#and I talk about all sorts of stuff and i guess some of it is stuff is important based on how it’s talked about but I don’t fucking remember

[yabagofmilfs]

I truly wonder about how sid feels when people, especially other hockey players, talk abt him like he's some sort of celestial/mythical being. Cause like, I guess it must feel nice to be acknowledged as one of the best players ever, but he also likes being just one of the guys and this view of him is decidedly not that. And having all those expectations placed on him must be soooo much pressure too, along with like all of canada seeing him as a savior.

there was an article recently that talked about the immense pressure playing for canada puts on him because he’s so beloved, and so successful playing for that expectations are set incredibly high for him. (i’m sorry i don’t remember where it’s from, i think i only saw an excerpt posted.) and i think if you couple that with his “elder statesmen” status and the awe the younger boys have for him + the way the press has turned interviews with every player into “what’s it like playing with crosby, the greatest man on earth” + the political stuff ramping up the intensity and meaning of the games + being injured + the season(s) the penguins have been having + the expectations he always has for himself, the weight he’s carrying must be so massive. if it were me i’d burst into tears at center ice, but that’s why im not sidney crosby.

he must be used to it to an extent, but jesus how exhausting.

[sledge-in-space]

John Seed is a comfort character for some people. Folks like to ship him with their deputies or craft redemption arcs for him.

There's nothing wrong with that, obviously.

But I just can't wrap my head around it.

There's nothing comforting about the way John Seed treated Joey Hudson. I don't understand why the ordeal she went through doesn't seem to matter to fans of his.

She was bait for the rookie deputy and nothing more, because she wasn't going to give in and join the cult.

He terrorized Joey and the rest of Fall's End, stooping to the lowest, most inhumane levels to get his way. Some even theorize that he hurt the "sinners" in his care just because he wanted to, for malicious, sadistic reasons that didn't have anything to do with the cult. At worst, some people go as far as to speculate that he raped Joey.

It's easy to see why someone might come to that conclusion. The way he acts is deplorable and he makes everything feel extremely personal, sometimes in ways that can be interpreted as sexually charged. He'll do anything in order to get his way because "no" is antithetical to him. He regularly flies off the handle, so much so that Joseph is threatening to cast him out. All the touching and getting right up in the player's face is so uncomfortable and obsessive (which is the point, but I digress).

So why does he get to be redeemed and venerated by fans? Don't his actions warrant consequences?

Are people willing to let him off the hook because he's attractive? Because he had a horrible, abusive childhood? Obviously he's got a lot more lore than most of the cast. Is that something people are interested in exploring for him over other characters?

I'm not trying to come after anyone personally. There's nothing wrong with liking villains and Jacob, Faith, and Joseph have also done terrible things to innocent people.

Which is like, fine. It's a video game.

And I know that John, like Joey, is a victim of Ubisoft's choppy, inconsistent writing and storytelling. Things got changed and swapped and cut during development that got us to where we are, with the story we have. Flaws and all, not like it was ever going to be perfect.

But in my opinion, I feel like the adoration for John does a huge disservice to Joey. People make thirsty edits of him while she's literally tied up behind him. It's tasteless and makes the optics of her situation look even creepier.

Her pain has largely been ignored for as long as the game has existed. I can't for the life of me figure out why.

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[coyotesinew]

Some recent thoughts about nonhumanity and my relationship to the community + my personal relationship with it that I cleaned up, my writing style is a bit disjointed, I would like to share more of my writing, if anyone would be interested in seeing that :)

[icewindandboringhorror]

I've referenced before how I have a big google document to keep track of every media I've ever seen in my entire life (just for reference because I like to track everything possible lol… I am the Data Collector), but recently as I was updating it, I thought of actually evaluating them to find out random percentages (like for example, out of Total Shows Watched, what percentage did I finish vs. stop watching, what percentage did I like or dislike, etc.)...

Evaluating these things is made easier by the fact that I already place everything on each subsection of the list into 6 broad ranking categories, so I don't have to go back and guess to figure out how I feel about them or anything. The categories are: Ranking 5 - overall best* (despite some criticisms of course because I'm too much of an Analyzer to ever find anything Perfect lol) Ranking 4 - more positive than neutral, but not good enough to be 5 Ranking 3 - either the good + bad negate each other, OR it's just not memorable/interesting in any way enough to be ranked higher or lower (this is the Default category ALL things are placed in if no other rank applies) Ranking 2 - maybe a few redeemable elements but largely more negatives than positives Ranking 1 - So bad that it circles around to being fascinating to observe in some way (not necessarily Funny, or Good, but just interesting somehow) Ranking 0 - Bad in a genuinely frustrating or obnoxious manner

*("best" primarily defined here as most interesting, rather than most good in a technical sense, or some other measure. I tend to value more highly whether there's something novel or thoughtful about the worldbuilding, tone, writing, base premise, etc - than about whether it's actually executed perfectly.)

