#because its clear they're going for very different things with them

[hal-o-ween]

Personally I think a lot of opinions about which Monster Hunter games are "good" and which are "bad" just comes from people failing to recognize that Monster Hunter has two different mainline lineages going at this point, each of which are supposed to emphasize different aspects of the series and create a more distinct experience between them to make it more worth experiencing both. And some people won't like both lines! That's ok! It doesn't mean they're bad, it just means the style of that line isn't for you.

[depresseddepot]

trying to determine which parts of my relationship with sex are asexuality, which are trauma, and which are autism is like trying to have a conversation with three people talking loudly and all at once

[coloursofaparadox]

hnnnnnnnnnnnmmnn its overshare on the internet o clock

[arolesbianism]

I've been thinking abt new game+ friend quests and it's just me going ah yes and they have all these issues and talk abt these things and oh oops this is all accidental foreshadowing

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

[nezz-cringe-crib]

growing up is realizing that dipcifica was actually a pretty damn good ship and holy shit i totally misjudged this pairing.

i never really liked dipcifica mainly because of how it got represented by the fandom, but looking back on it, it would've made a lot of sense and it would've been beneficial for both of them to date each other. and even in a completely platonic sense, their dynamic worked well enough that they could've done a lot more together.

dipper is a very nerdy awkward guy, clearly. he likes solving mysteries and sometimes he gets a little in over his head because of it. and his silly little awkward teenage love life reflects all of these things. that little shrimp was disney's #1 simp, it's actually insane. whenever he'd start to fall for a girl it'd end up going pretty terribly because he'd have no idea how to just act like himself and he'd also become a little bit of a jerk. (i'm not trying to like dog on dipper btw. he's just a kid and these are all understandable flaws, especially at his age and at the time period gravity falls took place in). however, with pacifica, a lot of these flaws are manageable solely because of how they're introduced to each other. dipper hates pacifica at first and wants nothing to do with her, but eventually they're forced to work together and realize "huh. we actually make a really good team." for dipper, this gradual building of a relationship is really beneficial to him. he wouldn't just go head-first into simping for some random girl and he'd also learn to respect her as a person and realize when he's being a little bit of a dick. being with pacifica, platonically or romantically (though personally i think romantically would strengthen their pros more but thats just my personal taste), would've helped dipper become a better person.

this goes for pacifica as well. pacifica's homelife is extremely controlling and it's what groomed her into becoming the mean girl that she's first presented as. as the show continues though, it's clear that she doesn't really want to be mean to anybody. she only acts spoiled because she doesn't know what else she can act like. she wants to connect to people but she's been so forced into this fake rich life that she has no idea how to be genuine with anybody. that's why her having a connection to dipper is so important. dipper is a little blunt, and he especially won't hide that from pacifica because he initially hates her and her family's lifestyle, so this'll eventually help pacifica realize "oh shit. i'm kind of a dick. my family are kind of huge dicks." and we do end up seeing this from her in "Northwest Mansion Mystery". she learns how to be herself, learns who "herself" even means, and learns to stand up for who she is when she figures that out. also pacifica's pretty damn smart???? especially socially???? she could absolutely help dipper do a lot of things when it comes to mystery solving, and with her status it'll most likely be things that dipper could never pull off and never even thought about because that's just what he's used to. they'd both end up learning a lot from each other because they'd be dragged into environments that they're not familiar with, but the other is. and their different perspectives/lifestyles would help the other view their environment in a new light.

not only is their relationship genuinely really beneficial to the both of them, but i also just know that their dialogue and scenes with each other would be so damn silly i can't not say yes to it anymore. i also just personally like headcanoning them both as bisexual so that's a plus for me.

anyways, tldr: i was wrong about dipcifica and its actually really good, i just think people should really analyze their relationship more since the way the fandom presents it (or how ive personally seen the fandom present it) is a little icky and shallow at least in my opinion. yay for dipcifica being silly little goobers :3

[moghedien]

I've been so fascinated with how the movie pulls off the emotional climax at Ozdust, because I think its not nearly as simple as is seems to a lot of people. Like you can reduce it to "Elphaba did something nice and Glinda felt bad" and then one dance routine later they're friends

I think its a lot more than that though, and I think the movie kinda trickles things in gradually to show it throughout. And that kinda reduces it down to Glinda's guilt motivating the entire friendship, which I don't think is accurate either. Its less "Glinda feels bad" and more "Glinda and Elphaba realized they were playing entirely different games and had entirely skewed their reasons for hating each other" which included making Glinda also realize that she was being a bitch for no damned reason

Like, even their reasons for their rivalry are different from each other and so are their reasons for "maintaining" that rivalry. Their first interaction was them both mutually embarrassing each other, though only Elphaba was trying to embarrass Glinda. Which, to be clear, I'm not saying puts Elphaba in the wrong. Elphaba is very clearly in the right for I'm pretty sure all of this, and even if Glinda wasn't trying to embarrass Elphaba, it doesn't make her promising to degreen Elphaba in front of everyone any better. It's just important to understand their different perspectives on what is going on to understand the different places they're coming from. Glinda was putting on a performance of being a good person, at Elphaba's expense which she didn't even consider. Elphaba was pointing out how stupid that was and embarrassing Glinda to prove she's unbothered and correct.

That is kinda that best summary of how their rivalry goes. Glinda is performing, while Elphaba is responding to that but specifically in ways to piss off Glinda and show she's wrong. But they don't realize what the other one is doing. Glinda is performing to look like a good person and maintain the admiration of her classmates. By putting on this front of suffering by having to be in Elphaba's presence, she gets an easy win with her peers. In What is This Feeling specifically, you see them over and over again validating Glinda for just existing in the presence of Elphaba.

And given the girl sings a whole song about how "its not about aptitude, its the way you're viewed," you can assume that putting on a good appearance to her peers is probably the most important thing to her, period. Literally nothing matters more than that, and Elphaba provides an easy win. But she also has some clear attraction draw toward Elphaba that is strange and unspecified (she's gay), because she doesn't just suffer by being Elphaba's reluctant roommate, but clearly goes out of her way to partner with her, to find her at lunch, to make a scene with her in class repeatedly. Like she almost doesn't even count just having to privately live with her, she needs to bring it out in public too and spend time around her even when she should be happy to finally not have her around.

And making it all the more clear to me that all of this is, in Glinda's eyes, just a performance, we have the "looks like the artichoke is steamed" line, which is definitely one of the meanest things she says to Elphaba, but the way it goes down is fascinating. Because let's look at how that goes down:

Glinda makes a scene because Dr. Dillamond mispronounces her name.

