#also i hate how adamant white people are that i’m one of them because i’m white passing

[pjthedaft]

i hate living in the city. i hate having no transportation to the rez. i feel so disconnected from my people and myself. i can’t get my hands on a hand drum, i can’t get beadwork, i can’t get real moccasins, i can’t even figure out how to source the materials to make stuff myself without supporting non-indigenous sellers. every time i see a shitty crochet dreamcatcher being sold by some white people, it’s like rubbing salt in an already gaping wound. this fuck sucks this fucking sucks this fucking sucks. i hate it here.

[dtmsrpfcringe]

We don't hate women. We hate women who are abusive towards their partners.

Michael and David both deserve better and just because you want to buy into what PR and social media tells you, you don't have to attack other people for being upset over actors they care about possibly not being happy.

David wouldn't leave Georgia, they are married and have children, so he feels responsible. He always puts other people before himself. And Anna played it well with the babies, as harsh as it sounds. Michael would feel terrible leaving the girls. People staying in relationships doesn't prove you right, sadly. It's no sign of anything other than commitment and commitment doesn't always come from a place of love.

By saying that Michael and David shippers want to see them unhappy in their relationship, you show that you're missing the point. The whole point of shipping them is wanting them to be happy. You just want to be hateful towards people who don't suppprt your narrative, it seems.

GOD I WISH TUMBLR WOULD LET ME ADD TEXTS BEFORE ASKS SO I COULD SAY “Warning: you’re about to hear one of the most moronic takes I have ever heard” *insert gif of amanojaku from ghost stories here* okay let’s…we have to break this down it’s too much for me to just laugh at and go “wow this is dumb as hell”

“We don’t hate women, we just make up stuff so we can justify hating them”- you. where’s…where’s any shred of proof that either women are even a little bit abusive? I mean don’t you think we would have seen some of that by now? And no, enty lawyer doesn’t count as proof and neither does random screenshots of a bit of text with zero context. Also neither do jokes online with your partner when they’re okay with it (and make the same jokes quite literally all the time) and nobody sees a problem with it except the people that conveniently hate these women.

2. “Michael and David both deserve better” yes I’m sure the rich white middle aged men who are two of the most popular actors in their countries who have girlfriends/wives and kids who love and adore them are surely hurting because some weirdo on tumblr says it.

3. Hate to tell you this but married people with children divorce all the time. It’s not like if they divorce he is going to suddenly vanish in a puff of smoke babe.

4. Even if that’s true, your theory of him only staying out of responsibility is bullshit. Someone who stays for the kids isn’t going to dip their wife into a kiss on the red carpet and look at her like a hozier song sounds. If there’s any event or interview where he can find a way to praise Georgia, he does it. He always talks about her. After events they’ve been seen kissing deeply and walking arm in arm honeymoon style.

5. as for Anna and Michael, (David and Georgia too but they seem more open to pda) they don’t owe you pda. Michael has been more than adamant about defending his girlfriend on twitter and good for him about it.

6. if you guys were genuinely concerned with Michael and David’s impending relationship crashes, why is it always tied to their love for one another? The only people who see This rampant “abuse and unhappiness” is this group of people who believe David and Michael are actually in love and want to elope together. Nobody else. Not even other Sheenant shippers. You guys literally just hate them, I mean Invisibleicewands has been talking shit on Anna since she posted her first photo with Michael back in 2019 and hasn’t stopped.

7. “And Anna played it well with the babies, as harsh as it sounds.” seriously what the absolute crap is this supposed to mean my dude? I’ve gotta be honest….you know how smex works right? Michael could absolutely choose to use protection!!! Why is it on her? Not on him. He’s had kids before I think he knows that a stork doesn’t bring the baby. Holy hell you people make my eyes hurt

8. (finally) funny you should bring up narratives, you know considering you’re part of the group that thinks any affection towards anybody else that isn’t them is PR (thinking of the Joseph Fiennes hug fiasco) that lied about Georgia and Anna being abusive, that has tried time and time again and moved the goalpost, that fabricates evidence and tries to send death threats to people who speak out, and then lie about it, that your group is the one who can’t handle women working together and have to call everything PR. The same group that ignores the fact that Anna and Georgia are friends, to talk grave shit on them. Newsflash sweetheart, we aren’t the ones pushing the narrative here. You only want to see David and Michael happy as long as it aligns with your delusion. Have the day you deserve.

anyways, I think this is going to be my pinned post. Mostly because I want this to be embarrassing if you ever try to come back here and lie on Betty whites internet again, but also because I think this addresses so many tin hat talking points at once. Just because we love aziraphale and crowley doesn't mean we get the right to insert ourselves into their personal lives, you wouldn't want someone else praying for your relationship to fail.

[battlekidx2]

Hazbin Hotel - Vaggie Finale Thoughts

My thoughts on Vaggie are… complicated. I think the last two episodes of season 1 do a really good job with her and I love the beats her character hits, but the rest of the season didn’t build up to some of these beats the way they should have to make all of them hit as hard as they could.

I’m just going to jump right in to explain what I mean.

Vaggie’s role in episode 7 where she has to go convince Carmilla to help them face the angels is at its core fantastic and the song that they get together is a banger, but the basis for this song– that Vaggie is being driven by vengeance and has to fight for love instead– rings hollow. 

Everything Vaggie has done this season has been for love. She’s been nothing but supportive of Charlie, putting all her effort into the hotel and Charlie’s mission. Her song and arc in episode 3 surround Vaggie’s belief and love for Charlie. Vaggie fighting for love has never been the central issue of her character because she’s been doing it all along.

I like the idea of Vaggie being driven by vengeance, considering how brutally Lute mutilated her and how she was cast out of heaven for the “horrible” offense of hesitating to kill a child this would make sense for her character, but this wasn’t shown at any point prior to this song. 

Where was this thirst for vengeance when she came face to face with Adam and Lute in the hotel room? Where was Vaggie’s anger at heaven when Charlie was calling out their hypocrisy? At what point in this season did Vaggie choose vengeance over her love and support for Charlie?

If vengeance was what was really driving her character then Vaggie would be pushing Charlie to call out heaven. She would take some impulsive actions to strike back that put Charlie’s goals in danger. She wouldn’t be the one telling Charlie to keep a cool head or singing about supporting Charlie no matter what.

This is the issue that’s been plaguing Vaggie this entire season. So much of her character has been tell rather than show. We were told by Husk that Vaggie hates herself. We were told by Carmilla that Vaggie was driven by vengeance. When Vaggie is faced with the decision to support Charlie against heaven or side with heaven to keep her secret the narrative lets Vaggie just not make a choice.

She doesn’t get to show her character and flaws through her actions. At least not the ones the show says she has.

I think this problem is a bit more obvious because when the show does build up something with her character it is really good.

Vaggie being the one to reach out to and convince Carmilla to help their cause is a great beat. We see early on that Vaggie isn’t a people person. She has trouble trusting and/or inspiring others, but here we get to see her reach out to and connect with someone else, and it's through this understanding the two have that she is able to get Carmilla to help her (by training her to fight angels) and the hotel (by providing weapons).

This exact struggle is also reflected in the moments with the hotel residents. Throughout the season Vaggie has always come across as being on their level. Charlie is well-meaning, but because of her privileged upbringing she has a very black and white view of redemption and struggles to deal with the more serious mental health issues that the hotel residents face. Whereas Vaggie is more jaded and has made massive mistakes in the past.

The other hotel residents can understand her struggle to do the right thing and redeem herself, which is why it was impactful to have Vaggie be the one to let them know that they can leave and that she’s the first one to see that they stayed. It emphasized the connection between them.

Vaggie’s fight with Lute was also amazing. Lute was the angel that cast her out, ripping out her eye and cutting off her wings. There’s a personal connection there that makes this battle investing. The way their battle ends really emphasizes the conflict between Charlie and heaven in episode 6 by showing that Vaggie, someone cast out of heaven, is more worthy of heaven and angel wings than Lute, Adam’s right-hand woman, through her decision to choose love over hate and spare Lute’s life.

It’s these moments that show the full potential that Vaggie has as a character and put the moments that they fumbled in stark contrast.

I really like this show, but I do think it has flaws. Vaggie’s character is a prime example of how the pacing of this season made certain character arcs suffer. 

I'm hopeful that the show can improve on some of these issues now that it officially has a season 2 and that it was the biggest animated release on Amazon Prime (which is impressive because The Legend of Vox Machina had the massive already established fanbase of critical role watching it). I really enjoyed watching this season week to week and can’t wait for what they have in store for us next.

