#and for a while i blamed myself for it
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the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.
capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.
now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.
and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.
and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.
and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".
it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"
#this was much longer i had to cut it down for legibility#but i do want to say i am aware this post doesnt touch on human rights violations as a result of fast fashion#that is because it deserves its own post with a completely different tone#i am an environmental educator#so that's what i know the most about. it wouldn't be appropriate of me to mention off-hand the real and legitimate suffering#that people are going through#without doing my research and providing real ways to help#this is a vent post about a thing i'm watching happen; not a call to action. it would be INCREDIBLY demeaning#to all those affected by the fast fashion industry to pretend that a post like this could speak to their suffering#unfortunately one of the horrible things about latestage capitalism as an activist is that SO many things are linked to this#and i WANT to talk about all of them but it would be a book in its own right. in fact there ARE books about each level of this#and i encourage you to seek them out and read them!!! i am not an expert on that i am just a person on tumblr doing my favorite activity#(complaining)#and it's like - this is the individual versus the industry problem again right because im blaming myself#for being an expert on environmental disaster (which is fucking important) but not knowing EVERYTHING about fast fashion#i'm blaming myself for not covering the many layers of this incredibly complicated problem im pointing out#rather than being like. yeah so actually the fault here lies with the billion dollar industries actually.#my failure to be able to condense an incredibly immense problem that is BOOK-LENGTH into a single text post that i post for free#is not in ANY fucking way the same amount of harm as. you know. the ACTUAL COMPANIES doing this ACTUAL THING for ACTUAL MONEY.#anyway im gonna go donate money while i'm thinking about it. maybe you can too. we can both just agree - well i fuckin tried didn't i#which is more than their CEOs can say
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You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.
-Shrimp Anon
The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.
Get ready cause this is a yap session:
Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.
I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.
The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.
This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.
Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...
These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.
I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.
Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.
It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.
I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.
It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.
There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.
End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.
#i also think it is because mouthwashing is first and foremost a game about rape culture and the patriarchy especially in work spaces#regarding women and centering conversation around Curly a man rubs people wrong because it does overshadow that commentary#but it still mixes other topics into its initial theming and message on how abuse conditions you to accept certain things that are harmful#and how getting used to a culture/enviornment does not mean you are happy healthy or most importantly safe in it. I personally like to#explore those aspects where it mixes all the themes so we can discuss the ways you have to watch out for things because there is a differen#in the idea Curly enabled Jimmy just because they were bros and because he was an example of another man afraid to step out from what#is a still oppressive system that does try to punish those who act against it even if they fall in the category of those who would benefit#from it as Jimmy and PE 100% represent that sort of misogynistic system where men that would be “good” are altered until they follow line#in a way both on the personal and professional level as PE is the corporate lock out and Jimmy represents the social and its just the issue#that the discussion of it sounds like “in defense of men” when I am more so trying to discuss how it is much deeper than men being scared t#upset other men but complacency is rewarded by not becoming another person subjugated hence as all the moments Curly does try to do#something we can tie it back to how Jimmy reacts and a possible penality from PE where we now need to address the ways to combat those#two concepts so we dont get cases like Curly or Daisuke or Swansea where male avoidance of the issue is considered neutral or even good.#i think most of this boils down the perfect victim mentality to where if someone who underwent or is being abused is not a perfect example#or accpetible type than their abuse can not be considered a valid or substantial reason for effects on their behavior compounded with the#fact that Anya's abuse at the hands of Jimmy is a systematic issue that Curly is a part of even if unwillingly and was more physically#violating and topical cause sometimes i have to remind myself that all media is still critiqued through the lens of the culture it came out#in cause i do think about what if this game came out inlike 2014 like the conversations would be sooooooo different could you imagine it?#but back the before statement Curly isn't perfect but I feel like boiling it down if hes a good person or man is not the point of the game#but more so good people can still be part of the problem and the idea of condemning a person for one act creates a false sense of#rightouesness and justice that does not aid the victim and in fact aids the abusers in escaping blame for their mulitple behaviors as we se#how the men on the ship tend to blame Jimmy for just one act against them including himself while there is a plethora of things Anya is#concerned about with Jimmy#and its not that Curly just made one mistake with Jimmy but more so we consider his actions more damning because he didn't stop Jimmy#instead of focusing on the fact Jimmy did what he did regardless of Curly and the consequence because we already know he's bad n maladjuste#which is problem in the conversation where the individuals are blamed but the system and perputrator are overlooked in a sense of acceptiab#complacency as we know how they are and the lack of tangibility to personally affect them on a larger scale like I should just make a post#on like cutting out the face when it comes it confronting systems of oppression rather than tag talking but just ask me to clarify if#you want that like im jus trying to say we avoid talking about Jimmy and PE so much cause it is obvious what they do wrong that we make#the initial and inherent problem out to be one aspect someone in this case Curly does and the the constraints they use to force actions
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heartbreaking: this viral post is saying things you completely agree with in the most irritating way possible
#mumbling#goD#thinking about that one cringing = pearl clutching post i saw a while ago#legitimately good points and the only time i’ve ever seen someone point out the linguistic shift#of ‘cringe’ going from verb to adjective and how that takes the blame off of the people DOING the cringing#like yeah! that’s it that’s the thing i’ve been trying to figure out how to say!!#the insidious shift from cringe as an action of the beholder to a property of the beheld is not only worth examining#but demonstrates a seriously important way our brains can be affected over time by language#that was something i didn’t even notice! sure it bothered me but i didn’t know how to express WHY#and i think it’s so cool to see someone finally manage to articulate smth that’s been pissing me off for years#HOWEVER#my god was op’s phrasing annoying the hell out of me for some reason#just written in such a grating writing style i couldn’t bring myself to reblog it even though i really wanted to
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⦿ Help Zygarde end the clash between Xerneas and Yveltal and restore order.
