#and yes of course i do know people can like villains and bad characters Look around my beautiful home

[porcubus]

Because the writers do not say it directly and fans cant acknowledge something unless it is spelled out in blood on the windows we will be seeing two violent racists tastelessly woobified and slobbing on eachother and the man they targeted and abused since childhood for months to come #enemiestolovers

[pro-sipper]

Had such a fun conversation with my therapist today. Honestly I'd been wanting to bring up the whole pro/anti debacle with her just to see what she'd say and how it would stack up against what proshippers and antishippers have to say about therapy online. No points for correctly guessing which side she agreed with

I talked about my job for about 3/5ths of the time there, then segued into The Discourse by telling her about how I'd been writing daily during the first two weeks of my new job, but hadn't been as active lately

And I even asked her if she had any other chronically online clients she talked to and she reassured me that she had plenty, and even one who had kind of explained this whole debate to her before (from a proshipper stance, and how she lost a friend over it)

I explained my whole issue with her about how fandom is so deep into purity culture these days. And how reckless and raunchy it was in the 00s and how I don't want to go back to that, but there's got to be some middle ground somewhere.

I told her about some of the stuff I've written and all the weird or nasty comments I've gotten on it and how that can be discouraging. And I told her that most of my works are smut, and of those smut works, all of them have at least a little sprinkling of trauma in them. And she said that can be a good way to look at things. And used a real life example of how something could be awful but there could be good things about it too. Specifically saying that nothing is just black and white, everything has shades of grey. And that digging the little good out of the big bad is a positive thing, actually

And I told her about being a young teen and reading a fic with incest in it and having the sense not to immediately jump to "I want to recreate this in real life" and she was like "Yes, exactly. It's like this one book I read, umm..." and I was like "Flowers In The Attic?" just as a guess and she was like "Yes!" and said just because you read about something doesn't mean you want it to be your reality

And I did my best to explain the whole concept of how some people seem to think that everyone engages with fiction by putting themselves in the shoes of the main character, so if the main character is doing awful things then you must want to do awful things too. Which of course she said was in no way true

And she told me that she was such a big fan of horror movies and loved to watch those as a way to relax and unwind bc it gets her mind off her work, but that doesn't mean she wants to be a killer lol. And I had to be like "Oh no you don't understand. They think killing and torture and cannibalism is totally fine, it's just when you bring sex into the equation that people start freaking out" and she was confused at that lol

And of course she thought it was ridiculous that people can get called a pedo or a groomer or whatever other awful things over fictional stories.

So yeah it was a fun and reassuring conversation. I know I'm leaving some stuff out but I can't remember any more specifics of what was said. Plus I was talking a mile a minute bc I wanted to say everything on my mind before time was up asfdsfs it was a monumental task.

OH and I even brought up how people will literally say "well my therapist said..." just for some other people to accuse them of lying or saying their therapist is corrupt or some other bullshit which she was understandably aghast at. Because she is a licensed therapist who went to Therapy School and knows better, and is not a magical villain promoting propaganda fed to her by Big Proship to corrupt her clients. You know how it is <3

[schoenpepper]

Intro: You choose the emerald ring and bracelet.

Warnings: bad grammar, awful writing, photos aren't mine, mentions of death ig

A/N: Malleus is just so male-lead-coded it's actually insane. Like, crazy powers? Pretty face? Unique fantasy race? Green flag???

Masterlist

You pick up the emerald bracelet and ring set. You would hate to let Malleus down, as he's genuinely one of the sweetest people you've ever met. Not to mention, you really do enjoy spending time with him, so being at the ball shouldn't be any different for how you two usually act around each other. The moment you step inside the lavishly decorated ballroom, the handsome prince makes his way to you, seemingly just short of teleporting in his effort to get to you faster. "Child of Man, I am very much pleased that you have accepted my invitation." Malleus says happily, holding out his hand.

"Of course. Thank you for inviting me." You take his hand and walk with him slowly to the center of the ballroom.

"I must say, you look absolutely marvelous tonight. Not that you don't look marvelous normally. You look incredible every day."

"Thank you." You chuckle. "Malleus."

He seems slightly shocked at the first time you've ever used his real name. "Y/N." His voice is soft when he returns the favor. He looks at the accessory on your hand, tracing his finger over it. When the orchestra begins a new song, he leads a solemn waltz with his eyes never leaving yours. You fall into a comfortable silence with him. With every turn you make in his arms, the background fades more and more, but the color of his eyes seem to glow sharper and you're helplessly drawn to him. This isn't good. You could've lived with ignoring your 'avoid the capture targets' plan, but breaking the most sacred rule of all? It's ridiculous. You could be in danger. You could die.

His hand squeezes yours.

The villain died in so many different ways depending on who the main characters chose because that stupid villain fell in love. And yes, you're technically friends with all the male leads, but who's to say that the world won't suddenly force everyone to play the role they were supposed to? There's still so much you don't know about this world, or why you're even here. Falling in love with Malleus Draconia of all people is so, so very dangerous.

He sways you as the dance comes to a halt.

You look into his eyes again.

You should stop. You should tell him that you can no longer be friends with him. Crawl back into your shell and be cautious, be safe. Love your life more than you love this man you've only known for a year.

You hold his hand tighter.

"Malleus. I love you."

Try Again?

[bowtiepastabitch]

Heaven's Not Homophobic in Good Omens, and Why That's Important

I need to preface this with, I am not trying to start a fight or argument and won't tolerate any homophobic or bad faith arguments in response to this. Cool? Cool.

This is in large part inspired by this ask from Neil's blog, which sparked some discourse that I don't want to get involved in but that brought up some analytic questions for me.

He goes on to reblog a question asking about Uriel's taunt specifically, clarifying that "boyfriend in the dark glasses" can just as easily be read/translated from angelic as girlfriend or bosom buddy. The idea is that an angel and a demon "fraternizing" is seriously looked down upon, not that heaven is homophobic. And that's super important.

We see homophobia in both the book and show, of course. Aziraphale is very queer-coded, intentionally and explicitly so, and we see the reaction of other humans to that several times. Sergeant Shadwell, for example, and the kid in the book that calls him the f-slur when he's doing magic at Warlock's birthday party. These are, however, individual human reactions to his coding as a gay man.

I am, personally, not a fan of heaven redemption theories for the show; no hate for people who want that it's just not something I'm interested in. I don't believe that heaven is good with bad leadership, or that God Herself remains as a paragon of virtue. To me, that's not in line with the themes and messages of the show. It's important, however, that heaven doesn't reflect human vices. Heaven can be nasty and selfish and apathetic in its own right without ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or racism. This matters for two reasons.

Firstly, we don't need the -isms and -phobias to be evil or at least ethically impure. In a world where we spend so much time fighting against prejudice and bigotry, our impulse is to see that reflected in characters whose motivations we distrust or who we're intended to dislike. While it's true that that's often the big bad evil in our daily lives, it can really cheapen the malice in fictional evil from a storytelling standpoint. A villain motivated by racism or as an allegory for homophobia can be incredibly compelling, but not every bad guy can be the physical representation of an -ism. Art reflects the reality in which it's crafted, but the complexity of human nature and the evil it's capable of can't be simplified to a dni list.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, is that for Good Omens specifically, this places the responsibility for homophobia on humanity. If you're in this fandom, there's like a 98% chance you've been hurt by religion in some way. For a lot of us, that includes religious homophobia and hate, so it makes sense to want to project that onto the 'religious' structure of Good Omens. It's a story that is, in many ways, about religious trauma and abuse. However, if heaven itself held homophobic values, it would canonize in-universe the idea that heaven and religion itself are responsible for all humanity's -isms and -phobias and absolve humans of any responsibility. Much like Crowley emphasizes repeatedly that the wicked cruelty he takes responsibility for is entirely human-made, we have to accept that heaven can't take the blame for this. To make heaven, the religious authority, homophobic would simply justify religious bigotry from humans. By taking the blame for religious extremism and hatred away from heaven and the religious structure, Good Omens makes it clear that the nastiness of humanity is uniquely and specially human and forces the individual to take responsibility rather than the system. Hell isn't responsible for the Spanish Inquisition, which by the way was religiously motivated if you didn't know, and heaven isn't responsible for Ronald Reagan.

