#anyway he's been blorbofyed

[peroriin]

ok lord licorice serve

[avatorofthelonely]

re: “Martin. I’m too tired to explain this in detail. But it has less to do with how he is in canon and more of the fandom’s failure to acknowledge or even see some of Martin’s more toxic behavior.”

can you explain this a little more? i think you’re right, martin’s been a little blorbofied too much because a lot of people identify with him very heavily and are unwilling to recognize his faults, but i’d be interested in your thoughts

Me: I don’t feel like explaining this.

Anons: so 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️ do it anyway 🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

I jest, but I’m gonna preface this with a few things:

1) as it pertains to what I’m about to say about Martin, I don’t think he’s the most toxic character nor is this anti Martin or Martin hate. I’m simply exploring some of his less saviory aspects.

2) I do not hate or even dislike jonmartin, dare I say, I even enjoy it from time to time. No relationship is perfect and it is important to identify toxic behaviors in relationships in media.

3) to the second anon, we’re clearly never gonna agree on my love, Georgina Barker, I’ve already stated why I like her narratively and don’t feel like repeating myself.

Okay, on to Martin.

Simply put, he’s canonically pretty manipulative (including manipulative towards Jon). He even calls out himself to himself for manipulating himself when he went into the lonely during the eyepocalypse.

Annabelle fucking Cane, the person literally manipulating the whole of the plot, all but calls him manipulative and considered him for an avatar of the web in mag 196:

Also as it pertains to JonMartin, Jon does exhibit his own somewhat toxic behaviors but I’m just focusing on Martin for this post.

Martin does somewhat gaslight Jon at times. Notably the “I know I asked you to go on a smiting spree but you’re the one who’s wrong for doing it.” He also looks to Jon so many times to pas his ego and self esteem and frankly — it’s just not healthy to be a therapist to your s/o in this way.

I also understand why Martin isn’t comfortable with Jon’s statements or certain aspects of his power but Jon goes out of his way to help Martin with aspects of being attached to the lonely and I just think to some extent it’s not reciprocated on Martin’s part.

There’s a few more things I could say but I’m honestly worried the hardcore Martin/JonMartin stans are already gonna come for me on this one.

[beansterpie]

16,17,13 (:

Thank you for the ask Maple!! <3

13. worst blorboficiation

Oh ooohhhhh ok lemme think. This is slightly trickier than 'worst mischaracterization' because blorbofication implies that the people mischaracterizing the character also loves said character, so I'd say Griffith is out. Though with him I guess I can say I really don't like yandere Griffith. I know the second duel he gets pretty yandere-y, but I still maintain that that was a very specific situation in which he was desperate and panicked and not behaving as he usually would. Otherwise he's shown to be remarkably chill and non-posessive imo.

BUT anyway. I think right now I'm gonna have to go with Hiruma lmfaooo. Man the way some people blorbofy him.... his unhinged demonic side gets softened to cute mischeviousness, and they'll depict him getting cute and blushy when feelings come up....? That motherfucker is shameless, I don't think you could embarrass him in you TRIED.

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Mmmmmmm.... soulmate AU's. There's a ton of fic tropes that I could put here but I'm putting soulmate AU's because they're everywhere and I just don't understand why people like them. I guess I've read a few in the past where the soulmark or whatever actively makes things more complicated (a ship like LawLight would make this juicy, depending on how it's written, or for example if one side of the ship is already married or something), but usually it's like... two characters who are already friends turn out to be soulmates, one sees that the other shares their mark, but for some contrived ass reason doesn't say anything and just uselessly pines until of course the secret comes out and it ends with happily ever after. It's just not my thing lol.

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

f-feelings realizations.... this is more for fic but I'm SUCH a sucker for feelings realizations... As in, both sides of a ship don't even know that the reason they're so hung up on the other is because they're in love, and the realization slowly (or abruptly) dawning on them, and how they handle that realization. To throw in a tricky caveat, I'm actually largely not a fan of the '...oh' moment that's been meme-fied in fandom, because I think it's a bit... boring? What I want is a unique emotional journey for each character, not the same shy reaction every time. The italicized 'oh' always feels silly and cheap to me lol.

