#WE ARE NORMAL AND HAVE NORMAL DISCUSSIONS LIKE ACTUALLY

[madlori]

No.

Just...no.

You guys? NO.

We are not doing this.

We are not going to have a conversation about how it's perfectly fine for two adult men to engage in puppy play. We are NOT going to discuss how kink is valid.

WE ARE NOT.

We are not going to lend legitimacy to literally one of the most insane wrong takes on a line of dialogue I have ever seen in my eight zillion years in fandoms.

We are not going to have a discussion about it like that's actually what that scene meant, or what that line implied. We are not going to debate that question on its merits BECAUSE IT HAS NO MERITS. Or any basis in reality as normal people perceive it.

We are going to shake our heads at the profoundly dysfunctional levels of obsession with hating something that leads to THIS crazy an interpretation of an innocent statement.

We are not going to engage with it like it's a real thing.

It is not a real thing. It's a made-up thing.

Treat it like that.

[centrally-unplanned]

IRL (In Real Life) - Buffydom Propaganda And the Internet-That-Was

It is 1997. You just got back from the latest Hot Topic run to restock on whatever the most raven-black bomb of Manic Panic they have on the shelves is, so you can do double-duty bleaching your hair in the shower while watching a CRT TV precariously mounted on the lip of your sink. On that TV is the Season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you are obsessed. Unfortunately for you, no one else in Bowling Green, Ohio, shares your passion for a CW WB show about vampire hunting teens who purposefully fumble their line deliveries. You are alone, and you have shit you gotta say about it to someone, anyone, who will understand.

Fortunately for you, the marketing team at ye old WB anticipated that their audience would be a bunch of fucking nerds, and boy do they have a solution to your problem! Welcome to the Bronze:

A while back I stumbled upon the inexplicable existence of "IRL (In Real Life)", a 2007 documentary about the community that formed around the aforementioned Buffy fan discussion forum/chatboard. Officially running from around the launch of the show until it switched over to UPN after its fifth season (with the forum dying a dramatic death in the process), The Bronze was a highly active center for the Buffy fandom, which generated several spillovers into real life. In particular, it was famous for the creatives and even actors on the show occasionally posting on the forum, which culminated in members of the community organizing a yearly party in Los Angeles where posters would fly out and be joined by said cast and crew. This documentary charts its culture & history via interviewing an array of its members.

As always, I am not here to give the blow-by-blow; instead, what is the narrative this documentary is trying to sell?

My previous documentary write-up was about nerd culture in the 2010’s; newly ascendant, growing confident in its own values and looking to justify that to itself, wealthy and with a developed enough ecosystem for crowdfunding to create professional, polished documentaries of its own heroes. None of that is true for IRL. Filmed on whatever camcorder/potato hybrid proto-Ebay would cough up from its zero-bid listings in a series of hotel rooms and people’s living rooms in 2003-2004 after the forum had died, this is the era of nerd culture at its most conflicted and insecure; mocked by the mainstream and unsure if it should be proud of that fact or deeply ashamed of it. And this documentary wears this conflict right on its sleeve; one of its opening lines is a confident assurance to the audience of “don’t worry, we aren’t like those nerds”:

Throwing Trekkies under the bus in the process, cold! Particularly given how it proceeds to barely even blink before pivoting to explaining their hobby of running “WITTs”, multi-day-long collaborative roleplays:

You are exactly those Trekkies my dudes; you weren’t just at the devil’s sacrament you were hosting it! "WITT" stands for Whedon Improvisational Theatre Troupe, you can't recover from that guys.

(I love how “dozens” is large by the way - it was for the internet in 2001, right?)

Anyway, beyond documenting the forum and its members, the conclusion this documentary wants you to hold is that the Bronze was a special place of real community, and it is a community of “normal” people, who made real relationships. And in particular, that internet relationships can be just as real as those found in meatspace, that these relationships transcended the digital and entered the physical; and that this what fandom can be about.

I want to start with the ways that narrative was correct within the context of the time. I can actually explain that Klingon comment! I have one extant interview with the director of the film, Stephanie Tuszynski, and she put her motivation as follows: 

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary? ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me […] It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

It wasn’t a random example - the 1997 documentary Trekkies set the “standard” view of fandom as extremist oddballs, and Tuszynski specifically wanted to counter that. It was the early 2000’s after all, nerd stereotypes were strong, you had to fight them explicitly! In a society where there is strong background hostility to one’s identity, you will attempt to normalize it using known reference points; and certainly the people on these forums were more “normal” than the stereotypes admitted to because that entire binary framework is a dead end.

More importantly to the narrative is the online aspect, “making friends on the internet”. Another find I have is a blog post from a professor who used the film in a class; and in the film’s narrative of “people with no one ‘irl’ to share their hobby with finding friends online” triggered a debate around if the online relationships are “taking away” from in-person relationships that are presumed to be more valuable. A debate that still rages to this day over social media! But the contours were different back then, the internet was presumed to be niche, ancillary, and relationships made online in a completely separate box from “in person” friendships. The documentary goes to great lengths to explain that they were a real community because that idea is so contested. Ironically, they do this by emphasizing that they met up in person, hung out, attended each other's weddings, etc; as if only by meeting up in person could the relationships be validated as real? But you can’t truly fault them for meeting their implicit critics halfway in making their case.

