#after some rant or weird or even problematic shit gone down

[tim-hoe-wan]

Without a doubt the KarJenners have done a lot of pr relationships. But I can’t understand those who think Kendall and her NBA boyfies are pr. Have they not seen NBA fans 😭. They’re gonna buy those jerseys and sneakers no matter who they’re dating. Only time they’re gonna get mad is if they pull a Durant, but that’s mostly temporary and a new city will just buy their merch again.

Everytime people say that about NBA players, especially if it’s cause Kendall is dating them, I kinda just laugh. I don’t even know if it’s pure inability to believe Kendall would date men or pure inability to believe their family could date for real. A lot of my friends work for the NBA, including your fave WS anon. Those players are nearly impossible to control and contain in ways pr relationships would require. Of all the members of the gc who work for celeb pr, those under the NBA really do the least exciting things or go on a near constant panic attack if they ever have to deal with Kyrie Irving. Like, do people believe athletes career, particularly an a young and active NBA player, flow the same way as showbiz celebs?

[butwhatifidothis]

Hoo boy if this ain't a doozy.

To start with: it's been some time but I don't think I've linked to Cap'n's fic before. Going through my older posts I have yet to find any that do. If anyone does find anything like that, I will immediately delete it.

But, yes. I'd only gone over the fic due to seeing how influential it was in the fandom, and I had continued going over the fic due to the various problematic elements OP listed out.

And, well, yes, that does very much include how Byleth, as she is presented as a mixed-race person, is portrayed in this fic. And I say this with no ill-meaning directed towards Cap'n as a person, since I'm pretty sure he wrote pretty much everything problematic in this fic due to ignorance and not malice; reading Byleth's character arc in his fic was genuinely extremely uncomfortable for me, as a mixed-race person. Here's a doc that breaks down why that is in a more detailed fashion than my critique does.

Off of that: the main issue I see with Raxis doing this with Reyna is that he seems to take deliberate actions to spread his critiques around as far as possible. He makes his pinned post on Tumblr a table of contents for his critique of Reyna's fic (which includes links to the fic he's critiquing, the series the fic is in, and her AO3 profile - these links also appear in his critique of the first chapter), he keeps bringing it up on his Twitter, he brings it up on the public Edelgang discord. It's not that it's wrong of him to vent or rant about things he doesn't like, so much as it is... kinda weird that he's doing it to a fic that has such minimal impact or influence regarding anything in the fandom, and doing so on at least three different platforms.

This isn't like Cap'n's fic, which was known to some degree to large portions of the fandom, or was taken as meta. Reyna's fic that Raxis is critiquing isn't touted out as required reading, no one is recommending it to VA's, it's incredibly new and was released during a low-point in 3H's general fandom activity, and it involves crossing over with a title fewer people in the general FE fandom (and especially 3H fandom specifically) have played. The only reason he'd likely even know the fic exists at all is because of Reyna's other much more popular fic... which as OP stated didn't seem to have had the same impact as Cap'n's did, and if it did then it'd make sense for him to critique that one instead of the no-name-nothing fic.

So honestly? It really comes off as Raxis targeting an easy fic to try and get attention. Especially when his spork has something like this passage in it:

(and to make clear, yes, I am still not blocked by him, despite what he's said in the Edelgang discord)

Bringing up my name in a completely unrelated fic for basically no reason but to bring me up... it's just very strange, in my opinion.

There's also the fact that Raxis has a history of both having it to where people harass others directly off of the posts he makes of them, and of harassing people himself. He's bragged about driving users off of Tumblr, and the people who used to send a shit ton of anons like this to us

are the exact same people who would go on to do similar things to Reyna's new fic, hours after he'd make his spork - down to copy-pasting his words verbatim again:

And while yes, Raxis can't exactly mind control everyone who reads his posts into not harassing people, he also, well. Has a history of this sort of thing happening with him, and one that has been made known by those affected by it for quite some times now. Given that, from my reading of his spork, his only real main gripes are that Reyna writes Edelgard poorly in a fic that no one but him cares about (in a way relating to "meta" that is), it just seems like it's... uncalled for? For him to so continuously go on about this fic on so many different platforms, especially when considering said history he has regarding harassment

Edit: Referring to OP saying I would delete certain parts of my critique: yes, that's entirely correct. I was asked if I would and I said yes, which was relayed to people who said they had contact with Cap'n, but no one was ever told which parts I should edit/remove. I said that I would delete everything if given the chance to speak with Cap'n and discuss with him all of the more problematic elements of his fic - not the strikes against canon, but all of the racism, sexism, homophobia, victim-blaming, etc. that was unintentionally being presented in a harmful way. Again, I was never given this chance to go through with this.

I am still willing to do this, by the way. But nothing has ever happened yet

It's okay if butwhatifidothis risks leading people to harass Captain Flash by going over his fic but it's not okay if Raxis does the same to reynaattheend?

Okay I feel like I want to get one thing out of the way before I go into this.

BWIIDT agreed to remove parts of the old reviews that were particularly rude or offensive if they were pointed out to her, something that was literally promised to the MODS of the Edelstan discord server (who claimed to have a direct line of communication to Cap).

So the guy literally had a chance to air his grievances with the posts and have the parts he didn’t like removed within reason, and we never got any examples of things to ask her to remove. So either she’s not as rude as people make her out to be, or they never actually cared about her critiques and haven’t bothered reading them, even when handed the literal opportunity to edit things out they didn’t like.

Additionally BWIIDT has said that she would be willing to remove all the postings completely if the guy would just hear her criticisms and learn from them, so he could better handle the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic. Of which there is a lot.

I don’t know how you could possibly compromise more without just straight up being a door mat and pretending like this white man never had any issues with the way he wrote race and women.

Anyway as for why I view these as two completely different situations that are not really comparable IMO:

1) Cap’s fic is/was at the time literally being shoved at people. We were told to read it to “understand canon better”.

This isn’t just me saying this. I remember around the time before/slightly after BWIIDT started giving her criticisms of the fic I was seeing it getting recommended to a bunch of people. There were people on various social media sites complaining about the Edel crowd shoving the fic down their throats. I had it recommended to me on some different platforms, etc.

And that’s not just fans of the fics’ perception. Cap himself has stated that he views the fic as meta commentary on the game/discussion of canon, not just a fun little fic he did. And he’s happy people view it as essential for understanding canon.

As far as I’m aware, Reyna’s fic has never had that sort of culture around it, nor has she wanted it to have that kind of impact on fandom. I’m pretty sure she’s even explicitly stated that she KNOWS it’s not always aligned with canon and she doesn’t care, because it’s just a fun little project for her.

2) As far as I’m aware, BWIIDT never linked to Cap’s fic? I don’t even think she gave the title of it at first, it’s just that most people figured out what fic she was talking about BECAUSE of the aforementioned it getting shoved down everyone’s throats. But I wasn’t really following her in the beginning so I don’t remember, I’m sure she can reblog this posting if she wants and further clarify.

Raxy has literally been linking to Reyna’s fic on every posting and spelling out the full name of the fics and the author. Given his followers’ propensity for harassment (which he claims to not support) he really should have known better. He wasn’t “risking” sending her harassment it was basically a foregone conclusion.

He definitely should have taken all of the links down and stopped linking or naming the author or fic after it became clear people were literally going and harassing her, using his posts and material to throw at her. But as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done ANY of that.

3) I know from talking with BWIIDT since Raxy started harassing everyone here that she wasn’t going to bother with Cap’s fic originally, but then the annoying fans shoving it down people’s throats + she noticed a lot of very problematic handling of race that she wanted to talk about in greater depth = her discussing the fic at length.

I haven’t read through Raxy’s criticisms, but I feel like there’s a BIG difference between a woman of color pointing out the problems regarding race and gender in a fic (written by a white man) that’s being recommended to everyone as ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE GAME vs. Some Guy Who Doesn’t Like A Random Fic

Additionally, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to tell her to shut up because, uh, it just feels kind of gross to tell her to just not be mad about the way the white guy is butchering the biracial experience when she’s a biracial woman and I’m not? Which again, very different from telling a 35 year old cishet white guy who is acting like a dick about anime chess to be less of a dick about anime chess.

4) And again, I also know for a fact that BWIIDT is just interested in critiquing/venting about the fic, and would be willing to stop making postings about it if Cap actually bothered to read the critiques and learn from the mistakes he’s made regarding the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic.

But like, he keeps doubling down on it insisting that because he grew up next to a reservation and he has one queer woman doing his beta reading there could never be any problems with his handling of any of these sensitive topics, so he doesn’t need to listen to any of us ever, and people are still touting it as essential for understanding canon, and he’s still okay with that, sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s VERY different from what Raxy is doing, which is basically just calling Reyna’s fics “cringe” and “not canon” from the snippets I’ve seen. He’s also blasting them over LITERALLY every social media platform he has for some godforsaken reason. Which like. If your goal was just to critique the fic why are you posting that shut EVERYWHERE?

5) I really don’t think Raxy is that bothered by the criticisms of Cap’s fic. He harasses people regardless of if they’ve talked about Cap or his fic, and after his aborted attempt to drum up harassment against BWIIDT on GameFaqs he came to Tumblr and started begging her to “do his fic next”

Like honestly I don’t even know what goes on in that guy’s head. Weird ass behavior. I really don’t care what he has going on, it’d just be nice if he’d act like the 35 year old he actually is and quit being so petty and childish.

Even if you think what BWIIDT did with Cap’s fic is wrong, why would it EVER be acceptable to drag an uninvolved third party into the mix and bash their fic and send them harassment as “retaliation”? Reina has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even have fucking social media accounts outside of AO3. I know because I literally left her a comment to warn her about this clown and she told me.

What BWIIDT has done with Cap’s fic is admittedly a bit of a grey area, but ultimately I fall on the side of “whatever” with it because of the notoriety and influence on fandom fans of the fic desperately want it to have, and because of just how problematic elements of it are for various communities.

I mean you can’t go reccing a fic as essential for understanding the game and shoving it down the entire fandoms’ collective throat and then expect it to be treated like a 14 year old’s silly self insert fic when the people you told to read it critique it with the gravitas you assigned to it.

If you wanna critique BWIIDT for what she did with Cap’s fic, or critique me or anyone else for interacting with her, or you just think my logic is stupid and you want to critique that, then that’s… fine? I’m an adult, I’m a person, I know there’s places I can grow. But I’m sick of people acting like it’s okay to be a shitty person just because you got your feelings hurt once, so now it’s okay to go making it everyone else’s problem. And I don’t know if it was your intention to defend the guy with this ask anon, but it’s definitely happened too damn much with this guy and the Edelgard fandom as a whole.

That was another thing that really fucked me off in that conversation with the Edelstan server mods. I had one of them acting like I run fucking Reddit and I’m somehow responsible for some trolls calling Edelgard fans Nazis four fucking years ago. You can bet your ass I would get crucified if I tried to shit talk some random ass Edeleth fic and tried to justify it with “but it’s ok cuz some Edelgard fans were mean to me once :(“. There’s a reason why the fic being touted as essential for understanding canon is the one getting critiques and not any of the THOUSANDS of other Edeleth fics in existence. Because no one fucking cares about fanfics when they aren’t getting shoved down your throat and touted as “essential”.

I mean fuck dude, I got called a fake queer and an r-slur and intentionally triggered with genocide bullshit and had people talking about killing me. Am I going around harassing random fic authors over it? No, cuz I’m a grown ass fucking adult and I know how to act like it, and I know that 99% of the people who write/have written Edeleth fics had absolutely nothing to do with that.

So if you’re justifying going after Reyna with “but BWIIDT was mean to Cap!” Then knock it off, Reyna has literally nothing to do with this and you’re being shitty by trying to drag her into it. If you just did this to spork a fic, then you’re currently being a dick over a fanfic for no reason and clearly it’s leading to the author being harassed.

@butwhatifidothis if you wanna add onto this feel free.

[hollywood-rose]

Hannigram rant because I love them

One of the weirdest things I see anti's say is shit like "if this was a man and a woman-- or if this was in real life-- or if this ship was in a different show we'd all use it as an example of a toxic ship!!"

It's a piss poor argument. Of COURSE it would be awful if it was any of those things-- because then it wouldn't make sense. There is context to Hannibal and Will's relationship in the show that wouldn’t be there in any other scenario.