This idea is perhaps more strongly and explicitly expressed in the Good Omens novel, in the scene where Aziraphale briefly possesses a televangelist on live TV. It's comedic, yes, but also serves to demonstrate that human concepts of the apocalypse and religious fervor are deeply incorrect (in gomens universe canon) and condemn exploitation of faith practices. Pratchett and Gaiman weave a great deal of complexity into the way religion and religious values are portrayed in the book, especially in the emphasis on heaven and hell being essentially the same. They're interested in the concept of what it means to be uniquely and unabashedly human, the good and the bad, and part of that is forcing each individual person to bear the brunt of responsibility for their own actions rather than passing it off onto a greater religious authority.

Additionally, from a fan perspective, there's something refreshing about a very queer story where homophobia isn't the primary (or even a side) conflict. The primary narrative of Good Omens isn't that these two man-shaped-beings are gay, it's that they're an angel and a demon. The tension in their romantic arc arises entirely from the larger conflict of heaven and hell, and things like gender and sexuality don't really matter at all. Yes, homophobia and transphobia are very real, present issues in our everyday lives, but they don't have to be central to every story we tell. There's something really soothing about Crowley and Aziraphale being so queer-coded and so clearly enamored with each other without constantly being bombarded with homophobia and hate. It's incredible to see a disabled angel whose use of a mobility aid makes no difference in their role and to see angels and demons using they/them pronouns without being questioned or misgendered. It's all accepted and normalized, and that's the kind of representation that we as queer people deserve.

[midnightjewel]

Left and Right

BNHA boys when you don’t know left from right. Just silly stories.

Characters Included: Kirishima, Bakugo, and Denki

I can do a part 2 with more characters!

(Also, I really apologize for Kirishima’s being so short!! I feel kinda bad about that ngl)

Kirishima

You’re most certainly not going to be judged by him

He understands that not everyone is perfect and not everyone knows their left from their right and that’s okay!

“Babe, can you grab me my keys?” The redhead asks, already dressed in his hero attire and ready to head to the agency. He was ready to walk out the door when he realized that he sort of needed his keys to drive his car.

“Where?” You ask standing by the kitchen counter where they sat

“Your left” he says casually as you helplessly look for the keys, not knowing where he was referring to. He watched as you turned to the right “Uhm No-“ he almost laughed “Your other left” he snickered remembering how you can’t tell the difference off the top of your head

“Oh my god hold on” you say quickly as you use your thumb and index fingers to make the ‘L’ shape to figure it out

“Oh here” you smile and toss your fiancé his keys as he laughed his ass off “Yeah yeah have a great day” you laughed and rolled your eyes

Bakugo

Is genuinely confused and concerned that you do not know your left from your right, he just thought it was something everyone knew

He’s not meaning to be judgmental but he lowkey is…

He just can’t comprehend how someone couldn’t tell the difference

You were a fairly new driver as you were only 17. Of course you and Bakugo were the same age but he started driving as soon as he was of legal age to do so. You on the other hand had gotten a late start to the driving game.

But you had insisted on driving to your date which Bakugo opposed. It was his car after all, and you had just gotten your license like a month ago!

But against all odds here you were driving Bakugo’s pride and joy. His car was very important to him so you promised to be careful

“Okay, here you’re going to take a right” he tells you as he reads the gps for you so you could keep an eye on the road

“Okay sure” you smile as you turn the car left and the gps speaks ‘proceed to the route’ before rerouting you

“What?” You look confused at the gps as your boyfriend stairs at you in absolute disbelief

“I said right…” he continues to stare “hold the fuck up! Do you not know your left and right?!

“Don’t distract the driver” you remind him

“Yes it’s true” you sigh dramatically after a few minutes of silence “I don’t know my left from my right off the top of my head” you smirk as you glance over to see him shaking him head in disbelief

“Well, if anyone wouldn’t know their left from their right it would be you” he laughs to himself as you pretend to be offended but deep down, you knew that was him exposing himself and basically saying that he knows you well.

Denki

Be so for real, he doesn’t know his left from his right either! So who is he to judge?

He might laugh a bit because it’s relatable to get confused but he means no harm by it!

Class 1-A was training outside today with Class 1-B. It was always stressful when you weren’t training by yourself or with someone you were close to.

But you knew that in the real world, you couldn’t tell everyone to go away because you were nervous about people watching you! So you just had to suck it up for the 30 minutes.

“Okay (Name) and Kendo, you’re up first this morning, you will be competing against one another” Aizawa spoke in his usual melancholic tone and your stomach flipped.

“You go girlie” your best friend Mina, patted your back and gave you a wink “Thanks” you smile at her support

“So there are villain dummies that come forward on this track” Midnight begins to explain to you “They can come up on either side, and while it’s not realistic because these dummies can’t do anything besides bump into you, your job is to use your quirk as best as you can to knock it over” she says and you nod in understanding

“Start facing away from the two tracks” she added “I will tell out commands and that is practice for working with sidekicks and other pro hero’s” Midnight clarified “First one to knock one over gets a point for their class”

Surprisingly, you understood the assignment very well it was just executing it in front of both classes that made you feel weak in the knees.

“Good luck” Kendo smiles to you and you nod “To you as well” you grin

“Okay the machine is on!” Vlad states and midnight watches to command you “(Name)! On your left!”

“Which way?” You turn over your shoulder to the right and much to your dismay, you had found out that you were completely wrong “Oh what?” You look confused as you put up both hands to make the ‘L’ shape which brings out laughter in the students and your cheeks burn with shame

“(Name), you’re out until you can figure out your left and right” Aizawa heavily sighs and your boyfriend, Denki Kaminari could see the look on your face as you walked back to the group, you looked ready to cry from embarrassment

It just so happened that Denki was up next, and he may or may not have short circuited himself just to get the focus off of your mistake and make the students laugh at him instead of you. It did make you smile though, he was a good boyfriend.

[codenamethebird]

More Hades 2 rambles from me! Though this time round it's a continuation of a point I made in this post.

Specifically, that I think the final boss of the Surface will be a living human mortal.

A couple people on that post disagreed that it would be a human, mostly just because of boss fight mechanics. Which I do get, but this is my not so little refute of that idea (all in good fun of course, I very well might be wrong! I just have thought a bunch about it since then and wanted to ramble about it).

I'll be getting into later how the game could have a hard mechanically satisfying human final boss later, because first I want to talk about how it would make sense naratively. Not because anyone remotely argued this point, I just think it's interesting haha.

So let's go back for a moment to Hades 1, and it's final boss, Hades himself. On a mechanical sense, it makes total sense, Hades is the god and master of the underworld Zag is trying to escape. He would be the final obstacle. But what really makes Hades work as the final boss, is the story and emotional reason he's there.

The plot of Hades is ultimately about Zag's messy relationship with his dad. And that final boss fight is an ongoing conversation with him. While irl you and your questionable dad constantly fighting to death is not a great way to fix your problems, these are weird bound to underworld greek gods. Death is their weird love language for like half this cast haha. There is a reason Death is one of, if not the main love interest.

Okay now that I've established that, let's look at the one final boss we do know from Hades 2, Chronos. Now it's Grandpa's time to shine. Unlike Hades 1, he fits a lot cleaner into a more traditional villian role. The monster who literally takes over your house and takes your family hostage.

In that way, it is a personal fight for Mel to save her family, but Mel lacks a specific personal connection to Chronos himself. Obviously there's the whole Grandpa thing, but she wasn't like raised by him or anything. He is a convient big bad she can hate simply and wholeheartedly. While he does try to challenge her beliefs at times, Mel will never listen to him because of the whole family kidnapping thing, and Gramps equally doesn't want to engage with her either. He just wants to be a dick to her.