Elphaba defends Dr. Dillamond and tries to embarrass Glinda.

Artichoke comment.

everyone is laughing at Elphaba.

To Glinda, this is what they do. They poke and poke at each other in public until one of them folds and wins, and if its her she gets public approval. But, what makes this clear to me that this is a performance is Glinda's immediate actions after the artichoke comment. When everyone is laughing, she exchanges a look with Elphaba, and the look is not mean at all. She doesn't look like she's gloating or like she just won, she just kinda nods and smiles and it seems like a genuine acknowledgment of...something. It's unclear what, but she doesn't seem like she's overly proud. It's like she's nodding to someone who just played a good game against her, but lost and she wants them to know they played well. It's bizarre the look here and fascinating.

And even more bizarre because Elphaba seems to acknowledge it as well and seems like she understands and almost smiles in response. But I think this also illustrates the disconnect in them for what their rivalry is.

So looking at Elphaba now, her approach to her rivalry began with her embarrassing Glinda, as mentioned before, and continued with her embarrassing Glinda. Most of what she is doing is trying to intentionally embarrass Glinda, which as I said before, isn't really wrong because Glinda is as far as we ever see, the one who is in the wrong and who starts the whole thing by embarrassing Elphaba. But as I said before, embarrassing Elphaba isn't the point of what Glinda is doing, she's trying make herself look better and is just using Elphaba, but literally how would Elphaba know this and why would it matter?

We see that Elphaba has been targeted and mocked her entire life, and that is basically what Glinda is doing to her now. But its also different with Glinda. Because before its always like, groups of people banding against her, with Glinda its personal. She certainly has her minions and all, and basically the entire school hates Elphaba just because they love Glinda, but Glinda isn't really using them. She's still doing everything herself and seems to actually go out of her way to go against Elphaba herself.

That, as far as we know, is different than any bullying Elphaba has experienced before, and what also makes it different is that Elphaba has an advantage of having something Glinda wants and something that prevents her from being pushed aside. Elphaba is basically going to be at this school however long Madame Morrible wants her there, and Madame Morrible also hates Glinda, so Elphaba can't be pushed away and she also has this one thing to hold over Glinda, because she's the one getting the attention that Glinda actually wants. And she's also potentially the only one that might help Glinda get it.

In a really weird way, this rivalry with Glinda might be the closest thing to a friendship that Elphaba has had from someone that isn't her sister or her nanny. Because its both of them personally going after each other and they both also have advantages over each other. And its clear that Glinda could be using her peers to target Elphaba but isn't. And Elphaba also makes it clear that she can ignore people she doesn't like, and yet she doesn't ignore Glinda. Because both of these freaks enjoy poking each other nonstop forever too much. There is something that draws them together (homosexuality) even when they supposedly can't stand to be around one another. Glinda is performing, but Elphaba is having the time of her life sparring with someone in a way she probably never has before.

Which takes us to the hat.

Elphaba approaches Glinda because, according to Nessarose, Glinda did something nice for her. We don't know specifically what Elphaba was going to say to Glinda, but it seems like its something she isn't comfortable with. Maybe she was trying to figure out what Glinda's motivations were. Maybe she was just going to thank Glinda for what she did. Either way, we don't know because Glinda interrupts her by giving her the hat and really talking up that damned hat too. Not only giving her the hat, but specifically inviting Elphaba to go out with them. Elphaba has probably never gotten anything like that before.

Elphaba, who has had the time of her life being antagonistic with Glinda up until this point, now thinks that Glinda is doing nice things for her and for her sister, for seemingly no reason. So she returns the favor and makes Madame Morrible accept Glinda as a student and tell her that night. That night, because this was going to be best night for Nessarose, maybe for Elphaba too now, so let Glinda have something too. Maybe this rivalry was turning into something else and maybe Elphaba was glad for it.

Only, Glinda wasn't being nice.

Glinda getting Boq to ask out Nessarose wasn't to be nice to Nessarose. She wanted Boq to leave her alone. And she didn't give Elphaba the hat and invite her out to be nice, she wanted to embarrass her after receiving validation for the idea from Pfannee and Shenshen.

What you need to know about Glinda here, is that she does not think about other people. She will throw a fit at Dr. Dillamond mispronouncing her name because he physically can't say it right and then repeatedly call Boq by the wrong name. She doesn't know if Nessarose wants to go to the dance or if Elphaba wants her to stop mocking her. She doesn't even consider these things when deciding to do something for her own benefit. She is doing as Glinda must do to perform as she needs for her audience (the entire world).

Which is how we end up here, at the emotional climax of the night. When she discovers that Elphaba did one very nice thing for her after she did something specifically to humiliate Elphaba, its not just guilt for this one moment, right? Its guilt for every little thing that she's done that she just assumed wasn't actually affecting someone else. Her mocking Elphaba and doing all these things wasn't actually about Elphaba, after all, it was about Glinda looking well. Because she didn't even really think about Elphaba, or how she might be interpreting what their dynamic is or that she might actually have been hurt by the things Glinda does. It was all a performance to Glinda.

But is was something else to Elphaba entirely.

And so we look at all the times, like the artichoke moment or their introduction, where Elphaba didn't seem all that upset and maybe Glinda realizes that wasn't always the case. She just wants people to think she wasn't. She was performing too, just not in the same way Glinda was. She was enduring the disapproval of others because she was maintaining this dynamic with Glinda, whereas Glinda was getting approval from others for enduring Elphaba. They were playing different games entirely and Glinda didn't know until Madame Morrible gave her the wand. It wasn't just the cruelness of the hat that she realized, it was the cruelness of single thing she's ever done to Elphaba.

And looking from Glinda's perspective, it makes sense if you see that she's forced to reckon with the fact that she's a terrible person and doesn't like herself, but look at what the situation is from Elphaba's. To Elphaba, Glinda is the first person that saw that she'd hurt Elphaba and then reached out to comfort her and try to help fix it instead of laughing or getting upset or doing nothing. Like I said before, the dynamic she has with Glinda before this is maybe the closest thing she has had to a friend, which is fucked up. But also part of me wonders, based on how they're seemingly drawn together when they could just ignore each other and based on Elphaba's reaction to Glinda's sort of nod after the artichoke comment, AND based on how quick Elphaba was to approach Madame Morrible, part of me wonders if Elphaba was just hoping for a moment when their antagonism would end the whole time. And that's why she's so willing to accept that once Glinda does something that Galinda is not supposed to do and makes a fool of herself to support Elphaba in front of all of the people she's supposed to be putting on a show for.

