#but wow i have no coherent thoughts

[felonytaxevasion]

Can I hear more about the worm vs the boys please if you want to expand on it on tumblr? I love worm and I don’t really like the boys and I can't quite explain to myself why

Yea absolutely! Im sure there's some other Wormblr posts out there that go into this in more depth but I can paraphrase what I was saying to my friends.

We were mainly discussing the concept of "edginess" and excessive anger, violence, and shock value in media and I brought up Worm and The Boys as examples so that I could sort of warn my friend about the tone of Pact without directly spoiling anything. My main thesis is that Worm is incredibly super duper edgy, however it doesn't come across as nihilistic and misanthropic like The Boys does.

I feel as though too often The Boys is usually taking the stance of "well humans suck so if you gave humans superpowers they would find unique ways to suck and the only thing separating normal people from monsters is power. So no one should have power" which I don't inherently disagree with to an extent. It's an exaggerated critique of capitalism and celebrity. But it's also such a gross way to look at humans/the nature of humanity.

Contrast with Worm that says "bad people with superpowers will use their powers to do uniquely horrible things. But good people with superpowers will also be out there doing uniquely and incredibly good things for the benefit of humanity. Every human as the potential for abhorrent cruelty. But it is just as true that those same humans all have the potential to do good."

I think it's really important that the two final and most major antagonists in Worm are motivated by nihilism and hatred of humans. Jack Slash and Scion both have the philosophy of "Humans are cruel. The parts of humanity that are good are losing out to cruelty. Why try and fight it. It's easier to just kill everyone". Contrast Taylor who, I'm 99% sure, never for a second questions if humanity is worth saving. Everyone around her in Gold Morning says "there's nothing we can do so we should at least die happy" and Taylor says "I cannot die happy unless I spend every second of my last day fighting for the miniscule chance to save humanity from extinction". Taylor and the fucking insane lengths she will go to save humans when she doesn't even like them all that much is the heart of Worm. (And like don't get me wrong worm is also about Taylor fucking failing to not partake in human cruelty at basically every opportunity. Quite possibly the worst anyone's ever done it. But that doesn't change the fact that she is trying and in the doing is pushing the audience to try as well)

And on the other hand I think the attitude of The Boys kind of just IS Jack Slashs. I honestly cannot even fathom what the take away is meant to be beyond "people are fuuucked up dude". If I wanted to be especially cruel I would say that I think a large majority of fan base for The Boys was generated on the basis of shock value and the incredibly strong performances from the cast. It's easy to get in to season 1 because it presents a horrible world with no redeeming qualities but you can assume in later seasons "they're gonna figure it out! Good will win out! Or at least good will lose for reasons that connect with the audience and make it a tragedy" but three seasons later theyre floundering to find a message and a reason people should care about the world and it's characters.

At the end of the day TLDR I think worm works because it has something to say and uses edge to support the thesis. The Boys exists more as a framework to explore cruelty in fiction and I just don't think it has a lot to say outside of that.

[youngpettyqueen]

I think the reason Charles never refers to Hawkeye by his name is because it’s a nickname, because he’ll call BJ, Margaret, and Klinger by their names without issue, and I could write up an entire post about Charles’ approach to names and nicknames and I might come back and do that tomorrow when it’s not so late

For now I just want to make the point that there’s a scenario in my head where Charles tried one (1) time to call Hawkeye Benjamin in casual conversation and the entire conversation ground to a halt because they both got incredibly uncomfortable about it because it sounded so WRONG and they agreed to never talk about it again

[duck-in-a-spaceship]

I'm CONVINCED it's impossible to be weird enough to truly phase Joyce. I tried my VERY best. I was so weird. We named her boat together. I looked at her passport for some goddamn reason. I told her allllll about my drunken amnesia. She did not care.

It's the only point so far where I've reset a save to go back and try to get what I want. And I did that MULTIPLE times. I got Kim to be like "Mmm yes, this is going well. Love how we're not talking about the case." And then I ask her about the case and it's the same thing everytime.

"Come on, I though you were going to be more weird." Kim says. "I thought you were going to use your freaky-deaky amnesiac cop charm."

I don't know what to tell you my man. I've bent time and space to try and make this work for us. I've tried every dialogue option there is, in just about every order. Quite frankly I just don't think it can be done. This woman is unflappable.

[erinravenseeker]

Just had a middle-of-the-night “ohhhh” moment as I just figured out that Kim Dokja needs the Fourth Wall not because of the scenarios but because it was essentially his survival mechanism for life.

Now I have only read the novel once so I could totally be forgetting stuff & way off-base but this is what I remember. Inane rambling under the cut, major spoilers included.