#pokemon fanart#pokemon xy#pokemon legends#zygarde#xerneas#yveltal#pokemon legends z-a#pokemon legends ZA#pokemon legends za#kalos#pokemon x and y#pokemon#sorry guys cannot help but keep drawing scenarios#they're so fun to play around with#although that often raises high expectations (which I blame myself for that)#2 big reasons why I enjoyed indigo disk = drawing art and engaging in theories within the community#the hype season really helped make the DLC experience more enjoyable; while I liked ID#I have major gripes with the story (aside from kieran's).#I hope xerneas & yveltal gets more role! Really solid designs and lore-stuffed creatures yet unfortunately underutilized like Terapagos
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Still very wild to me when people try to gotcha Jason with the whole "if you can kill other people for being evil why can't they kill you" when jason is like. One of the most passively suicidal characters I've ever seen. What if man
#augh i dont want to cw this because im just talking about The Character and i feel bad when i do it for characters but i probably should#suicide mention#ask to tag#while im here i do absolutely believe hes been suicidal since jaybin times. maybe even before just in different ways. but like#going into that building with shelia? yeah#now. i DONT think he was aware of it and if youd ask him hed say no fully believing thats the truth#but like if a ghost jaybin had some introspection time i think he'd maybe eventually be like yeah#his outcomes to him were have a loving parent or die and hes a very big fan of ultimatums like that.#but he doesn't fully see it like that as jaybin because oh hes a hero and saving others when no one else can is what heros do :)#ramble. ivee been feeling it lately yknow how it is#ive once saw a post saying jason was planning to die after the joker was dead in utrh and yeagh i can see that#he puts A BOMB in his HELMET#suicidal characters in the context of hero stories are so fascinating to me. the self sacrifice.#the not caring about your own safety as long as you save someone else. the pushing yourself#the way itd be so easy to make it look like they just fell in battle. to be considered a hero in the end#anyway ive been glancing at suicidal jason todd fics. how bad is it that im still getting mad about characterization#because theyre not killing him right#AND ANOTHER THING. since im here and i try to avoid making posts about The Character like this so might as welk get it all out#think about suicidal jaybin as well as the fact 80s bruce very much considered suicidal people/people attempting like#weak and lazy? yells at them? i think thats about it. Very Much. je seems to straight up just hate them#again very much feel free to ask me to tag this one ^-^'#and i hope no one thinks im being callous here im very worried about that. i just its a very important part of his character to think about#and its fun to explore as someone who is passively suicidal myself#jason todd analysis#anyway no one look at me i am in my corner just rotating him#WAIT to clarify i dont think jaybin fully realized Just becauceof the heros sacrifice thing. i made it sound like that i believe#anyway. if you read him as suicidal since jaybin times and go to ditf with that lens like i did. well. the post death victim blaming..
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Why do you think the tides have slightly turned from "Elia deserves better than Rhaegar" to shipping her and Rhaegar together? Like what is the psychology behind these people because I've seen some of them like/reblog anti Rhaegar posts while also shipping Rhaegar x Elia at the same time.
hey anon! my thoughts are a bit messy, but i’ve done my best to explain them coherently :)
so, rhaegar was the best man anyone could have when elia was alive, and most people want the best for their favs. he was considered the most handsome, didn’t have a bad personality, and he was crown prince—meaning elia was almost queen, which is often seen as the greatest role a woman can have. the narrative also treats rhaegar as a beautiful, tragic, haunting figure, and elia actually had this very aesthetically pleasing man all to herself at one point! she was married to him, had children with him, and her life was so close to perfect! but rhaegar just had to go and ruin it. 😠
for many elia stans, if rhaegar hadn’t fallen in love with another woman (they want him to have been a completely different character), then everything would’ve been perfect, and elia would’ve had the best, most desirable life. however, that’s not what happened—elia met a very tragic end, and as a result, these stans feel double the bitterness. because of this bitterness, they blame rhaegar for everything (even though it’s not logical to do so), but he’s just too ‘perfect’ to let go of. so, for years these stans have made rhaegar revolve around elia, filling his tag with posts about her out of bitterness. so, i do believe that this obsession with rhaegar x elia has always been there, but i think it’s become a more favorable stance on the elia stan side of the fandom because of a mix of reasons.
plus, rhaegar is one of the few canon relationships we know elia had, since she’s not much of a character. because of this, and the fact that most people don’t like to stray too far from canon, most elia stans are forced to focus on rhaegar, which has created an echo chamber. basically, if a sentiment about elia and rhaegar’s relationship becomes popular, then the whole elia stan side of the fandom will likely regurgitate the sentiment. (also, this desire to stick close to canon is likely why the elia x arthur ship was so popular. while it’s a total crack ship, it had good aesthetics, and since elia and arthur at least knew each other, it allowed the stans to create their perfect fanfiction whilst sticking it to rhaegar. but remember, elia was actually married to rhaegar and had children with him, so while arthur is cool, rhaegar was always ‘top dog,’ meaning arthur would never be able to match up to rhaegar to most elia stans. also, the arthur x elia crack ship is likely her second most popular ship, which just shows how little elia stans have to work with, so they’re always forced to eventually return back to rhaegar for a lot of things.)
however, even if the elia x rhaegar ship gains more popularity, these stans will never stop hating rhaegar because he wasn’t ‘perfect’—and he wasn’t perfect because he didn’t love elia. plus, rhaegar loving another woman and supposedly kidnapping her is what began the war that led to elia’s tragic death. that’s bitterness times 1000. and while i don’t actually blame rhaegar for the war, i do think that this is how an elia stan sees it. i also don’t view rhaegar’s complex relationship with elia as a bad thing—it’s actually a very realistic take on an arranged marriage between two decent people. but most elia stans will never be able to get over the fact that they almost had everything, which is why many have it out for lyanna, as they consider her a thief who ruined their ‘perfection.’
tbh, that might be why so many elia stans are so obsessed with the idea that rhaegar only got with lyanna because of the prophecy—they don’t want to believe that rhaegar actually loved a different woman and not their perfect self insert elia. that’s a bit mean of me… but i don’t know what else one would call the ‘elia’ elia stans have created.
now that i’ve laid all those thoughts out, i’ll try to explain why the tides seem to be turning… i think it may have something to do with the ‘targaryens are all evil and bad’ sentiment losing popularity. i think this shift has occurred due to a mix of factors, such as years of fandom fights and fandom cycles leading to the targs being more liked now than before. it helps that canon doesn’t actually condemn the targs/favors them quite a bit, and the influx of new targ fans from HOTD has also contributed. this combination of reasons seems to have shifted the way the mainstream fandom discusses all the targaryen characters, including rhaegar. so, with this shift, it’s only natural that some elia stans/elia x rhaegar shippers—who’ve always been there—are using this opportunity to push their agenda. while these stans still hate rhaegar and see him as the bad guy, they just can’t let go of him. and as the mainstream fandom moves away from the anti targaryen sentiment, these smaller corners of the fandom, which tend to be echo chambers, are also affected, which has therefore led to a rise in rhaegar x elia shippers and the ‘shifting tide’ that you’ve also noticed.