So what can I fault them for?

*****

I was perpetually amused when watching the doc that they included two married couples in the filming, and for both one of the spouses would talk and the other would sit there, in silence, the entire time. Maybe they were members of the community and just not talkers; maybe their lines got cut in post. But what I kept thinking was that they were there selling normality to me; married couples are just inherently less oddball, less threatening, and in the era where “nerd = virgin” just less nerdy. Like with the Klingon line, there is an intentionality to the “just like you” vibe.

Which, as mentioned with the extensive forum roleplay, inevitably breaks down once the reality of forum activity is dug into. And I buried the lede here - you may have seen the title of the “longest” roleplay was “RTBS Soul Restoration Project”, but what does that mean? RTBS was a forum member’s name, and well:

Oh yeah, we are saving our friend from “a fate worse than death: worshiping Britney Spears” - welcome to 2001 baby! This is peak “nerd wars” stuff, the normies hate our shit so we hate the normie shit right back. Which is exactly how nerd culture was in the 2000's. I am not at all throwing shade at their tongue-in-cheek roleplay, resplendent in the ludicrously purple prose and asterisk-laden action descriptions as required by the early internet; but it sits in clear tension with some of the other messaging in this film. Leave Britney alone guys!

The documentary highlights a number of common practices from the forum - people doing daily greetings, the way that it being one unending massive chain of posts with no threading or topics meant people would mass-tag individual people to respond to and from “circles” that way - but there are things it leaves out. I did what any normal person would do after watching this documentary and read through over a year of archived posts on The Bronze to understand the community - but man did I not have to, as on literally the first page of my archived link I see:

And through God’s good grace that second link is archived:

Yes there are pictures at the link, and yes later on it does compare Buffy’s cleavage to the Mona Lisa. (The Giles link is not quite functional, but I was able to find it; sadly it is not nearly as thirsty)

I also found these “onboarding” sites for new members. Remember, this forum was the official forum, which meant there were no community mods or ability to “pin rules”, it was pure anarchy - so advice filled the gaps. And one of the bigger ones, in its *sighs and rubs forehead* blue font on black background, warns against “hottie posting” aka talking about how hot say Angel is, not because it isn’t allowed, but because it is like “pointing out the sky is blue” - it is so common that it will just get washed out.

It might seem like a similarly sky-is-blue comment to note that this forum was heavily about shipping, hotness discussion, fanfiction, and the like. Of course it was, right? These website “senior members” were trying to minimize it, police it, but it broke through constantly and also simmered under the surface through discussions and RP’s from my own review of the forum. The documentary, however, spends incredibly little time on it. Brief mentions of Angel fics, and no mention (iirc) of discussion of how hot the women were at all. Because once again those details really don’t fit into the narrative it is trying to sell.

At one point in the documentary someone notes how diverse all the friends they met in this community were? Which I broke out laughing over. In one way it is not wrong, I get it! Midwest college kids meeting people from all over the country, ages 40 to 14, talking about something no one in their podunk town understands. But on the other hand, you could not come up with a more standardized slice of humanity if you tried to rig it. Everyone here is an American+ with computer access in 1998, it is a grab bag of sys admins, nerd creatives, and comp sci majors.  I did a random sampling googling the people interviewed to see what they are up to now, and literally a third of them are librarians. Even their fashion is like God played a prank on this director; not even a 2000’s anime con panel lineup is this stereotypical in the combinations of alt-goth lit girls and nerdcore computer bros.

The evolutionary process of joining this forum -> liking it enough to go to the live meetups -> liking that enough to participate in a documentary about it was a pressure cooker spitting out only a certain kind of person. Which is truly fascinating to see on display! This is the internet-that-was; and it bleeds through the grainy film despite the director’s efforts at times to the contrary.

Though even then it was only a very specific slice of the internet-that-was, because this is a very special breed of Online; namely, the professionals.

*****

Something that is decidedly not typical of The Bronze as an online community is that, as mentioned before, Joss Whedon and other creatives posted on the web forum, answering questions and also just playing around, and how that led to in-person parties where both forum members and cast/crew attended - the Posting Board Parties, or PBP’s. At these they hosted fundraisers, talked about the show, and in the documentary one girl reverently describes with incredible Repressed Lesbian Energy her experience of seeing Eliza Dushku dancing next to her. The PBP had a panel of party organizers, admission systems to keep out the “undesirables”, budgets, the works.

