#and it doesnt even work contextually here

[keepingupwiththeboltons]

If the ruler should be determined by who "doesnt want it", then clearly aegon is the right pick?

[moonshynecybin]

what would you consider essential marc and rosquez watching? i don’t mean races but the stuff happening around it, there seems to be so much and idk where to start 😭

BIG ass question. i think it depends what you want outta this and how you best interact with content slash consume information. for me (not to brag but. winner of multiple historical essay writing competitions in high school. for context on the kind of freak i am bringing to the table here.) the research is kind of the fun part ! like i just started googling shit! i would go to inactive blogs and just search 'marquez' on them to see what would happen ! a lot of the times that works ! but it also takes a lotttt of time lol so i'll chuck some good resources your way, why not...

okay im not sure how basic we're talkin here but um. background. so the documentaries are, i think. the best place to start. theyre entertaining and offer a good amalgamation of clips to provide context for the actual racing. and like i know you de-emphasized racing (which is fine lol who cares) but it really is like the most important thing in the world to these fools and its a pretty visual sport so i think its at least helpful. like yes sepang IS about the press conference, but its also about the conversation they have ON the race track using their motorcycles. which is also somewhat a conversation that they HAVE been having all year long...

i'd start with hitting the apex (2013), its a GREAT introduction to the "characters" that does a lot of legwork to contextualize everything. lays the scene for where vale is at coming into his relationship with marc (both personally, wrt to marco simoncelli, and career-wise concerning his flop at ducati), and also how insane marc's whole deal is in general. the second half is. materially a study on what him entering the premiere class did to the sport as a whole. the introductory chapter in many respects

marc marquez: all in. MY introduction and blissfully free online. marc comma in his own words, with all the implications of that. a self-produced documentary where he is giving feedback about the edit of said documentary straight to camera and no less vulnerable because of it which is very marc imo. revealing both intentionally AND unintentionally about his whole deal with injury, vale, and his image.

motogp unlimited. im gonna be real kind of boring. like i would still watch it ! but do it kind of later, once you know the major players so youre automatically more invested. it doesnt really give you more than marc says himself in all in tbh, and i get the sense him and vale were NAWWWT interested in doing more than the bare minimum for it.

marc's rookie doc. free and subtitled on the youtubes. the first half of this is deadass just him wanting to fuck vale so bad while every comment from vale has me saying GIRL. out loud because the foreshadowing would be genuinely shocking if this was fiction. anyways the laguna seca of it all....

next i would hit up PODCASTS ! i think it makes sense after the documentaries, because these are all podcasts that arent strictly about rosquez (even if they are in many ways the main characters lmao) and personally it helps to put faces to lesser known names that might pop up before i listen to a purely audio product and get lost in the soup of sounds. the paddock pass podcast has two retrospective episodes about the 2015 season that are really good at context, oxley bom pod has a fun recent episode on valentino that i love, again just poke around a lil

videos. these guys have never filmed a lot of content together tragically. what i wouldnt give for someone to make them do an escape room. anyways ranch visit HERE (post explaining the ranch visit here). sepang presscon (sowwy) here. vale unhinged podcast interview the month after marc's documentary came out here. vale retirement interview where he gets asked about marc here. vale talking about asking marc to the ranch here. vale postrace at argentina 2018 here. UCCIO postrace at argentina 2018 here. theres a lot moreeeee just go on my blog archive and filter for rosquez and vids its easier lol

journalism. hello. okay so you should genuinely spend some time reading through mat oxley's stuff he can write (theres a paywall but you can run that shit through wayback machine). he also loves an insane comparison which i do enjoy.... again this is one that can be solved by googling his name and tacking on 'marquez' or 'rossi' or a specific time period or race it will probably reap some dividends. in terms of specific ass articles this one is kind of load bearing in terms of sepang and some of the interpersonal competitive tensions at play. that being said there are manyyyyyy crazy interviews and snippents of articles from other journos floating around motogp tumblr (like literally too many to link) adn its fun to dig around to find them, but mat oxley gets a shoutout because i was reading this article TODAY !

other content. honestly one of the best resources I'VE found for plotting out the arc of their relationship is @kingofthering's everyrosquezpodium series. you can REALLY see it play out lol. also her tagging system rules she very neatly lays out years and races... so if something jumps out at you, CLICK ITTTT ! also all of @ricciardoes fave presscon moments series. insane.

all this to say a small little rpf fandom like this rewards some digging! i would just recommend following narrative threads that interest you ! its also a small fanbase that is pretty research oriented, so if youre ever confused about somethin, just shoot an ask or run a search on someone's blog (@kwisatzworld has endless vale resources and @batsplat is one of the most thorough researchers ive ever seen, for example) like for real theres so much... i also have a primer that i made forever ago that has some links on it so you can peruse that if you so wish. but frankly a lot of it is just using those research muscles and being sufficiently deranged enough to be screenshotting reddit threads at one am so you can post them to tumblr because they mentioned marc and vale in the same sentence and that lit up some of the neurons in your brain

(and i know you said outside of races but i think theyre good benchmarks as turning points soooo you should do some diggin on laguna seca 2013, jerez 2015, argentina 2015, ASSEN 2015, sepang 2015 obvi, argentina 2018, and misano 2019. those are the big tentpoles of insane rosquez relationship drama imo. i mean theres many more but. im limiting myself.)

[zeravmeta]

you know for the longest time I've been of the opinion that the rhine labs trio dynamic is a parallel to the dynamic that doctor-kaltsit-amiya have and honestly this event is giving me more to play with

because like. saria is The Boss. like she is very much The Guy that everyone in rhine labs looked up to (and even still look up to) that could handle basically anything. rhine labs was the dream that kristen and saria made together, where even as further and further conspiracy and questionable experimentation took it over, people still trusted her. and thats so reminiscent of babel, the dream that theresa and doctor shared and the eventual fate of that, with one (saria and doctor) so clearly just supporting the other (kristen and theresa) because they cared about them. Saria always had a strong moral center, but years of having to slowly look the other way and cover up more and more made her numb to that sort of thing, up until the breaking point with ifrit, which has left her with so much guilt she literally Cant do anything except atone. Much in the same way, doctor was once just a medical practitioner who had to step up and fill in the diminishing ranks up until they turned out to be very good at war, from which they sacrificed more and more of their humanity until they were a cold machine of war, with post amnesia doc living with that sword of damocles always hanging over them that they'll eventually have to answer for their past selves' sins. it's this particular wrinkle that contextualizes sarias own relationship with doctor, because she can so clearly see herself in them and yet, much in the same way she has to stop kristen, she Would step to stop doctor if they ever became the same way again.

silence and kaltsit also have an interesting parallel in this aspect, as both have a very specific strained relationship with saria/doctor due to what they caused. notably, both of them looked up to saria/doctor, but were left feeling betrayed after seeing just how much they were willing to justify for their goals. the key difference with them here is that kaltsit being an immortal left her taking action and planning for literal centuries on how to fix all these problems, whereas silence is basically on day 1 working to dismantle and reform rhine labs. they also fundamentally share the same types of feelings to saria/doctor, where that, while there isnt only loathing and resentment, a whole bunch of their interactions are indeed colored by that feeling, and that even if the other truly is working to right their wrongs, that doesnt mean that those feelings of bitterness just dissappear, and justifiably so.

ifrit and amiya may not seem like complementary characters at first but in fact I would argue that due to sharing Hypergryphs Favorite Character Archetype (the girl who will end it all) they actually overlap significantly, but they just have one key difference: ifrit didn't have to grow up quickly the same way amiya did. the point of silence and sarias intervention is that ifrit was not forced to take up the mantle the same way amiya did, and a lot of their respective dynamics hinges on how they treat ifrit/amiya: ifrit is very specifically protected by saria and silence, both of them willing to completely drop their history for her sake, while doctor and kaltsit, while protective, are also subservient to amiya. the two might be the adults in the room, but its amiyas goals that they are supporting and amiyas dream that they are fighting for. they even both have the same type of relationships with their caretakers: even though saria/doctor did wrong them, they still heavily admire and look up to them, with silence/kaltsit being someone they also deeply cherish but are more willing to push back against.

you can even extend these parallels to the idealism that both trios drew from their true leaders: kristen and theresa. in a weird way, these two characters share the trait of genuinely and unconditionally loving their "other half" (saria and doctor) but are so committed to their dreams that it inadvertently destroyed their other half. Kristen was perfectly fine committing atrocities for her dream, even if she was willing to take every detour if it meant that saria would stand alongside her again and support her, while theresa, even though she hated war, was perfectly willing to let doctor become a war machine to win more and more of their harsh battles (a trait thats also passed along to amiya).

the real difference is that kristen's dream was always for herself, while theresa's dream was for everyone else, and the fallout of that is drastically different: kristen burned her bridges for her dream, while theresa's death completely shattered hers. saria, silence, everyone in rhine was betrayed by kristen, whereas thereas death splintered the organization and left so many mourning.

they're all a sort of twist on each other in that way. saria is a doctor who never spiralled into the war machine that pre amnesia doctor was, silence is a kaltsit without the agency or control that she has, and ifrit is an amiya who never had to grow up as quickly.

what makes it so good to me too is that the rhine trio isnt a dark reflection of the rhodes trio, it's the opposite.

true reconciliation between saria and silence *is* possible, and very well the path that they're headed in. for everything that happened, they are working together and slowly rebuilding that trust because they've already had their reckoning. with doctor and kaltsit, there's simply too much history and (justified) loathing on kaltsits part for their past relationship to ever be truly salvaged, even moreso because both of them are willing to follow amiya to the depths of hell for her dream, while saria and silence would die if it meant that ifrit would never have to pick up a weapon again.

maybe one day, if doctor does get their memories back, and true closure can be achieved in that shared history, they might be able to salvage their relationship, but as it stands theres still too much to answer for.