#‘if only rhaegar did this’ is a very common sentiment amongst elia stans#most stans have always had the ‘if only’ mindset#‘if only elia survived’ easily leads to ‘if only rhaegar didn’t run off with his whore’ as the targs become less hated#it’s kinda a pipeline? rhaegar anti plus elia stan leads to rhaegar x elia shipper who still hates rhaegar#another reason that a lot of this happens is because elia and the martells plus dorne are the good ‘others’ a person can like#while the targaryens are the ‘bad others’ one can safely hate as they’re white & have a bit of demon symbolism + come from an ‘evil’ empire#the targs also ruled over everyone so a lot of fans like pushing all the blame onto them for all the problems#however the targs are cool and they’re hot af and being royalty is the best! so they’re the ‘bad others’ one can safely hate#but people still want their aesthetic and want their favs to have what the targs had. all the cool magic + the aesthetic + danys monikers#so people can convince themselves that it’s okay and logical and right to hate the targs but most ppl will still connect their favs to them#of course… things have been shifting in the fandom which i’m very happy about#and all of these sentiments are combined and compressed when it comes to rhaegar and elias relationship#so any big shift on how the fandom views the targs will always affect the way rhaegar and elias relationship is viewed#it just so happens that the targs aren’t the evil dragon nazis anymore so it’s kinda okay for elia stans to ship him with her#i’m not gonna go through my tags and make sure they make sense so i’m simply hoping for the best#anyways… i hope i didn’t digress too much. i just found this shift so interesting so i couldn’t help myself#asoiaf fandom critical#anti elia stans#rhaegar targaryen#anti rhaegar x elia#house targaryen#valyrianscrolls#pro rhaelya#lyanna stark#rhaegar x lyanna#anon ask#thanks anon this was a fun topic to cover#i recently found a really old post about both elia and lyanna and boy… it was quite discusting to read#elia stans kinda cycle from ‘elia deserved better x crack ship with shallow aesthetic’ back to elia x rhaegar while shitting on rhaelya#just know that rhaegar is always the bad guy to them! the sentiment on lyanna will go from hot to cold but rhaelya is always bad as well!
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Abuse, Silence, And Why Kevin Can Fuck Himself
I recently finished watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix, and, aside from being the most brutally honest portrayal of domestic abuse I have ever seen, I discovered a beautifully written examination of narrative as power and silence as abuse and how this manifests in our larger culture.
Without going into too much detail, the show is filmed in two distinct styles that are interleaved throughout each episode to tell a cohesive story. Allison and Kevin’s relationship as seen by the rest of the world is told through a multi-cam, laugh-track sitcom that depicts a very typical “goofy husband, shrewish wife” mainstream comedy. Allison’s life through her own eyes is told through a single-cam drama/thriller about Allison planning to murder Kevin to escape his abuse.
It’s an absolute masterclass in screenwriting, but more than that, every episode explores the difference between truth, fact, and reality, and how none of these things are quite as much or as little as story. But while the process of transforming the chaotic and plotless reality of life into a story is as involuntary and essential as breathing, misogyny and the degradation of women is just as ubiquitous in our society, and a story that exists at the expense of another person’s lived reality is a refutation of their humanity.
It's also just a great show for anyone who likes to engage with history (or reality TV or true crime or “real life stories” in general), because while we have to tell ourselves stories about her own lives, we have to tell ourselves stories about other people as well. Eternal silence is narrative death, and the perpetual silence of an unspoken narrative is often the last death we can visit on someone whose story we’d rather ignore.
I also pulled up some books – Lolita and Disgrace – that dealt with similar themes, but from the perspective of the abuser. And what strikes me the most is that, across three beautifully written stories about narrative and silence within a culture that normalizes abuse, Allison, who began her story within a state of narrative death, was the only point-of-view character who had any chance of surviving.
One of the main themes of Kevin is that a compelling story is often a story that reinforces what we already believe or like to believe, and while the story may be factual and true it often also exists at the expense of someone's lived reality. The exact same series of events can be a silly joke or a harrowing tale of abuse depending on the lens through which we view it, but historically we've only been willing to see the multicam, laugh track, sitcom perspective on unbalanced relationships.
The alchemical process of turning a series of disjoint facts and experiences into a narrative creates something new and compelling, and erases much of what previously existed. In this way, it’s entirely irreversible. We spin our experiences into a very thin thread, a story we can tell ourselves that elicits something within us, something we need in order to live with the complex, uncertain, and unsatisfying reality of life. In think in many ways the thing we elicit in ourselves is truth. But truth is both more and less than fact, often more a reflection of our own beliefs and desires than the events of our lives. And in telling that truth we may never stray from the facts, but we almost by definition cannot give voice to another person’s reality.
There's a scene in season 2 of Kevin when Allison is hit by a door – a la the classic excuse – because of Kevin’s carelessness. And while he absolutely did not hit her, the way it's written is such an incredible allegory for how Kevin has curated their story and curated their friends' and family’s perceptions of their story such that even if she tells everyone the exact, unvarnished truth of what's happening to her and begs for help, they will only be capable of seeing the laugh-track, sitcom, “Kevin is a harmless goofball and his wife is a total shrew” perspective on the events of their lives.
