#WHY WOULD YOU BE UNKIND

[wehaveagathering]

folks i am in incredible pain

[bacchuschucklefuck]

riz gukgak is SO distressing to have as a favourite character I can never funckign rest out here

[lungfuls]

like, abuse in secret happens, especially when society Wouldn't approve of the abuse. abusers aren't necessarily being enabled to abuse, often they are going to great lengths to hide how they treat someone. and like, people who knew how my mom treated me didn't feel like it was okay because i was a female or child or a female child.. they just weren't willing to get involved to a degree that would affect anything bc it would logically end in assisting to remove me from the home and people reasonably question their own judgment and intentions when faced with a choice like that, often deciding it may be best if they stop meddling because that's such a huge way to alter the course of a child's life. i do think people may have been more sympathetic to me if i was a boy + my mom may have loved me more if i was a boy, but that's not WHY she abused me and the abuse didn't endure bc people turned a blind eye or didn't care due to my age/gender. my mom is a mean person. she abused me because she's mean and she went to great efforts to obscure what our home life was like exactly bc she knew how people would feel about it. i was deliberately isolated because she was mean. not bc of our socioeconomic dynamic(s). tbh.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

suddenly got a really vivid image of my head of like a c!prime home movie sort of thing and like it starts off and it looks like just two brothers hanging out and c!tommy's just awkward around the camera but as it captures what’s clearly a long span of time c!tommy slowly gets covered in more and more injuries that never seem to heal and is clearly just playing along with whatever he thinks c!dream wants out of sheer terror and it slowly breaks down more and more over each clip, somehow becoming more and less genuine in the exact worst possible ways. by the end hes all but catatonic and blatantly very much a dead corpse only continuing because of magic with injuries it’d be impossible to survive otherwise and c!dream is still excitedly chatting to him like nothings wrong and beating his ass at mario kart.

[nicosraf]

Is there anything about ABM that youve been waiting for someone to ask about, but no one has yet?

I didn't want anyone to ask me this but before publishing ABM, I emotionally prepared to be asked "why the hell did you write the book like that" and I've been fairly surprised that no one has really bothered me about it?

As in, I expected a lot of people to give me shit for the.... unorthodox stylistic choices and general execution of such a strong pitch.

Sure, I don't look at reviews, but I expected to be directly approached and (maybe angrily) demanded an explanation for the style.

By style I mean: the book being separated into two parts, with a bizarre interlude, and the prose itself (so many sentences start with And !!!!!), and sometimes the metaphors just make no damn sense, the purposeful contradictions ("emerald rainbow")), the long lists of stuff (clothing, gems), the description of chores, the pacing having such an abrupt switch from slow and routine to quick and messy. The thoughts!! The shift from Lucifer's close POV to an omnipotent head-hopping narrator. The violent switches from scene to scene in different locations with different characters towards the end.

In the wild, I've seen some people assume my intentions for all these stylistic things. Some people are so far off, but I think that's fun. I think one of the great things of writing such a weird book is that you can tell a lot about a person by what they assume your intentions were.

Regardless, I guess it was dumb of me to be incredibly nervous that I would get directly attacked for it. I prepared answers and everything. I don't know - maybe I have a worse history with publishing that I realized skskssks

But people give me mostly fun and silly questions, which I'm insanely relieved about and thankful for!

I don't know if I even want to talk about the stylistic choices. I could, but also eh.

[dg-kino]

I feel like with everything that's happened to me then the world is trying to turn me into some kind of villain

but like, that'd be so weird and embarrassing lmao. I can't be evil because I'd feel so cringeworthy doing it yknow what I'm saying

I could totally exact revenge, or treat the people who've hurt me with cruelty and apathy, but I'd feel like such a loser lol

[la0hu]

masha broke a bowl by accident in the kitchen and when i brought her the broom and dustpan and asked her if she was okay, she looked at me, straight-faced, and said, "no, i'm not okay." and then i realized she meant that she still feels emotionally abused by the house somehow, and i felt a flash of anger because i am so sick of her shit, and i rephrased, "are you physically injured?" and she gave me another look and said "i'm physically okay." and then when connie asked from her room "what's going on?" masha replied "nothing new." like fuck off ohhhhhhhh my god

[scionshtola]

man h*rmes really just. did not have the tools to help m*teion properly process all that despair. and how could he! no one else had them (the flowers were always white!). but he cared about her. and he wanted her to go out and learn how to deal with despair and more (in the course of your long journey you will learn from those you meet. learn to walk and run and so much more). and it’s just so sad to me. if he knew how to handle his own despair, if he knew that everyone had to find their own reason for living, he wouldn’t have needed to send her out in the first place.

[stoneshipper]

every time i get sick i remember why sickfic is one my favorite genres.

[quietwingsinthesky]

know that if i ship a character with one incarnation of the doctor, it automatically extends to all of them. i can’t be held back.