All this the documentary shares openly; it is a peak moment where the digital becomes real in a transcendent way, opening doors analog reality never could. It is also a cold-sweat-waking nightmare story from the lens of a modern Hollywood social media manager; one person in the documentary tells the tale of how one time lead actress Allyson Hannigan posted her phone number on the forum asking people to leave her cute voicemails. The person in question immediately called, and got Hannigan herself instead of the voicemail, so they chatted for a bit (The guy telling this tale is obviously lovestruck; his wife is sitting in typical silence next to him). Today this would be a code-red, nuke your phone situation; but the circle was so cloistered, and the rules so unwritten, that no one cared in these early years.

What they share less openly is all the drama that went into this event. They wax nostalgic about how the parties brought them together, but what isn’t mentioned is the church schism it caused, as the moment cast from the show started attending the party it got mobbed by outsiders. By its ~3rd year there were approximately 400 guests but only ~50 or so were from the forum. They had a huge fight about it, the head of PFP planning committee - “Morbius the Vampire”, who was later jailed for financial fraud btw - told the dissenting faction why don’t they just throw their own party if they hate his so much, and so they did. There was more fighting about it, and eventually they held a peace summit at an LA joint called Mel’s Diner to merge the two factions together. (My source for this is a book, which I will link later)

Hilarious, for sure, but while so much of what we have discussed is “proto online nerd communities”, this part is most decidedly not. The typical web forum absolutely cannot replicate the experience of roleplay-posting your way into shaking hands with Joss Whedon and having a shitfight over party budgets in LA. But most posters never got to attend these parties, of course, this didn’t mean much to them. While for those who did, you cannot help but imagine that this played a gigantic role in making them all become a “real” community. And care enough about that circle to, well after the forum was gone, schlep to a hotel room to be interviewed for a documentary about it. Participating in a documentary is always, in some way, an exercise in selection bias; but here the pruning is turned up to 11 - this is a very elite slice of a very unique fandom experience.

*****

I have one deeper level to go on this thread, somewhat buried in time today, that further shaped the participants here: “Whedon Studies”. The 2000’s was not the birth of media studies as an academic discipline; but it was the birth of fandom-driven media studies, and Buffy was nearly unassailably the leading light of that movement. Academics hosted entire conferences (and inexplicably still do!) on Buffy, Firefly, etc; almost all from the lens of gender & media, as Buffy’s brand was deeply entrenched in that deconstructive milieu. This movement would die a fiery death during the 2010’s shift in media & gender politics, and when the controversies around the toxic working conditions on the set of Buffy/Angel led to Joss Whedon’s near-total expulsion from creative pursuits. The whole edifice is, in a deep way, “cringe” for many of its former participants today.

But what is relevant for our story is that director Stephanie Tuszynski was a full member of that movement; while composing this film she was, for example, giving talks like these at conferences devoted to the Buffyverse:

God that is a lot of talks. This film itself was her thesis project for her I believe philosophy masters, and in our scant interviews lists other fandom-academic film projects she wanted to tackle (which as best I can tell fizzled out later). And the interview subjects were often participants in the same space as well! Academic-types doing media studies with a Buffy bent, or things like culture writers for new media outlets. One of them, writer Allyson Beatrice, even published a book about the Buffy fandom that was in regular bookstores:

To quote the blurb:

A hilarious collection of true stories from Allyson's days as one of the Internet's leading cult TV fan gurus, her mind-boggling escapades include meetings with network executives in dark steakhouses to try to save doomed TV shows and one hastily arranged wedding for two committed Buffy fans. 

I highlight this not to say that academics cannot make documentaries, they certainly can. What I am saying is that if you point your camera at career Buffyverse writer Allyson Beatrice, and label her as a typical forum member giving you the hometown everygirl perspective on the community, you are, however unintentionally, lying to your audience. In its quest to give you the just-like-me Buffy fandom experience, what this documentary elides is that it is often giving you the lens of people who are fans of Buffy as a career. Those people are going to be bringing very different experiences to the table - of course they are concerned with sanitization, with nerd culture debates, the works. That is their bread-and-butter trade.

This dynamic bled into the forum’s day-to-day; there was a very clear hierarchy of “veterans” and “top” posters, who organize the live parties, have deep roots in the community, and even the ear of the show team...and everyone else. Particularly because as mentioned there were no rules on the forum, but since that can’t actually function in practice they self-generated community rules and thus their own leadership class. Cliques and groups were common and named, and veteran posters even had formally designated groupies:

I had also by this time become a groupie. I so enjoyed one particular Bronzer’s posts that she allowed me to become the seventh of her groupies. It was through groupie-dom that I got my first taste of firsthand WITT: several Bronzers, on the occasion of the birthday of she-to-whom-we-group, each took turns grabbing the microphone and praising the day that she was born. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we did this. But it was fun, and very funny, too, as we each took turns waxing melodramatic off the top of our heads. And from work, no less

The source for this by the way is a 400 page ethnography of The Bronze posted by academic who did *cough* “field research” there; I am sure their membership in the “Bronzers Adoring Darla” fangroup was purely for comprehensive data collection purposes.