Hannibal has been fucked up since childhood. He’s literally a cannibalistic serial killer. He’s the ‘villain’ in the show, to put it plainly. He isn't meant to be sweet and wholesome. We all know that in any other context the way Hannibal treats Will would NEVER fly. So using random hypotheticals as reasons to hate it is.. strange? To me, at least. 

Hannibal can essentially see the ‘monster’ Will is deep inside. In turn, he uses his own unconventional means to try and bring it out. So yes, he manipulates the hell out of him. It’s from a mostly selfish point of view. He ultimately wants to help Will become like himself-- because he fully believes that he is (and he isn’t entirely wrong).

No Hannigram shipper will deny that Hannibal treats Will terribly most of the time (ex: lying about his mental illness, framing him for murder, and all that fun stuff) but we also know that, on top of it ALL-- Hannibal loves Will. He loves Will in his own morally skewed way. Hannibal is not normal, will never BE normal, and isn’t meant to be normal. It shouldn’t be shocking as to some of the methods he uses when it comes to Will Graham. But he does feel some type of remorse— like when he was trying to figure out the equation for time travel, presumably to undo everything he caused (this was after he rescued Will at the muskrat farm).

Hannigram isn’t some sweet white picket fence relationship. It's dark and complicated and confusing. But that's why we love it! They’re two morally grey characters that are fucked up and intense.

I also want to mention that even before Hannibal intervened that Will empathized TOO well with killers, and I honestly believe he would have turned out like Hannibal on his own accord. Would it have taken a lot longer? Probably. Would it have been as severe? Probably not. Who knows. But that desire was always buried deep inside of him-- Hannibal just helped bring it to the surface (in the worst way possible, of course). 

You can't really be the moral police on a ship and calling it problematic when... the show itself is meant to be problematic lol. Hannigram is there to show the darkest sides of two people that, overall, love each other in the most fucked up way imaginable.

Will struggles with his feelings about Hannibal throughout the show because he desires to be a normal person, but he KNOWS deep down he isn't. There are multiple references to this that I don’t feel like adding to this rant (it’s already long enough lmao). A couple examples I will add, though— In Primavera, while speaking to Not!Abigail he is actually talking to himself and admits that, ultimately, he wants to be with Hannibal. He loves Hannibal. He wished he could have run away with him like he had suggested. (there is a great post explaining this here). Additionally, in Dolce when Will admits that they’ve begun to blur-- and he’s unsure if either of them could survive separation. He knows they’re alike, even if the ‘pure’ side of him doesn’t want them to be. 

He has multiple chances to get away from Hannibal. He is smart enough to know that. I don’t think he was under some weird manipulation spell from Hannibal. He admits that he wanted to run away with him when speaking to Jack-- and he made the choice to warn him in season 2. Will isn’t stupid! He’s incredibly smart! He isn’t some child who can’t think for himself. He’s shown that so many times in the show.

At the end of the day-- (I'll say it again) Hannibal loves Will. It isn’t a conventional type of love, and he will never be able to express it in a healthy way. That’s just how he is, and how he always will be. Will is well aware of this, and knows that in many ways he is just like him. That’s why they work so well. That’s why Will loves him, too.

I feel like I kept repeating myself but I had to blow off some steam. 

Look, you don't have to ship it. Ship whatever you want. Just try to understand that there is so much more to their relationship than "uwu Hannibal abusive and evil, Will sweet and does no wrong uwu". Not to sound obnoxious but.. it’s deeper than that. So much deeper. I don’t want to sound like a Hannibal apologist, either. It’s just not all his fault the reason things turned out the way they did.

I will conclude this by saying I'm not trying to imply Will is as bad as Hannibal. He obviously isn't. He didn't really deserve everything that happened to him-- but they happened. That's all I'm trying to explain here. I’m sure Will’s life would have gone a lot smoother without Hannibal being involved. But I fully believe, again, that at some point his dark side would have come out one way or another. 

Hannigram is canon. The actors support it, the (ew) producer (even though he literally took credit when it was convenient when he denied them being canon for most of the time the show was running-- I hate bryan fuller) supports it. So.

This was super long and I’m so sorry. I have most anti’s blocked but if any of you guys happen to stumble upon this-- move along, thanks. You can hate the ship all you want. I won’t change my views, and I’m sure you won’t change yours so don’t waste my time. I’ve heard it all. Keep it to yourself. Thank you. I understand the moral reasons to dislike the ship, I just don’t think they fully apply in context of the show! 

[popculturebuffet]

The Loud House review 4x29: Brave the Last Dance

In a months late review of a show I watch only on occcasion that i’m doing for some reason: Clyde gets the help of the rest of the Clincoln true to find out if his crush likes him or not: Hyjinks and my smouldring hatred of rusty insues. 

With Ducktales only arriving once a week, me missing reviewing and having a lot of time on my hands i’ve decided to branch out a bit.. maybe not a ton, but ocasionally review other animated shows and seasons. If you have any suggetions or any paticular episode you’d like me to look into, let me know. 

For now I decided to take a look at a show I mostly watch whenever the mood strikes; The Loud House. I do enjoy the series, but it’s a casual love... it also dosen’t help that I can’t go into the tags without finding reams of incest but I digress. I do still like the show and despite it’s ocasoinal terrible episodes and even worse creator, it’s still a solid series and deserves it’s spot as nick’s crown jewel.. I do wish nick would stop abusing everything ELSE in it’s lineup, but that’s a whole other story. The point is I like the show, but i’m not a super fan like I am for say Ducktales or Steven Universe where if there’s something new, i’ll go out and grabs it immediately. But I do like it.  And I do regret not knowing this episode existed for two months because 1) This is a holiday episode and I like to watch those around their holiday and 2) Because dance episodes are my shit. More often than not if i’ts a dance episode of a show, i’ts usually pretty good. Community, Big City Greens, Gravity Falls, She Ra, OK KO, Parks and Recreation.. I really COULD go on indefntiely, but I won’t.  Dance episodes usually bring out the best in a creative team, have adorable romance moments, or huge dramatic attacks and everything in between that just makes them awesome to me. So naturally I watched this as soon as possible and my thoughts.. well as with anything they take some context.    You see this episode follows a character who has kind of a .. problematic history to say the least and thus has kinda gone up and down in my opinon. Early on, as most of you probably recall, the series was more focused on LIncoln, the middle child and only boy in the the titular loud house among 10 sisters. And given it focused mostly on lincoln and his shenanigans and schemes to deal with living iwth 10 other siblings. Now the show has evolved since then and for the better in my honest opinon: now all 11 siblings share the spotlight and whose in an episode depends on whose needed, and thus each of the siblings has their own supporting casts of varying depths and episodes, sometimes with NONE of the other family members playing a signifgiant role. But since the show was originally Lincoln centritc, it also picked up an extra main character outside of the 11 loud kids and their parents: Clyde. Clyde is Lincoln’s best buddy, a glasses wearing awkward kid whose dad’s sometimes smother him but are still loving kind guys, and who often goes over to Lincoln’s to share in the feeling of having siblings outside of his surrogate brother Lincoln obviously. However early on Clyde, like most of the cast in the earlier days, had about three character traits: being an only child, being a dork and having a near pyschotic crush on LIncoln’s oldest sister Lori which gave him crippling nose bleeds.  This would’ve been fine, if a touch annoying, had it just been him fainting and nosebleeding.. but instead, it also causes Clyde to be kind of a dick. He perused her constantly despite her rejecting him for a number of obvious reasons, you know him being a decade younger, her being not intrested, him being more like a second kid brother to her, and of course the fact she has a boyfriend, Bobby. Bobby is the nicest guy around, was a great supporting character, and is probably the reason i’ll get around to watching the casagrandes on occasion. Clyde however treats him like garbage, tried to break them up, and in general was a dick to a guy whose only crime is being in a loving relationship with someone Clyde wants to be with but obviously can’t have. It was annoying with the only time it was tolerable was that episode where Bobby was mistaken for cheating and clyde spent an entire episode preparing to beat bobby up if it was accurate, then upon trying (It wasn’t it was just shenanigans), failed spectacuarlly. Bobby is nothing but nice to him by the way.  So yeah it was hard to root for Clyde for a while but eventually it stopped.. not because they had an episode of Clyde TRYING to get over it, they did it just didn’t resolve it, but it was just dropped.. likely because the writers realized it just wasn’t that funny and with bobby put on a bus to the spinoff, they had no real jokes for it and no one really liked the passing out gag. The fact that series creator Chris Savino got fired for sexually harassment is not lost on me and only makes the gag worse.  But thankfully the character did bounce back and by season 3, even before savino was thankfully fired, they put the joke to bed with Bobby’s exit, and it is thankfully buried deeper than the bunker where htey keep walt disney’s cryogneically perserved body... what you thought he just kept the head? Why woudl they? Disney was rich and belived in the future. He probably wanted his body merged with some sort of mechanical man. But with that gone Clyde thankfully became what he was in his better episodes: an adorable dork, with two loving fathers. Though now he’s not the only kid on the block with two gay dads.. he and Violet should get matching friendship t-shirts reading “Gay dad club”... and i’ll probably draw that at some point but I digress i’m several paragraphs in and I haven’t even gotten to the episode, and I STILL have one last bit of explostion for context that most of you may not need.  That last bit is that LIncoln’s episodes evolved a bit around season 3: instead of JUST being him and Clyde, though that can still happen, Lincoln soon got a circle of buddies, each of whom plays a role in the episode, for reasons i’ll get to in a bit, and part of my reason for reviewing it is to touch on my thoughts about them and my weird love of these episodes. So a breif overview since some of you may not know who they are.  Lincoln himself: The former lead and now one of 10, and a great character I enjoy following a lot even if I miss his Zack Morris-esque fourth wall breaks, minus the smug... no one can out smug or out sexually harass Zack Morris.  Liam: A country boy and the only one of the intial five besides Clincoln I actually like. He’s a kind hearted well meaning country boy and is always kind and friendly, and reminds me a lot of stinky peterson but with a tone down accent.  Zach:... I forget he exists, i’m not even sure this is his actual name. He’s just.. there for some reason and i’m not exactly sure why he’s been kept around now that Stella, who i’ll get to next, has been introduced. But he has goggles and wild hair and that’s.. it. Any of his lines could be said by the others without muchc hange.  Stella: My faviorite out of the group, a frieindly girl who was insitally introduced as Lincoln’s third love intrest.. before pivoting to have her not really WANT to be with any of the guys in an episode that’s really good and instead joining the group. She has more personality and energy than most of them, and thus I do tend to seek out an ep if she’s in it. I do also kinda lowkey ship her with lincoln, but only al ittle. her episodde was about hwo every girl who pays attention to you isn’t into you after all and it’s a lesson kids need. I wish I had it when I was that age honestly. Anyways... finally we have the bane of my existance.  Rusty: I hate this kid. I can’t stand his goofy face, and I love goofy goof so goofy faces are not a problem, obnovious wannabe ladies man smugness, or his basicaly being the useless asshole of the group. LIke Zach, I don’t get why he hasn’t been written out. Hell Zach I at least get as the generic guy they can slott in. Rusty is just terrible. it’s telling that his LITTLE BROTHER, who showed up in one episode as a love intrest for Lucy, is far more popular.. mostly because Rocky’s actually likeable and isn’t a dipstick. I just hate this kid and want this character written off already. He’s the weak link in the group and is SOMEHOW more obnoxious than Clyde during any episode bobby and him were in the same room. And tha’ts an acomplishment! Gah. I could rant about this little shit all day, but i’d prefer to move on.  The episode has a pretty basic setup: Clyde is on the dance comitte, and is a good chef which .. tracks. I do think h’es cooked before and his love of Dessert Storm, a in-series cooking show that the Loud’s love too, has been documented in one or two episodes and cooking does fit his personality: he’s a detail orinted kid, he has parents who have lots of money to spend and have been established to like coooking fancy themsevles, it makes sense he’d pick it up. But it’s the Valentine’s Dance and Clyde has a crush on Emma, one of the girls on the comittee. His friends pick up on this and stellas has an adorable “awww” type grin while the boys all have smug shit eating grins but are all willing to help. It’s part of why I like these eps: the 5 really seem to have a nice rapport and be genuine friends.. friends who all fought over a girl once, except Stella who was said girl, but friends nonetheless, who eventually put said friendship over that. Even if one of them’s a block of wood and the other the bane of my existance, you still get the sense their valued.  It’s from there the episode Segues into the standard loud house formula, which is one of the resaons I do only watch the show ocasionally: while the episodes can varry wildly, some just fall into a formula of “character or characters do various things in a row until they realize they were wrong or something”. Now the show HAS had good episodes out of this formula, L is for Love and Racing Hearts, and yes i’m a saluna shipper but the eps are good beyond that, but sometimes it can feel like padding. This is one of those times. Each of the squad tries something to help Clyde find out if Emma likes him or not, he’s too nervous to take it as a sign he should go for it, rinse and repeat 3 more times before the plot finally moves on. This is also why I went into detail on the Clinclon Crew: each one, except Zach because the boy is made of paper mache remember, gets a chance to try helping him out.  Rusty: As if you needed proof I wasn’t overreacting, Rusty SPIES ON EMMA WITH BINOCULARS for the plan.. he did not need them, and the joke dosen’t land like it should because Rusty sucks. And his plan is to drench Clyde with cologne and if she comments on it, she likes him. I do however like the joke about how clyde thinks Rusty’s cousin that gave him the plan, proving Dumbass is a genetic trait, had a girlfriend at a camp who probably dosen’t exist.  Liam: Liam’s plan is a bit funnier... not because of the plan which like the previous one not really that great but hey their 11 or 12 i’ll give all of them but rusty some slack, because he sucks. But the Clincoln Crew which i’m calling them now so there, head to the movies and Liam says ,d ue to a similar thing happening with his chickens, if a girl sits next to you, they like you back. It’s not entirelys ound but the chicken thing got a small chuckle out of me and LIam does have some odd charisma.  Lincoln: And Zach but i’m not convinced they didn’t just swap in a manquin with a tape recorder jammed inside for him for this or any scene. Lincoln uses one of lori’s magazines with some sounder, if flimsy but beliviebly for kids, logic: ask her for a pen: if it’s a regular one they have no intrest, it’s it’s fancy she likes you. like the other two it happens.. but in a resonable bit of writing like the last two Clyde isn’t sure due to a combinaton of insecurity and these plans being as flimsy as the paper they made Zach out of .  Stella: Whose grandma can read tea leaves and actually predicted her moving to royal woods, because stella is great. Stella is also damn good at it as she does predict Clyde at the dance, in a chef’s hat for reasons that i’ll get to in a moment. dancing with a girl. Tha’s lal he needs and this bit finally ends. As I said it’s the tedium. While what happens NEXT is intresting enough, you really didn’t need all of those or have enough jokes and were clearly padding guys, come on.  So Clyde, and crew, stages an elaborate frencha nd boat related danceposal.. that fails. As you probably figured. Emma is flattered, but shoots Clyde down gently. Clyde reacts as you’d expect: by fleeing the scnee as fast as possible, quitting the dance comitte off screen, and planning never to return, which while overracting, DOES feel realistic.  Clyde goes home for some mopey solo time and becomes a tad insufferable, ignoring his friend’’s texts and getting upset as his dad for watching the movie that clearly inpsiried his dance invite plan, depsite it being their valentine’s day he’s interrupting. It woudl’ve played better if he still got upset but iddn’t you know, run in front of their tv and call them out on something they coudln’t of known as he didn’t give them details.  Thankfully the mild annoyance is b roken when, after ignoring his friends texts, which granted for Rusty and Liam is probably normal as liam probably talks about drywall and Rusty uses the word dawg and unlike Lincoln dosen’t seem genuinely worried after Clyde, you know, got rejected in front of a large crowd.  He’s broken out of his mopey solo time by a call: the person he passed cake duty off to screwed up, and after some urging from Cheryl, the principal’s secretary who Clyde knows personally from past episodes and is head of the dance comitte and an utter delight this episode, Clyde does what any normal kid would do: dawn a flimsy disguise and sneak in there. We also get a cameo from Girl Jordan who hasn’t shown up in forever so that’s nice.  Clyde fixes the cake, and Cheryl compares his mustache to a dead caterpillar which was gold, and tries to sneak out only for Chole, another girl, to notice him and stop him. You can probably tell where this is going: She , rather than mock him finds what he did romantic, she also likes dessert storm, he asks her to dance, puts his chef hat back on because time loop,a nd the two dance and even have an adorable bit where they throw their hats to each other. Also Rusty is dressed like cupid and my eyes boil out of my head as the episode ends.  Overall it’s not a bad ep. Had a suprising amount to say about it, but overall it’s a decent, cute ep for valentine’s day with a nice amount of friendship and some nice character stuff for Clyde and plenty of gay dad’s and Cheryl. Overall not a bad way to spend 11 minutes in this ongoing apocalypse. Coming Soon: I feel like quacking so I think Iw ill.. take a look at an episode of quack pack that’s donsy related.  Until next time courage. 

