#era soapboxes

[gothelsflower]

physically i’m here mentally i’m at candy corn acres

[merrysithmas]

lol i literally couldnt care less about fandom drama but i will i say i saw an entitled cishet say "NO ONE BETTER START SAYING MIZU IS they/them!!" and if you cannot consider Mizu, an outwardly gendernonconforming character who shows a distaste towards 'feminine' dress/makeup/roles and penis-in-vagina sex as potentially nonbinary, trans, or otherwise ... then like who is ok for the trans fans out here to imagine as trans??? like who will you give us permission for, Your CisMajesty?

lmao kiss our collective trans azz tbh

[justworthlessreblogs]

do you have any more pikario or yukari (or both) headcanons maybe

i still have a few!

rio:

he's a very trusting person originally but after yukari lies to him in episode 16 that trait slowly disappears and he becomes a lot less gullible

ghost/cryptid disbeliever despite being a literal fucking fairy and living around magic all his life

this one is incredibly random but i was rewatching the avengers for the millionth time last night and it occurred to me that if he was into superhero movies he'd be a black widow fan. like i don't think he'd be into superhero movies all that much (his interests lie elsewhere) but if he was i think he'd connect with her backstory a lot. overall he tends to like characters that go through redemption arcs gee i wonder why. during his julio era he would've been the most insufferable loki stan

yukari:

is a prankster! nothing too big or anything that would hurt anyone but she does like messing with others. stuff like switching out the water with sprite. aoi catches her setting a prank up one day but instead of ratting her out asks to join her. they become an absolutely terrifying duo

also ghost denier. now i want an akiyuka buzzfeed unsolved au because i can hear them saying so many of those quotes

[joosthead]

was legit gonna post this yesterday 8/18 after seeing the tiktok comment about him and his autism but decided against it but wow i can’t believe it needs to be said

also one more thing is that joost turning off mentions and asking people not to follow him around are literally … the most tame boundaries anyone in that position could take …??? 😭😭 he could literally stop making music, he could delete his social medias, he could turn off his comments completely and never interact with fans ever but he doesn’t.

he is obviously capable of communicating his boundaries and the few he does communicate people disrespect it’s laughable

edit from today w what he just posted: ​such a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation and it’s so sad seeing it happen to such new and promising artists(joost + chappell roan + ethel cain + mitski + probably tons of others) people saying that they’re just not cut out for fame if they react like this… i promise you fame wasn’t the goal when these people started making music and even if it was no one deserves to be harassed and stalked at all

[johndonneswife]

🌙🌵✨☀️ piñon tree smell after rain. u agree

[murderballadeer]

i can literally never have short hair again i was born to have a cloud of hair around my face i think

[heartbeatkaleidoscope-new]

So right now would be a good time to remember that whenever Taylor writes about a relationship, her truth is just that: her truth. She writes about things from her perspective, so that's the only perspective we get. That however does not mean that the person she was with doesn't also feel some kind of way about HER, and her and her contribution to (or lack thereof) the relationship.

Taylor isn't perfect, she's human and humans are messy. This whole turncoating thing the fan community has been doing lately as Taylor has divulged more and more of why and how her relationship with Joe fell apart has to stop. She is a grown woman, she meant it when she said she doesn't need us to defend her against imaginary enemies on the internet. Reminder that we are all flawed human beings and unless actual abuse is involved, chances are both people do things in a broken relationship that aren't the healthiest or most mature, and that ALL OF US have been toxic at some point in our lives.

Taylor is not a fragile doll that needs rescuing, nor is she infallible. Allow her to be messy and to be human because placing someone on a pedestal and holding them to perfection is to do them a disservice and the OPPOSITE of love.

[sick-sad-little-world]

"[Pretty Noose is] an attractively packaged bad idea, something that seems great at first and then comes back to bite you." (x)

(via @lovehate-love)

[petoskeystones]

one day into having a shoulder tattoo and im googling sleeveless shirts

[cressida-cowper]

it would’ve been SO funny if they started chanting “wooder”

[rubinecorvus]

I feel like ik exactly which blog ur on about… the pipeline of ww2 to kpop must be studied

I totally didn't mean to vagueblog there... I think I clicked on a juicy The Pacific gifset and suddenly was taken to a BTS stan blog wiped of its traces of HBO War. I don't even remember who it was or who it used to be!

But also, is it? A pipeline, I mean. I don't know any other blogs this has happened to.

It seems a little counterintuitive bc WWII media (in my mind) has so much potential for life questions and philosophical thought, as well as just being about the most brutal times in history... and then kpop is like, people saying "poor little meow meow" on twitter

although I'm sure at least one person somewhere in the universe has probably referred to Eugene Sledge as their poor little meow meow so maybe that thought is redundant

[gothelsflower]

blah blah blah hercules on the west end blah blah tiktok inspired musical uhhhhhh whEre the FUCK is my Broadway version of the princess and the frog???

[luobingmeis]

sometimes i monologue to myself for what feels like hours abt 3zun/nieyao and then i end with the very lxc statement of “well, they both have their reasons” :’)

[fearlessplatinumtracks]

Swifties PLEASE try to make your tour outfits sustainably! PLEASE do not buy from Shein or other awful fast fashion if you can help it! Thrift, use what you have, borrow, or buy something that you will wear beyond the concert!!! Concerts already create soooo much waste and we can help to make it better by choosing outfits sustainably! This is my soapbox

[corneliaavenue]

I'm going to be honest, but the gatekeeping of Taylor has progressed past a funny little joke at this point. The majority of Twitter and Tik Tok swifties are going to be respectful and aren't going to impact your enjoyment of the tour at all.