[choose violence]

[lunaryuwu]

11 13 17

11. number of fandom-related words you've filtered

Just one actually(it’s squipemey dhbdgsjakbak) didn’t block harry potter/jkr because i’m not sure how the filter works and sometimes i just want to read those posts talking about why harry potter is not that good and updates on whatever jkr did this time. I don’t interact with hp posts a lot so it doesn’t really affect me and i don’t really care if a pro hp post makes it onto my dash. It’s not really my business anyways, people like what they like so i don’t have much to say about that. I don’t think i need to explain squipemy or whatever the hell the ship is called. I should really get on to putting the variations of that ship but so far it’s been working so i think it’s fine(plus i don’t know what it’s called. Is it like. Technical difficulties? Yeah i think that’s the one. Maybe i’ll at the very least add like squip x jeremy)

13. worst blorboficiation

I feel like i have to say jeremy as much as the other characters have been blorbofied to extremes that i do not like, i think i have the most to say about jer cuz like. he isn’t the innocent baby boy anxious teenager uwu character?? He has done stuff wrong and he would be painfully aware of it and will be haunted by his mistakes BECAUSE MISTAKES ARE WHAT HE MADE. It’s not just “i was anxious and i wanted to get christine to like me” there’s like. underlying insecurities?? Loser geek whatever?? There are deeper reasons?? And michael, as nice as he would be would not just immediately forgive jeremy, given mitb so the apology shouldn’t just be like, a few lines and michael goes i forgive you like?? I need hesitation and struggles of forgiveness because what jer did really hurt?? (That’s off point but i’m getting it out there) and like. jer can be so badass..(as i have mentioned many many times before) but i feel like his character sometimes gets simplified into just anxious uwu teenager. I need more like. angry jeremy. petty jeremy. is willing to throw hands with you in the past but not so willing now(but can still do it) jeremy. He has his flaws and i like writing about it!!! So i want them to be acknowledged!!!

(Big rant dhvdghsbajakak)

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

As mentioned I want more petty jeremy or just. jeremy throwing hands fics/art. Thanks to mj(if you see this hi!!!) i have l2c!jer to occupy my mind and I WANT MORE OF THAT!!!!! And like, bmc timeloop aus,,, i’m a sucker for any time travelling/time loop related stuff(that one bmc big bang fic with michael and time travelling has my heart,,,)

[saturnaous]

loooouuuuuuuu umm. i read it all. what the fuck do i do now. u got me hooked

oh OHWUAGAHH WAIT IT'S THURSDAY THERE'S A NEWONE I HAVEN'T READ YET I'LL TGET BACK TO YOU

EUEGEH 🤭 grogna. Anyways. NOW. you either reread it, read the Pos'Thal Cronicals(also very good but it's only been going for like a month or two so there aren't many) OR. Eheh. Ehehe. Eheheheheh. We blorbofy them. do you want to know what I think about them. I like to think Becket is trans. it just feels right with like the way. that he got his name and how his silhouette changed when he got rid of his armor and stuff. idk. it's nice to me. ANYWAYS. Twirls feet kicks hair. this is great. wonderful even. I love rhese guys. they are my guys. heehoo.

[piedoesnotequalpi]

I highkey want to ask you all the questions from that ask meme bc you know I love encouraging haterism, but I’ll just pick the ones I think are juiciest: 1, 8, 12, 13, 17, 25

Heck yeah being a hater!

(tbh there's another one I think is juicier but let's be real I probably wouldn't have answered it publicly)

The character everyone gets wrong

I feel like I'd normally say Race for this, but! I've been thinking about it lately, and I've been more frustrated about Davey characterizations lately.

8. Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

*Bernie Sanders voice* I am once again asking for you to accept bisexual David Jacobs into your headcanons.

Also I feel like I've seen a lot of people who characterize modern AU Katherine as very femme and I disagree with that. Modern AU Katherine's style icon is Taylor from HSM and I will not be taking criticism at this time.

