#fan response to it was so critical he nearly killed himself

[rosegadyn]

I don't really care about the Mandalorian at all but I did watch the bit where they got Ahmed Best in to play his character Kelleran Beq, who is now the guy that saved baby yoda during Order 66, which makes him kind of a big deal in current canon or whatever which just. makes me really happy, seeing Ahmed Best get some fucking justice. I'm really glad they gave him something else in the universe to feel good about instead of it forever being tainted for him

[longing-for-rain]

Katara and the “Mom Friend” Trope

Both in-universe and among fans, Katara has always been identified as the “mom friend.” While often used as a joke, the trope does reveal a deeper and more tragic aspect of Katara’s character: the way the war has forced her to grow up quickly and take on a parental role at a young age.

This is a frequently misunderstood part of Katara’s character, despite it being central to her arc. Since the show first aired, Katara has been the butt of many jokes and has always been one of the most hated characters by fans. From tasteless jokes about how she talks about the loss of her mother too much to accusations of being too emotional and bossy, Katara’s character has always been under attack by fans.

In past years, and still in certain parts of the internet, this behavior was blatant, but lately I’ve noticed a more subtle spin on this. As it becomes slightly less socially acceptable to say blatantly misogynistic things about female characters—particularly here on tumblr—I’ve noticed fans express the same negative sentiments about Katara, but dressed up to appear more progressive. The most common way I see this sentiment expressed is fans downplaying Katara’s role as “team mom” and trying to make it seem as if Katara is less mature and responsible than she really is.

Of course, these individuals would have you believe that their reasoning for these opinions is that they really care so much about Katara and want to “let her be a kid.” But in reality, when you ignore the way that Katara is forced into a parental role in canon, you also ignore and disregard the context for many of her character traits, leading into the accusations of her being bossy and overly emotional that I mentioned earlier. It erases, and therefore minimizes, a huge source of stress and trauma that weighs on Katara throughout the series.

The idea that Katara fans created the concept of her being a “mom friend” is ridiculous. This is mentioned so much in canon that it’s practically a running joke. Toph accuses Katara of acting like everyone’s mom in The Chase. A similar conflict arises again in The Runaway, when Sokka even admits that he thinks of Katara as a mother figure, despite him being her older brother.

Katara seems pretty hurt by this too, and it’s still never properly addressed again.

In The Headband, Katara actually pretends to be Aang’s mother.

And looking at everything we know about Katara, it’s very clear how she assumed this role. Think about what she says in the exposition of the entire show:

Katara: Ever since mom died, I've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing soldier! I even wash all the clothes! Have you ever smelled your dirty socks?

The moment Katara is introduced, the audience is given a critical piece of information about Katara—that she’s lost her mother and essentially assumed her role. While Sokka is more or less playing and occasionally hunting (we hardly ever see him do this in canon by the way), Katara is doing the overlooked, underappreciated labor that keeps everything moving. There is a great post here by @theotterpenguin that details this and the inherent misogyny in devaluing the kind of work Katara does, and how many fans tend to do this.

This trend continues throughout the course of the show. Katara is always the voice of reason who keeps things moving. She reigns in Sokka and Aang, who are constantly getting themselves into trouble.

There are countless examples, but to name a few:

As early as The Warriors of Kyoshi, she’s trying to get Aang to behave and not endanger himself to look cool. And having him mouth off when she gently suggests that he help with a minor chore.

In The Storm, Katara warns Sokka not to take a risky job, which he ignores and nearly gets himself killed.

In The Blue Spirit, Katara is trying the whole time to do something productive via Momo, remaining vigilant despite the sickness wearing her down.

In The Chase, being the one to politely ask Toph to help out, and honestly doing a pretty good job of keeping her cool as long as she did.

The entirety of The Desert episode. While everyone else was drugged up, hopeless, and even outright hostile, Katara kept everything moving and saved everyone’s lives.

Whenever Aang goes into the Avatar State, it’s always Katara tasked with calming him down, despite how dangerous and volatile the Avatar State is when not properly controlled.