We know he’s generally antisocial, placing himself outside of society like a reader, and he internally smoothed over Sangah’s rough points even before the scenarios, making her into a ‘character’ (a caricature of herself) that fit into an archetype.

Dissociating from reality & viewing himself as a reader is his coping mechanism & “WoS coming to life” provides a convenient excuse to keep ignoring that fact.

This kind of ties in with an idea I’ve been forming about the Fourth Wall, which is that KDJ is fundamentally incapable of believing that “The Characters” (read: everyone) can experience growth as a result of his actions. He exists outside of the story, he is in the audience beyond the fourth wall, so he cannot affect the characters.

Hence the paradoxical nature of the Fourth Wall. For as long as he is a Reader, the Fourth Wall is maintained. And as long as the Fourth Wall is maintained, he will continue to be a Reader.

(Warning this is where it gets incoherent and messy.)

Kim Dokja fundamentally NEEDS the Fourth Wall to be maintained. Not just because of the OD stuff, but because it’s the way he’s learnt to cope with existing. It’s also why dying is so easy for him—we know he cannot deal with the guilt of making people he cares about suffer, but if he’s just a Reader, that means he can’t really have any meaningful impact on their lives, so it’s fine for him to just… disappear.

Kim Dokja is not actively suicidal, he’s just invested himself so far into the worldview of himself being a Reader that to him, his temporary deaths no longer register as dying. More like… stepping out of the theatre for a bit.

It gets complicated when we hit OD. Because then we realise the KDJ we’ve been accompanying is essentially a self-insert OC. So we can ascribe the way he thinks to OD, including all the coping mechanisms and self-distancing. But where OD manages to escape the narrative along with SP, at the same time the KimCom Crew escape the narrative, KDJ actually kind of… doubles down?

Like, OD does what any Reader does and learns from the book. When KDJ says “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” It’s not just him learning this lesson. It’s actually kind of the opposite. OD is Reading this lesson so he learns that he’s allowed to accept the mercy of SP & the 999 crew. So they escape the narrative.

KimCom also manages to escape the narrative but KDJ… can’t. He comes to the conclusion that he was actually backstage all along. But that means he’s still not ON stage. A Character can’t feel for the Script Writer or Director or Stage Manager. So he doubles down on his separation from them, stepping into that role. And then then KimCom comes banging on his door backstage because they’re not just characters, they’re the Actors now, and KDJ disappears because he can’t deal with that, because he fundamentally cannot exist on the same plane as them.

I think that’s why I’m hopeful at a post-epilogue ending. KDJ The Reader exists at essentially a higher tier than the people around him, and so he believes he cannot be loved in a way that has a lasting impact on them. But he DID spend years being affected by WoS, by Yoo Joonghyuk. If he becomes the Character, and them the Readers… maybe, just maybe, he can actually accept that love.

[elprupneerg]

I hate when I see a post that maybe has helpful information, but it’s so full of guilt tripping, calling people who don’t know the information stupid, and calling people who haven’t been talking about that particular problem stupid, that I don’t feel comfortable sharing it.

[corrodedcoughin]

okay so your trans art binge-reblog spree yesterday kinda synced up with me having Intense Gender Feels so please allow me the liberty of gently knocking at your inbox again bc I feel a mighty need to unleash some trans!Eddie headcanons on you >.>

imagine the sheer emancipation of Eddie growing out his hair again after he had cut it short when first moving in with Wayne but this time long hair feels different and so, so much freeing bc it's no longer a stupid social expectation rooted in sth that isn't even true about him but instead a personal choice, one deeply connected with the music that comforts and inspires him like nothing else

imagine the freedom of him first realizing he's trans and how things — maybe not all things but at least some of them — suddenly fell into place from just knowing who he is, even if back then he had no opportunity and no safe place to as much as think about trying to socially transition. just feeling like his authentic self for once, without the weight of others' preconceptions about all the arbitrary ways he's supposed to be. he might've been unable to tell anyone at that time but simply having that knowledge to himself was liberating from the years of having felt like there's sth wrong with him. liberating bc now he knew for a fact that there wasn't. how can this be wrong if it made him feel like himself for the first time maybe ever?