[ceasarslegion]

Pls tell me more about ur news experience while protesting the Ford gov and their shitty choices?

I was going to UofT at the time when the ford government gutted OSAP, the ontario student aid program for those out of the know. They converted all grants into loans and no longer gave money to cover living expenses, and they struck down the 6 month grace period ontario students had after graduation to find well-paying jobs before their repayment started.

For the americans here, i should contextualize that student loans in canada do not at all work like they do in the US. We take out loans from a combination of the federal government (known as NSLSC loans) and our provinces of residence specifically. When we apply, we fill out our financial info including our income and if we are considered an "independent" student or not, the legal definition of which differs depending on your province of residence. The main difference being that independent students dont include their parents' incomes when they first apply, theyre considered their sole and only breadwinner. Depending on that income and a few other personal points, you get a combination of loans and grants that cover both tuition and partial living expenses, and when you graduate, the federal government takes all your loan and income info and doles you out a personalized regular payment plan so you have it completely paid off after 10 years if you follow it. And you have 6 months after you graduate uni to find a job and get settled where you don't pay anything. Theres also other options if you still cant pay like the repayment assistance program that freezes your payments entirely if you prove youre below a certain wealth bracket, but thats the gist of it.

Now that everyone knows the context i can tell the story. The ford government of ontario circa 2019 decided that ontario university students dont need living expense coverage, that it would universally be loans regardless of any low income status, and that the post-grad grace period wasnt necessary. And being in one of the most expensive cities in the country, that was not going to fly with my peers.

I personally took out my provincial loans from alberta student aid that has all those benefits, so the OSAP gut didnt actually affect me at all, but injustice is still injustice even if it doesnt affect me, so i joined the student protests against the ford government that people were bussing in from the other side of the province to attend. At some point along the line, other folks noticed that i was comfortable around the news cameras and my main strengths were in public speaking, so when cameras were around asking for interviews i was pushed in front of them a lot to be trusted to explain our grievances and goals without getting noticeably hotheaded, so i did a lot of live interviews for CTV and citynews toronto during those few months.

And they were kinda right to do that. Im really good at interviews and public speaking and arguing points in general, and not the best at more hands-on things when it comes to activism. And like, you do need PR people to get support for a cause, contrary to what a lot of tumblr users seem to think. Like you need people whose jobs are to present your grievances and reasons for marching in a way that presents you as respectful and worth listening to and considering the points of. So that was mainly my role in those protests. I dont know if you can still easily find those interviews buried in their broadcast archives but if you want to look for me be my guest

[majorasnightmare]

saw another dem/lib post that irritated me but most importantly made something click

i think for a lot of these people, the idea of voting is so intrinsically tied to the concept of preserving human rights that they miss the forest for the trees. like. in a democracy, it isnt supposed to be this overwhelmingly dire all the time. i think the idea of voting being a pleasant process that inspires no guilt regardless of what votes are cast or how or when is a concept utterly foreign to these people

so it bears repeating: democracy is not supposed to be like this. this is not democracy. you are supposed to directly, directly, contribute to policy making by virtue of your vote and not work through several appointed representatives whos opinions may differ wildly from yours and who can choose to straight up ignore you in favor of what benefits them. you voting for a tax increase on imported bread, for example, should meaningfully impact whether or not that tax increases and by what degree in a democracy

voting is not part of your birth control routine nor should it be

birth control is a resource you have an unalienable right to access and voting should not determine if you get to have it

voting determines the degree of tax money the state takes from the sale of birth control, if any, or if it even costs anything in the first place, as voted on by the needs of the community

a better future is so impossible to imagine that handling voting as the contextual tool it is feels like a personal attack on human rights to these people because thats how they conceptualize it. voting is not pleasant. voting is always stressful, and critical, and the idea of a vote not being meaningfully effective towards reaching an intended end goal feels anthithetical because voting feels like the only thing preventing human rights abuses

i promise you that isnt the case. voting will not save us because voting did not get us into this situation. the problem is deeper, the root cannot be cut at the ballot box, and you need to be able to conceptualize a better world where this cycle doesnt keep repeating, and then make it real on as small a scale as you can

this isnt a psyop or ahistorical. this is the reality of america being an oligarchal republic that calls itself a representational democracy that operates as a fascist state to the vast majority of the populace. fascism is not incoming, it is here, we cannot vote our way out of it, because voting is not a tool designed to stop fascism. you cannot unscrew the lid off your ps4 with a hammer.

voting in america determines how much weight a representative gives a particular topic or policy to determine if enacting those policies will meaningfully contribute to either their quality of life or their ability to stay in power, and voting is directly offset by lobbying who possess a stronger influence by virtue of manipulating capital. voting determines power at a local level, where its most powerful, but grows increasingly weaker the higher the scale and the more representatives between you and your intended official. thats why the electoral college handed trump the presidency in 2016 despite hilary clinton having the largest popular vote lead to date.

please stop blaming third party voters, non voters, people critical of the american government+biden+democrats+liberals on the internet, russian psyops+chinese psyops, etc for the fact that the american representative system of presidential election is functioning exactly as intended, and start dedicating that time and energy towards helping houseless people in your community find shelter from the heat and donating to aid palestinian aid freedom and resistance. change starts at home and home can be a single person. we can make a better world

[indirectcomedian]

hey its crow from ao3 I wanted to ask if you'd watched the most recent MoTM Christmas episode? (there is a gluttony cameo)

i also want to ask your thoughts on greed and other rosemary shards we haven't seen in your fics because I'm curious

may these questions find you doing well!

hi crow!!!!! i am very happy to answer your questions :) im gonna try my best to break up my word vomit here

- i have seen the christmas cameo!!! gluttony stealing the stupid christmas sweater off some poor guy she took the soul of is fucking hilarious

thoughts on the shards i havent written about!

-greed

i will admit that i am not as familiar with the story of greed shard as i am the others, purely because a lot of the content is behind rise paywall (ik the whole anthology is like $12 but i hate spending money on shit bc im in college and broke). i think her decision to be more of a manager and tactician rather than “in the fray” is interesting, and i wonder if it is because she saw the downfall of the pervious shards and thought better than being all buddy buddy with others (though obviously out of kayfabe this is bc of her injury). i will say tho her relationships with paradise lost (how she acts with them) are a lot closer than the word “general” or “tactician” implies, so it could just be that she perceives herself as more emotionally distanced than she actually is. i think its in rosemarys nature to get a little freaky with all her alliances, must be a demon thing.

-wrath

i simply love her. her feud with cherry bomb has to be one of my favorite wrestling storylines of all time! i think its really clever how they still kept the story going even when cherry was injured and unable to participate in actually wrestling, something that professional wrestling companies today struggle with. of course love her absolute ferality and how she will throw down with no regard to her wellbeing is so entertaining to watch. in writing her i want to explore more of the “symbiotic” side of her sharing the body of courtney rush and what exactly working together with a demon soul shard looks like. in the little period of time that it was just courtney rush in impact she says that the demon is like a protector to her and she misses her and i think that is so oddly sweet. also imagine the interpersonal conflicts you could have with someone you share a body with.

-lust/decay avatar

same with greed, im sure i havent seen EVERYTHING there is to see with this era of rosemary, simply because i wasnt into wrestling at the time and i cant find everything through backtracking online. i feel like she is the most cartoonishly “villainous” of all of the shards, as one would have to be to be in a storyline with the hardys, i guess. love the sexuality played for evil and how she managed to escape the manic pixie dream girl allegations by being actually insane. she kind of bridges the gap between wrath shard and envy shard by being feral also a planner and tactician. she may have the most tics and odd behaviors of the shards (particularly with hearing voices, in an early out out of character interview she said that lust is “schizophrenic”) and i think that would make her very challenging but very interesting to write.

-pride

i would say the most human appearing of the shards? shes interesting because she does participate in human stuff like occasional drinking for fun and teamwork, but also is the very opposite of a yesman in every friendship dynamic she has (taking on the full burden of curbing the enthusiasm of both taya and jessicka). not to say she doesnt have fun! lots of demony things are played for laughs instead of horror with pride. she is a bit more willing than envy to accept help in manners regarding the undead realm (though shes definitely not thrilled with taya helping her in the undead realm). i actually contextualize pride a lot as rosemary trying to avoid another situation like envys.

thank you for the ask!!! i love talking about rosemary in all eras :)

[solardick]

Здравствуйте versus привет.

Hello versus hi.

Formal versus informal.

Subject’s birth point on “classical/modern” Waite’s version of the high priestess versus my own variant. The bearer of language and structure.

“Formal” english is a meek point. It barely exists anymore. The more formal an english speaker is the queerer they sound.

May I? Versus. Can I? Proves the degeneration of language. Which isn’t a far off shoot considering the vast amount of imaginative corrections needed to be made between spelling and pronunciation, it comes built it. And predisposes the mass to live an untrue nature. If i worded all that the way i intented. A Bow’s bow. Cant tell the difference between what word means what the contextual fails to the bias.