12. The unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

I'm not sure that any of my favorites are unpopular, but maybe some iterations are? Anyway, going off the different iterations thing, I think 92sies Crutchy is perhaps underappreciated - I find the contrast of how 92sies Crutchy acts towards adults vs. amongst his peers vs. towards adults when he knows he's safe very interesting.

13. Worst blorbofication

So I had to ask Rizz for a definition because I know what a blorbo is but was having trouble extrapolating blorbofication. I might have also been mixing it up with another term, because my first thought was the Delanceys (maybe that's babygirlification? (is that a thing?)). Anyway, as much as I love Race, he is probably the most blorbofied.

17. There should be more of this type of fic/art

Rizz said this in one of their responses but like...more AUs where the original plot/themes of Newsies are somehow reflected. I know I'm saying this as someone who mostly has fics that don't do that, but my juggling au is a very loose adaptation of the original plot and it's been really fun to figure out how to translate it, especially since it's a much less direct adaptation than I'm used to writing/planning.

Also, related to what Finn posted the other day, let's throw more characters in the gender blender! Katherine deserves to go in the gender blender. as a treat.

25. Common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

I...am not sure that I'm sick of hearing complaints. Most of the complaints I see are very reasonable.

[transgenderfivepebbles]

i think i have fully blorbofied five pebbles to me. he lives in my brain rent free. he is the poor little meow meow. anyways share me ur unparalled innocence hcs

congrats on the blorbo anon!

oh man.. innocence my beloved lil bastard my silly menace to society my personal projection board.. where do i even start

LONG answer below. probably average Me RWposting Length but still Long

(just for clarity: i will be using he/she/they pronouns for innocence here btw!)

i think she was the youngest! not just of the local group either. the last of them all. i know most people hc pebs as the youngest but ui’s name seems to imply that they were meant to be the last one ever built, innocence being associated with youth and childhood and all.

also shaded pearl calls them “the local iterator project” in 1514.something, which probably means their construction was underway, and by 1592 the ancients are already gone. so yeah there probably wasn’t much time between their completion and global ascension.

which is especially sad!! he was so young!! barely even got a chance to exist and was abandoned!! imagine how that must have felt for them. being made for a purpose, to solve your creators’ puzzle for them, and before you know it they’re all gone. you didn’t even get to try

and i think his ancients weren’t as oppressive as, say, grey wind’s (but that’s a matter for another post) but they weren’t particularly caring either. they were already thinking of leaving anyway so they didn’t pay much attention to their iterator.

as for their personality… i think they were quiet. conflicted. undoubtedly carried a lot of anger but not quite like pebbles. he made his anger known, he could show his frustration, he wasn’t afraid to stray from his purpose and work on something else. innocence, though… she just couldn’t. whether it was engraved into her very code, or just the conditioning of what little contact with the ancients they had, something kept them from rebelling the way pebbles could.

and that made them envious. why could he do that? why could everyone just do whatever they wanted, or be satisfied with what they had? why couldn’t she be like them?

and that envy turned to resentment, to everyone, but mostly pebbles, who with his inability to read between the lines, was oblivious to it. one of the few innocence trusted was moon, who had been patient with him all this time, who really tried to be a good big sister in spite of the treatment they got.

and then. well. she was gone. and pebbles took her.

at that moment innocence was very very pissed. i mean you would be too if your stepbrother who was better at everything than you killed your sister, the only person you’ve ever trusted, and stopped talking to anyone after the fact.

and so they went all I’m Going To Ruin This Guy’s Life. and they did.

[hideoussundemon]

violence ask game: 13, 17, 18 ✨ ✨

You know how much I love violence and conflict

Worst blorbofication:

Okay this one's probably a little mean. I'm sure there are objectively worse characters to blorbify, but...Cam Mithcell from SG1. Not because he's problematic or anything like that. The opposite actually. I'd understand more if he was controversial. But he's just SO bland, such a non-character, that I deeply and truly struggle to understand what people see in him. I guess he's a handy blank slate? I know some people enjoy those kinds of characters, which is fine, but imo a blorbo should be blorbofied for who they actually are, and who Cam is is Jack O'Neill but if you took literally every interesting part of his character away but then inexplicably have everyone else on the show treat him like their best bud anyway because of a heroic backstory that you retconned in. God bless y'all Cam lovers, you do you, couldn't be me tho

