#but i'm thinking loudly

[mctwinkdom]

I HAVE THINGS TO SAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[stormsbourne]

Me up again metaphorically pacing my room thinking about how datv is a game about hard choices that don't have a right or wrong answer (but the answer you choose still shapes you and your relationships the same way it shaped Solas and his own relationships)

and a game about regret for things you had no choice but to do (the same way Solas had no choice but to struggle against the rule of the evanuris including his best friend/lover/elder sister)

and a game about how even then you ultimately did have a choice (the same way Solas could have refused to make the dagger or could have allowed flemythal to do whatever she had planned or could have not tried to tear the veil back down which he knew would kill everybody before it fixed anything)

and a game about how sometimes you do your best and do things for good reasons and you still fuck up and you can't save everybody and people will still be frustrated with you (the same way the veil was an accident and Solas was only able to save a tiny fragment of mythal and even that fragment seems bitter about him holding her there even though he does it out of love)

and a game about what leadership does to its leaders (the same way Solas killed his blighted allies, the same way he betrayed felassan, the same way he ultimately betrayed the shard of mythal in flemeth)

and a game about GRIEF and how rook is trapped in it and not being allowed to move forward by blood magic, and how grief cages you (the same way Solas feels caged by the loss of mythal and he's just as trapped as rook is but it's of his own free will and how he uses rook as a method of self absolution for what he did to Varric)

and how every character arc and story touches on at least one if not multiple of these points and how it's all layered in with area quests, side quests, main story quests, that do the same thing. I'm tired of feeling like I have to qualify my praise of datv with "it has problems" because it's a fucking dragon age game. They are all, in their own ways, hot messes. Each one has its weak hinges and its stress points but the level of sheer thematic cohesion and thought in datv is absolutely fucking unparalleled and I don't think I'm wrong to say so

[ghoul-butch]

the thing about transphobes saying that "sex can't be changed" while still making making intersexist carve-outs in law is that they give up the plot immediately. they think sex can be changed! but only to suit their agenda. they only bring that line of reasoning out for the cruelty of stopping those who seek to change their sex, while keeping it out of their mouths for the cruelty to enforce the sex binary on intersex people. it's all to make a two sex binary real through any means necessary, before anyone wants to call this "hypocrisy". it's not hypocritical to announce exactly what evils you intend to do to others and then do them.

[thissying]

Max about the baby and vacation, GP Abu Dhabi, 2024

[makiswirl]

can i just say. and this is probably a niche hill to die on. that i am so gobsmacked every time someone vaguely hints at the idea that jotaro doesn't care meaningfully for the other crusaders, usually particularly kakyoin and joseph, when those two actually tend to be the ones he reacts to being hurt the hardest

like he cares for his loved ones!!!! that literally plays into his character motives in every single part he shows up in!!! stop lying to me!!!!!!!

[aromanticannibal]

while I see the appeal of izuku calling kacchan katsuki I think if he does katsuki should be allowed to burst into tears immediately

[utilitycaster]

I occasionally write general character/story trope meta that gets picked up on cr circles that only brush gently against mine and people will say shit in the tags like "this is why I hate Essek" and I need to be clear that you can feel however you want about any character at any time but if you do this on my posts it's an IMMEDIATE brutal drag in the group chat.

[god-damnit-vinne]

hey do you ever think miu called kokichi a twink. i wonder how he would react to that

[cthulhu-with-a-fez]

other people have probably already said this but like. it's been a shockingly nice experience to watch the dungeon meshi fandom go absolutely NUTS over falin. just this unbelievable wellspring of thirsty romantic eye for her, and not only is she chubby in canon, most of the fanart i've seen has skewed towards drawing her even chubbier? i... genuinely do not think i've ever seen that before. i don't think i've ever been in an anime fandom where someone both looks like me and is the subject of such enthusiastic adoration BECAUSE she's fat before.

it's... it's really nice.

