#engaging with media in a complicated-ass world

[krakensdottir]

So, about Good Omens:

It's still good, guys.

Like if you didn't like it before, that's fine. But if you loved it then, and now you suddenly think it's bad, you're lying to yourself. Not on purpose, but your brain is trying to reconcile what you've learned about the author with what you felt before. Understandable, it's trying to avoid contradiction.

But that isn't how it really works. In reality, toxic traits of an author do not retroactively poison their work. That's why we talk about separating the art from the artist.

Anyway, this isn't about NG and it never was - he's said as much himself, several times. This is a promise he made to a friend, and whatever else you can say about him, that friendship was real. He damn well better keep his promise. This story changed lives, minds and hearts, and it deserves to be completed, for its own sake and for Terry's, and that's that on that.

(And no, we are not going to get a magically pure Season 3 without NG involved. It'd be nice, but it's not happening. The facts are that no one else knows what they planned together, and the screen version wouldn't even exist if not for NG and that promise. Besides, he's already written the script. Remains to be seen whether he'll be on set at all, but he is involved, and that's that. We can either enjoy something beautiful from a problematic creator, like we always talk about on here, or we can't.)

[sukunasweetheart]

👀👉🏾👈🏾 Sukuna x Reader ex's to lovers?

wowowow i cant believe im doing like another celebrity au again but here goes nothing ahaha...

i love this trope, i ended up writing a WHOLE, lengthy ass, detailed plotline on it i hope u dont mind <3 (A WHOLE WHOPPING 6K WORDS YALL)

prepare for hella angst, OOC sukuna, insecure fem!reader, ghosting, messy break up, conflicting and complicated feelings + sexual tension and then intense smut @ the end (make up sex)

imagine sukuna being like, an amateur model-turned-actor, with you being his highschool sweetheart, who was there to support him since day one

a very happy, fulfilling relationship for the most part-- until he starts gaining huge amounts of popularity.

youve always known that he was meant and born to reach sky-high levels of success, and you were certain he was going to make it one day

but things get rockier by the second, and insecurity is such an ugly, ugly thing

seeing him model with other beautiful celebrities, acting in roles where he had a love interest to kiss and fondle, reading those gossip scandal articles involving him and another party every few months or so-

it all got too much for you.

all you needed was some reassurance... but young and vivacious sukuna, drunk on this fame and attention, failed to recognise that and left you feeling neglected.

not on purpose tho, he's never engaged in infidelity, he's never gazed upon someone else with lust or love on his mind - he was using everyone around him as a stepping stone towards his own career

sukuna's known you since forever, and he was confident that you knew his affection for you was unwavering... so he failed to understand where you were coming from whenever you brought these things up

arguments after arguments after arguments

the worst part of it was that he wanted to keep his relationship with you a secret. saying something about how having a significant other would slow his progress in his career down... the decision was urged on by the entertainment company that he was in a contract with

it hurt so damn much when he was being interviewed on tv about his romantic life, only for him to tell the world he was single.

it leads to more arguing.

of course, as a rising celebrity, he was quite awfully busy with many business trips and attending a lot of parties and galas

another terrible fight occurred right before he had to leave for a flight overseas but by then, youd pretty much already decided that you were going to leave him

you basically ghosted him, packing all your belongings overnight, blocking his number and all his social media accounts, making sure even all yours and his mutual friends didn't know of your whereabouts. you're going to start fresh. and give him no closure.

it was petty revenge, and maybe immature of you, but you were just as young as he was, and you wanted him to hurt as badly as you were hurting back then.

sukuna's still overseas, having just come back from another fancy gathering and is fresh out of the shower, in his hotel room... he decides he's gonna try and give you a call, but ofc you don't pick up

he sighs and convinces himself that he'll sort things out with you later when he gets back, not knowing that there won't be a 'later'.

meanwhile you're dragging a suitcase out of the apartment, taking a taxi somewhere else far away, crying as you pass by giant billboards that have pictures of sukuna plastered all over

he feels like such a faraway person now. no longer someone who you used to cuddle closely in bed, or hold hands with. you're not even sure of who you are without him anymore.

you could imagine his reaction when he came home, only to find your entire existence missing. seriously, it was like you were never there. you left nothing of yours behind, and the place was cleaned spick and span, not a hair of yours to be found.

when was the last time sukuna felt so panicked?? this dull ache in his chest, as he spams you calls and texts that never reach you

he contacts mutual friends in rotation but everyone is absolutely clueless... he considers filing a missing persons case but then a trusted friend of yours tells him to not look for you... and that you wanted them to relay a message to him, just a simple goodbye.

what the fuck are you talking about?

oh, here comes a severe headache.

his mind is whirring with overlapping memories, thoughts, regrets, thinking about any clues that might give away where you couldve gone, but theres simply nothing

the shock moves into sorrow, then denial, and then it turns to anger. does he mean nothing to you? so much so that youd abandon him without saying a word?

its like he was going through the five stages of grief, but for someone who he knew was still alive..

eventually, he finds a rebound out of spite. if youve left him, then it's means he's free and single, right? he gets himself piss-drunk, and beds another, only to wake up feeling absolutely disgusted. it feels like... it feels like he's cheated on you. even though you're already gone. he's just a mess of conflicting emotions, and it lasts for so long.

the reason why he doesnt hire someone or use some other underhanded method to actually look for you is because of a weird mixture of both his pride and feelings of insecurity, thinking that maybe, just maybe, you do deserve someone better, someone who understands you more... (and he's also fearful that someone like you, might've already found love somewhere else, and he's definitely not confident that he'll be able to act maturely if he sees its true)

eventually, acceptance does come... but does it really?

i like to think he went through many failed relationships, his partners always leaving him upon witnessing him getting intoxicated and calling for none other than your name in his state. someone who no one around him knows anymore.

years pass, and time really does allow you to forget. for both you and sukuna alike. in your mid thirties, both of you are single at this time.

you've been busy with your new job at some company (dont ask me, i was too lazy to decide what kind, so u guys can make this one up bye), and he made sure to keep himself busy as well. no time for fleeting romance.

of course, until fate does that weird thing where it pushes people together again... a new project lands in your lap, where it involves some kind of collaboration with THE celebrity, ryomen sukuna. of fucking course.

you really did desperately try to get it off and pass this off to some other colleague but they insisted your involvement was necessary. what are you supposed to do? you almost decide to quit... but this job means a lot to you... you can't just throw everything away because of an ex... right?

and, oh my god, when the first meeting does happen, involving the celebrity himself, you and a couple other coworkers to discuss the project, sukuna sees you and his brain short circuits for a moment.

he starts doubting his own vision, and then he reminisces, in the middle of whatever the fuck everyone else was talking about during the meeting.

"... Mr. Ryomen?" one of the other participants ask.

he clears his throat, regains his composure and regathers his focus. he's an actor for god's sake. and he starts speaking, with thoughts of you in the back of his mind. about how much youve changed, but also remained exactly the same...

during introductions, you shake his hand and act professionally. his eye twitches. will you continue to pretend not to know him even afterwards? should he talk to you separately after this? no... doing that would mean he's the desperate one...

when you saw sukuna hesitating, part of you felt relieved. so you're not the only one getting freaked out. you don't expect him to acknowledge you anymore, though.

after the meeting, he walks out feeling confident that he's going to ignore you back, if this was the kind of game you're going to play with him. you mean nothing to him, just as he means nothing to you.

but he remembers the shock that went down his spine at the feeling of the warmth in your hand. he watches you take an elevator by yourself, and tries to make a split second decision on whether he wants to let you go, or if he wants to chase you down.

he probably shouldn't bother.

but he impulsively speed walks down towards you, anyway.

youre startled when the elevator doors are blocked from closing just at the last second, with someone's arm coming through between. your heart skips a beat seeing that it's none other than sukuna.

what is this sensation? this mix of fear and... excitement. you should be unperturbed. you're over him. he's someone from the past. you're buzzing with these feelings, but there also comes a creeping resentment that finds its way to you again, as you try to remember why you left him in the first place.

he unclicks whatever level you were heading to, and clicks on the highest level instead. he's gonna take you to the rooftop of the building, where he can confront you peacefully.

"Mr. Ryomen? Is there something wrong?" you ask him. still feigning ignorance. like salt to a wound. you know its another petty move from your part, but you can't help yourself.

"Don't call me that. You know damn well why I'm here," Sukuna drawls, sounding more sad than angry. they've really become strangers.

you grow silent, being hit with a pang of guilt. deep down, you knew you shouldve handled it more maturely than that. he deserved closure, and you needed it too. but isn't it too late for all that now?

the conversation flows tense, but unravels slowly. there's still a lot of questions being withheld though. he wants to ask you how youve been. were you able to sleep peacefully after you left him? why did you have to leave in the worst way possible?

a familiar headache creeps up.

simultaneously, the anger finds its way in his heart all over again. he knows he didn't do much good towards the end of their relationship either but ghosting him was plain disrespectful and childish.

you surprise him when you give a sudden heartfelt apology.

you tell him that you know apologising now after all these years is frankly almost meaningless but still, he didnt deserve to be left behind in that kind of way. you admit that you should've communicated with him properly that you were breaking up with him.

he's left kinda speechless, bc he was so ready to be all snarky to you after everything.. he's still mad, but he can't really say shit anymore without sounding like too much of an asshole.

truth be told, if you did stay around to tell him that you were breaking up with him beforehand, he probably wouldn't have let you go... where would you guys be now, if you never separated?

"i've always wanted to apologise. it's been weighing on me ever since i left."

...and yet, you didn't ever think to call or text him even once afterwards? he never changed his number in hopes for that, and he hates himself for it.

"i understand that you hate me now, but let's try to get through the collaboration without trouble. and then we can part ways again."

that one pierces his heart, like a bullet. you haven't said anything technically wrong. he should hate you. or at least, he should feel indifferent by now. and yet... the way that you automatically assume so irks him badly.

"do you really believe that i hate you? aren't you the one that hates me?"

it's a stupid fucking question. what the fuck is he even saying? he wants to kick the elevator door.