Yeah. It must be Santa clause. Definitely.

Truth is here. One may easily change the devil card for satan. Uh, i mean santa.

Clause

The russian’s dont technically have a Santa. Its soemthing else. Which serves as a near point.

Its makes the man’s job alot easier considering he doesnt have to fly over and deliver presents to the largest country in the world.

But on track. The high priestess of waites variety, makes a luke warm connection to the biblical holy church of king David or who ever. Part of the old testement. Ehich is primarily the school of gard knocks. Without saying the BJ on the pillars are suppose to represent boaz and joaz or whatever. Like anyone cares. But, those familiar witb the tarot cards would agree. That thise pillars stand for the magician and the chariot. Too bad though that BJ stands for something completely different on the perverted side of society. No one is going to make a connection to the church based on a BJ.

Its the tora or rota. Or whatever BS. The circle of “life” go around and come around the BJ. Getting sick of it yet. Well too bad.

Curiosity abound. What is the difference between C, see and sea? How to spell the letter C? Speaking of meekness. I beleive this is here.

Wholy mother of mary. Damned girl. Dont stop now.

But, oh well, my ass is going to keep me up all night again. I don’t want to be alive anymore. Right in the “erogenous” zone. Never goes away. Always gassy. Always sensitive. Always swollen.i dotn think im going to work again inwamt a fucken ciggarette. Diet doens tfuxken matter. Just life fucken with me since my first memeory.nothing to learn except being raped by existance. Doems tmatter if im an asshole or a savoir. Its always the same. Welcome to life man. Here a staircase. Push. Been that way ever since. For experience. Im hoing start smoking again pop a couple pills maybe ill sleep. And no one to talk to excspt degenerates criminals, foreigners that dont speak english and fags. The only thing i did different today was buy a couple snokes off some fucken cocksucker asshole that talks crap all the time. Like most of them. Probaly drugging me again as usual. Been beeing drugged since forever. Its apart of their warcraft. Been super nice to me today too. Even offered coffee. But fuck you. Last time its fucked me up. Side wffect aof the pills the guesswork doctors gave me. Are. No operating machinery and Psychosis.

Suicide is the only sin god doesnt forgive. No fuck cause you fucken dead. Wait another half hour see if the pills work and if not. Save the rest for when i get wasted and hang myself. Being muscle relaxants or some shit. The fuck if i know. Back to

Tv.

Pills worked. Mostly. Just felt warm. And now my vission is a little blurry. Doubled the dose he gave me. So 20ml is just a little too little. Last time i took a dose he gave me. It didnt do anything. I dont want ot go to work anymore. I want ot go bsck to being wnemployed and and suicidal. Less stress that way.

Oh well guess ill never know what it feels like not being abused.

Oh gid sent me a rabbit. Still dont knwo what thise mean. A croh flew past earlier.

Want people to quit smoking? How about you make them illegal and stop fucken manufacturing thr fucken things. Maybe we do need a fucken dictatorship. Anout the jobs the jobs. Fuck the job hiw many fucken immagrant do y’all invite over here and they go straight to welfare. Fuck your bs.

I fucken hate this continent. I can eat an wntire large bag of doritos and have no symtoms. Had chicken and homey yestweday. No symptoms. Had so again the next day. Was up all night. . If its at the end of the GI track. Then it can take up to 36 hours to reach that point. But apparently it can take on 15 mins to 4 hours. At leat i grt my proteins worth with a litter of yogurt everyday.

So i checked my hororscope for my birthday next year. Spyche return. And eros. Pluto sqaure pluto. Neptune sayrts in aries. Mean. Wonder if its a comming out celebration. Oh, there goes a croh. Ita ganna be a shitty day

Anyway. Excuse the insanity and despair. So for the rabbit portent. Or omen. It’s attached to lost and found. Easter bunny. This coupled to the crohs. Lost ans found something negative. But also dor the positive. For the rabbit. Seems to be. A neutral character. But, this is going off a single happening. And will need to be looked into to see if it’s a constant. Like that of the croh.

…uh. He told me his name was BJ.

I cant do it man. I cant look at an image of a woman with nig bold letters saying B J and keep a straight face.

Though inget it. It was definatally a magician chariot converstion. Empowering and all. Can’t say that it didn’t wake me a bit. Even though ive heard it all before. My own priestess. Has innocense written all over her. With a power of a logos looking over her. The magician to the empress or the emperor. As number 4. Nature and rule. Its akin to my gamma card being connected to the star. But i dont like callingnit the star. Its misleading. As there is no wish. Its retirbution. Because the falling star as it is sometimes depicted as. Is a moment to wish. A moment in the future to come. But asnit plays out. It is that moment of the future being breed from temperance. The eight pointed star is the connecting clue to the justice card. And is the calm and quiet of the night from upheaval and unease. It being a woman. Suits it perfectly.

As temperanve is a balancing of Accounts of something that shouldnt be. Waite’s version shits all over these connections. Replaces the eight pointed star connection to strength instead. Mother nature wrestling a lion roar to caressing it. Not my experience.

… ghost busters: frozen empire?

Is this to say that the summer is going to be mild and cool. As aquaman: the lost kingdom, was to the unnaturally warm winter? So, jo “intense heat this summer? The preview looked like some horrible acting. But ant-man. Isnt a greta actor anyway. Funny but. Not very good. I dont know if i should order books. I never read them. They just sit there. But i like having a library. University edition of english grammar. And the evolution of the russian language. Which is pricy. But, tarot books are inadequate and unreliable.

And what happened to my symptoms? Severe again last night. Popped a couple pills fell asleep. Instead of binging anime. Woke up the next morning and all but gone except for the very mild by comparison. Didn’t do anything different even ate a large bag of Doritos. The Polypropylene and thermoplastic resins are delicious.

Whichc must be why when people have a hard time saying something, or looking for the roght word. Most people will comenin a correct them or say “ja, i get ehat you mean.” But, i havent even pooped yet.

Erin on attack on titan finally found the ocean. The ocean and the perils within and withon. Not so different from the perils on the night. Which works as a star card. And the letter V the russian war machine placed upon their naval fleets.

Wow, women are particularly pretty today. Told you V stands for vagina.

What? They’re objects. Blame the english language.

But its monday now. Pains back. And why move away. Looks like the condition is permanent. And if i do. Ill just be forced out of where ever i land ahyway. Its a life theme. Been that way since my first memory. Seems to dissapear mostly on saterdays. I get born, tied to a higjlt toxic relationship to some plutonic fucken cocksycker that treats me like shit. Enjoying the feeling of superiority over me. Litterally. And i get tossed around from place to place for ither peoples convinience. 39 years and counting nothings changed and it has nothing to do with me. . The entire fucken plabet may burn. And i font give a fuck.

[1tsjusty0u]

zelda ask game!! 🐦👑😔

!!!!!

🐦 - Any Opinions or Headcanon(s) about a certain Zelda Race?: OUGH ok so. i had a ramble for disconnected races, and im going to keep that in my notes for now. however for a specific race. hahahahehahaha for a Specific race. im going to talk about the zonai. i also have hcs for them however those hcs completely disregard who and what they are in totk it might as well be a different race entirely. so anyways; i think they suck 🎉🎉. sorry zonai lovers. mostly in execution honestly, if there was a separate game that had no lore ties to other games or wasnt a direct sequel to one the zonai Could Work. theres still some problems (raurus imperialism but thats mostly a character thing, the secret stones couldve been handled. A Lot Better, they could have actual motives), but it could work. like how the minish cap handles the minish. however in the context of specifically botw they contradict Everything, as well as just make for bad plot elements in totk. theres the obvious stuff, like the hamfisted zonai ruins being in placed in odd locations, the zonai replacing the ancient sheikah as a whole and it going completely unmentioned, building the Majority of ruins including gorondia for some reason??, plus more things i cant think of off the top of my head. but to add something new ish to the conversation is how it goes against botw. like . before totk the terminology for the people who made those animal ruins all throughout faron and the ones who made the thyphlo ruins and the thundra plateau were considered to be the zonai, a barbaric tribe who may or may not have descendants from lurilen. like we had the barbarian set, we knew where all the ruins were (including doorframes. thats not a joke), we knew their crest and we had creating a champion info that contextualized some of it back then but now doesnt align with what totk did if that makes sense. theres still some similarities (dragon motifs, powerful magic users), but theyre clearly not the same race (gestures to the architecture and just they way theyre spoken about before and after totk). they try to handwave it by saying those ruins were either a monument to king rauru (thyphlo ruins), or in game the animalistic ruins try and cover zonai ruins for some reason, hiding it. even then the trailer ruins were different and fitted more closely to the style of the animalistic lomei labyrinth ruins. and on one hand this kind of feels like mad man ramblings because. we Didnt get that. all the thoughts made about the zonai pre totk could theoretically fit (worshipping a water dragon, the pillars being used for magic), especially with how vague the totk zonai Are. plus who cares it didnt happen. plusplus its probably just because i Expected something and didnt get it. it just feels like the set-up of the zonai was either a prank or Was thought about until being scrapped. and its like. i dont want to more or less justify theory videos here? if they made a game without the zonai At All that was a sequel to botw that would be alright! some of the conclusions made In those theories kind of suck! you wouldnt have to call them the zonai or even have them Be There. but take creating a champion and the trailer for an instance- when you Specifically give us information only to go back on it like it wasnt there . Why. you can even see the divide in what we thought the zonai were from ocs like in the prince ganondorf au i believe or just. searching up zonai oc before:2023. like keep in mind when i say “the barbarians/zonai” im Specifically referring to pre totk zonai and its so hard to clarify that. i dont know i could probably come up with more substantial arguments here its just. brain ramble. on the bright side it creates a neat time gap and a point in History. i dont like totk as a whole for multiple reasons but it sure did that. should probably just call them the faron tribe. also sorry i didnt talk about any actual problems but you get the gist.

