and a chance to move on. We could only communicate digitally from then on, and we haven't actually spoken to each other for a bloody long time, but I no longer consider her to be my enemy.

Why did I just tell you my life story? Because I saw a post yesterday that was complaining about Eleanor's "redemption" and saying it shouldn't have happened. Frankly I wouldn't call it much of a redemption. There's no arc to it. We don't see what happens next. We don't know if Eleanor becomes a better person after Kitty's death or if she stays the same. We don't know if she is punished for her bad behaviour or if she's rewarded for wanting to be better. Literally all it is, is Eleanor realising she fucked up and feeling remorse. That's it. Nobody tries to excuse her actions. Eleanor does give us a reason for disliking Kitty: because she thought Kitty had taken something from her. It doesn't take a genius to know that this isn't a fair reason, because Kitty has been nothing but kind to Eleanor, and Eleanor herself acknowledges this.

Considering the whole context of Eleanor and Kitty's relationship, I think Eleanor's behaviour and her feelings about it at the end make sense. It's not that they're justified, because they're obviously not. It's just that it's realistic.

Think about it: Eleanor is a bully. She and Kitty are sisters, probably of similar ages, have grown up together for at least some of their childhood, and seem to receive the same level of affection from other people. Neither of them are obviously favoured more than the other. Eleanor isn't worse-off than Kitty is, nor is she significantly more powerful. They're equals, but Eleanor feels irrationally jealous.

They're both pretty young, and Kitty's naivety and Eleanor's pettiness suggest that they're not the most emotionally mature people in the world, which is fair enough because why would they be? Eleanor's immaturity is shown in the way she treats Kitty. Her bullying is always either motivated by jealousy, as we see in the flashbacks in Something To Share?, or simply because she finds it funny, as we see/hear in the book/audiobook when Kitty's reading from her diary. Her "jokes" do sometimes go into dangerous territory, like when she abandons Kitty for hours when they're playing hide and seek, or when she pushes her into the lake, but as far as we know there is no desire to seriously hurt Kitty, only to embarrass her or to spoil things for her. That's why I think the Six Idiots made the right decision when revealing Kitty's death. They had the other ghosts originally suspecting Eleanor, which makes sense because they know she was horrible, and this just reinforces that fact for the audience, but to be honest, if Eleanor had murdered Kitty that would be a serious escalation from the childish bullying. And from a writing point of view, they'd already had a "supposedly trustworthy family member turns out to be responsible for a ghost's death" plot already in The Thomas Thorne Affair, so doing that again with Kitty and Eleanor might have come across as lazy writing. And I think it just fits better with Eleanor's character and her relationship with Kitty that she didn't kill her. Eleanor is a bully, but she isn't a monster.

Thinking about their relationship, it makes sense, at least to me, that Eleanor had a change of heart right at the end. We know that she didn't like Kitty, but they were sisters and they treated each other like sisters and Kitty never did anything to hurt Eleanor, so it's safe to assume that Eleanor's feelings about Kitty would probably be quite complicated. And considering her immaturity, it's unlikely that she fully understands them herself. I imagine the threat of losing someone you're close to would be a pretty sensible reason to reconsider your relationship with them and wish it could have been different. I don't doubt that Eleanor would have wanted Kitty to go away when she was alive, but she'd be understandably shocked when Kitty is actually dying and she realises how serious the matter is. Even if they didn't get along, Kitty has been a very significant part of Eleanor's life, and everything is going to be different without her. I think that's what Eleanor is worried about, and that's what triggers the realisation that she's been horrible to Kitty and Kitty didn't deserve that treatment.

Eleanor isn't some kind of cartoon villain. She's a person. Not necessarily a good person, but still a person. And I can tell you from experience that sometimes real-life people have an unexpected change of heart. To be honest, Eleanor's makes more sense to me because I know what caused it. My friend's apologetic e-mail literally came out of the blue. For all I know, it might not even have been genuine. I still feel hurt by the way I was treated by my friend, but I know that's in the past and I can't change it so I might as well live with it. I've forgiven my friend, because I've tried holding a grudge and it's exhausting, and I know history won't repeat itself. Things are never going to be the same between us and that's okay.