"...i left because i thought you hated me, that you didn't need me anymore. and i tried to convince myself that i hated you too. but that couldn't be further from the truth. even now, i don't ha-"

before you can say any more, the elevator doors open, and a small group of employees are standing outside them, looking curiously in at you and sukuna. then, they realise who he is. they come flocking in, asking for autographs and pictures.

you quietly slip out of the crowd, and after giving one quick glance at sukuna, who visibly wants to pursue you again, you walk away to avoid gathering attention on yourself. wait-! dammit- he thinks.

he can't chase after you. he can't call out for you to stop. he can't push all of these people away. if he did, it will cause rumours and unfavourable articles to fly out. let's try to get through the collaboration without trouble. his own fame becomes another obstacle between you and him.

back then, you were his whole world, yet somewhere along the path, he started to fail in making you feel like it.

he watches you take the fire exit towards the emergency stairs, while he's surrounded by overbearing fans who beg for his attention. you're going to have to walk down in your heels, all because of him. as he catches the final glimpse of you, as he's reluctantly dealing with his fans, he begins to understand, a little bit. he didn't want to understand why you decided to leave him. but he does now. a little.

a couple of stairwells down, you eventually pause for a moment and sit down on the last step to take a breather. you wipe your sweaty palms against your skirt. the familiar tug at your heart, in which your insecurities come flowing back to you, seeing him surrounded. you need to build higher, stronger walls around you from now.

when sukuna is done on his end, and sends them off down the elevator, he goes off to check down the stairs you went, but you've already booked it. slipped right through his fingers. you were about to say something important. with unresolved feelings, sukuna also takes the stairs down, with a heavy heart. each step down brings him another old, nostalgic memory of you to him.

from then on, the more he interacts with you during work-related matters, the more apparent it becomes that he still harbors feelings for you. he tries to ignore it, push it back down, but it only returns twice as overwhelming.

your voice. the way you smile. the scent of your perfume. exactly the same as back then. yet, he also observes the changes that have occurred in you; how you act, speak and the kinds of words you use, as well as seeing you in such a professional setting rather than personal - everything is coming together to allure him more, and he's in a state where he's unable to resist this attraction, but also unable to act on it, because he's not sure how you'd react to it.

he knows it's not just him getting drunk on nostalgia.

the next time he catches you alone, he makes sure to tell you that he doesn't hate you like you believe he does. you'd never admit it, but that gave you butterflies in your stomach.

in fact, everything sukuna does, even just locking eyes with you for a few seconds, is enough to make your heart rate increase, intensifying when he looks at you almost like... almost like he wants you. you must be imagining things.

he finds himself doing uncharacteristic deeds, like sending coffee for all the staff members. his manager passes them out to everybody, including you. he doesn't know if you still like your coffee the same way as he remembers, but he makes sure that yours is a little different, a little more specific than everyone else's, in hopes that you'll notice these small gestures of his.

over the course of the project, he inches closer to you, ever so slowly. but you don't seem to budge. even worse, you seem to be avoiding him as much as you possibly can. you avert your gaze from his. stagger away when he gets close.

he brings it up on one occasion, when he's able to approach you at the back of the building, where there's no one around, and no watchful eyes of a nosy audience. it's definitely frustrating and unpleasant- when he wants to speak with you, he has to keep distance in case another scandal rises. he doesn't want to drag you into the spotlight, without knowing if you're okay with it first.

sukuna only really talks to you when there's nobody around. maybe he's being considerate of you, but it gives you the impression that he doesn't want to be seen hanging around with you. it makes you remember things you don't want to. it makes you remember that being with him now requires a courage that you're not sure that you have. at the very least, you know you definitely didn't have it back then.

you keep conversations short with him, and try to leave. but he keeps at it persistently. what is he trying to do? is he toying with you?

"you're acting like you want us to get back together. don't do things that'll make me misunderstand," you tell him. you were trying to provoke him. expecting him to deny it harshly and back away, because you knew he was prideful- he'd never be caught being hung up over an ex.

"...and? what if i told you that i do want that? would you stop avoiding me then?" he takes one step forward, and you take one back, proving his point.

why is he pushing aside his ego for you? where did all his arrogance go off to? this isn't how the sukuna in his twenties would've responded. his answer makes you waver, and you don't appreciate that. you try not to show it.

"no. i'd only begin to avoid you even more. so don't start."

"i'm not," you deny, but your voice betrays you. he clings onto that.

"why? ...afraid that you'd cave in to me?"

like the way he's already pretty much caved in for you?

"you don't sound very convincing."

"...would you want someone who'd choose their career over you?"

that stops him in his tracks. he has nothing to say to that. because he did make that mistake. where he prioritised his job over your feelings.

"i don't hate or blame you for that anymore, sukuna. but you have to understand... i don't want to go through that pain ever again. i don't want to hold you back. we both deserve more compatible partners."

your own words sting yourself, and you try to go again right after saying that, because it's getting too much for you. his hand flies out to grab yours out of instinct, to stop you from leaving. leaving him again.

it's really not like him to be the clingy ex, pathetically begging to be taken back, but he's willing to throw such pride away if it means you'll be appeased. if you'll let him back into your life again.

"don't say that. you never held me back-- you were my home and my everything, and i was the one that started to take you for granted," he says gently, his low voice laced with sorrow, so uncharacteristically. you've only ever heard this kind of tone from him once before, and it was when his grandfather, who was like a parent to him, had passed away. his thumb brushes over your hand.

"give me another chance. this time i'll let the whole world know about us. about how much you mean to me."

he gets in close ever so slowly, and you let him, for only a moment, before gently pushing him away, with a hand on his chest.

sukuna hitches in a breath, heart sinking to his stomach. he wants to embrace you so, so, so bad. he needs your warmth. always has been. always will. but he sees that you're unrelenting, which breaks him.

"no, stop... i'm sorry, i can't."

you're still scared. you keep thinking about how lonely you felt when you were with him, at least right before the break up. seeing him laughing through the tv screen. alone in the living room. and all the arguments.

your hand slips out of his, and he lets you go. he feels empty when you walk away. hollow. the similar feeling he felt when you first left him, but less anguish and more despair. when he gets home, he tries to drink those feelings away. something he rarely does. old regrets and heartaches return, and he drinks until he passes out.

while he drinks, you weep. crying into your pillow, wondering if you're doing the right thing. wondering if this is how it's supposed to be. terrified of being with him again, but also terrified of losing him, like a hypocrite.

from then on, sukuna keeps a respectful distance from you... no longer trying to make approaches in secret, no longer pursuing you every chance he gets. but he still sends out coffee. even provides snacks to the crew. little do they know, they're the kinds of snacks that he knows you loved. hopefully, you still do. he'll keep his distance because it's what you want, but he wishes to keep doing these little things for you. subtly.

and you notice it, too. you have vivid memories of telling him about your favourites and preferences back then, and you recognise what he's trying to do. you drink the coffee. and you always grab a handful of the snacks. you do appreciate it. it makes you happy that he remembers. on a few occasions, you turn to look at him, only to witness him looking away at the last second.

it's not too long before the project is successfully finalised, and all their efforts have been rewarded. a celebration is due, and your boss throws a party at a fancy hotel for everyone to enjoy themselves at. sukuna had stopped going to so many gatherings and parties quite a while ago, but he attends knowing that you'll be there as well. he'll see you for the final time before he'll lose any excuses to be around you ever again. it'll be the final night.

you exchange a few words with him at the venue, but the two of you leave each other to mingle with other groups reluctantly, to avoid suspicion. both of you are quite tense all throughout the night, sipping on some wine to ease it, but it still doesn't relax the tension you feel, no matter how far away sukuna stands from you.

a few hours in, and you decide to excuse yourself early to head up into your designated hotel room. your boss covered the expenses for a night, and it would've been a waste to decline it, so you decided to stay. sukuna isn't around anywhere at the venue anymore, so you assume he's already left. you thought about saying farewell, but it didn't seem appropriate after you flat out rejected him. you still have doubts about the decision. because you miss him. but what's done is done, and you can't take back what you've already said.

however, getting to the hotel elevator, you notice he's standing there, with miraculous timing. you awkwardly "hey" him, and he says it back, hands in his pockets.

the two of you step inside when it arrives, and the thick tension remains.

"i'm surprised. i thought you'd be staying around longer for the party," you tell him.

he can't tell you that he found it unbearable, to see you hanging around other people, but being unable to get closer to you himself.

"i just got a bit tired," he lies. "did you have a lot to drink?"

"not at all. i had a few glasses, but i'm still sober."

"same here."

as the lift gets closer to your level, you get antsy, thinking about what to say before you leave, but your thoughts get interrupted when he asks you something abruptly.

"...can i walk you to your room? for the last time."

you swallow thickly on nothing, and feel how your chest aches at the words. last time.

"alright. sure," you say.

he wasn't expecting you to say yes, but he's glad you're letting him stay beside you a little longer. you're staring at the elevator doors, but he's looking at your face from the side. if only the lift would malfunction and stop, right here.

but it doesn't, and soon, he's really walking beside you as you get to your hotel room door, in silence. you unlock it using your key, and then that's it.

"thanks for walking me here," you say rather sheepishly. the thought of him wanting to spend even a few more seconds with you... your hold on the door knob is tight as you stand, face turned around to look at him. it's taking everything in you to stand your ground. last minute guilt and regrets are bombarding your thoughts, and...

"i'll say this now because i probably won't get another chance again," sukuna starts, looking directly into your eyes. his eyes are mellow, and he looks wistful.

"i'm sorry. i realised i never apologised, even though that's the first thing you did for me," he starts. he knows there's a mountain of reasons he is apologising for, but he decides he'll keep this short for your sake.

".. i can't lie to you and say that i wish for your happiness with someone else. 'm not that nice." you know it the best. and you understand, because you don't think you'd be able to withstand seeing him happy with someone else, either.

"find your happiness elsewhere, thanks," he grunts humorously. for god's sake. he's never been good at things like this. being heartfelt. at least it made you chuckle a bit. his expression of indignation melts away into a melancholic one again.

"i still love you." (always have, always will.)

you fight back sudden tears, and your throat begins to ache. sukuna unclenches his fist, and tries to relax himself more.

"and...i'll miss you," he breathes the phrase out. says it so quietly, like it hurts for him to say. (i don't want to let you go.)

something snaps within you and everything starts to scream at you to take everything back, and stop him from going away. don't go- don't go- don't go-

"...goodnight."

he notices your wet eyes, and he has to fight back against the urge to reach out and wipe it away. to rescind his farewell, and pull you into his arms again - forcefully, if he has to. he needs to leave, before he loses control.

you're panicking, and your vision is swimming, and you don't think you'll ever be happy again if you let him go like this-- you're gonna be heartbroken in the worst way imaginable. you want him back, and you know you're being unreasonable after turning him down like that, but you don't care anymore. you want to go against your fears. you want to try being with him again.

before you can stop yourself, your hand catches onto the hem of sukuna's sleeve, seconds before he takes another step away from you.

his eyes widen, and he looks at your grip on his sleeve, like he's checking to see if it's real, and he's not making this shit up in his mind. his heart beats impossibly fast. his hopes skyrocket. the world decided to have mercy on him.

"...you're being unfair, grabbing onto me like this. after i went through hell just now, trying to say goodbye." he's being awfully patient right now.

you don't respond, only silently weeping.

he waits to see if you'll let go, whether this was just an act out of a temporary fickle in your heart, but your grip remains tight, and you're now just looking up at him with tears rolling down, eyes glossy and desperate, pulling at his heart strings. you only let go when he comes back to you, not hesitant to brush his thumbs across your face now, wiping the wetness away.

"what do you want me to do? tell me, and i'll do it. leave? stay?" sukuna coos at you, like he's always done before, waiting patiently until you've calmed down enough to respond properly.

"i shouldn't... i shouldn't let you in. not after how much i'd pushed you away," you whisper. today was supposed to mark the end of it all.

he doesn't even give a fuck about that anymore. what matters is now.

"...but do you want to let me in?"

"...yes," you hic.

he takes a couple of steps forward, making you step back with him, his hand on your waist to make sure you don't trip on the way. he goes past the doorway and into your hotel room slowly. one- two- three- steps. he closes the door behind him quietly.

"and..? what next?" he asks in a low voice, standing close to you, one hand still remaining on your waist, and the other on your upperarm.