Which I think, makes Glinda joining Elphaba in the dance that much more important. Because, and I love this for the movie, she's not getting praised for doing so. Shenshen and Pfannee tell her to stop. The initial reaction she gets once people realize she isn't mocking Elphaba is scorn. For like, this one little moment they're on the same page. Glinda is getting disapproval for being with Elphaba here. And it ends in them being accepted by the party, but that almost seems to be unimportant. They hug before they realize that everyone else has joined in, and once they realize it, they leave the party together pretty much immediately. Their relationship has been a show in public for so long and so what happens next when they stop performing happens in privacy, just for them.

[traegorn]

Girl you can rant and rave all day but we all know for a fact you can't vote your way out of this mess so your "genuinely, what else can we do?" sounds like pure cucked defeatism. This downward spiral of American fascism has proven stable, so no, voting isn't going to stop it. The democrats will never be pushed left - as proven by blatant history. I know this is your cue to list a bunch of social services or civil rights concessions a la #bidenwins but the drip violence of homophobia and abortion restrictions under republicans does not come close to the bipartisan armed tyranny that murders people in broad daylight.

Voting isn't going to solve any of this, and no voting isn't going to "clear the way" or make it easier to resist. Democrats have proven over and over and over again they will use the full force of violence to stop anything that truly threatens them and the ONLY WAY to stop American fascism is to threaten them, to threaten the very foundations of the system itself.

You exert all this effort, have all this pained frustration, over the weakest political action you can take. You are not challenging fascism or tyranny or helping any of the people harmed under bipartisan violence. You ignore these people and focus on "harm reduction" for the few who do benefit from the pitiful social safety nets democrats eke out only to be undermined in the next four or eight years as republicans INEVITABLY take back power. Such is the case of a two party system, as history proves. You're staving off the inevitable by exerting all this energy into electoralism, and the people you "save" by electing democrats are inevitably hurt anyways when republicans INEVITABLY take back power - because that's what the system guarantees.

You exist in a cycle of abuse with the American government, a punishment-reward system under the 2 parties that keeps you afraid of punishment and too desperate for reward that you ignore how the hand that feeds you is also putting kids in cages and blowing up babies overseas. You, and everyone who thinks like you, will never be the ones to save anybody.

Idk I was pissed and now got all sad again after writing this. Just so you know my being sad at the state of your ideology isn't a representation of my passivity that people like you like to construe - I am painfully politically active. But it's just...sick. You're stuck in an abusive cult and now I just feel bad for you

I'm usually a lot nicer when I reply to folks, but you brought a certain energy that deserves a different response. I want to be clear to any passersby who I'd normally be polite to in this kind of conversation: This energy is reserved only for chucklefucks who bring this kind of shit to me. Please do not take this as a reflection as to how I'd treat people willing to engage honestly and civilly with me. This anon came to me unprovoked, so they're getting a rather unique response.

So here we go.

Oi, shit head. This was the stupidest thing I've read all day.

Democrats 100% have moved left in the last 40 years. Are we still recovering from when they got dragged right by Reagan in the 80s? Yes. But we've made headway getting things back on track. You claim a lot of stuff here, but don't cite a single example. Likely because you just repeat what someone else told you on TikTok that one time. You couldn't find your way through actual theory if it smacked you in the face with its dick. But you don't want me to actually justify it.

Because your own words told me you'd dismiss any evidence I provided:

I know this is your cue to list a bunch of social services or civil rights concessions a la #bidenwins but the drip violence of homophobia and abortion restrictions under republicans does not come close to the bipartisan armed tyranny that murders people in broad daylight.

Bitch, this shit is a sliding scale. Trump authorized more drone strikes than Obama did in eight years. Are they bad? Yes. But if you're telling me you want more murders, Trump's your guy. Guess what, living in America means dealing with the fact that you've been complicit in genocide this whole time. Look at the land you stand on -- it is soaked in blood. Look at the smart phone you're reading this on, it literally came out of a genocide.

You bathe in blood every day, fucking figure it out.

We do our best to minimize harm. And if you'd ACTUALLY read or watched anything I've said, your two half dead braincells would have noticed the part where I constantly say "voting is not the end of your activism." It's the fucking start.

Either Harris or Trump will be the next President. Trump will be worse. If you aren't doing everything you can to stop him, you're not a leftist, you're a grandstanding piece of shit who doesn't care about anything other than the smell of your own farts.

You want to fuck up the two parties? Great. Put in the fucking work -- because the Presidential election ain't it, shithead. Build a real movement from the ground up. Build community, build a party system, run local candidates. When's the last time your ass went to a city council meeting or a school board meeting? Do you even know when they're held where you live?

But let's face it, you couldn't coalition build if you tried because you're so far up your own ass you kiss your small intestine goodnight.

Daddy Revolution ain't coming, shithead. There's work to do, so get your head out of your ass and do it.

You want Trump to win? Netanyahu would kiss you on the lips for it. Fuck off.

[theveryworstthing]

a small selection of ill omen spirits common in myths and legends from mainlander and rabbit culture respectively. ghosts and spirits are different things and no one knows exactly what spirits are, but rabbit priests hypothesize that if they're real (very rich of them to assume they know what's real but whatever) they might be ghosts that sort of decomposed a long long time ago and turned into Something Else. probably not though. who knows. here are some spooky facts:

Mainlanders:

mainlander spirits bringing ill omens tend to be very bestial and chimeric. often they have have too many limbs, shrouded and/or twisted faces, and a lack of markings at the joints that all mainlanders have, though sometimes these markings will be replaced by a cracked texture that looks more like broken shell than skin.

silent weeping isn't always present but it is common, and the spirit never actively cries, its tears just continually leak.

most of the time.

spirits that specifically come warning about death are always surrounded by a circle of mushrooms wherever they go, and may even be the center of countless interlocking circles if they're coming to warn of mass tragedies.

stories say that these spirits can be talked to, but that would involve getting close enough to hear their whispered words. the "proper way" to engage with them is by thanking them politely while averting your eyes and then offering to sing them something in return. you start singing before they answer of course, and then keep singing, drowning out their words, until they leave. never try to leave first and never disrespect them but don't listen to them ESPECIALLY if they're saying anything involving or incriminating the Royals. if you encounter one then you must contact a medium who will tell you what they probably wanted without the pesky threat of blasphemy involved :)