[ineedrelationshipadvice]

Hi, I have a maybe strange problem - I keep having the urge to check the social media of my boyfriend's ex. This is not a jealousy/suspicion thing. For context, she was abusive towards him. I think I am trying to understand how someone can be like this. I have resisted for many months by rationalising that it's unhealthy and a waste of time, but the urge itself persists. How can I stop this urge? I'm not sure exactly why it exists. Thanks :)

I think this is a normal interaction. Is it healthy? That's a good question. Is it a waste of time? Most definitely. But I don't think this is an inherently bad thing that you're doing.

You're in a unique scenario. You are with your partner, you probably think they're pretty awesome, and you've probably heard quite a number of really awful things that this person has done. If this is the first time you've heard of someone being abusive to someone in your immediately sphere of influence, or if this is the worst example of it that you've seen in your personal life, it can be a bit shocking and confusing. How can someone have been SO HORRIBLE to someone I care about so much? Lots of thoughts can run through your head. Is it something my boyfriend did that made her act that way, and maybe I'm missing a red flag? Is she just that horrible of a person in general? If so, what made her so horrible? What is a red flag that I can look for in her behavior so I can see abusive behavior from people in my life in the future?

You said the right word in your message: rationalizing. This is you attempting to rationalize how an abuser can continue on in their life despite the terrible things they've done. You're trying to rationalize how this was even possible. And that's fine, because it means you're thinking critically. And I think everyone does this from time to time when they see something so GALLING that they just can't understand; your brain goes brrr at the very concept about how awful something is.

How can you stop the urge? Again, I don't think there's inherently anything WRONG with scratching this itch. You're not doing anything as long as you're not harassing anyone; if you're just looking on from afar and studying this like a zoologist of abusive exes, then that's not a bad thing. Just make sure you stay uninvolved and don't interact with this ex, and also don't talk about it at all with your partner, because they should have no more contact beyond anything he personally wants to engage in.

That being said, if you believe that your obsessive tendencies to analyze this ex is becoming problematic, then yeah, it's probably best to stop. How do you recognize if you've gone too far?

Are you losing sleep over this? If so, stop.

Are you becoming angry or frustrated over things she is doing? If so, stop.

Is this affecting your mood any time you engage with her? If so, stop.

Do you have better things to do? If so, stop, at least until you're finished with those things.

Another thing you can do is considering writing a small essay for yourself about their behavior, and what you've learned. It's fine to rationalize things in your head. But putting that shit on paper and properly trying to logic the whole thing out can help you put some finality to the "research" you've been doing, and what you've actually learned from the whole thing.

If you want to continue this analysis, just make sure you're setting limits upon yourself. It's fine to be curious, but don't devote time to this stupid person. Because you're a busy bee, and have plenty of things that are way more important to worry about that are not a crappy person from your partner's past. But again, don't feel weird for trying to rationalize things as you're doing.

To show you how to write an essay about your experiences analyzing someone, to show you that what you're doing isn't actually that strange, and mostly for my own selfishness, I'm going to write a brief essay below about a time where I did exactly what you are doing to someone who affected me in a similar way. You don't have to read it if you don't want, but it can show you how obsessive I got over it, and also is an example of how trying to force that shit into words through summary and recollection can help you put the situation to rest so you can move on with your life.

_________

An example from my own life. I wanted to teach in Japan. I applied for the program that would allow me to do so, and almost got in, but I eventually got turned down. I then heard, a year later, that a random person got into the same program, at the time when I would've been hired. They were kicked out of the program summarily after. Why? How did they get into a program I really wanted to get into, yet I didn’t and they did; furthermore, how were they KICKED OUT of the prestigious program I wanted to be apart of? How could they have been so irresponsible?

Turns out that they had extreme schizophrenia and BPD (two major health conditions that are supposed to be taken into account when applying for the program), and while in Japan working at their elementary school, they decided to go off their meds. When they went off their meds, they decided they had a crush on a co-worker, and started dating them. They got into an argument one day, and it upset her. She decided to go to her partner’s house and sit on the porch until he made up with her. He obviously found out about this after he got off of work, and noped the fuck out of there, because he was being actively stalked at his home. The police were called, and the girl called the police "fascists" and accused them of being "pedophiles" and "raping her" because she was sitting in a manner where her full-ass pussy was exposed because she wasn't wearing underwear under her skirt (you can't make this shit up). Obviously, the cops called her job, and she got deported.

I was aghast. Here I am, imminently qualified for this job, but she got it instead, despite her health conditions. Then, not only was she irresponsible in the position, but she literally stalked someone, got reported to police, lost her job, and deported from the country. How could I not get this job but she could? What did she do right that I didn't, because everything I'm seeing, she did many obvious things very wrong.

So, like you, I irrationally followed her on social media. Instead of going home to USA (where apparently her family had disowned her), she went from Japan to Russia, making her way to Moscow, and then to central Europe where she apparently had some friends. This led her to Germany, where she got in trouble with the police for illegal substances and being intoxicated in public. She bounced from Germany to The Netherlands, where she found a place to live. Stayed there a bit, getting high on all manner of drugs, until she apparently got kicked out of her friend's place. She lived homeless for awhile, until the police picked her up, and sent her to a sanatorium. She claimed she was being unlawfully held against her will, even though she was literally ranting and raving on social media about all manner of racist, homophobic, and sexist shit, pooping on the floor, refusing to wear clothing or cooperate with the doctors, clearly off her meds, completely lost to the world, only occasionally having lucid moments during 12+ hour livestreams from her sanatorium.

She was eventually let out and deported, but this time she was forced to go back to her home in Georgia, USA. She was told to report to the local police department, and then to the doctor to renew her medication (which the sanatorium prescribed her). She got to the USA, threw her medication in the trash (she had apparently been faking taking the medication for some time), and went to her friend's house in Atlanta. There, she got in a fight, and got kicked out. She was homeless for a long time, but instead of letting that get her down, she was screaming racist things at black people in the public parks, and somehow attended MomoCon even though she said she was broke and had no money??? She got taken to another sanatorium at some point, was eventually released, and then somehow got inducted into a master's program at the local university (even though she still had no home or money). And that's where I last checked in on her.

What did I learn from that fuckin' wild story? Because you probably lost the point somewhere halfway through, as did I. The reason I got so obsessive about this chick is because I was upset that she got a job and I didn't. So through all that rationalizing I did what did I actually LEARN? 

Well, I learned that she's crazy, obviously. And I learned that I was jealous of her for getting the job I thought I deserved, and was watching her ongoing failures in some weird manner of spite. And I was also just flabbergasted, because it was like watching a trainwreck, and I couldn't look away, because I've never seen someone like her bounce around between so many crazy adventures, failing every step along the way, and still somehow succeeding? And how did she get all these prestigious decisions despite being homeless, off her meds, and doing terrible things? Likely because she lied about her qualifications and never got caught in her lies. It was a time.

[vecna]

Oohh for the fandom meme! Dragon Age?

Send me a fandom!

Oh boy, this is going to be spicy.

It’s also very Anders-negative, so apologies up front.

The character(s) I first fell in love with:

I’m actually not sure which was the FIRST, but it’s a tie between Morrigan and Alistair. I saw fanart of them going around at the time Origins first released, and that’s what got me to try the game! 

Alistair was a breath of fresh air, because at the time, I was used to warrior men in games being all Edgy and Rough, and he was the total opposite and a sweetheart.

And Morrigan was just instantly my goth wife, and had Claudia Black as a VA, so I was sold immediately.

Both still hold a special place for me!