Side note: The moment where Vaggie spared Lute is where she should have gotten her angel wings and specifically she should have gotten Lute’s angel wings. This would just heighten the thematic importance of this moment and show through Vaggie’s mercy– the very thing that got her kicked out of the exorcists– she has shown that she is more worthy of being an angel than Lute. I can’t take credit for this. I heard it from Sarcastic Chorus.

[wishcamper]

Nesta, Interrupted: gendered perceptions of alcoholism in ACOSF

CW: addiction, sexual assault, gendered violence.

Creds: I’m a licensed counselor with a degree specialization in treating addiction. I have career experience with multiple modes of mental health, trauma, and substance use treatment in women-specific carceral, institutional, and healthcare settings. And I know anyone can come on the internet and say that, but I pinky promise.

The short version:

ACOSF stigmatizes alcoholism in line with cultural standards.

Western culture feels differently about female and male alcoholics due to systemic sexism, and thus treats them differently.

Women’s experience of alcoholism is often compounded by or even a result of systemic factors and intersectional identity.

Nesta’s treatment in ACOSF, while repugnant, is in many ways very accurate of attitudes today.

(I’ll be using “women/men” and “male/female” to denote cis afab and amab people. Little research exists on the experiences of queer, nonbinary and gender expansive considerations in addiction and recovery, which is a fuckin’ shame. Studies are also largely conducted with white participants due to enormous barriers to treatment for Black, Indigenous, and people of color, so this convo is inherently incomplete where it neglects those intersections.)

Okay, first things first: ACOSF is a book that stigmatizes alcoholism. I will not be taking questions.

The number one thing to understand is that in America, land of Miss Sarah, we are very bad at addiction treatment (tx). Why? Because our culture hates addicts has as stigma around addiction. And female alcoholics bear a very specific set of stigmas based in their identity.

In Susanna Kaysen’s memoir Girl, Interrupted , Kaysen’s character is institutionalized following a non-fatal suicide attempt. When evaluated, she’s diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, that bastion of diagnoses perfect for people (75% of whom are female-identified) who don’t fit into our polite definition of functioning. As the book unfolds, she reflects on how (white) women are often pathologized when they buck against systems of oppression that create the dysfunction in them in the first place. That is not to say other women in the institution are not genuinely in need of help, nor that mental illness in women is always from a systemic wound. But it’s crucial in the treatment of female addiction and mental health disorders to considered the systemic factors of gendered violence and patriarchy, and the attitudes we hold about women who struggle with drinking.

Think about female alcoholics in media. If she’s young, she’s a loose, reckless sl*t looking for trouble and deserving of the reality check when she finds it (Amy Schumer in Trainwreck, Lindsay Lohan in general). Or if the woman are older, they are discarded, or gross, or pathetic, or evil like anyone Faye Dunaway played or Eminem’s mom in 8 Mile (deep cut lol). Men are afforded a much larger spectrum of experiences and struggles - Ernest Hemingway, Leaving Las Vegas, Sideways, the dude from A Star is Born, Frank from Shameless (brilliant), frat boys, blue collar workers, introspective tortured artists, fucking IRON MAN. I could go on forever, but I hope that illustrates the depth and diversity of male-centric stories of alcoholism not often afforded to women.

One of the most empathetic and accurate portrayals of female alcoholism, in my opinion, is in the show Sharp Objects (the book, too, but actually witnessing it makes a difference). We see Amy Adams’ Camille swig vodka from an Evian bottle while fending off vicious, veiled attacks from her verbally and emotionally abusive mother and experiencing flashbacks of teenage sexual assault. We watch her struggle to find emotional safety in her conservative hometown, both wanting to fit in and get out in order to survive. We GET why she drinks and I have trouble blaming her for it even as she wreaks havoc on herself and others. We can see her clawing just to make it out alive, and alcohol is the tool she’s using to do it, for better or worse.

Which is where Nesta enters the chat. When we get our first glimpse of her alcohol use is ACOFAS, it’s portrayed as something everyone knows about but that she’s still mostly keeping it together - her dress is clean, her hair is neatly braided, she doesn’t need a chaperone to show up to a family event. The deterioration between ACOFAS and ACOSF is alarming, and we know that alcoholism is a progressive condition so that tends to happen. Was there a particular trigger? That’s hard to say. Solstice certainly didn’t help, especially with the pressures to perform and conform to the standards of the Inner Circle aka the people in power. I imagine seeing her sisters bouncey and reveling in the world that stole them and killed their father was probably.. tough, to say the least. The barge party seems to be a turning point as well, though this one is more confusing to me. But given the child abuse, extreme poverty, sexual assault, kidnapping, bodily violation, witnessing her father’s murder, almost dying, WAR - and that’s not even to mention essentially becoming a refugee - it would be amazing if she DIDN’T drink. She 100% has complex trauma, and is looking for ways to cope.

No one with full capacity dreams of becoming an addict when they grow up. Addiction, in my professional and personal experience, is largely a strategy for coping with a deeper wound. People don’t drink to feel bad. They drink to feel good, and to survive. Nesta herself is drinking to survive, but it’s having the unfortunate side effect of killing her at the same time. As she slides into active addiction, the thought of her own death may even be comforting, and alcohol in that way is her friend. (There's some interesting research right now framing addiction as an attachment disorder, but I don't know enough to speak on it much.)

So she obviously needs help. That’s not a debate. What is a debate is how the IC should best go about intervening. A variation on the Johnson method is used in ACOSF (the one from the show Intervention) and appears to be successful only because they threaten her if she doesn’t comply. This method has mixed data to support it, and while it’s very good at getting people into tx, there is a higher relapse rate for those who receive it (1). The “family” gathers and tells her the ways she’s hurt them and tell her the consequences if she doesn’t seek the help they’re offering. And again, so many of their reason are the effects on THEM, how she’s making THEM look, not her pain.

The IC’s ignorance and dismissal of her alcoholism in ACOSF is frankly mystifying. Why do they intervene on all the drinking and sexing, anyway? It seems like they’ve been fine enough with it up to this point. But now it's gone too far, not because of her illness but because she is embarrassing them. And I don’t know about you, but between Cassian apparently fucking half of Velaris and Mor’s heavily documented emotional drinking, that’s hard to square. It makes it feel much more likely that they don’t like the way she is coping, that she is not fitting into their picture of who she’s supposed to be. This picture is inherently gendered, because Prythian society and those who live in it have explicit and implicit expectations of gender roles, whether they’ll admit it or not. Cassian and Mor are playing their roles well; Nesta is not.

That leads me to believe it is NOT all about her, but the systemic and internal factors influencing their perception of her and the ways she’s struggling. It’s distasteful to them for her, a female, to be deteriorating this publicly, despite the fact that her very identity makes it harder for her to function in the patriarchy of Prythian. We hear almost exclusively about sexual violence against women, aside from 2 male characters. Past or present assault of women is a major plot point on multiple occasions (Mor, Gwyn, Nesta, Emerie, Rhysands mom and sister, the lady of autumn, Cassians mom, Azriels mom, I could go on). But something about the way Nesta is contending with that is unacceptable, and I believe it’s because she’s not trying to cover up her dysfunction. In prythian, we keep these things hidden- Mor’s assault is never processed in full, Azriel’s mom seems to be alone at Rosehall, priestesses are literally hidden inside a mountain for centuries. Women process trauma alone and in the dark, but Nesta is in the light and she is loud. She is refusing to hide her problems, and the IC don’t like that, whether they realize it or not.

So why don’t the IC understand this? Like I said earlier, as a culture we hate addicts, or what they stand for, in very much the same way I think we hate people experiencing homelessness. We convince ourselves it was a series of bad choices that led someone where they are, choices we would never make because we are smart, smarter than them. We believe are more in control than that. We can prevent bad things from happening to us because we are good, because we are better than whoever it’s happening to. But the reality is almost ALL of us are one hospital stay away from homelessness, just as all of us are one trauma away from addiction. And with female addicts, we have another layer of expecting women to only struggle nicely and quietly, or to go away. Intersectional factors are at play here, too: white women are much more likely to have alcoholism attributed to mental health and trauma factors, where people of color often suffer the same addiction being more associated with crime. You can imagine how that plays out differently.