Rabbits:

rabbit spirits bringing ill omens are a little more...unavoidable...if the stories are true. they have something to tell you and they're gonna do that whether you like it or not. which is a conundrum because rabbits, as a rule, do not fuck with omens and destiny and foretellings. letting the universe think it can lead you around is a bad idea most of the time. that's how you get Chosen Ones, AKA, Fate Slaves. rabbits refuse to be doomed by the narrative, they can doom themselves thank you very much.

all this is probably why their brand of spirits are so insistent, because they know rabbits want nothing to do with knowing the future.

but.

it's complicated.

because while most rabbits turn down carot readings and side eye tea leaves, they do listen to these spirits. because danger is danger and they haven't survived this long on the island ignoring information about their surroundings. rabbit ill omen spirits are treated less like beings trying to order you around and more like the smell of smoke before a fire starts or the far off sounds of a predator. a personification of vigilance. if a spirit of ill omen starts bothering you it's best to hear them out. you shouldn't let them lead you anywhere or follow their orders because if they're giving orders then they're Something Else, but if a Black Crush floats through the halls, headless wormlike body crumpling in on itself section by section until it's just a writhing black line dripping phantom blood on the floor, then you should probably check the tunnel stability of the entire warren.

now.

culturally these spirits have a lot of moth attributes and tend to show some kind of damage correlating to the threat they're warning you about. many of them are non-verbal but their messages are always very clear. no cryptic bullshit. if the rabbit encountering the spirit doesn't seem to get the message then they'll up the ante until there is conformation that they are being understood. spirits should be respected and listened to but using your common sense is the most important when dealing with them and it's important not to freak out and jump to conclusions.

[yanmuffins]

asks 2.

context.

here are some more asks i'm replying to in a bulk about phineas and ferb reader!!

my favorite part in dc. vs vampires is when reader comes together with damian and damian to build a silly machine that un-vampifies people in like half a day so they can defeat the vampire king. it is canon.

@amethystjellyfish

perry really is reader's number #1 stan. they're his family, reader's had him since he was a small platypus baby!

he does his best to keep reader safe, which is why he doesn't like the batfam much. he keeps it professional on the rare occasions they go on missions together, but that's it. he hates how dismissive of reader they are in the beginning, and he hates them later on when they star showering them with attention because they found out about their inventions.

not tired, anon! i love seeing people enjoy my concepts and interact with them!! ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧

and i'm sure this has happened. more than once, actually. the power of coincidence is strong with reader. the life-saving laser beam comes from a situation involving reader's latest machine they built and tested with the help of jon.

unfortunately, one of his lasers richochets on the machine during testing, not only causing it to save batfamily's life, caught in a dangerous situation in a completely different location, but also destroys the machine so there's nothing to link it to reader.

ah, well. they'll just have to keep looking.

reader, seeing them run past her: oh! there's perry :)

i love how we have established tim is terrified of this platypus. nevermind the other pets in the manor, it's the platypus with its googly eyes that drives him insane. they don't get it, he got up to drink water at 3 a.m. and the thing was just there, looking at him. menacingly.

jason would though. meanwhile, perry is wishing he could just go back to metropolis. he didn't have to deal with reader's siblings in metropolis. he doesn't get enough hazard pay for this.

hm... good question!

i like to think that, much like with phineas and ferb, luck is on reader's side most of the time, so i don't see reader getting injured by their own inventions.

but, let's suppose they do: it's a nice sunday afternoon, the batfam has decided to gather around the living room and hang out, watch a movie, lots of popcorn and soda. they don't have to think about criminals or fighting, tim and damian are bickering, jason is around, peace reigns the manor.

until they hear an explosion. they run to the garage only to find reader on the floor, unconscious, bleeding, and an assortment of destroyed metal components to a machine they can't decipher. damian doesn't even feel good about reader finally being busted.

later, when reader is back home, awake and out of risk but with a bandage around their head and their leg in a cast, they're in for the biggest (and probably first) scolding of their entire lives. reader tries to play it off. it wasn't that big of a deal, they're fine, aren't they? and they're genuinely optimistic about it. but the entire family is talking over each other at first, until bruce signals for everyone to shut up and leave the room. he has a very serious talk with reader, and makes it very clear they're not to come near a toolbox ever again.

but he understands. it's partly his fault for not being attentive. he won't make that mistake again.

ofc reader is really upset. dick comes next, then stephanie, then cass, then duke, then barbara and they all try to convince reader in a much more amiable tone that hey, it's fine. who needs to do all that whacky stuff to have fun? just hang out with us. they can get another hobby, and this time they can make it a family thing! how's that sound? not fun? don't be like that... they're sure reader will come around.

tim is pretty much the only one who congratulates them for being awesome pulling all those stunts, one per day, it's impressive. but now it's time to step back a bit. who knows? try being careful and bruce will let you work with a welding tool again. one day. maybe.

damian and jason's reactions are more similar to bruce's. in other circumstances, damian is on reader's side and helps them sneak around to continue their shenanigans, but in the case of reader getting hurt he just wants them to not do that. any of that. ever again. and jason has to hold himself back not to snap and ask them what the hell were they thinking?! they could have died! he ends up just telling them to quit it. they're just a kid who shouldn't be messing around with that sort of stuff.

anon, i wouldn't go as far as say he'd use venom against them, but he's bit batfam before. as stated, he does not dig their vibe at all!

anon, that's a great idea! though i think p&f! reader is much too motivated by the creative process and experience that their inventions bring more than just willing them to come to life.

they have the power to create whatever they want, but what's the fun of it? what about hte process? the building? the friends they make along the way? the memories? i think reader would find the ring awesome at first, but the novelty would wear of in less than a week.

anon...

because i dig the idea of reader being friends with dipper and mabel. reader talks about their crazy inventions, and loves hearing about all the cryptids they came across during vacation.

reader invites the twins to the manor, they share their most recent summer memories. reader talks about that one time they built and drove a massive monster truck with their brother damian, but jason only comes into the room in time to hear about dipper and mable talk about the weirdmaggedon. he has several question marks around his head. aren't those kids a a little too old to be making shit up? or maybe... no, there's no way. or is there? no... he would have heard about this... but weirder things have happened. but what if...