As so often happens with abuse, their friends and family saw Allison being hurt because of Kevin. But the alchemy of creating a narrative around Kevin and Allison is irreversible, and the series of events they witness can only be spun together to a joke, an accident, a silly, childish mistake. Allison’s reality, Allison’s pain and fear, is completely elided. Like a lost sound in the middle of a sentence, her experience goes silent, and their larger understanding of her relationship never has to change. And you feel so acutely how Allison lives her entire life in that silence.
Storytelling is human, it’s essential, there’s no other way to engage with our own lives. And it’s not lying. It’s never lying to tell the truth. But it doesn’t reflect every reality, either, because another person’s reality can’t be reflected within our own narrative, because that’s what it means to be another person. To spin two different threads.
And because narrative is the essential process by which we understand our reality, denying someone their own narrative, or denying that this narrative be heard, is inherently abusive. To allow someone a voice is to give them humanity, and to suppress it is to strip that humanity away.
Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, follows the story of a professor, David, who rapes a student and then fails to protect his daughter, Lucy, from being raped by intruders in their home. He destroys his daughter’s life – not through failing to protect her, but through twisting her rape into a story about why the rape of his student wasn’t wrong. The main theme of the book is generally considered to be exploitation, but Coetzee doesn’t deal with the exploitation of the rape. That’s too direct, too immediate, too easy for the reader to understand as misogynistic and wrong. Rather, Coetzee delves into “the innocuous-seeming use of another person to fill one's gentler emotional needs” (Ruden).
The rape is how we understand David as a fundamentally exploitative person, a person who denies others their humanity by converting them into a vessel for his own desires, who erases their voice in order to speak through them and give himself the things he needs. And that’s how we recognize that the way he absorbs and claims the stories of his daughter and his student is another kind of violation of their humanity. Another way of turning women into vessels for men’s pain and fear and need.
What’s fascinating is that David's student finds her voice – files a complaint against him – and is eventually able to continue with her life. The woman he raped is less damaged by him than his own daughter, because she was the woman he couldn’t permanently silence.
In Lolita, another brilliant novel about abuse, dehumanization, and storytelling, Humbert turns to the reader at the end and says, “Imagine us, reader, for we don’t really exist if you don’t.”
It’s not that Humbert knew he was fictional, but that he knew everyone was fictional. Believed the entire world only truly existed in his own mind, because anything beyond that was irrelevant to his needs. He coped with the collapse of his ability to dehumanize Dolores (who he called Lolita) by demanding that his voice be resurrected. Demanding immortality. Demanding his narrative exist in another person’s world, and thereby be given the existence and humanity that Allison and Dolores and Lucy and David’s student were denied.
Pushing his needs, finally, onto the reader, because we are the only person he has left, and a person like him can only exist through the use of another. In that way, Humbert was powerless. In that way, Kevin and David were powerless, too.
In Disgrace, David’s dream is to write an opera, and at the end of the book he realizes he’ll never finish his magnum opus. He’ll never be able to terminate the process of converting himself, his world, into a story. But he does learn to decenter himself in that narrative. And it’s when he loses all fear of death, and any conception of the self, that he gains the ability to give dogs – who he generally equates to women – a voice within his opera, his life’s work.
It’s in death that we discover our true unimportance as human beings, that we learn to let go of vanity and our conception of the self entirely. And David had degraded women so thoroughly in order to justify how he used them to meet his own emotional needs that it was only in losing all value for his own life that he could gain the ability to see them as equal voices. To actually put those voices into his own life story. It's at the cost of himself that he allows other people to truly exist, in the death of the self that he finally allows the world to exist outside of himself. It’s almost a positive character arc. Almost.
When Kevin finally loses the ability to abuse Allison, he, like many abusers, loses all desire to live. His world was built on a structure of superiority and inferiority, on beings and vessels, on the inherent value of men and the inherent meaninglessness of women’s lives. The system on which he based his entire reality has been destroyed by Allison’s declaration of the self. And, if he was a being because she was a vessel, then in losing the ability to treat her as a vessel, to fully and completely dehumanize her, he has lost his own humanity.
It may be perfectly summed up here: “Become major. Live like a hero. That's what the classics teach us. Be a main character. Otherwise, what is life for?” (Coetzee).
If you’re not to be a main character, if there indeed is no split between major and minor characters, between people and the paper dolls that populate their story, between living beings and the vessels into which they pour their need – what is life for?
Nothing. At least, not for people whose narrative must exist at the expense of another.
And that’s why I say that only a narrator like Allison could survive this kind of story. Despite beginning her story trapped in eternal silence, her reality fully elided no matter how immediate and obvious it became, Allison was the only point-of-view character of any of these three stories who didn’t establish her power through the degradation of another. Who didn’t conceptualize the world via being and vessels. Whose narrative didn’t exist, by necessity, at the expense of another person’s humanity. Whose thread could exist in a larger tapestry without destroying her sense of self.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s not generally a likable character. She’s misogynistic, cruel, selfish, jealous, desperate, afraid, and in pain. Like anyone in an abusive relationship, she’s not at her best, and she’s often pushed to do things that are ugly and disturbing because she’s simply been pushed too far.
But, for me, the power in her character is in how her last scene never felt like a final scene. Her story didn’t have to be killed, her conception of the self didn’t have to be killed, in order to reveal the brutal reality of stories twisting and intertwining without any inherently superior truth or narrative among them. Allison’s story was one of declaring herself. And that’s why it didn’t feel like it ended at the end. Instead, this felt like a beginning.
#this is probably the most egregious 'post that no one asked for' that I've ever written#but man this show HIT me y'all#and then I went back and reread parts of disgrace and that hit me too#it also made me reconsider my online presence and how I myself engage with narrative in the very small little world I'm a part of#I caught some shit a while ago and made a conscious decision to never comment on the narrative around the beatles#and to be clear I was just talking about a general narrative in society at large I wasn't bringing up anything specific or attacking people#more how larger social narratives filter into and sometimes come to define individual stories#but it was upsetting to people and I figured instead I can just try to express a compassionate perspective on the mentally ill myself#but now I wonder if I've gone too far#idk without naming any names I'm getting unblocked by people who should definitely still find my mindset intolerable to their worldview#and I don't blame them because we all have reasons for the things we believe and we're all just doing our best#but it's a canary in the coal mine#it makes me think I've become so focused on not ruffling feathers that I'm tacitly approving some disturbing beliefs#and I think I could have happily ignored that if I hadn't just watched this show#posts that no one asked for#kevin can fuck himself#kevin can f*** himself#op#longer rambles
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Do you guys think Chuuya ever went to Odasaku's grave. Do you think he stood there, unsure whether to curse or laugh or cry because what the fuck, what the fuck. He didn't even know the man, other than that he made Dazai want to die less, and yet, and yet-- nice things don't stick around when you're in port mafia. Maybe it's Odasaku's fault maybe it isn't, Chuuya didn't fucking know. He didn't fucking care because deep down, he always knew Dazai was going to leave one day. He just didn't know it would be this soon.