imagine him hesitantly knocking on his uncle's door in the middle of the night when he had no choice but to run away from home. imagine the surprise on Wayne's face and all the unyielding unquestioning trust and comfort he's got for him, so thorough and genuine that it only takes him a few days to come out despite the fear. and then Wayne's silence breaks into a question of what name his nephew would like to called then. the words startling soon-to-be-Eddie into a impulsive hug, which is returned with utmost care and with quiet thinking-out-loud rambling of whether Wayne's got any clothes that would fit his nephew and that he would feel comfortable in

imagine the joy when Eddie gets a fake ID from Reefer Rick one day

imagine him making friends with the rest of Corroded Coffin guys and, when he gathers the courage and trust to come out, being met with support, ranging from confusion and a promise to eventually get how any of it works and to respect Eddie's pronouns etc, to deep understanding that hardly needs words bc you know you're being seen for who you actually are

imagine Eddie working on his voice and ending up achieving some success partly thanks to singing along to his favorite songs and trying to learn harsh metal vocals and at first scaring everyone around by going over the top with them until he figures out ways to train his voice to be more masculine sounding without resorting to that kind of harshness (and developing multiple fun vocal stims on the way)

imagine Eddie getting together with Steve and as a bonus gaining the perfect person to get advice from when it comes to figuring out a workout routine for his purposes

imagine the relief of knowing there are multiple people who you can be your authentic self with and who love you for this and would never change a single thing about what makes you yourself

oof well, I kinda carried away "a bit" (meanwhile the Feels have only intensified further whoops) and these are in no particular order but I really hope you'll like this humble offering. have a restful fulfilling weekend💜

LIAM!!!! LIAM!!!!! I am always ready for transing the narrative (been in some gender struggles too so let’s be in this together 🤝) I’m going to be running commentary replying so if it’s incoherent or accidentally cover something said later I’m sorry!!

- the hair!! YES!!! I feel like he had long hair before and felt pushed into have short hair in order to be taken seriously in his identity but what he always really wanted to be was ‘just a boy with long hair’ and the more it grows the happier he gets becuase THIS!! THIS!!! Is who he feels like he should have always been!!! This feel RIGHT! When it gets past the length of being ‘acceptable’ for a boy and starts brushing his shoulders he hasn’t never felt more strongly that he is Right. That this is Who He Is, this is Eddie Munson and Eddie Munson is a societal expectation-dodging BOY

- THE ACCEPTANCE AND REALISATION!!! What if he was going around as a child saying kid stuff like ‘when will I grow a beard?’ And being hushed by his elders (before Wayne). Going along with what was given to him, be it toys or clothes because his family didn’t have a lot so he’s not going to ask for more but knowing that they didn’t feel right. That he was performing a character for these people and hoping it would be enough for them, for himself. It’s not, something still feels wrong and he can’t figure out. But then, then he gets the keys to the kingdom, he moves in with Wayne and Wayne gives him some money and sets him loose in the thrift shop. At the start he sifts through the girl’s rails but all of the sizes are wrong for him. So wayne just suggests the boys racks because hey it’s just T-shirts and we need to get you stuff that fits. He guides eddie to the plain T-shirts, not thinking much of it. Not thinking it’ll be a Realisation in the young mind of his nephew. Eddie goes home with 2 boys T-shirts that day and from then on gravitates to exclusively wearing them. Next thrift shop visit eddie makes a beeline to the boys section and doesn’t look back.

- AHHH WAYNE AND COMING OUT I LOVE YOUR VERSION!!! What about Wayne passing a couple of shirts on to Eddie? A hat too? And a belt because god knows Eddie’s buying the jeans that hide his hips and needs something to hold them up. Wayne starts calling eddie ‘son’ and ‘boy’. Every time it’s like Christmas lights have been turned on behind his eyes. He feels dizzy with it, can’t contain himself, has to clench his fists to stop himself from shaking becuase this? This feels right. It fees Correct and knowing Wayne is here with him is the ballast he needs to secure himself on this unpredictable ride.

-CORRODED COFFIN SAYING ITS SO METAL OF HIM. (I personally also hc Gareth as trans so I like to think that Jeff and Freak are always ready to be Boys and show them Boy Stuff. Like alongside band practice they had Boy Practice at the start and now they can burp the alphabet in harmony and can armpit fart guitar solos and play fight and are just GOOFY)

- eddie going to a gig or band practice and then the next morning waking up with a slightly wrecked voice that he /loves/. He surreptitiously tries to maintain it, shouting lyrics in his room and just screaming sometimes but it starts to get painful and he accepts he has to find a different way. He listens to the radio with Wayne, asks to go with him when Wayne’s work friends plan a couple of drinks in one of their yards. Eddie gets to go to a couple, gets to listen to Wayne’s country and rock radio stations. Gets to hear these men talking and tries out phrases he hears when he’s on his own, records them on a tape deck he found in the thrift by luck one day. Records and re-records until he gets it right. Until he can prank call principle Higgins and get shouted at down the phone ‘I’ll find out who your father is boy! He’ll have your hide!’ The peak is when he goes into scoops and gets everything he wanted ‘hey man, how’s it going?’ From the offensively cute sailor with the big hands and strawberry sweet smile