Eleanor doesn't get forgiveness. At least, not that we see in the show. Kitty thinks Eleanor was a good person but that's because she wasn't aware that she was bullying her. The other characters in the show know how bad Eleanor was and make no excuses for her. Everything she did to Kitty is clearly shown as abuse, and the closest thing she has to a redemption arc is simply her own realisation that she was wrong.

Was this plotline executed flawlessly? Probably not, nothing's perfect. And I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I hope my argument at least makes sense to everyone. If you're unsatisfied with how the show went, I'm sorry, but the only solution I can give you is: fanfiction. Read it. Write it. Immerse yourself in it. You can do whatever you want with fanfiction. Go mad. Write the ending you wanted and don't harass the show's creators.

[magpie-black-and-white]

Hot take: Hater culture is just cringe culture in a different trench coat.

“I love being a hater u3u” No you love being a pedantic little shit who takes the enjoyment out of everything and makes people feel bad for liking anything.

What makes “being a hater” so fucking annoying isn’t even the negativity, it’s that it makes everything fucking boring. What, something has to be flawless to be good? Get fucked. I hate that kind of mindset, that just because something has its issues that it’s fine to dismiss everything it does right. Chronic “Hating” strips everything of its individuality and demands conformity, because how dare this thing be something I don’t enjoy! How dare there be flaws!

And don’t even get me started on how half of the “flaws” they point out aren’t even fucking flaws, and are just not conventional.

It’s also fucking annoying how this kind of mindset crawled into fandom spaces. That’s also why, in my opinion, it got this rebrand, because “cringe” in itself is kind of a fandom-esque term. It’s just a bunch of bitter idiots getting lost and finding themselves in fandom spaces somehow, only to point at everything and going “Oh my GOD, do you UNIRONICALLY like that??”

It’s the same shit over again, where something is only “allowed” to be enjoyed through like, seven layers of irony. It’s pathetic. Fuckos, it’s fine to acknowledge that something has flaws and still like it. At least fucking stand for it.

I didn’t want to acknowledge how fandom in general has deteriorated because of these insecure, bitter idiots invading spaces made for enjoying something unconventional safely, but fuck, I miss the old times. They weren’t fucking perfect, but at least there wasn’t some whiny rat around every corner screeching about how liking something is bad unless you do it at a mental and emotional distance.

Fuck haters. Fuck cringe culture. Fuck all the people who say shit like “love being a hater uwu” and “being bullying back”. Sort out your own fucking issues. Grow up.

[theseventhoffrostfall]

Continuing on, because finishing this book is apparently a better use of my time than the dozens of good ones waiting for me, it's notable that surface-to-orbit and orbit-to-surface lasers are a constant threat and concern at the strategic level. No mention of the diffraction, refraction, attenuation or any other problem that make lasers just about the least desirable weapon to be using in either direction. Most scientifically-realistic space combat ever, remember. Also, I'm aware this is me being petty, but lasers firing into an atmosphere just invisibly blow shit up instead of leaving a big white lightning-like beam as they ionize the air they pass through.

As for non-pedantic remarks, the protagonist is on a roll of not doing his job because he doesn't want to bother people and is afraid he'll get yelled at. I don't mean some kind of internal affairs thing, I mean neglecting to conduct intelligence work and research on an unknown ship because maybe the sensors operators and comms guys will get annoyed by him.

Again, this is where I suspect the author's background comes into play. If you're a reporter playing tagalong, everything the military does for you is a favor and any request you make is a distraction from their actual work. Our grand master subject matter expert genius guy (that is very much the impression his bio is trying to give, I reiterate) can't put himself into the mindset of actually being in the military, where "not doing your job because you don't want to be annoying" has a lot of names but most famously goes by 'dereliction of duty'.