The character(s) I never expected to love as much as I do now:

Loghain is the main one. He does a lot of truly reprehensible shit in the first game. But once I sat down and read the prequel novels about young Loghain, plus saw what he’s like if you recruit him, he grew on me A LOT and now he’s a top fave.

Nathaniel I expected to hate as soon as I saw his name + who his father was, but then the expansion came out and I ended up loving that dude almost immediately. I really wish he was around more after Awakening, and also really wish he’d been a romance option, especially for a Cousland haha.

Merrill is a weird one because she was totally uninteresting to me in DA:O, so when they announced her as a companion in DA2 I was like, “Ehhhh.” Then they punked me by making her adorable and sweet and now I love her.

Plus a bunch of side-characters like The Architect? I liked him a bunch in the novel + Awakening – although I found his Plan in the novel much more appealing. But as the years have gone by, I keep surprising myself at just HOW disappointed I am he’s never appeared again haha.

The character(s) everyone else loves that I don’t:

There’s a few, and all of them will get me yelled at, but here we go.

First: Isabela. This one’s a bit complicated, but it really just boils down to her attitude towards how you play your character. I actively dislike characters who are super sexual – regardless of gender. But Isabela in particular bothers me because she’s constantly pushing her lewdness and sexual humor on you, and when you try to discourage it, she admonishes you with, “Well, you’re no fun.” Her whole character is just… like that for me. Super pushy, overly lewd, gets uppity when you don’t have the same ~liberated~ opinions she does, and this is all played up in the writing like she’s this Empowered Woman the player absolutely must love, especially if they’re playing a male character lol. I hate her for the same reasons a lot of people hate Liara in Mass Effect, but with the addition of pushy lewd jokey characters always rubbing me the wrong way.

Second: Iron Bull. I’ve written a lot about why he makes me more uncomfortable than any fictional character I’ve ever encountered, and I just outright hate him, he makes my skin crawl. If you want details, feel free to DM me, I don’t really want to rant about it again publicly.

Third: Anders. Again, I’ve written a lot about him before, but. I hated him in Awakening, for a lot of the same reasons I hate Isabela in DA2. But the changes they made to him in DA2 are just kinda :/. While I absolutely agree with him about Mage Rights, the level of preachiness they added to him drove me nuts, and the fact that you’re painted as a Bad Guy if you don’t like him blowing up the chantry. And from a purely OOC standpoint: He’s become a figurehead for all the aggressive Discourse people in the fandom, and if I see someone list Anders in their sidebar bio, I know pre-emptively that their blog is going to be full of 6 page long essays of meta about how everything is Problematic, and no thanks.

To a lesser extent, I’m also not fond of Zevran. But in his case, it’s not anything major like the others, I’m just tired of Bioware’s habit of making the bisexual characters overly lewd sex-focused rogues/deviants.

The character(s) I love that everyone else hates:

Loghain, lol.

But also Sebastian Vael? There’s so much about him that I find genuinely fascinating, especially regarding his backstory, and his struggles between his feelings of responsibility to his family vs his dedication to the Chantry and bettering himself. He’s such a dear character to me, and such a pivotal part of any playthrough, I’m always blown away when I remember he’s a DLC character and many people don’t have him.

HOWEVER Anders being the fandom darling means that people tend to unfairly shit on Sebastian for reacting poorly to the Chantry explosion. People also like to label him as a poster child of a White Straight Church Boy, while refusing to acknowledge he’s… not straight, and not exactly a church boy either lol.

Also Vivienne, but I think that one’s really self-explanatory. I love her, and she gives a really needed perspective on the Circle, since most of the mage companions previously were apostates. But of course, she gets written off as a Chantry apologist, and an uppity bitch, when people would def love her for the same traits if she was not black lol.

The character(s) I used to love but don’t any longer:

Justice. And by extension, Anders. A lot of people like to rant about how Justice ruined Anders, but I always saw it the other way around.Justice was my favorite character in Awakening. The whole concept around him, that he was a Fade spirit who took human form and was experiencing life for the first time was SO fascinating. I felt like there was so much to explore there with his character.

Buuuut then they had him merge with Anders. With the narrative being that he WAS a spirit of Justice, but the moment he connected with Anders, it corrupted his entire spirit into something he wasn’t anymore. So essentially, the character I used to love no longer exists, thanks to Anders. And it reminds me of that phrase recently, about how the destination is so terrible you can no longer enjoy the journey? I can’t even appreciate Justice in Awakening anymore, knowing what happens to him.

To a lesser extent, Corypheus. He was SO COOL and the premise of him was AMAZING when he first appeared in the DA2 DLC, but then Inquisition had to go and turn him into a weird shallow mustache twirl villain.

The character(s) I would totally smooch:

None? Idk I don’t really have the Smooch Fictional Character gene.

The character(s) I’d want to be like:

MAEVARIS TILANI. May I one day finally have the confidence in my identity that she does, and also marry a sweet bear man who adores me.

The character(s) I’d slap:

Too many to list, really. Probably Anders.

The pairing(s) that I love:

THERE’S SO MANY. And most of them are with the PC, because I generally don’t ship NPCs together. But my top 3 are:

M!Hawke / Fenris is my ultimate OTP in the Dragon Age series, by a long-shot. Not even sure where to start on how much I love it, but two damaged guys leaning on each other to work through their respective loneliness and trauma is MY JAM. And lmao I love silver-sideburned Hawke chillin in retirement somewhere but being a supportive husband while Fenris goes off hunting the Bad Guys, it’s great.

Solas / Lavellan is a close second, with the caveat that I increasingly prefer it with a male Lavellan. Having the Inquisitor in love with Solas just changes the entire tone of the game for me, for the better, and him actually being the villain trying to end the world while in love with this normie elf is just (chef kiss). Too bad I’m burned out by how overly spammed it is.

Dorian / Inquisitor is in third, I will just always be fond of how it’s a story of the Inquisitor helping Dorian be happy with who he is, escape an abusive family, and realize that he’s allowed to be loved. Good shit good shit.

Some others:

Warden / Morrigan is probably my favorite Origins ship, and that only intensified with the way she talks about the Warden in Inquisition, esp if they’re Kieran’s other parent. What a cute goth family, regardless of the Warden’s gender, cause you can pry Bi Morrigan from my cold dead fingers.

Cassandra / Inquisitor might have a lot of Romance Cliches, but I adore it – although, similar others, I increasingly prefer it with a female Inquisitor. I actively dislike the weird no-homo rejection with her, and come on, a lady Inquisitor being her Knight In Shining Armor is just good storytelling.

Cullen / Inquisitor, for a lot of the same reasons as Cassandra. I love me a cliche romance, but I’m also fond of the narrative w/ him of someone he loves helping him heal through the lyrium withdrawals and take time to rest.

Josephine / F!Inquisitor is just adorable all around, and wholesome, and great.

Varric / Hawke COME ON HOW WAS THIS NOT AN OPTION.

On the rarepair end:

Sebastian / Hawke doesn’t seem like it would be a rarepair – you’d think everyone who loves Cullen/Inquisitor would love this one too. I do! But alas. That said, I’m also pretty aggro about this one with a male Hawke because SEBASTIAN IS CANON BI. WHY WAS HIS ROMANCE STRAIGHT.

Maric / Loghain is a rarepair I will take with me to my grave LOL. Never forget the scene where Maric thought Loghain was leaving, and bolted across the camp with almost no clothes on to beg Loghain to stay. Come on.

Nathaniel / Cousland is dear to me, and I love it so much more than Alistair / Cousland haha.

Greagoir / Wynne, I can’t believe this got validated in canon ahhhh.

The pairing(s) that I despise:

Again: THERE’S SO MANY.

Iron Bull / Dorian is my least fave by a longshot. Again, I have written about why I hate this pairing a great many times, but it’s awful and toxic and makes me deeply uncomfortable, and I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing anything about it ever again. Please keep poor Dorian away from that man. He deserves someone that doesn’t sexually harass him until he’s finally worn down into dubious consent (while drunk) and then outted to everyone about it.

Isabela / Fenris. Sorry, but it’s just bad writing that Fenris bails on Hawke because the physical intimacy triggered his PTSD and he needs space to process, but then will turn around and have a casual sex relationship with Isabela instead. Yikes.

Anders / Fenris. Aveline / Isabela. Alistair / Morrigan. All of the DA2 Hawke/companion rivalmances. I don’t enjoy “these two people hate and antagonize and want to kill each other… but they fuck” in any form.

Cullen / Amell. Yikes.

And basically ALL of the canon wlw pairings in this series suffer from the fact they have men writing them, and as a result they’re almost always some kind of abusive or racist, and skeeve me out. See: Celene / Briala, Leliana / Marjolaine, Branka / Hespith, etc. Please Bioware, I’m begging you to consult some actual queer women. It’s insane how badly they’re treated compared to how the canon mlm couples are written.

FINALLY, I recognize this will be the most unpopular of all, but. As much as I love M!Hawke/Fenris, I just honestly cannot stand seeing F!Hawke/Fenris. There are some pairings where I’m so attached to the m/m or f/f version, I cannot deal with the m/f version anymore, and that’s one of them. (The others are mainly non-Bioware.)

[manifestoonmoralmanlove]

Long Exposure

OKAY I WROTE WAY TOO MUCH ON THIS BUT I GOT BIT BY THE RANT-BUG!

Also this came up much later than I intended because I realized I was being overly bitter and therefore rewrote a huge amount of this.

First and foremost I would just like to give a little disclaimer:

This is by far NOT the worst comic I’ve ever read and if you like it kudos to you.  Keep supporting it if you love it but ranting about how wrong I am is not going to change my mind.  I would also like to say that if you agree with me that this is not a great webcomic, do not harass the fans or the creator.  Write your own rant and we can bitch in the disque comments like the bitter fujo-bros we are.

SO HERE GOES!

Oh good god, this is a very frustrating level of comic for me.  It’s bad on several levels but it’s coherent and panders and rides clichés JUST ENOUGH to have a huge fanbase.  

Basically the author made a belligerent teenage meat-head, wanted them to bang a dude, any dude, and sketched the comic while Stranger things was on in the background so oops paranormal bullshit shows up once every 50 pages but has no bearing on anything ever.

So the story is as follows:

Mitch is a violent piece of shit but tragic past so it’s cool.  Jonas…has a dick so that’s good enough, therefore the two have to bang. Jonas’ step dad disapproves because homophobia.  There is also another bully in school for no plot relevant reason.  Things play out like stereotypical high school trash drama. (And I will admit my bias I’m really sick of high school trash dramas)

Look at this joke of a jealousy plot line! Where the woman is physically present in the comic for like 1 page, get slut-shamed, Jonas’ interest in her is so transparently thin it’s laughable it was even included, and this is pretty much forgotten about after seme has his token jealousy-induced pout.

Also we have, “NO FOSTER DADDY, I LOOOOOOVE HIM! IGNORE HOW 1 WEEK AGO I SHIT MYSELF AT THE THOUGHT HE’D COME BACK TO SCHOOL TO TORMENT ME! BUT OH NO TURNS OUT YOU’RE A PHYSICALLY ABUSIVE, HOMOPHOBIC 1-D VILLAIN LIKE ALL FOSTER DADS!”

They also get ridiculous over powered paranormal abilities which maybe part of a plot? Doesn’t look likely so far.

So let’s now do a deeper dive on this business:

Paranormal elements aka what paranormal elements?

The paranormal elements are a joke.  They got them day after they fell into a puddle by a mysterious facility.  Neither of them makes much of an attempt to hide their powers.  In fact nobody seems to really give a shit that they’ve got these life ending powers with no negative side effects from getting magical scientific water on their pants.  Writing Pro-Tip: We aren’t going to think it’s surprising or cool if nobody else reacts that way in the comic.

Mitch’s OVER power is telekinesis that can lift cars.  Jonas can make a shield or kinda slash at stuff with his but most of the time his powers are just glowing ribbons of energy to highlight how he’s being tsundere or a romantic moment.  The evil facility they got it from is now following them around and…out to get them? I guess? The lead characters care about this SO LITTLE, that it’s not until 200+ pages or so later, that Jonas googles what the facility was. (He made some random post on what looks like Reddit before this google search but again 2 panels, explains nothing.)  Not only did they wait that long the big reveal is that it’s called GAMMA HARDY HAR VERY ORIGINAL and that people have gone missing by it which we pretty much already know.   But the ad on Jonas’ phone is bigger and conveys more information than this essential plot information. 