[see-arcane]

Oh bitter bitter irony

Bile below

I started out afraid that Eggers would over-Coppola his Nosferatu--he didn't! :D--only to run into a growing dual tide of fans who are either

A) actively trying to Coppola his Orlok and Ellen into lash-batting forbidden romance bodice ripper cliches ("He backhanded Knock for daring to suggest he steal Ellen! uwu He brought a plague and attacked her loved ones just to be with her! uwu She clearly wanted to be with Orlok all along, fuck Jonathan Thomas, the useless stuffy loser! uwu Orlok just doesn't want her to deny herself! uwu Every word he says should be 100% taken at face value, he would never use the Classic Abuser Playbook to victim-blame his target into compliance, just do murders and choke slam her for saying she doesn't like him, ignore the long-distance repeated psychic rape since she hit puberty, it's fine it's fine uwu")

or

B) going full pearl-clutch about the very concept of Orlok being an icky evil unpretty mustached corpse monster (with all the abuse and assaults being tacked on in the aftermath to Prove~ this is Not a Proper Ken Doll Dracula)

like

guys. we're sinking into the deep ends of two very different nuance-free pools here

Yes, there is a disturbing fucked up but Actually There connection between Ellen and Orlok. There is attraction, there is a core spiritual likeness that led Orlok to her as a girl. But that does not obliterate the fact that he is monstrous to her and to everyone she cares about. He is a rapist. He is a manipulator. He abuses her and the covenant connection--which he point blank tricked her into without any warnings to what she was agreeing to as a teenager--for years. And then, when she dares to fall in love with and wed someone else, he throws a murder-tantrum until she agrees by her own will* (*under duress) to be his. Not his equal in anything but suggestion, but his property. His owed Affliction. And it is meant to be horribly fucked up that Ellen has even a thread of positive feeling for him, regardless of what supposed matching darkness she has in her. Just like many victims in her position will feel for their own sexual and romantic abusers.

This is not Count Gary Oldmanacula and Winonmina Harkryder. This is not star-crossed tragique kissy kissy Francis fanfiction. It does not call for mental gymnastics to take the fangs and blood and violation out, to excuse the monstrosity Eggers harvested from the actual source story or--and I am putting my head through the wall about this--taking anything Count Orlok says at face value when his entire MO, from the first assault on Teen Ellen to the trick document he makes Thomas sign to sell her away to the full spread of mind game horseshit he says to Ellen's face or puts in her mouth to puppeteer a fight between the Hutters, IS TO MANIPULATE AND ABUSE EVERYONE AROUND HIM

Fuck, even Knock got ripped off via Orlok's bullshitting and he made a literal full Faustian willing contract with him

And on the flip side:

Stop stop stop stop STOP wringing your hands over the presence of gothic horror monstrosity being in the gothic horror monstrosity film.

Bela Lugosi and Gary Oldman? They looked impressive. They looked charming and elegant and polished and, obviously, iconic. The legion of pressed and bleached and chiseled Dracula Lites after them, less so. But they are pretty!

And none of them have looked like the Count who Bram Stoker made or what his inspirations would ever have recognized as a vampire or a boyar. Robert 'If I do not personally graft the actual time period of this movie into place with my own two hands I Will Die' Eggers actually did his research in putting his Orlok together and, being a Horror Film Writer and Director, actually remembered to put the horror into the famous vampire horror story.

Attraction, sensuality, romance, and assault all have their place in it too--it is Nosferatu: "Dracula, But the Focus is On a Dracula Trying to Make the World's Worst Nightmare Threesome Happen"

And, shock of shocks, in Murnau's film, as in Stoker's book, the main couple--Harkers, Hutters--have the loving couple intimately preyed on by the same monster. While Mina/Ellen ostensibly 'allow' themselves to be preyed on, in both scenes it's done out of a desire to protect Jonathan/Thomas from the Count.

Mina keeps silent and allows Dracula to feed on her and force-feed her his blood to kick off a magical enslavement-undeath, lest Dracula follow through on his threat to bash Jonathan's skull in

Ellen sends Thomas away and offers herself as bloodbag and bride to Orlok specifically to keep him from killing Thomas and finishing off all of Wisborg

Would these magically have become 'better' setups if only Count Dracula/Orlok were hunky clean-shaven bishounen sexyboi doms there to ~liberate xoxo~ the already-married already-fucking already-skirting the lines of propriety gender role-bending young woman?

Because if that's the case in your eyes, click here. Scroll on through almost 130 years' worth of film and TV and plays and books and a thousand other spinoffs where Dracula is perpetually sandblasted into your cape-swishing hickey-nibbling knockoffs of choice. All yours.

But for fuck's sake.