And to emphasize, I am not saying this is problematic or anything - the groupie things were all in good fun, best I can tell. I simply aim to showcase how the Bronze wasn’t just a baby version of online fandom forum dynamics; but also a baby version of e-celebrity mechanics. Something the documentary does not even attempt to touch on because that would be something normal people would not understand.

*****

All of the above may have come off like one big roast, and it is a little bit, but as I have mentioned before every documentary is propaganda. It is just impossible to have a tight film building a narrative out of the pieces of letting people speak to the camera without that narrative being but a slice of the truth those people want you to know. The Bronze web forum was a very special place to these highly invested fans, and this documentary is not lying to you about that.

But it is also a big part of early internet fandom! The Bronze was famous at the time, and it is right there at the beginning of so many shifts; the first generation of non-technical internet users, a new era of ‘fantasy’ media with the trappings of prestige and social critique, a boom in critique-as-community, and more. I very much want the full picture of that community; who made it up, what did they want from it and what did they get from it, and so on. No film could offer the full picture; this film’s homebrew rawness gives a valuable piece of it, and I enjoyed it for that. I just aimed here to draw out not only what the broader, more accurate dynamics of The Bronze were, but also the cultural question of why the film focuses on what it does, hides what it refuses to show, and what that says about 2000’s internet & nerd culture. Hopefully I succeeded in that.

And also to have fun looking at some incredibly dated Buffy fandom bullshit. May it have been fun for you too! {hugs you and waves goodbye}

[madreemeritus]

Guys have I ever commented about how both Youtube and Tiktok have the shittiest takes on Stolas? No? Then I will try to comment more often.

"I wonder why Octavia is mean to Stolas" because she's a teenager who doesn't know the truth about her parents' situation or the abuse her father went throught during 17+ years, that's why.

As Stolas antis are unable to recognize the MOST BASIC aspects of the story, let me just remind everything we know about Stolas and his relationship with his family:

(TW: MARITAL RAPE, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND HAVING TO EDUCATE STOLAS ANTIS FOR THE 100TH TIME)

1- emotionally and physically abused by his father

2- forced to marry an abusive person when he was a fucking child

3- raped multiple times by Stella before she got pregnant

4- TEEN FATHER. TEEN. FATHER. You know what a TEEN FATHER means? He was forced to be a father when he. was. A. TEEN.

5- spent 17 years surviving his wife's verbal, emotional and physical abuse FOR HIS DAUGTHER'S SAKE

6- took accountability when he realized his mistakes towards his daughter, and his mistakes were basically trying his best to make his daughter happy while being a literal survivor of parental abuse, domestic violence, SA and social isolation, literally a fucking normal human being trying his best and improving himself

7- is not only teaching her spells slowly and respecting her time, but also raising her as the teenager girl she is, and not as a 'legal adult' full of rich folk bullshit responsabilities as he was raised

"Stolas is a good dad" yes, media illiterate antis, he IS. He raised his daughter with love and care, he shield her from potential dangers (which came from her own mother), took accountability everytime he made a mistake with her, and sacrificed 17+ years in silence, surviving domestic violence, FOR HER. This is what a good parent does; loves, takes accountability and cares for their child, and as someone who has a very shitty dad who actually doesn't respect me or take accountability, I proudly affirm Stolas is doing great. You know what STELLA, an actual terrible parent, does? Abuses her husband in front of their kid and turns Via against her father. This is what a terrible parent does, oh but sorry I forgot she's the cisheteronormative woman who can do no wrong despite doing everything wrong maliciously.

Octavia acting like a teenager is absolutely in-character and justified. She doesn't have to know that her mother is an abuser, and this is why Stolas shield her from this hell, because he wanted her to have a normal fucking life. But the AUDIENCE? Grown adults who KNOW what is happening with Stolas and should understand how basic parenting works, acting like an angry teenager who hates Dada? Now that is just bad faith and urge to justify your hate boner against Stolas with the same stupid outdated arguments that were discussed a thousand times in this fandom.

For a man that was forced to have an abusive wife and a child at his teenage years, yes, he is a good father. He makes normal mistakes like any normal parent does. In LooLoo Land, he (unintentionally) ignored Via's discomfort because he was trying to cheer her up, trying to, as himself said, keep her away from their hostile house — whose hostility is Stella's fault. In Seeing Stars, he DOES NOT ignore Via nor forgot about the promise (he forgot the day, not the promise), he was busy standing up against his ABUSER. He asked for some minutes to finish his phone call, if Via had waited just a little bit longer, he would turn off the phone and listened to her. She didn't, because she's a kid with the trauma of growing up with an abusive mother and a closeted dad, again, in-character and understanding. But grown adults who were supposed to understand what is going on with Stolas having the same behaviour of a kid is hilariously telling a lot about how you react to this show.

Stolas makes the same mistakes Blitzø makes with Loona. Blitzø often infantilizes her to the point of being overprotective, and guess what? He also took accountability, because he, just like Stolas, is a good dad. And just like Lucifer as well. Buuuuut you don't really care about what is or what isnt a good father, you just want to yell about how much you hate Stolas. And the reason why you hate Stolas (at least one of the reasons) is because you can't understand basic shit about him.