👑 - Favorite version of Zelda?: HM!!! on one hand you. should not be asking me this i have chronic starting but not finishing games for zelda. from what little i know . actually hang on i think ive been spelling sheikah wrong. or sheik. or both shit. Ok Anyways n NO I HAVENT ALRIGHT!!!!! ok but firstly the kakariko sheik gif is so funny out of context

cringefail gamer moment 10/10. though. i dont know if they exactly count as a zelda in this sense? given the differing pronouns + people tend to separate sheik and zelda. which makes sense because nintendo does this too. so uhm. honorary mention? otherwise i like alttp zelda both for her casual design but also just because you can talk to her. she has one piece of dialogue (except for telekinesis tiles) and she doesnt do anything, but for halfish? of the game you can Go Up to her. and Talk to her. im so used to cutscene zeldas or just. no zeldas. i also like tetra though i do wish we got to see her more. or i may need to replay it as my memorys probably spotty. design wise i also like casual sksw zelda. the belt and the.. ccoat? and the fabrics and the ribbons in her hair. its great. also i like botw zeldas subtle crown, her braid being similar to a crown braid though not exactly. i also like young oot zeldas design specifically the headpiece. tis neat. anyways ! either oot or alttp.

😔 - Least Favorite Zelda character? something something they hate me and are going to beat me with rocks. thats a bit how i feel right now. alright so. once again i am zeldas georg adn should not have been counted. that being said i dont! have many! well. alright so im sorry for the slander but. so far what ive played of tp (ive gotten to the very start of wolf link) im not too much of a fan of ilia so far. rival love interest or just love interest whos done kind of poorly to me. she might get better as a character but for now. meh. then theres the alttp npcs in kakariko who send a guard towards me. on one hand yes i am wanted from. the story that is fair. however Cmon.. i dont even talk to them they just spot me and run into their houses as the guards come to kill me. i guess its because the other kakariko residents are chill with link that it bothers me slightly but it does make sense. however free my man he did nothing wrong!!!!!

[the-ghost-rat]

I love how your opnions abt the show match mine so much cause ive been feeling the excat same way abt clankie, ppl describe them as a “fast slow burn” but they just arent. They just go from sometimes talking to frankie sundally being head over heels for cleo then back to barley talking w some the slightest bits of being romantic(by that i mean one shot of them sitting at a table) i truly dont blame ppl for wanting cleuce back cause these two had so much chemistry toghter so many ups and downs that clankie just doesnt have, ive been feeling the same way abt g3 habby too-it feels like we went from heath having a big crush on abbey to sundally them datin, it legit does feel(like you said) that their just catering to g1 fans, same w draclawd which is ironic cause i legit felt nothing when i saw heath ask abbey or clawd ask draculaura for prom despite loving them alot in g1-they just lack the fun dynamiacs the two couples had, draclawd being a himbo x bimbo Romeo/Juliet couple while habby having a jessica & roger rabbit dynamic, all they do now is just blush & hold hands thats rlly it - also honestly seeing frankie try to figure out this new feeling would be a really interesting concept, it would get me more on board w the ship-it could be a nice way to help kids who r still questioning its not something i see any show do they useally have the character already know their queer

(Yeah the club feels like a lowky retcon, its mentioned one time then completely vanishes never mentioned again-the way its introduced is so awkard too they just have drac tell us what it is then cut to ghoulia sitting in one if the chairs-it would feel much more natrual if again like you said it was used to further devlop clankie & to help frankie figure out their feelings, trying to live up to her exes is a rlly fun concept too n could work just as well)

Right, its why i say g1 was better at contextualizing the newer characters like why wasnt catrine at monster high? Oh yeah cus she lived in scaris before! Boom there done , now why did teez never show up before? Hell if i know 🤷🏽‍♂️ but his here now , also im the excat same way-i see ppl bash g1 for having random episodes that dont connect n are just random when it never set up to be a serialized show-its an episodic one, its like complaining shows like courage dont have one overarching story, g3 however DOES set up to be a serialized show, to have one overarching story yet it never allows conflicts to proced beyond one episode , like antoer user said it wants to be the next amphibia or owl house but its far too simplistic to make those show’s sort of story work-i strongly agree they should have just made it a simplistic episodic show w silly monster teen shenanigan like g1-its where monster high works best, the more serialized overarching story sort of format works much better for ever after high

Oh PLEASE do a post for the lore & mythology if ur up for it cus i have so MUCH to say about it n would love to see ur take on it, i honestly hate the whole were-ruler concept due to it being based on a popular misinformation that wolves have an alpha(im autistic & have a special interest in wolves so thats why it bugs me alot) it doesnt even make sense for most of the wereanimals-why would the werecats care about whos the alpha?? Their house cats they dont have a hierarchy and like you said it has nothing to do w the school, it feels like its just half assed into the show so they can have a big conflict, i honestly in general just cant stand the wereanimals-thats the ONLY monster we ever get in terms of new characters n all of them just act like wolves or even cats(clawd jumping onto the wall when scared), the human vs monster conflict is also done so horribly-the monsters r still framed as being a minority like in g1 okay yet the show constantly depicts the monsters as practicing how to kill humans, lagoona stating she has killed multiple sailors in her life & when clawdeens dad comes everyone in the school tries to eat him, the show litrealy justifies humans discriminating againest monsters yet we r supposed to see them as the marginalized ones? Even tho their the ones attacking humans unprovoked? Its giving me disneys zombies energy , also as someone who is a witch-i rlly cant stand drac or the depiction of witchcraft lol they made it a human practice yet dont AT ALL bother takinh inspiration from actual witchcraft, its all just pretty lights n goofy spells n like i get it its a kids show but come on at least try to take some inspiration, you could make witches a seperete monster like in g1 and nothing would change in the story there was no need to make it a human practice

Also yeah i strongly feel you on bloodgood, she got streaked by the “adorkable” beam hard ,how i explain her is in g1 she actually felt like a guardian, she was characterized w how a teen might see their high school principal like (being very intimidating n rule following) in g3 however she acts like an adult sitcom character, shes also honestly such a hypercrite-she almost kills or well “expels” toralei after she “finds out” shes a witch yet just tells draculaura to not show off when she finds out shes a witch (its also so weird how nightmare barley ever appers anymore since in g1 they two were always seen toghter, nightmare was almost a part of bloodgoons design i mean after all she is the headless horsemans daughter)

Also MAN the relief i felt when u noted how stereotypical the characters are-ppl always get upset at ppl saying this n pulling out excuses like “but its not a stereotype some people are like this!!” Not getting thats litrealy what a stereotype is-its taking one aspect some ppl from a group has n applying it to the whole group, its not ppl making up things, like how lagoona is overly obbessed w telenovelas even tho shes 16-telenovelas are watched way more by the middle aged women then teen girls , it feels like they just slapped it there cus lagoonas latina n we ALL know latinas love their telenevolas am i right??(sarcasim) same thing w her having anger issues , why does it HAVE to be lagoona?? Why cant anyone else have anger issues?? Manny is litrealy right there he had that in g1

I also agree with everything you said-i would just add that the issue w the new ethnic backgrounds is they took away already prexisting representation, by that im refering to the wolf family-there was no need to make clawdeen biracial now when she was already a diverse character(being monoracial Black) n its even more upsetting when aside from drac all the other white main characters got to keep their race, their all still monoracial white , i remeber reading the show bible where it says nonbinary is normalized in monster high that it has tons of nonbinary characters-yet thats not what we actually see in the show, the only nonbinary character is frankie everyone else stayed cis it feels even more wrong to me since “frankenstein” is a common insult cis ppl throw at trans ppl, it feels wrong that in this massive school the only nonbinary character is the frankenstein monster

Monster high G3 rant

Watching the TV series and I’m kind of disappointed.

This will be my second watch of season 1, I’m rewatching after the current season 2 episodes.

the show feels very flat in my opinion. They’ve given the characters a lot of cool traits, but they’re used for like one episode and then never brought up, or they only use one specific trait 24/7. Like Frankie in this generation, they have the ability to electrocute, extend their body parts, and they get visions from the people they’re made out of. Specifically they get visions from this one recurring doctor/ scientist. The idea is cool, but the vision literally is there to give exposition about something conveniently. Like when they are trying to solve the puzzle of clawdeens mom, Frankie’s vision just conveniently tells them what to do and how to do it.

In that same episode, we see manny taur. A Minotaur character. And right away we are just told that he’s good at puzzle solving, and so is draculaura! They’re rivals! But this is the first time I’ve ever seen or heard about draculaura being into puzzles, let alone her one sided rivalry with manny. And as the episode ends, she’s like “well you can be the rightful puzzle master” but it feels so flat. There has been no build up to this moment.