Let the gothic horror be gothic horror. Up to and including the monster being monstrous. Up to and including, yes, a deranged connection and magnetism between Pretty Girl and Actually Freaky-looking Undead Rat Man. Up to and including, yes, the Human Lover not being the starched and stuffy blandman there to be thrown in a ditch to let Girl and Sexy Monsterman who truly understands her~*~* get together, and instead be a genuine romantic partner who is as adamant in endangering himself to protect his beloved as she is for him.

tl;dr:

Stop trying to retroactively Coppola this movie and using 'haha but I'm a monsterfucker' to side step the fact that the villain here is a villain and is using the rule book of actual abusive relationships to gaslight his victim(s) in a very human, very gruesome way

Stop wailing that your personal diet vampire fetish is being sullied via the presence of a mustache, maggoty corpse pecs and the horror of the Count not being a GQ model

Just stop

[samijey]

Sami Zayn & Jey Uso vs The Judgment Day (MSG 26/12/2023)

[autisticrosewilson]

So sick and tired of you bitches saying that Jason possibly being assaulted WHICH HAS BEEN IMPLIED MULTIPLE TIMES BOTH WHEN HE WAS ROBIN AND IN MODERN COMICS (not the Talia thing that was bullshit) WAS STOLEN FROM MIA!! DO YOU GUYS THINK THAT MIA IS THE ONLY CHARACTER EVER WHO HAS EVER HAD THIS SPECIFIC TRAUMA START BEING SERIOUS RN

[hamletshoeratio]

Can y'all just be you know normal Marina Thompson for like 5 seconds? Because christ, the sheer Misogynoir that some of you spread about her character is insane and you don't even realise it.

[creekfiend]

oh my god today was so comically garbage and I decided to end it by trying to make waffles for myself which I have been doing multiple times a week for the last month and I know the proportions by heart and yet I got them incredibly wrong and then I was like "no worries I will simply make a double batch and freeze some of them" and then I got the proportions even wronger and now I have like five very dense very dry waffles instead of eight regular waffles that would have had the right amount of milk in them and I am going to bed and tomorrow the gremlins had better cast their eyes on someone who isn't me or I cannot make any promises about what I will do

[irl-batsignal]

I overheard these two girls, they're doing homework and talking.

SOMOENE MADE FANCFICTION OF THEIR TWO TEACHERS?? HUH WHAT

WHO MADE FANFICTION. OF THEIR TWO TEACHERS?

WHATT

[pepperf]

Question to all the Five fans who haven't blocked me yet: is there anything actually in canon to say that he worked closely with/was personally victimised by the Handler, or is this just an incredibly popular headcanon (because people feel it explains a few things)? Because that wasn't at all how I read it, but Five is not my focus, so I may have missed something?

From what I remember: when she first appears in the apocalypse, they're definitely strangers, and she recruits him. Then on her next appearance, it sounds largely as if that was the last time she'd seen him. She tagged along on the killing of Lila's parents, but this was stated to be unusual, maybe even unheard of ("Management never came on missions" or words to that effect). She focuses on him in s2, but she's working on a specific plan at that point, and although she deliberately plays cat and mouse with him, it's not exactly the worst thing that happens to him that week. And after that, she's fully dead.

I ask because I have seen a lot of comparisons of Five and Lila's relationships with the Handler, and I'm honestly not seeing where that comes from. Lila had years of abuse from childhood, she was indoctrinated and manipulated, gaslighted into loving her tormentor, told that she'd been 'saved', her loyalty had to be absolute - the relationship was one of abusive parent and abused child. Whereas Five was recruited by the Commission, worked for them for...five years? (I don't think they ever specify, but he's already Old Man Five in the apocalypse), and then got out. He barely seems to know the Handler - or the building and people, judging by the introductory tour he gets.

I'm sure he had a shitty time there, and the Commission absolutely uses people! But like...on the level of denying expense claims, judging by Hazel and Cha Cha. And oh, they'll definitely kill you if you're in their way - but it's not personal. For my money's worth, I would say his life in the apocalypse was far more formative for who he is as a person - and that absolutely was as terrible a fate as anyone could wish.

(Relatedly, I think it would be kind of hilarious if Five's there complaining about the Commission with an undercurrent of 'I know that place like the back of my hand', whereas in fact everyone there is like, "The new guy? Yeah, I think I met him in the canteen once...kind of mean...")