So what is the effect of all this? Gendered expectations lead to not only external stigma around addiction and tx, but also to internalized stigma which can limit willingness to seek tx. (2) Many social forces encourage women to drink and discourage them from telling anyone. Factors such as poverty, family planning, access to education, racial discrimination, and location can make services harder to access. Internally, women are more likely to enter treatment with less confidence in their ability to succeed, but report more strengths and more potential to grow recovery strengths during and following tx. For men, the pattern is reversed (3). And women have more successful tx episodes overall when gendered considerations are a part of the design and implementation of services (4). For Nesta, the effect is that she’s forced into treatment and copes by having hate sex with her ex and changing herself to conform to her family’s expectations while the House and the Valkyrie’s actually take care of her. I do not see how Sarah drew the line from there to recovery, I truly don’t. If anything, she recovers in spite of the ICs intervention, not because of it.

In summary, Nesta Archeron deserved better. Nesta deserved the same compassion the book gives to men who are struggling, and it’s a reflection of not just the book’s culture but the author’s culture that she doesn’t get it. Female alcoholics are worthy of treatment that integrates their identities, as those identities are often essential factors contributing to their addiction. What's shown in ACOSF is a reality many women live, and they shouldn't have to.

Barry Loneck, James A. Garrett & Steven M Banks (1996) The Johnson Intervention and Relapse During Outpatient Treatment, The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 22:3, 363-375, DOI: 10.3109/00952999609001665

Groshkova T, Best D, White W. The Assessment of Recovery Capital: Properties and psychometrics of a measure of addiction recovery strengths. Drug Alcohol Rev. 2013;32(2):187–94.

Best D, Vanderplasschen W, Nisic M. Measuring capital in active addiction and recovery: the development of the strengths and barriers recovery scale (SABRS). Subst Abuse Treat, Prev Policy. 2020;15(1):1–8.

Polak, K., Haug, N.A., Drachenberg, H.E. et al. Gender Considerations in Addiction: Implications for Treatment. Curr Treat Options Psych 2, 326–338 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40501-015-0054-5

[meetinginsamarra]

mayprompts2024, #25 intuition

White Pony Tattoo - Part Five (intuition)

Sherlock took a sip of his tea and John felt a wave of jealousy for the teacup that was embraced by this perfect cupid’s bow of Sherlock’s lips. Sherlock swallowed and John mirrored the movement subconsciously, fascinated by Sherlock’s bobbing Adam’s apple.

He’s far too beautiful to concentrate, John sighed internally, how will I even survive getting tattooed by him, with his hands all over me? Well, all over my arm at least. But he will be so close. I’ve never met a person who at the same time is such a seductive menace and an annoying dick. Seems like he’s just my type, dear me.

“So,” Sherlock stood up again, unable to contain his excited energy about explaining his deduction, “how did I know?”

“I’m all ears, oh great Meastro.”

Sherlock flashed John an amused smile.

“When I first saw you, you had pulled off your jumper and were looking with disdain at the Virgin Mary tattoo on your upper arm. It sports the face of a real woman, your ex-wife apparently because of the marks on your ringfinger where your wedding band had been. Ergo she left and betrayed you and you’ll be divorced soon and want to eradicate every memory of her.”

“Okay, I get this. But the soldier? Getting shot and surviving in Afghanistan?”

“Your whole stance and demeanour screamed ‘military’. You still cut your own hair in short military style. Scar tissue on your shoulder peeked out under your vest. You’re not shy about showing off your naked arms but hate the scar. I’ve done a lot of research on skin and also cover-ups. I know a gunshot wound when I see one, one that got severely infected by bacteria and you survived sepsis. The skin is badly healed, so a quick emergency job. There are tiny spots of sun damage on the skin of your neck, they are fading but still visible. Ergo, you’ve been in a hot country with a war going on and got shot not very long ago where the British have fought, so soldier in Afghanistan or Iraq.”

“Amazing!”

“You think so?”

“Sure. What about the doctor part? Intuition?”

Sherlock snorted. “No. I don’t deal in intuition. I knew you were a doctor already, even before we talked about achieving perfection in our respective trades.”

“How so?”

“The position of getting shot in your back while you were kneeling. Exit wound is on chest, causing an intermittant tremor in your hand. You hate the scar tissue on your shoulder, you conceal it as it insults your ideals as a doctor. Only a doctor would have scrutinized my frontroom for cleanliness like you did. You saw the flyers about proper hygiene and skin care after getting a tattoo. You appreciated the skin care products I sell in this shelf here, obviously acquainted with them and knowing they’re the best you can get.

Also, a doctor because it’s the only logical reason why you should have been kneeling and bent over in such an unusual angle, so helping a comrade wounded in action. You wouldn’t have been distracted otherwise and missed the shooter because you automatically scanned the shop for any possible dangers when you entered and subconsciously stand at attention when you have to face a perilous task…”

“Perilous task as in getting you to tattoo me?” John intterrupted with a grin.

“Obviously, do keep up, John! You loved being a soldier and wanted the happy memory erasing the one of your ex-wife. You’re attracted to dangerous situations and people, they make you feel alive. Final conclusion, you wanted a soldier in full combat gear for a cover-up.”

“Holy Christ, you’re spot-on.”

Sherlock beamed, not hiding being very satisfied with himself.

“And are you?” John continued.

“What?”

“Dangerous to me?”

“Of course, I am. Firstly, I’ll come at you with a loaded gun…”

“…a tattoo gun…”

“…that still can cause a lot of pain and damage to your skin if wielded incorrectly.”

“I’ll give you that. And secondly?” John asked and took a sip out of his cup.

“Secondly, you find me dangerously attractive.”

John spat some tea onto the coffee table.

+++++

tagging some people @totallysilvergirl @peageetibbs @lisbeth-kk  @raina-at @calaisreno

[dotthings]

After rewatching 4.19 Jump the Shark, here's some thoughts on hunting, the making of personal connections, and what SPN is about.

As often happens with SPN, the characters themselves play out ruminations on these themes. I barely even have to write commentary.

DEAN What the hell was that? SAM What? DEAN 'Hunting is life. You can't have connections.' Dad gave you that exact same speech, remember? It was just before you ditched us for Stanford. You hated Dad for saying that stuff, and now you're quoting him? SAM Yeah, well, turns out Dad was right. DEAN Since when? SAM Since always. Dean, when I look at Adam, you know what I see? DEAN A normal kid. SAM No. Meat. Because the demons and monsters out there, that's all he is. I hated Dad for a long time. I did. But now I think I understand. So we didn't have a dog and a white picket fence. So what? Dad did right by us. He taught us how to protect ourselves. Adam deserves the same.

Notice how this severe idea that all they can have is this, nothing else, no friends (even friendships with other hunters is frowned upon, John was noticeably isolationist and distrustful and alienated his hunter friends who loved him, like Bobby), no love stories, nothing but the hunt, comes right from John's words.

Dean's shocked to hear it from Sam. In part because Sam always fought John about it and now Sam is quoting John, but in part it's because one of Dean's long arcs is rethinking a lot of John's ideas and finding his own identity outside of being John's shadow, or mimic.

In season 4, as Sam goes deeper and deeper under the influence of demon blood and Ruby's coaching, he goes colder and more ruthless and more remote, less like the Sam we know, and Dean notices more and more.

DEAN Listen to yourself, man. SAM You think I’m wrong? DEAN I think it's too late for us. This is our life. This is who we are, okay? And it's fine. I accept that. But with Adam, he's still got a chance, man. He can go to school. He could be a doctor.

Now it pulls back to Dean's resignation--but it's too late, the words are already out there with Dean questioning it. Too late for the audience not to notice.

While Dean doesn't expressly voice the idea that as hunters, maybe they don't have to sever all personal connections and turn off their hearts, it's self-evidently on Dean's mind. He doesn't see much hope for himself. That doesn't mean he isn't thinking it. And it's a very obvious part of the canon story for the run of the show.

As usual with SPN, two things can be true at once. Or there's a seed of truth but it's an incomplete truth. It is difficult to form and maintain connections in the hunting life, even with other hunters in the life. That doesn't mean Sam and Dean don't have any or can't have any. SPN self evidently shows they absolutely did, right along. Not just with each other.

Found family--the forging of connections, the human heart--is part of the life's blood of the story and always has been.

Dean in particular, throughout the series, has been adept at forming these connections and caring. He may at times try to shut himself away because it feels safer. The other people get less hurt. He'll get less hurt. But always he lets them in, he always cares.

It's easier with other hunters. People in the life with them, who understand that life.

John's narrow worldview of hunting, the ruthlessness, that's mirrored in Sam in this episode, and the idea that they can't have anyone else--isn't presented as the right answer.