Another example is lagoona. In her designated episode, she is rooting for torelai to win the fear-leading captain over draculaura (another thing that has no build up as to why it’s important to her) lagoona explains that torelai is holding a secret over her head, and if it gets out she will lose her status as the fiercest monster in school. But this is the first time we have heard this!! In previous episodes there’s no mention of her being scary or fierce. Or even her super fast swimming skills. It’s just brought up and glosses over with a “be who you are, it’s okay to like what you want! We all have secrets 🥹” but there’s no real character development.

My last example will be the way draculaura is presented in this series. From what she tells us, she has high standards to live up to as a vampire. She needs to look good for her day so she studies endlessly and is striving for perfection. But she also has a love for witchcraft, which is banned in monster high due to its connections to humans. This can be a cute premise, but they NEVER show draculaura compared to any other vampire to show how she’s supposed to act. They never give us episodes where she blows off her friend’s shenanigans because it makes her look bad, and they never really show her dad being so overbearing. They don’t show us WHY humans are hated. And even though witchcraft is banned, whenever anyone finds out about it they’re just cool with it? No push back or anything. The only character to challenge draculaura was torelai.

This all may be very nitpicky, but MH is a character driven franchise. Character relationships with each other and their surroundings are very important to me. I want to feel the so called pressure these characters are being put under. It doesn’t have to be ultra serious 24/7, but issues get resolved within one episode and then rehashed a few episodes later with no further development. Especially with characters like Cleo and lagoona. They have been benched as side characters in this show, and side characters get much worse treatment.

‘The general episode progression is like this - introduce an issue, introduce a high stakes situation that involves the school, have all or one of the main 3 engage in a sequence of fights against this issue(or rapid solving of said issue through convince) - issue is resolved and lesson is told to viewers-characters reset for the next episode.

I know this is a children’s show, but that doesn’t mean it needs to have bad writing, not all kids are high off cocomelon. Kids deserve good writing in their media!

My next rant will be about clawdeen and her story this generation

[fearlessleaderbucky]

does Bucky ever get rid of the hydra arm in the comics? and what are those comics you've been posting from, I want to catch up on some Bucky loving

his arm gets destroyed Many Many times in the comics like. honest to god lost count. but it's nearly not as.. hmmm.... Dramatique™ as the mcu made it (like giving him a vibranium arm and bucky trying to distance himself from the winter soldier) so in a way he Did get rid of the arm. just. wasn't a big deal. tony fixes his arm up and gives him back-up arms too bc bucky is so reckless he loses it so many times LOL

let me remember wtf i read bc its been blurry as hell but heres ur "catch up on bucky loving" compilation with no order bc im a mess. this part is the "bucky is here for a short time but he amuses me"

what kickstarted everything was that i read winter soldier (2018) its like 5 issues and i was weeping the whole time like nooo bucky my meow meow

thunderbolts 2016 where bucky is their leader. i sure read that. i dont remember what happens on it tho. i liked strikeforce more 😭

strikeforce which is what i posted earlier before i went to bed. very funny. i loved it. its my fave teamup and it is bc most of my favorite characters are there hehe

tales of suspense which follows clint and bucky and i cant say no to that dynamic man. theyre funny

hawkeye freefall where sam and bucky are in #1 and #4 and #5

unstoppable wasp 2018 where he shows up in #7 and.. maybe the ones after that too he was there semi often but hes my fave. My beloved. my one and only

he's in sam wilson: captain america bc of course he is from #7 to #9.. or #10...

falcon & winter soldier (2020) which is just my religion basically

this is where i started being like Man bucky in the comics is just such a good guy. now i want More. so this is where its a little Longer and U Gotta Read More but its worth it bc ed brubaker loves bucky and you can tell he does so every run you end weepy over how much u love bucky

deep breath

captain america (2005) which is the official Bucky is Back run. this is where the winter soldier begins. if you're like me and you're like "man im only here for sam and bucky" you'll probably scroll down til u see them and u go AHH SHIT THERE THEY ARE. i linked you from the moment the winter soldier saga starts so :-) halfway through this turns into a bucky cap run! i am not a bucky cap enthusiast but contextually it works so well and its what the character needed. hehe

some point after bucky returns during that run he begins working undercover for fury which leads to winter kills which is like sad bucky hours BUT THE YOUNG AVENGERS ARE THERE

hes also in young avengers presents #1 which i could argue. you could skip. but i love eli and i love bucky so here he is. i wish i could order these chronologically i am just talking here

captain america and bucky for the sweet bucky pov that makes u wanna cry

captain america reborn which is just them bringing back steve. bucky is there. i dont remember much from it but its on my read list so

then its captain america #602 onwards til tje very endwhich follows bucky and zemo and all that jazz. lots of sambucky goodness imo. i dont remember if this is where the winter soldier trial begins but i think it is and then hes in siberia where he just has a very terrible not good very bad day

and then. My god. idk. shit happens. Some Event happened that i didnt read because reading comics is a lot of "and then you have to go to THIS EVENT" and im like. No thanks. so basically bucky dies, but he doesnt actually he just fakes his death so he could tie loose ends as the winter soldier. everybody mourns him even steve then theyre like Steve he didnt actually die oops. its This Issue

and then finally. winter soldier (2012) woah. its so good. Good shit. made me go through it so bad. you think you love bucky? think again. ed brubaker loves him more than you

thats p much where im caught up with bucky. he has more appearances that i'll eventually get around so ill probs update it hehe. sorry i dumped such a long list on you 😭

[threewolfmoons]

@rei-ayameme sorry this took a minute, we've been understaffed at work but i'm too tired to try hard today so.. this instead finally lol.

first, caveat, i consider myself well researched but i am not a capital h queer Historian by any means. i'm a phd candidate and my specific areas of expertise are US queer history (particularly 20th century onward but mainly 80s-2000s, though i have a pet interest in 1950s camp subcultures) & post-90s queer theory. this list will accordingly skew US/post 90s for the most part.

i *also* am a person who doesnt like audio formats for information so most everything here will be text based or film sources. i think hbomberguys producer put together a good list of queer youtubers i can try to track down or if someone has a link they can share thatd be great. (this is mainly why i hadnt heard of somerton either, i do Not enjoy the youtube video essay as a genre lol.)

ANYWAY. so i started researching into queer history as an active choice in my early 20s around the time i figured out i wanted to medically transition. id been raised in a pretty gay friendly liberal town and had been out as Queer of some kind since i was like 11 but i didnt have a strong sense of queer history/community beyond my immediate friendgroup, and i wanted to change that. (this was before i got into grad school also fyi.)

i say that bc one pervasive myth i hear often is that there isn't information available. or if there is, its gatekept in ivory towers and completely inaccessible.

this is patently not true. we live in an age of incredible availability of information. what we lack is context and structure for that information- a way to understand it, find it, contextualize it, assess it. these are learned skills! they can be hard skills to learn but they are learnable and i promise if you are willing to put in the smallest effort you will be able to find sources in all sorts of places, some of which ill cover below.

the way i got started was literally just googling "important queer books" (i wanted literature then). youd be surprised how many sites like they or autostraddle or even like.. huffpo frequently just post listicles of queer books and things like that. i just .. picked what seemed interesting and started reading. thats really it.

also sticking this in here: i do have a podcast ostensibly about comic studies but we have done many episodes on queer and trans history. another great podcast is morgan m page's one from the vaults, a trans history podcast.

so some of my faves:

FICTION

i dont read a lot of fiction in gen/older fiction so this isnt a huge list but, some starting points.

- EM Forster, MAURICE

published posthumously in 1971, the publishing history is well worth reading about in addition to the book itself. also has a genuinely lovely movie adaptation featuring young hot hugh grant if thats your thing,

- any James Baldwin

cowardly not to pick I know I know but come on. Giovanni's Room is the seminal ~gay book of his i guess, but like, Go Tell It On The Mountain fucks so severely i love it. also his nonfiction writing is extremely important and easy to find online or at like. any library,

- the Beebo Brinker series

I found these totally randomly in a thrift store, theyre a lesbian pulp series by Ann Bannon (i own I Am A Woman specifically). lesbian pulp is such a fun genre dont let people lie to you about it all being depressing straight garbage - yes yes theres a lot of that too but the idea that no gay people or people who cared about gay people were writing pulp... come on.

- Stone Butch Blues - pretty well known seminal butch/trans masc text. Leslie Feinberg was a transgender Jewish activist- also a figure worth researching even if you dont read this book specifically.