While I'm a firm believer in the "We (the gods) are actually the bad guys" theory, I don't think Chronos is secretly an angel. He did you know eat his kids and that entire scene with Hades and him just reeked of shitty dad vibes. While Chronos might be better for humanity, I think he really is using them as a prop and doesn't genuinely care about them. (This is a derail, but I do think the human army side of things including Prometheus will turn on Chronos at some point. Specifcally that they are already planning to).

But yes, basically, while I adore Chronos as a villain, you get none of the character growth from either party that you got between Zag and Hades in the first game. Obviously, we are still in early access, so there's more dialouge to be had. But from what we have seen, those two are not changing the other. So this is my roundabout way to say that must mean the Surface boss is the one that is going to be all about Melinoe's character growth.

I don't think I need to explain why fighting a human would be a fascinating place for character growth for humanities #1 hater Melinoe. Mel's the Hades equivalent in this game (not the Zag), who will not listen to anyone who disagrees with her. Getting beat up by a human might actually start to get it through her head.

But also I want to dig into why I don't think the final boss will be another Titan. I've seen Atlas thrown around a bunch as a possible final Surface boss. Also Typhon... I'm certain there are others. But I don't know what they would add to the narrative, especially as a final boss? I think there's more evidence for Atlas, so I'll focus on him.

It would make some sense, he was the leader of the titan rebellion and much like Prometheus, in certain versions of the myth he was also freed from his punishment by Heracles! Which considering Heracles suspicious lack of dialouge so far, and the dialouge he does have being a god hater, I do think he's the one who freed Prometheus in this game.

But other than those connections, what does Atlas add to make him an interesting antagonist to Mel? He's not particularly tied to humanity, and while his punishment sucked he did lead a rebellion against the gods (and traditionally the reasons have nothing to do with humans).

Mostly, in my opinion, if the game was going to have a titan also be the final boss for the Surface, it wouldn't be Atlas. It would be Prometheus. He's the powerful titan who has a legitimate gruge against the gods and who can engage with Mel in interesting ways, challenging her stance against the gods. But they have already used Prometheus, I don't know how they could write Atlas (or whatever titan/god) in a way that would be more interesting than Prometheus, and rival the Hades boss fight for thematic weight. Also, it would be 2 titans in a row, which isn't nessisarily a bad thing, but still.

I've also seen people throw around it might he Ares, which I will admit would I would be way more excited for that another titan. Theres some interesting ideas to be had with an Olympian who has betrayed the gods. But we already have dialouge with Athena where she says how Chronos' armies motivations wouldn't line up with Ares'. And I feel like going from a dude only obsessed with war to someone fighting for some kind of higher cause would be a jump in character. Not impossible, but a little weird.

And ultimately, I just think that a Human would serve the purpose better as an antagonist to Mel who would shake her worldview on living mortals in particular. A fight with Ares would mess with her relationship with the gods, but not as clearly with humans.

Okay now that I've talked about themes, how about what people actually had an issue with lol, how would a final boss with a human make sense from a boss fight perspective. I have three main ideas, that don't really contradict each other and could all exist in the fight.

1st idea: multiple enemies. We've heard that there are human armies, the final boss could possibly be a leader of them. We could have hords of enemies, could have select recognizable commanders that have different skill sets, etc. None of the Surface boss fights have multi bosses in them (they have random mobs but none like the sirens or Theseus and Asterius), so I don't think it would be strange to have it. And while stretching the definition of a human boss a bit, these other bosses could be ghosts and other kinds of beings (I just think the main boss should be a breathing human).

2nd idea and tbh my main one. Have them be a Witch! Or some other kind of magic user. I feel like this should be obvious, but a lot of the theming around Hades 2 is witchy/magic stuff and it's wild we don't have a major witch enemy yet (other than obviously Hecate, but for obvious reasons I don't count her).

I'm thinking some kind of High Priestess of Chronos kind of character, we still don't know exactly how Chronos was revived and this could tie in, but there's a bunch of ways you could spin a magic user! I think it would be a prime place to put a narrative foil to Melinoe. A fellow Witch whose family was stolen away by the gods who is looking for justice. Maybe when finally looking into a mirror, some of the stuff Melinoe's been told will finally breach her thick headed skull haha.

I don't think I really need to get into the technical about how a witch fight could be cool. But one idea, tying into my first point, a magic user could have mind powers and compell powerful beings to fight for them. This could be the Zag boss fight of borderline crack theories or even maybe the aforementioned Ares who maybe got captured during his war path. A magic fight doesn't need possessed enemies, but it could be cool.

And finally, my 3rd idea. You might be going, but how could a human be more powerful than Prometheus? Well first point magic, but more seriously, just have them be boosted by Chronos and/or other allies. I mentioned a theory about a high priestess sort of character (the power of God and ani--), but more specifically, if they do go the route of a foil to Melinoe, she has her boons from the gods. Much like Theseus in Hades 1, the final surface boss could gain the boons of Chronos/Prometheus/and the like. Maybe even a Chaos boon, they have already aided Chronos once, and there's a decent chance the humans might betray Chronos at some point so Chaos might be chill with them. This could also be a way to introduce more titan characters and the like without needing to make models for them haha.

But yes, tldr, magic human gives us both the thematic weight of it being a human, witch stuff to parallel Melinoe, and just cool powerful magic fight as a final boss (and it could parallel the Hecate boss fight, the first boss u fight and the last being magic based).

[pascaloverx]

OUR SECRET — MYG

chapter three

Summary: You and Yoongi are having an affair. No, you are not being his lover. But the world is not ready to know that an idol is dating someone. So you two were doing your best to make sure no one found out. Until he breaks up with you. His mistake.

Author's note: This fanfic will contain inappropriate language and intimate moments between some characters. Be warned. I will let you know if anything becomes inappropriate. Please enjoy this Yoongi fanfic.

PREVIOUS NEXT

You wake up surprised, you didn't even remember falling asleep. Especially in the studio where you shouldn't even be. Yoongi is still sleeping while you are spooning. How did this happen?

"Let's stay like this for a little longer..." Yoongi murmurs, almost opening his eyes and you don't know how to react.

"And we get caught like this? Never. I have to find a way to get out of here before I cause problems." You respond, moving away from Yoongi. Of course you I wanted to stay in his arms but a scandal now would be harmful.Even though there's a bigger scandal still growing inside you.

"Then why are you here if you're afraid of being seen with me?" He asks almost as if he's offended. You laugh, seeing him get angry. How the tables turn. In the past he couldn't stand the idea of ​​us being caught together. Now he's angry at you for being cautious.

"Scared? Me?" You speak indignantly at your ex-boyfriend's accusation. Yoongi seems to forget that you are the one who loses the least if the public finds out about you two.

"You always revert to things like I'm the bad guy. I literally mean that I don't care if anyone sees us and you treat me like the villain." And then you think about how long all you wanted to hear from Yoongi was this. You wanted him to be proud of being your boyfriend.

"It's easy for you to believe that you want people to know about us now that the two of us are nothing. Nothing to each other. Nothing but..." You look at him as you're almost crying. It's now or never. Tell him about something that will change our lives.

"Don't say we're nothing. You could never be nothing to me." Yoongi caressed your face gently. It's as if his touch makes the sadness goes away.

"Yoongi, we will never be anything to each other because you and I. You and I..." You are about to speak and morning sickness hits you. You vomit into a trash can near Yoongi’s soundboard.

"You are sick? Maybe it's something you ate..." He says worriedly. You think it's cute that he cares.

"That's what I was talking about. You and I can't be anything to each other anymore. Because I'm going to be a mother and you're going to be a father." You speak delicately trying to be as gentle as possible by saying this.

"Is this some plan of yours?" It's the first thing the man who says he loves you says. You have a feeling he's not going to react well. So you get up heading towards the door, but Yoongi stops you from leaving.