"i... i don't know. i just need you," you mumble, looking up at him, eyes red from crying and half-closed. your hands inch up along his back, grabbing handfuls of his suit jacket. sukuna hitches in a breath and something dark flashes across his eyes. they reflect his desire, his almost carnal desperation for you-

"forgive me. i don't think i can hold myself back, anymore."

he captures your lips in his, and groans shamelessly into you. you grip onto him tighter, heart beating so rambunctiously that you fear he can hear it too. it feels too good. the moment he reached you, it felt like the final piece of a puzzle clicking in to complete a full picture.

you part your mouth, and he wastes no time in slipping his tongue inside, kissing you in the way he knows you love, in the way it makes your lips tingle, and, oh god, even after all these years, he still knows how to get you going like no other.

sukuna tastes the traces of wine on your tongue, and even better, he tastes you, the one he'd been missing and craving all this time, the warmth of your skin and touch, your scent, just everything about you, you, you.

he backs you towards the bed, without breaking this breathless, hungry kiss, where he softly lays you down, with him being above you, chest to chest, arms supporting his weight. he momentarily pulls away from you simply just to breathe, and the two of you gaze at each other for a hot second, full of love and lust, breaths overlapping one another. he attempts to ask you "do you still wanna continue?" just in case, but before he gets to say a word, you grab him by his tie and pull his lips to yours again, beginning to loosen it and take it off.

he understands that you want it, now. you successfully manage to untie it, somehow, with just willpower alone, and you start aiming for his buttons next, undoing them one by one. your actions send sparks down to all of his limbs, and he feels so fulfilled by your desire of him, being as intense as how he obsesses over you.

soon after you're done with it, he takes them off and chucks his own clothes away, rendering him half-naked. your hole clenches around nothing at the sight once he pulls away again, his firm muscles and the same old tattoos that you vividly remembered the patterns of. you greedily run your palms across his pecs, eyes turning to hearts. he smirks at you.

it's his turn now, and he doesn't hesitate to start undressing you as well. sukuna gets dizzy at the thought of being able to feast his eyes on your body. he dives in to keep kissing you, and then begins to unbutton you with such speed, it almost startles you.

it's off. your breasts are out in the open now, and sukuna has his fill with massaging them with his large hand, having missed them so much. his palm feels so hot, and your nipples pebble up at his touch, making you gasp into his mouth.

his kiss moves over to the side of your face, it glides down your neck, shoulders, and eventually reaches the swell of your chest. your fingers brush through the pink of his hair as he does so, and you purse your lips together, basking in the feeling of his warm kisses littering your skin. he leaves you hickeys-- the same shape and size and same locations as he used to even during your days in highschool, and you chuckle to yourself at the thought.

it's not long before he's loosening your skirt and slipping your undergarments down, getting rid of your slick-stained panties, much to his satisfaction. sukuna rubs a thumb over your aroused clit, and you whimper, having missed the touch of a man- his touch specifically.

"fuck... you're so wet.... all for me?" he asks, proceeding to slip two fingers into your weeping hole. you arch your back at the feeling, how his thick digits scissor inside of you and press up against a particularly lovely spot. he watches your every response as he does so, watching how you moan because of his touch, and how you're grabbing at his wrist because it's getting too intense. his cock prods uncomfortably against his pants. you're producing so much slick, and his fingers are getting absolutely drenched.

when he takes them out, you whine a little in disappointment.

"i know, i know. i'll give you something better," he whispers, kissing your cheek.

he unbuckles himself, and lowers his boxers to reveal his aching dick, tip wet with precum, veins bulging out the sides. looks the same as you remember. he pumps it a couple of times with his hand that's still covered with your slick, and he twitches. this isn't a dream, is it?

"oh god, please, i need it-" you plead, your hole feeling eager and empty.

"it's all yours," he mumbles. your begging makes him lightheaded as he lines himself up at your weeping cunt.

"i'm all yours."

when he sinks in deep to the hilt, you cry out at the fullness, as his tip pushes the spot inside you that had been feeling so lonely for years. your hands finds themselves against his back, feeling for his tight muscles.

"shit- 'm gonna lose my mind," sukuna groans as he gives a few shallow thrusts into you, cock so hard and throbbing wildly as your plush walls clamp on him and coats him with your arousal. he grabs one of your hands from his back and interlocks his fingers with yours against the mattress, before leaning down to bring his lips against the side of your neck.

"oh, thank god... thank god, you changed your mind. i love you. i would've been so fucking miserable without you, doll. for the rest of my life," he croons, breath fanning so close to your ear. you shudder at the tone of his voice, tearing up again, mixed with pleasure and relief, and you grab his hand tighter.

you turn your head a little more to the side, making it easier for sukuna to bite and suck on the sensitive skin of your neck, as his thrusts increase in speed, nudging your g-spot with every movement.

soon enough, he's bringing his attention back to your tongue, which he caresses with his own, nibbling on your lower lip, maintaining this same perfect pace in his thrusts that brings you closer to your orgasm.

"sukuna- i'm- i'm gonna-" you say breathlessly.

but he merely kisses you again, swallowing up any words you could say or moans you could let out, not minding the gasps and whimpers that you make.

sweat beads on his perfect body, and he makes out with you through your high, groaning back when he feels your walls flutter around him. he's close. even once you've finished cumming, he begins to pound into you quicker, wanting to get to his own orgasm. you claw at his back, crying out in pleasure, as sukuna's tongue lathers your jawline.

he wants to breed you so fucking bad. but no, that'll have to wait. he can't do something to jeopardize your trust in him. he'd rather die than endure another second of being distanced from you again.

right before he's pushed off the edge, sukuna pulls out and desperately jerks himself off above your stomach, panting as his cock throbs in his hand with every spurt that coats you, feeling so hot against your tummy.

you feel a twinge of disappointment, because you also wanted to feel that in your womb...

his dick twitches weakly after being spent, and he breathes heavily, liking the sight of you being covered in his seed for another time. (and many more from now.)

" 'kuna... it's a safe day for me today," you suggest to him without thinking. "i want it inside me..."

the phrase is enough to get heat pooling in his abdomen, and he feels himself get hard all over again.

"you sure, doll? if it's what you want, i'll..." he begins to say, almost flustered by your suggestion. you know you shouldn't say this next line, but it's so easy to get carried away with this man... get caught up in the heat of the moment.

"i want your babies so bad."

you've hit his switch. sukuna growls and puts you into a mating press instantaneously, making you squeak.

"no takebacks," he mutters dangerously, beginning the second round.

the night is long, but heavenly, as soon after he dumps everything he has into your womb, then proceeds to eat you out, making you cry for the third time before sunrise.

when you're awake, it's already heading past midday, and you're relieved to see that yesterday's happenings were not a dream, seeing as the large man is sleeping with an iron hold around your body, as if subconsciously afraid you'd leave him before he woke up again.

he awakens from his slumber to your light, feathery touches on his face, which puts him in a good mood from the moment he opens an eye. it was the scenario he's always dreamed of. waking up next to you, smiling.

there's much to talk about. about what's to come next, future plans, worries, and things they need to do to make amends for all the lost years between each other. but you decide to take things slow.

back to bullet points again bc im lazy to write it properly now

you spend the weekend w him at the hotel and stuff, just playing eating and sleeping, catching up yk

he tells you on his own accord that he wants to let everyone know that he's with you now, but he's worried that it'll bring backlash to you but you tell him you're going to be brave and take it, bc you WANT everyone to know

anyway prepare for turbulence

but everything'll be alright bc hes with you

im thinking about how mopey he'll be when you have to separate from him bc you each have your own homes rn, hes always asking you to come over or if he can come over to your place

and he'll be begging you to move in soon, like old times (he lives in a rich man house now tho)

and also thinking about how its a fresh start, but they also go through old memories and now reminiscing isnt painful anymore bc yall are back together

sukuna also says he's stopped doing romance genres in acting bc he had felt annoyed acting in lovey dovey scenes when his own love life used to be in shambles all the time

and bc hes at a point in his career where he has more choice in choosing between scripts that are offered to him, he's going to continue to decline the ones that have love interests, it doesnt affect him that much anyway

he's just being more considerate of your feelings now... and you promised him that you'll never just disappear like that again when you're upset haha...

sometimes when you still have a few disagreements with him, he keeps subtly checking up on you (hes traumatised, leave him be)

lots of facetiming when he has to go overseas for filming purposes <3

okay, thats all, bye <3

Masterlist

[eofoc]

day 9: relationships (part 1)

Ange & Juliet - platonic, half-siblings

Ange & Yuze (angeyuze 🌿🌊) - romantic

Mischa & Orifiel (orimischa 🗝️🦢) - romantic; art credits: first, second

Juliet & Roselyn (roseliet 🌹🕯️) - complicated; art credits: first, second

AAAHAGHG MY FAV DAY!!!!! prepare for a crazy CRAZY EXTENSIVE infodump (under the cut) ...

edit: i feel like this is already a long ass post so tbh. i might just reblog with a description of the other two (🗝️🦢+🌹🕯️) at a later time :]

idk if i need to say this but i hate incest. please block me if you engage in any sort of incest media / fiction. my ocs siblings relationship are strictly platonic

💚🧸 ill start with the siblings because they make me a bit crazy i cant lie. they are half-siblings!! juliets dad died when she was very very young (a baby basically) so she grew up with her step-father (ange's father)... she didnt really gaf about him at all though because she was mommys girl . amen

when they were younger, ange and juliet got along really well!!!! juliet loved playing the role of an older sister and she liked dragging ange around ... they also played togetjer a lot :3 but like. gradually they started getting more into their studies and all .... their parents were getting more and more antagonistic towards each other so they began piting the kids against each other as well. #divorce

as a kid ange viewed juliet as some sort of a. higher figure... something beyond his reach... a kind and silly and funny angel and the only person who treated him right honestly. so when he assumed that juliet has betrayed yuze and had his parents killed . his world Lowkey literally crumbled. i think he realized at that time that shes just a human person and can Also make mistakes.

their relationship got a bit strained because ange started to isolate himself Hard. and juliet is a naturally pushy person when it comes to others so it did make her frustrated when he wouldnt tell her anything or talk to her... wah...... ange was also being ostracized by society because of his father :( juliet tried to throw parties and warm others up to him and she was like. just act nice okay. but it failed lowkey because hes a bit of an asshole sometimes

they had a big fight over that and stopped speaking like.. at all...... ange thought juliet was setting him up and exposing him to people that dont like him when all she did was try to fix his image and reputation... whatever okay.

i also want to say theyre very similar in a lot of aspect!!! both mask their emotions to a crazy degree, usually with a smile or with humor... both kind of try to appeal to people as much as they can, but in different ways? ange mostly wants people to see him as stupid and non-threatening (opposite of his father) and juliet wants people to see her as pitiful and hard-working. they are also both mildly suicidal BUT ange is like -> i have no purpose so i should kms vs. juliet being like -> kms is the only way to escape the purpose i have in life

🌿🌊 ohhh the doomed yaoi... they make me super super sickly.... i talked about their childhood like 93849 times so . well. idk if i should do it Again . However

theyre like. childhood friends to one-sided enemies to lovers . in their childhood years yuze and ange met when yuze was helping his parents with tailoring clothes and yuze helped him out a bit (ange was afraid to speak up and yuze noticed it...) and so it began. ange kind of even in his childhood clung to yuze a lot because it seemed like he was the only one who understood him and his troubles. like even to a bigger degree than juliet could. to yuze . well he didnt think too much about it . like childhood friend yay :)

then the whole FIASCO happened. yuze jumped through 9328 mental hoops and as a 10 year old the only logical thing that made sense was that ange had something to do with the death of his parents. poor ange lost his only friend, his dad was executed and his mama now hated him more than ever and forbid juliet from meeting with him. so they were both going through it .

and then when they meet again they are literally . two different people . its like meeting a fuckign stranger because of how much theyve changed and that drives me a bit crazy. ange is hurt by the resentment yuze seems to hold for him.... yuze is like damn i have to kill this guy (he doesnt Really hide it...) but he finds out how suicidal ange is and hes like. :/. i dont like you but dont do that actually jesus christ youve had it rough. and then he finds out that ange didnt have anything to do with his parents after all and the GUILT that kicks in is crazy. and then more stuff happens (Heh

[myrskytuuli]

I stumbled upon one of those characters react to their own books/movies/series fics again, and was lead on journey of contemplation about metanarratives so let me guide you to the same journey.