- Left Hand of Darkness - this is a trans book. fight me.

more contemporary fiction i really like: Call Me By Your Name by Andre Acimen (yes yes i know i know), anything by Ann Leckie, Nevada, Detransition, baby! ...theres others Im sure I cant think of but hey did you know Libby has an LGBT section you can look within

NONFICTION/THEORY

for a long time i labored under the impression that queer theory was bullshit and problematic and mostly straight people and blah blah anyway then i actually started reading it.

the thing about academic writing in general is that publishing is part of the job of being in academia. so yeah, theres a lot of stuff that kind of sucks. thats fine. thats true of any other type of media too. theres plenty of queer theorists i disagree with (looking at you lee edelman) but often even when i disagree i can find value in what they are saying. theory in the humanities should be thought of as a way of structuring understanding: it doesnt mean aha! this is exactly whats happening in a literal sense, it gives us a way to think through the world and understand our experiences. thats all!

anyway.

sara ahmed- dont always agree with her but queer phenomenology is one of those texts that blew my brain wide open. i also think the way she writes is pretty friendly for a non-academic audience; her writing pattern is pretty repetitive and she works concepts down pretty thoroughly. (which can be annoying but is nice, i think, if youre newer to reading theory or queer theory)

judith butler - bodies that matter is more or less The foundational text of 90s queer theory (as a distinct field separate from feminist theory and queer studies). im simplifying a little like of course but its a biggun. butler gave us classics like "gender is a performance". you know the foundation of contemporary understandings of gender identity etc. she is.. difficult to read and sometimes annoying to me personally but like. important to spend time with imo so you know who people are in dialogue with now.

eve sedgwick - the other "founder" so to speak of 90s queer theory. tendencies is a masterpiece. eve sedgwick you are my weird gay uncle and i love you.

jose muñoz - cruising utopia is a book that fundamentally altered my worldview and my relationship to my own queerness. he also wrote disidendification which is an excellent analysis of how marginalized groups (namely latinx queer people) work with and against popular culture to form their own subcultures (again simplifying) - its the kind of thing tumblr media kiddos should eat up imo. also the way he wrote is really bitchy and funny.

david wojnarowicz - not a theorist, an artist & aids activist. his memoir close to the knives should be required reading. he also made a comic w two friends that was finished and published posthumously, 7 miles a second, which is maybe my favorite comic of all time. gutwrenching.

riki ann wilchins - not a Queer Theorist per se but i have to shout them out, fabulous genderqueer activist, discovered their essay "Read My Lips" entirely by accident and made it my entire personality for several years.

other big names to be aware of/research etc, non exhaustive: teresa de lauretis (termed "queer theory"), lauren berlant, gayle rubin, foucault (i know, i know, look if you dont want to Read foucault the wikipedia summaries are like. Fine.), michael warner, jack halberstam, e patrick johnson, leo bersani

theres also lots of people who arent "queer theory" per se but who overlap, eg eli clare, robert mcruer (both in critical disability studies)

also some specific trans studies folk:

susan stryker (arguably the founder of "trans studies" as a field!), micha cárdenas, paisley currah, andrea long chu (yeah yeah), jules gill-peterson, c. riley snorton, jay prosser, dean spade, sandy stone, kj rawson

like i could go on. again though! if you just google like "queer studies syllabus" you will find curated lists that already exist for you!!

beyond like reading i also want to call out archives.

at the simplest, an archive is a repository of primary source information- for example, letters, pamphlets, photographs, magazines, meeting notes, etc etc really anything you can think of. i think rhe cultural image of archives in the us is often that theyre closed to the public but thats often not the case! many archives are either

1. completely digital (w varying levels of access)

2. open to researchers - yes some are only open to affiliated researchers meaning you're with a university or museum etc, but a great deal do allow visits from unaffiliated or independent researchers as well.

some completely open, grassroots queer archives are listed below, mostly from my diss advisor's wonderful list of open-access digitized grassroots media

Houston LGBT History - one of my absolure favorites, obviously a lot of texas specific materials but the site owner maintains a huge treasure trove of digitized early gay press magazines from the us & even canada - absolutely fantastic wonderful stuff.

Transgender Digital Archive - a HUGE open database of trans history ephemera with excellently curated finding aids

Queer Zine Archive Project (QZAP) - a wonderful collection of digitized queer zines; they also have an in person space but I'm not sure about their visitation policy.

Independent Voices (Reveal Digital) - big open access repository of digitized alternative press media- there's an LGBT specific section as well as other categories (Black press, GI, student newspapers, etc). It's hosted on JSTOR, but you dont need a personal account to view these as theyre open access

i could go on but hopefully thats a good start. again, these are open, free to read online, thousands and thousands of items. pick any magazine and start reading it. if thats too overwhelming, try looking up gay press on wikipedia as a starting point!

ok i havent even gotten to like movies and this is already untenably long so maybe ill like. try to make a more organized list eventually but yeah. hopefully this gives you some starting points!!

i was unfamiliar w james somerton prior to the hbomberguy/todd videos but woof. as someone who taught queer history at the undergrad level his scam is especially hurtful to see.

if nothing else i hope that coming out of this his queer fans and especially younger queer fans see what a lie the "no one's talking about this" mentality is - there is such a rich, rich, rich history of queer scholarship, of queer historians and artists and activists who have dedicated their lives to documenting and archiving and analysing and celebrating queer life and art and history and future. and it's often much easier to find than you think!

i just wonder like. how many students, how many people cited this asshole genuinely thinking he was providing original ideas and thus never got the chance to engage with the original sources and learn from them you know

i'll try to compile some starting points later for the like 100 people that will read this lol

[titleknown]

You realize that fandom being a very *autistic* way of engaging with media doesnt inherently make it morally and politically correct, right? Any more than "all actions fueled by trauma or personality disorders are justified" is true. If people following their basic instincts can be *harmful* (like traumatized adults dumping their issues onto minors), it can also by extension be politically maladjusted.

...First off, I think we need to define “fandom,” because people define it differently in these conversations and I have often gotten into quibbles over it with others.

I would define fandom as A) A specialized deep interest in a particular subject/grouping of subjects and B) Dedicated social groups/spaces regarding that specific subject. No corporate worship; slavish devotion; or all the other crust that’s been built around it in practical existence necessary.

Because, honestly, the perception of fandom as political maladjusted; I think; is very much a “But you still participate in society” argument. In that, so much of the shitty behavior from the worship of megacorps to the ‘walled gardens” of corporate-owned worlds this user talks about from Mark Fisher here to the burn-n-churn iteration of beating a narrative horse into a fine red paste...

It’s not some magic mind-control-ray bibble, it’s a product of material power; specifically the powers of monopoly via copyright and the ever-consolidating means of production/promotion and people getting really weird under its constraints, existing in a culture they don’t get to own; they just rent it. Cory Doctorow has talked about this regarding how social media got more fucked up as it got more consolidated, and I think the same applies to art.

And, I think most fandom-critical discourse is bad, because it not only pathologizes the natural behaviors of “grug like specific art” and “grug talk about specific art amongst cave friend who like specific art” by inherently conflating it with all the bullshit that surrounds it, but it emphatically refuses to find a way out.

Like, the biggest asshole I ever knew who I argued with about this deliberately flaunted the “no solutions” thing. And that tracks with the grand majority of what I see. Zero attempts to build power/undermine monopoly, endless dickery.

You don’t do any of the building of institutions to create better shared spaces for working with homegrown art, you don’t try to do any real; active pushes to break up the copyright system that creates this nightmare; you don’t try and create creative commons media ecologies to work within, you just end up as asshole hecklers.

Which, by the way, contextualizing the way special interests shape fandom and become warped by the forces that warp all fandom as autistic people’s “natural instincts” being politically maladaptive is ableist in that very specific “disabled and neurodivergent people are a burden” way I see often in leftist circles.

Doubly so given the “addiction” metaphors (Which, I mean, fit with my thesis that these so called “addictions” are a result of circumstances of disempowerment, look up Rat Park) and infantilization I see thrown around so much in these debates, because flowery words can only conceal so much contempt for us as a burden on the existence of “real art,” and it is... disability theory 101 that the conception of us as a “burden” is core as to why we’re treated like shit, not helped and dehumanized!

And, I find this important because shit rolls downhill. People like you have not done shit to fix these media systems, but both the pathologization of these means of media have been used by the neurotypical adults in our lives to hurt us, and also only used to push us towards media that performs the aesthetics of maturity rather than being actually mature.

Like, when people try to push us towards “real” “grown-up” media thanks to the broad cultural denigration of the “childish” end of pop culture; IE “childrens cartoons” and all that, we don’t get pushed towards; like; Metropolis or Jan Svankmajer’s stuff (Both of which I have seen and adore BTW), we get pushed towards shit like Law and Order or SNL.

But, even beyond disability, I’ll say the framing and pathologization of “mass culture” and our interaction with it has been an unmitigated failure from both a theory and praxis perspective, and the fact that none of you care to actually engage in the building of power to make it not like that, or go “No, it is the proles who are wrong” on why it failed is flabbergasting and enraging.