Additionally, there are so many small details that add to this picture. Katara is always the one we see getting food, preparing food, doing chores, everything of that nature. Everyone else would be completely lost without her.

And sadly, this is something never properly addressed by the narrative nor acknowledged by fans. There is a great post here by @ecoterrorist-katara explaining the tragedy in this. Katara is constantly burdened with the responsibility of keeping everything moving and doing the invisible labor that is never appreciated but keeps everyone moving, which is the reason why she’s viewed as being in a maternal role. Because that’s what she very clearly is to her friends.

This really wasn’t meant to be a ship related post, but it is kind of the elephant in the room here. I know a lot of the motivation in downplaying Katara’s “mom friend” role stems from shipping discourse, in particular, the hatred of the idea of Katara and Zuko acting as team parents. Some people associate Momtara as a Zutara trope and as a result, relentlessly bash it as they do anything even tangentially related to Zutara. But did you ever consider why it’s a Zutara trope? Because a lot of fans recognize everything I mentioned previously, and enjoy the idea of someone helping to share that responsibility. Sokka, Aang, and Toph clearly didn’t, so that leaves…guess who.

Zuko: You should get some rest. We'll be there in a few hours. You'll need all your strength.

It’s tiring seeing this trend from people who clearly don’t care about Katara or her character. Sure, you might try to act like you’re downplaying Katara’s maternal role and how a huge part of her canon character was the war forcing her to assume that role out of “wanting her to be a kid” but you really aren’t that different from more blatantly misogynistic fans who call her immature and annoying. You don’t recognize or respect the work she’s constantly putting in to protect those around her, and then you have the audacity to get mad at fans of Katara who actually like the idea of someone taking some of that burden off of her shoulders?

Same Katara hate, different font. She is forced into this material role, and refusing to acknowledge this is disrespectful not just to Katara’s character, but all the real life women and girls forced into similar roles who see themselves in Katara.

[web-novel-polls]

Best (Web Novel) Hater Tournament

Last Updated: July 27th, 2024 - Please check the original post for updates

Submissions Closed - Masterpost here

[Plain Text: Submissions Closed /end pt]

Rules:

Must be from a web novel or adaptation

Can be a hater of any kind or just have the hater soul

Please submit one character per response (no limit overall)

Tournament Tag: #best hater tournament

Arthur Galvhan from Unlucky Clover

Submission: Legitimately nominating him because he's such a hateful piece of shit that his irrational hatred causes the apocalypse. That is simply an impressive amount of being an absolute asshole. 

Han Sooyoung from Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint

Submission: She spent years hating on a web novel similar to her own through an anonymous account and hate reading the comments it's sole reader posted. Even after the novel came to life, she still kept criticizing its horrible writing and protagonist. 

Hua Cheng from Heaven Official’s Blessing 

Submission: Treats nearly everyone that isn't Xie Lian with derision

Wiki Link

Jiang Cheng from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Submission 1: Hates Wangxian's relationship. 

Submission 2: Dude devoted more than a decade of his life to hating on his dead kind-of-brother (it's complicated) how has he not been submitted already? bonus points for his actor's many faces of utter disgust in The Untamed 

Mod Propaganda: Haterism so bad you can start fandom discourse just by name-dropping him. 

Wiki Link

Jun Wu from Heaven Official’s Blessing

Submission: 

(Spoilers) Tossing his old pals into lava and then destroying an entire generation of gods wasn't enough! He also ground the old generation of gods up and made them into the foundation of the new Heavenly Realm, so everyone steps all over them whenever they're walking around. Also an over simplified explanation of the entire plot is basically Jun Wu hears one phrase that sets him off and decides to be a giant hater because of it, destroying a whole kingdom within like three to four years in the process. This guy is the epitome of "...and I took that personally."