#do u guys think he blamed odasaku for a while. for being the reason dazai left#and then blamed mori for a while. because he made him leave#how long do u guys think it took him to accept that dazai left because he was destined to leave. unlike him.#wow i love making myself sad#skk
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Hey there! Hekate has pointed me toward your blog and I just wanted to say hi 💞
I do have a question though, have you ever had deities help you with motivation and executive functioning skills? I've got ADHD and the "laziness"(🤢) or what I call "going slug mode" (staying in bed all day, no motivation to shower, etc) really commands my life.
My periods of deity work tend to coincide with my periods of productivity and energy, but I often fall off when, well, everything else falls off. So I guess I'm also looking for advice or at least to connect with someone who's had similar experiences.
(I've also connected with Aphrodite and Loki! Other gods I've worked with in the past are Mother Hathor and Brigid)
First off, I may or may not have had so many feelings upon seeing "Hekate has pointed me towards your blog" because the idea that my blog can be useful enough that a deity would go "go look at what that dude has to say" just brings me so much joy.
Second off, OH THIS IS ABSOLUTELY SOMETHING I SHOULD SCREAM ABOUT THANK YOU. I can't believe I haven't already made a post about this!!
I, too, am an ADHD motherfucker and I have always had so many issues with keeping up with my craft. I will absolutely be calling it "slug mode" from now on, that's the best fucking way to put it. I've had deities help me with executive function at times, but if I'm honest I've forgotten lately that I can ask them for help with that. More often than not it looks more like nudging me towards a task than giving me the energy- but that doesn't mean you can't ask! It just means I forgot I could, lol.
This is gonna be a chonker post, so I'm breaking this post up into two parts; 1, why accepting "falling off" was the best thing I could have done for myself and 2, how to still connect with your craft (and deities) through those times anyway.
So for one, you're not broken or a failure, and your deities fuckin' love you.
Call me philosophical, but hear me out; I've always worked in cycles. Cycles of insane productivity, cycles of tiredness, cycles of hyperfixation on one thing, then another, then another. I'm just someone who works that way, and I've always viewed it as a problem to be fixed. I've always viewed MYSELF as a problem to be fixed, which really started with the school system but that's an unrelated rant. So, apologies for getting a bit intense especially since this may not apply to you personally, but just in case:
You're not a problem. You don't need to fix yourself. The world works in cycles. Seasons, reincarnation if you subscribe to that belief, the water cycle, and a billion other things I've forgotten- working with cycles is just a natural way of going about life that I think shouldn't be forgotten. I have intense periods of growth in my craft, and I have periods where I don't do much and instead play my favorite video game for eight hours straight- and that's okay! One of the best things I did for myself and my craft was give myself permission to do that. I, and you, are not failures as witches for "falling off" and our deities love us anyway. Not in spite of it, either, because of it. They know how to work with the cyclic nature of things; people are no different.
So honestly, there's a chance that none of this will make sense to you- but there's a chance that you, and maybe others seeing this post, might find that giving yourself permission to go through cycles might be the best thing you could do.
Okay, now that I've yelled about that, here's ways that I keep myself connected to my craft and my deities during my less witchy periods.
I give myself permission to use witchcraft for "dumb shit." I have at least one post on this, but witchcraft can BE childish, playful, "dumb-" it doesn't need to be serious all the time. So I'm learning to let go of what I think it should look like and recognize that sometimes the way to stay connected is to lay in bed and draw a sigil on my phone as a mini-spell to manifest a nice little treat or a thing I want in a video game.
This isn't deity work, but it had been huge for me: SIGILS. Sigils my beloved. I don't often have the time, energy, or supplies to do what most people think of when they talk about spells. So instead, if I'm feeling like I could do a spell for something but that's just too much, sigils can be done on my phone or computer while just chilling. Also, if you're like me and a writer, I just write spells too. Literally the same way I write statements for sigils, but a bunch of 'em.
Personally I just talk to my deities. I would like to do this more, actually. You don't need to have a big reason for calling them in, just ask them to sit with you and talk about your day or infodump about a special interest. They're not going to deem it unimportant; you're important to them.
Turn anything into a devotional activity if you want. Any self-care. Not just the typical stuff; I mean food, meds, literally any sort of "maintenance" to keep your body and mind running! If you can't do those, play music you associate with them, or watch a show/play a game and invite them to just sit with you. Whatever you're already doing, you can just ask them to do it with you. If that's literally just laying in bed doing nothing but feeling crappy, I can assure you I've asked them to sit with me during those days too and they've been more than happy.
Literally most of my offerings are just random food. As we speak, I have a little tiny thing with a few sips of soda because I give Loki some when I drink some. If you don't have the time or energy to put it on the altar, literally just drink it with the intention that you're drinking it "for" them. When I did a reading and Kali visited for it, she asked for a graham cracker of all things. It doesn't have to be associated with them. Virtual offerings too! If you can, I've seen people just scroll through pinterest/google images and pick images to offer to their deities.
This might not be something you struggle with, but this is definitely something I would need someone to tell me so: ASK. PLEASE. ASK FOR THINGS. They're not going to riot if you ask for things!! Let them help!! Ask for things, unapologetically if you can muster it!!! I am using excessive exclamation marks for a reason, I swear. My deities are in a constant state of telling me to just ask for things.