There should be more of this kind of fic/art:

This is a personal preference because he's my fave, but I really wish there was more Carson fic in the SGA fandom - but more specifically, clone!Carson fic. Idk if people just aren't interested in writing Carson in general, or if they don't like dealing with the fact that he's a clone in the story, but there's next to nothing with him (much less as the focus) and I think that's a damn shame considering how interesting his whole situation is, and how underused he was in canon. It genuinely ticks me off when I read post-canon fics that feature pretty much all the characters, even side characters like Radek and Lorne, but which doesn't even mention Carson for some reason.

It's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...:

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: y'all are SLEEPING on Jack/Teal'c. Their chemistry? Glorious. Their compatibility? Unparalleled. When I first started watching SG1, I thought heaps of other people would share my vision, but I've only seen a smattering of Jack/Teal'c content, especially compared to Jack/Sam or Jack/Daniel. And those ships are great, don't get me wrong! But Jack/Teal'c are my number one <3

[njavj]

13, 10, and 19 for the violence ask game :D

13. worst blorbofication

ok to be fair i am a pretty avid blorboficator myself bc characters are probably the most compelling part in any media for me and i loooove making characters a bit more likeable than they really are. it's a guilty pleasure of mine. that said, jean from disco elysium definitely got a bit too blorbified for my taste. love my friends who like him, and he is a character with whom it's pretty easy to connect, but honestly i feel like in fandom spaces he gets portrayed a lot softer than he really is. i'm sure he cares for harry a lot, but he is actually so done with him. the man is an alcoholic and has been choosing things over jean so many times, i know why he feels the way he does about him. i think sometimes because of people liking their dynamic so much in general they forget how jean in the end can even feel like a genuinely bad guy because of how hurt he got and him giving up on harry. yeah

& if we're talking about patho then id say definitely artemy, andrey, stakh and peter are like really blorbofied. in a way that's like. people like to make them much more sane and good than they really are. they are all still very traumatized and very unwell. artemy takes lives, albeit unwillingly, andrey does it without remorse and is violent, stakh has deeply rooted self hatred and doesn't back away from shitting all over his friends except for lara, peter is. well. Anyways i can say i trust like a handful of people with characterisation of these dudes

10. worst part of fanon

ok whatever ppl know me for patho so patho it is bros. probably how people collectively decide to trust some dialogue options talking about one of the characters' past and ignore other. also when ppl headcanon ethnicities bc when they do they're mostly european and while that may be quite possible its just like... i dunno do more research on ussr demographics? because some choices definitely make more sense

otherwise for me pathologic at this point is mostly fanon so idc LMAO

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

nothing to be ashamed of in my life ❤️ maybe i like burda too much though

[ignitesthestxrs]

Review-Thoughts-Experience: IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote

I came to this book with an ingrained reticence to reading books that are older than me, a mental block that I haven't managed to navel-gaze my way into unpacking even at my big age. The hole in my personal literary canon this has left is something that I've been tentatively poking around the edges of for the last couple of years, only for Truman Capote to stick his leg out and send me tripping face first in. I didn't mean to blorbofy a real life gay man who's been dead for forty years, but the group chat can attest: I stan.

I do find myself intimidated by the prospect of pulling together some thoughts on this book, as though the existence of several decades worth of commentary on a text means that I can't have my silly little goodreads review. It's largely self-imposed - I don't have the expectation of an audience here - but the vague insistence that if I'm going to bother saying something, I must Bring Something To The Text hovers menacingly over my keyboard anyway. The funniest aspect of this (funny haha and funny strange) is that IN COLD BLOOD itself is extremely approachable.

This is narrative non-fiction written for the general public. The emphasis on the setting, the multiple POVs, the scattering of background details to ground you in who a character is while their segment dives in to what they've experienced - the text is welcoming. It invites you to sit with these people and their experience of murder, whether that be committing it, discovering it, investigating it, being on trial for it, making a life after it.