Wiki Link

Lan Jingyi from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 

Submission: jingyi hates su she so much even though they've never interacted before and then absolutely obliterates him verbally in front of almost every sect leader, what a legend

Lan Wangji from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / MDZS

Submission: Just because he's quiet doesn't mean he's not a hater. He gets his hate across economically. Jin Guangyao? Hated. Su She? Hated. Jiang Cheng? Don't even ask. Loathed entirely. Anyone else not in his immediate family (including problematic cancelled husband Wei Wuxian)? Not even worth his time. Bro even hates himself (sometimes) 

Mu Qing from Heaven Official’s Blessing

Submission: https://www.tumblr.com/bonesblubs/708661194148511744/inspiration 

Mod Propaganda: Mu Qing can split a tower bell in two yet can’t admit he wanted to be friends with someone he’s known for 800+ years without trying to immediately kill himself. Randomly started reciting a poem about his least favorite coworker’s dick just to fuck with him (Feng Xin). Said he’d kill a bride like Xie Lian if she was sent to him. 

Wiki Link

Shen Jiu / Original Shen Qingqiu from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving 

"Even if all of this could be redone from the beginning, in the end, the conclusion would remain the same. My heart is full of malice, my insides hatred and resentment. Today, Luo Binghe wishes for me to die horribly, and I only have myself to blame." - Shen Jiu, The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, Volume 4: Chapter 24 (Reddit 1, 2)

Submission: Both the Shen Qingqius are haters just in very different ways 

Mod Propaganda: The Scum Villain that beefed with a 14-year-old out of jealousy & tried to kill him. 

Wiki Link

Shen Yuan/Qingqiu from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System 

Submission 1: He was an anti fan that literally got so mad at a novel he was reading that he died and then was transmigrated into the novel he hated (besides the main character) as the villain. The author of said novel also transmigrated and they formed a love/hate broship.

Submission 2: 

My man is the hater-est hater to ever hate, except like Kendrick Lamar. He hate-read a webnovel with over 20 million words, and left scathing commentary on every single chapter. Even the author Shang Qinghua, of the webnovel PIDW, which by subtext was very very popular, knew Shen Yuan (Peerless Cucumber) as the legendary anti-fan.  He hated it (everything except the protagonist Luo Binghe) so much that after reading the last chapter, he choked and died (...slight exaggeration). Shen Yuan also proceeded to transmigrate into the novel, make everyone fall in love with him, use the power of headpats and 'a smile from the cold beauty' to overturn the genre from harem-esqe to danmei, bending the protagonist. Tldr, the power of Shen Yuan's haterism turned Cool Edgy Awesomely Powerful Protagonist Luo Binghe to soggy wet clingy white lotus bing-bong Bingmei, and it's honestly better off this way <3 

Submission 3: he's an internet hater screenname Peerless Cucumber who hates this webnovel so much he dies and transmigrates into it to fix the entire plot and also he's left so many hate comments the author (fellow transmigrator) knows and remembers who he is after being in the webnovel world for decades. Dedication.

Su She from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / MDZS

“Stop thinking so highly of yourself. Who told you I cursed Jin Zixuan in order to frame you? Back then, I wasn’t working for Sect Leader at all. I cursed him simply because I wanted to!” ….Su She, “Those as arrogant as him--I’ll kill every single one who comes my way!” - Su She to Wei Wuxian, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, EXR, Chapter 104

No propaganda submitted

Mod Propaganda: Haterism so bad he straight up made a new sect. Cursed Jin Zixun. Has beef with a guy who barely knows he exists. 

Wiki Link

Yin Hanjiang from Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know 

Submission: Second half of the novel YHJ in particular, hater energy unmatched! Righteous sects? fuck them up. His own sect? on eggshells. His best effort at not murdering someone is to start wiping his weapon with their clothes. General vibe of 'if anything happened to Venerable i'd kill everyone in this room and then myself AND SOMETHING JUST HAPPENED TO VENERABLE'. Anyway get their asses babe <3

Yu Ziyuan from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

Submission: I would not blame anyone who went through the first half of the story believing that Yu Ziyuan hated every single person she ever met because she talks shit about her husband, her son, her adopted son, and her daughter whenever she gets the chance to. Sometimes all at the same time. She projects so much raw hater energy that she psychologically scarred her son for life. 