@randomlyappearingartist

you are so right. to be honest, i don't even think the batfam would even know of his existence, since he's pretty much a very minor villain acting in metropolis. after perry joins the league, or in the rare occasion of dr. doof teaming up with another minor gotham villian like condiment man, is when they get to know he exists.

and since perry seems to have him under control, they don't even acknowledge the guy.

i love love love this sm!

they assume it's just flash mobs. it's got to be. flash mobs with really weird themes, like an entire musical number dedicated to the squirrels in damian's pants. that was strange. bruce patrolling in the middle of the night and this new crime lord just burst into a song with a band and hired back dancers, because it's apparently a new trend a minor villain in metropolis started.

and what about that one time dick took damian (and reader) to the library and some guy just started singing about how he doesn't have rhythm? and damian just started playing a trumpet? and reader started singing? i mean, it was a bop and he started dancing, but it was weird anyway.

but now i'm thinking of damian and reader singing the "summer" song together (he sings the "it's noticeably warmer" and that's it) though! wholesome.

@lazyandannoyng

not annoying at all! you're good ⸜(˙꒳​˙ )

i have this little idea in my head that reader doesn't take the wayne name when find out bruce is their dad and move to gotham, and bruce is pretty secretive about this new kid of his for purely privacy and safety reasons. so when reader does their networking, it's often not obvious they're a wayne. not sure if this will make it into the fic, but it really resonates with this concept!

it's also funny to think that a lot of people don't even know reader and the waynes are related. even if they do know reader is related to the batfam, nobody really talks about them by name (just "your sibling"), and all of those little details like never asking about where the gloves came from (because why would he) or the misunderstandings where one party means one thing and the other assumes it's another (dick has many siblings! too many!) just end up helping reader not get caught. and i just think that's neat.

[ab121500]

Idk if anyone else has noticed but i am CONVINCED Teia and Viago get together and break up multiple times (at the very least ONCE) IN Veilguard. Cause when you first meet them CLEARLY something is going on between them. Like that moment between them when they tell Rook and Lucanis about Caterina. So, together.

but THEN. In every single one of my saves when I see them next Teia has a line during a conversation with Viago thats like "Good, good. Why is this so awkward?" To which Viago replies with "Perhaps we know eachother two well to just be colleges" (or something like that). Now to me, that sounds like a post-break-up we can still be friends sort of deal. So, broken up.

Then next time I visit I hear things like "its not breakfast if we don't sleep" and "our open drapery will not be the test" and its very clear they are at least fucking but are probably more because look me in the eyes and tell me Viago de Riva has casual anything. Mr. Wears-gloves-so-frequently-his-skin-rarely-gets-to-breathe does not take skin to skin contact lightly, even if he definitely trusts someone. So, back together (again)

Then theres that line about "this is why we got to split. And got back together. And split." So, theoretically at the time of saying that they're split (again.) Maybe i'm just assuming, but it fits my insanity so i'm taking it. So, broken up (again).

Then we get to the final fight and we get the "you like my furrow, call it the thinking mans dimple" line and like. Thats something i'd say if i was in a relationship with someone. That level of just, cute yet taunting is so relationship coded. Sure you could say it as a friend or even as past lovers but i feel like in the friend case it'd have a different sort of tone of voice? And the past lovers version would probably be something like "you LIKED my furrow." As in past tense. So, back together AGAIN.

I am absolutely feral for these two; they will NOT leave me be so I must scream about them into the tumblr void because my sister and friend are so done with me not shutting up about them.

[fangsandfeels]

"Everyone gets along because there is a threat", yadda, yadda, yadda.

Bullshit. This is not how real scenarios work and it has never been.

russia is a global threat right now, but the world can't decide between sucking its dick and politely asking it to stop because the mere thought of confronting russia makes it shit its pants. The very few countries who scream into the void, warning about russia and telling people to wake the fuck up are ignored and viewed as crazy doomsayers.

This is how real crisis looks like. Nobody works together against a threat because people are spineless cowards who would rather throw their neighbors under the bus than fight. Nobody learned anything from history lessons, books or survivors.

The only difference in a fantasy game is that NPCs end up having more spine and moral principles than real people.

But in Veilguard, everyone gets along because they have NO reasons not to.

Davrin has no real reasons to beef (if you can call it that) with Lucanis because he is a Grey Warden. He knows where Grey Wardens take their conscripts from. He knows that Grey Wardens regularly recruit mages who are a lot more likely to get possessed if they're not careful. Working with an assassin who knows friend from foe isn't the worst thing ever. One subtle warning about taking action if demon takes over is enough.

Taash has no reasons to antagonize Emmrich aside from horrible writing.

Neve gets along with Bellara because writers gave Bellara a happy childhood with her family and turned Dalish artifacts into Apple store gadgets, while refusing giving Neve any nuance as the citizen of Tevinter.

Emmrich gets along with everyone because he is generally a kind and well-mannered person who doesn't like to stir the pot.

Any companion who could have had a sharp edge, got that edge ripped off and a cartoon band-aid slapped on.

Never doesn't deal with people who don't know about Shadow Dragons (and they probably shouldn't know much because when you work against a powerful government who wants to destroy you, you shouldn't show off), so she constantly has to deal with the fact that people assume she is a noble or a slave-owner because she is from Tevinter; that they don't know that she had to literally fight against being enslaved herself because in Tevinter mages who refuse to use their power to dominate others are turned into slaves as well.

Bellara isn't conflicted about working with humans, especially Tevinter humans at all. She seems to never have dealt with oppression her whole life and she is super quick to write off Cyrian as evil even though there are clear SIGNS that he was tricked and controlled by the Forgotten One. But no, she never thinks "He is still there, I can save him, I won't lose him again", she goes straight to "Oh nooo my brother is dead to me".

Emmrich doesn't get burdened by people reacting to him and his sincere intention to help with fear, because of all the sinister rumors revolving around necromancers and Nevarra. He isn't hurt by people assuming that he loves death and things dying. If even he openly admitted that he is deeply terrified of death, they wouldn't have believed him.

Harding isn't burdened by the revelation she learned and what to do with it. Should she storm her way to the Orzammar? Should she talk to fellow surface dwarves and reconnect them with their history? Should she never breach the subject because the truth hurts and it's too much pain, too much anger to live with - and maybe she shouldn't let other dwarves go through it?

We don't even have a party divided on what to do with Solas (kill or talk it out)? Even though it's logical to have companions who are convinced that Solas has to die and those who think that he is misguided and can be convinced to stop.