"Before you say something you'll regret, I want to leave. Don't worry, I won't appear in front of you or demand anything." It's painful to think that this is what he wants from you but it probably is.

"You are pregnant?" He asks like someone who needs confirmation bigger to believe.

"Yes, I'm pregnant. I'm going to have a baby. Are you satisfied?" You ask, trying to hold back your emotions and not cry. He looks lost as if he doesn't know how to react. That's when you hear someone trying to enter the studio.

"I'm going to hide you in the bathroom and then ask Namjoon to take you home. But this, between you and me, isn't over." He whispers and you shiver. You nervously let yourself be guided by your ex-boyfriend, knowing that soon you and him will have a baby.

[isabelawritesthings]

Mortal Kombat 1 dialogues with Loki reader

characters included: Liu Kang, Raiden, Johnny Cage and Shang Tsung

notes: The dialogues will be with both the male and female versions of Loki, and since Loki is a canonically gender fluid bisexual character, there will be flirting in both forms.

a/n: Loki and women are my new obsession, maybe I'll do more dialogues with Marvel or even DC characters.

Liu Kang

MALE VERSION –

Liu Kang: You're causing a mess in the timelines!

Reader: What? Is it so wrong to travel through the multiverse?

-

Reader: Are you as powerful as He Who Remains?

Liu Kang: Who is this, Loki Laufeyson?

-

Reader: Do I remind you of a sorcerer?

Liu Kang: Unfortunately, yes.

-

Liu Kang: Make peace with Thor.

Reader: Why? Isn't it enough to live in his shadow all my life?!

-

FEMALE VERSION

Reader: You're quite handsome for a Fire God.

Liu Kang: Focus, Loki (Sylvie).

-

Liu Kang: You need to stop with the time travel!

Reader: Why? Are you afraid I'll break your perfect timeline?

-

Liu Kang: Shang Tsung is seduced by you.

Reader: Tell him I won't be a concubine!

-

Reader: Does Johnny Cage know there is a difference between flirting and sexual harassment?

Liu Kang: I'll talk to him later.

Raiden

MALE READER –

Raiden: Does your brother have lightning powers too?

Reader: Believe me, creating illusions is more impressive!

-

Raiden: Have you allied yourself with the sorcerers?

Reader: Come on, Raiden, you know I'm greedy.

-

Reader: Is your amulet your mjonir?

Raiden: What is a mjonir?

-

Reader: Come back to Fengjian, farmer boy!

Raiden: Not while you're out there causing chaos!

-

FEMALE READER –

Raiden: Is Shang Tsung jealous of me?

Reader: He thinks you're my boyfriend or something like that.

-

Raiden: How many gods are there in Asgard?

Reader: Our pantheon is as numerous as the stars in the sky.

-

Reader: What does Hela want with you?

Raiden: I don't know, but I hope it's nothing bad.

-

Reader: Very handsome for a shaolin

Raiden: This isn't going to... Wait, are you flirting with me?

Johnny Cage

MALE READER –

Johnny: Thor is more badass!

Reader: And why should I listen to the opinion of a mediocre actor like you?!

-

Johnny: That Sylvie has no right to be so hot!

Reader: You know she's technically me, right?

-

Reader: You're a womanizer, right? Have you ever tried something different?

Johnny: Look, I respect people with different tastes, but that's definitely not my case.

-

Reader: I also had problems with my father.

Johnny: This isn't going to make me sympathize with you, superhero movie villain!

-

FEMALE READER –

Johnny: Are you sure Hela is the goddess of death? Because you can kill with this look!

Reader: It's not too hard to see why your wife left you!

-

Johnny: I bet Asgard doesn't have gods as beautiful as me.

Reader: Please, have you seen my brother?

-

Reader: Who is this Madam Bo?

Johnny: You would have to go to Fengjian one day to know, do you like Chinese food?

-

Reader: I think Liu Kang is mad at me.

Johnny: Of course! You and your variants have wreaked havoc on the timelines!

-

Shang Tsung

MALE READER –

Shang Tsung: We could both benefit from an alliance.

Reader: HA! I am a God! I make no alliances with mortals who came from poverty!

-

Shang Tsung: *laughs* shall we start, God of lies?

Reader: As you wish, sorcerer...

-

Reader: I invaded Earth once, it will be easy to dominate Outworld!

Shang Tsung: Good luck facing Liu Kang and Mileena's forces!

-

Reader: You are as evil as I am.

Shang Tsung: Correct statement, Loki.

-

FEMALE READER –

Shang Tsung: Think, Loki (Sylvie)! You could-

Reader: Be your consort? May Odin protect me from this cruel fate!

-

Shang Tsung: Your body, so beautiful I could-

Reader: Ewww... Keep your perverted thoughts to yourself, sorcerer!

-

Reader: What did you see in me?

Shang Tsung: Power, beauty and cunning... Everything I admire in a woman.

-

Reader: You took advantage of Sindel's desperation to manipulate her!

Shang Tsung: *laughs* and the idiot fell right into my plan!

-

[tamaruaart]

Keep in mind this isn't me hating on Kirke, I love that fucked up goddess she's such a fun character. But goddamn I hate her fans.

It's all just people trying to push feminism where it wasn't 🙃 Yes, it's true ancient Greece was kinda shitty towards women. But goddamn that was 3000 years ago. We can enjoy these stories but it's important to not push modern perspectives and view points on these stories while also not condoning these actions. Not to mention we may very well experience this kind of thing with future generations that will come after us so it's important to simply stay humble. Civilizations and humans are constantly evolving and viewpoints are constantly changing so it's not exactly fair to history nor ourselves to take these ancient ideologies to heart. Grow up.

Anyways Circe/Kirke is not your hot little witch cutie 🥰 She's a goddess and the daughter of the Sun Titan. She's done terrible things and that's what makes her iconic. Istg if she wasn't so infamous no one would even know about her. She's morally gray and that's what makes her so neat >:D Now, is it unforgivable to paint jer in a good light? No, but I think if you remove ALL of her questionable morality she losses her charms. She isn't the same Kirke anymore. (Looking at you MM, your writing is good but holy shit.)

It's not unforgivable, but it's simply incorrect. If anyone wants to learn more about Kirke's original/actual character, I don't really recommend most modern interpretations- (MM's novel, Hades 2, DC, Odyssey Movies, my bbg Epic the Musical etc...) I'd say just read the Odyssey, reasurch some older mythos and read the Argonautica.

Can you still like these interpretations of Kirke? Yes. Of course. I love Epic's Kirke even though she is pretty inaccurate. You just have to acknowledge they aren't the real thing! :D That happeneds with most characters ngl, no adaptation nor interpretation is going to be 100% accurate to the original, but with Kirke it's always so... Apparent? So visible. They never make her at LEAST 50% accurate. Which 🤬

She was not a victim, she wasn't incredibly horny, she wasn't a girlboss, she wasn't love sick for Odysseus (it's hinted she only found him to be an 'interesting mortal' of sorts) she wasn't 100% cartoon villain of the week either. She's MORALLY GRAY 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️

She holds Odysseus' men hostage, she turns Scylla into a monster out of jealousy, she turns a man into a woodpecker because he didn't want to sleep with her. But she ALSO helps out Medea and Jason (even though it's because Medea was her neice but STILL) and she gives Odysseus instructions on how to head home.

She does BAD things that shouldn't be forgiven and aren't at all justified, but she also does GOOD things that should be acknowledged. She's a goddess. She's a character. She's morally gray. WHAT THE FUCK IS NOT CLICKING???? 😀

I just don't like modern interpretations of Kirke and I'm a meanie so I made this ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

That's why I stick to my 3000 year old books instead of these puny ones that were written in my century 💪💪💪

Do not apply feministic messages or themes on Kirke. Nor any Greek mythology figure for that matter. This was 3000 years ago 😀 if you want to focus on feminism FOCUS ON WOMEN WHO ACTUALLY HAD TO STRUGGLE ABOUT THESE THINGS AND THAT EXISTED IN THE 19-21 CENTURY 😀😀😀😀 WHEN PEOPLE KNEW OR WELL WERE SUPPOSED TO KNOW FUCKING BETTER. OR JUST FOCUS ON MODERN FEMALE STRUGGLES THAT ARE RELATABLE??