And here's the amount of shows that have so far been placed into each category -

TV shows ~ Rank 5 (highest) - 20 shows ~ Rank 4 (mid-high) - 28 shows ~ Rank 3 (neutral/default/meh) - 114 shows ~ Rank 2 (mid low) -33 shows ~ Rank 1 (low low but intriguingly so) - 14 shows ~ Rank 0 (iredeemably low) - 2 shows

This would make for a total of 211 TV shows overall. However, there are 57 shows within these list marked as "didn't finish" (typically meaning I quit on the very first or second episode - but log them still to keep a record that I at least had a brief view of them).

So my total of genuinely fully watched shows would be more 154. 211 Total, but a More Accurate Total of 154.

Counting them all and using the Total Number Of The List (211) -- that means roughly 9.5% of all total shows I have ever watched (or at least attempted to watch) have been Mostly Good, 13% have been Moderately Okay, 54% have been either entirely Forgettable or some mix of good + bad that lands them right in the Neutral Middle, 15.6% have been Mostly Bad, 6.6% have been Bad (but in an interesting way), and 0.9% have been Terribly Bad.

Additionally, I didn't even get past the first two episodes of about 27% of the total.

Sooo, discounting ones I didn't finish, my total TV shows ever watched in my life would be about 154 (maybe give or take a few, assuming I might have forgotten some from very long ago).

But instead of entire life, let's just say this is the total for 'About 20 Years' (so, not counting very early childhood when I likely wouldn't remember things I saw/have no detailed recollection of them (like for example, I'm sure at some point when I was like 4yrs old I must have seen an episode of Spongebob or something, but I have zero distinct memories of it, can't quote anything of it, and barely recall the premise - so I don't count it on the list, etc.)).

In that case, 154 divided by 20 would be roughly 7.7 shows a year.

Which is actually surprisingly low considering that I often have stuff on in the background for hours whilst I make sculptures and do costumes and stuff (maybe I should have also marked some distinction between 'things I fully paid attention to' and 'things I kind of half listened to whilst sculpting', but that would further split the categories too much probably lol), but I guess a lot of that is youtube videos or random documentaries, so .. eh.. maybe I get it being lower.

Now, doing the same thing for movies-

Movies ~ Rank 5 (highest) - 4 movies (3.4% of total) ~ Rank 4 (mid-high) - 12 movies (10.3% of total) ~ Rank 3 (neutral/default/meh) - 91 movies (78.4% of total) ~ Rank 2 (mid low) - 8 movies (6.8% of total) ~ Rank 1 (low but interesting) - 1 movie (0.8% of total) ~ Rank 0 (irredeemably low) - none in this category (0%)

That makes 116 for a Total (Actually Remembered) Movies Watched In Lifetime (Or At Least In 20 Years).

116 divided by 20 is roughly 5 or 6 movies a year (I feel this has probably been skewed though by adding everything since like elementary school onwards, as I remember a lot more movies from child/teen years.. Whereas, the past 3 years I feel like I've barely seen maybe even 5 movies?? lol). I also have "Didn't Finish" marked on 18 of them. Which means I quit halfway through about 15% of the total movies.

So, a for broader summary stuff..

I seem to be less forgiving to movies than tv shows, by far. Which makes sense to me, I guess, because I love elaboration and details, so "short form" things that only last an hour or two are often lost on me a bit. My biggest complaint with movies is indeed usually walking away just wishing there had been more exposition, more scenes where characters are doing nothing, more "mindless bantering" conversations, more Quiet Downtime and Lore Elaboration and so on lol, so... of course most 1-2hr films end up feeling a bit Not Enough To Draw My Interest/Nothingy to me.

If you count 5 and 4 as "like" and rankings 2 to 0 as "dislike", then for TV shows I at least somewhat liked 48 of them, and at least somewhat disliked 47 of them.. So it's almost exactly the same lol. I'm just about equally as likely to find something bad as I am to find something redeeming about it. But overall, the largest chance is that I just won't really care much for it at all and it will be tossed into the 'neutral' pile, forgotten forever. Movies have a bit better of a balance, "liking" 16 of them, and "disliking" only 9 of them. So I'm slightly more likely to enjoy a movie than to find it annoying - though still VASTLY more likely to just not find it anything in particular, possibly not even finishing it.

ANYWAY.. this is vague and literally pointless, but like I said, I just really find information fun. Like my document where I've rated every apple flavor I've ever tried (like 40 of them now?), or reviewed every oreo flavor (32?), or ranking data from my entire 10 years of Trying To Make Friends process (out of 100 people, roughly 8% chance of a moderate compatibility, 3% chance of high), or etc. etc.. I love to have random pointless things to analyze I suppose lol.