True crime often brings to mind wine-drinking white women sharing tips on how to avoid being sex trafficked via random objects on your car and emphatically insisting on longer, crueler carceral punishments - this is, admittedly, a gross generalisation, but one that exists for a reason. While I think any true crime enjoyer can point to favoured exceptions to this rule, the genre as a whole has had the effect of flattening the lived human experience of murder into something easily digestible, a little thrill to spice up lives that are statistically safe from the kind of violence they're consuming.

If a (fair!) critique of true crime as a genre is that murder is too often treated as salacious entertainment, I found IN COLD BLOOD to be a thoughtful, considered text - while also one intended as entertainment for a broad audience. Looking briefly into the aftermath of its publishing, it's clear that the small community at the heart of this novel was uncomfortable with their depiction, that the fame of the murder case was a burden to them. IN COLD BLOOD added to both that fame and discomfort, especially with Capote claiming his depiction was the absolute truth.

The interesting tension to me here is that, while that claim might have served Capote's ego and the book's promotional purposes, the text itself is aware that it's depicting a situation where there can be no 'absolute truth'. Capote writes from the point of view of the victims, the murderers, the investigators, the community affected by the murders, and at one point a distant take on his own role as interviewer. It's clear upon reading that much of what he relays must be an interpretation of events - there's no possible way for Capote to have records of precise dialogue, let alone the thought process of every individual POV the text inhabits. But this isn't a text that's interested in delivering the reader to the One Truth about these murders - it doesn't want to solve the crime, it wants to explore it.

What drives a person to murder? What drives two people to murder? Are you a murderer because you killed someone, or because they state says you are? Who were the victims, how did they live their lives prior to their deaths, what plans for their future were abruptly cut off? Capote goes so far as to dip into the mind of the insurance manager who signed a contract with one of the victims the day before the murder - what is the impact on this business, what decisions are made in the wake of the murder, what is the difference between a moral decision and a business decision, or is a moral decision a business decision? Again and again, these tiny slivers of perspective are served up for the reader's contemplation, the ripple effects of a thousand choices leading to murder, and away from it.

Capote claims he came away from the experience of writing IN COLD BLOOD believing that the death penalty should be abolished, and it doesn't surprise me. IN COLD BLOOD reflects on the sheer pointlessness of these murders - the reader is aware from the beginning that the murderers are mistaken about the wealth they expect to find, that they will come away from the act with little to show for it, no means to change their life, no real remorse for what they've done beyond the impact it's had on them.

And yet their perspectives are written with empathy - the pointlessness of it all is, perhaps, the point. That there was no reason for these people to die, that there was no grand purpose or great evil that drove these men, that this was a case of two guys who thought they had found a reasonable situation to an unsolvable problem, and that this is where the horror of it all lies. There's no over-arching narrative here - the Clutter family died for no reason. Murderers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith died - because they killed, or were next to the man who killed, sure. But what impact does their death at the hands of the state have? It brings no one back to life. Their incarceration and death are as purposeless as the crimes they committed. IN COLD BLOOD tells us that there is no great tragedy to their death, but no great justice in it either. The tragedy is in the unfolding of it all, the vague sense that it didn't have to be that way, the knowledge that it was always going to end in a graveyard.

The conclusion of the book is, according to the man who features in it, entirely Capote's invention. Lead investigator Alvin Dewey never met Susan, the childhood friend of Nancy Clutter, by the Clutter family graves. While I think that's something that matters very much to the real people who were really impacted by the events of the Clutter family, in terms of the purpose of narrative non-fiction, this scene doesn't exist to report what really happens. It's metaphor - the closing of the book, but the carrying on of the story. Nancy and the Clutters are dead, and so are their murderers. There is no more story for them. But their community can't stop with them. They can visit, they can remember, but they have to leave again, to grow older and grow away.

Can you look a real person in the face and say, well the narrative purpose of this thing that was made up about your life serves a higher master than the literal truth? Obviously not. But I do think IN COLD BLOOD begs us to question what we mean when we demand the truth of something, and what it means when we are given it.