Dean, as the series goes on, moves more and more into living the hunting life in a way that's by his own definitions, his own way, not his father's dictates. Despite the challenges of the hunting life. Dean makes his own rules.

We also see more instances of people in the hunting life who don't live by the extreme isolationist ideas of John Winchester. In fact, it turns out John was unusual and that hunters are sociable with each other, even if the life can be harsh and isolating. There's a hunting community. We only see glimpses of it early on because John kept Sam and Dean unusually isolated due to the circumstances of his particular quest, the YED.

But Sam and Dean are not their father. They forge their own path.

Most of all, SPN is a story about the connections that form between people--including the brothers, but not limited solely to the brothers.

SAM Dean...all this...it's not real. The dad Adam knew—he wasn't real. The things out there in the shadows—they are real. The world is coming to an end. That's real. Everything else is just part of the crap people tell themselves to get through the day.

You know what popped into my head when Sam said that? Dean's voice telling Cas in 4.22 -- You know what's real? People, families -- that's real.

Sam falls into a dark despairing mindset where all he can see is monsters and he is losing his heart. 4.19 ends on an ominous note

DEAN You know, I finally get why you and Dad butted heads so much. You two were practically the same person. SAM looks over. DEAN I mean, I worshipped the guy, you know? I dressed like him, I acted like him, I listen to the same music. But you were more like him than I will ever be. And I see that now. SAM I'll take that as a compliment. DEAN You take it any way you want.

Dean's coming to some realizations about his own hero-worship and imitation of his father, and seeing how he's not in fact, his father, no matter how much he fears it (or used to wish for it), and learning how much Sam is the one who is more like John than he is, despite Sam's lack of imitation and worship.

And without their friends who are like family, Sam and Dean aren't ever finding their way out of this thicket. They'd be lost, the world would be lost.

SPN is first and foremost about love.

[pinkfoxsodas]

Warning Saw X Spoilers of John Kramer Take

I will admit I am bias because I’m still angry about what happened to my fave character Adam, but I can’t help point out the flaws of Jigsaw’s own hypocrisy. However, just because I’m going explain why I think John is kind of a hypocrite, doesn’t mean I hate the character; in fact I think he’s the most interesting villain of the series. I just can’t stop thinking about this because I’ve had this opinion on John Kramer for a long time. I think John is a selfish and bitter person because of his situation that he even convinced himself that his actions are justified.

In Saw X, when John was tricked into thinking his cancer was gone, he was drawing one of his latest traps in his sketchbook. But decided to throw it away in the trash because he no longer wants to continue his work. If John truly believed he was doing the right thing, why not continue setting traps now that he no longer has to worry about dying? It proved that John was bitter of his own situation that he was going to die and all these people he believed that were wasting their lives, will never have to experience limited life. It made me think of the timer he gives his victims, like 3 minutes to live and he has 3 months.

And what about the people who have no choice but to be props for someone else’s test? John specifically targets people to test and is willing to sacrifice others for that one specific person. Test subjects like Lawrence, Jeff, William etc. A person’s life hangs on balance of someone’s else’s choice. Amanda had to kill a guy to get the key out to save herself, while he didn’t get the chance to fight for his own life. William had to choose which of his employees he had to spare while killing the others. Lawrence had to kill Adam a stranger to save his family who by the way were also props to Zepp’s test. I’ll come back to Diana later. And the people used as props for Jeff’s test were people that Jeff felt were responsible for the death of his son or let his son’s killer walk free. It was like John never saw them as people. He’s always on about respecting life, but how can he when he uses people as objects for another person’s test? And some of those people didn’t do anything wrong but be related or work for the person that John is testing. Like Joyce Dangen, she didn’t know that Bobby lied and yet when he loses his game she’s the one who has to suffer and die. And John can argue all he wants that the reason those people died was because of the subject failed their test, but that’s not true. John was the one who put them in those traps and kept them immobilized. He used them as tools for that one specific person he was testing. People he believed that deserved to be tested or to be turned into one of his followers. John wanted Lawrence to survive, because he needed someone like Lawrence skills for his tests.

John also has a black and white view of the world. He does not see grey, meaning he doesn’t really try to understand why a person makes the wrong choices in life. But he’s very quick to judge a person’s character just from first impressions, like Adam for example who he deemed angry and pathetic. The whole game was made for Lawrence and Adam was just added there and we don’t have much information on him like Lawrence. And he has a bias on people who have drug addictions. When Amanda tried to reason why Gabriela did what she did because of addiction, Jigsaw immediately shut her down. Yes what Gabriela did was wrong, but she wasn’t as messed up as Cecilia who did it for money and has no problem killing people.John had just said that everyone has free will, but how would he know if he never experienced addiction? Amanda understood because she was just like Gabriela. But it could also be because he still held a grudge against Cecil who was responsible for his wife’s miscarriage because he wanted to steal drugs.

Now the subject to children. I was glad to see that John had humanity to see that Carlos was just an innocent child who didn’t deserve to be put in a life and death situation. But it brings back the hypocrisy when we see Diana, Daniel and Corbett who again are used as props for their parent’s test. Yes they were saved, but they were traumatized through their ordeals and will mostly suffer from ptsd. And Daniel lost his dad and Corbett is now an orphan. And Diana only survived because Allison was able to get out of their restraints and Detective Tapp was able to rescue them on time. If none of that happened, Zepp most likely would have killed them because John told him if he did, Zepp would be given an antidote to survive his poisoning. John I don’t know if he would have given Zepp the antidote if he had killed the Gordon family, because he might have been disgusted by the death of a child. But Zepp followed the rules of his game and John would have just blamed Lawrence for their deaths instead or wouldn’t have cared because again they were just props. Never accepting that he was responsible for kid a dying and would have blamed either Zepp or Lawrence.

I would have said more but this rant is too long and I just wanted to get this off my chest. I do love Saw and I enjoy the characters, but I will bring up their flaws when I’m talking to friends about Jigsaw! And since Saw X made me sympathetic towards John it also reminded how unfair he was towards his victims.

[kimberlyannharts]

Mm. Yeah. That sucked! Sidelining Tommy to lift up M/tt in unprecedented ways! I don’t even know where to begin with this. We fridged Grace TWICE for this? Arguably Coinless Trini and Kiya too? Tigan by definition I guess wasn’t fridged but I still hate it! At the same time I wish I knew more about the character to have feelings about it beyond “that sucks!”

Also I know we talked about Rita and Chloe’s mom already but you know what? Remember Coinless Zack (and to a lesser extent Skull)? I sure thought they would be relevant! I would’ve cared more about Adam and Rocky and whatever that was if they had ever bothered to give Adam an arc, and actually spent time with them this event! Also Tommy giving up his powers to help people he largely doesn’t know uhhh sucks. How was Tommy more important in Shattered Grid, he was DEAD. I was really hoping we would get M/tt relinquishing the Green coin but that would’ve meant actual development and reflection on his part and not being the writer’s best boi. If M/tt had stayed a civilian supporting character I could actually see him having a role in the civilian army plot (which by the way why didn’t we just call in the Eltarian army ages ago. I think they said something about Eltar being attacked but who cares.)

The last note I’ll end on is part of me wants to look back on Ryan’s writing a little kinder now, but at the same time it’s the shitty decisions of villainizing Kiya and Death Ranger and M/tt’s rangerhood that got us into this mess in the first place! At least Coinless Trini/Scorpina yuri real. And the Gravezord shoutout felt like it was meant for you personally. I’m sorry this is so long, and I hope Prime has nothing to do with the main book. We are free.

= I probably should have felt more triumph at that panel of the MMPRs morphing together but it was literally ruined by how Tommy wasn't there and instead M*tt was basically in his spot (even positioned so he was slightly ahead of everyone else. good lord. was it not enough coddling that you literally erased the ONE bad thing he did in this storyline, which was murder Grace?) He should have died instead of Tigan. I know I'm partly saying that because I hate him but it's so unfair that that asshole gets to survive EVERYTHING and end the series with TOMMY'S COIN but Tigan only existed to die. It actually would have been impactful because like it or not, M*tt has been around for so long while Tigan was only here for.....three issues?

= Candice had checked in with the Command Center to report Aquitar fell and then in a later issue it was mentioned they hadn't heard from her for days, leading them to believe Eltar had fallen too. Honestly it doesn't even really matter because her return was clearly just supposed to be a reward for Skull doing the civilian soldier plot (because as the more conventionally attractive one of the comic relief duo, he gets the passionate, committed romance while Bulk just gets to weirdly call Taylor hot.)