Be gentle with yourself. Genuinely, I think one of the best ways to honor your deities doesn't even require them to be there at all; just try not to hate on yourself for being the way you are, because they wouldn't want you to.
Overall, my only advice is just... throw away what you "should" be doing and find out what you LIKE doing. What works for you? It's a hard question to answer, but it gets a lot easier when you start looking away from what "should" work. Your deities are working with you, they wouldn't be working with you if they didn't accept every single part of you. That includes slug mode.
As always, my DM's and asks are open if you have any more questions/just want to connect because being a neurodivergent witch sometimes just feels isolating at times! If you actually read this whole post thank you, I hope some of it helped!!
#also I'm like 90% sure Hekate popped in while I was writing this#like idk there were vibes and I was like “????? Ma'am this is a wendy's”#/j I love her she can pop in anytime even though we don't work together she's great#if any of this post feels particularly targeted though I'm blaming her#pagan#pagan witch#witch community#deity work#paganism#witchblr#witchcraft#eclectic pagan#paganblr#witch blog#adhd witch#hekate deity#I definitely had an ask tag and I don't remember it#ask#Frog's walls of text#also forgive any typos I am currently in said slug mode myself#don't ask how the hecc I wrote this while in slug mode#idk
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look at the way i ride ~
#lyss.vent#been feeling very much on the edge lately#of what? i’m not really sure#a classic Meltdown ™ maybe#i have a therapist i talk to weekly now and that’s been a huge help fs#but it’s still like#my boat has a hole#too many to count actually#i’m constantly dumping out the water but it doesn’t matter yk?#i’m still sinking#there are so many things i should be thankful for#friends and family that care about me#i have hobbies that i enjoy#a good consistent job that pays well#i’m working 40 hrs a week and making enough to save monthly#this is what it means to be successful right ?#i should be happy…i have everything i need…#yet i feel rundown and empty#i’ve also realized that there are horrible ugly things that still live deep inside my bones#why do i blame myself for them when i was just there? when i was the victim?#i’m the only one who can save myself from it all so why can’t i?#what’s even worse is that i have to watch from the sidelines while life single-handedly fucks up my loved ones too#i’m so powerless in all aspects of my life#everything’s out of my control#and it hurts so much :(((#tbh old me would’ve given up by now but that dumb bitch isn’t in the driver’s seat anymore#she’s just along for the ride now but she won’t give me the aux#tho new me is stubborn and has something to prove so i’ll keep driving :3 vroom vroommm#i’ll play my own music soon#i love queue ☆〜(ゝ。∂)
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it mattered because when my brother asked me what if this is the happiest you'll ever be? the best you'll ever get? the thing i felt was fear, not peace. everybody thought you were so perfect for me. even i thought you were "helping me grow". i had to challenge every internal clock. make myself more thoughtful, more kind, more beautiful.
i told my therapist it was good because i like the changes i made and there's something so strong about saying i did that. the problem is that i can like the difference all i want, but i changed for you. something akin to getting your name tattooed, all my progress is stamped with fuck you.
it was the happiest i'd ever been and also the best i'd ever gotten. i would still get in the car and think what the fuck just happened.
#warm up#writeblr#i spent a lot of time picturing our future#how funny to think: in each version of our future#i was never myself#i was someone smarter kinder braver#better adept.#who could navigate the way you shouted and got angry at small things and never fucking believed the best of me#i would never be needy and you'd never get tired of me#people usually talk about how we picture people as being “fixable”. but i assumed i was the problem. my idyllic picture wasn't of you.#it was a version of me that wasn't ill. that needed no extra help. that could be your wife and happy#the fact i wasn't happy was because there is something so wrong inside me. it's always been that way. i convinced myself:#if i stay i can change. if i stay i can make it worth it. i can apologize and fix this. and make us both okay.#for the last year i've been thinking about how you blamed our whole breakup on me. how it was my fault for whatever thing.#and i agreed with you. because of course i did. you'd trained me to believe everything was my fault . that you wanted to love me and i made#it far too hard. that i was always finding ways to ''set you off'.#a few days ago while i was doing something else#i realized that while i was in crisis you told me to fuck off and find someone else to get help. and you never fucking apologized .#you said i made you do that because i wasn't being sensible. i had been crying too hard to speak clearly.#you said: you're doing this to manipulate me.#you forgave yourself for that. i had to forgive you without apology. you said you were right to react that way. and then you were SO#SO annoyed. any time i said: i feel like you aren't nice to me. it is hard to trust that you love me.#i don't think about you that much anymore. but these days when i do: all i can think is that im not sure u ever really understood kindness#you were the cruelest to the people closest to you. and most of the time. that meant it fell to me.
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So the hunger AU has been living low rent in the back of my head for months now but it also very heavy for me personally so I've been distantly and slowly learning more about it. Anyways, on the subject of watcher Grian coming to terms of what happened to player Grian, one of my favorite nerd songs really hits, especially the chorus. Overthrone by TheLongestSoloEver. It slaps and I have no idea if you take music suggestions but I wanted to share because I adore this au and honestly it's so perfect. Anywaykthanksbye
HEY CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE BRIDGE HERE ACTUALLY BC HOLY SHIT IM GOING BANANAS AT HOW ON THE NOSE THIS IS
OH MY GOOOOOODS THIS SONG RULES I LOVE SONGS WITH BEATS LIKE THIS IM RUNNING AROUND IN CIRCLES!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR SHARING!!!!!! :DDDDD
#shouting speaks#asks#hunger au#song recs#and thank you so much for the kind words!!!!#hunger au is DEFINITELY very heavy and sometimes even i have to take a pause from it to brace myself while writing#i love its honesty but sometimes. woof#so i absolutely do not blame you for taking it slow and keeping some buffer distance :]#glad ur taking care of urself neighbor!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️#this fucking RULES i cant stop listening to it#aud#txt
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will fully admit that I never finished SVSSS book 4 until an hour long layover.. I have to say with my full chest: LQG you gay-ace disaster
#svsss#LQG#I LOVE HIM!#he’s so……. him#He’s so much.#he really is a mood and a moment#who can blame him for falling into a sworn situationship with xianxia helen of troy#tbh as an ace myself his reaction to LQQs fortune is how I reacted when people strongly implied they had a crush on me#becoming stupid nervous blushing stammering etc etc. dread and desire equal#so while I do say HOMOSEXUAL I am also tenderly holding him to my bosom as my brother
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Order 69
I want a fic about the clone wars where everything is the same, except the Kaminoans had a small miscommunication and told Palpatine the Jedi kill order was Order 69 instead of Order 66. Instead of trying to kill their Jedi COs, the clone are now trying to seduce them and sleep with them.