Edit: by the way, let me show yall this print. It's so adorable. As irritating as Stolas's "sLaNdErInG" crowd is, the fandom always manage to make everything better. Let's smile more and think about the good things <3

[mesetacadre]

you mentioned discussing student unionism with a comrade a while back, any thoughts on that that you’d be willing to share on tumblr

—a student who is very depressed about the current state of student organizing

I think this is pretty obvious but on this site it always feels necessary to say explicitly: All my knowledge, experience and opinion are almost exclusively regarding the student movement in Spain. The student movements across the imperial core are somewhat similar, and the dynamics as far as I've seen and heard are essentially also similar to those in the imperial periphery, except it's modified by a general bigger will to actually be combative and a more conflictive social climate. For example, last academic year we had a Chilean at our uni and it wasn't too dissimilar to what he knew in Chile, with the considerations I said earlier. But still, specifities between countries are many, even between different universities in the same country or region, since they tend to have a certain culture, and aspects like the way a campus is designed have more influence than most people think.

The first problem or obstacle I identify with student unionism is the lack or seriousness. Actual student unions, unions in the sense of the word, are few and far between. What's far more common is to have leftist horizontalist etc types of orgs acting as a poor proxy or the exact same types of orgs as the previous ones but while calling themselves a "union". In my opinion the main thing these orgs lack is placing the worker's movement at the center of their activity. Students are workers as well, and worker and student issues are very often more connected than those solipsistic orgs like to pretend. Universities and lower education have lots of workers in their respective environments, often also unionized, and if a student union can find common ground with these workers, their demands can go so much further. Of course, that comes with a drawback, that these are all worker aristocratic unions and consequently also tend heavily towards minimizing combativity and place too much faith in institutional bureaucracy.

The second big obstacle is external to the unions themselves, which is that legally and socially they don't have anywhere near the same respect and rights as the regular worker unions. In terms of legality, student unions in universities often have to be registered as a normal student association, such as a tabletop games club. And most people don't really register that difference which does (or is supposed to) exist. I've had to explain the concept of a student union to people much more often than the concept of a worker union.

The student movement as a whole has a lot of particularities that are as interesting to discuss as they are annoying to deal with, and those of course interact a lot with student unionism. For example, the widespread tendency towards localisms and horizontalisms means that, because most students don't generally look out that much outside their faculty, university or high school, unionization is either very hard to achieve or materializes in more of a loose assembly of students from different places unable to coordinate anything. Being in an actual student union with a proper structure really does make you realize how baffling and inefficient it is to have these localisms and individualism. It's a trade-off between how much you want to do as you please and achieve actual results, a trade-off that most people don't even recognize as real. This time the 17th anti-hierarchichal horizontalist and anti-patriarchal assembly will really save us

[darkwing-ramblings]

What makes a happy silmaril?

For context we must consider that the silmarils are written as living is not intelligent beings in a way and that they were derived of trees and so are a probable never-before-seen-gem-plant-hybrid-creature-with-opinions-just-no-mobility. Also I am @darkwinganimus by another name, to be clear, and this moves a previous discussion @eri-pl and I were having in the replies of one of their posts over to a format with no restrictively frustrating word limitation.

As @eri-pl puts in their Silmarillion reread part 6: "They loked like diamonds, so canonically white-ish. their fire is made of mixed Treelight, so I would assume warm white is canon.

They shone like stars of Varda but had real life inside — I really need this in English! OK, I googled it.

OH. Something else but: "he pondered how the light of the Trees, the glory of the Blessed Realm, might be preserved imperishable" — It may be me jumping on things + Tolkien's poetical wording, but this seems like a strong suggestion of "Fefe wanted to jump higher than his head" (he was not the first one) and sheds a light (pun intended) on his sttitude towards the Silmarils later.

Anyway back to that part about life: "and yet, as were they indeed living things, they rejoiced in light" So they are living things, not just "like" living things. Silmarills = baby Trees is canon! (OK, somewhat canon? but they *are* alive, and by logic they must be bred not made-in-the-strict-sense by Feanor)

So they glow by themselves with warm white, but also they are iridescent like diamonds. Beautiful indeed."

(Opinions such as disliking Morgoth then Carcaroth enough to burn him when the former wore them in his underground torture fortress Angband and the latter rudely ate them).

Anyway, the discussion points I actually want to raise are below, now that the nature of the silmarils are established as probably-living- beyond the possibility of poetic and figurative language along those veins merely sounding cool- is explained:

@eri-pl Hmm, okay, so per your reply attached to this post "Melkor (to be precise this was his name at that point :D ) wanted to kill Feanor anyway. He thought Feanor would be home too, iirc from the book. And still, Fefe could have worn them to a well-guarded situations, at least. But he was too paranoid." let's imagine Feanor takes the measure of no vault and just wears the silmarils everywhere, because he's pretty sure no one else distrusts Melkor enough to be sufficiently on guard. Melkor now has no reason to attack Formenos during the party so I don't know waits to ambush Feanor travelling on the road back from it, directing Ungoliant at the trees for a distraction etc and stealing the silmarils+killing Feanor as planned. Good for Melkor he achieves all his goals.