Also, if I haven't already made it clear. LIKING A CHARACTER ≠ CONDONING THEIR ACTIONS. I'm just talking about all the people who either call her a girlboss, hate on other figures for being morally questionable but turn a blind eye when it comes to Kirke, and people who make fun of Odysseus and call him a man whore for sleeping with Circe and Calypso. (Despite the fact he's a literal victim)

And for the last time:

👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 NOT👏 A 👏KIRKE 👏 THE GODDESS 👏 HATE 👏 POST. 👏 THIS 👏 IS 👏 ME 👏 SLANDERING 👏 SOME 👏 OF 👏 HER👏 FANS 👏 AND👏 MOST 👏MODERN 👏INTERPETATIONS👏 OF 👏THAT 👏TWISTED 👏MORALLY 👏GRAY👏 BITCH.

Also I made a typo in the meme. God damn it dyslexia. (It's should be 'transforming' not 'transformed')

[dismissivedestroyer]

Hi! So I want to make a Spooky Month OC but I suck at drawing, do you have any tips or advices about drawing characters in the Spooky Month artstyle?

Okay so, I might not be the right person for this, cause I also am not all that great at drawing in the Spooky Month artstyle, but I did some character design at school so I might be able to give a few tips! Please do take everything I say with a grain of salt tho!

Spooky Month's strong suit is definitely character design. It's SO expressive and well done it's genuinely unreal. You might want to know exactly what your character is gonna be doing, or how their personality is gonna be like, because character design in Spooky Month cares a lot about things like these. For example: Radford works at a cinema, so of course he's wearing 3D glasses, but also his HAIR IS LITERALLY SHAPED LIKE A POPCORN.

So maybe decide on a job for your character, and try to start from there, get crazy with shapes and have fun! Spooky Month characters have designs that are both extremely simple to draw, since they use mostly basic shapes, but also are extremely thought out and meaningful. Another example of great character design is Pump

Now, I have no idea if you already had an OC in mind, but make sure to choose the right shapes to represent it. Something I see around in the fandom is people making these OCs that are like, serial killers and dangerous people and stuff, but then give them the "Lila"-like oval head. And honestly, nothing wrong with that, that's a choice you can use! But still, shapes allow us to understand a lot about how a character is just by looking at them. So you might want to experiment around a bit!

Ovals in Spooky Month are the "good" shape, let's just say. Most character with an oval head are sweet, helpful, kind-natured! It's often paired with oval eyes, so it's mostly a shape that's used for not villainous characters.

Circles are a bit more complicated, because Spooky Month subvertes the Circle Characters. While yes, they're also used to draw children, such as Skid and Pump, so they may come off as unthreatening at first, most main villains, such as Eyes, Bob and Dexter Doll (which is meant to represent the likes of a child, so that's a nice contrast), are mostly circle-shaped.

There's a very wide range of Square characters in Spooky Month. Square characters are usually bulky, big and strong. They often come off as threatening (such as Moloch), but there are so many other fun things you can do with them. Like, take Frank. EVERYTHING in his design should alarm us, him being square-shaped, the black eyes, the wide smile. Yet, he has a shape of the eyes that's very relaxed and chill, so we end up trusting him. As for Dexter, he's a mix of circles and squares, so we can't really understand his intentions right away, because he's shaped in the most confusing way possible. He's just made to be unsettling and leaving us to wonder if he's a bad guy or just an oddball.

You can do SO MANY fun things by mixing up shapes of faces and eyes it's INSANE. Also, you can mix up other characters' features to create a new one, if you're planning to do a fankid or stuff like that. Look at Ross, he's literally a mixture of all his parents' features!

My main tips for drawing in the Spooky Month artstyle are mostly

1) Play around with shapes. Be as cartoony as possible.

2) Try to be consistent with proportions, because, based on personal experience, if you draw the pupils of the eyes slightly off it changes the whole character's expression drastically

3) don't worry too much about details, Spooky Month has a very simple artstyle. You don't have to draw a perfectly anatomically correct hand, just whip up some cartoony three-to-four fingers and you're good to go

4) try to redraw some pre-existing screenshots from the serie to get familiarity with the way Pelo draws expressions. It helps a bunch.

So yeah, that's all! Good luck with your oc :)

[coffeegnomee]

i'd love to hear your thoughts on zam's new dilemma about wanting to use the rollback exploit to revive/help people if you have the time ^_^

Buckle up it's time to talk morality on lifesteal.

ZAM: “But like. If there was a way to theoretically use this for the good of the server, for, you know, something that is upholdedly, no matter what, undeniably, objectively just, right, something objectively righteous, then, i would have no problems with this i feel like.”

This debate over using an exploit to revive players is so interesting to me because, of course, zam takes it as being so tied up with morality. 

We as humans are intrinsically obsessed with morality. Every story revolves around it: heroes vs villains, or anti-heroes and morally grey characters. Everything returns to morality. 

Because in the real world, morality is of vital importance. It is literally life and death. What is good uplifts and allows us to live freely and love deeply. What is evil tears us apart. It ends in death. 

If you look at laws, everything revolves around morality. This is illegal bc it hurts this person, that is illegal bc it hurts that, etc etc. 

So of course in stories everything goes back to morality. It is the way we try out and learn and think about what is good and what is evil. The characters do good and do evil, they have to work through the consequences and learn from them, allowing us a free insight into what we might do ourselves in such a situation, or what we learn we must never do. 

So lifesteal is a story. A story that is populated by real world people, so everything ends up going back to real world morality. 

But it’s not the real world. It is minecraft. And that makes ALL the difference. 

Take murder for example. Murder is an objective evil. Why? In the real world it is the removal of another from this world, irrevocably. They are gone, no do overs, no second chances, gone. Gone because someone else took them away. And that’s evil because you matter. Every person. Nobody should decide if you die before your time.

That’s not what murder is on lifesteal. You JUST steal one permanent heart. The person can still come back, they can still exist in the realm. They can even get the heart back.

So what is analogous to murder? A death ban? 

It’s getting closer. But the revive beacon is an in-server tool to remove even the effects of a death ban. You can get a do over, a second chance. Even death is not permanent.

So murder isn’t the same, which is why we can love how much murder happens on the server, it’s not real, it’s all a game.

So from one perspective, murder on lifesteal is impossible to be an intrinsic evil. 

AND YET, it IS death and killing and in the real world that has weight and so the actions of the characters can be debated on moral lines both within themselves and between each other.  

What this gets to is the exploit. Finally. 

Because we have gotten to a point on lifesteal where some players don’t care about death bans. They don't want to play so instead of quitting silently they go out in a blaze of glory or whimsy. 

The analogous thing here, perhaps, could be like leaving your friend group when you go to college. 

Now, would it be an evil if you dragged your friend back from college and forced them to be around you and would not let them live their life? Yes. Because love is about free will. The freedom to choose to be with a person or not. You cannot love if you don’t have freedom. And love is an objective good. 

Reviving someone on lifesteal is not perfectly analogous to that because they aren’t dragging someone back on with the revive beacon. 

But the extent that we try and force others to play would be getting closer to being evil. You have to allow them to simply not play. Convincing isn’t an evil, it’s a suggestion, a request, letting the other know you want to be around them and enjoy their company. But force would be bad. 

So on one hand you have the potential “analogous to the real world” evil of preventing someone from playing with a death ban. That evil can be objected by the members of the server: in this case it would be a moral good to revive players. 

And on the other you have the moral good of free choice to play or not, and if someone decides to ban themselves that is not objectively evil. Bc they chose it. It would be morally neutral to revive them, and evil to force them back on or smth. 

And then you have this exploit. 