Fun little musings for a few legions if you would like
212th
“The time has come Commander. Execute Order 69.”
“It will be done my lord.” Cody slips his helmet off. “Hey General.”
Obi-Wan looks around in confusion as Careless Whisper begins to play from an unknown source
The rest of the battalion watch as Cody quite literally sweeps their Jedi General off his feet and carry him back into the base
None of them have seen Kenobi that red in the face
“Do we need to... do anything? About the order I mean?” A shiny asks
“I think the Commander has it covered.” Boil responds
327th
“Execute order 69″
“Kriffing finally” Bly responds before shutting off his com
Palpatine stares at the dark com device for a few moments. That was unexpected
The Separatists are cleaned out in record time on Felucia, almost entirely by Commander Bly himself
Aayla didn’t think she had every seen her commander so driven by anything, it truly was impressive
No one sees Bly or their General for a long time when they finally get back to camp
104th
Plo Koon is not with the 104th when the order goes out
He is also in a star fighter and by the time he gets back to the ground the battalion he is with is panicking because Plo Koon isn’t their regular General and Wolffe would kill them
By the time Plo returns to his men the issue has been resolved
157th (Billaba’s Legion)
“Execute order 69″
Grey put away his com device before walking towards his general where she was currently talking to Caleb and Clone Force 99
“Well shall we let them do what they-oh!”
Grey wrapped an arm around Depa’s waist and dropped her into a dip before kissing her
Caleb and the whole of Clone Force 99 stared at the two making out infront of them with either horror or confusion
Echo clapped his hand over Caleb’s eyes
“I can still sense it”
“Sorry kid”
332nd
Ahsoka was very confused, one minute Rex was looking more panicked than she had ever seen him, now…
Now he had calmed down considerably and had begun... flirting with her?
She was very weirded out because it definitely sounded like flirting, why her brother was flirting with her was beyond her
Then Jesse, ever the womanizer, had strutted into the com bay and she had been truly disturbed
As soon as she could she escaped her weird brothers and went to look up the file Rex had said, one about Fives
She called both Rex and Jesse to her location and prompt whacked them both on the head before getting their chips out
Both were extremely horrified that they had tried to flirt with their sister and apologized a lot
Now that Ahsoka knew what was happening she found it really kriffing funny
They quickly spread the word about the chips to the rest of the GAR
501st
As soon as Anakin, freshly fallen to the dark side, marched into the hangar where his men were waiting he felt like something was different
He led his COs to the com table to go over their strategy to attack the temple and to cover all entrances
Appo siddled close, leaning forward to trap Vader against the com table with both his arms
Vader’s mind short circuited and lets just say that the march on the jedi temple did not happen
Morning After
Cody wakes up with Obi-Wan sleeping on his chest and his com blinking at him from the side of the cot
What the kriff did Rex mean by control chips?
#the clone wars#I think it is important for you to know that I was derangly cackling to myself as I wrote this while listening to Careless Whisper#The idea that there was an order on the chips to fuck the jedi#it gives me a few extra years of life#also Rexsoka shippers dni#they are siblings your honor#Anakin is a disaster and I stand by that#do you blame him#Jango Fett and every single on of his clones are smexy#Lets be honest#Depa and Grey are Caleb's parents#Fives his punching the air in the afterlife#I DIED FOR THIS?#Appo saved the entire temple#we thank you for your service sir#the jedi might have to rethink the whole attachment thing after this#many of their members did not put up a fight against their men#commander cody#Obi-Wan Kenobi#codywan#commander bly#aayla secura#plo koon#Commander Wolffe#depa billaba#captain grey#Ahsoka Tano#captain rex#ARC trooper Jesse#sag’s stuff
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Your influence in this world doesn't need to be all-encompassing and World Changing. It can be small ripples. It can be gentle and easily missed.
Let yourself do small things. So often, people have this idea that to do "good things," it must be a grand gesture that changes every little thing. Honestly, that can be so intimidating and scary. We weren't meant to carry the world by ourselves. We each contribute, often in small ways, often in ways that aren't seen by everybody. But the people you affect might just take that kindness you gave them and let it light them home. Let yourself be that in whatever way you want. You don't need to carry the world alone.
#positivity#encouragment#encouraging words#ngl i gave a customer a lot of food for free because i could tell they were down on their luck and they deserve to eat#and i hope i contributed to them realizing this world will cherish them and they aren't forgotten#because it's scary not knowing if you can eat or drink or if you will be safe enough to sleep and while i don't know their story...#...does it matter if i do? i will do whatever i can to make sure the people around me are well-fed and taken care of#i think small things like this are honestly what make this life worth living#i don't think i would want to be here if it were not for moments like these#it's never not worth it to do what you can/are comfortable doing#and i hope it can come back around to reward you tenfold <3#i used to labour under the idea that Changing the World is the only way you can 'be good'#and that made me scared to do small things like this. and i partially regret that. but i don't blame myself or anybody else who feel...#...the way i did. doing 'good things' can be scary and intimidating and it's okay to be uncertain or fearful. it's okay; i promise <3#i just wanted to remind somebody that you don't have to change the world in one fell swoop. it's okay to Just Be#i love you (platonically) if you have read this far. i hope you do something kind for yourself#you - too - deserve good things. you deserve kindness and satisfaction and wonder
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please say more about jilypad + diverging parenting styles... perhaps even a possible scenario >:) i imagine harry has very cunning tactics for using this to his advantage
helloooooo <3 thank u for this ask bc i love talking about these three and harry. i went looking thru the archives to find this post; my first foray into this side, and really, i’ve never looked back after that.