I doubt anyone tracks things in their life in this same exact way, but I'd be interested in hearing any at least somewhat similar data !!! (like, how many TV shows you watch a year on average, and what percentage of those you like vs. dislike (if you keep track of that sort of thing), etc.)). I guess it might be easier with movies, since I think some people use those websites where you curate a list of movies you've seen and you can rate them or something, so maybe the numbers are already available on those places. :0

[fvckw4d]

The concept of queerbaiting annoys me. I was told that it refers to a work of fiction pretending to cater to a queer audience but then pulling back from it to avoid alienating homophobes, which is an incredibly specific thing. But a lot of people seem to think that it instead means "any time there's any gay subtex, metaphor, or ambiguity" or "whenever something from 1995-2012 was being a normal amount of homophobic for the era."

[vampiric-fangirl]

okay i want to take a minute to talk about the exact way in which i think lute hates herself because i don't think i really have yet.

(this one ended up pretty long so i'm going to put it under a cut.)

the blueprint (and part of it) is her exact flavor of internalized misogyny. she's a pick-me girl - any woman with even just an amicable relationship with adam is some level of that by default and lute goes the extra mile. and, according to my understanding of the subject, the pick-me girl is characterized by her hatred of women despite being a woman herself and, as a result, desperately trying to distance herself from her idea of shameful femininity and mocking women who don't, often for the purpose (whether conscious or not) of being accepted or given attention by misogynistic men. the pick-me girl forces herself to be a certain way, perhaps a way she didn't really want to be in the first place, because she wants to be able to love herself and be loved in a patriarchal system and doesn't have the awareness or the willpower to fight it. she hates what she is, hates herself, but warps herself and her view of herself and others to escape it.

now i'd like to argue an extension of this principle when it comes to heaven vs. hell.

the storybook opening, regardless of how biased its author may have been as so many people in this fandom like to argue (and they do have a point but some of them take it too far and use it as an excuse to ignore - not the point), presents a clear theme: heaven represents order and obedience while hell represents chaos and freedom. lucifer and lilith are "rebellious dreamers". however, with the way the conflict between adam and lilith is presented, gender is woven into this dichotomy as well. heaven is the patriarchy; hell is the feminist rebellion against it.

(queerness could probably also be incorporated into this model as well, but. this is already an entire fucking essay and it's not extremely relevant to the topic at hand. but it does mean a homophobic homosexual lute would track.)

with this added context, adam and lute hating hell as vehemently as they do - especially with the subtle differences in the way they each do - can be read as, at least to a certain extent, a symbolic + abstract representation of their misogyny.

(something important to note here and maybe something that i just want to talk about, also, is the way vaggie embraces femininity after falling. after falling, she can finally be feminine in the way she want to, not the objectifying and restrictive way that was forced upon her as an exorcist. after what may have been years of healing and encouragement from charlie, she wears a giant puffy bow and does not give a damn. and it's beautiful and i love her for it and i love her so much and - oops got sidetracked there. basically: hell allowed vaggie to express her gender freely. heaven did not. patriarchy. freedom. big bow. pretty woman. i bow and walk off stage.)

and you can kind of see something similar to her internalized misogyny in her hatred of hell. i mean, it is, of course, not a 1:1 comparison given she actually IS an angel, but some elements persist. there is still that desperation to distance herself, even at the cost of basic reasoning ("Angels don't make mistakes"). there is still that forcing herself to be a certain way. there is still that warping of her view of herself and others to escape her self-hatred - or maybe, in this case, a more accurate way to put it would be: to escape her self-hatred-inflicting-guilt and the doubt threatening her unfathomably thick defenses against that guilt. there is still that apparent fight for male - or, in this version of the conflict, angelic - attention, specifically from adam.

(side note 2. a lot of the comparisons i drew here also are/related to stuff characteristic of many cults, which the exorcists - at least as far as the mental and emotional effect on the members goes - functionally are. maybe there is something to be learned there, about the intersection of cults and misogyny/sexism. maybe not. i don't know actually sometimes i straight up have no idea what i'm taking about.)

although, this method of analyzing lute only REALLY gets interesting when you look at her hatred of vaggie with it. vaggie, who was an angel - just like lute is! - once, but is now fallen (for daring to step outside the violent orders that police them, another thing that's mere possibility terrifies lute) - just like lute could be! vaggie, who is happy in hell. who is happy being all of the things lute hates, from perhaps both a heaven vs. hell perspective AND a gender perspective. (and possibly a sexuality perspective too.) and if it is not only possible for an angel to be like this - hellish, and perhaps more importantly FREE - but also for an angel to be HAPPY like this, then. that's fucking horrifying! so she of course doubles down on her hatred and tries to maim/kill vaggie. so that she never has to face this - the reality that the hatred she is consumed by could so easily include herself. that maybe it already does.