An exploit would be analogous to the real world as breaking a law. And if law breaking is a moral evil bc the laws are set for the moral good of the people (given that the law IS actually for the good of the people. Like, i’m not debating real life laws rn just giving the concept of above that it is logical for society to create laws for our good), then exploits are a moral evil. 

BUT this is lifesteal. As a content creator platform, any action taken for the good of content and for the good of the server wide story is ALWAYS a moral good. You are always morally good if you seek to keep the sever going through conflict and content bc it is for the benefit and uplifting of the other members. So an exploit for content is a moral good. 

Another set of two hands. 

Smash it together and you have Zam using an exploit to bring back members who wanted to be banned. 

This is suddenly analogous to like, breaking into prison to free a friend. By their own actions they landed there and they will get out given enough time served. Give them time and they will return. 

But breaking them out is to go around the perfectly legal system that is in place and will get them back eventually.

Bc using a legit revive beacon is perfectly legal, perfectly morally good. 

But using an illegal revive beacon IS breaking a law. And that is morally evil. Or is it good? Is it for the good of the server? Or is it breaking a morally just law?

Can that ever be justified? 

Can you be morally good when you break a law even when you know the affect you want won't even bring back the people you're trying to rescue? Can you involve yourself with someone who doesn't care about real world morality, only content creator morality and still come out morally good? Can you live with yourself knowing Spoke will mess up the server with this and your own justifications for your involvement might not matter at all bc the members you revive will never log back on?

Who the hell knows!

And THAT is why this arc is so fascinating. Because That is the POINT of the debate of morality. That is the POINT of story. That is the POINT of watching PrinceZam.

He brings the real world morality in AND the content creator morality into every one of his arcs.

And he will have internal struggles at every step of the way, particularly with this arc BECAUSE it folds up both sides of the debate.

His characters always are concerned with the real world morality and either align good, evil, or grey. But he himself will always have a separate debate about the content creator morality and wonder if this is this "good for the server" content or is this "bad for the server" content. And then the answer gets folded back up within his character.

While Mapicc, who I want to talk about after reading this back, Mapicc gets away with murder because for him real world morality doesn't matter at all; this is minecraft, no real world morals can affect me. Admin commands, exploits, murder. all are perfectly fair game.

What does matter to Mapicc is content creator morality. You are morally good or evil in his eyes to the extent that you are doing things that lead to interesting, fun, challenging, or otherwise good, content. You are evil to the extent that you are boring, use overwhelming power, or just don't have respect for the other people on the server.

And that just barely scratches the nuance of morality and decision making on lifesteal and how each member looks at it differently.

[psi-spectacular]

I don't like hazbin hotel (shocker)

A lot of the problems come down to three things: 1. Viv's issue with being unable to let a concept go, 2. Her inability to maintain a consistent tone, and 3. The fact that it only has eight episodes. Look at helluva boss for example. So many villains get cliffhangers that say "oooOoOoOo I'm gonna reappear in another episode, just you wait!!" And they either just don't or the execution is completely flubbed stryker-style. And what is the show supposed to be? Is it a slice of life comedy about imps killing people on the surface? That concept was basically abandoned like five episodes in. A serialized drama about a complex relationship? Nope! the exploration of Blitz and Stolas's toxic relationship is returned to status quo for gag comedy. OOP! We've got two new characters to center the episodes around while abandoning the core cast!

Now look at Hazbin. I really liked the pilots concept! The idea of sinners being redeemed was interesting, the animation was nice, the characters were compelling, and I was really interested to see how they would develop over time and become better people! Then episode one of the new season comes out. Suddenly its about how heaven sucks actually (Off topic but can we talk about how in the opening exposition, Charlie talks about how angels kill demons to keep them from rising against them, and then in the meeting with Adam talks about overpopulation? What's up with that?) and quickly turns into a war against heaven plot.

You know the main concept of the show? Redemption of sinners? Yeah. I can count how many episodes are about that on a couple fingers. And count how many characters are actually there for redemption on two. And there are so many side characters they like to focus on rather than, I don't know, Focus on Charlie?

Thats another problem! Charlie barely has a focus. You'd think, as the main character, she'd get some sort of development, or some kind of arc, or at least more of a personality than "sunshine princess with big dreams". I don't use this word very often or very lightly, but shes very much mary-sue ish. Her obvious issues (IE seemingly weirdly fundamentalist christian ideas on redemption, constant overstepping of boundaries, the fact that she barely seems to put anything into her relationship with Vaggie while Vaggie falls over herself to make sure Charlie's happy, Very visible savior complex) are never discussed or adressed, and the fact that her hotel is based on an idea that doesn't have any evidence of actually even being possible is only ever addressed by antagonists who are supposed to be in the wrong. She doesn't change, she doesn't do much, but still manages to get everyone to sacrifice themselves for a hotel they're supposed to be super attached to. But we're never shown WHY they care.

And don't get me started on the side characters. The V's are only important in 1-2 episodes and never again, Carmilla exists as a plot device, Lucifer's... Lucifer, Adam is a one-note sexist strawman, and they just... Keep introducing characters. Pentious, Cherry, Mimsy, Cannibal town! You care about these characters! You must you must you must!!!! What do you mean you don't know who these characters are? Of course you do! They were in the plot important pilot that you have to get on youtube to watch!

These characters could have been explored so much better if there was more time in the show. Yes, thats the fault of Amazon, but when you're working with constraints, you need to learn how to work within these constraints. Keeping the "Heaven bad, hell good" thing for the second season while leaving the first season to focus on character development would have made the final battle so much more impactful. It's like an anti steven universe. People complain about how much filler steven universe has, but without that "filler" we wouldn't care about the characters as much as we do. Hazbin hotel, on the other hand, is like watching all the "intense, plot important" episodes without any context of who these characters are and why we should care about them.

At some point, when you're working in the industry, you need to learn that you need to trim the fat. Get rid of certain characters and plot points. Kill some characters off if you need. Wait to introduce a concept. If you can only work with a short amount of episodes, focus on making a good story with well developed characters first and a grand finale later. If you can wait, Wait. If you can't, don't. I know there's a second season but I genuinely don't know how it can go from here. Adam's dead, a sinner is redeemed, the hotel was rebuilt bigger and better than ever... what now?

TL;DR Hazbin Hotel reminds me of me and my friends old edgy gods and goddesses discord roleplay from when I was 13 than an actual planned story.

Sorry for the essay. Its honestly painful seeing something I looked forward too for years flop so hard on the execution. I love the concept, the songs, the animation is.... okay, Angel dust is best boy, but everything else is just eh. Mid. It tries to be so grandiose but I just felt bored and very confused throughout the whole thing, and very uncomfortable during episode 4. Its not offensively bad (hell, its barely even as offensive as people say it is) But its just. Not good in my opinion.

[writing-for-life]

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

[tyrantisterror]

My Personal History with My Good Friend, Satan

My first encounter with The Devil - that I can remember, at least - came when I was about three or so. My mom liked to borrow VHS tapes from libraries to show me and my siblings a lot, and one of the libraries she used was the one at our church. It was a small and obviously very religion-centric collection, but it left a notable mark on me - like, that's where I saw this weird, kinda shitty cartoon version of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe which might be responsible for irreconcilably fucking up my taste in women? I just have this distinct memory of watching the scene where Edmund is tempted by the White Witch and thinking, "Yeah, he's making the right call." If anything I was frustrated that he hesitated - three year old me was already simping for this woman. Just imagine a child channeling Ernie Hudson in Ghostbusters and growling, "When a terrifying and beautiful woman offers you candy and a private sleigh ride, you say YES!" and that's basically me as a kid.

Where was I? Right, Satan. So, the other video from that library I remember was this cartoon retelling of Bible stories, and really I just remember the Adam and Eve part. The temptation scene had this huge, super gnarly-looking demonic red snake in it, and he was so cool and badass and I was already predisposed to like snakes anyway, so of course he was my instant favorite. But, like almost all media featuring reptiles that captured my little child heart, he turned out to be the bad guy - literally The Devil, in this case - and was punished at the end of the story. And that pissed me off.