So, I’m genuinely fascinated with the concept, even if (as anyone who has ever bit the bullet and gonw to read these fics knows) they are almost all garbage. I think I can remember one or two fics in my history of fic reading that did anything interesting with the premise and the other was a fic that circulated as a torrentable pdf and nothing else, but I digress. Usually these stories start with the avatar author being some kind of meta-god and kidnapping the characters to show them their future and I always think what a huge shame it is that the most interesting part of the idea is never utilised, which is that the characters could find out about a parallel universe where their world is fictional and get to experience the media about them as...you know...media. In a way that they could complain about bad directors, why somebody gets the bad-ass theme song and others don’t, whether the bad cgi resembles the real thing at all or why the author decided to include this thing in the book but not something else. Just...the media they are interacting with being actual media that has been created in our world to tell the story of those characters, sometimes more or less succesfully.

But. Then I got hit with another thought that derailed me completely, and made me fell down a unhinged idea rabbit hole. If for example star wars characters found our parallel universe where they are fictional, what if this world was fictional in the star wars universe?

Just, you know. Everyone complaining how convoluted the WW1 prequel series was compared to the original WW2 series. Half of the runtime is spent on politics, almost all the action happens in one trench, and even the director doesn’t seem to understand why the war even started. Compared to the clear-cut heroes and villains of the WW2 series, it’s no wonder the original fans were frustrated. Even though the World War series has always been very anti-war and the original series wasn’t as simplistic as everyone makes it out to be, the allies were shown stooping to worse and worse war-crimes near the end, and that was the point, to show that there can be no good sides in war, Padmé rants angrily after seeing some dudebros miss the entire point of the series on message boards again.

Obi-Wan thinks the franchise has its moments, but on the whole relies way too much on the shock value of mass slaughter and sensless deaths. Ahsoka is always trying to rope people into reading the tie-in novel series the Cold War, which actually deviates from the open battlefield format and tries to engage with the loose plot threads and the implications that the original WW2 series and especially the divisive decision of pulling out deus ex nuclear weapons at the last minute left behind.

There’s a lot of back-and-forth about how uninclusive the series is, with only human characters, but it has also been pointed out that there is a valid metaphor being made about how irrational speciesim is, because even in a world that human-supremacists are always harping about, their utopia of a world with only humans existing, people would find other arbitary ways to be prejudiced against each other.

On the whole, there’s a shiton of complicated lore about how all these nations were formed and some of the ideas are really good and some really stupid, but what everybody agrees is that when the galaxy+ bought the franchise and started churning out soulless mini-series about the future of the World Wars universe, nobody was impressed. The Cold War novels at least tried to tell a story about grey morals and paranoia, the New Millenium sequels are just stupid. Suddenly people just want to be nazis? again? Every villain is simply the dumbest character you’ve ever met? Most of the conflicts rely on the leaders making the dumbest decisions possible? There’s plague and environmental catastrophies and new nazis? At the same time? What a cash-grab.

[idkjustletmescroll]

I hate modern media.

Like don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good stuff out there, but for the most part it feels like so little heart goes into most books/movies/shows?

Like--the PJO show, don't get me wrong, it was good...but it was, at least to me, just kind of...fine? Nostalgia can only go so far.

Casting-wise, it was perfect, and it does seem like it was made by people who genuinely love and care about the source material, but who had to rush their story because they just didn't have the time. They had 8 episodes. Each of those episodes was like 35-45 minutes long, but not only is that pretty long for a single episode, if each of those episodes pretty much just covers one part of the story...that's still not a lot??

House of the Dragon? 10 episodes. No matter how long those 10 episodes are, they're trying to show us how a whole ass war got started in 10 FREAKING EPISODES. How Alicent and Rhaenyra's friendship broke down. Both of their relationships with their spouses and children. They still didn't fully explore Rhaenyra and Harwin's relationship. Does Rhaenyra have any more complicated feelings about her father for his role in the deterioration of her friendship with Alicent? Plus all the time skips...we don't have time to sit with these characters and their relationships and get to know them. Not like we did in GOT (at least the first like 4 seasons).

Not to mention waiting like 2 years between each season. Like, one of my favourite shows ever is Arcane because I like to suffer, and between season 1 and 2 there are 3 years (season 2 comes out November of this year). Watchers may not be happy to wait that long, but we expect good quality for that wait because Arcane is insanely good in all aspects--animation, character arcs, world building, nuance, commentary, music, action, etc., etc., etc. A lot of other shows, not just the two I've mentioned above, just don't feel as worth the wait. I still think they're enjoyable, and I think the writers do want to make good work, but that's hard to do with 8-10 episodes. And Arcane has only 9 episodes, and all of them are long, sure, but I feel like since there are so many moving parts and characters and subplots to the subplots, it can a) keep viewers engaged that long, and b) can easily fill up that much time well with clear priorities and a tightly woven story.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, a masterpiece show in my (and many other people's) opinion, had 20 episode seasons, each episode around 20-25 minutes. That's a reasonable amount of time to focus on one adventure or aspect of the adventure. Prioritize what to focus on, and it slays. But you can't keep giving writers 8 episodes, a shit ton of material, and then expect 100% quality every time.

[awritingcaitlin]

Author Ask Game

Okay tagged by both @elbritch-kit and @nanashi23 for this so I better get off my ass and do it 😂

I'll tag @golden-heretic, @elizmanderson, and @aziz-reads (you guys were in my notifs recently hehe) (no pressure)

1) What is the main lesson of your story (e.g. kindness, diversity, anti-war), and why did you choose it?

Leaning on TBW for this one...

That there is hope in the darkness. And that the "right" path is not always easy.

But I didn't exactly choose that lesson. Because when I and my cowriter started this... that's not what we were thinking about. We were thinking about putting our characters in situations.

2) What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding (like real-life cultures, animals, famous media, websites, etc.)?

Okay so full disclosure that this started as a Pathfinder ttrpg campaign. Beyond that... media that ends up reflected in this includes: The Witcher, Sanderson's work, Warhammer 40k, Dragon Age, and a few other things that I cannot remember at this time lol. But sometimes I'll look at media and go "oh yeah, that was formative."

3) What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?

Rinnie's trying to make the world a better place, which means stopping the Nidtrins. Nathaniel's trying to finish his damn mission. It's a lot more complicated than that.

I don't think I'm trying to achieve anything here? I want people to read this book and have a good time. Maybe see themselves in a cool character.

4. How many chapters is your story going to have?

Okay so currently it's at 45. We'll see if that changes.

5. Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

It's original content. If trad pub wants to take it, great! Otherwise, self-pub.

6. When and why did you start writing?

Okay so I've been telling stories as soon as I could string sentences together if my parents are to be believed. I'm that kid who just can't not write. (I say, as someone in their 30s.) I think I've always meant to be a storyteller?

7. Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of Writeblr? What other writers of Tumblr do you follow?

No, not really? Write what you want and what makes you happy. Also anyone I'm tagging is cool people.

[mermaidsirennikita]

ARC Review: Bloom by Helen Hardt

2/5. Releases 8/22/2023.

After a failed engagement, Frankie meets a mysterious man who wants her to call him the Phantom. At the Black Rose Underground Club, they have near-anonymous meetings, fulfilling her every fantasy. But as Frankie's feelings deepen, she wants to know the man behind the mask--but he may be more complicated than she expected.

Okay, so. I thought this was going to be a fun, ~modern~ spin on The Phantom of the Opera. Not exactly. It's more a standard contemporary BDSM romance with a bit of flair for the phandom. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me.

Quick Takes:

--This story feels quite rushed. And like, I didn't expect anything other than a fun, kinky romance, but just... the book feels very literally rushed off the last page, and it leaves the reader feeling dissatisfied.

--Frankie overhears that this man is called Phantom, like by other people, like in public, and she recognizes his mask as a Phantom of the Opera mask, and she acknowledges POTO is something that exists in this universe, and he implies this is nOT A COSTUME and perhaps something he wears all the time, who knows? And her response is "intriguing".

I just can't buy that. I can't. This is not an alternate universe. This is our world. There is no way an adult woman who has had enough life experience to get engaged at some point, would go "oh tell me more" about that situation without having some questions. Even in a kink setting, there would be questions, setting a scene, clarification. Even an extreme POTO fan would have at least internal questions, you know? Beyond "intriguing".

--I should add.... I'm not going to act like an expert in kink, and the portrayal of kink in romance doesn't have to be accurate. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, I've enjoyed books in both contexts. Here, however, it felt surface level in a way I don't think it should have as it was (apparently) an integral part of the novel. It's not the side dish, it's the main course, and it didn't feel authentic here.

--In his first two POV chapters, Phantom quotes two different novels. One is POTO, which I expected. One is The Great Gatsby. There was no damn reason why this man needed to be quoting multiple novels that early in his own personal monologue.

--I think that in order for all of this to feel emotionally plausible, Frankie would've needed to be a massive Phantom Phan. Like, not casual. She has these little musings about floating to his lair or whatever, and I'll be honest, I'm not 100% sure I bought it. No, this woman needed to be like--sobbing about the show closing on Broadway, a Phantom-related account on every social media platform possible, downloads of multiple bootlegs on her hard drive, several of which she filmed herself, a contributor to a Phantom-related publication, Ramin Karimloo's autograph tattoed on her ass, card-carrying STAN. That is the woman who I can buy randomly hooking up with this man in what was not a pre-negotiated (for her) scene.

Like, she's just acting as if this is NORMAL, and again, while kink is in this book, this is not someone she met and formed a connection with outside of kink who's like "hey, I REALLY like to do POTO scenes with my partners, would you be the Christine to my Phantom?" This is just some guy she met at a bar who wears a half mask and talks about haunting an opera house, though I will add, he is not actually the Phantom of the Opera.

I'm super into camp, but I think that when you do not properly acknowledge certain things in a contemporary romance, you cross the line from camp to just distracting, and that's where I was. I couldn't get into the book because I was so distracted.

The Sex Stuff:

The sex is... fine even if I did have my issues with the feeling that the kink wasn't... lived in, somehow? I also have a problem with an adult woman who seems to have a reasonably public, non-sheltered life being shocked when a man uses the "c-word", as she put it (she also doesn't know what a strap-on is, among other things), but that's me. It's not especially kinky, and there was a dialogue moment that really took me out of it, but. It is what it is.

I wish I'd like this more, as I do enjoy POTO, but I just couldn't get into the story.