Dealer's Choice

Qi Rong from Heaven Official’s Blessing

“Obviously, those things weren't within the realm of consideration for Qi Rong. He swore like there wasn't a single person in the Three Realms he didn't want cursed to death. He called Pei Ming a rotten manwhore, Little Pei a kiss-ass, Jun Wu a faker, Ling Wen a damned bitch, Lang Qianqiu a moron, Quan Yizhen dog shit, the Water Master blackhearted, the Wind Master a tramp–he probably didn't know Shi Qingxuan was actually a man.” - Heaven Official’s Blessing (Tumblr)

[wallisninety-six]

The Bittersweet Tragedy- and Triumph of The Beach Boys' "Sunflower" (1970)

Pet Sounds and the collapse of Smile in 1967 is often seen by mainstream critics and some fans alike as *the* defining moment where The Beach Boys lost the script, lost their knack for quality album-making and started a creative downward spiral for the band and Brian Wilson himself. Things *were* far from rosy, but this is also far from true. In reality, that exact moment occurred with the release, and total chart failure of Sunflower in 1970.

The truth is that Brian, while definitely ceding his leadership role slowly, was still writing tons of music for the band and remained heavily involved (with the exception of the album 20/20 in 1969, when he was in a psychiatric hospital) with the creation & production process of the band's albums from 1967-1970, and Sunflower was no exception. This time though, he wasn't alone.

Since Brian had taken a firm leadership role since the band's early days and practically cemented his position with Pet Sounds & Smile- the group's unease with his direction grew, tensions rose considerably, and infighting at times got really heated- and after Smile's collapse, the rest of the group emerged to slowly & gradually offer their songwriting talents and make music more as a collective than ever before. Although very fragmented- 20/20 represented a new peak for the band actually working *as* a band together.

With the band in a severe amounts of debt, depressed, struggling to find their footing in a practical power vacuum, plus submitting album after album to their new labels (with nearly 40 tracks) and having them constantly be rejected- the fact that Sunflower exists as it does is nothing short of a miracle. Not less because the Boys- even if it was for a fleeting moment, found harmony and could work together effectively as a true collective, making a unanimous statement about the power of music and love, each in their own way. It's seen by some as the band's Abbey Road, and it's not hard to see why.

Each and *every* single member showed off their music chops and in their own way- with so many moods and feelings, a variety of vocalists plus different (and even groundbreaking) instrumentals. The stars aligned for this extremely hard-fought and incredibly genuine album. But it wasn't enough.

When it was released, critics liked the album fine enough, but most questioned the need for anyone to listen to the Beach Boys anymore, throwing them to the wayside. Sunflower *peaked* at 151 at the Billboard 200, their worst showing ever at that time- *this* was the defining moment that started the downward spiral.

Just like with Pet Sounds, Brian was absolutely devastated by the commercial failure & lukewarm response of Sunflower- only now his psyche was much more damaged and rattled than it was in 1966, and he retreated further and further away from the band, famously staying in bed for over 2 years, overeating and abusing drugs, and barely appearing in later albums until 1976, and even then he wasn't as involved thanks to the extremely toxic relationship between him and his abusive, controlling "therapist" Eugene Landy.

The rest of the band started to drift apart in a major way, with acrimonious and even extremely bitter tensions hitting a fever pitch- with individual members traveling to concerts *separately* and with Carl Wilson being the one single thread that kept the band from completely collapsing. Fellow Beach Boy Bruce Johnston would leave the band in 1972 and wouldn't return many years later. Dennis Wilson would chart out his own solo career, but his promising rise was tragically cut short by drug & alcohol issues that would eventually kill him in 1983. Carl Wilson- the youngest member, would die from lung cancer in 1998 at only 51 years old, and the band completely fractured virtually for good. Creative and fully collaborative songwriting would end as the band became an oldies act cashing in on their past success.

Sunflower has seen a bit of a resurgence since around the 2000s, not only slowly but surely becoming a cult classic with a devoted following, but it's also finally received recognition from the types of major publications that once shunned it (and the band)- with the likes of Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and AV Club ranking it as one of the greatest albums ever made. Perhaps the biggest tragedy is that the rest of the band members' individual hard work and legitimate talents for music weren't recognized for decades- and for Carl and Dennis Wilson, they never would in their lifetimes.