I humbly ask how this then might end up in your opinion better for the silmarils in question, aside from more time outside out and about Aman in sun years per your "Feanor wearing them might have ended up better for them anyway. At least he could have worn them to well-defended occasions (like That One Party), but he didn't because he was paranoid about the normal Valar too.". Because without Feanor and with Finwe alive there a question of if the flight of the noldor even happens afterwards- which they were agitating let's assume so and skip the how-that-happens/goes for now- and about the oath.

Now the oath is terrible for most beings involved, yes, but is it terrible for the silmarils themselves? It's a force of dedicated warriors specifically trying to retrieve them from Melkor their evil abductor- a force of dedicated warriors who make their retrieval from Morgoth so fraught a topic Thingol invokes it in an arguably rash and spur of the moment to Beren arguably meaning "I-would-see-you-dead-before-I-give-permission-for-you-to-marry-my-beloved-daughter-go-die-to-Morgoth-and/or-the-feanorians-over-a-silmaril".

It sees one of them get out of Angband in the hands of Beren and Luthien and enjoy free-range-ish years in the open then ultimately make it to Earendil upon Vingilot's prow. Earendil and Elwing's arrival with said stolen silmaril also helps petition aid from the valar in the war of wrath successfully leading to one ending up in the ocean (not terrible for pseudo-plant-gem-creatures as an environment) and a random volcano that maybe also got swallowed by the sea (at least there's no Melkor and it has possible gem-friends in its volcano). If there is no oath all of the latter is in question and whilst things could end better for the silmarils probably (and definitely those who died because of the oath on both sides, but that's not the focus here) they could also end up worse.

Now, Feanor's son's swear the oath of their own initiative when he begins to but on their own with him dead it's not exactly assured say Kanafinwe is going to see to it a very similar one is made.

I understand entirely that it is a lot of words however so won't be offended if you'd rather call it a day/don't actually read this all. Either way putting it together in one place has pleased me greatly whether any response, staggered yay or nay, results.

[jubmato]

i cannot stop drawing ctommy girl HELP

based on

[skitskatdacat63]

Fernando Alonso & His Relationship With Cards

I'm sure we're all familar with the cards on the back of Fernando's Vegas GP helmet by now, but did you know his relationship with cards goes a lot deeper?

I. Magic Tricks

You've probably seen or heard someone at least mention Fernando's propensity for card tricks. As far as I can tell he was doing them(publically) as far back as 2003 all the way to as recently as 2018. Even once performing a card trick, with a condom and a teddy bear(!??!?!??!!), in front of Valentino Rossi who said "How was that possible?"(x)

But how did this start? According to James Allen, "Fernando admits to having been heavily influenced by his grandfather, a mercurial figure, who taught him magic and card tricks, still one of his passions away from the race track."(x) And I'm not sure the validity of this one, because I couldn't find an actual source, but apparently he once said: "My parents are responsible for the two things I like doing most - driving and magic tricks. They bought me my first go-kart and a magician's kit."

In several interviews he described it as his hobby off track, and that he loved learning new tricks and surprising others in the garage with them! So clearly cards are pretty important to him both as a hobby but also to who he is as a person since they've been with him just as long as racing has.

II. Card Symbolism in His Helmets

This is the reason I originally made this post, but I thought I should also explain the origins of his card fascination first. As I said, we probably all remember the cards on the back of his helmet in Vegas, but did you know that wasn't the first time he had cards on the back of his helmet?

From 2008-2013, he used to have a pair of cards on the back of his helmets. The symbolisms of the cards themselves as well as the evolution of their design is really fascinating to me! Even more so with the recent development of the card choice in 2023.

Fernando said he wanted to reference his two titles in some way on the back of his helmet and after his friend sent him several ideas, he decided on having two cards(an ace of clubs and an ace of hearts, sometimes pictured with 05 and 06 on them as well), saying: "I picked the cloverleaf [the ace of clubs - Ed] to give me luck, but the only pity is that it doesn't have four leaves!"(X)

2008.

Here's the very first appearance of the cards! They're displayed flat, with the 05 and 06 clearly visible

2009.

Very similar to 2008, but with a slightly different design, and they're maybe a bit more straight with less shadow?

2010.

This is the first major change! I was sad they didn't have the years on them anymore, but then I realized they're sparkly to match with his signature lightning bolts on the top of the helmet!!

2011.

Honestly I'm still somewhat unsure if this is the actual 2011 helmet? It's pretty difficult to find clear photos of the back of helmets from older seasons. It's easiest to find them on replica sites or auction sites so I'm not 100%? But anyways, I like that this has the championship years on the underside of the cards

2012.