Thanks to Netgalley and Entangled: Amara for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[loonyoz]

Idk I guess I should make a pinned post? Sideblogs, links to my art posts, and info about me below the cut

@hezele is where I’m attempting to write fanfiction

I might make a sideblog for my art someday? Idk

My Art:

Right now I just have very random bg3 art

Wyllstarion Howl’s Moving Castle AU:

Wyll making a pact

Wyll and Astarion

Sketch of Wyll in demon bird form

Sketch of fem!Wyll

Strictly Ballroom Wyllstarion

Sketch of Branwyn, @/odessa-castle 's oc from their lovely fic Nothing Like the Sun. (highly recommend giving it a read!)

Used to have supernatural art and non fan art posted but got self conscious and deleted it lol.

Other notes and info about me:

I would list all my interests (like books, shows, etc.) but uhhh that list is way too long. Honestly I feel like I love most things/genres/media and am always looking for more art to engage with and appreciate.

I try to put alt text on all my posts that have images but I’m pretty sure I’m ass at it lol. Lmk if you have suggestions for me on how to make my posts more accessible or my alt text better and I will do my best to implement it.

This is the internet so I really don’t want to share much about myself, but I think it goes without saying I’m very neurodivergent and queer lol. I use way too many terms but genderfluid, transmasc, and nonbinary are the best descriptors for myself.

Branching off of that I want to say the internet is a difficult place to navigate, especially socially. I’m sure I make lots of mistakes on how to communicate best with people online, but I try my best to do so as respectfully and kindly as possible. The internet is a great way to get information and have discussions about important topics, but there are many pitfalls and problems that can occur that are too numerous and complicated to get into here (although I’m sure anyone whose been on the internet for all of 5 seconds is familiar with them).

I use tumblr mainly to discuss creative media and I also don’t feel I’m qualified or informed enough to speak on most serious/real world topics. So I try to avoid bringing up alot of real world issues on my blog because I worry I would only be detrimental to these causes. Of course, creative media is not off in its own bubble from the real world and so real life problems are bound to be part of the art or discussions.

I bring this up for two reasons. One, I don’t want people to see my lack of activism and feel uncomfortable, or that I don’t care. This is unavoidable but perhaps this alleviates some people’s worries. Two, I want people to know I’m open to constructive criticism and learning new things. If I post something that you think is misinformed or hurtful, and you’re willing to tell me, I want to know about it and what I can do to improve. And on lighter note, I love to analyze stories and art and provide my thoughts and opinions on it. My favorite thing is to have discussions/arguments about interpretations of stories and ideas. So as long you approach me in a respectful/kind way I would be overjoyed to chat.

Anyway if you read this far, thanks for slogging through the wall of text :). Tumblr is glitchy but Im pretty sure most of my followers are bots I need to block 🤷

[aizenat]

First of all, as a rule of thumb, if someone reblogs a post and says something in the tags and not on the post itself, that’s because the person ISNT looking to engage with OP. If this post got like 1000 reblogs with ppl disagreeing in the tags, would you do this to everyone? If so, it’s manic behavior and I’d recommend seeking help with managing that because it comes across as unhinged and is just generally unhealthy.

Meaning, if you had beef with me agreeing with the person I reblogged this from, then take that up with THEM, not me. I didn’t ask nor send for you.

Second, I’m not reading your ten page MLA formatted essay on a fucking show. The person I reblogged from succinctly explained our problem with your op. I’m not saying shit about you denying the racial dynamics but rather your weird take on gender. You’re on some shit I don’t agree with there plain and simple. And based on that, you don’t strike me as the person I would want to hear your takes on the racial dynamics between them either.

I don’t care about any of this! No one cares about any of this! This is why the person I reblogged this from said what they said! You’re trying to over complicate something and make an argument no one cares about. Like fuck keep your dissertations on your page and leave ppl passively engaging with your post alone.

Idk if you’re Black, but i sure as hell fucking am. Real Black, dark skinned, with two dark skinned Black parents and a Black ass family living my Black ass life. I was a part of media critique discussions for well over a decade, and was a mod on a site where we literally talked about shit like this long before it went mainstream and got annoying. I’ve actually read books and poems from Black revolutionists, lgbt ones at that, and was part of the communities having talks about gender and sexuality and expectations long before zoomers who got their political and social takes from Twitter in a post Trump world started jumping in with their uninformed hot takes.

This is how I know your OP is a bunch of bs and why I’m sure if I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt and click on your link to another post (as if it’s my responsibility to go through someone’s entire page before I reblog a critique of their post to make sure they didn’t address it on another post; if you’re that interested in “correcting me” or whatever then reiterate your point instead of adding links fucking lazy ass), whatever you said would be more rambling incoherent saying-nothing garbage.

A good lesson you obviously are still learning is picking and choosing your battles. You waste everyone’s time and energy (including yourself) when you engage with someone who doesn’t give a flying fuck what you have to say. Pick on someone who actually cared enough to leave a proper retort on your post, not someone who said something quick in the tags and then doesn’t interact with anything you post again. You can’t fight everyone and make everyone agree with you and not everyone WANTS to go back and forth as you attempt to convert them to your way of thinking. Learn when to agree to disagree and who is worth engaging with. You’ll be surprised how much freer you’ll feel once you let go of that obsessive need to be right all the time.

The whole framing of Lestat as the sole symbol of patriarchy that fandom is so desperate to put him in doesn't work unless you deliberately ignore how he was also a victim of rape and abuse before he was turned. People want him to be fit into this strict role of "father figure/violent husband/perpetrator" that is only that and not even a whole person, and in doing so they need to push aside the fact that despite being his family's provider, he was also pushed into that role when his father forbid him from joining a monastery or gaining an education that he wanted. Lestat wanted to run away with a theater group as a kid, and actually managed to do so once Gabrielle gave him her blessing and monetary support in order to go to Paris. He didn't always want to be the provider, he was forced into that role and became despondent when he thought he would never get a chance to leave his home.

His new life prior to being turned is pretty much the antithesis to the whole "Lestat is a manly man who would sooner throw up than be compared to a woman" spiel: he lived with another man in Paris while also being an actor, having left his family and "responsibility" to them. The only family member he was ever close to was his mother, all the other male members shunned or ridiculed him. Add onto that the fact that his turning firmly placed him within the role of the damsel/victim: he's kidnapped from his bed by a stranger, taken into a tower and left to rot while being fed on for a week, before then being raped and violently turned all while never even being asked if he would consent to it in any normal circumstance. But you of course have to ignore all of this if you want him to only represent the aggressor/patriarch while Louis is the helpless unhappy matriarch of the family.

My issue isn't that I think Louis isn't a victim, it's that it's not unrealistic for Lestat to be an aggressor/abuser while also displaying traits that aren't regularly assigned to stereotypical depictions of male characters. He's abusive to Claudia while also having been a victim of abuse from his own family. He's not a good maker/teacher, but he also didn't even have one when he was turned. He's the provider/attempted protector of the family and seemed to like being that, while also having run away from his own family prior to this to act in a theater in Paris. He's a rich white man while also being obviously effeminate in public spaces, even to Tom's own bigoted humor.

Like Louis' own complicated story with being his family's benefactor and provider, you can't firmly place Lestat as being one thing or another in terms of gender ideals without deliberately ignoring parts about him that don't fit this. And I don't think it's an absolute necessity, when even in Louis' own story, Lestat isn't stripped of his effeminate mannerisms or behavior while also being the abusive maker/father/lover.

[alicedrawslesmis]

ok so I just saw a post that said 'how come there aren't a bunch of modern adaptations of les mis like other classics?' and I was thinking about this question a lot these days so I have my 2 cents here: I think it's just because of politics

there's a weird dissonance with the way this book is read in the english speaking world and the french speaking world, because nationalism in france is a bit of a hot topic and les mis is pretty tied to national identity and if you are going to properly engage with the legacy of Victor Hugo, poet, you're going to be wounding a lot of egos and touching on complicated messy feelings (the french reviews for the les mis 2000 adaptation are a big case study on this, where they're like 'finally we took back OUR story from the hands of those YANKEES' nevermind that les mis 2000 is like. It's les mis 2000)

they did have a Les Miserables set in contemporary times recently but I haven't seen it, and it seems to be only les mis in spirit and not actually an adaptation of the story (also the main character is a cop) (there's a lion in there? I didn't know that. Will the people in that block use the lion AGAINST THE POLICE???? Now I'm intrigued)

and in the english speaking world people who adapt the story tend to I guess completely miss the politics of it and just turn into 'evil gay cop chases robber around town' because that's the legacy of the 1935 adaptation and also because they're sort of allergic to having a story with an explicit acab message. People with money to make a les mis adaptation will more often than not be people who think the police exist to protect them (true, and also middle class people need to get off their-our- ass cause this is the fucking message here dammit why do people keep missing this????) (studios are so averse to making a story with an explicit political message cause they're afraid of controversy)

there's this distancing that happens when you're adapting a story from a long time ago where you can be like 'damn haha things were crazy back then... anyway, I'm glad all those problems are fixed now and I can cry about these characters then go home and live my life like nothing is changed' and period pieces tend to be escapist media in general, even the english version of the musical premiered in the middle of a political crisis but people who liked the musical didn't even mention that

and that's just the easiest way to adapt the story, and now we're in a media landscape where modern adaptations of old books tend not to get made, they just tend to be period pieces because it's more prestige this way.

(I still want someone to make a les mis set in the USA in the 70s like it's right there bro come ON)

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

honestly looking back at my undergrad degree…. i find it so strange how the philosophy faculty while i was at my home uni didn’t think that presentations were a good way to assess people. don’t get me wrong, i hated public speaking and i had anxiety attacks around presentations during uni. but like. it was so bizarre that the one subject who obsessively prides themselves on being able to communicate complicated esoteric ideas to the layman- ie keep the ideas of tableau rasa in philosophy of mind or epistemic injustice in epistemology “simple stupid”; just didn’t want students to present these ideas to an audience.

so the one main way to present the said esoteric ideas in a formal assessment with my home uni’s philosophy dept was either wholly essay based (eg my epistemology subject had two 50% essays only- once they scrapped philosophy exams or mid term in class written assessments/quizzes as a form of assessment) and maybe an unmarked essay plan worth 2% and class participation that was always around 5%. and yeah, again, i loved the fact that not having presentations meant i had a reason to avoid my readings in philosophy.

but still. i think being forced to communicate the esoteric ideas in a marked presented assessment would’ve probably made me engage with the readings more. bc otherwise it was just a vague “oh yeah i think i understood the first 2 pages of dennett’s view of the zombie problem” (this was a 50 page reading) or “the narratives in our lives that goldie posits shape us into human beings correlates with our sense of self and the way we interact with the world and media around us” (this was a whole ass book my dad bought me for a first year subject called media, art and censorship; but we used one like 100 page chapter) in the class go around of pretending that you’ve done the readings.

because you can spit all that bullshit out during tuts for days, weeks, months of a sem or YEARS of doing your degree, with either a major or a minor (like myself) in philosophy. but the minute that you have to do a presentation for say, like, your honours thesis or your phd or whatever else degree there is with philosophy (i’ve forgotten tbh)…. just how the fuck do you actually posit and present those incredibly complicated philosophical problems clearly to an audience???