= As much as I still do love the Coinless book on its own, so much of it never meant anything to the book or outright contradicted it. Dark Specter took over that whole world with evil lava goop, why didn't he do that in the prime world? The book explicitly states that the White Coin can't be split, but they just do it anyway in this event? I GUESS we can just assume that world turned out fine when Dark Specter was defeated, but we don't even get a panel where we can show Coinless Zack and Skull and maybe even Jason okay in their world?

= Going along with that, Scorpina calling for Alt-Trini is probably the only other time besides the Tomberly scenes that I felt genuine emotion in this finale, because damn they really just took out Scorpina's loved one AGAIN. And for literally no reason lmao (why did shattering the Grid delete Alt-Trini and Kiya but not Billy? Obviously he was present for the blast too)

= I did like the Gravezord shout-out so you're right about that

= And yes, a lot of the problems with this event can be pointed to Ryan refusing to give a proper ending to his concepts and storylines (something he has said that he likes about comics; that they can go on indefinitely. which. uhhhhh) - so Melissa felt she had to tie up all of the loose ends that were left. I think that was unnecessary for some of them - for instance, I really wasn't wondering where Dayne was. The guy's a mercenary for hire so it's easy enough for me to believe he wouldn't want to be associated with jobs involving Rangers ever again and went on to parts unknown - but she was clearly trying to put away the toys that Ryan had left out

[richmond-rex]

I was tagged by super talented @eve-to-adam! Thank you <3

How many works do you have on AO3? I've got 19 fics currently on ao3 (but I always think about deleting some of them so that number may go down).

What fandoms do you write for? Currently I only write historical RPF, but I've got two Still Star-Crossed stories on my profile as it stands. It was very fun to write them but the show wasn't renewed and eventually my passion ran out.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos? Draw Your SwordsBlooming (modern AU) We Sang of Roses (modern AU) A Royal BedJoy on Earth

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Though not always successful (I'm kind of a forgetful person, sorry!) I try to respond to comments because I like to acknowledge the person's effort in commenting. It's very easy to simply read and leave a like/kudos, but leaving a comment sometimes after you're still processing a story or when you're naturally very shy takes a bit more from you. So I like to acknowledge that.

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? Probably To love God is to love a sinner, but some stories have ambiguous endings such as The Relentless Weight and more recently, The Hour of the Wolf.

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Probably my no-plot-only-fluff fic, White Christmas

Do you get hate on fics? Not frequently, thankfully, though that's probably because the readership I get is so small. I did once get a comment saying my story was too cheesy, and another one once berating me for describing Elizabeth of York as 'blonde' (a herald who witnessed her coronation described her hair as 'light yellow'; so please don’t tell me I’m wrong ♥)

Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I do (though not frequently), which is considered controversial because I write about real (albeit historical) people. Sex is part of the human experience and it can tell us a lot about the characters and the relationships, so I try to feel less guilty about it. I also like to take smut as an exercising in writing: to test how far I can get in evoking a sensation without getting into more explicit territory is always a challenge.

Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? In terms of different fandoms? I don't remember ever doing that. I have mixed different eras, though.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of!

Have you ever had a fic translated? Again, not that I'm aware of.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not a fic per se, but once I did share an AU with @harritudur and another friend. It was very fun :D

What’s your all-time favourite ship? I do love to explore the relationship between Henry VII and Elizabeth because it was so unlikely to have happened in the first place, let alone succeed. I find it very touching! I do have other ships, though.

What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? It's not a WIP that I have posted anywhere but I did start writing a oneshot that I wanted to dedicate to a friend about the relationship between Edward IV and George of Clarence! It did feature a few unexpected people too.

What are your writing strengths? Probably dialogue and themes. It's difficult to say, I pick my writing apart so much when I'm in the process of writing it, once I publish it's very hard for me to go back and confront myself. It all kind of turns into nebulous territory.

What are your writing weaknesses? Many, many things but scene transitions are probably at the top of the list! That's why my story chapters usually all take place in a single scene.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? As a bilingual person I find it important to portray this completely unique experience of mixing two languages as they come (if the character in question is multilingual). It's not a popular view, though I do think people should get more comfortable with not understanding word-by-word everything that ever comes across the page. The strangeness of being confronted with a language that you do not know is a part of a different kind of experience and it can only enrich your reading. Of course, all should be within reasonable limits: information that is essential to the overall story should be in the language the story is set in.

First fandom you wrote for? I think it was Star Wars but I can't remember if I actually published it anywhere. I was very very young lol

Favourite fic you’ve ever written? Blooming has a very dear place in my heart, it was the first fic I actually felt like accomplishing myself in terms of achieving the characterisation I wanted for my characters and creating a narrative that made sense for their development.

I think most people have been tagged already, but I'm tagging @harritudur, @heartofstanding and anyone else who feels like joining in the fun! x

[kazeiia]

this is just a lot of rambling, so bear with me for a second. i only got into the social media side of st after s4 when i couldn’t wait to get more of the story, and byler was one of the first ships i ever got into because i was getting edits and theories left-and-right. there were people that had byler theories for every single little thing, including stuff like lighting, the use of color, metaphors, analogies, etc to show how it was going to be cannon, but i took it all with a grain of salt because no matter how much i wanted gay representation (without the kill the gays trope) in one of the biggest shows in the world, the creators are still mostly middle aged white men.

BUT,,,, i recently rewatched s3 and things don’t add up. mike was so adamant about his feelings for el. he said he loved her to the whole extended party, and spend the entire summer trying to tell her that he loved her through his usual rambling, but it took will’s “not possible” to realize will was the only one who wasn’t willing to grow away from their party, even if they were going to be a thousand miles apart. when el finally said i love you back (even if mike never told her that directly btw), he looked confused and shocked—not the catharsis you would expect from someone whose partner finally said the Big Three Words.

there is a part in hopper’s letter to el that talks about not wanting to move on, and the scene focuses only on mike, looking back to the empty byer’s house on his bike. he goes back to his own house and hugs his mom (like he did after the quarry incident) looking just as lost and confused as he did when el kisses him goodbye. then he spends a hundred-and-something days giving will the cold shoulder??? like, why??? it’s not like mike to NOT be glue-trapped to the rest of the party. at this point, he still hasn’t said i love you to el. he can’t even say it when el brings it up directly, and he deflects by asking her what she the hell she was talking about. it might be chalked up to his family ties and how the wheelers don’t seem the type to show affection naturally, but i also think it could be a little bit of his aversion to lying to people he cares about. mike genuinely cares about el, but it’s a little bit like idol-worship, like this ideal in his head of superman el needing her own lois lane.

will is different because, to mike, he isn’t superman. he puts mike on the helm of the ship as the heart of the party. he looks up to him. he believes be understands him and he genuinely needs him. he believes he is smart, strategic and funny. he’s his best friend. so mike has the option to take on this responsibility, or to conform to what everyone around believes he will do—love el and be in love with her like a good boyfriend would be.

the only time mike genuinely smiles around el in s4 is when he gets the chance to help and save her from the whole owens-brenner lab thing. so it’s kind of obvious which choice he prefers. mike wheeler seems like the type of person that desperately wants to be needed because he hates it when people treat him like a good-for-nothing kid (his parents, steve, hopper etc). he even tells will that he’s scared of not being needed in the van scene, and will shuts him down by telling him about his role in the party. he spends all this time missing will (he goes back to dnd), and then when he finally sees him again, he pulls back because he doesn’t want to miss him. he doesn’t want to lie to him by not telling him how much he missed him. in s5, i really hope that the writers realize it makes the most sense plot-wise and theme-wise to get them together, but that’s a whole another theory and lots of people have discoursed about it before me.

anyways, i know no one really cares because i’m just one of many, but i wanted to let it out that now i’m fully convinced that mike wheeler is canonically a little fruity. let the delusions commence!

[caatws]

The one thing I'm having a hard time digesting when it comes to fandoms continued reactions to Gamora's treatment in the movies is how quickly many people resorted to victim blaming. Why was she so emotional when facing Thanos. Why did she give up the stone's location to save Nebula. Why was she emotional when she was about to die. Why couldn't she fight harder and take out Thanos by herself. You also have people saying her Thanos wasn't really an abuser and her death isn't that bad because Thanos was obviously so upset by it.

