#don't ignore the truth

[belleandre-belle]

What This Jewish Professor At Columbia Wants You To Know

[sunderwight]

Bingqiu AU where Luo Binghe's the chosen village sacrifice to the evil deity who lives up the mountain.

Normally the village sends maidens, but they've more or less run out of expendable girls of the right age and, ahem, "virtues". So of course Luo Binghe's early life bad luck kicks in. In the wake of his mother's death there's no one to really care about what happens to him, he's fairly pretty, and the village leaders decide that if they dress him up like a girl the teenaged homeless kid should pass well enough. And hey, y'know, he's probably got a hard life ahead for him anyway -- dying in a brothel of some venereal disease or on the streets of exposure or starvation. At least as a sacrifice, everyone else gets to benefit from his loss! And the kid will get added to a shrine and be remembered as a hero! If anything, he should be happy about this!

Binghe is not happy about this.

But he's also a skinny underfed nobody who is easily overpowered, dressed up like a bride, and tied to a post. So. Not much he can do but wait for the evil deity to come and do whatever horrible thing he's gonna do to him.

Meanwhile, Shen Yuan is pretty sure he's been isekai'd into the over-powered hero of some kind of supernatural adventure story? He's not totally sure because he doesn't recognize the setting, but the signs are there. He's got a shrine-like base of operations (though it seems to have become corrupted/ruined, probably he has to restore it somehow), he has a very resilient and handsome new body with spiritual energy of some kind flowing through him, and a very clearly magical sword. Plus lots of neat starter powers! Though it feels like he has other abilities that have been blocked somehow? Probably he has to level up in order to access them.

When he treks out of his "base" and finds what seems to be a distressed maiden, he takes it for his beginner hero mission. The girl claims that she's been doomed to be sacrificed to an evil god. That sounds a little above Shen Yuan's pay grade for dealing with, so he unties her and decides that they had better just get out of the whole region altogether. He already packed up anything useful from his base, anticipating he might get caught up in an adventure once he left, so they follow the river away from the settlement until they reach another one.

While they travel, Luo Binghe tells Shen Yuan about the cursed deity, Shen Qingqiu, who was cast out of the heavens for slaughtering one of his brethren and has apparently being do-who-knows what to maidens from the local village in exchange for his "protection" ever since. Sounds like a real asshole! And also mid-level boss type bad guy at least. Shen Yuan hopes he doesn't have to fight him, but he probably will.

Thank goodness he found Binghe, though! Clearly the helpful little sister type! He's definitely going to require her assistance if he's going to figure out how to navigate this world and level up his skills enough to take on a god.

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[yet-another-haven-of-dollya]

Just Nyan and-

-Kariya

[robynator]

very hypocritical of aemond to call rhaenyra's children bastards when rhaenyra is literally his father alicent fess up why does your son look exactly like your ex gf? 🤨🤨🤨🤨

[heckyeahponyscans]

Snopes.com was THE fact-checking / lie-debunking website in the 2000s, covering everything from lighthearted fare like "is this a picture of Bigfoot?" to rumors about Iraq War, which at the time often spread via chain emails or Dick Cheney.

Well, Snopes still exists and I encourage you to check it out. They will investigate until they find the primary source of a photo, a quote, an article. This is especially important in a world where AI is increasingly able to fool the human eye and human ear.

In case you were wondering, the status of the photos / articles I clipped for this post are:

Israel making a deal with BetterHelp - Real, and the company was founded by an IDF soldier who proudly brags about this fact in his online profile. Also they have previously been caught selling private medical information.

IDF soldier threatening a woman with children - Real picture but not from current conflict

Are Palestinians forbidden from collecting rainwater? Yes, and the situation is even more dire than the headline makes it sound. Really recommend this article for a deeper understanding of the discrimination the Palestinians suffered even prior to the current conflict.

Did Israel use white phosphorus on Gaza? The evidence strongly points to yes. This article is VERY good, very well-researched.

[utilitycaster]

There's something weirdly...disingenuous in all the posts questioning why Orym might want to talk to Dorian specifically and not the others. Like, this post is really good and covers the non-romantic reasons why this makes sense, and I agree with it entirely! Also though, it's not like Liam hasn't pretty consistently made it clear that Orym has feelings for Dorian. You do not need to like this (I think it's abundantly clear that I think you can openly dislike a ship) but you do look kinda dumb if you're like "why would he want to specifically speak to someone he's known longer than anyone but Fearne, who's slightly removed from the current tragedy, and whom he has repeatedly messaged whenever he's feeling upset?"