This is when I started getting weirdly emotional about the helmets. Do you see how they've progressed from being a centerpoint to being curled up and sad at the bottom of the helmet? Not listing the year anymore??

2013.

Same thoughts as 2012. And after this season, they cease to exist (just like his ferrari chair in the garage, WOAH CALLBACK), until cards make a reeappearance in his Vegas helmet, albeit in a different form

2013 Monaco(Honorable Mention):

For some reason 2013 helmets were easier to find proper pictures of, so I happened to witness this absolute beauty. The creativity of this helmet genuinely blows me away??? Wanting to keep the card motif, but making sure to incorporate it into the rest of the puzzle piece design?? Mwah! There was another special 2013 helmet but they didn't change the cards at all so I really applaud this one

2023 Las Vegas(The Return of The King):

The magnificent return! But look! The cards are different cards! Instead of being two aces, it's now an ace of hearts, a four of hearts(his driver number of course!) and, the, now iconic, representation of himself as a Joker. I literally could not believe my eyes when this helmet was released and I saw the Joker card, what a fucking silly old man....I really wonder if he felt nostalgic having cards on his helmet again or if he didn't think about it all and was just like, "ah cards because Vegas!!!"

III. Why Does This Matter?

*The rest of the post was factual, this is moreso my personal thoughts on the symbolism of the cards/designs

This post spawned from me recently watching the 2010 Bahrain gp and noticing "hey wait a minute...are those CARDS ON THE BACK OF HIS HELMET!?" It's a really tiny detail that's unfortunately covered up by the HANS device pretty much whenever he's wearing the helmet, so it's really difficult to spot! But I became fascinated with the fact that he had cards on his helmet before that recent helmet, and now here we are!

There's something to me about how the design of the cards evolves over the course of six seasons from the cards being front and center to being smaller, more folded up and closer to the bottom of the helmet. As I said, the 2012-2013 ones genuinely made me depressed because it feels, symbolically, like his hopes for getting another Ace are becoming more and more unlikely and falling away until they eventually fall falt and fade away entirely after 2013 and disappear for basically a decade.

But when they return? They're not the same cards! Instead of representing Fernando's championships, they now represent him as a person, displaying his driver number and his persona of being a Joker!! Though I do think it's interesting he happened to keep the Ace of Hearts, even though he talked more about the Ace of Clubs before. I'm not sure it's actually this deep in reality, but I like to think that it's him not letting his championships(and the lack thereof) define him, but rather letting who he is as a person shine and be the centerpoint instead! But on a sadder note, as @suzuki-ecstar said to me, maybe the Aces aren't there anymore because he's lost all hope for a chance at a third Ace entirely :(

[iguessitsjustme]

Something I find fascinating about Wandee Goodday is that no one has kissed yet (I know Ye and Cher have kissed but...) Like not a full on make out session despite having an established couple in the show that they could be using to show us kisses. But we get no kiss sex scenes from Yak and Dee and soft, somewhat chaste scenes from Ye and Cher. We all know both couples are fucking. But the lack of kisses where normally the show would have one couple more active in that department tells me how important kissing is to this story.

Dee has stated that it's silly but he doesn't want to kiss unless he loves that person and is serious with them. But the entire show is respecting the no kiss rule which tells me that it's not silly. The entire show is respecting Dee's boundary here. And yes, Yak and Dee have come so close to kissing so many times, but they haven't. Dee has always pushed him away and Yak has always respected it when he does.

It makes me wonder what's going to happen once the main couple does eventually lock lips. Will that open the floodgates? Will the audience get to see both couples kissing then? Or will it continue to withhold that specific moment of intimacy. There's something the show is saying about the expected parts of intimacy being taken for granted and also deserving of privacy and that's up to the people in the relationship.

Kissing can be an act of love and desire, but what the show is saying is that it is not a requirement for those things. I can be completely talking out of my ass here, but something about this is really sitting with me. Not only do we get Plakao as ace representation, someone who wants a partner to cherish and be cherished without sexual expectations, but we also get the show reinforcing the ideas that love comes in all forms with so many different acts and different people are comfortable with different things. And all of that is okay. And all of those boundaries are worthy of being respected. Regardless of societies expectations for what it means to be in a relationship and be physical, whatever is right for you is right and isn't that just beautiful?

[horsemeatluvr23]

etho doodle!!!!! this one is late because i was having an identity crisis and thinking about moving to lebanon. anyways the necklace is bdubs missing tooth from secret life <3

[sharkzippo]

fics that remember jubilation lee is actually in the original trilogy ( despite having less than a second of screen time ) and have her as john’s actual non-bobby best friend are so big brained, actually. and they’re right! jubilee is 100% john’s bestie and his worstie all rolled into one.