Meanwhile with Rocket in vol 3 I don't see anyone saying why did he have to make Ayesha mad by stealing the batteries in the first place. Why didn't he try to give them back once her realized she was upset. Why didn't he fight harder when he got attacked by Adam. Why was he so emotional. If Rocket was a girl people would be saying all of this probably while adding on what was he wearing while Adam attacked him clearly he brought it on to himself.

Sometimes it's really obvious a lot of people in fandom hate women or are relatively oblivious to them until they are forced to pay attention. At which point they will scrutinize them within an inch of their life. If the woman isn't white multiple this by 3 or 4 depending on the circumstances.

I did enjoy vol 3 but I'm not really on-board with calling it the best mcu movie or the best trilogy completion ever as easily as other fans have. Would people consider it as great as they do if you took the same circumstances and put them in an Avengers movie and treated Captain America's character the way Gamora was treated.

I keep hearing abt what ppl have been saying abt gamora and I’m so glad none of that kind of stuff has crossed my social media feeds bc wtf :/// like I guess I didn’t even expect that many ppl in the mainstream to remember who gamora is to have all these opinions on her ☠️ LMAO but unfortunately not surprising to see the difference in how gamora and rocket are treated

Yeah like I still think vol 3 and the gotg trilogy in general/overall are strong but I also think that’s in part bc their competition with the mcu is so weak 💀✋🏼 like not to discredit the rly amazing stuff in the gotg trilogy bc there is rly amazing stuff in there. It’s just a shame it feels like it ends on such a different/inconsistent note than the direction we were originally going in bc of the russos interference. But still overall better films/sequence of films than any of the other trilogies or the 4 avengers films imo

[daisybellejpeg]

Yeah pretty much the only thing I can really say I fumbled the bag on was making an admittedly edgy joke because I was shocked at how myopic the op was being (I’m myopic, I can say myopic, right? Maybe?). Cant relate to having DID, but I can relate adjacently to having to face potential triggers on a day to day due to both my PTSD and my AuDHD. Like, the example I used when talking to a pal about this was crying babies.

Like, screaming beans is one of the few noises that will straight up send me into a meltdown, right? But it’s also pretty common. If I’m at a restaurant and the parents are being neglectful and letting the baby cry I’ll notify staff, but if it’s somewhere like a nursing room in the bathroom? I’ll use the men’s room, piss as fast as humanly possible, or wait for the parent to leave. If it’s at work? I’ll run to put on my ear plugs or take a bathroom break to calm down a bit. It’s common for therapists to recommend removing yourself from a situation that causes distress if no reasonable accommodations are possible. The world doesn’t revolve around me or anyone else with mental health conditions. Op came off as kind of entitled in my opinion so i made a joke at their expense in response, which wasn’t exactly the best course of action. I’ll admit that.

Rest of the callout is bad faith and generally dogshit as hell tho lmao. Will give them credit for correcting pronouns after I poked fun at them misgendering me on Twitter, but the rest? Yeesh. If I wanted to be just as bad faith I’d ask why bro hates the idea of a white man being replaced by someone who’s not only indigenous Mexican, but also half roma (I’m as of now hoping to make him half Meztizo Tarahumaran half Chicano). Bright only made their self insert Jewish as an afterthought because they thought the religion was cool and put little to no research otherwise. Not only that, but we’re talking about the same moron who would blow a gasket at any mention of headcanoning bright as autistic. There goes your supposed ND rep.

Not only that, Shaw is an only child. The rest of the brights are getting their own rewrites. I’m working with Nessa on 590 and 321, both whos races are undecided as of now. Adam’s sub in, Agent Khaleel Odeh-Mansour is a Palestinian immigrant and was raised Muslim as far as he remembers. He’s also a double amputee with cybernetics to replace his arms, lungs, and one of his eyes. Mikkel’s sub in, Agent Ansgar Leonhardt, is half Slavic and is canonically autistic, as is his twin sibling, Reuben. Claire’s rewrite, Usagi Kato, is Japanese and also canonically autistic.

Writing for people of all walks of life is a labor of love for me. Researching different ethnic groups and cultures is actually one of my hyperfixations. Dude really picked the wrong autistic person to cry erasure too. I’ve extended an olive branch to this person to talk about their gripes with me on Twitter, so we’ll see what results from that. I’ll also be more than happy to loredump about the like 7 ethnically Jewish ocs I have to them, I promise none of them mistake their Sheitels for Hijabs either.

Ok so this post was meant to be for a specific bright fan (so im not trying to call out all bright fans or all bright fictives/systems) , but since they have me blocked me since its upload and since they have made it clear that they don't actually care about the victims of bright, I'm making this post anyway.

So, one bright fan on here has decided to make a callout post not only villainizing DJKaktus, but also @daisybellejpeg, you know just the person that is helping make shaw who is a VICTIM OF ADMINBRIGHT S*XUAL AB*SE AND HAS BEEN TRUAMATIZED BY HIS CREATIONS. They claim that Daisybelle is anti-DID/systems and also trying commit Jewish eraser. So since I am very pissed off at the moment, I'm just wanted clear up stuff about that this and leave a little note to people like this fan (also sorry daisy if I put any words in your mouth or act "white knightly", I just feel some else saying something show that their isn't personal bias) :

So for starters, DAISYBELLE IS NOT ANTI-DID/SYSTEMS. They have mentioned multiple times that they acknowledge that they bright systems/fictives are a special situation.

Plus, Daisy in general is always going to be slightly antagonistic towards bright, them being a direct victim of Adminbright, but so far Daisy (imo) has done a good job being clam about handling people who still hold on to bright (at least better than I have). The only thing they have stated that will not tolerate is people giving shit to them about how they create shaw, as its become a healing tool for them.

Now the Bright fan that made that post had decided to include two screenshots "proving" that Daisy is anti-DID/system and a Jewish yet completely left out context points.

For the first one, they completely left out the beginning part of conversations and completely doesn't point how the person daisy is responding to has no idea what they are talking about and the fact that person ten starts to act in a sort a jerkish explaining after daisy saying the initial description.

This, to me, feels very patronizing thing to say especially, and so no surprise Daisy proceeds to go off on them about being patronized. For some reason, though, bright fan tried to twist this into daisy erasing the Jewish rep. This, however, is not only not what they said, as all Daisy said was "you deadass don’t know this since we haven’t even decided on a race", (although I should mention daisy is pushing for shaw to be Mexican American), but even if Shaw isn't Jewish, its probably because they don't want any more connections to bright outside of the number, not because they want erase Jewish people.

As for the second screenshots, while I will admit that daisy was a bit harsh to the user (as they were system stating people to stop using bright and they did make a joke about the way worded on twitter), Daisy, as mentioned before sees Shaw a healing device and people telling others to stop using it doesn't really do anything change. Plus Daisy ends up explaining their point of view in the comments.

Now their is technically one more set of screenshots that try to prove that Daisy does not understand how DID works, but as I mentioned in the beginning, they have said they aren't a expert on DID and that it is a complex situation. At most they have urged people they use the interfaces on sites block tags that causes problems.

That is about all for me laying out the facts, however one more note for the bright fan that made that callout post and for people like the bright fan: can you fucking not villainize the victims of the Duckman. Like, its one thing to go after Kaktus, but its whole another to go after a victim of Bright, one that has a entire fucking document showing the trauma they endured and still haven't fully healed from it, thus clearly having a continued negative stigmatism. Not only does this make you all look like complete dickheads completely inconsiderate about the victims of adminbright, but also paints of bright fans and system/fictives in a negative light along with you. You could of block the shaw tag. You could have used the interface to ignore all the people that cause your mental state problems. Hell, you could of found or make a character that served as a transition from bright, like Dr. Myriad. But instead you decided to attack a already hurt person and doubling down on usage of the character.

Also, P.S., if that origional poster isn't a fictive/system and was simply using other peoples mental disorders as a way to villainize Daisy, then they can go fuck themselves.

[gayjameswilson]

unpopular opinions on the characters. go

Ooo okay. Here we go.

The Chase/Adams ship is terrible. They had absolutely no chemistry, plus I feel like people ship them all because they’re both conventionally attractive white people. Also, Adams is a really boring character and supplied very little to the show as a whole.

Stacy doesn’t deserve all the hate she gets. Her going behind House’s back like that and making the decision he didn’t want was very shitty, and House has the right to be angry at her over that and hold resentment, but she was also placed in a very terrible situation, and just wanted to save House’s life. She’s only human.

Huddy is hot garbage. I love House, and I love Cuddy, but those two were never going to work together, and it showed — House crashed his car into her entire dining room, after all.