[rolandkaros]

forever hilarious to me that tennis is promoted as this prestigious highbrow big-brain sport when most tennis fans these days are like. yeah this is my favorite player. yeah i don't know why they're like that. yes they are stupid. no i will not choose somebody else.

[qu4kerider]

“You've changed.”

ARCANE S02E03 & STAR WARS: EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH

[chirpsythismorning]

Why I Don’t Experience Byler Doubt

It’s simple. One of the most essential techniques in storytelling: Show, don’t tell.

Show, don't tell is a technique that allows the audience to experience the story through actions, words, subtext, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than exclusively through the creators' exposition, summarization, and description.

Even more importantly (assuming we want to enjoy ourselves bc this is supposed to be high quality entertainment), it adds drama. Rather than telling viewers what's happening, a filmmaker will use this technique to show drama unfold. 'Telling' is factual and avoids detail; while 'showing,' is detailed and places the human subject at the centre of the drama.

This technique is literally playing out in the narrative when it comes to Mike’s inability to tell El he loves her (or even simply write love Mike in his letters), which he never would have had to tell her (spell out) in the first place, if he had just shown her that he loved her.

It’s no fun having to spoon feed your audience. Instead, it's much more enjoyable for the storyteller to present the truth in the details, even sometimes contradicting very basic assumptions that are being outright told. Hence why, for example, when the Duffers were asked about the Vecna reveal, Ross used the opportunity to go on a mini tangent: 'the best twists are ones that you go, “Oh, I should have seen that coming.” As opposed to the twists that go, “Oh, well that just came out of nowhere.” So, “Oh, I missed these clues along the way.” But you get nervous when you’re writing it because you go, “Well, to me it seems obvious--'.

In fact, Show, don't tell is what largely allows surprise revelations to hide in plain sight. Because obviously, if a writer just tells their audience everything that's happening while it's happening, we would always see what's coming next.

And so the problem I have with downplaying or even completely refusing to acknowledge the importance of Show, don't tell, in the case of Stranger Things especially, is that, in order to comfortably subscribe to what is being told, I have to ignore what is being shown.

We see this play out all the time on Reddit in particular, which if I'm being honest is the only platform at this point that treats mere speculation about Will and Mike's relationship as if it is the end of the world. On the rare occasion the mods don't remove a byler related post, the post is either already negative towards byler or the comments are filled with fury over the poster simply thinking critically by speculating about byler. Even if you manage to get a fan over there in the comments to consider certain evidence pointing towards byler as incriminating, they'll still manage to end it by downplaying the Duffers and their abilities, because 'They're not that smart!'...

They'll ask for evidence, be presented with it, only to insist that it's all reaching because details mean nothing and everything about the show is actually just surface level, ie. it's not that deep.

Without even realizing it, they're low-key admitting that going the byler route would be smart, and yet here they are tirelessly defending a show that, according to them, has shit writers and no deeper purpose. All this does is prove that they are hoping this is the case. Because even despite being presented with strong evidence that the show might very well be epic, they would rather reject it altogether.

They would rather have one of their favorite shows suck and defend it religiously, then consider the possibility that it's good and gay...

Don't get me wrong, there are definitely fans on reddit that don't hate byler. I imagine out of the million in that sub, there's a silent majority that would be open to it. Keep in mind, most fans still active at this point in hiatus are hardcore fans, and so they're obviously opinionated, that goes for everyone on most platforms rn. And yet, I know there are very likely casual fans who are popping in there every now and then, the same people in the majority when after s4 dropped, saw that monologue and said What the actual fuck was that?

There’s a reason no other couple on the show has needed to hear the words I love you to believe it. Well, besides Steve and Nancy…

Because SHOW, DON'T TELL. That's why!

So, what do I mean when I say that Show, don't tell is why I no longer have byler doubt?

It's actually pretty ironic, but basically the moment Mike told El he loved her, that's the moment they showed us that he didn't.

I mean, for starters, how does one go about filming a romantic love confession? Because if we're being entirely serious right now, they made just about every artistic and creative choice possible to go against what a romantic love confession should look like to feel satisfying.

I mean, you'd probably want the atmosphere to be intimate, right? Make the audience feel like these two are the only two people in the room (world) for this moment?

Well, that's not the case for Mike and El, nor is it the case for literally any of their scenes in s4 (arguably a lot of their scenes in the series; Will the wise drawing in El's room, I'm looking at you). Almost all of the scenes with them together in s4 had Will in the background, often times in the literal frame between them. That is NOT how you film scenes for a romantic pairing that you want the audience to root for, from beginning to end.