Sometime shortly thereafter - or at least that's how I remember it, this was over thirty years ago so things might be smushed closer together than they really were by the fog of ages - some of the kids in my preschool chastised me for liking snakes. "Don't you know the devil is a snake? Snakes are evil!" I remembered the movie, and it made me angry.

Because snakes aren't evil, and as a kid I knew that because my parents taught me it. Snakes were just animals, they don't know right from wrong, and to call them evil it to judge them for what they are, not what they do. That experience taught me a very important lesson: The Devil is a tool to make people hate the innocent. And as I'd later learn, snakes were far from the only innocents people would vilify because of a demonic association.

The second time I met the devil came a few years later, when I was six or seven or so. My Grampa and Grams liked to take us up North to Mackinac City and the Upper Peninsula each summer, and I have a lot of fond memories of those trips, but there was one in particular that's relevant to this discussion. We saw a sign for a "laser light show" in the shopping district, and I got to stay up late to see it with my family. The show in question was basically a cartoon projected into the night sky adapting the song The Devil Went Down to Georgia. It was super primitive and hokey and cornball and terrible and I loved every second of it. I was enchanted, absolutely delighted with the spectacle and the silly song where the devil was less a force of evil and more a comically bumbling inept supervillain - one of my favorite archetypes, even back then. So that's the second lesson about the devil I learned: The Devil can be fun sometimes.

Now, Godzilla, one of the few reptile characters I encountered as a kid who didn't end up a villain (at least not in the first movie of his I saw, Godzilla vs. Megalon), had already set me on the path to loving monsters of all stripes and, by extension, horror fiction in general, so as I grew up I had many more encounters with the devil. But while I warmed up quickly to most monster archetypes, like vampires, zombies, werewolves, etc., I always felt dismissive of demons. It kind of coincided with me becoming disillusioned with Christianity as a whole, in fact. A story about fighting evil, Christian-style demons is ultimately an allegory for fighting evil as defined by Christianity, and Christianity's definition of what evil is, well, sucks. It's bad! They got some things right, but some things horribly wrong. The devil is the tool Christianity uses to make you hate the innocent, and I struggled to enjoy a lot of demon stories because of that. Still do with some, in fact.

There were exceptions, of course - I loved The Evil Dead series as soon as I saw it at too-early-of-an-age, but then, the demons in it aren't super Christian. They aren't repelled by holy water or crucifixes or prayer, and in fact God and Jesus barely get mentioned in the series and never come up as a potential solution. They're kind of secular as demons go, and maybe that made them easier to stomach. But overall, demons ranked pretty low in the hierarchy of monsters to me - they were too tainted by the religion that spawned them for me to enjoy.

Until college, anyway. I quietly renounced my faith during my Freshmen year, and then, as if seeking one last chance at redemption in my eyes, the devil came to me again the following year. That's when I had a class on Medieval literature, and was exposed to far older devil stories than I had ever seen before. And Medieval devils kick ass. They have so much more personality and variety than I had come to expect, and some are downright affable, even sympathetic to a degree. It was one of many moments in college when I realized there was much more to a topic I'd previously written off as boring and trite.

This is when I read Dante's The Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost and Marlowe's Faust and Ben Johnson's The Devil Is An Ass. It's when I read early Gothic Horror novels like Matthew Gregory Lewis's The Monk, and dived into The Twilight Zone, which has more than a few episodes that are updates of medieval-style devil folktales in a more modern (i.e. 1960's) setting. And so many of these works presented the Devil not as a stand-in for everything Christianity hates, but as a person - a deeply flawed person, yes, but a person with actual wants and feelings and thoughts of his own, a person who was interesting and compelling - and sometimes funny, and sometimes charming, and sometimes really sad. There was, dare I say... sympathy for the devil growing in my heart.

In the last year of my undergraduate studies, I attended my college's yearly Medieval Studies Congress, where people from all over the world came to Kalamazoo just to share their research papers on medieval history and literature. One girl's thesis paper was on the subject of "rueful devils," i.e. depictions of demons in literature where they wanted to repent their sins and redeem themselves, which uniformly ended with the devils' hopes being dashed as they could not fully repent. This idea... possessed me. The idea that the devil could repent, or at least try to - that there could be hope even in the most debauched sinner. It was such a good narrative trope in my eyes - why did it die out centuries ago?

Well, because the church didn't like it, you see. If the devil can repent - if the Absolute King of Evil can choose to become a good person - then he's not very useful as a tool to make people hate the innocent anymore. The devil MUST be "pure evil" to work as intended. A rueful devil, a repentant devil, a devil that can be redeemed, forces us to be more forgiving and kind. It forces us to be better. It prevents us from hating people because an old book says so. And some people just couldn't have that, and so the trope died.

...

After I got my bachelor's degree, I entered the job market and, after applying to fifty different places or so, was finally hired as a high school english teacher about two weeks before the school year started. Said school year was the worst year of my life. Like, I've had extreme self loathing issues and suicidal ideation since, like, sixth grade, but holy shit it was NEVER as bad as it was in that nine month stretch between 2012 and 2013. There was this bridge I had to cross on the way to work each morning, and about two months in the job was so stressful that part of my morning routine was thinking, "You know, if I just swerve to the right, this can all be over and I'll never have to worry again." About halfway in I began drastically losing weight despite not changing my diet or getting more exercise and it was so traumatic that to this day whenever my weight starts to drop my initial reaction is dread rather than excitement. I impulse bought the first two Kung-Fu Panda movies and, after watching each for the first time and crying hideously, proceeded to watch them on repeat for an entire weekend while sobbing myself hoarse for reasons I couldn't comprehend at the time.

I was in Hell. And the devil met me there.

I started writing a story during that year. I didn't get very far, just a couple chapters, but it was one of the few things that gave me a sense of accomplishment. Despite all the stress and sadness and misery, I made something. It was a story about demons, and Hell, and trying to make your life better even when the world around you seems deadset on making you suffer as much as possible.

When my bosses called me into their office at the end of that year and told me that I had to quit my job so the assistant principal could take my teaching position and survive the downsizing they'd get next year, and that if I didn't quit they'd give me the lowest teacher evaluation they could and make it supremely difficult for me to get hired elsewhere... I was relieved. I'd been let out of Hell. After a handful of months left to finish out the year, I was free.

And then I went home, with nothing. No job, no desire to pursue the career for which I'd spent five years and an ungodly amount of money getting a degree to pursue, no nest egg, nothing. Nothing except a few chapters of a book.

The years that followed were hard. I did a lot of temp work, it took me a very long time to find something that worked for me. I may have left the worst year of my life, but there was still a lot of misery waiting for me. And through it all, I felt the need to accomplish... something, ANYTHING. I had to make something to prove I had a reason to exist, even if it was something that only had value to me.

With three years of work, those chapters became my first novel, No Sympathies: A Tale of Those Who Trespass Against Us. It was about the devil, and Hell, and finding salvation even when things seem inescapably bleak. It was my first novel, and now, eight years later, it's the first of five.

The devil saved my life. He saw me at my lowest, lifted me up, whispered, "It'll be ok. You have to keep going. I'll be with you, but you have to keep going," and goddammit, he kept me from swerving right.

That's when I learned the greatest truth about the devil, at least to me. The devil is a tool to make people hate the innocent, yes, this is true, but because of that, the devil can be a savior for the broken, the beaten, and the damned. You can feel like you're worthless, wretched, and doomed. But if the devil can rise from Hell, if the devil can choose to change, if people are willing to pray for the one sinner who needs it most - then there's hope for you too, isn't there?

Demons are creatures of rebellion - against God, against nature, against the powers that be, against doom and damnation itself. They were made to be a tool to hurt the innocent, but that's not what they have to be. Devils can lift us up, because no matter how far you fall, no one can say whether it's the end for you except you.