and THAT'S why she begs to be killed when she loses the fight in ep. 8, i think. it's a combination of two things: 1. she does not want to face reality and 2. she hates herself. (also she has self-worth issues. did i mention she has self-worth issues? yeah she has self-worth issues. at least when it comes to her compared to adam. natural consequence of being a loyal follower and dedicated lieutenant of someone like him. her self-hatred and self-worth issues are thoroughly intertwined, though, just like vaggie's are.)

that's also why she just fucking. tears off her arm as soon as vaggie leaves, too. she does not care about physical pain or keeping all of her limbs attached, she is far too wrapped up in a. trying to preserve her intensely unhealthy mental state by Not Thinking About Things b. wanting to sacrifice herself in some way, even if it's just losing a limb, because of said mental state c. trying to get to vaggie so she can kill her and be rid of this plague on her conscience d. trying to get to adam too so she can fulfill her desperate (after?)lifelong mission to be of service to him to fill the void inside her caused by her deeply repressed doubt and inner conflict. probably? but then again i'm just a fallenwings girl at heart so idk honestly.

tl;dr: lute hates herself. she makes herself perfect in the way she understands perfection to avoid this. after that, she shoves her hate onto others to distract herself from her own internal conflict and, in some cases (vaggie), she hates others (vaggie) because they (vaggie) exhibit the traits she hates that she has driven out from herself. (although, despite my fixation on fallenwings, this probably extends to other exorcists showing weakness/making mistakes in general.) finally, she works feverishly for approval to reassure her of her place in the grand scheme of things from the man whom she, for reasons brought about by her blind, unquestioning efforts to cling to the version of right and wrong forced upon her and that she has also forced upon herself, views as the paragon of everything she strives for: adam.

she does not fight the system. she breaks herself apart to fit into and work for it.

[maddieandangel]

Had a weird Hollow Knight-related dream a couple days ago, so I decided to draw a major scene I remembered from it dgsgshf

More context will be in the tags, for those interested!

[deadbeandrop]

actually y'know what i guess i'll talk about it while i'm here

i think about this scene a lot regarding him and (obviously) this episode in general, but especially when slinkman is like... actually a character that gets development and changes over the course of the show, it really does say a lot to me

and with the placement of scenes here, it's right in between lazlo, raj and clam getting slinkman to muster up the courage to show off his past aspirations, to give it another go, only to be reminded of how all that turned out, panic, and flee back to what's comfortable... aaand in between him finding out everything is actually lumpus' fault, and very purposefully sabotaging a budding dream, at that

and i think he's sort of gone through life in this way for a long time, this humble and passive acceptance of the roles and duty he's been placed in, of the world around him deciding who he's supposed to be. especially to lumpus. a best friend, sure, but nowadays an assistant, an emotional support crux to keep him (and the camp) from falling apart. i've always ran along with the idea that running camp together was lumpus' idea from the start, and look how it's turned out

i love how he says "pull yourself together", too, the tone he has as if he's scolding himself for daring to think or try to be anything like that again, that he should know better by now, when the moment's far passed

although, i don't think fame and danger/excitement are what he really wants out of life, even deep down — not anymore, at least. in the end, it's a lot more about healthy self development and sort of taking back "control" of his own path in life, right? and at the same time, a little of all that now and then wouldn't hurt...

see i've been typing this out for an hour but forget everything i just said and let's get slinkman a motorcycle

[yippie-madness]

recurrent thoughts of cutting my vocal cords out but unfortunately i would die before i could. sigh.

[jathun]

ngl I have such a love/hate relationship with the fate franchise

[thetangibleghost]

I've always wanted to wake up from a dream laughing and I just did but I realized after I woke up that I have missed a million social cues :((((((((((((((((( it wasn't even funny idk why I couldn't stop giggling. I dont even giggle irl.

[seaofreverie]

The Me who bought tickets to see TMBG in february 2023 and the Me who's going to actually go to the show next month are two completely different people

[marsixm]

im trying to wrap my head around why i dont get enthusiastic about reddit style fiction (not a dig but a descriptor) like scp and shit like that, bc its not that i can’t enjoy them but i think its like… when stuff is framed as if it were real, but its fiction, its like, well KNOWING its fiction eliminates a huge element of the intrigue, but also, crucially, i like character-driven stories, or at least stories WITH characters. but i also like it when things are interesting for said characters to experience, like, i want the ghosts and monsters and conspiracies but i want the characters to be character-ing, yknow? not that i dont enjoy slice of life and… what would u call the first thing, non-character specific horror? idk? but i prefer when its both. its like i love kirk and spock but also i do enjoy watching them Experience Situations when i watch star trek. i enjoy the idea of spooky national forest monsters that arent real but experiencing it alongside a character would be better, and i want more trans and gay characters whose lives are clearly trans and gay but i want a plotline to unfold too

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[anonyanonymouse]

🙈