WE GET IT! YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THIS PLOT THREAD! WHY IS IT HERE!?

The cars are following them around but not enough effort is put in to make this even feel like it’s that weird no less scary or tense.  I think this is best summed up in the scene where Jonas reveals his powers to his sister. He spends about 1 page and a half talking about the powers and she reacts as if he got a bruise that looks a bit like a dog. There is one page where he explains he’s being stalked by these people which she has a slightly stronger reaction to, and then the next 3 pages which finish up the scene where they talk about Jonas having a crush on Mitch.  Which his sister reacts MUCH stronger too but like forgets she’s upset by it really fast and leaves off with a, “Guys are only after one thing!”  Which should be a joke cause HAHA YANNO Jonas is a man himself but no such luck. That’s treated like, “Poor little ukey, don’t give up your chastity to the first seme who bullies you.”  Way to make this comic feel as if it’s a queer love story and not some sad spank fodder for the lowest common denominator.  Oh wait damn, are we supposed to be scared of some shadow organization!? I don’t know how I got distracted from that.

It would be hilarious if this was some kinda parody. That a teenager is more worried about his crush feelings than the fact he may get abducted, tortured, and horribly killed by a bunch of murder scientists.  Pity it’s not!

Speaking of which…

Pace and focus problems aka I WANT THEM TO KISS! I JUST WANT THEM TO KISS! FUCK THE REST OF THE STORY! KISSY KISS KISS!!!!

One of the major problems in this story is that it only cares about building up Mitch and Jonas’ blooming relationship so everything else is pretty much forgotten and the pace suffers heavily from it because it’s so obvious the artist CANNOT WAIT until the two bang and it feels very rushed and juvenile for it.  It’s hard to go 2 pages in without some barely veiled hint that BOY OH BOY Mitch has the hots for Jonas.  There is no suspense that the two may not end up together because the author is so obnoxiously chomping on the bit for it.  And like listen, I get it, comics are a very time and energy intensive medium, and you’re doing it because of how much you just love the notion of these two together. It feels like such a drag to spend hours working on just some bullshit transition page when all you want to do is to draw them snuggling. I get the impulse, but you GOTTA rein it in if you want the story to have tension and be believable.

The story starts off with Jonas being deeply afraid of Mitch, and Mitch doesn’t exactly live it down. However by the end of the 1st day Jonas is unabashedly leading Mitch into a restricted part of the woods in the dead of night cause…..SCIENCE PROJECT???????  The science project is pretty much a SHRUG WHATEVER, IF IT GETS THEM TO INTERACT!  Even with this partnered science project in place there are like 80 reasons why Jonas would avoid this particular scenario since yanno it does sound pretty damn dangerous to do this with a guy he’s pretty sure wants to beat the tar out of him. What changes about Jonas’ perception of Mitch here? Well Mitch insults him a bunch and kinda sorta help him hide. And by hide, I mean pulls him to his strong chest for them sweet sexual tensions.  So really nothing should change from this interaction but...

From then on, Jonas just does whatever Mitch says and not under threat. Doesn’t matter that he was quite recently scared of and hates Mitch and he’s done nothing to really dissuade Jonas’ fears. This happens because he’s a puppet destined to fuck Mitch so he’s not allowed to make it even slightly difficult for them to bond….if you want to call it that.  Basically they’re bonding is Mitch being rude to Jonas and pressures him into breaking the law and despite yanno all the terrorizing Mitch has been doing, suddenly this is like sensual foreplay to him. 

The fact that Mitch and Jonas both get powers and are being stalked for it so they work together to figure it out would’ve been a good way to push them together.  Problem is when they get together they just like bond and flirt as if nothing really happened and don’t do jack shit to find out who’s behind all this.  Honestly neither of them seem very concerned.

Sure the 1st kiss doesn’t happen until page 200, but we started this couple off in a really deep hole.  If the two had met on neutral terms or had been friends I could probably see this bonding working and the pace as reasonable.  However that is definitely not the case here.  This is compounded by the fact that this couple is just poorly written, uninteresting, and fails to ~update~ the same shitty bully/victim BL narrative.

Relationship aka I can see where you’re coming from but try harder next time.

I will confess that my cup of tea is not the bully/nerd dynamic due to it’s typically exploitative nature. So I am coming into this bias.  This story does have a much less problematic, if stills stereotypical, take on it.  Nerd does one nice thing to the bully, bully is now obsessed with him, and years later torments the nerd cause that’s how bullys express affection.  The nerd just KINDA GIVES IN CAUSE IT’S EXCITING I GUESS?! At least in this version I can more readily see where Jonas would find these shenanigans as genuine, non-traumatic excitement.  Mitch introduces him to BREAKING LAWS! WOO!  Instead of the typical BL introduces him to UNWANTED SEX!  NOT WOO!

However I still feel as if it’s a bit of a stretch for both of them.  It makes more sense for Mitch to pursue a fellow bully who treats him half decently.  Mitch is bitter toward people whom he perceives as having a better life than him, and yet at the same time (perhaps this is me over-analyzing) should view himself as beneath these other people because he was called shit all his life so he doesn’t want to taint anybody else either.  So Jonas as a target of affection seems pushing it because his (initial view) of Jonas would lend Mitch to distancing himself out of anger at society and at himself.

As for Jonas? He seems more annoyed than charmed by many of Mitch’s antics. Also it seems like quite a big jump, not just realizing you’re attracted to the same gender but the individual you’re attracted to is...to put it nicely not exactly the most socially acceptable suitor. Jonas does openly say, “Yeah I’m not happy I’ve got this crush” but that’s pretty much as conflicted as he gets.  He doesn’t have to have a big GOSH AM I GAY OR NOT internal conflict but I feel as if it would be poor characterization if he doesn’t have an internal conflict about GOSH MY CRUSH IS ON AN EMOTIONALLY VOLATILE GOON! THAT MAY NOT BE THE BEST DOWN THE LINE!

I will say the fact that both Mitch and Jonas having less than stellar male father figures in their life could’ve been a much MUCH better way for the two of them to bond together.  However at the moment it seems more incidental than something the two of them have really talked out.  It wasn’t something like,

“I have a crappy dad!”

“Oh my gosh me too! It really sucks.  I wish I had somebody to give me guidance from a male perspective in this wild world that is teenage hood.  I don’t feel as if I can trust what I was original taught.” 

“Gosh me too!”

Instead the conversations feel more like two totally separate exposition dumps rather than something they have in common.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I can see the potential here but it just doesn’t make the grade.

Characters aka please believe the worst human being in this story is actually the best one.

You know that 1-d villain in every after school special?  That’s our seme!

Mitch is a textbook bully who physically harasses everybody he can which includes teachers and totally innocent peers.  Out of I would say the 4/5 people he’s shown to expressly pick on in school, only one of them is shown in text to be a bad guy.  And it’s absurd how, despite only being back in high school for like what a week, that he hasn’t already been suspended or expelled already.  Why?

Mitch is shown to pick on and threaten fellow innocent students who think about telling on him for the harassment they suffered. Mitch (on his 1st day back) threatens a teacher with violence, and just what…3 pages ago steals the same teacher’s keys.  This teacher has been shown as a good person and the only authority figure that is shown expressing concern for Jonas.  We also see him and his buddies kicking the snot out of somebody on the first day he’s back. A fight that’s 4 people vs. 1.

So Mitch isn’t some kinda modern day high school Samurai, who only beats on those who deserve it and fights fairly.  He’s just a piss-drinker.

Yet he hasn’t gotten punished for any of the above behavior and I haven’t even mentioned some of the worst things he’s done.  The worst one on school grounds was putting a knife to another bully’s throat.  That’s right, he brought a weapon to school, and threatened to kill another peer while on school grounds.  But? No punishment!  Simply having a weapon, even if not used against somebody, is more than enough for expulsion in the majority of American schools.  The kicker here being, there were witnesses, there is no reason why the person he threatened wouldn’t report it (in fact he seems the type to report tripping on someone’s foot as harassment), and due to Mitch’s reputation there would be no reason for anybody to disbelieve it either.

Mitch has a tragic past and comes from poverty.  I can kinda see how his law-breaking violent behavior is just how he was inadvertently taught to act from his shitty brother and step-father and he has a lot of anger in regards to abandonment.  The problem being here his bad behavior is not treated as bad.  It’s treated as 1 part hilarious, 1 part that other guy deserved it for doing something much less severe, and 1 part BAD BOYS ARE JUST SO HOT HNNNNNGH!  And I’m not saying this to shame anybody into bad boys, but Mitch genuinely treats a lot of helpless people real shitty but it’s framed as...well... those 3 things above.  What I’d like to see is Jonas confronts Mitch about how he treats the majority of his peers, and maybe Mitch realizes it’s not okay to frighten people on whims and confront WHY he does it.  But I will say I’m not exactly banking on that future since Jonas will just nod along to everything Mitch does with the only notable exception being stopping him from KILLING HIS FOSTER DAD!

Oh and there’s a not-so-subtle hint that Mitch maybe bulimic? But there’s literally 1 page of it and there hasn’t been a peep before or since? WHY IS IT THERE? ….my friend you can’t just throw mental illness on the table and forget about it.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised that Mitch treats Jonas with more respect and less abuse than a lot of bully semes do, and yet at the same time it doesn’t feel as if Mitch is behaving out of character around Jonas, rather that he just has a soft spot for him. But Mitch is still kinda a douche to Jonas to be honest.  While Mitch doesn’t hit Jonas but he takes glee in making Jonas feel unsafe and is just flat out rude to him in many other instances.  So while not abusive, it’s not enough for me to bridge a gap into giving a shit about him.

Have you ever seen a cardboard cutout?  That’s our uke!

I’m all about freckles, nerds, and pudgy characters in BL so you’d think this would be a slam dunk. Unfortunately there’s little to talk about when it comes to him.  He suffers from uke-doll syndrome and just does what it’ll take to get to that sex scene and nothing else.  There are MENTIONS of things he likes but like that’s all they are mentions.  Like someone refers to him as a band kid.  Do we even know what instrument he plays? NOPE! At one point Jonas liking to do photography is brought up, there is even some kind of implication that he feels bad he doesn’t photograph anymore.  However this is powered through in 3 panels and we can barely tell what Jonas even took pictures of to begin with.  If done properly we’d get a panel of what kind of photos he took.  If he used labor intensive techniques, took pictures of animals/people/scenery, a deceased family member, a specific place with meaning, or if he took pictures of a place he used to live.  There is a lot of subtle character building that can be done there but instead we get 1 awkward shrug because we gotta transition into the non-existent romantic tension.

I will mention one scene which could potentially be very interesting character building but TO BE HONEST I think I read it in a more interesting way than the creator intended. In a recent page a character brings up how Mitch is a nutcase and Jonas gets really defensive screaming that the whole school just DOESN’T UNDERSTAND HIM!  Which I think the author intended to be just that. 

However, if you factor in, just the previous night Mitch NEARLY MURDERS Jonas’ foster father and would have if Jonas hadn’t stopped him, there could be more to it.  Despite how much he hates his foster father, he doesn’t want him killed.  Jonas could be feeling really doubtful about having a crush on Mitch.  While there is a good side to Mitch he STILL IS REALLY UNHINGED AND DANGEROUS like everybody says.  So he becomes defensive when this is questioned, because he’s been worried about it himself.

But welp it’s most likely just U DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT A PRECIOUS SOUL THIS VIOLENT BAG OF DICKS IS ON THE INSIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE!  Speaking of foster daddy…

Antagonists aka a homophobic puppet show put on by somebody who’s convinced saying the word fag is worse than stabbing someone to death.

The antagonists include a strict foster dad who’s concerned about his adopted son hanging out with somebody who’s been to juvie for trying to kill someone, does drugs, trespasses, causes massive property damage, brings knives to school, oh yeah and almost violently murdered the dad personally. WHAT AN ASSHOLE!  Haha just kidding!  Just kidding about him distrusting Mitch for being a violent criminal, he does do all of the above in the text of the story. The real reason why he hates Mitch is because he’s a filthy gay that’s turning Jonas into a filthy gay too.  Which like sure….have the foster dad character be a homophobe but like it makes negative sense why he would knee-jerk into being worried exclusively about gayness cause…

1.)    Daddy issues is a cop and Mitch is a legit criminal that is where they should OBVIOUSLY be at odds

2.)    Jonas appears to be bisexual but before Mitch he’s only expressed interest in women. So his dad logically should not be paranoid at this point that he raised some filthy gay, because there’s no history of it and he does not obviously present as such.