...I would like to point out that I am being figurative here. The devil does not literally exist, at least not in my view of things. He's a fictional character, nothing more. But he's a prolific fictional character, and how we portray him can say so much about us. And, to me, he is a dear friend, despite being imaginary, because the devil was there for me when I was low, and it was on his wings that I rose from doom.

...again, figuratively, not literally.

[doink-boink]

I fully think that Zach does what he does because he is a VERY LONELY MAN. He makes robots to do his bidding (keep him company), he acts like he hates dealing with people but leaps at the opportunity to work with the other villains. He's also a genius whose ideas have been scorned since he was little, probably incredibly isolating for a guy who could have taken his ideas and used them in a good way if he was encouraged to do so. Major gifted kid to burned out adult vibes. I just feel like he has a lot of potential......

-Martincrushcameback

Yes!! Regarding leaping at the opportunity to work with the other villains, you can really see that in The Mystery of the Weird Looking Walrus!!

(More under the cut because I ramble for a good while)

He desperately wants Donita's approval as well as her friendship - of course that blows up in his face, not only because he didn't get her the pearl, but also because yknow. He's a big ol liar lol. I haven't watched the episode with it, (as I'm not on season 6) but you can see this when he compliments the Amphi-Trek XT!!

Zach stops himself short as he's about to compliment an invention that Aviva made because he wants approval from Paisley!

I want to explore this more in my fic, especially regarding WHY he and Aviva aren't close. They went science camp together, yes, but the show drops little details between them that implies that they might have actually been friends. Or at least, that's how I interpreted it!

In my AU I think that they were good pals up until Highschool, but Zach's decision to work with animals is what ends that friendship. He had no regard for their feelings and health, using them for his own gain. (Additionally, he starts to use animals/pursue that as concept as AVIVA began working in that field!! He wanted to connect with her, but ended up driving them apart.)

In typical Zach fashion, he refuses to stop what he's doing because it's getting him attention from others, maybe even the school itself, giving him the praise that he needs. His own ego ruins everything!! As it does in the show! Furthering "because it's giving him the praise that he needs" thing, I feel as though he isn't close WHATSOEVER with his parents.

At least, not in the typical fashion. AU wise, I think that Zach has a strained relationship with his father, but was very close to his mother! Want to make it a Moral Orel type deal with Clay's backstory where something happens and his mom is out of the picture, leaving him with his dad. Maybe this happens before he begins to use animals for his bidding? It would make sense! He wants some sort of attention that he isn't getting at home, some sort of acknowledgement that he's doing something good!

Aaaa!! There's so many things to explore with Zach as a character!! He's so fun man. And so very tragic at the same time lol

Also would like to bring attention to his CLEAR want to express his self worth!! I feel like he "looks up to Aviva" in his own weird little way in canon. Of course he is actively 'tearing her down' here, but you can tell that he KNOWS what she's capable of and wants the other villains (that's the context here, I believe it's Paisley's introduction to them) to believe that he's capable.

Even after this it's really clear to see that regardless of how he feels about her, he LIKES Aviva's inventions enough to steal them time and time again!

Dude. Dude just go work with her man it's for your own good... Wink wink nudge nudge I toooootallly won't do this in Somethings Never Change nooooooo

But genuinely, he would have so much to gain from WORKING WITH AVIVA. He wants her companionship so bad man.

Sorry this post got so unbelievably LONG lol, I've got a lot on my mind about these guys. Also apologies that I went on my own little sub tangent about my fic, hope it was okay!!

[justanotherhh]

something i haven't seen much of so far is analysis of charlie's journey from the perspective of someone who also needs to change how she engages with others (vaggie too, but that feels more obvious as she's an ex-angel/exorcist and a sinner)

when charlie tries to help angel by confronting valentino it's been built to in the other episodes, because it's made very clear that she doesn't respect sex work -- she's got that "we need to save them from themselves" type attitude you see a lot with people who haven't done critical analysis into their own biases from a position of mildly-to-severe privileged disgust and haven't engaged with the perspectives of sex workers as people who can frame and understand their own experiences (whatever work they engage in and why they do sex work to begin with). same for her opinions on addiction

the scene where angel has to do a reenactment with sir pentious frames addiction as

something to be judged

something pitiable

something predatory

which isn't exactly a great way to bring angel onboard with the programme/make him feel less like shit. meanwhile the anti-sex + weirdly heteronormative attitude is also present in that scene by having sir pentious dress up as a virginal young girl in an anime-type school uniform with a big lollipop (the irony of this being practically indistinguishable from a porn setup feels very intentional), who declares that "she" won't be having sex before marriage as the great crescendo (sidenote, monogamy in the afterlife sounds.... like a long time to be monogamous......... yzma voice: "why do we even have marriage??")

angel, up until his duet with husk, is having it made clear again and again that the people seemingly helping him find the essence of his being inherently gross. he likes sex -- yeah there's the performance/face he has to wear to get through the day, but i think the bdsm club was a sincere suggestion and vaggie literally calls it disgusting/shoots it down without thinking about how to do so respectfully (again, she's an ex-angel/exorcist, she has biases of her own to contend with, but also the implications that nobody in heaven is having fun sex or negotiated kink and bdsm... tragic. do they even have a sex club called consent up there?)

charlie is a fairly conservative person at the beginning of the story. yes, she wants to help, but her framing of what "help" looks like doesn't take into account her own biases; presumably she grew up with the idea that "sinners are bad people" as much as anyone else did, if not more considering lucifer gave up on the sinners and that's been her environment from birth -- cut off from the people she's supposedly in charge of, but "hearing stories." (in both the pilot and happy day in hell she clearly has a fondness for the sinners, but it's as an outsider, someone who does not relate to them, and generally there's that overtone of "royalty doesn't know shit about what anyone is going through" which, charlie being a ruler, i wonder if that will be a focal point or just something to accept, it's not a dealbreaker for me, just something i noticed, esp as helluva boss has poked on power dynamics in hell along those same lines). the yearly murdering of demons is, likewise, something that is simply status quo and so even getting to a place of "hey maybe we shouldn't do that" is big and was inevitably going to create more cracks in the logic of black-and-white heaven-or-hell, so it's cool that that's where we the audience get to first meet her -- right as those threads are about to start unravelling

but at the very beginning, in some ways she echoes elements of characters like adam and lute (who are of course far more in-your-face, being villains) in her original assessment of what makes someone "a bad person" -- it causes her to create a system that doesn't actually work, and then of course the hotel is destroyed, but next time they'll build it to be better! (metaphor *jazz hands*)

why is angel in hell, is the question later asked. is it because he was/is an addict? because he drinks? because he does sex work? because he likes sex? (it may be because he's killed people/was in the mafia, but we don't have all the context yet, for now those are the things people know in the story itself) at the beginning charlie isn't asking the right questions, questions that would need her to go into herself and challenge her own biases, but throughout season 1 she goes from merely proclaiming that "everyone" can be saved, to sincerely challenging the idea of "needing to be saved" from things that shouldn't be judged in the first place. "if angels can do whatever and remain in the sky." yeah, how are we stipulating what's allowed and what isn't hmmmmmm? stay tuned for s2

(and youknow, apologises to angel for overstepping his boundaries, so it's not like angel doesn't know that she does care for him, ep4 gives a lot of development for their relationship as well -- it's the tipping point for a lot of what comes next)

interested to see how that challenging will continue in s2. she's gone from "we have to make you into a good person by cutting out things that make me (and others) uncomfortable from a conservative/purity-based judgemental framework" to "why do we have these systems of judgement in the first place?"

tl;dr angel changed a looot in s1 but so did charlie. she understands better now that the work she's doing is going to look very different from what she'd first anticipated, and poking at her own biases in relation to angel helped that journey and brought her closer to actually understanding and relating to the people around her

(there's another element here about charlie and vaggie as queer women in this particular universe, but it's a slight tangent so... different post)