so i’ve talked ab this a bit before but i fully think that james was a very overprotective ‘mother hen’ type parent. i tend to read his behaviour in lily’s bday letter to sirius as being scared of his child on a broomstick and i fully, fully think he’ll never be able to let go of that as harry grows up. he’ll be anxious and suspicious and paranoid, and his first instant will always be to wrap harry up in cotton wool and hide him away. (i low-key connect this to his childhood as well; going from being spoiled and sheltered to dropped in the middle of a war, black & white thinking, living in extremes etc etc makes it v hard for him to be Normal about his child. as he shouldn’t be, really, but yeah) that’s why he thrives during the initial years; he never minds the hard parts of being a new parent, loves it in fact, and it makes it better that he can keep harry close to him at all times w/o coming off as a helicopter parent (not that the notion bothers him ofc).
it’s good, then, that he has two partners to even the scales, no? i think lily was the most…balanced out of the three. she had a relatively normal childhood, grew up in a working class family/neighbourhood and had to deal w adversity from a young age so she’s developed a nice, thick skin. she also has a sibling with whom she has a v rocky relationship so she knows that kids are, ykno, a bit unhinged. and a little bit of hardship is not a problem. i hc her as needing time to get used to parenthood, unlike james who stepped into it natural as breathing, or even sirius who loved harry on much on first sight that it made up for everything else. ofc lily loved her son, but it didn’t come w the same blinding intensity of her partners and made her feel really shitty in the beginning. but, i think she’d shine during his teen years actually, because she’s not overbearing or intense and becomes the quiet, calm strength that a hormonal, spotty teen boy would probably need.
and sirius <3 our poor baby falls in love with harry, perhaps even more quickly than james, with such startling speed that it shakes his entire foundation. he doesn’t regret it but he’s constantly discombobulated. i also imagine that…it takes him longer to settle into the role of parent, esp bc he’s not biologically one ykno? not like it matters to anyone, ofc, but it takes him a long time to truly accept his authority and place, to believe that he has just as much right as j&l to be there, to parent harry. this has the consequence of him always being more indulgent than the other two; after all, he considered himself a godfather before a parent and a lot of that thinking stayed. he lets harry get away with stuff the others might not (and the little mf figures this out later); some of it also comes from sirius seeing so much shit, and facing so much shit himself, that he rationalises a lot of stuff as ‘well, this isn’t the worst it can be, so what’s the harm’ (because his life has been such a roller coaster that he’s forgotten that not everyone’s like that, if that makes sense?)
its obviously not this clear cut but i imagine harry looks at it like this: if he needs unconditional love, he goes to james; rationality and logic, lily; acceptance and calm, sirius. when someone has to be beat up for hurting harry, james steps in. if he needs help burying a body, it’s sirius. dealing with some asshole boss/teacher/classmate’s mother who’s making harry’s life hell? lily. i can keep going but,,,u get the idea, right? this makes sense, i hope lol
i actually think harry’s first birthday is a great example. sirius pushes the boundaries by gifting lil harry a broom; james loses his mind running after him; lily places an industrial sticking charm on harry’s butt, leans back with a glass of wine, and enjoys the show. even as he grows up, lily and james act as the disciplinarian, and sirius is the emotional outlet. all of them fill in each other’s cracks so well, and it’s only when harry grows up that he realises how effortlessly they worked off each other to parent him.
also oh man o man. harry being cunning is,,,,,see, i’ve not considered it this far but it makes perfect sense. i think canon harry actually had so much manipulative energy and it’s often overlooked for his goofier traits but! this is the same dude who used his dead parents to trick slughorn into revealing sensitive info! imagine if that could be channelled into his jilypad interactions 😈
it’s like, it takes him a bit, because his three parents r so smooth, but once he realises that all of them have certain weak spots, he does NOT hesitate to exploit them. (it has the unintended consequence of truly strengthening the jilypad relationship into an unbreakable one bc one thing their kid taught them is to have ironclad communication going at all times so nothing they’ve said, or not said, is used against them). so like, he knows if he wants to sneak out to a party, it has to be sirius and in a specific way—‘i’ll be totally safe, papa, plus i really wanna see what it’s like and idk when it’ll get a chance to again’. if he widens his eyes to pitiful levels, pouts a little, and blinks faster than usual, then james is putty in his arms as long as he’s separated from the other two. divide and conquer becomes the main tool in harry’s arsenal, actually. lily’s the toughest nut to crack, purely bc she doesn’t run on emotions or irreverence, but harry soon learns that if he comes up with a solid, logical case that proves his argument has unbiased merit then he has a good chance of getting her to say yes. (this is good, bc u can arrange words in the correct order, but u can’t always control emotions)
so overall yeah, you’d think one kid + 3 parents would be an easy bet, but harry keeps them on their toes all the fkn time.
#sirius black#james potter#lily evans#jilypad#harry potter#i knew before i even started this that it would be ridiculously long lmao#i just cannot bring myself to shut up#wrt lily and harry’s baby years#i feel v v strongly ab motherhood not coming naturally to her#and becoming a very sore point for her. bc she sees james and sirius and she keeps blaming herself for being an unfeeling robot#when she’s not. she just thinks more logically than them and doesn’t feel as strongly. that doesn’t make her a bad mother#and no matter what j & s say a small part of always thinks like that. until the teen years. and suddenly the dynamics r reversed#bruh i think i need help it’s not even funny how not hinged i am for this trio lmao#there also! padfoot!#a while ago i wrote a lil thing. but i fully believe that whenever harry was emotionally distraught he’d actually go to padfoot#bc he needed someone to just. sit. and be there. while he’s processed emotions#and lily would be too ruthlessly logical and james would be fretting and trying to fix it and sirius would panic. just a little.#but padfoot is a warm comforting weight agains this side and he just lets him be. it’s grounding.#so harry always. without fail. does that#it’s actually 3.5 parents lmao#i do wonder what their parenting fights would about if any. hmmmm. my glasses are too rose tinted for me to consider it#a thought for another day#anyway. hope this endless rambling made sense! and that u liked it!#would love to hear ur thoughts too <3#pen’s notes#pen’s asks
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