[majorasnightmare]

27 9 10 for the durge question!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

27. How does your Dark Urge feel about giving and receiving orders?

he has a strained relationship with the concept of authority, in that he hates having to listen to other people but being in charge starts to build up stress over a while. he kind of gets pushed into leading the tadfools because he just happens to be the most personable at the time, and it just sticks so he gets roped into being the primary problem solver+party face. he doesnt like ordering around anyone he considers a person (so. the party) but as the rest of the world mostly registers as walking sacs of blood and meat, ordering them around is kind of like inputting commands in javascript. its so expected its a non thing and barely registers. the only times he rly gives orders is when hes in combat, where he more or less coordinates combat tactics using the tadpole. he was more commanding pre tadpole, encouraged to view his authority as a divine right he can and should exercise as he pleases, but he never really was the kind of person who found "i tell someone to do something and they do it" to be particularly pleasing or satisfying.

receiving orders either pisses him off (if its from aforementioned non person), mildly irritates him (doesnt agree but its from someone he cares about+respects), is a non issue (DOES agree with), or is From Minthara (highly contextual but always gets his attention and is motivated to comply with it)

with minthara, he has a fairly complex 24/7 dom+sub relationship and orders from her register differently esp cuz its a privellege she utilizes rarely outside the bedroom. IN the bedroom its his preferred way of navigating the experience, and thats broadly true even before he settles down with minthara. hes very much an Acts Of Service kind of person when it comes to intimacy of any stripe, and mostly prefers being told what to do rather than being expected to intuit or predict it

9. How does your Dark Urge feel about the city?

HAAAAAATES IT hates it hates it HATES it

the city makes his Urge go into overdrive and is just extremely overwhelming. his particular bhaalspawn concoction came with an extremely strong sense of smell, and cities are FULLLL of people. smell is how he navigates space when he doesnt have clear lines of sight, and mentally keeps track of everyone by scent, so a city is just an overwhelming confusing cacophany of noise and people and smell and meat as his Urge reacts to the sensory stimulus by demanding he cut it back by thinning the herd. when it isnt overwhelming him, the experience makes him snappier and more irritable than usual and pre tadpole made him a night owl for the most part. the chionthar makes it a bit easier to manage as he can focus on the rivers smell, and the same is true for by the docs.

overall cities are bad and hes never fuckin liked them and if he had the chance, hed turn baldurs gate into glass and carbon outlines. unfortunately most of his friends live there

10. What motivates your Dark Urge to either embrace or resist the tadpole?

fuck everyone else its him and this tadpole against the world

post lobotomy the tadpole orin inserted had the unenviable task of holding a bleeding lunatics brain together while its body got dragged through the colony to collapse in a heap at kressas door. orins knife on dirge went mostly through the corpus callosum so the two halves of the brain suddenly lost the ability to communicate all while a sharp foreign object stirred shit up like a blender. personally i dont imagine the flesh of bhaal dies easily but in this instance that works against dirge rather than for him, with attempted recovery causing swelling in the brain while his body tried to keep itself from complete shutdown. so in addition to a stab wound, brain damage, and oedema, now theres a fucking worm in here, and from the worms POV it gets promised a shiny new car that transforms into a live in mansion only to arrive at an on fire dumpster. so clearly the fire has to get put OUT before you can DRIVE it much less LIVE in the damn thing, and then some fucking necromancer decides nows a great time to practice wikihow surgery. so now the dumpsters slightly less on fire but, abandonig the metaphor, this lunatic didnt line up the aortic ventricles properly and well that takes priority cuz if we dont have BLOOD the whole things a crapshoot. and this situation repeatedly, daily, for weeks, until dirge gets shipped to the nautiloid. just a tadpole fruitlessly struggling to keep an injured bleeding brain from dying so it has a home to live in, since it cant connect enough to dirges psyche to fully utilize its psionic senses to determine if its safe to abandon ship, while much needed rest and recovery periods keep getting interrupted by kressas experimentation, leaving dirge in a constant torturous cycle of starting to recover from the stab wound, only to have to go into crisis mode and recover from kressas otherwise lethal surgery first. the swelling and scarring meant that dirge only rly had activity in the limbic system and hindbrain+brainstem area, which, driven by murderous godspawn blood, meant that only the murder and fight+flight instincts were online, leading to his feral animalistic behavior. the situation was just a long slog of awful, and his first tadpole wore itself down just trying to keep its host alive. for that period of time, parasite and host had a single goal of survival, and suffered jointly as a paired unit, incapable of escape or of recovery, becoming increasingly desperate as both wanted nothing more than to live as that most ancient, thoughtless desire. when shipped to the nautiloid, id imagine the emperor could sense dirges tadpole was on its last legs and replaced it with a fresh one, as illithid tadpoles are cannibalistic, leading to the intro cutscene. dirge wasnt in nearly as bad a shape in the nautiloid, since he finally had an unbroken timespan to rest and recover, and his current tadpole got to receive a dumpster that was NOT on fire (recently extinguished). the damage was already done, however, and he isnt in good condition, so the current one is also in the position of trying to keep dirge alive, it just isnt in crisis mode. dirge (correctly) assumes the tadpole is whats keeping him from suffering further brain bleed or swelling, as the tadpole utilizes its position to more or less hold the meat of his brain together and supplementing neuron impulses with its own psionics, essentially provising help for his mangled corpus callosum. as such he generally has a neutrally positive view on it, and his experience as a GoOlock already meant he was somewhat familiar with psionics. combined with his power hungry nature, and he was fairly incentivized to embrace his tadpole powers, no illithid catfishing required

[37q]

i have a few thoughts about terminology, uncited of course because i dont have the literature on hand right now, but its mostly just like, intuiting said terminological variance and development. anyways its about gay, lesbian, butch, and fem/me. i think a lot of times people ask or wonder aloud why certain things are called lesbian or gay, like a lesbian relationship or a gay bar, because they feel as though it implies that bi people cant be a part of these things. however, i think theres a misconception about why those things are called lesbian or gay that arises when you prioritize identity nomenclature over lifestyle nomenclature.

for example, its not that lesbians have a monopoly on lesbian social functions, its just that "lesbianism" is a circumstance of intimacy between two women. the "reason", if you could claim theres a "reason" for any organic social evolution, lesbian eventually became the term used to describe women who exclusively sought out intimacy with other women -- distinguishing them from women who sought out intimacy from more than just women -- is because, well, "lesbianism" is all they did. similarly, gay relationships arent relationships comprised of two gay men, its a relationship comprised of two men in general. its describing the gender composition, not the identity composition. (as a side note, this becomes more complicated when reading 70's-90's lesbian feminist theory that cites heterosexuality as an institution or a social function, referring to the gender composition rather than the identities of the participants. this can be compared to "same-sex marriage" rather than "gay marriage", the former of which i think is actually more meaningfully descriptive.)

the functional circumstances here are whats most important for what language we use to describe these social realities. if someone doesnt want to conceptualize or articulate their sexual identity, let alone call themselves "gay" or "lesbian", its important for describe social functions or spaces in ways that denote its gender makeup so that they know what theyre getting themselves into. i think relative description is incredibly useful for things, whereas for people a lot of times having a static or fixed term for themselves is helpful to get the point across. but the fact that these social things may use differing lingo from what you call yourself doesnt mean you dont fit there. its all about the contextual gender composition and what youre looking for in that moment.

this brings me to butch and femme. aside from the fact that butch and femme have long been used outside of "lesbian" contexts (i.e. woman / woman) such as in drag and ball functions, there are accounts that provide evidence to qualify the notion that a fixed lesbian identifier must precede the use of these specific sub-identifiers. one example, which i think encapsulates it well, is that a lot of femmes in the oft-discussed ~lesbian bar scene~ in the mid 20th century had husbands, and they maintained these marriages with men decades into their lesbian affairs, later on sometimes even telling their husbands about their late-night or home-alone proclivities.

the reason i bring this up is because, when they were in the life, these women were femmes, especially when you take into consideration the centering of butches in these romantic and erotic circumstances. femme, and butch, denote(d) more than just mere "gender presentation", among other things they denote(d) the social role you occupy/ied in circumstances of eroticism or intimacy with other women AND the social opportunities that youre offered and you take based on what you feel is appropriate for your gender role in society at large. this is especially true in how one earned their living, such as factory work, "turning tricks", or secretarial work. now heres the catch: while these butches called them femmes, and other femmes called them femmes, i can guarantee you when they went home to their husbands they were just their husbands wife. this vacillation in identifier between social contexts isnt a way of invalidating these womens experiences, its just that a womans lesbian desire and lesbian-specific erotic function didnt really have a meaningful place in the household with their husband. they had their spaces that they frequented to fulfill that part of themselves. this, i think, shows the historical imperative for developing identifiers for people who happily lived such lives, whether they were married to men or sought out casual relations with both men and women.

as for the relevancy this has on contemporary sexual nomenclature? to put it simply, one is butch or femme in contexts -- sometimes, but necessarily, intimate -- between women. the reason a lot of lesbians make an exclusive claim to butch and femme is because their lives are exclusively centered around women. they never leave the life. however, in the aforementioned contexts, if youre looking for a butch were not gonna ask your sexuality, or even if you identify as femme. its just obviously apparent social roles that provide a framework for our social interactions. however, even if a bi woman is a butch or a femme when with other women, when theyre with their boyfriend or husband theyre just, like, normal. and thats ok.

[fipindustries]

there is something i realized about my tastes when it comes to literature, i actually do enjoy exposition when its well done, or rather the realization is that exposition CAN be well done. 