3.)    Mitch ALSO does not obviously present as gay.  He seems to be out to his friends (and only recently), but doesn’t appear to be out to the whole school and even if he was out to the whole school it would a stretch for random cop dad to know about it.

So the real reason that adopted dad knee-jerks into being worried about gayness is because it makes him more of an evil, bad, no-good 1-D villain.  This on some level makes sense, because it’s easier to hate somebody for mistrusting the gays rather than somebody mistrusting someone who is..haha well….untrustworthy.  Problem being the rest of the story acts as if Mitch is a hero for destroying cars, and trying to kill people, so it’s a moot fucking point anyway.

In between the homophobic jargon Foster Father expresses fear that Mitch is a bad influence. Probably for the gayness but the negative influence is pretty true in the text. Jonas trespasses, skips school, causes property damage, and does drugs because Mitch tells him to.  Sure he has a choice in the matter but he had none of these inclinations before and I think it’s likely might never have done this if Mitch hadn’t open the door as WIDE AS THESE PLOT HOLES.  So again, it’s hard to see him as the 1-D antagonist he’s painted because WELP the fears of him picking up bad behavior are technically true.

The other antagonist (who really is not necessary to this story at all) is Neil.  Who I’m guessing was put in to make Mitch look better but no joke he’s worse than Mitch because he’s verbally instead of physically abusive. That’s not true the real reason why he seems like a bad person and Mitch isn’t is because Neil comes from a family with money and uses slurs.  (Which to be honest I wouldn’t picture Mitch being ABOVE if he was pissed.)  Mitch does objectively MUCH WORSE SHIT that he GETS AWAY WITH and Neil makes a few homophobic and fatphobic comments, get humiliated in public, threatened with a knife, and has his car seriously damaged if not totaled.   Also Neil apparently forgets that his car was annihilated because when he sees the people he thinks are responsible he just goes back into making fat jokes.  The worst Neil does is punch somebody after getting kneed in the dick. The worst Mitch has done is seriously attempt to kill 2 people.

So like, that’s an obvious choice right?

Say something nice Faps:

Okay the art is nice. It has a good style, good character design, and it’s consistent. Sometimes backgrounds disappear for no reason but it’s not hugely jarring.  The colored powers are a cheap kinda trick but the use of them in water for that scene was genuinely very pretty.  However I will say as cool as the style is, it’s not really suited for the material.  Like the violence looks semi-comedic when that doesn’t appear to be the intention.  Also the fact that the characters don’t have lips make the almost and DO kiss scenes look just kinda…how to put it stupid?  Like it becomes readily apparent this style is tooney and not sensual/romantic at all cause flapping those two flat lines over each other is really unappealing and silly in my opinion.

Also I do appreciate how our male leads are not the conventionally attractive types.  In particular, I give big kudos out to Jonas being on the pudgier side, even if he’s not majorly, so the artist doesn’t GLOSS OVER that fact about him.

TL;DR

The reason why this story is popular is trying to be a less problematic version of the fetishy bully/victim romances you see in a lot of BL manga.  The big problems being a story hyper focused on the flaccid romance which gives it a poor pace and makes anything else, even plot relevant info, feel like a joke. Even when the story is progressing as it should it uses some big time cliches and doesn’t put in the energy for it work.  The characterization is better but leaves Jonas looking hollow and glamorizes the violent actions of a bully.

If you want a gay delinquent with a heart of gold story read Mr.Mini-Mart, Rutta and Kodama, Blue Sky Complex, and the Hydra series.

[ireneinisolation-blog]

3/21 - Podcasts

Late start again today... I guess I am finding occasional ways to occupy myself during the day even if it doesn’t involve any social interaction :(

So going light here again, and maybe shorter than the dreams one, but also maybe not.

I am a podcast enthusiast to say the least. On a normal day, when I’m not in semi-quarantine, social isolation, distancing, whatever the fuck you call this craziness, I listen to many podcasts. While I work (I still get shit done), while I run, while I clean, while I get ready in the morning, etc. Constant podcasts. They keep my hyperactive brain under slight control. Interestingly, I’ve been listening to fewer recently since locked inside all the time. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s like I’m trying to concentrate on the current moment, despite my better judgement that tells me that I absolutely should not concentrate too hard on it or I will be instantly depressed. Anyway. I guess that’s just a bizarre side note of the moment.

Normally, I listen a lot. And I have a lot of favorites. Against my better judgement, I listen to a lot of crime podcasts. They almost always bum me out, but I just can’t stop myself. The rest of my taste in podcasts is less problematic. The first time I really got into listening to a podcast was with Serial. The second one was Reply All. The latter has remained an all time favorite. Another more recent favorite - perhaps my absolute favorite at this time, is a science podcast called Ologies. I have things to say about both of these podcasts now. I’ll probably have more in the future as well.

Reply All A podcast about the internet, and a delightful one at that. One bit that they do now and then is what they call “email debt forgiveness day” where you can reply to that old email that you have waited WAY too long to get to, then it got awkward, then you just decided that socially it would be better if you didn’t reply at all. But email debt forgiveness day removes the awkward. You can pick up where you left off and just be like “sorry, been meaning to write this for ages” and that’s that, it’s all good. I’ve been thinking about this idea recently because it seems like this whole social distancing/quarantine thing is just nudging us all towards an all day, everyday kind of email debt forgiveness “day” (eternity). Should I write to that guy who I worked with in college and now we live in different countries? Probably. What about that girl I was friends with throughout high school and into college until we both got too busy and just dropped the ball simultaneously? Yeah, I think so. What about girls who I played soccer with when I was a kid? Or people who I lived with when I was studying abroad? Okay, let’s not get too carried away. I need to still *desire* contact with the people I’m reaching out to (which includes some people mentioned above but not all). Anyway, this will be an interesting opportunity to digitally reconnect with anyone that I feel like reconnecting with. It’s interesting now as that begins to happen more, as the walls of normal social behavior seem to be blurring. It is an odd experience for everyone, EVERYONE, all over the country and really the world to be experiencing this same external threat at the same time. I know we have different smaller related issues that we are dealing with (medical issues that contribute to extra fear of the virus, loneliness, childcare, job security, etc.) but the overarching issue is one that we are ALL experiencing. Maybe it can bring us together yet, even as we all shelter from each other at a distance. Happy email debt forgiveness ETERNITY!

Ologies I love this podcast. And I try to push it on everyone I know, as well as a number of people I don’t know all the time. Basically, each episode is a different topic, a different interview with a different “-ologist” explaining their field of study and research, work, etc. It is truly a gem. A couple episode I’ve been thinking of recently: Quantum Ontology to talk about “what is real??” In said episode, interviewee Dr. Adam Becker shoots down the idea/bullshit claim that some people make that we could all be living in a simulation. He explains that this is an extremely “white man” interpretation of civilizations because to make that claim you assume that all societies inevitably go through the same steps that our current western civilizations have gone through, and that they are all aspiring to the same goals. However, just because the West in this day and age was brought about the way that it is largely because of the white patriarchy does not mean that all societies would inevitably lead in this direction. Even if we look at examples beyond the West or we look instead to women to lead our societies, would “simulation” still be something seen as so likely for our societies to aim for? Probably not. Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot recently - against better judgement - on predictions on how this virus is going to play out and what will happen to society afterwards. And Jesus H. am I bothered by what I’ve read. For one, it is absolutely insane for anyone to think they know what is on the other side of this. I know it is just a prediction, but if you feel the desire to get a piece published about your bummer predictions about how the world is ending, just think again and DON’T. It isn’t useful to have someone say that things are going to turn out horribly because it doesn’t motivate people to do any better. Sure, the virus is it’s own thing. But we do have control over the politics and the economics to an extent. Hell, even the virus we have control over some science, even if the virus got a head start. I keep reading things that say shit about how we’re going to become a more nationalistic society after this (wtf, how do you even figure?) or that even though emissions have gone down in some places as the virus has gotten really bad, emissions will actually be worse later (that one is a real weird prediction because for that prediction to be true, disruption from the virus will need to be short enough that when we return to our normal lives, everything quickly becomes business as usual plus a desire to travel and consume even more. In my brain, this doesn’t make rational sense. Yes, it could happen, but there is not enough evidence that it will to bother making it into a prediction). I’ve seen similar articles over the past few months and years regarding climate change. Predictions that the climate will get way worse and there is no point hoping for anything else because we’re not capable of restructuring society to prevent the climate from suffering. That is a bullshit way of thinking. Fucking stuffy old white men who have such a limited range of thinking that if they don’t personally have any ideas of how to make things better than it must be that nobody does. Movements make change. These stuffy old men just favor status quo and bureaucracy. But the outcomes can be different if we allow the process to get there to be different. Well this has been a rant. The conclusion here is that predictions about the future anytime, but especially now, make me very angry. Now is not the time to have a narrow idea of possibilities for the future. We need to think widely and wildly about ways that society can be rebuilt after this. Nationalism, right winged bullshit, xenophobia, rigidity are not the only ways for us to regroup after a crisis. Equality, opportunity, collaboration. These are the ways that we can come out of a crisis and form a society that was better than before. And I can’t be the only one dreaming of this as an option. We can build a better future.

The other, considerably less heavy episode of Ologies that I have had on my mind recently is the Sexology episode! The episode is a delight, though the thing I want to note is not strictly sex related. Interviewee Shannon Boodram at one points talks about how we need to appreciate our bodies, and even when we are out and about and doing things, and not in any kind of a private, sexual setting, we should enjoy having our bodies. I think she mentions something about stroking your arms or something. I can’t remember, it’s been a while. Normally I’d say “well let’s try not to look like too much of a crazy person while ‘enjoying our bodies’ in public” but hey! I’m not in public now. I am mostly just in private all the fucking time. And when I am in public, on walks and such, frequently there is nobody around. So I guess as long as we are doing this whole social distance thing, we should all enjoy our bodies (as many of the other pleasures of life are stunted at the moment). Stroke your arms or legs or whatever! Be thankful for your toes. Give yourself a head massage - whether you’re on your couch or on a walk surrounded by absolutely nobody. Appreciate your body - whether it’s PG or not ;)

I’m sure I’ll have more on Ologies another time. For example, there is a two part episode on bats, which is relevant as people freak out about bats having given us coronavirus. However, the real issue is that we as humans have been invading their habitat (and don’t blame China!) There’s also a different two part episode on fear... which seems rather relevant right now. Is there anyone out there who hasn’t had at least one anxiety-induced nervous breakdown and/or panic attack since going into semi-isolation whatever? I myself have had many a nervous breakdown in the last week. It’s unpleasant. Maybe I should spend more time appreciating my body. Anyway, you’ll read more on Ologies later. For now, go take a listen.

Daily updates.. daily updates... Went to the store today in the afternoon. Actually just went for a walk but brought my bags in case I wanted to go to the store. The parking lot was very mild, so I went in. Honestly, I haven’t been into a store so empty in a long time. There were other people, just not crazy and it was very nice. I guess everyone expects Saturday afternoons to be busy or to be all out so they think it is not worth it to go. Meanwhile, I passed the store yesterday on a walk and the parking lot was PACKED completely. Weird.