The history before and after Sunflower makes the listening experience much more emotional and incredibly bittersweet- not less because it still feels so tragically timeless and genuine- the band came out of some of the darkest years of their life to make an incredibly gorgeous work of love. Unlike many of their much later albums, there was more of a broad, positive reception to Sunflower among the band members- with lifelong rivals Brian Wilson and Mike Love coming together in agreement to sing it's praises.

It just wasn't made for it's time- but with the band members getting older and as the past fades away, it's about time to give it a shot, and realize (as much as i admire him) that The Beach Boys was not just Brian Wilson- it was filled to the brim with talent, and that even in the darkest times, setting aside differences and working together can truly create something beautiful.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

It pains me how nearly every single character treated JGY badly. Stunning that he isn't a total monster honestly

I mean I'm sure if you asked certain corners of this fandom, you'd find plenty of people eager to discuss with you in great detail just how monstrous they believe he truly is!! thankfully we are not in that corner of this fandom; we're in the corner composed of people who paid attention to his chapters and who don't take everything said by his every critic and enemy at face value 🤌

while I do believe that jgy's empathy programming is maybe wired a bit differently from other people's (or perhaps was just deeply and fundamentally altered as a direct result of the circumstances of his childhood and the cruelty he endures almost daily until jgs's death), I wish more attention was paid to jgy's many acts of kindness, compassion and generosity, things he does in the text for no reason at all other than the desire to help someone because it is within his power to do so.

it's an act of selfless bravery for young meng yao to throw himself between his mother and the john who is trying to hurt her, and he's injured seriously in the process when the john ends up shoving him down the brothel stairs in response to his intervention

young meng yao has nothing at all to gain through allowing himself to be beaten and abused by wen xu's cultivators while in hiding with lxc during the war--in fact, he could potentially gain quite a lot in the short term or long term through cooperating with the qishan wen, because what other connections does he have? but he doesn't! he protects lxc because he wants to protect him, even if it costs him quite a lot to do so

we know that jgy loves spoiling nhs and showering him with gifts, and I know there's plenty of ~discourse~ around whether he's doing this to drive a wedge between nhs and nmj (yawn), but I just genuinely love how clear the text is that not only does nhs just delight in getting fancy new stuff from jgy every time he visits, but these gifts are specifically tailored to nhs's interests in art and calligraphy, because jgy has been paying attention to nhs as a person.

just--look at how focused nhs is on comparing the inscriptions on the fans, he's clearly intellectually engaged by what he's doing, and nmj could not give less of a fuck. it makes me very angry on nhs's behalf, and at this point nmj hasn't even kicked jgy down the jinlintai steps yet!!

it also kills me how overjoyed nhs is by the arrival of his knight in shining armour, even if he is mostly just glad that nmj is gonna redirect his temper at someone else for a while lmfao. but like it's clear at this moment that 1) nhs is just happy to see jgy, and 2) nmj, while still going through life with a hair-trigger temper, is clearly still capable of finding nhs's reaction to jgy as something funny/amusing, and not solely a source of anger/resentment. makes me very 🥺

look!! /gestures @ all of that, look at how jgy tries to intercede on nhs's behalf here with nmj (and please appreciate with me nhs's precious and emphatic agreement lmfao hush a-sang you are not helping). I think the bits I highlighted below just emphasize how tuned in jgy is to nhs's interests and how seriously he takes them:

the things that jump off the page and grab me by the throat here are nhs's immediate fascination with the cultivation technique that jgy and nmj are discussing, because you'd think that anything even tangentially affiliated with cultivation would be something nmj would want to nurture an interest in. but beyond that just the confirmation in the text that jgy, knowing nhs does have an interest in music, previously procured and delivered him a first edition of something that clearly held nhs's interest and so enthralled him that he is unable to stop himself from talking about it! he's so excited, and intellectually engaged by the gifts that jgy has brought him--and then nmj just... shuts him down so completely that he flees the room. just. what the fuck, da-ge.

and it's pretty clear that jgy is also thinking the same thing, though he clearly can't come out and say "respectfully, chifeng-zun, but what the fuck," and still expect to keep his neck attached to his shoulders. so he uses the only effective tools at his disposal to try to get through to nmj: speech and diplomacy. and I will never understand why fandom ascribes such nefarious intent to what he says 👆👆👆 right here. "brother, if you're concerned for huaisang, softer words would do no harm." "it isn't that huaisang is a good-for-nothing, but that his heart lies somewhere else." "the only person whom I can't discern is you."