You guys gotta understand, rewatch value is one of the most important aspects to this story for the Duffers. When talking about the prospects of s5, they mentioned that they rewatched all the Lord of the Rings, saying how important it was, despite what some fans might say about the ending being too long, or this or that, bc to them, it was necessary to watch it all, and to rewatch it and rewatch it, in order to appreciate the entire story as a whole, aka the way it was intended.

If you're a serious about Mike and El as a romantic pairing, but because of the way the show has set up their relationship over the seasons, you can't sit down and enjoy more than a quarter of each season bc they're either separated, broken up, or on the rare occasion they are together and happy, they're accompanied by a kicked puppy in every shot, maybe all of that's for a reason.

And that applies to the scene in Surfer Boy more than any other scene in the show, a scene that is supposed to be Mike's monologue to El... You mean a scene that directly parallels Mike's monologue to Will in s2?

When planning the end of s4, do we think the Duffers just decided they wanted this intimate moment between Mike and El to have Will in the frame behind Mike (visually piggybacking off of him, in an episode titled The Piggyback...) in almost every shot, including when he said I love you for the first time, for no reason at all? Or is it possible there was a reason for it? Just like there's been a greater reason for everything?

Like bro, I'm sorry, but even if what's being told in that scene is relevant, all of it still reads as either a lie, a partial lie, a lie of omission or a platonic truth hiding behind romantic phrasing: I don't know how to live without you = platonic (trauma bond), whereas I can't live without you/I don't want to live without you = romantic. The later is out of desire/want, the former is out of fear of the unknown.

The entire scene the lighting is blinking rapidly. And so the vibe they're going for here is uncertainty, which is quite odd for a love confession that's supposed to feel certain? Then we have El seeing all red the entire time. She's literally choking, hearing Mike struggle to muster up anything that could help her pull through, only to overhear Will calling Mike the heart, followed by Mike finally saying I love you????

And I guess according to the Duffers, nothing says true love like a love confession ending abruptly by a two day time jump...

Oh and how about, instead of them taking the time at the end of the season for El and Mike to have a private moment, where they could finally address their love for one another, let’s have them barely on speaking terms, and the one time they do talk, let’s have it be offscreen and mentioned in a private moment between Will and Mike, who in contrast to Mike and El, we're going to prioritize having a scene with them alone together at the end of this season...

In the last minutes, let’s have El look at Mike and Will, only to avoid them with visible annoyance. And THEN let’s show Mike visibly defeated by El's annoyance, instead prioritizing reassuring Will, aka his friend with whom he shares an I didn’t say it/ You didn’t have to bond...

I mean? Are we just not going to talk about it? The fact that I didn't say it/You didn't have to could pass off as a literal synonym for Show, don't tell...

It just kills me that even with all of that, the Duffers were like, You know what? Fuck it. Let's show them all the endgame couples lined up next to each other, with Will and Mike in the middle and El standing on her own in front of them. If by now they still refuse to consider it, after everything, this ending probably wont convince them anyways, but it makes for great rewatch value...

Seriously, if you're subscribing fully to the belief that what is being told is the whole truth and nothing but the truth (so help you god), then you're having to ignore all of that. And I can't ignore all of that, I just can't. Which makes it impossible for me to experience doubt anymore.

[xxchromies]

birth forcers like you must be hunted for sport

You say I'm problematic and the way you say it, so fanatic <3

[possamble]

AHA thank u i was mostly just. frantically pulling the "no hetero" card bc farcille is super super always endgame for me and the "marcille has two hands" thing is absolutely not for me and my personal characterization of marcille

i like. can't find it anymore for some reason but there was a farcille fic set just after the shuro confrontation where laios reaches over to hold marcille's hand and ask her if she likes him or if she's just tolerating him too and it was so. the vulnerability. the puppyness.

that safety and security he must feel in knowing that she wears her heart on her sleeve and he will always know when she's unhappy with him because she will absolutely let it be known. the way that falin's first revival was the turning point for the way he felt about her because, for the first time in his life, protecting falin wasn't something he had to shoulder alone. there was finally someone else who cared about her as much as he did (in his eyes, resenting his parents for failing to protect her) and would stop at nothing to save her. the way it must have been proof for him that, not only was falin not alone anymore, he wasn't alone anymore.