Also, there are NO companions whose background, viewpoints and attitude would rile other companions up. We have no controversial characters whose interactions with the crew Rook would have been forced to intervene in unless they want their team to start throwing hands with each other.

We could have had Imshael - to give EVERYONE a reason to worry, and argue, and have conflicts. We could have had an ex-Venatori Calpernia bashing heads with Neve, Bellara, and Emrich. We could have had a Qunari spy who'd make Lucanis' dagger-arm itch.

If writers didn't forget about the Architect, we could have had an intelligent Darkspawn companion Davrin could be losing his shit around.

Or heck, we could have had a former red templar who got partially (magically?) reversed from their mad state and is now not a mindless beast, but still is on a borrowed time, probably needed due to their strength, but barely tolerated by anyone.

Who is fanatical, mostly because they have to believe they made a noble sacrifice, that it all was for the greater good -- because the truth scares them to their core. Who gives Lucanis shit for being an assassin and abomination, who bashes necromancy, and mages, and talks about purity, while downplaying their own actions as "Yes, these are my sins, but they are for the better world, and I would be proud to die for that world unlike you heathens who would rather ruin it than repent for your flaws". The kind of companion you'd initially want to do nothing with, but who can reveal an entire gallery of fucked up contradictions and trauma if you decide to keep them around.

However, writing such companions takes skill, courage, and requires absence of greedy corpo "we don't want to scare away new players with all that moral nuance" thinking.

[fanged-fanfics]

☆ A Human's Sparkling — Starscream x Human!GN Reader ☆

Genre: Fluff || they/them pronouns for reader || No warnings needed

A/N: Yes I'm aware this is obviously indulgent but I think about this a lot so SHHH LEMME HAVE THIS. Also, please note that all my Transformers works will have a mishmash of continuity. I try my best to not write plotholes, but at the end of the day they're a mashup of various bits of lore not tied to one specific adaptation

──────.𖥔 ݁ ˖˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ──────

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Having a relationship with Starscream definitely had its ups and downs. To call it a slow burn would be putting it nicely- it was more like a very very VERY slow burn. Especially because you were human. When he came across you by chance on a mission, he never knew how important you'd be to him. It was a looong time of denial and second-guessing before he finally mustered up the courage to be honest for once

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Things went better than he'd ever expected. Though working through years of trauma and built up unhealthy defense mechanisms, he worked with you and let himself be loved for once. Still, he felt like he had a long way to go. The idea of siring kids didn't come to him for a very long time

ᯓᡣ𐭩 You'd brought it up first, and of course Starscream went into a long complaining tangent about how sparklings were hard to care for, irritating, and quite frankly could eat you both out of house and home. You tried to talk to him about it a bit more once or twice, but eventually you pulled back. If he wasn't ready, that was that. You were content to leave it there

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Until.. one day, after several months of doubt and consideration, he brought the idea back up to you. Now that the war was over, there were quite a few problems of orphaned sparklings. He'd already written off the idea of trying to have a sparkling with you the natural way— he still shuddered thinking about how it would look from that. But this was different. It was a way for him to try and give back to Cybertron like he'd been wanting, and for you to be happy as well. Once he reassured you fully that he did also genuinely want a sparkling now, you two set out to the Space Bridge together

ᯓᡣ𐭩 As was expected, having a sparkling caused a whole new well of problems. Mainly, Starscream had no idea how to be a sire. He didn't exactly have fond memories of his carrier, either. He struggled with realizing that this new sparkling was going to now take up all of his time. You were worried then. You had no doubt that he was trying, but he definitely didn't hide his scowls very well

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Eventually though, you notice his behavior shift. His scowling, as you come to learn, is merely for show. Just an attempt for him to keep up his 'superior commander' look. In reality, he knew more about sparkling care than you thought. He knew how to calm the little one when they got fussy, how to feed and clean them, and you swore you caught him intentionally trying to make them laugh. He hated admitting it, but his actions made it clear. He was learning

ᯓᡣ𐭩 And, obviously, having a sparkling gave you some problems as well. The sparkling loved when you held them, but they were extremely heavy. They loved to crawl around and explore, but could easily break anything. A human home wasn't the typical environment for a little bot. But with Starscream there to aid you, you both managed to keep your eyes (and optics) on them

ᯓᡣ𐭩 Starscream is VERY particular about who gets to hold your sparkling. His Trine are the only bots he let's hold them, and even then it's only for barely five minutes and under full supervision. Primus forbid an Autobot get anywhere near them. His wings will flare out and point up defensively, low growling leaving his voicebox as he presses the sparkling to his chassis, glaring heated daggers

ᯓᡣ𐭩 You're the exception to all his particularness. His protective nature and defensive sneers are aimed towards other bots, but with you, he merely watches as you engage with your little bot. Seeing you two bonding makes his spark finally feel at rest, if only for a moment

ᯓᡣ𐭩 He nitpicks everything pertaining to them. How to hold them, feed them, talk to them, what toys to give them, everything. He's very much a hovering type

ᯓᡣ𐭩 He'll take a while to admit it, but sometimes his spark lurches in a painful way when thinking about how he used to be. Back when he was at his height of power. He doesn't want your sparkling to ever see that side of him, but he almost backs himself into a state of fear mulling over it. Everything he's had to endure... it'll never happen to you, or your sparkling. Not even a tenth of it. He knew from the moment they reached a tiny servo towards his own— he'd rather do it all again than have them feel what he did

[the-s1lly-corner]

Hi!! this is my first time requesting anything but i was wondering if you could do creepypasta boys were you kiss / compliment there scars!

Kissing their scars (various crp)

Bro I scratched my skin right next to this burn last week and it HURTS so bad

Characters: Jeff the Killer, Ticci Toby, Eyeless Jack

Notes: Reader is GN, fluff, these boys need help

CWs: talks of violence in.. well all of them, mentioned of self harm in Jeff's part

Jeff

You decide to kiss the gashes in his cheeks, the ones that he carved.. he never really viewed them as anything very negative; sure it reminds him of the night he killed his entire gamily.. a fact he has a very wishy washy feeling of guilt over depending on the day

At first he thinks you're trying to kiss his cheeks but you make it very clear what you're trying to do when you begin to compliment them- they've healed so well since theyve been put there

Between the three he tries to play it off the most, of course it looks nice- they make him beautiful, and he always will be beautiful! What are you talking about reader?