I’m not sure if this is unpopular or not, but I enjoyed the tritter arc and it gave us some excellent hilson plots — Wilson lying to Tritter to protect House, “maybe I don’t want to push this thing until it breaks”, House apologizing to Wilson for once when it’s all over, etc.

Not sure if this is unpopular or not either, but I loved the ending. Of course I don’t want Wilson to have cancer, and I totally sobbed my eyes out throughout the whole cancer arc, but the ending gave us what is, essentially, hilson endgame. The entire c word with House caring for Wilson, “I need you to tell me that you love me”, House sacrificing his entire life and career to spend Wilson’s final five months together. Hilson is canon and I genuinely believe that. Those two were in love. (Hugh Laurie and rsl agree, god love em)

I wish people would look more into Chase’s character than just “pretty Aussie guy”. He’s not a child, and he has an excellent character arc. He goes from being a suck-up to House to learning to make his own choices, like killing debala, standing up to and punching House, etc. Chase toughened up and made himself something successful.

I enjoy Cameron’s character. She supplied the morality to the team, but then as we see more of her, we see that she’s as morally fucked up as the rest of them and makes her own mistakes. The hameron arc is so terrible though and I hate how Cameron acted throughout it all. I’ve already made plenty of posts about how the hameron arc sucks. House never even loved her, and they never would have worked together. But she has her good moments, and I sympathize with her. She’s a delight to watch.

Foreman needs more love. He’s just so human, and behind his stern exterior, he cares so so much. Like in the episode Histories he stayed with the homeless patient, and when she was dying, he told her that he was her dead husband and that he forgave her. During Euphoria, Foreman prayed with the man dying beside him when the man asked.

Taub also needs more love! He’s such a good character and I love him dearly. He was a perfect addition to the team after the others left. Plus he’s hilarious. Goofy man.

Wilson is gay. Like, this exceeds headcanon. Wilson is a queer-coded character (So is House.) The show gave us plenty of reasons to believe Wilson is gay and his marriages were fake because he was just overcompensating for being in love with House. Plus, the down low episode? That entire episode is one big sign that says “Wilson is gay”

House and Dominika were better as friends, and if they had been in a relationship, that never would have worked.

Cuddy deserved better plot lines. I loooove her adopting Rachel and being a mother. But that’s like… her only plot besides the huddy arc, and the huddy arc was, once again, terrible horrible no good very bad. Cuddy deserves so much better.

Wilson is the only person who would work well in a relationship with House, and vise versa. Those two understand each other better than anyone else, and are so codependent it’s crazy.

I probably have more, but I can’t think of them right now. So do with these what you will lol. Thanks for the ask! This was fun!

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

It boggles my mind how everyone knows that racial dysphoria is the result of a racist society and yet there are people who think that gender dysphoria isn't the result of a sexist society.

When I was a child, I struggled greatly with the fact I was black. I hated it. So much so that eventually my mother snapped at me and basically told me I'm black whether I like it or not. So much so that I actively wished to be white. I was envious of the white children in my class with their gorgeous eyes and different hair colors. I felt like I fit in with them so much more than I ever did with the black kids and looking at the friend groups I formed, you'd be able to tell. I felt like black kids were much meaner than I was and white kids were more soft spoken and more relatable. I would ask kids if I could pass as half-white or light skinned and was so disappointed whenever I would receive a "no". I hated it when people pointed out that I was black because it felt like something I desperately wanted to hide but couldn't no matter what. All my favorite characters were white. All the people I looked up to where white. It was never ending.

Reading this you're probably thinking that this is the result of shitty media representation and stereotypes and racism. You're probably not thinking "oh, that's a clear sign that you were meant to be born white!". Nope, you're probably thinking that my feelings were the result of the terrible way that society treats black people.

Now here's the real kicker: I didn't just want to be white, I specifically wanted to be a white boy. I loved the way boys were effortlessly masculine and athletic. They could build muscle easier and had the perfect physique in my eyes--completely flat, short hair, and more defined muscle. It made me uncomfortable to be viewed as a girl. I didn't like the way my dad made me cover up whenever I went somewhere and didn't do the same for my brother. I didn't like the way my breasts were something I had to be aware of and hide. I didn't like how my body grew. Didn't like getting my period and having to deal with it. I wanted everything my male counterparts had: the deep voice, the masculine clothes, no breasts, attention from girls, I even wanted an Adam's apple at one point. I would get so happy whenever people thought I was a boy. For a while, I was that girl who only hung out with boys because I related to them more.

Looking back on it, this was a the result of shitty media representation and stereotypes and sexism. There was no representation of the type of woman I wanted to be on TV. There's the stereotype that all women are interested in feminine activities and presentation. The aforementioned are a result of sexism. It was also because I was a masculine lesbian and I don't need to explain that our society is homophobic--especially towards gnc gay people and ESPECIALLY towards butch lesbians.

And yet there are some people who think that this means I must be a man. I must've been born wrong. They don't think that this is the result of a sexist and homophobic society even though I was born a woman in the same way I was born black. Where is the logic in this?

[hamsterboos]

Ain't My Fault

As of yesterday I'm four teeth down but not in a lot of pain so I might try to get a few of the others I've planned out for Rowaelin Month! As always, big thank you to the team for hosting this and I hope people like this quick little drabble (I say as this is almost 2k words long) based off of Zara Larsson's Ain't My Fault. Please let me know if you would like to be tagged in my TOG fics! I did tag for my Hating Game AU but I don't want to assume lol

Word Count: 1683 Read on AO3 Rowaelin Month Master list

Day 1 of Rowaelin Month Prompt: Song Fic

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was criminal, honestly, how good looking this man was. It simply did not make sense that a silver haired man with tattoos could look this fine , and yet, here he was. He had walked into the club with his two friends and claimed three seats at the bar while Aelin had watched the entire thing from her spot at a table in the corner. It certainly didn’t help her case that he was wearing a simple v-neck white shirt under a leather jacket that had been rolled up, showcasing the swirling black tattoos on his left forearm. 

Aelin bit down on her bottom lip before letting go of it slowly as she watched the current bane of her existence laugh before taking a shot of tequila. She watched with bated breath as his Adam's apple worked as he swallowed before he wiped at his lips with a swipe of his thumb. 

“If you stare any harder at him, you’re going to make him burst into flame,” Lysandra laughed, nudging Aelin with an elbow, and Aelin jerked her gaze away from the man that had captured her attention for the past fifteen minutes. 

“Shut up,” she responded, half-heartedly glaring. “It’s not my fault that he’s fucking handsome.” 

Elide leaned her elbows on the table before resting her chin on her folded hands. “Honestly, I don’t know why you two haven’t just banged, yet. Lorcan keeps complaining about the sexual tension that remains after you two talk.”

“I’m not going to be the first one to crack, Elide. Rowan needs to come to me ,” Aelin insisted, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I can’t seem desperate.”

“Will you consider it if I say that we’re desperate for you two, instead?” Lysandra groaned around a sip of her daiquiri. Elide snorted as she picked up her phone, presumably to text Lorcan to tell him where the girls were sitting. The original plan had been to enjoy a nice girl’s night out with just the three of them, but then it somehow turned into a plan to try to get Aelin and Rowan together by the end of the night. She didn’t know why but there was something magnetic between the two ever since they had met each other after Lorcan, Rowan’s friend, had started dating Elide. Her eyes were always drawn to him, and it only got worse as time went on and she realized how much she liked being around him. 

Elide texted Lorcan and told him to invite Fenrys and Rowan, and sure enough, the man was whipped for his girlfriend and did exactly as she said. 

It might also be because he was also sick of the push and pull between her and Rowan, but she’d rather believe that Lorcan had feelings . 

“No, I won’t,” she responded, but it felt like she might as well make the move since Rowan was taking forever. That wasn’t something she was willing to admit, though.

“You’re the absolute worst . I can’t even live vicariously through you!”

“I didn’t think you had the need to,” Aelin mentioned, raising an eyebrow. “I was under the impression that you and Aedion were doing perfectly fine.”

Lysandra shrugged, waving her hand around in a dismissive motion. “You’re the one that insists that we can’t talk about the sex in detail, so I need you to do that for all of us.”

“He’s my cousin, woman. Besides, why can’t Elide be enough?”

“Because I have boundaries,” Elide laughed as she looked up from her phone. “And,” she continued, her voice getting down to a whisper as a smirk played on her lips, “we maybe women in happily committed relationship, but we still want to know what it’s like to have sex with Rowan. Like, have you seen the man?”