for example, how do you easily explain the twin earth thought problem (which my tutor for philosophy of mind was doing his dissertation on i think)??? or intelligently and clearly speak on the importance of the structure of thought problems and their philosophical patterns of learning connections or whatever the fuck (alas philosophy of science and logic was not my friend but i think my tutor of that subject did his dissertation on that. props to him (and also his corgi’s that he’d always use in his class tut questions) honestly.) and communicate them simply to your professors and other marking people??? when they’ve never let you build presentation skills???

but once you force me to present this then…. fuck man. maybe i actually have to do the 50+ page readings. maybe i actually have to form my arguments properly, before tyler, one of the really annoying philsoc dudebros that i can’t stand, will shut his fucking know it all kissass mouth….. just so i don’t hit him over the head with a chair.

but the irony of it was that by the time i finished my degree, the philosophy dept of my home uni FINALLY introduced presentations as an assessment method…. after marking what i think would’ve been too many failed philosophy rote learning exams; where no one remembered the meanings of epistemology or phenomenology or whatever else. they also added some more interesting fields to include stuff like the philosophy of media, film and literature which was the main one with a presentation (and i’m pretty sure it was even a GROUP presentation…. when philosophy is always painted as a solitary subject/activity) . there was also philosophy of religion which i think had a presentation as well. and the philosophy of narratives, self and psychosis; which was a third year subject i never took bc it had a 6,000 word essay in it lmao.

but still. to go through an entire degree that’s all about clear communication, argument and reasoning skills etc etc etc, it’s weird to think that they just straight up avoided or outright ignored presentations for so long and just wholly relied on essays upon essays and exams as their main source of assessment marking (not counting class participation and any of the dumbass 2% essay plans).

if there’s any philosophy tutors or profs on here, please feel free tell me your views on including presentations on your syllabuses. maybe it’s too much marking. maybe they take up too much time in 1hr tut slots. maybe people don’t want to hear jenna or freddie, the class stoners, half baked 20 min presentation on who the fuck knows what else i did in my philosophy minor. maybe philosophy profs don’t want to inflict more stress on students who have like 3 other subjects that ALL have presentations as assessments, some of which may be group ones. but i think i would’ve benefitted from doing presentations during my philosophy minor, whether they were individual or group.

[docholligay]

Please rant/rave (well, we already know which one it will be here) about Harry Potter!

GEE I HOPE THIS WAS WORTH WAITING FOR

OH MY GOD. The level of hatred I have for Harry Fucking Goddamn Potter, the culture around Harry Fucking Potter, extending its poisonous tentacles even to the concept of young adult fiction, fantasy, and the United Kingdom as a country and people. 

When you being on this, you may think, “Oh, Doc will explain that Harry Potter sucks because JKR hates trans women” and I will say, oh no, dear reader, that is a fantastic reason to hate the author, and I really suggest we all continue to hate her, and perhaps not purchase the QUEEN’S TONNES of officially licensed merchandise and movies and theme parks that give her stupid little fucking hands all that cash, but no, that is not why I hate the work. There are a number of great works done by terrible people, and the further out the lens of history gets the truer this is. 

I hate Harry Potter because it fucking sucks, and mentally stifled an entire fucking generation. 

“Well, Doc, Harry Potter was really there for me when--” Oh my god I could not fucking care LESS about your personal emotion connection to “orphan wizard boy turns out to be a rich aristocrat yet somehow less woke than Cinderella though” I have personally emotional connections to hot fucking garbage pails of media properties, and if someone came barreling through talking about the myriad ways in which they were horrible, I would be like, “Oh, you aren’t fucking wrong, pal” 

Harry Potter gained wild ass popularity in part due to its magnificent sorting system of Smart, Brave, Evil, and Other, because there’s nothing liberals like more than being able to put everyone’s personality into an easily labeled box, which is why astrology is so popular, or for the intellectuals, Myers-Briggs, which is just as fake but with the veneer of science. This allowed people to give into the tribalism they so desperately liked to pretend they did not possess, and also allow them to write thinkpieces about “The misunderstood Hufflepuff” or “Slytherins aren’t all bad!” or really anything that allows them to write a very real piece about their very imagined oppression for being a part of a totally fake house in a children’s book. Excellent use of your sociology degree, Kai, I thought the addition of phrases like, ‘Content of socialization” and “axes of oppression” really spoke to the struggles you face when wearing a green and silver scarf. 

The other reason it became popular is that it’s essentially wallpaper paste formed into characters. I have read all of the books, and I could not tell you even remotely what Harry’s defining personality traits are other than “protagonist”. In American, at least, a large part of it was the fascination with all things British, with the idea of boarding school and prefects and uniforms that aren’t inexplicably chinos and polo shirts for nine year olds. It allowed children to project onto something so bland that it could be anything. And for children, THAT’S FINE. There is a great deal of bland media made for children, but what I’m speaking to is the fandom, which is largely well over the age of 18. 

Because if we look at the books, are they...actually good? Was it good, or did I experience it as a child? I mean, honestly, on a literary level, are they, or was it just like we all watched Friends, we did it because everyone else was doing it, because I have a distinct memory of a series that involves such greats as “magical geegaws with poorly defined rules that are quickly forgotten despite being able to solve later problems quickly” or “Everyone loves Harry or is a bad guy, or secretly loved Harry all along” 

Oh, speaking of, man, if this was an actual well-written book, wouldn’t it have been wild to have Snape’s whole thing be to teach us that sometimes people do good things for the wrong reasons? Instead of naming your fucking child after the guy who ‘protected you’ because he still wanted to bone your mom? “After all this time” “Always.” 

While all this could have been explained, we have Quidditch added into the mix instead because 20 pages of the goddamn Puppy Bowl is exactly what I was looking for while I was waiting for JK to move the goddamn ball on literally any of these actual magical concepts. 

Harry Potter is a fucking trust fund baby, star quarterback, who grows up to be a cop and marries his high school sweetheart. (Speaking of, why were we shocked that JKR turned out to be a piece of shit when this was and always has been the conclusion of Harry Potter? Why are liberals so fucking into this series that upholds structures like it ain’t no one’s business? It’s a series that opines that those beneath us “Muggles” should be kept in the dark from us) Literally, he finds out he is a wizard and has a dragon-guarded fucking VAULT OF CASH. At 11. It’s such a series for little tyrants, you are special from birth and need do nothing to prove it, here is a letter certifying as such. Oh, not only are you rich and the greatest seeker and have excellent quips, but also your parents were not only rebels, but the best of rebels, and so deeply involved that your parents were killed by the big bad personally, again, because you are so special. His mother’s love literally saves his ass over and over again, because he was SO SPECIAL. He fought Voldemort FROM THE BEGINNING, and WON.  It’s literally the most privilege baby fantasy in the world. 

“But Doooooooooooc, it’s for chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiildren” 

A) Yeah, and you’re 32, you’re making my fucking point about Harry Potter setting an entire generation up for intellectual failure to launch. 

B) Okay, and? I can think of a bunch of kids’ books off the top of my head that in no way require specialness to be given by birth so as to roll out the red carpet for master protagonist. The Hunger Games. Watership Down. A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Chronicles of FUCKING NARNIA, about which I have only a small handful of particularly kind things to say. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but it’s my understanding that despite his being a literal demigod, the attitudes of the supporting cast are allowed to fall between the extremes of “Appreciates Percy” and “naughty or will learn” Harry does nothing to improve himself even after knowing that he is HUNTED BY THE BIG BAD! “I won’t do this because I don’t like Snape”. So There” which, again, if this series were written with the slightest bit of care or know-how, could be a humbling fucking plot point! BUT NO THAT WOULD BE NAUGHTY. 

But the real reason I hate Harry Potter so much has everything to do with the fandom surrounding it, and how it intellectually stunted a generation of adults. The promise of Harry Potter was that it was supposed to make a new generation of readers, and so the popularity of them was pushed, and so there was discussion of teaching them in schools, but I tell you fucking what, I know a whole lot more folks who grew up reading Harry Potter that never advanced beyond reading YA, or even just rereading the entire series every year and that’s pretty much them done and dusted. 

In the attempt to recapture whatever it was about Harry Potter that attracted children (A lot of it was your peers doing it. I read them all as they came out, and it was literally the equivalent of watching the game so you could talk at the water cooler. That was never going to be recaptured) people, who by this time were likely in their teens, kept getting recommended stuff at the same and same level. No one ever felt pushed to read things that are challenging, to read things that have some of the concepts or themes of Harry Potter but maybe complicate. I know FAR more adults who read adult books that aren’t into Harry Potter, even if they were as children, than the reverse. 

But Doc, why is reading only books meant for 14 year olds a problem??? I mean I suppose I can’t convince you that comfort is not the job of literature or of life, it is the job of an easy chair, because Americans especially are decadent as fuck about being comfy cozy all the time and if anything causes them distress or pain it should be immediately avoided. But Maybe I can convince you that you’re fucking up these books for actual ass children who deserve to have their own writing section without adults bringing their fucking asses into it. They deserve their own spaces. There’s a number of YA editors who have talked about the difficult space YA now occupies because since Potter’s blowup, it’s no longer a niche category, but basically “adult easy reads” and so they have been buying books that are more about the tastes of adult buyers than of literal 14 year olds. 

Is that not...sad? To anyone else? Honestly, and this is not part of the essay because it’s a broader reaching problem, but CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS NOT FOR US. CHILDREN’S MEDIA IS FOR FUCKING CHILDREN. The fucking 40-23 set really needs to get their shit together and grow up a little bit and engage in some fucking adult media, and maybe, if we support what we’re actually looking for FOR ADULTS, it will come to us. No one is saying you can’t read Harry Potter or watch some Cartoon Network show, but like, search your heart and come the fuck on. Engage in something more complex. If not for yourselves, for the kids getting shoved into simplified adult stories. It should not be about us. 

ANYWAY, my larger point is that it was Harry Potter, a badly written series about a magical boy who was chosen and magic and also rich and also a favorite of the headmaster and also more clever than most adults and also spoke the same magical snake language as the big bad and was also star quarterback, but at least there was a system in which you could buy a scarf in block colors and feel like you belonged to a team. 

(But not a sports team! lol handegg! I’m cool I don’t get into sports! Except Quidditch.) 

[nitewrighter]

This was a thing I started writing when I got that “What are your thoughts on Overwatch 2″ ask.

So to preface this, I have a lot of complicated feelings about like... "Overwatch... Now With Plot!" because when Overwatch first came out, I was really into the concept of the game itself being just a fun goofy PvP clusterfuck and the actual plot of the world being in outside media and players/fans could more or less choose how much they wanted to engage with the plot and characters. My lore-hungry ass was eating up every new comic, short story, novel, and cinematic, of course. I grew up with Jonny Quest, this kind of optimistic futuristic globetrotting world was very much in my wheelhouse, but I liked the idea that like... you could have different layers of engagement based on your own ideas about the characters--your favorite character could be the main character as far as you were concerned. And fans could basically flesh out the Overwatch universe from other fans’ combinations of cultural experiences and narrative satisfaction. Between canon and fan-made content, it could be the ultimate “Choose your own adventure” story. Or if you were a hardcore gamer, you could not give a shit and just game.