idk why i like rather than dislike the fact that his only framework for parsing how he feels about "the first girl other than his sister that he's ever cared this much about" is a comphet romantic lens. like he would have the autism moment of fully assuming that he's in love with her for a while and just like. not? doing anything about it? because he doesn't feel the urge to, nor is he sad that he knows marcille would mostly likely never "feel the same way" about him?

like. he "figures out" that he's "in love with marcille" with all the passion of printing out a label and sticking it onto a favourite scrapbook for organizational purposes. he's equally happy to be her husband or brother-in-law so long as it means she stays close and is part of his family.

i know logically i should hate it but it's sooo crunchy to me. my comphet besties ever. designated plus one and dance partner to all fancy and formal occasions. having actual real chemistry but the "romantic" part of it is some weird shapeshifter smokescreen. augh

[winged-void]

"In our grand successes over the past century we have invented a monster called a middle class. Our predecessors pillaged the Ashen Sea, and now the people are accustomed to receiving that pillage. And they are accustomed to their innocence. If they learn what we do on distant shores to secure their safety and prosperity, I am certain they would hang us all. Not for the crime of what we did, mind! But for the crime of allowing them to know.

"Once I told a man in Commsweal Square that in our foreign provinces we still force women into reparatory marriages or sterility. He laughed! Not us, he told me, not us: those things happen elsewhere, they happened once, but not in our Republic today."

The Monster Baru Cormorant, page 85, Seth Dickenson

[hellsingmongrel]

Man, so I'm not normally the biggest fan of Modern AUs, nor am I overly fond of fiction focused on kids, but...last night, my sleeping brain decided to concoct this Trigun (Stampede-flavored) Modern AU that now is living rent free in my damn brain! I want to get it out of my head and into the ether. I don't know if I'm going to do anything long-form with it, and I'm having to translate dream weirdness into more coherent storytelling, but here we go.

So it's modern day Earth, like 2024 or some shit, right? And that's when this version of Earth had just begun fucking around with Plant cloning. It's early enough that the SEEDS project hasn't even left the planet, the scientists haven't yet figured out how to put Plants in bulbs and use them for fuel, none of that! But they've already had Tessla happen, and the boys have already been born. Since they're not in space, even though they had to have found out about their sister, Nai hasn't had a chance to literally nuke humanity from orbit, and I guess Rem has had a chance to try and curtail some of his trauma, so he's...more stable? Ish? Stable enough where he's not actively trying to murder everyone. And the boys are "older," like we see in the flashbacks for the time Vash encountered Nai during the Last Run, so probably around 6 years old but looking 16 or so.

Rem has managed to fudge their paperwork so they've started going to school with human kids, to try and give them a normal childhood. Nai isn't as eager to play ball with the whole "being human" thing as much as Vash is, but Vash has got so many friends, Meryl and Milly and Lina are there and they're like the cutest, most stupidly adorable group of friends, just a bunch of little goofballs, like kids that age are. And the school has a field trip to a theme park (it was Disneyworld in my dream because my school actually did this, but ours was a band trip) and Vash manages to convince Rem to let him go. Vash and Nai and Rem are still paranoid about humans figuring out who they are, so you know, he's told to be extra careful and take care of himself, and Nai gives him one of his blades or something for self defense, just in case something happens. Even though Vash would never, that boy has trauma around knives and trying to defend himself, if you've read Trimax, iykyk. But he takes it anyway, and somehow, he manages to sneak it into the park. Maybe the metal doesn't register on metal detectors or something, who knows.

But he's a kid, and kids are dumb. Especially when they're 16. Especially if those 16 year olds aren't actually 16 and don't have the actual lived experience to know better. So he starts playing with the knife in front of the girls, showing off and just being a silly little guy. And then the knife slips. Bad. We're talking "this is how he probably lost his arm in this AU" bad. Blood everywhere, the girls are panicking and take him to the school chaperones and it's like "HOLY SHIT WTF DUDE, We're taking you to the ER, someone call his mom!"

And he hears that, pictures the doctors finding out he's not human, remembers what happened to Tessla, and panics. Boy does a runner like only Vash can do, and he manages to get away from them, out of the park, and escapes from security. And when parents get involved in trying to find him, the authorities start looking into the incident, and someone in the government overseeing the Plant research is able to recognize the elemental make up of the blade he dropped, and they start having suspicions. So the feds get involved, and it just goes from bad to worse, right?