(tangent: if my math is right (end of sunshot to nmj's qi deviation), this is a 4-5 year long stretch of time during which we see meng yao, and then jin guangyao, working himself to the literal bone trying to understand and get through to nie mingjue. it clearly frustrates him that he has failed at doing so, and he does not hide this from nmj! which is why it galls me that nmj does not do even a tenth of this work in trying to understand jgy in return post-sunshot.)

...wow this turned into a post deconstructing jgy's gift-giving as an expression of his understanding and acceptance of nhs as a human being, and I make no apologies for it.

but maybe nie huaisang should apologize to his san-ge's fierce corpse just saying 🍵

[irresistiibles]

“it’s more important for me to point out where people can grow and improve than throw out mindless compliments all the time.” though his concerns about xie lian’s friends had been large he considered most of them settled by this point. even if he wouldn’t consider himself a big fan of either god, he felt like he couldn’t voice complaints to jun wu, who’s ways of handling people he didn’t like or approve of were far too extreme for nianqing to get behind. “besides, i can’t recall the last time we sat down and had a normal conversation.” nianqing added with a light scoff. how would jun wu know where he stood with anything at all? “they ran when they could no longer support your methods! what was the point of saving our kingdom if we would have had to constantly kill citizens in the process?” he knew this argument was one they would never settle on, at least in regards to what they should have done, but the idea that no one cared just because they didn't agree with jun wu's methods wasn't one he could sit with. “i still wish they would let you know some peace. none of you were fair to each other.” it was the easiest thing nianqing could have against their past friends at this point. had two thousand years not been enough time for their resentment to disappear? maybe he was just too soft and idealistic, to get to his age and still hope for some sort of reality where they all managed to move on to the best of their ability. “it should be obvious!” he hardly knew how to explain it, it felt that obvious to nianqing. he was certain his fondness for jun wu was blatantly clear to everyone except the man himself. despite everything he had still wanted to stay with the man in the end. “how would i speak of you, in a world where i was the only one left from home?” it was a terrible thought, a reality nianqing could hardly even imagine living through. even though he had disapproved of most of everything he did, and didn’t speak to jun wu for years, there had still been a comfort in knowing he was alive. the thought of watching jun wu die and having to remember wuyong alone made him miserable.”i would say that you were a dedicated and kind ruler. that despite your position and power you always made sure to be fair. regardless of everything these have been true facts about you for most of your life.” he may not have been able to experience jun wu as the heavenly emperor, but he had seemed to always have a good reputation, and nianqing was sure it was at least partially earned. he looked at jun wu critically for a moment, trying to figure out how serious he was about the question, if it mattered to him or he was just asking to ask, before deciding it didn’t matter, and to just give an honest response. “my dear highness, of course it hasn’t changed.” there were other gods that he liked, there would always been a fondness for xie lian, but when it came to the best, to his favorite, to where his devotion lied, that was of course going to be the prince of wuyong. “you think any sort of optimism is naive, so that doesn’t surprise me.” nor did it surprise him that jun wu wouldn’t dare hope or try for a normal life at this point. It didn’t mean nianqing wouldn’t still push where he could, in hopes that one day he might break through.