- WORKOUT SUPPORT STEVE. YES. YES ABSOLUTELY!!! Steve showing him that he can’t just hit upper body every day, that he has to get everywhere. That he needs to make his core thicker if he wants that boy look. That working on his quads and calves will help, he promises it won’t leave him a big butt and tiny waist. (Not unless he wants Steve’s routine, that boy is going to work on his ass-ets okay?) eddie doing his first full push up with Proper Form and feeling the muscles in his back move and thinks yes. This is Good. God knows he’s not great at sticking to it but when it serves a purpose and it means he gets to ogle his boyfriend? Kind of a win win

- TBE LAST POINT!!! Yes!!! Eddie living in subconscious fear for so long that he pushes the very notion of being a Boy down. so far Down and Away that he won’t ever let it see the light of day. Or so he thinks. He tells himself that he is fine, that this is fine. But it isn’t and he doesn’t know what feels wrong. Until it slowly starts to change at a glacial speed. He tries different things. Starting only in his room, makes jokes that he thinks he can get away with in front of Wayne. Pushes it further, does more Boy things with corroded coffin. Sees that it’s okay? They are okay with it? With how he is? Sees that Wayne just nods at him and doesn’t make a fuss? That Wayne’s friends don’t bay an eye somehow? (Sure some guys at work do, but Wayne makes sure they know where their opinions aren’t wanted. That Wayne and his group aren’t to be taken lightly on the topic of Wayne’s nephew)

Eddie experiencing so much acceptance and love and there being so venom in it. No ‘waiting’ for it all to pass and Eddie to go back to ‘normal’. Eddies never been normal and that’s a badge he starts to wear with pride. With defiance. Knowing that he has everyone he could ever need how could be not?

[scarecrowbutch]

what i really wish wouldve happened for simon and bettys arc forreal, if they were going with the whole "betty has sacrificed everything for simon and he never cared" (WHICH AGAIN IS NOT TRUE !!!!!! but thats a whole other post teehee) would be for simon to ... sacrifice smth in return ? whether that be something like him taking on the role of a wishmaster for her like that au ive seen going around and giving her the option to wish for whatever shed want to, or using the crown to take on the role of golb in her stead, just SOMETHING along those lines if they really wanted to go in that direction. give her an opportunity bc otherwise its just kinda 👎

[phagodyke]

OKAYYYYYY

[cloudedgalaxies]

The cliffhanger for Book 7 Part 6 is FOUL. I went on a whole journey, experienced the five stages of grief stronger than I ever have and now at the very end when there's a teensy bit of hope returned through the literal sea of darkness and pain you're telling me that I have to wait another few months until I get the next chapter?!?!? 😭 😭 😭 😭

The devs can't keep doing this to me omg one of these days my heart is gonna stop working OTL OTL OTL

[another-faceless-girl]

just started watching Arcane and like - i know silco isnt a good guy but it just like hes everything my father isnt protective and caring (in his own way ig) and like i know my father would never dream of doing anything like that and the whole theme of parenthood being the one thing that breaks everyone is (maybe) true i know my father would never and it just hurts cause these arent good people and on paper my father is better than them but he really isnt. he really really isnt

[dullahandyke]

sigh actually whatd fix me is getting into shit that nobody i know knows abt so theres no expectations or whatever. my blade of the immortal arc was soooo good for me

[daydreamsinthemoonlight]

i caved and read the unwanted guest and now i'm insane

[eebie]

we are deconstructing gender on Google docs tonight boys

[international-repeater-station]

the new usamerican bill is INSANE. Like it's legitimately insane, it's even worse that the russian constant internet censorship because at least VPN is legal here (for now). i just. What. In the world.

i was so sure that in USA, it couldn't get worse than russian laws.

[kikuism]

just finished jade legacy

[moinsbienquekaworu]

Hey there, thank you for reblogging my post on writing romance, I loved your tags! Just wanted to point out that the example I give for why Gomez and Morticia like each other that you cited is not described as a universal guideline for writing romantic love. It was an example unique to that one relationship and it’s stated as such in the essay. I go into many examples of why people might like each other that are romantic and non romantic. The bit about long history was only one example meant to describe that one couple.

Thank you! I assumed it was a general formula for romantic relationships because it works pretty well for that honestly, and I'm used to people unintentionally forgetting about aspec experiences. I could've had more faith, it wasn't nice of me to jump to conclusions. Thanks for clearing that up and sorry if I sounded too intense about it. I'm glad you liked the rest of my thoughts though!