Of course, it's kind of in-character. Ensign Niel Mercer (who everyone calls Niel, because everyone uses first names in this book, much like all military organizations the world over are famous for doing) is weirdly shy and immature thus far. Refer to the blushing schoolboy crush/serial workplace harassment. I'm not ruling out that this intentional and it's heading towards an arc, but I devoted almost as much time as the book did to Mercer's (sorry, Niel's) reaction to getting into a gunfight on the surface and also proving useless in a gunfight on the surface. It is mentioned that the other junior officers are jealous of him being the only one of them that's faced enemy fire yet. Because I suppose they expected to be knee-deep in bodies and brass when they signed up to be officers in the boring admin sections of the fucking Space Force.

[qqueenofhades]

Also, continuing on from this post, which I wanted to add to that one but didn't have time since I was running out the door:

It might help if you think in terms of translation. Obviously, in almost all historical fiction/fantasy-inspired historical fiction/anything that's not set in the modern day, your characters aren't actually speaking modern English. They're speaking Middle English, Latin, Chinese, French, Sindarin, etc. If you're not going to be JRR Tolkien and create an entire conlang and translate everything on a molecular level, then of course there is some automatic level of translation and contextualization going on. Your characters are speaking modern English (at least in terms of grammar, spelling, style conventions) because that's the audience that you're writing for. Only a total lunatic would demand that you first learn the language They Are Supposed To Be Speaking and then translate it on a granular level. Your readers know that some concepts probably don't translate over perfectly, but they don't care, since they are engaging with you to create and experience a story in a medium/language they are already familiar with. Which, obviously, is the basic art of writing and making different concepts exciting and relatable, without getting hung up on tiny pedantic nuances that only interest, again, the absolutely insane. You should not be writing to please these kind of people. Trust me.

So if you're struggling with "exact" historical accuracy or worried about whether this tiny little detail is right: you don't need to! And I say that as a Super Actual Real Life Historian Person. I am not going to come after you with a baseball bat if your one-sentence description of something is not sufficiently Correct. If you want to do that research and include it, by all means do so. It's always delightful to see people going down rabbit holes of real-life research and voluntarily learning a lot about wildly obscure details, just for the sake of accuracy in their horny AO3 fanfiction. But also, this isn't and should not be some kind of holier-than-thou litmus test about the dubious concept of Accuracy (though yes, yes, I know, fandom spends all their time on holier-than-thou litmus tests). If you just want to throw in something that SOUNDS right and is reasonably plausible for the setting: go for it. Nobody except you will notice, you won't get your Fanfic Card taken away, and it works just as well. As I said, any remotely generous and/or basically sensible person will understand that you're employing concept translation, you're pointing at what it's meant to be, and trusting them to go "yeah okay, I get that."

For example: I myself will use the word "fuck" in just about any setting. I do not care when it technically started being used in that shape or form; it's an old word and as you might imagine, there are countless claimed etymologies for it. I am not going to invent some PG-rated nonsense word (looking at you, Star Wars and "kriffing") to substitute "fuck" when I want to use "fuck." The audience knows what I mean by it. It has a particular semantical, sexual, comic, vulgar, emphatic, etc collection of meanings that has been created from common usage. Technically, yes, the characters are saying some other strict phonic order of syllables that could be represented differently. But what they're saying is "fuck," that's what I want the reader to understand, and that's what I am going to write down.

Anyway, what I am saying here is: It's helpful to apply the concept of translation to history as well as language to fic, especially since as noted, this is fun writing you do for free and it can be as much or as little related to the brass-tacks details as you want. Nobody is coming in expecting to read a PhD thesis, and if you WANT to do that level of research, great! But you don't have to, a lot of what people think is "accurate" is really not, and should not actually impact on your or anyone's enjoyment of your work anyway.