[matchinacrocus]

Accept the grace and kindness for yourself that you are so happy to grant to others.

[broodygaming]

"TOXIC positivity for thinking it’s normal to, idk, enjoy the shows you watch."

no, toxic positivity is when a fandom can't take criticism and makes insular bubbles where they harass anyone who falls out of love with a thing or strawmans two different points into one so they can sound smart and win a shower argument.

y'know, like you did when you conflated the railroading and aimless arguments. :/

What’s a shower argument?

Haha wild. Anyways. Still don’t get ppl who have time to hate the things they watch. Seems really sad. Sorry ur in such a place. Hope you learn to love yourself more than that at some point.

[jawnlmablueorchid]

I haven't done a little rant in a while so I thought I might as well put on my "it's about understanding and perspective" hat and talk about things. And sure this is prompted by someone saying that mdzs as a story makes it a point to show that kindness is a choice regardless of how one has been treated. The examples having been used being wwx (who did kindness right, in op's perspective) in comparison to jgy and xy (who didn't do kindness right, in op's perspective).

So something about choice that I think I have noticed is often overlooked is that choice depends on what your options are and if you are willing to live with the consequences for said options. Stances like "I didn't have a choice," are used when people have gone through every option available to them (including not doing anything) and they have come to the conclusion that all but one option is not something they are willing to live with. So say jgy marrying qs, wwx transfering his core to jc, xy exterminating a whole clan. It's based on outcome and consequences and what you are willing or not to go through and live with to obtain such a goal.

Another point to put this little rant into perspective is that no one in this novel is actually 100% kind. People are kind selectively, and this is not a criticism, it's just a fact. Wwx is not kind 100% of the time because he tortured someone and has killed people, the same is said for jgy and xy. There is not a measurement for kindness tho, I mean, I suppose you could try and formulate a formula for that, but how much kindness someone gives depends on how much they believe the world to be naturally just, so their kindness will be repaid (which it isn't), as well as how many people will actually be receiving of said kindness.

So I suppose that formula would be like

[How many living creatures have you helped or saved - (How many living creatures have you hurt or hindered + how many have you killed) ] / how many people have hurt you = Kindness level

But at the end of the day, kindness is not quantifiable, as well as people shouldn't be judged outside of context. And I am not saying this because I think no one has done anything wrong, obviously they have. My point is more that kindness is not a clear cut line that if you do x then you are not kind. Kindness is relative to situation and context, and people will only be kind towards those people they see as deserving of their kindness.

[lesamis]

have you watched the second season of shadow and bone? what are your thoughts?

oof, anon, i hope (and honestly kind of expect) that my opinion on this isn't given any weight at all. i'm genuinely not invested enough in the books or the show or the fandom to really have the right to voice much of an Opinion, but i did watch season 2! it made me feel a million different ways, but mostly it didn't make me feel anything, which still bothers me.

there's a special kind of frustration to watching something that you're convinced has the necessary ingredients for a good show, but simply doesn't land with you. i talked my long-suffering friend's ear off trying to figure out what that was as we were watching. what i ended up understanding is that if a studio wants to target as broad an audience as possible with an adaptation, they have literally no incentive to prioritize depth over breadth. combining two fundamentally different book series - both of which come with very large character casts and a ton of plot baggage! - was always going to be a bad choice from a storytelling perspective. the second season kind of drove home to me just how far they were taking the commitment to trying to preserve every storybeat despite having a cast far too large to do heavier plotlines justice, and having a timeline that doesn't accommodate some of the slower developments that made emotional beats land in the books.

what you end up with is a very well-designed (oh the embroidery!) and well-cast (daisy head emmy when!) show that dips into complex and worthwhile characters in the most shallow way possible. inej has one of the most horrific backstories in canon, and the lynchpin of her trauma is taken off the playing field in the blink of an eye to advance a different storyline. a character arc like hers, or genya's, deserves space and resonance. if you got up to get a drink twice throughout the show at the wrong moment, you could have literally missed the resolution of both, that's how little space they take up. given how good these actors' performances are, and how much affection there clearly is among the cast and crew for the project, the lack of substance in the storylines you can actually see in the show makes me feel a bit jaded and cynical.

very sorry to go off on a tangent there, anon! i'm not sure i gave you a very uplifting answer. the blowing-out-of-proportion of adaptations for the sake of hedging every possible bet was a sore point for me in the rings of power last year as well, so consider all of the above as a personal shortcoming much more than like, an Intelligent Critical Assessment :')

[beartes22]

Starting to watch girls. I can’t stand Hannah, I don’t understand Marnie, jessa is fascinating and shohannah (?) needs more screen time.

Also, why is Hannah always naked? And why is Adam allergic to shirts?? He’s so weird. Everytime he starts talking or having sex with Hannah it’s so uncomfortable. Very cringey. Are they….people like…get turn on by things like this or are they just out weirding the other?

[carrieway]

i am so sleepy but the horrors (uk edition)