...Then the comics stopped coming, and plot-relevant content for the game slowed to a trickle. I stuck with it though, because by this point my interest was pretty much self-perpetuating with the new followers I was getting and all the fic prompts I was answering. It was fun. It was like paint-by-numbers. A solid chunk of players were trickling over to Apex and (barf) Fortnite but the battle royale and art style didn't appeal to me as much. Then the Blitzchung incident happened and Blizzard righteously hemorrhaged players. New characters were brought into the game that raised more questions than they answered. DPS's were added to a roster that's already choked with them. More players were leaving. So now Blizzard, in the midst of a PR nightmare of massive layoffs and supporting police brutality in Hong Kong, in a desperate bid, put out the preview for Overwatch 2 in 2019. And then there's months with pretty much no followup. Any hype that Blizzcon may have generated quickly withered on the vine as the pandemic severely impacted how Blizzard could work. And here I was. With a story and characters I cared so much about, and I was stuck holding 500K+ words of fanfic while I’m watching Blizzard shuffle game directors, and preview the same damn maps they previewed a couple months ago at Blizzcon for a game they can’t give us the release date for.

At this point, as a writer, and as someone who really cares about these characters, these narratives, and my own followers and what these narratives mean to both me and them, I’m willing to keep writing this stuff because I care about the story that much on its own.

As far as what Blizzard might put out though? I’m not getting my hopes up.

[themason]

Quick and Dirty Jupiter’s Legacy Review: They Did Josh Duhamel’s Fake Beard Dirty

In a lot of ways, Jupiter’s Legacy delivers: it is mediocre superhero escapism that spits out just enough plot twists to interest viewers. But in the ways in which art reflects reality, it is DUMB AS FUCK.

An ensemble cast of superheroes—Josh Duhamel, the only actor I recognized, plays the Superman-esque Utopian—I  think I'd have been 10x more into this show if the fake beards and wigs were of a higher quality. And I mean that. I would 100% dig a gray-bearded, long-haired, farmer Josh Duhamel... If only his fake follicles weren't so distracting. Maybe my standards are too high, as the muttonchops in the British dramas and mysteries I watch are top fuckin' quality, but I must not digress...

Like much of the work by writers I followed in the early oughts, this Mark Millar adaptation follows the various stages of life. Millar and other writers of his generation (and gender) have spread their tendrils throughout media the last 20 years as they chronicle the stages of their lives through pop culture: the manchild years, early marriage years, what it's like to have young children, reckonings with their own aging parents, and finally, what it's like to be an overbearing father with teenagers that hate you.

Mark Millar must have had teens that hated him when he was writing this initially*—or was recalling the ways his overbearing dad raised him—because the show is mostly about the family dynamics of Duhamel's character's family, which includes his spunky and faithful wife (Grace), too-hard-on-himself son (Brandon), and rebellious celebre daughter (Chloe). All of them have superpowers, and it's Duhamel's 120-year-old ass attempting to guide them responsibly through those powers. Comically, though the quality of the tantrums of the kids are analogous to teens, they are actually in their early 20s in the show.

(*Admittedly, I haven’t read the 2013 comic series, and am not certain how closely the show follows it. So maybe the comic is more opaque in its intentions than the show 🤷‍♀‍.)

The thing most people will hate about Jupiter’s Legacy is that there are multiple timelines. More than you can keep track of. Parceling out story tidbits seemingly at random. I'm ambivalent about this, tbh. I don’t mind feeling lost in a plot, but I can see others having problems with the jerkiness these timeline cuts bring to the flow of episodes. Ultimately, the freedom to jump between 1929 (right before Duhamel and his super friends received their powers) and 2021 (and sometimes in between) ends up feeling like a crutch for the writers to lazily lean on. But, this is the quality I'd expect from Netflix, as they seem to prefer to waste money and not time. Were they less stingy with time, maybe the writers room could have had a few more months to work out tighter scripts with fewer flashbacks.

At the core of my problem with Jupiter’s Legacy, and the core of the plot of the show, is "the code"—a set of rules Jupiter's Legacy's senior superheroes created and follow. The code: supes do not govern, and they do not kill. The do not kill aspect don't sit right with me specifically. As times have gotten tougher in the show, the do not kill rule has gotten harder, and the younger, new generation of heroes is finding it more difficult to understand why it exists, let alone abide by it.

And, of course, an important character eventually does kill. And thus, this further complicates the world heroes and villains alike live in, and this is doubly true for Josh Duhamel's Utopian.

At one point in episode seven, while discussing the “no-kill” code with his sister, Utopian’s son Brandon says, "You have to make a choice, otherwise you're just standing by letting the world go." Which is ironic since this is a show that does not make a choice. What “choice” do I mean?

It’s difficult to watch a show about superheroes acting as world police without thinking about the real-world police. This is doubly true when one of the subjects is whether said superhero “world police” (as I’ve dubbed them) should be allowed to kill dangerous combatants. The problem isn’t that the show “takes a side” when it comes to real-world violence. The problem is that the show pretends the subject doesn’t exist. Violence at the hands of superheroes and the ensuing effects are just utterly outside of reality. Of course, this is escapism, right? But escapism or not, there are other ways the show attempts to parody the real world, from the strained experiences of an overbearing father and his kids to the portrayals of celebrity lifestyle through the Utopian’s super-daughter, Chloe. I think I case could be made that the “code” is actually a fight against an increasingly fascist world (both on the show and in reality), but the metaphors get so lost in translation and muddled by real-world-problems that they seem meaningless to me.

I’d love it if I could JUST view Jupiter’s Legacy as a clumsy metaphor for all of our daddy issues, but it lives in a world where police violence exists. And when it’s engaging not only with the concept of whether the powerful should kill but batshit ramifications of that violence, like the superhero trope of supervillain “escalation,” it becomes real hard to find the show compelling.

Ultimately, the overall story itself isn’t about whether superheroes should kill—which ends up being a pawn used by both sides for control and power…but that doesn’t stop that single component of the show from being a distraction. By the time the last episode ended, I found that the way that the overall material had been handled left the Machiavellian plot twists inert. Which is not to say I saw them coming or did not see them coming, but to say that I just really didn't care.

[annikasafternoonread]

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (by Hank Green) -- Part 1

Hello friends! I’m so sorry it’s been a while -- life has just been weird lately, and I’ve been super tired, and the time never felt right, and I had so much to say, and and and I don’t know. 

But I’m here now XD

I had interest expressed for both Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce and An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green, and I think Wild Magic might have technically won but I just wasn’t feeling it for some reason. Maybe I had too many animals in my house already (I was catsitting for my friend’s two cats, who didn’t much like our two cats or our dog) and it was too overwhelming. But in the interests of getting my ass in gear and getting back into the reading saddle, I’m going to go ahead with An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. I’ll probably put Wild Magic back in contention for our next vote, though! 

I’m going to split this intro into two posts (you can read the second post here), because a lot of what I want to talk about is just general celebrity culture and why I think Hank was perfect to write this book. It’s not specifically focused on AART itself, and while it’s relevant, it quickly swelled to be quite long and I didn’t want to scare folks off with the size of the intro post haha. This post will try to stay focused on the book and what I’m looking forward to. 

So. An Absolutely Remarble Thing. This book fascinated me. It hit so many of my favourite vibes, and did it so well. April May is funny and clever, but she’s also human and complicated and sometimes selfish or stupid. Miranda is so smart and pretty and I’m very gay for her. The puzzles are fun and creative and interesting and exciting. And then the themes are spot on -- celebrity, media, persona, humanity, morality... and then some aliens, robots, and bisexuals mixed in as a treat. 

First up: April May. She’s amazing. I already said that, but it’s true. I have rarely encountered a character like her, where I like her so much and yet -- I’m very aware that she’s not a very good person. Not in an antagonist way, she’s very much the protagonist, and I think she’s written to be liked. But she’s also written to be deeply, deeply flawed. And it’s interesting to hold space for both of those, and to be reminded that they can coexist.

This book also asks a lot of questions about what it means to be a person, what it means to be a good person. Those questions don’t have simple answers, and we’re all out here just doing our best. Most people think they’re good people. Including people who we think are bad people. Learning how to engage with those people (or when to avoid them) is something that we’re all trying to find our own ways of dealing with. It’s hard, and sometimes it’s hateful, but we keep trying. 

And honestly, I think this book is at its core incredibly optimistic about humanity. There are people who want to sow fear or division or hatred, who want to undermine others or just cash in for themselves, but in the background of all of it -- this story is a story of community. Of millions (or even billions) of people around the world, coming together to work for something more than themselves. And there’s no real reason to, no reward they know of -- they just want to. They want to be a part of something more. They want to find the answers, just for the sake of answers. For the sake of doing it. I don’t know if that quite fits the definition of altruism, but it’s close. And it’s pretty damn miraculous.

Straying away from the story itself, I think another more unique reason I enjoyed this book so much was because of the time in my life it arrived at. It came out in the fall of 2018, and I figured out for sure that I was panromantic (or at least, romantically interested in women, exact labels are squishy) in the spring of 2018. I was surprised how much that affected my experience of a lot of media, but it’s just so fun and freeing to point at a movie actor or a book character and say “god I’m gay.” Like, I’d absolutely done similar things in the past of saying “she’s so pretty” or “I love that character/actress,” but there’s something so simple and satisfying about “I’m gay” that encompasses a different vibe, and when I wasn’t second-guessing my sexuality or worrying that I was intruding on queer/sapphic culture -- movies and books and TV shows and life just got better. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I have a major crush on Miranda and can I please date her. 

Also I went on a spontaneous international road trip to Ohio with two of my best friends (one of whom I was secretly in love with and am now dating) for the book tour, so that’s also a nice memory I specifically have attached to this book. 

I think that’s most of the things I had to talk about with this book, so I’ll wrap things up here. If you’re interested in me chattering about celebrity and fame and internet culture and Hank Green and social media for another thousand words, head over here for part 2 of the intro post, and otherwise I’ll see you soon to start reading -- might not be tomorrow, as I have spelling bees and work, but hopefully Monday. Or maybe Tuesday. Soon, I swear. I hope. 

See you then :)

[itsclydebitches]

Is buying the new Harry Potter game supporting transphobes because I've been seeing a lot of that on twitter? Not playing it. Pirating is fine, but actually paying for it.

Hi, anon!

I’ve seen a lot of the same and had initially thought to post my thoughts on the issue… before I got a very angry ask condemning me for a post where I admitted that I thought the game looked great and was excited to play it. I can no longer link to that post because I deleted it: a late night, impulsive decision made in an effort to try and protect myself from further flaming. Thus, I considered ignoring this ask under the same justification… before realizing that it might not matter in the long run. The Harry Potter: Legacy trailer has been out for just a few days and already I have gotten that furious ask, been told off by a friend for mentioning the trailer, and was questioned (antagonistically) about why I had added a Harry Potter related book to my Goodreads list. They’re small and potentially coincidental anecdotes, but it feels as if any engagement with Harry Potter is slowly coming under scrutiny, not just the (supposed—more on that below) crime of purchasing the new game. Given that I will always engage with Harry Potter related media, if there’s any chance such subtle criticism will continue regardless of whether I make the “right” choice to boycott the game or not, I might as well explain my position. Especially for someone who asked politely! Thanks for that 💜. 

Which leads to the disclaimer: Any anon hate will be unceremoniously deleted. This is a complicated issue and I intend to write about it as such. I ask that any readers go into this post with good faith and a willingness to acknowledge that this situation isn’t as black and white as they may prefer it to be. If that’s not something you can emotionally handle—which is 100% fine. Some subjects we’re simply not inclined to debate—or if you’re just looking to get in a cheap shot, please hit the back button.