[trans-leek-cookie]

ur comment on that post abt dunmeshi mischaracterization is so real. the white ppl have got to go i have seen the most egregious takes on certain characters particularly the ones who are clearly not white and its like hmmm i wonder why these white ppl r so quick to demonize the characters that arent white 🤔

TRULY. It's so scary out here. Can anyone hear me

[babacontainsmultitudes]

[just venting a bit into the void you understand you understand 😌] Lately I've been feeling very caught between "I have a lot of thoughts on Sparrow and Normal and all that with the ending and teen talk and feel like I need to get them out and voice them for my own piece of mind and resolution" and "I am lacking the strength and energy to actually sit down and write it all out and kind of really just want to fully move on to other things (AUs, fics, anything else)" but my brain can't seem to commit to either and that's quite frustrating cause it's just left me very restless. *Sigh*. Idk! Just needed to complain about that a bit ig, it's silly but this is what has been ailing me as of late.

[mafukasa]

also this is just a thought I had recently after seeing certain takes from certain people, but I really wish yall would actually remember that child neglect IS abuse even if it’s unintentional when talking abt tsukasa’s childhood yknow.

and also acknowledge it as something genuinely traumatizing lmao. cause as a victim of unintentional abuse some of the shit I had to read with my own eyes while being in this fandom is making me fucking sick just saying.

[matoitech]

it’s obviously important for ppl to criticize misogyny particularly transmisogyny in trans male communities since thats a trans community issue but if ur also tme and the only thing u ever exclusively talk about trans men for is talking abt us as bigoted misogynists (usually there’s a ‘binary’ slapped in front of it) i genuinely think you need to put the phone down go outside and remember that whatever insane misogynist guys online are saying is not a necessarily a reflection of like things adult men outside of a weird fringe group of freak transmisogynist dudes on tumblr who think the boys should get our own word JUST like the GIRLS or its NOT FAIR!! or whatever (and one coined by a fucking terf at that..) are saying, or justification for behaving weirdly about an entire diverse community of trans people.

again i do not say this to like dissuade ppl from discussing legitimate problems but like a couple points- 'binary' trans men r capable of talking about it ourselves, and we do, and we’re not the ones whose posts get shared about it. and second: if you’re only bringing us up to talk abt how shitty particularly TRANS men are you might have a problem you need to deal with? this is not a shocking statement. like at some point someone has to point it out to you and sit there and take the shit and patiently explain to you it’s that the problem comes when its literally the ONLY thing you bring us up for and act like we're not capable of talking abt this ourselves, and that its a problem how comfortable ppl r for letting ppl speak over/for us if the only similarity they share w trans men is.. an agab and not being cis (yikes!). or if theyre transmasc and male aligned in some capacity but dont have any interest in engaging with or considering themselves a part of like trans men, THEYRE the ones who need to talk abt it, bcuz the (usually 'binary') Trans Men wont (not saying those ppl cant or shouldnt but they may be treated differently for doing so)

first ppl liked using transmeds existing to throw up justification for treating us like a bigoted monolith you (uniquely) Just Dont Feel Safe Around and its normal to make assumptions abt us being transphobic especially if we don't identify by labels deemed 'safe' and Inherently More Radical, and now its pretending we all collectively cant recognize our privilege thru our intense blinding hatred of women and its up to you to save us from ourselves and beat some common sense into the inherently bigoted stupid about gender patriarchy dicksucker boys. like i dont know im tired of it when trans men being accused of only existing bcuz we want to be patriarchy bootlickers i guess is always what radfems have thrown at us, so its not like this negative perception of trans men filtered thru a supposedly progressive lense is new. a lot of adult trans men dont talk abt like particular hot shit thats discussed a lot on here rn (the 'trans misandry' shit for example) bcuz its was not a problem in the spaces we're in and we knew it was stupid as fuck right away and barely worth talking about to say 'yeah you know that thing we all know is stupid and bullshit? its stupid and bullshit'. bcuz we're not fifteen years old or weird misogynists. we have brains, don't hate women, and we dont all know and hang around the same people.

anyway dont take this post as a stand in for serious discussion and calling out misogyny (again especially transmisogyny) w other men, those posts do need to exist, i am not trying to say this stuff shouldnt be talked about. what i'm specifically pointing out is a frustrating pattern in the perception of and discussion of trans men that ppl probably dont realize theyre participating in. i do think it is very important to talk abt community issues and criticisms but if its literally the one thing you bring up trans men for i think being aware of that behavior has no NEGATIVES here. also do have to bring up i specified other tme ppl early on bcuz this isnt smth ive experienced or seen from transfems and their position as like the affected party of transmisogyny is automatically like .. if they have issues w trans men it is pretty inherently coming from a different place than like, a cis womans, or a tme nonbinary person, or a transmasc person with issues with trans men, or a cis mans, etc. tme ppl who are on a very different ground here, whose behavior is straight up different anyway

[freakwiththeknifecollection]

Years of reading and writing disapproving parent fic have come back to haunt me, as I'M now the one committing faux pas in front of my partner's uptight parents 🫠✌️

[bisexualrapline]

i hate army twitter lmao someone remind me not to go on there ever