Meanwhile, loopy from blood loss and panicking and a little sobbing mess because he feels dumb about slipping up and he's afraid he'll never get to go home to his mom and his brother again and is spiraling the way kids do when they panic, he gets lost in the city and ends up stumbling over teenage Wolfwood, who lives on the streets and has a few street kids that he looks after on his own with Livio. They never got to live at the orphanage, but that also means that the Eye (in whatever form it takes in this AU) never got ahold of them, so yeah, shits fucked for them, but it's actually a whole lot better for them than it might have been. And it's Wolfwood without all of the EoM trauma, so you can just imagine what he does when this delirious, bloody, terrified, severely injured kid runs him over in the street, sobbing about being caught by the adults and taken away.

Big Brother Nico do what Big Brother Nico do.

At that point, I ended up waking up, but damn if my brain didn't give me enough details to come up with a dumb AU idea that I kind of love and want to do something with, but I don't know if I have the time or spoons to do so.

Ideas I'd had following this beginning to flesh itself out in my head; Luida and Brad are Plant researchers brought onto the project to help the feds figure out wtf is going on with this whole situation, and when Luida is told to talk to Rem, because she's not giving them anything they can use, the two of them reach a secret accord to bring Vash home safe and sound and cover everything back up nice and squeaky clean the way it should have stayed.

Vash's arm is bad enough that he can't really heal it very well on his own without medical care, Plant healing or no. He's doing better than most kids would, but it still begins to go septic, and it forces Nico and Livio to make the really hard decision to find adults they can trust to bring him to so he can get the care he needs. He still ends up losing his arm, though.

At the end of everything, Melanie ends up taking Nico and Livio and the other kids in, so they still get to have their momma figure, even if she comes in later. Maybe she's the one that they find to help them. Is she maybe someone they've known was mostly safe but was never able to get them to stick around long enough to take care of them? Either way, the boys get Vash to her, and it starts the process of getting him home and the kids finally staying at the orphanage.

Meryl, Milly, and Lina all end up sneaking away when they realize that Vash is in more trouble than the adults are letting on, trying to go find him, since they know him better than anyone other than Rem and Nai. Eventually, they meet up with Nico and Livio while everyone is trying to avoid federal agents.

Obviously it's lovey-dovey Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends and Polygun-flavored, but in the "these kids are too oblivious to think about sexy things, yet" sort of way, because I really do headcanon that at least Vash is ace, Wolfwood is probably demi, and also I am not writing children getting intimate like that. >8/ But kids having little crushes on each other is adorable and I can't not have Vashwood and Insurance Girlfriends be the eventual outcome, once those idiots all grow up and get their heads screwed on straight.

Also, because Nai hasn't had a chance to murder everyone, Rem's managed to work with him enough that he's very slowly overcoming his trauma and regaining his ability to trust that he's not in permanent danger. He'll probably grow up to be a Plants Rights activist or something, lbh. Or a politician. But he's not going to murder people, so either way, it's a win/win!

Because Nico's been living on the streets with him, Razlo either hasn't had to manifest as strongly for Livio, or hasn't manifested at all. Livio is still the sweet, shy, crybaby teddy bear we see, and maybe Razlo only comes out when the feds start getting closer and almost managing to grab the kids, and because he's been able to bond with Nico and the other kids so well this time, Livio is close enough to them that the thought of them getting hurt or taken away is enough to make him want to protect their little group instead of just Livio.

Wolfwood absolutely grumbles about how alike Vash and Livio are. Both a couple'a crybabies, geez, what the Hell you two??? But he also is very much a teddy bear who gives the best hugs when one of his little band of gremlins is upset, so he probably spends more time in a cuddle pile than anything else, now that there's two of them to lose their shit at the drop of a hat.

Vash was totally the one very sweet boy in a clique of girls that everyone who'd known him realized, when they were adults looking back, that he was very much the sweet gay kid hanging out with the girls because it was safer to be himself around them than it was to be around the other boys. (This isn't meant as a stereotype of gay kids, this is based on actual kids I grew up with. My friend group honest to God adopted them because we were all a bunch of momma bears.)

Vash is also...not trans? Because he's a Plant and Plants don't work the same way humans do, but he's also not what humans would think of as a cis boy. He expresses a masc presentation, but probably the closest equivalent would be an intersexed kid. Nai, too, tbh, though he's probably more of the "I don't give a fuck" opinion when it comes to his own gender identity. He uses he/him because that's what humans think when they see him, but he doesn't care any deeper than that.

[butwhatifidothis]

The people who hate Rodrigue because of his response to Glenn's death have always been so confusing to me because imagine unironically being like:

Rodrigue: I want to believe that my son's horrific death wasn't for no reason

Folks: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO TOMATO TOMATO