Hes not at all willing to be vulnerable around you, it doesnt matter how long you two know each other or how close you get he never.. really let's himself just be in his feelings around others

But just know that hes going to be sitting in bed tonight looking up at the ceiling replaying what you've said and going back over the events that lead him here- rare moment of self reflection essentially

But to your face.. hes just the same as hes always been, even teasing you for having such a huuuge crush on him- bonus if the two of you are already dating

Eyeless Jack

You rarely ever get to see him without the mask, but when you do.. it's best not to do something like this the first time you see his eye sockets- hes very cagey about his face in the first place and hes not quiet ready to handle more attention drawn to it. The first few times it's off it's best to meet it with indifference

But when more time passes, you're more than welcome to test the waters. You already knew Jack had a fair collection of scars, but there was a different feel to the burned and gashed holes where his eyes would have been

He wont let you kiss him, mostly because hes unsure of what exactly the goo was made of, as well as naturally not liking the idea of someone putting their mouth where his eyes just to be- but you're allowed to trace your fingers along the scar tissue

Hes never going to tell you what happened unless theres a reason to, hes very firm when setting this boundary. It's just something that makes him feel.. gross..

He already doesn't talk much but he becomes silent as you trace your fingers and talk to him

He might go back to wearing his mask all the time again for a while but it's not exactly your fault, it was just a huge step- it's okay to back up a bit to process things

Ticci Toby

Due to his CIPA he has a bit of a disconnect between him and his injuries, scars included. He didnt really feel them when they were being made, sure he may have felt some pressure depending on what caused it but other than that, nothing really.. for a lot of them he doesnt have much thoughts- neither good nor bad

The only ones that really make him feel something are the ones he sustained from the crash- they're scattered across his body...

If you kissed or complimented any other scar he would tease you for being a little "weird", even making it a game to guess where he got the current scar from- with outlandish answers of course

But the second you reach one of /those/ scars the fun is immediately cut, you can tell theres something off

Similar to Jack, its something that has to be eased into due to the weight associated with the injuries. It's not the fact that it hurt when he got them but they serve as a reminder of what he lost

The only one who really tries to change the subject, perhaps by asking if you have any scars or markings on your body or simply changing the subject all together

Probably the only one who wouldn't want to be complimented due to the nature of some of his scars

[fuckyeahimafangirl]

I come here late to give my opinion on what Nicole Maines said in her book about the Supercorp fandom (go to Twitter for more info, but she basically gave her point of view of things as a queer actor on the show having expected things from the queer fans, confirmed we were being queerbaited while also blaming us for some actors getting fired). I appreciate her side of things and feel for her. But reading that I felt that A LOT was overlooked, especially the context of it all. So sit back if you care enough to read this and come with me as I go on a rant and we go down memory lane to give some context into what it was like to watch Supergirl live as a Supercorp fan.

The first season of Supergirl had its fair share of ships. People liked Kara/Cat, Kara/James, Kara/Win maybe anyone? I don't remember that one but I'm sure there were people out there who liked them. Some people even liked Alex/Kara (a conversation for another time). Kara/Cat shippers could also like Kara/James, because both ships had some strong foundations in the narrative, they were undeniably good ships, regardless of how you feel about age-difference relationships or straight relationships lol. There wasn't mostly an issue, except with the ones that liked Kara/Alex.

In between the first and second season of Supergirl it was announced that a main character would be gay. They didn't say who, though. Speculation began, of course. They did say that Maggie Sawyer was coming to the show but it was not confirmed that she was going to be a lesbian and even less whose love interest. 

Then the second season premiered. And in the very first episode Kara Danvers meets Lena Luthor. Their scenes together were filled with sexual tension from the very beginning, look at their meeting scene without context and a bit of an open mind and most people will see their chemistry and think that maybe Kara was meeting her soulmate. And the first scene of Supergirl meeting Lena Luthor? It was already drawing a parallel between them and Lois/Clark, one of most iconic, recognizable and undeniable canon ships of all time. Drawing parallels between these two ships was the creators of the show's favorite pastime and it started from day one, before the ship had any fans because we hadn't met Lena just yet.

But in that episode we did meet her. And we fell in love fast. Because their interactions and the interest concept of Lena's character were good. Could it really be that Kara was the main gay character? Could it really be that they were going to give us an epic love story with Supergirl and a family member of her family's historically known enemy? Could they dare to make the famous superhero anything other than straight?

It wasn't just a delusion on our part at that time. It was a real possibility based on real facts. Kara had suddenly dropped the guy she spent the entire previous season chasing after. She got him and dumped him for no good reason (the writers didn't bother to give it a good excuse) and in the same episode she meets this woman, at the start of the season we were going to discover a main gay character.

These are all facts.

A few episodes later Maggie Sawyer makes her debut and it's clear that she's Alex's love interest from the first moment. Cool. It's not Kara but at least it's Alex (because, at the time, we know, WE KNOW, that they don't have two lesbian/queer women characters in the same show unless they're dating each other. How could we think that gay people will surround themselves with other gay people? silly us), that was the reaction: We still LOVED that it was Alex, because it still made sense. And it was difficult to find Sanvers fanfic without it having Supercorp in it because we were all the same people, of course most of us liked both ships. 

Now, I obviously don't know her, but I seriously don't think that Chyler can say she felt overlooked by the fans that season. Alex's coming out scenes were some of the best we had seen in our entire lives up until that point, and we made that known. Not all of us might have been on board with Sanvers (some storyline choices could've been questionable) but with Alex? No one loved her more than the queer Supergirl fans. And in the meantime Supercorp kept getting screen time, their friendship progressing in a Clois kind of way that was beautiful to witness. While Maggie and Alex's relationship advanced pretty quickly from an "I'm not gay" to a rejection to a proper first kiss, Supercorp was building a bit more organically as Supergirl kept saving Lena's life, as Lena opened up only to Kara, trusting her all the while Kara was keeping this huge secret from her. We ate that shit up, of course we did.

After season two was over we got the news that Floriana Lima (Maggie) was going to leave the show. I remember Chyler saying that she wanted to do right by us and whoever came next was gonna stay. And I'm not faulting Chyler for what came next, at all. Chyler was and always will be one of the best things on Supergirl and she has always treated the fandom with the utmost respect and love. And I hope she only received the same treatment back (and I hate to know she got those letters from people threatening to kill themselves, but let's have a little compassion for those people and their mental health, I hope they're doing well).