Some stuff was still bare in the grocery store, but I found most of what I was looking for minus the black beans. Got many vegetables, some fruit, some eggs, some rice, some candy. The essentials. It’s still a real weird energy in stores though. There were a lot of young people who didn’t seem too anxious (about the virus anyway) - or maybe I’m reading into their actions too much. A few people went out of their way to not let anyone else in their 6 foot area. I try a bit without being crazy. Sometimes you can’t help it because that’s how aisles work. Both the cashier and the bag boy weirded me out a little, though maybe I’m being irrational like the rest of the crazies out there. The cashier coughed - just once, hardly a sign for alarm, but she was handling my groceries and it’s not preferable. The bag boy was sniffing a lot. Which was really not great, especially as he was touching all my good a lot, even after I asked to finish it up myself and he didn’t take that direction very well and decided to keep touching everything. Frustrating. It’s weird though the desire to blame someone if and when we get sick. With coronavirus or with anything else. You think, oh, I woke up with the flu today and I know that one person at work has the flu, or that lady on the bus was coughing, I bet it was her. To some extent, I would defend the fact that I blame the people who I think give me viruses because to some extent it seems to be the result of other people being irresponsible and showing up places when they should be home or not having good enough hygiene. But the thing is, viruses move. They are seeking new hosts, and they exist and survive because they move around in sneaky ways. Plus this current virus is extra tricky because the incubation period is so long and so many people are exposed from touching surfaces. So if I show symptoms in two weeks time of this new virus, will I look back and blame the sniffling bag boy (it’s not like I’ll ever find out if he gets diagnosed) or will I just need to accept that it is a sneaky little dick of a virus, and that I could’ve just touched a door at my apartment and not washed my hands well enough after or maybe the virus was already lurking on some produce that I bought. In a situation like this, blaming doesn’t seem right... except for blame on the government, and honestly many different governments. Why must they all suck as this crucial moment when they need to get shit done??

Alright, well I guess that ended on a low point. Again. My rants get away from me. It’s past midnight now (hey, it is the weekend and my sleeping schedule is always off on the weekend), but maybe I’ll take a shower before bed. It’ll remind me to enjoy having a body :D

Good night!

[fyeahwynonnaearp]

What Just Happened?!?: She Ain’t Right (S02E04)

What. W H A T. T H E. F U D G E N U G G E T S. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF. WTF?!? JUST HAPPENED?!?!?

So this is late because that episode killed me and I’ve risen from the dead just in time for tonight’s episode to completely slay me. If the cast is freaking out about it, then what the hell is going to happen?!?

Monster(s) of the Week Potential Big Bad Kind

WomanInBlack!Mercedes Gardner (@DaniKind): It was sad to think Wynonna’s sassy friend died, which was a shame because she was an awesome bitch. But, she’s still here! Stolen face, healthy bacon obsession, and Gardner Family creepy-incesty-vibes and all!

WomanInBlack!Beth Gardner (@meghanheffern): “She’s putting on her face.” It was such an innocuous statement...until it wasn’t. 

The Goo™: Likes early morning walks in winter, having fun, and a sucker for shiny things. May or may not have a thing for a certain ‘ginger butch cop’ and might make you kiss your older sister for shits and giggles. A problematic child that has your back if you happen to lose a limb.

Final Thoughts (No Spoilers)

We knew from season one that this show moves fast. They like to dodge,dip,duck,dive,and dodge all of our expectations and theories, but will turn around and give us something that we Earpers joke about and not expect that they will actually do it! This episode was an emotional roller coaster and it wasn’t until I was staring blankly at my TV two hours after it aired that I realized there was no WayHaught...and I was completely okay with it.

The plot of this season is definitely starting to separate itself from the Earp Curse. Some people might hate it and feel that the show is tackling too many things at once and need to focus on killing the Revenants, but I appreciate this. By not focusing on Revenants, this gives justification as to why more seasons are needed (story-wise). Plus, we know there are more than just humans-turned-demons and I like seeing how it develops Wynonna from reluctant hero to actually-wants-to-save-the-day.

The Earp sisters are definitely at the forefront of this episode. In the beginning of the season, I definitely questioned why won’t Waverly just talk to Wynonna about her issues. But then I remembered, Wynonna left Waverly and has been gone for three years before coming back and on-and-off before then. As close and as protective Wynonna is, she did abandon and leave Waverly alone in the past (whether it was by her choice or not). So, it makes sense why Waverly wouldn’t really have heart-to-heart talks with her big sister because in all actuality, how well do they really know each other? Especially since Wynonna might not even know when Waverly’s birthday is.

Read on for spoiler laden rants, freak outs, and (probably) incorrect theories. SO: This is super late because as I was about to post this, my laptop freaked out and shut down. Like, now my Mac HD disk needs repair, had to install OS on my external hard drive, and I needed to do a complete erase/redo of my laptop. Wynonna Earp broke my computer.

10 Things That Happened/I Learned

1. Dolls is a fire-breathing maybe-dragon! (ex?) Deputy Marshall Xavier Dolls from Arizona can breathe fire! This is NOT a drill. Jokes about LizardDemon!Dolls are over. It became real. This is real life.

2. Jeremy Chetri is an adorable gay, even if he can’t start fires with his mind. He has a fanboy!crush on Doc and doesn’t want Dolls to get the wrong impression that he’s straight when Rosita was flirting with him. Because, you know, Dolls helped him do a chin-up one time. So, as of now, The Squad™ is at least half-unicorn: confirmed!Lesbian Officer Nicole Haught, unconfirmed!Bisexual Waverly Earp, confirmed!Gay Jeremy Chetri, and unconfirmed!butwouldn’tbesurprised Bynonna.

3. Ba-Ding! Ba-Ding! And The Mysterious Case of “OMFG! Is That A Hand?! Whose Fucking Hand Is That!?”.  Look Ma! No hand!Waverly Earp. It was the moment when wlw everywhere grieved Nicole and Waverly’s young sex life. Even if The Goo™ didn’t do the ultimate winggoo act and regrew Waverly’s hand, I’m sure she and Nicole are super smart enough to not let a little loss of limb to stop them from having the sex. But seriously, there needs to be a follow-up on Waverly’s hand because is it just there...chilling? Will she get that ring back? It looked like a nice ring.

4. The Women In Black and the face-stealing and holy shit! are the Gardner sisters still wiggling and alive?!? When we first see the Women in Black, I admit to not completely think they were a big deal. Like, oh! there are two of them and cool! she doesn’t have a face and ah! it’s the Lady Gaga hand. But now they have a weird Tucker-obsession and plans to give him whatever he desires. 

5. Tucker Gardner VS Officer Nicole Haught. It’s official, Nicole is facing Tucker this season. At first, I thought it was awesome that Nicole will now get to be an actual cop. But with Tucker teaming up with the Women in Black, I think I will be screaming “Let her in The Squad™, Wynonna! Talk to Nicole!!” at my TV for the rest of the season.

6. “Miss Four Blankets, Plus A Bonus Blanket”. Just gals being pals. Because Nicole is definitely the bonus blanket. Plus, “Tacos are tasty!” and Girls are like guns, you better run when they’re smoking (Haught)...when they’re smoking hot.

7. What is coming?! And it’s not winter. We know from the season 2 trailer that there is this ‘Legion’ thing and buff firefighters in red robes and Black Plague bird masks, but what is going on with the asshole seal and the asshole who broke it and the asshole that broke out of it?! Well, whatever it is, there are theories that it’s connected to Waverly’s origins. Emily Andras hinted earlier that the pictures from the opening titles are clues.

8. GOONONNA.

9. WynHaught bro-ship sails(?). Wynonna apologized to Nicole, but they’re talking about two different things. Wynonna is apologizing because Gooverly and Nicole knows Waverly might be acting weird because of the whole not an Earp thing. Dolliday bro-ship is alive and well. Yes, they’re into the same crazy chick with a gun, but that won’t stop them from being bros and respecting each other.

10. The Plate. What is up with the fancy commemorative Purgatory plate? It’s clearly important because people died for it and Black Badge wants it and it belonged to an Earp. It always comes back to the Earps, doesn’t it?

[jjnonken]

TL;DR: Yeah, uh, bought one of these Because Reasons. Long story behind why I feel I need it. Short version: muscle memory sucks, getting old sucks, programmers suck.

So I’ve got this weird keyboard layout thing going on that I’ve been using forever, and I’m reluctant to change. Muscle memory of three decades (... OK, two-and-a-half) being difficult to retrain and all that. Especially at my age.

It started with the Doom layout and went downhill from there. At the time we were using Gateway 2000 Anykey keyboards at work, so I was able to use a cross-shaped cursor key arrangement (unlike the inverted “T” of other keyboards, which persists to this day). Since then the Anykey has gone the way of the dodo, though I snagged a few that were being binned, and still have at least one working one. For one thing, it doesn’t have a Windows key, nor any way to create one, so it’s of limited use. For another, it’s got an AT or PS/2 connector, depending on its age. My working one has a PS/2 connector; but you can’t really hot-plug a PS/2 keyboard. It doesn’t harm anything, but the system needs to be rebooted. Fortunately I have a PS/2-to-USB adapter (two of them, actually) and also AT-to-PS/2 adapters (fortunately just a form factor change; electrically they’re identical) if I want to make the other one work. Problematic, since I only have one full set of keycaps for some reason.

Yeah, so. What do I do? Well, I use the numeric keypad and reprogram the Num Lock to be “E” (and reprogram the Windows Menu key -- the one to the right of the spacebar, not the main Windows key -- to be “Num Lock”) using Keytweak. Which requires a reboot after a remap, so I can’t just casually re-tweak the keyboard layout and switch games.

Over the years I’ve managed to keep this layout by considering it a functional mapping. During my WFA years I was putting precise-fire weapons (sniper rifles) on one key; rapid-fire weapons (usually hitscan) on another; shotguns and other CQB weapons in a third; and melee in a fourth. Then there are the grenades. There’s more, including special layouts for TF-type engineer (whose emphasis is on building and maintaining machinery), but you get the idea. With a functional layout, the exact weapon that a specific player class uses for a particular purpose is unimportant; you simply determine which class it belongs to and map it to the appropriate key. If something doesn’t fit the standard then you come up with alternate mappings, but try to keep things as close to the standards as possible.

Of course, every game has its own way of doing things, and sometimes the weapons categories of a game (*cough*Killing Floor*cough*) don’t fit into my neat categories (tier 1, 2 and 3 weapons are about relative power), so over the last decade my system has been bent and beaten into various odd-looking shapes. But a few key, um, keys have always been the same.

But there’s a problem.

For most games that have a sprint function, the sprint key is a toggle. Tap it once while you’re moving forward and you start sprinting. Sprinting may stop when you a) stop, b) strafe (I don’t like that one), c) jump, d) tap the Sprint key again, e) any of a bunch of stuff, but usually reasonable reasons to stop sprinting. Killing Floor did something different, which was to let you run a bit faster when you switch to a melee weapon, which is why sometimes you’ll see me switch weapons when I’m running (I’ve got something over 2,000 hours on the game, so it’s a pretty well-ingrained habit, even years later). KF2, on the other hand, gives you a separate sprint key -- but requires you to hold it down.

Most of my other fingers are busy when I’m moving and shooting, so I tend to use the PG DN key, which is fairly convenient to my left pinky when I’ve got the rest of my fingers on the numpad home row. Which works great when it’s a tap to sprint. But when you have to hold it down with your pinky, suddenly a lot of maneuvers turn this arrangement into a game of Twister without any of the fun.

Well, I found this keyboard, a Logitech K330 (usually comes in a combo), which rearranges the home/end/etc. cluster to narrow the keyboard a bit -- and the PG DN key is suddenly next to the home row instead of a row above it. No more cramping positions!

It’s an unusual layout, though, and difficult to find keyboards that have it. So far I’ve found... basically just the K330, though there are a couple cheap wired ones out there. I think Dell or somebody ships one with their computers. Fortunately I was able to find a batch of four on eBay for cheap when my first one became a victim of the Pepsi Syndrome, so over the past few years I’ve accumulated a few extras.

Yeah, so that. But there’s another problem: not every game will let me map what I need. because everybody uses WASD, so of course I would use WASD. Only muscle memory and old age; remember those? So they’ll let me remap my keys, which of course they do, only the remapping is limited, because nobody is actually going to use the remapping function. I had a whole thing over the keyboard mapping in 7 Days to Die because they have a tremendous amount of function overloading plus fixed functionality, so I ended up having to completely unbind the mouse scroll wheel and I still can’t really use the mouse to steer my vehicles. 

Num Lock was a problem for a bunch of games -- either they simply won’t let it map or tapping it would toggle the Num Lock function and make the keys work sometimes, but not others. I resolved that by remapping it as described above.

Enter is another one. A lot of programs won’t let me map that, which is kind of awkward, because that’s my Crouch button. Motherfuckers. Mostly it’s games that assume that Enter is Enter and won’t let you map the main Enter key only. There are some, though, that will let me map the Num Enter but not the main Enter, which I can live with. Philosophically I dislike it, but it doesn’t affect me directly. (But still... it should be possible.)