[mortalityplays]

Hi! I really liked and agreed with your post on purple prose, and I was curious what books if any you'd describe as having purple prose. Not even necessarily as shorthand for calling it bad! just examples of it, especially from non-classic literature. Unless the term is entirely subjective lol. Feel free to reply to this ask publicly or privately; I don't mind either way

Have some Conan the Barbarian (sorry about! the racism):

TORCHES flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face. In one of these dens merriment thundered to the low smoke- stained roof, where rascals gathered in every stage of rags and tatters—furtive cut-purses, leering kidnappers, quick- fingered thieves, swaggering bravoes with their wenches, strident-voiced women clad in tawdry finery. Native rogues were the dominant element—dark-skinned, dark-eyed Zamorians, with daggers at their girdles and guile in their hearts. But there were wolves of half a dozen outland nations there as well. There was a giant Hyperborean renegade, taciturn, dangerous, with a broadsword strapped to his great gaunt frame—for men wore steel openly in the Maul. There was a Shemitish counterfeiter, with his hook nose and curled blue-black beard. There was a bold- eyed Brythunian wench, sitting on the knee of a tawny-haired Gunderman—a wandering mercenary soldier, a deserter from some defeated army. And the fat gross rogue whose bawdy jests were causing all the shouts of mirth was a professional kidnapper come up from distant Koth to teach woman-stealing to Zamorians who were born with more knowledge of the art than he could ever attain.

Conan is an interesting example imo because it displays a lot of the highs and lows of pulp. Robert E. Howard could also write very punchy, straightforward action, and often did - but part of the selling point for the emerging genre fiction of the era was that it was lurid and lascivious. While the extract above is. Well. Bad. It is worth recognising that within its context it was also kind of experimental.

Howard wrote these drooling, sort of bewildering, sensory passages for the same reason Marvel movies punch you in the face with saturated colours and rapid cuts and a billion VFX. You see it in the work of H.P. Lovecraft too, and I will grudgingly acknowledge that that's something worth recognising about his literary impact. I also think Lovecraft was a pretty bad technical writer, personally, but that's a whole other soapbox.

My point is that a lot of truly purple prose today (in the sense that it is extraneous, distracting, undermines its own function) traces its legacy to this era of pulp where there was a distinct secondary purpose to overwhelming the reader with ornamentation. It was self-consciously indulgent, and strikingly distinct from the more genteel floridity of equally bad literary novelists. For instance, compare the above with the even purpler prose of the famously awful Irene Iddesleigh:

On being introduced to all those outside his present circle of acquaintance on this evening, and viewing the dazzling glow of splendour which shone, through spectacles of wonder, in all its glory, Sir John felt his past life but a dismal dream, brightened here and there with a crystal speck of sunshine that had partly hidden its gladdening rays of bright futurity until compelled to glitter with the daring effect they soon should produce. But there awaited his view another beam of life’s bright rays, who, on entering, last of all, commanded the minute attention of every one present—this was the beautiful Irene Iddesleigh. How the look of jealousy, combined with sarcasm, substituted those of love and bashfulness! How the titter of tainted mockery rang throughout the entire apartment, and could hardly fail to catch the ear of her whose queenly appearance occasioned it! These looks and taunts serving to convince Sir John of Nature’s fragile cloak which covers too often the image of indignation and false show, and seals within the breasts of honour and equality resolutions of an iron mould. On being introduced to Irene, Sir John concluded instantly, without instituting further inquiry, that this must be the original of the portrait so warmly admired by him. There she stood, an image of perfection and divine beauty, attired in a robe of richest snowy tint, relieved here and there by a few tiny sprigs of the most dainty maidenhair fern, without any ornaments whatever, save a diamond necklet of famous sparkling lustre and priceless value.

Christ. Hopefully you can see the depth of the scale here - the Conan extract is muddy and difficult to read, but this is near incomprehensible. Part of the reason this passage is so much worse is that there is even less intent behind the author's use of language. Here, she is working overtime to evoke a kind of dramatic-intellectual style borrowed from writers like the Brontë sisters (imo at least - not an expert, that's just the sense I get as a reader). The further these flourishes get from lending purpose to the meaning of the prose, the harder they are to parse.

BUT my other point is: far fewer writers these days set out to emulate Irene Iddesleigh's arch, roundabout, society conscious voice than they do the hallmarks of classic pulp. We're inured to sex and violence, sin and debauchery in fiction today, so extracts like the Conan example feel even more bloated than they did in their time. And that creates a real pitfall for amateur genre writers: the instinct to pay homage to the stylistic choices of the classics can lead them right into Irene Iddesleigh territory.

Too often, the purpose of these overwrought, leering descriptions isn't calculated to thrill the audience, but to establish a piece in the company of older works the writer admires. And that's what leads to truly purple prose in contemporary genre writing, which makes readers scoff and laugh, which makes authors self-conscious and timid, which leads us here to a point where wordy description is inaccurately identified as the problem. It's not. The problem is excess - and when something has purpose, by definition, it's not excessive.