So Maggie left. And while some fans were not coping well with that, most fans understood it was the actress' decision. That was fine. What wasn't fine was the decision the writers made by making the breakup about not wanting babies when they were about to get married. How on Earth (any Earth) a couple don't talk about that particular issue BEFORE deciding to get married? It was an easy way out. But okay, it's just a TV show, I don't write it, we can move on from that... In the same season, at the same time this whole discussion and breakup occurs, the very same person who wanted to have kids has a meet-cute with a SINGLE MOTHER, Sam. The story was full of promise, she had a kid already with whom Alex got along amazingly, there was great chemistry between all three of them, Sam also had a dark secret being basically her sister's most powerful enemy, their relationship was mostly well built throughout the entire season. But guess what? She wasn't her new love interest, and left at the end of it. 

A lot of Supercorp fans LOVED AgentReign (Sam/Alex), by the way. A lot of Supercorp fans also loved ReignCorp (Sam/Lena) and a few even loved AgentCorp (Lena/Alex) and SuperReign (lol what was the name of this ship? I don't remember but Kara/Sam). And guess what? There wasn't a war between us. We were mostly the same people multishipping because it's fun and because these were interesting characters with interesting relationships created by the writers. We were inventing and wishing for stuff, but the foundations were laid for us, some (most) things were there and most of us were just screaming that we liked what we were being given and wanted more of that.

And that's why come season 4, some people were having a hard time accepting Dansen. Because we were mourning the loss of Sam and her relationship with Alex, the what ifs are always the worst, no matter the situation.  But most Supercorp fans embraced Kelly (and Azie, we love Azie and what we got to see of her relationship with Chyler, and Katie and Nicole), the vast majority of us ended up loving Dansen despite the writers not always doing a great job at writing their arcs. And it's awful that some fans treated her and other members of the cast horribly, but that was by far a small portion of the Supergirl fandom in general, and especially the Supercorp fandom. And, by the way, as a side note because racism was part of the problem for a minority of the fandom, A LOT of us in the Supercorp side of it are not white people from the US, A LOT of us are from other countries/races/cultures (that can be racist too of course, but the point is we don't know the races and motives of everyone behind a keyboard).

And that season most of us also embraced Nia because she was the first trans superhero, because of her queerness, because she was an awesome fun character, because she was relatable and geeky like most of us. We embraced her, her relationship with Kara and her relationship with Brainy. And we showed that by trending Nia related things, by adding Nia to our fanfics and fanarts. Nia was a Supercorp ally for most of us and we didn't exclude her from the art because we loved her as much as we love some of the other characters in the show.

Now, if Kara would have had, after the first season, one male love interest that was decent enough, we would have still love and wanted Supercorp, that's true (especially when it had been years of build-up) but most of us probably would have liked the pairing anyway, because we loved Kara Danvers and wanted her to be happy and to have the love she wanted at the beginning of the show (which she didn't get, by the way).

But the writers decided to give her, instead, another man who didn't treat her well. And I couldn't honestly tell you half of William's storyline because I couldn't care less. The creators of the show didn't make me care. Hell, I didn't even see Kara cared enough about that character. The writers should know their audience and should know that the audience needs moments to make them care about the characters, the writers have the power to make that happen. Many times I've seen a fandom hate a character one episode and love them by the next one, because sometimes all it takes is one good scene, or one good arc. William never had that. And now we have confirmation of what we knew all along, that maybe they were writing half-assed storylines for their love interests because they were too busy trying to figure out new ways to queerbait us. If they would have put a quarter of that effort into creating good love interests for Kara and/or Lena (but especially Kara), most of this conversation wouldn't still be happening 3 years later.

We embraced Andrea Rojas, we embraced her so much that we shipped her with Lena. Most of us weren't the blind Supercorp-or-nothing crazy fans a lot of people to this day make us out to be. When things were good, we mostly liked them. But please, please, let's be honest here, a lot of the time Supergirl was not a great-written show. And I get that those are Nicole's friends but a little objectivity, especially after all these years, would have come a long way.

These past few days I've read a couple of people saying Supercorp was the only good thing about the show. Those kinds of people were and still are a very very minority. A lot of us started the show before Supercorp existed and LOVED (still love) the Danvers sisters with all of our hearts. And the writers, at times, didn't know how to keep up with that relationship, the one that at first was the very center of the show, all that well either.

Most Supercorp fans didn't actually like that the 100th episode revolved all around Supercorp. 1) Because it was queerbaiting at its finest. 2) because it should've been about the Danvers sisters. Or at least about all Supergirl's most important relationships in equal measure. Yes, Lena was a big part of her, but ALEX EVEN MORE SO. The fandom didn't make that happen, we didn't fire any actor either. These were decisions made by the people who had the power to make anything in the show happen. If we would have had our way we all know what we would have done, and no, it definitely was not p**n (the most used AO3 tags for our ship speak for themselves).

I didn't see Nicole's last paragraph on the subject shared much. A lot of people didn't see that she acknowledged a small portion of the good the Supercorp fandom did.

But by the time you get to it, you already have a bad taste in your mouth. Because it still reads as if she's talking about us all without a care that "the toxic fans" were just a loud minority. Not to say that the good guys weren't louder, because Supercorp is still what it is to this day because we're still loud. So why is there very little mention of that? The way we supported Nia's episode? The way we supported Kelly's?

And because we were having fun and we were loud about our love for two fictional characters, WE WERE ALSO RECEIVING THREATS from some toxic fans, hell, the day before yesterday some fans were receiving death threats like it's 2017. Everything she says the cast and crew were dealing with, the Supercorp fans were dealing with it as well, and more so because the toxic people felt validated by the choices the creators made. Validated by some writers on Twitter making it worse. Validated by some of the actors who were also mocking us. We were all called delusional, and that was the most chill thing you could be called.

I understand her point of view, and I imagine that was not a great first experience in that kind of set, and I would love to have the opportunity to talk to actors about this topic that fascinates me (relationship between fandoms and cast/crew). But context is important, to see other people's point of views is important when having these conversations. She felt her own community wasn't supporting her when most of us were and that didn't come across at all. Not even with her final words. 

The fact is, they were hurt by a small part of their own fandom (which, by the way, they have no idea how old those toxic fans were. Not to say that adults are not toxic. But we, as the non-toxic adults, should also think of the demographic and react accordingly). And most of us, the queer Supercorp shippers, were also hurt by the toxic part of the fandom and by some of the people she's trying to defend. Let's be clear, there's not "mayyyybe," they were 100% wrong in queerbaiting the hell out of us from day one and mocking us for believing the bait. Make no mistake, most of this is a consequence of THAT.