Right. Introduction done. Now here’s the tl;dr: saying things like “Buying this game is inherently selfish/transphobic” isn’t the hot take people want it to be. Is boycotting Legacy one (very small—we’ll get to that too) way of showing support for the trans community? Yes. Is buying the game proof that you’re a selfish transphobe?  No. This isn’t a bad SAT question. Legacy boycotters are to trans supporters as Legacy buyers are to  ___? The argument that someone is selfish for buying the game is basically that you are choosing a non-essential video game over the respect and lives of trans individuals, but the logic breaks down when we acknowledge that purchasing a game has no real life impact on a trans individual’s safety, support, etc.   

“But Clyde, you’re giving Rowling money. She is then using that money to support anti-trans organizations. Thus, you have actively put more harm into the world.” Have I? I’m not going to get into whether/how much/what kind of money Rowling is receiving from this project because the fact is we don’t know and we’ll likely never know. Suffice to say, she probably will get some portion of any $60/$70 purchase. The real question is whether those sales have any meaningful impact. Reputable information on Rowling’s net worth is hard to come by, but it seems to be somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion pounds. Or, to put it another way: a fuck ton. And money keeps rolling in from a franchise that is so, so much bigger than a single video game. It literally doesn’t matter how much money you might put in her pocket via Legacy because she’s already so goddamn rich she can do whatever she wants. If Rowling wants to give a million dollars to the heinous “charity” of her choice, she can. She will. You are not directly contributing to this horror because that money may as well already exist. Every person in the world could refuse to buy this game and she’d shrug, going about her disgusting life because it literally does not affect her in any meaningful way. You’re refusing to give the murderer a knife when they’re got direct access to a knife-making factory. Horrible as it is to hear, you can’t stop them from doing something horrific with that tool. 

For me, this is the straw argument of the Harry Potter world. Not straw as in strawman, but literally straws. Remember how everyone was talking about plastic straws, swore off them, and subsequently deemed anyone who still used one to be selfish people who didn’t care about the environment? It didn’t matter if you had a certified “good” reason for using one (disability) or a “selfish” reason (carrying straws everywhere on the off chance you wanted a drink is a pain in the ass)—you’re a horrible person who wants the planet to die. Same deal here. If you can swear off straws, great! Do what tiny bit of good you can. But if you can’t or even don’t want to give them up, the reality is that your “selfishness” doesn’t make a significant difference in the world. The amount of plastic corporations are pouring into the ocean makes your actions inconsequential. It’s not like voting where every small, individual act adds up to a significant total. This is your lack up against others’ staggering abundance. It’s not adding a few drops of water until you have a full bucket, it’s trying to un-flood the boat with a teaspoon while someone else is spraying it with the hose. Have you, on the most technical level, made a difference by moving that teaspoon of water out of the boat? Yes. Is it a difference that holds any meaning in regards to the desired outcome? Not really. Now apply all that to Rowling. She is so phenomenally wealthy—with additional wealth coming in every day—that your purchase of Legacy is a teaspoon of water in her ocean of funds. It’s inconsequential.

“But Clyde, buying this game would support her and supporting her sends the message that what she believes is okay.” Exact same argument as above. JKR’s fame is so astronomical that no video-game boycott could ever make a dent in it. For every 100 people who swear off her work there are another 1,000 who continue to engage with both her writing and the writing related to her world because she is that prominent. Harry Potter is one of the largest franchises of all time, second only to things like Pokémon and Star Wars. This isn’t some indie creator who you can ignore into silence. The reality is that Rowling is here to stay and we have to take far more substantial acts to counteract that influence. 

Even more importantly, buying the game is not evidence that you support her views and the black and white belief that it does is an easy distraction from those harder “How do we improve the lives of trans people?” questions. I started compiling a list of stories with problematic authors only to realize the number of incredibly popular texts with awful histories attached to them unnecessarily increased the length of an already long post. Everything from Game of Thrones to Dr. Seuss—if you love it, chances are one of the authors involved has a history of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. Which I don’t say as a way of excusing these authors, nor as a way to silence the justified and necessary call outs on their work. Rather, I bring this up to acknowledge that engaging with these stories cannot be concrete evidence for how you view the minority group in question. The reasons for consuming these stories are incalculable and at the end of the day no one needs a “correct” reason for that consumption (my teacher forced me to read the racist book, I only watched the homophobic TV show so I could call out how horrible it was, etc.) If fiction were an indicator of our real life beliefs we’d all be the most horrifying creatures imaginable. I may be severely uncomfortable with the queer baiting in Supernatural, but if a friend says they bought the DVD collection my response is not, “How dare you support those creators. You’re homophobic.” In the same way, someone purchasing Legacy should not generate the response, “How dare you support her. You’re transphobic.” There’s a miles’ worth of pitfalls in connecting the statements “You purchased a game based on the world created by a transphobic author” and “You yourself are transphobic.” 

So if buying Legacy does not add additional harm to the trans community from a financial perspective, and it doesn’t make a dent in Rowling’s platform, and playing a game is not evidence of your feelings towards the group the author hates… what are we left with? “But Clyde, it’s the principal of the thing. I don’t want to support a TERF” and that is an excellent argument. Your morals. Your ethics. What you can stomach having done or not done. But the “your” is incredibly important there. People need to understand that this is their own line in the sand and that if someone else’s line is different, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically a worse person than you. For example, I have made the choice not to eat at Chick-Fil-A. Not because I believe that me not giving them $3.75 for a sandwich will make a difference in their influence on the world, but because it makes a difference to me. It helps me sleep at night. So if not purchasing Legacy helps you sleep at night? That’s a fantastic reason not to buy it. But the flipside is that if someone else does purchase it that is not a reliable reflection of their morals, no more than I think my friends are homophobic for grabbing lunch at Chick-Fil-A now and then. Sometimes you just want a sandwich. 

“But Clyde, why would you want to buy it? Rowling is such a shit-stain I don’t understand how anyone can stomach supporting her—whether that support has an impact or not. Maybe someone eats at Chick-Fil-A because it’s close to them and they’re too busy to go elsewhere, or it’s all they can afford, or they don’t know how homophobic they are. There are lots of reasons to explain something like that. But you’re not ignorant to Rowling’s problem and there’s no scenario where you have to play this game, let alone spend money on it. So why?”

The reality is that I will likely be buying Legacy, second-hand if I can, but new if it comes to that, so I’ll give some of my personal answers here, in descending order of presumed selfishness:

5. Part of my work involves studying video games/Harry Potter and as a researcher of popular culture, my career depends on keeping up with major releases: good and bad. I often engage with stories I wholeheartedly disagree with for academic purposes, like Fifty Shades of Gray.

4. I find the “Just pirate it!” solution to be flawed. I’ve spent the last four months struggling to get my laptop fixed and I currently have no income to buy another if it were to suddenly develop a larger problem. I am not going to risk my $2,000 lifeline on an illegal download, no matter how safe and easy the Internet insists it is. 

3. We’ve been told that Rowling has not been involved in Legacy in any significant manner and I do want to support Portkey. No, not just financially because I know many others have insisted that everyone good has already been paid. Game companies still need to sell games. That’s why they exist. There’s a possibility that a company with just two mobile games under its belt will be in trouble if this completely flops. Is my purchase going to make or break things? No. Same reality as whether it will put new, influential money in Rowling’s pocket to do horrific things with. But I’d like to help a company that looks as if they put a lot of heart and energy into a game only to get hit with some real shit circumstances outside of their control. Even if they’re not impacted financially or career-wise… art is meant to be consumed. I know if I wrote a Harry Potter fic and everyone boycotted it because they want nothing to do with Rowling anymore, I’d be devastated. Sometimes, you can’t separate supporting the good people from supporting the bad. Not in a media landscape where thousands of people are involved in singular projects.

2. I’m invested in reclaiming excellent works created by horrible authors. That’s fandom! We don’t know much about Legacy yet—this is pure, unsubstantiated speculation—but this new story could be a step forward from Rowling’s books, giving us some of the respect for minority groups that she failed at. That’s the sort of work I want to promote because Harry Potter as a concept is great and I think it’s worth transforming it for our own needs and desires. The reality is that as long as Rowling is alive she’ll benefit from licensed material, but if that material can start taking her world in better directions? I want to support that too.

1. I literally just want to play it. That’s it. That’s my big justification. I think it looks phenomenal and I was itching to get my hands on it the second the trailer dropped. And you know what? I’m not in a good place right now to deny myself things I enjoy. I don’t need to tell anyone that 2020 has been an absolute horror show, but for me certain things have made it a horror show with a cherry on top. Not a lot gets me excited right now because we’re living in the worst fucking timeline, so when I find something that makes me feel positive emotions for a hot second I want to hang onto it. I have no desire to set aside that spark of happiness in a traumatic world because people on the Internet think it makes me selfish. Maybe it does, but I’m willing to let myself be a bit selfish right now. 

Which circles back to this issue of equating buying a game with active harm towards the trans community. It honestly worries me because this is a very, very easy way to avoid the harder, messier activism that will actually help the queer community. When someone says things like, “You’re choosing a stupid video game over trans lives” that activism is performative. Not only—as demonstrated above—is purchasing a game not a threat to trans lives or ignoring the game a way of protecting trans lives, it also gives people an incredibly easy out while still seeming ‘woke.’ Not all people. Maybe not even a significant portion of people, but enough people to be worrisome. “I’m not purchasing that game,” some people post and then that’s it. That’s all they do, yet they feel like they’ve done their duty when in fact they’ve made no active difference in the world. Are you donating to trans charities? Are you speaking up for your trans friends when someone accosts them? Are you circulating media by trans authors? Are you educating your family about trans issues? Are you listening to trans individuals and continually trying to educate yourself? These are the things that make a difference, not shaming others for buying a game.

All of this is not meant to be an argument that people shouldn’t be absolutely revolted by Rowling’s beliefs (they should) and that this revulsion can’t take the form of rejecting this game wholeheartedly. This isn’t even meant to be an argument that you shouldn’t encourage others to boycott because though the financial impact may be negligible, the emotional impact for you is very real. I 100% support anyone who wants to chuck this game into the trash and never talk about it again—for any reason. All this is meant to argue is that people shouldn’t judge others based on whether they purchase this game (with a side argument that we can’t limit our activism to that shaming). That’s their decision and this decision, significantly, does not add any real harm to the world. Your fellow Harry Potter fan is not the enemy here. We as a community should not be turning our visceral on one another. Turn it on Rowling. She’s the TERF, not the individual who, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to play the game only tangentially related to her.  

If Twitter and Tumblr are any indication, I can imagine the sort of responses this post may generate: “That’s a whole lot of talk to try and convince us you’re not a transphobe :/ ” For those of you who are determined to simply things to that extent, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. Please re-read the disclaimer and consider whether yelling at me over anon will benefit the trans community. For those of you who are still here, I do legitimately want us to think critically about the kinds of activism we’re engaging in, how performative it might be, whether it harms the community in any way, and (most significantly) whether it’s actually moving us towards a safe, respective world for trans people to live in. Personally, I don’t think telling Harry Potter fans that they’re transphobic for buying Legacy will generate any good in this world, for them or for the trans community. 

At the end of the day only you can decide whether you can stomach buying this game or not. Decide that for yourself, but make that decision knowing that there’s no wrong answer here.