There is a tendency for “show dont tell” in story telling and while its generally more directed towards movies and tv there is definetly push for that in writing as well. That is what writers like wildbow or brandond sanderson do where they try and focus most of their writing in letting a scene play out without having the narrator get lost in exposition, spelling out what the character motivations are, what the themes of the story are and what it all is supposed to mean, just let the events speak for themselves.

but i say that there is such a way in which exposition can give flavour and texture to the story, it can help set a tone and it can be a neat way to convey context and necessary information about the story while giving it some texture, making it feel like a world with a past.

now here it is how it can be done wrong, if its just info dumping or a wall of text. nothing makes me snore more than a story that begins its first paragraph with the entire lore of the world laid out in front of you before we even get to see a character or have anything that we can attach ourselves to. those stories that page one they start with something like “in the beggining there was darkness, which we called “the vast yawn” until lothofill, the great spark, first flashed its breath of life and shaped the world, etc etc etc”

to me good exposition is when its given in discrete chunks, usually by a playful narrator, and usually shared as if they were cool bits of trivia that the author cant help but share with the reader. it doesnt have to feel like a text book, it has to feel like an anecdote, something like “...by the way, were you aware dear reader that the modern “chutes” as we call them where originally made of transparent plastic? the idea was to give the passengers a magnificent view of hypercity as they traversed it at more than 400 miles per hour! sadly after one too many streaks of vomit and piss clearly noticeable on the tubes crisscrossing the metropolis it was demeed that the experience was perhaps a bit too thrilling for the common civilian and they were changed for the modern metal tubes that you see today, many companies gladly welcomed the new available suraces for adds”

and i think in great part this is why i enjoyed worm and pact to a bigger degree than twig and ward, in worm, as the parahumans setting has to be introduced for the first time to the world, we get to see it explained and contextualized by taylor time and again, she introduces the endbringers, the whole deal behind scion’s first appearance, the slaughterhouse 9, the prt, the classification system, the deal with leet and uber, etc. and taylor shares it with the passion of a cape geek.

likewise with pact where blake has to constantly be updated about how magic works as he keeps encountering new things to fight.

whereas in twig wildbow never actually put all that much effort in explaining the “deep lore” of the world and we dont really see sylverster go on to long tangents about the history of the world. in ward the world is already known so, again, we dont really see victoria doing long expositions about what is the deal with this or that.

i dunno, maybe is just me but when a book tries to be all show no tell, it feels like im reading someone descrive a movie, to me the fun in books and literature is the play with the language, is the narrator weaving words, going on tangents, getting distracted, telling jokes, making small remarks here and there, and this perhaps is a product of me growing up with the classics where you could have someone like verne deciding to pause the story just so we can dedicate five pages to the history of aeronautics or the biological taxonomy or sea life, as well as latin american writers who had no trouble having a much more casual approach to narration where the specific events and actions of the plot are not nearly as important as the main idea that the story is trying to communicate

[soncfseed]

reposted from my old blog

i want to post some links so people can better understand what bpd is and what a personality disorder is and is not. then, i’ll do a quick rundown of the 9 bpd symptoms and which ones ethan has/displays and how they manifest for him.

here is a quick ref of some common misconceptions about the disorder. tldr version: a lot of people think bpd isnt real, or that people with bpd are just crazy assholes but its a legitimate mental health problem that has multiple factors including ones that seem to be genetic and environmental.

a personality disorder is defined by the mayo clinic as: “a type of mental disorder in which you have a rigid and unhealthy pattern of thinking, functioning and behaving. A person with a personality disorder has trouble perceiving and relating to situations and people. This causes significant problems and limitations in relationships, social activities, work and school. In some cases, you may not realize that you have a personality disorder because your way of thinking and behaving seems natural to you.” basically, its not that a person has a bad personality in terms of poor character or is intentionally acting in a way that may seem irrational or explosive, but rather that the person has functional differences in how their brain reacts to things. personality is defined as:  “the combination of thoughts, emotions and behaviors that makes you unique. It’s the way you view, understand and relate to the outside world, as well as how you see yourself.” it isn’t just behaviour nor is it something people consciously control 100% of the time. borderline personality disorder has been linked to physical differences in the brain and its functioning, particularly of neurotransmitters and brain chemicals similar to mood disorders like depression. it is a type of neurodivergence, not a skewed moral compass, a choice, or something that people with bpd typically enjoy. the symptoms are very stress inducing and cause a lot of turmoil for the affected person, and when poor coping skills have been ingrained and then create further stress or complications in the person’s life, particularly in interpersonal relationships.

ok now we’re gonna hit the 9 symptoms and 4 domains of bpd and how ethan fits into it. the dsm-5 requires 5 symptoms out of 9 for a person to be diagnosed with bpd. ethan displays, in my opinion, 8/9 symptoms and would be a candidate for diagnosis in my experience.

domain a - emotional regulation 1) “Affective (emotional) instability including intense, episodic emotional anguish, irritability, and anxiety/panic attacks” ✅ generally, this is episodes of intense sadness, anger, irritability, insecurity and self doubt for ethan. he doesnt usually have anxiety or panic attacks, but he has had a few in extremely stressful situations. his symptoms of an anxiety attack tend to lean more towards irritability and emotional outbursts.

2) “Anger that is inappropriate, intense and difficult to control”  ✅ while ethan does become rightfully frustrated when the captain returns the book, the fact that he has what seems like a minute long complete meltdown including hitting/smashing objects, that would be a good example of the kind of situationally inappropriate anger and displays of temper ethan has. his anger spikes rapidly and it makes it hard to control his actions at times.

3) “Chronic feelings of emptiness”  ✅ while we don’t necessarily see this explicitly in game, i’d argue that’s part of his experience of bpd. he often feels a lack of purpose, a lack of self, and substitutes that with his role as the leader of new eden.

theres additional symptoms described as such: “In addition, if you suffer from borderline disorder, you may also experience emotional hyper-reactivity (“emotional storms”),  or emotional responses that are occasionally under- reactive, and frequent episodes of loneliness, and boredom. “ ethan definitely experiences emotional storms, and episodes of loneliness particularly. thats amplified by the fact that hes not particularly close to anyone in new eden besides maybe the judge. between a lack of substantial interpersonal ties with his community and his disorder, his episodes of loneliness are often very intense and distressing.

domain b - harmful impulsive behaviors 4)  “Self-damaging acts such as excessive spending, unsafe and inappropriate sexual conduct, substance abuse, reckless driving, and binge eating”  ✅ ethan deals with this to an extent, but not these specific self damaging behaviours. for ethan, its usually not eating or not sleeping for periods of time, or going on particularly dangerous missions to find the book. hunting also serves as an adrenaline rush, but because it sustains new eden its less impulsive than it is an acceptable way of spending a day

5) “Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats, or self-injurious behavior such as cutting or hitting yourself.”  ❌ ethan has suicidal ideations, but doesn’t have a history of engaging in self harm or suicide attempts.  

though not an explicit symptom, dangerous impulsivity that affects the self or others is a common symptom, and one ethan does deal with. his decision to turn new eden over to the highwaymen was in part spurred by his impulsive thinking and behaviour.

domain c - perceptions of self and others 6) “A markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of yourself (your perceptions of yourself, your identity)”  ✅ ethan definitely experiences shifts in this realm. this is part of why he ties himself so strongly to his identity as the leader of new eden in light of his poor relationship with his father (which will come up again). when that is threatened, it sends him spiraling because of his unstable self image. this applies to ethan’s image of himself as a person morally, his worth relative to others, and even how he feels about his body and appearance.

7) “Suspiciousness of others thoughts about you, and even paranoid ideation, or transient and stress related dissociative episodes during which you feel that you or your surroundings appear unreal.”  ✅ ethan is absolutely suspicious of others and it goes beyond his learned suspicion of outsiders that all of new eden seems to have. he is particularly suspicious of his father, and of people within his own community. some of this is completely rational, but it often extends beyond that. he experiences, in my hc, dissociative episodes and bouts of depersonalization where parts of his body don’t feel real or don’t feel attached to him/belonging to him.

“Other symptoms in this Domain include split- or “all-or-nothing” thinking, difficulty “pulling” your thoughts together so they make sense, and rational problem solving, especially in social conflicts.” ethan deals with all of these issues generally speaking. this is in part why his decision to burn down new eden was so extreme; he has difficulty at times with regulating what is rational and what is not (and making nuanced decisions), particularly when under extreme emotional duress like during an explosive emotional episode or mood swing.

domain d - unstable relationships 8)  “You may engage in frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.”✅ this is part of why he looked so hard for the book, why he pushes himself so hard to be the leader of new eden and why he turns on them so aggressively at the end. sometimes this can manifest as lashing out, a way to “get them before they get me” mentality. he has particularly strong responses to feeling abandoned or ignored.

9) “Your relationships may be very intense, unstable, & alternate between the extremes of overidealizing and undervaluing people who are important to you.” ✅ this is definitely something ethan struggles with, especially with his father. this is also why he was willing to let new eden burn and its people suffer with it. he had swung too far back from feeling rejected that went completely into “new eden bad”, undervaluing everyone there to the point that he was able to rationalize destroying the place at the expense of the people who lived there.

none of this is meant to excuse his poor decision making, but in the context of my hc for him, it explains why he can act so irrationally at times, and so extremely. in reality, people with bpd are more likely to hurt themselves through self harm, suicide attempts, impuslive behavior, and self destructive behavior. ethan seed is 1) not a real person and 2) living under some very intense and unusual circumstances with probably the WORST person to parent someone with bpd, joseph “i talk to god and he says your soul is tainted” seed. he also doesn’t know he has a disorder and doesn’t have the knowledge or resources to get mental health treatment for his disorder. as it stands, however, he’s made some pretty bad and pretty horrible decisions, and at times can be a bad person. this doesn’t mean, however, that he is 100% bad or always awful, or that bpd is the sole cause of his behaviours. it isnt. lots of people (including myself) have bpd and we haven’t been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of anyone; we’ve never burned down our hometowns or tried to get our fathers killed. ethan’s display of bpd is more of a tool to explain and contextualize his behavior and character rather than to condemn him, condone him, or excuse his actions.

tldr ethan has bpd and so do i thanks 4 listening to my ted talk