I’ve never played Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, though I own a copy. Why? Because the motherfucking ratfuck bastard morons won’t fucking let me fucking remap to the fucking num pad at all. I cranked it up, tried to map my keys, gave up and uninstalled it. Will my mapping make sense in a game that has a very different control paradigm? No fucking clue, because I’m not allowed to try.

Lazy fucking asshats.

Destiny 2 is one of the “can’t remap Numpad Enter” games. There might be one or two other keys, I’ve forgotten. I was determined to try, though, so I dusted off my Gateway 2000 Anykey keyboard and reprogrammed enough keys to get it working.

It’s awkward. I’m not used to the keyboard; it’s HUUUGE; it’s heavy; and it requires rearranging my desk a bit because I kind of need the other keyboard nearby, too. Actually it’s more convenient in one way: using the Numpad with my left hand means I have the keyboard pushed waaaay to the left, which is really inconvenient for typing normally. Entering text fields usually means shifting the keyboard back and forth. So I can put my regular keyboard in front of me... only now I have to change habits, because I’m in the habit of moving the keyboard, not changing to a different keyboard.

Yeah.

So for that and some other reasons I’ve not been playing; none of my friends actually want to play with me; I could use some guidance while I learn the game, but it’s not easy when all your friends have already leveled way past you. Especially when said so-called friends have communications and patience issues. S___ tends to say something; if I ask him to repeat it because I had trouble hearing, or because I didn’t understand, he shuts up and doesn’t say anything. (And I don’t mean Snarb. Different game; really great guy.) A great teacher never ever repeats himself because, you know, repetition isn’t the key to learning, or any such shit, right? Sorry, rant over.

Once in a while I try to find a standalone programmable keypad or keyboard that has buttons in what are blank space in a regular keyboard. In other words, I want a button in the home row, immediately left of the Numpad, because that will let me hold Sprint down without (as much) cramping. A week or two ago I found the one you see at the top and put it on my wishlist. I added a set of red-and-white keycaps because, well, I’ve inadvertently started a bit of a red-and-white theme with my equipment, which I won’t go into here -- this shit’s already too long. Also stuck on my Amazon wishlist.

Yeah. So. Destiny 2 is being shifted from Blizzard to Steam in October. Meantime apparently they’ve gone to a free-to-play model, which I should resent because I paid for it? Apparently? I dunno, when TF2 did that I figured I’d gotten more than my money’s worth out of the game. Here I feel a bit more cheated, seeing as how I haven’t played it more than a few hours. But still, whatever. I went through the motions of getting it transferred to my Steam account. It should show up soon. I guess. Beginning of October.

And now my friend Blacksix (another great guy, and one of my oldest current gaming buddies, hailing back to my Urban Terror days) wants to play. Last night he texted me and said he wanted to try it, was preloading it, and encouraged me to preload it too. I went ahead and did that, reasoning that my account should migrate into that if they didn’t fuck things up, but I don’t really have anything to lose -- never played enough to accumulate any resources. Like, any. Not like, any significant resources; no resources. Just the initial playthrough on a few characters. No money or manna or coins or credits or tokens (or whatever this game uses for commerce) or weapons or, well, anything. Blacksix is going to want to do an initial playthrough anyway.

And then I had to decide: am I going to follow through with this? I found this nifty keypad that should solve all my mapping problems. But it’s $90. But I can afford the occasional $90 purchase. It may even let me play Metal Gear if I really want to try. It’ll apparently let me set up specific mappings for specific games and swap them easily. 

So, I figured, what the fuck. Last night I put in an order for this keyboard (the 46-key layout, since it starts with the numeric keypad layout I’m used to and the left side is all individual keys; and Cherry MX switches) and this replacement keytop set. And while I was at it, a copy of Twice Upon a Time, because damned if it’s not one of the best movies EVAR and more than $25 entitles me to free shipping.

So now I’m all a-quiver with anticipation.

[patheticphallacy]

IT’S MAY Y’ALL. Even though I’ll still be doing blog posts in May, it’s not going to be as hectic, as I finally finished my second year of university and have decided to take it easy after a very packed April.

I’m also doing things a little different with my wrap up this month by getting rid of star ratings. I watched a video on it, and I just feel like I’d rather people go by my actual comments on the books than look at the rating and decide that covers all my thoughts. I still have star ratings on Goodreads for my own personal use, but I’m doing my best to start writing proper summaries of my thoughts from now on!

READING WRAP UP

  Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan– a solid follow up to the first book, although there’s a startling lack of dragons in a series about a dragon naturalist! Definitely go into this one expecting a lot more politics than book 1, and Isabella starting a lot of Drama.

The Elementals by Michael McDowell– such an amazing horror novel! McDowell is so underrated for a writer who wrote predominantly in the seventies and eighties, and it’s so tragic how young he died. 

Princess Jellyfish Volume 1 by Akiko Higashimura– such a disappointing read. It’s really problematic, to the point where it drastically impacted my enjoyment of the plot, especially when I’ve got so many other more recent manga I could be enjoying more than this. 

Fullmetal Alchemist Volume 8 by Hiromu Arakawa– speaking of next tier manga… holy shit. I am so scared of volume 9 and finishing this series, it’s meant so much to me and it’s really helped me immerse myself fully in reading manga. 

Lumberjanes Volume 9 by Shannon Watters– Barney is a precious precious bean and I love them! This is a roller derby volume, and it was pretty great: I’ve been a fan of roller derby since I first watched Whip It, and this volume was super entertaining!

Lumberjanes Volume 10 by Shannon Watters– wholesome volume where the parents come to visit their kids. I do feel really sad for Molly, but it was nice seeing everyone else’s parents! 

Lumberjanes: A Midsummer Night’s Scheme by Nicole Andelfinger– this was a fun bonus one shot comic. However, it does get very cheesy and it’s whole message is just so obvious  that them explaining it was very much unneeded. 

Smut Peddler Volume 1 by Various Authors– this is a fun anthology of smut comics that I super enjoyed reading. E.K. Weaver’s comic is by far my favourite, and it’s only after I realised that it was a one shot about a character in her webcomic! 

Rumple Buttercup BY Matthew Gray Gubler– a very cute children’s graphic novel about loving yourself and finding acceptance! 

Smut Peddler Volume 2 by Various Authors– this wasn’t as good as volume 1, but I still read it really quickly and had a fun time looking at the different art styles and methods of story telling!

Dream Daddy by Various Authors– there are so many good moments in this comic, it’s so great. Highly recommend if you’ve played the game, and if you haven’t, check it out, it’s real fun! Damien and Robert’s issue was by far my favourite as they were my favourites in the game too.

Tokyo Ghoul Volume 5 by Sui Ishida– finally, I’m starting to enjoy Tokyo Ghoul. It took a while this volume to actually understand what the hell was happening, but once I did, it really did become something I enjoyed.

Rick and Morty VS Dungeons and Dragons by Patrick Rothfuss– A decent enough read, although there is way too much dialogue and exposition on every page. The font is really small, too, so reading it was a hassle. 

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero– this book was actually terrible and I have a whole review discussing my issues and how harmful it is!

Jackass! Volume 1 by Scarlet Beriko– This is a funny, sweet manga about fetishes and blackmail. It has an age gap romance between an 18 year old and a doctor, and there is some transphobic bullying/weird treatment of bullying being okay if the person has a crush on you, but the main relationship is great, and the MC has a really lovely relationship with his older sister. 

Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka– Chronicles the Alice Batwoman arc from Detective Comics, as well as giving the backstory for Kate. It’s so great having a badass DC hero who is a lesbian, whose storyline also touches on homophobia in the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ era of the military. Glad I finally got to this!

Sparrowhawk #5 by Delilah S Dawson– a really disappointing series conclusion overall. I knew I should’ve just stopped reading after the first issue and I wasn’t feeling it, and I honestly wish I had after such a dissatisfying conclusion. Others may enjoy this, but it really wasn’t for me.

Assassination Classroom Volume 1 by Yusei Matsui— an amazing series starter! Already really moving with a teacher who spends all his time encouraging his students despite being a threat to the entire world they have to kill within the year. I have a feeling this will become a new favourite.

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara– really great non-fiction read written by a journalist who played a massive part in the resurgence of talk surrounding the Golden State Killer. You also get some of her life story, and by the end I was almost in disbelief that the author had already died by the time her work was published. I will say it did drag at points, especially in the parts not written by McNamara that had to be finished after she died, but overall a really thorough look into the cases and the victims.

The Woods Volume 5 by James Tynion IV– this series is- dare I say it- picking up? I still have issues with the representation and the fact that most of the main characters to have died, especially in this volume, were POC while the white characters are in the exact same situation and survive. Will have to see if this carries on. 

Backwards & In Heels by Alicia Malone– this started off strong, and I found out so much about women in film and their presence in the industry since the creation of film in the 1800’s. However, by the end it got so repetitive and formulaic in the way information was presented that I started skimming. This is more of a coffee-table, occasional-read book when you fancy learning more about amazing women! Also, even though there is diverse rep and talk of lack of hiring of WOC and LGBT+ women in the industry, we also get the author praising white women earlier on in the book who took on roles where they did blackface and yellowface, which really dulled down the conversation in the latter half of the book. 

My Love Story!! Volume 6 by Kazune Kawahara– so GOOD. I got so emotional reading this volume, I ended up crying. This is by far one of my favourite manga series, I can’t recommend it enough. It follows tough-but-soft boy Takeo as he enters into a relationship with Yamato, cutest girl in the universe, with the support of his best friend Suna. Truly the PEAK of romantic comedy fiction. 

When the Sky Fell on Splendor by Emily Henry– emotional, hardhitting read about a group of friends who end up with superpowers after discovering a strange alien object. It’s very reminiscent of the film Super 8 in my head, and if you love stories about not only aliens but found families through friendship, highly recommend!

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle– I just don’t think Sherlock Holmes is for me. I love the retellings and adaptations, and in theory, I’m invested in the murder mysteries, but I just think Doyle’s prose weighs it down and there’s always that underlying racism I don’t think is appropriate to even attempt to shake. 

And my May TBR Jar pick is…. MY HEART GOES BANG by Keris Stainton!

TV SHOWS/MOVIES/VIDEOS

At the start of the month, I started bingeing Dead Meat videos, a channel entirely revolving around horror. My personal favourite series is the Saw kill count videos, and the movies that changed horror podcast episode James (the host) does with his girlfriend Chelsea (who is amazing)!

I finally watched season 2 of Stranger Things! I adore Steve, as always, and it was such a solid season (BOB). However I did have an issue with the needless rivalry that festered with Elle towards Max, season 3 better sort that and stop pitting girls against each other for no reason other than because of boys.

Zoe from Read by Zoe was on FIRE this month with some really great read-a-thon videos! I loved her 24 read-a-thon vlog especially, she read only books she enjoyed growing up and it all felt really nostalgic.

This is very much a personal one, but my favourite streamer returned to a podcast with the company he used to work for, and it was just…. so heartwarming to watch. I can’t believe he left four years ago! I’ve been watching this company since I was about fourteen, so it was so nice watching this, a long-awaited reunion.

Kat at paperbackdreams did an amaaaaazing video rant reviewing After by Anna Todd, and I loved it. In general Kat is a top tier booktuber for me, I highly recommend her videos as much as I can!

MUSIC I’VE ENJOYED

Pressure by The 1975

Old Town Road Remix by Lil Nas X, Billy Ray Cyrus

The Black and White and I Spend Too Much Time in My Room by The Band CAMINO

I Got 5 On It  (Tethered Mix From US) by Michael Abels, Luniz, Michael Marshall

Soldiers (From Stranger Things) by Kyle Dixon, Michael Stein

REVIEWS I POSTED

Three Romance Reviews: Kulti, The Hating Game and Sunstone

The Elementals Book Review

Meddling Kids Book Review

OTHER POSTS I’VE DONE 

Spring Cleaning Book Tag

Film Friday: Favourite Campus Films

Getting Through Exam and Essays: ADVICE

DISCUSSION: Reading at University, and how I do it!

Music Monday: OMG This Song Book Tag

Top Ten Tuesday: Rainy Day Reads

Top Ten Tuesday: First Ten Books I Ever Reviewed on Goodreads

  April Wrap Up & May TBR Jar Pick IT'S MAY Y'ALL. Even though I'll still be doing blog posts in May, it's not going to be as hectic, as I finally finished my second year of university and have decided to take it easy after a very packed April.