Aelin’s jaw dropped as she let out a shocked laugh. “I’m going to tell Lorcan you said that. I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that.”

“Tell me what?” a voice asked from Aelin’s right, and the girls turned to find Lorcan, Fenrys, and Rowan standing in front of their table. Rowan’s eyes were already on her, glancing over her body, or at least what he could see of her top half. The gleam in her eyes made her glad for the time she had spent getting ready. Plus, it was helpful to know that trying to leave the club with him tonight would be a lot easier than she expected. 

“That I absolutely love you,” Elide covered before Aelin could even open her mouth to respond, and it was clear from Lorcan’s eye roll that he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t bother questioning her, anyway. The three sat down on the table, and the kick from Lysandra from under the table — along with the glare that made her green eyes look even brighter than normal — led to Aelin making one of the more questionable choices in her recent memory, but honestly, it wasn’t her fault. She couldn’t be blamed for how close Rowan was to her and how badly her shin ached from the stiletto. 

While Lysandra and Elide had distracted Lorcan and Fenrys thoroughly with an argument over something with diet soda that Aelin didn’t care about, she leaned an elbow on the table and rested her head on her hand, leaning her body towards Rowan.

“So, what’s your name, handsome? Better yet, what’s your sign so I know we’re compatible?”

Rowan’s face lit up with a laugh before the bright smile turned into a smirk that made Aelin want to jump into an ice bath with how her body was beginning to burn. It was as though she were the flame that could only be soothed by his ice.

“I didn’t think we had the time to go through those questions,” he commented, running a hand through his hair, and Aelin wanted it to be her hands that ran through his hair. 

And played with it and tugged on it and —

“I mean, considering the way you seemed to be staring at me earlier,” he finished. Rowan’s bright green eyes held the promise of what could happen later tonight, and the fact that he was well aware of her attention on him made Aelin much bolder.

Aelin scoffed but trailed her index finger down the length of his forearm and hand before resting it on his thigh. “And? Do you want me to ‘accidentally’ trip and fall into your lap to make things easier on you?”

“It certainly wouldn’t hurt.”

“How about you take the charge for once? The staring wasn’t a one-way thing, after all,” Aelin pointed out, raising an eyebrow. Rowan looked down at her dress again before looking at her, his pine-green eyes pinning hers. 

“If you two are going to just eye-fuck one another, can you please not do it in front of us,” Fenrys begged out of the corner of her eye, and Aelin jerked her hand from Rowan’s thigh. She refused to let her cheeks burn out of embarrassment, and the only saving grace was that she was drinking so her cheeks were already slightly flushed and pink. Rowan also momentarily looked startled by the comment until he rolled his eyes and told Fenrys off.

“How about I just make myself scarce around you, Fenrys,” she retorted before glancing over at Rowan and seeing him opening something on his phone that made Aelin suppress a smile.

She was about to continue her conversation with Rowan when she caught Elide’s — and by default, Lysandra’s as well — eyes, blatantly telling her to get her ass up and on the dance floor to get Rowan away and out of the club, preferably with her.

Aelin rolled her eyes at her best friends, but she sighed as she relented. She was really out here doing all the work, but then again, she’d seen what Rowan had been doing on his phone earlier, so it’d be all worth it.

She stood up and straightened out her gold sleeveless wrap dress, making sure that she wasn’t accidentally flashing the wrong people, and made her way into the throng of dancing people. Aelin didn’t have to wonder if Rowan would follow her to the middle of the crowd because she knew for a fact that he would, and she wasn’t going to be responsible for what happened between the two.

So, really, it wasn’t her fault that she spent so long on her makeup and hair for tonight after she heard Rowan was coming to the club, making sure her lips were painted the perfect red and her hair was in soft curls down her back. 

It wasn’t her fault that she had coincidentally picked a gold dress after overhearing him express that gold was his favorite color on girls.

And it certainly wasn’t her fault that she instinctively knew he was coming when she recognized the scent of his fresh snow cologne as he approached. A smile graced her face as she felt his large, warm hands slowly trail around the side of her waist towards the center of her stomach where they flexed once, a test to see if she would pull away from her.

Aelin leaned into his body, pressing her back into Rowan’s, and she felt his chest rumble as he laughed. 

“Is someone eager?” he whispered into her ear.

Aelin smiled. “You say that as though I didn’t see you order that Uber before I came out here to dance.”

“Is that a crime to want a drive home after drinking?” he asked as Aelin dragged one of hands away from her waist and down towards the hem of her short dress. His fingertips snuck underneath the hem for a brief moment before they trailed back up her body. 

“It’s not,” she responded, turning in his arms and snaking them around his neck. “But it could be if the address wasn’t yours, and was, oh I don’t know, mine?”

Rowan smiled at that and bent down to softly brush his lips against hers. “And who’s fault is that, you temptress?”

“Certainly not mine.”

[mewintheflesh-2]

HEHEHEEHEHEICJWODMWOMSOSMDSOMSSOSMOSMSSISJSKSM

Fuse can be the sopping wet pathetic little meow meow now <3 I’ve been thing for awhile about a Fuchsia who regrets his actions, who hates who he used to be, shut down the lab, and literally has constant mental breakdowns over what he used to do. Turned vegetarian too, will never eat meat ever again. Released all of the test subjects and unfused all the ones he could save still (it wasn’t a lot.)

Is genuinely one of the sweetest guys you will meet. Tries to protect people from others who are like how he was in his past.

BUT that’s not exactly what we’re talking about here, I just wanted to bring it up because I love Fuchsia a lot <3

Poor Swap!Fuse oh my god. If he’s getting everything that og Fuse does enacted on him I’m surprised he’s still alive. Probably has scars and stitches all over his body, a few mismatched body parts like hands and feet, branding burns, and very very sensitive skin. I think he’s gotten so many injections into his skin that some parts of his body are permanently discolored. Probably has HEAVY white coat syndrome (both by definition and just because of the white lab coats.), so the people he works with now have to wear black/grey lab coats instead. Sweetest guy you will ever meet, very adamant on helping anyone in any way he can. Greyromantic and Greysexual, too used to being taken advantage of to be comfortable with any of that unless he really REALLY knows someone.

I haven’t listened to this song in a while but Swap!Moro reminds me of that one Candle Queen song. I think it’s a vocaloid?

ALSO MCCOY NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GET OUT OF THERE

I think Swap!Moro would be a lot like Kazui from Milgram, completely lying about his feelings the entire time and just keeps progressing the relationship more and more just to see what‘ll happen, how far he can take this, sometimes accidentally because he’ll just say whatever comes to mind.

I think I would like to keep them as they are for right now though, i just like how they are right now, BUT THAT DOESNT MEAN I DONT LIKE THESE GUYS TOO!!!!!! I’m just very used to their og counterparts. Especially Fuse

ALSO for all future references of Fuchsia specifically (the one I mentioned in this post), I will be tagging him/referring to him as Dr. Orion!!!! :D

FUCK IT I’M SWAPPING THE PERSONALITIES/BACKSTORIES OF FUSE AND MORO FOR FUN BECAUSE WHOO BOY! (I know it is mostly Moro but I want to make my baby EVIL)

Fuse becomes the most anxious and sad doctor known to man.

Maybe he was a lab rat of some kind and he was put under all these tests by the people he used to work with.

He finally escapes the lab and finally makes an identity for himself, makes his discoveries, and meets some amazing scientists.

Of course, this all gets shut down by an ice KING!

He's still a little insane don't worry.

Moro becomes a self-obsessed shithead, cold as ice, and does not care for anyone but himself.

He's always playing the victim to get his way and the fans buy it. They're like “Why would this amazing dude do any of that?!”

He's still SUPER pretty and people who don't like him just say he got where he is just because of looks but that's far from the truth.

He's very street-smart and knows how to make people work. Has that cunning and charisma like an OG Disney villain. His stage name is “The Ice King.” How Disney villain is that?

McCoy’s and Moro’s relationship would be VERY one-sided. McCoy is saying how he loves his beautiful boyfriend and giving him gifts and Moro is like “This is the perfect person to become my pawn!”

Moro becomes the controlling one in his and Marius’ old relationship and then plays the victim afterward. He probably got Marius canceled.

I feel like OG Moro’s skating outfits are mostly simplistic, but this man goes ALL OUT. He's basically wearing a Victorian Princess dress and is still slaying it on the ice.

Note: THIS IS NOT CANON I THINK! This was just for fun and I was listening to Friends on the Other Side earlier and I thought, hey, what if Moro was a bitch? And then everything picked up from there.