he took a moment to reach up, pressing a hand onto the wound on his neck to make sure the bleeding stopped. as intense as things were nianqing didn’t want blood just dripping down on him. his hands were unsteady as he worked to apply pressure, and he couldn’t tell if he was actually effectively doing anything but couldn’t bring himself to check. “i would like to live.” nianqing answered clearly. he felt like the answer to that was obvious with the way he had spent his life running, how even now he could feel himself shaking slightly at how close he had come to nearly being killed, or maybe he was shaking from frustration, it was impossible to tell. regardless, the energy and tension kept his body shaking slightly in place. "perhaps i am simply tired of the fighting and the running.” he was tired in general, and certain he wasn’t the only one. “if you cannot work with me or stand me anymore and our only way forward is you killing me i would rather you just do it." nianqing wanted jun wu to be happy, that much was undeniably true, but would he die for it? he really wasn't certain, though perhaps that just had to do with his own belief that in the end that wouldn't really help the emperor. was he being overly optimistic, or emotional, in thinking his death wouldn't actually make jun wu feel better? perhaps so, but then again the man did seem as though he truly couldn't bring himself to end mei nianqing, was even mad about the fact. maybe he could hope that there was still some sort of bond there, even if it wasn't always a good one for them. "your highness..." he wanted to reach forward, to pry jun wu's hand from his face and try to soothe whatever hurt was happening right now. in a better moment he might have offered, but right now he kept his hands where they were. “because we’re still here and alive. you will have to spend your time doing something.” and besides, he couldn’t actually believe that ruling the heavens was actually what jun wu wanted, not fully, even if the man didn’t know it himself. if it was his goal there would not have been a reason for everything that happened with xianle. “you achieved all anyone could want and you still weren’t satisfied! even now you mention rebuilding! stop thinking about rebuilding an empire. i’d like to start small. what’s something small that you want?” there had to be something, but he also doubted it was something jun wu thought about. even if the emperor refused to answer him he could just hope he would get the god to think about it a little.

"i never claimed you couldn't, i've simply rarely heard you have anything nice to say about anyone beyond xianle." jun wu replies with a long sigh. nianqing always seems to take issue with far more people than you'd expect from a priest of his standing. but the minute that jun wu disapproves of someone, it seems like the other feels obligated to come up with something decent to say about them, simply to be contrary. unsurprising, considering the man is, as a general rule, a contrary person, but he doesn't need to enjoy it when it's directed at him, apparently solely designed to further the argument they're currently having. "for people who cared about wuyong, they certainly ran quickly when things took a turn for the worse. i did what i could to save our people, and they only cared to save themselves! they were selfish, and even now they can not let go of their resentment!" even despite his best efforts to destroy every trace of wuyong, erase his greatest failure from the face of the earth and the memories of humankind and immortals alike, he can never manage to erase the taint on his own visage, the stain of his friends' final vengeance forever engraved into his very soul. "is it obvious, priest? it's obvious that you would mourn the man you fled for centuries, the man who wrapped his hands around your throat with the full intent of ending your life?" it didn't feel like anything about the two of them was obvious anymore, with two thousand years of betrayal and mistrust and madness between the versions of them that truly knew each other. and yet the other spoke as though nothing had changed between them, like he was still the naive prince who'd wanted nothing more than to save the world, despite them both knowing that couldn't be further from the truth. "then make me understand, priest. how would you speak about me, if xianle had struck a killing blow on me that day, if i died with all my sins laid bare before the entire world?" his expression is mocking, though it feels out of place with the genuine question behind the words. he can't imagine a universe where death absolves him, where anything would absolve him, he knows he's long since gone down a path that doesn't coincide with forgiveness. he's made his bed, and he'll lie in it, he'd done what he believed to be necessary, and if unforgivable sin was necessary to establish a peaceful world, then so be it. "then has it changed?" the words are left so vague that he truly can not place what exactly mei nianqing means by them. and while the opinion of one person shouldn't matter, not to the heavenly emperor, the god of gods, the first of the great calamities, and yet the distinction is suddenly incredibly important to him. "and i think you're naive if you think either of us have any hope at living a normal life after everything that's occurred." he didn’t want to think too deeply about nianqing's claims, because if he looked at it all too closely, he's certain that he'll need to face truths that he still isn't ready to hear, even after millennia of life.

he couldn't kill him. he couldn't kill him, even when the man stood before, eyes closed in acceptance of his own demise. the final remnant of the past that he'd so wanted to destroy, and he was incapable of striking that final blow. once again he'd failed, his mind whispers, the pain in his head exploding. he has no idea anymore if the mocking laughter if his own mind, or if his old friends are once again mocking his weakness, interceding on behalf of the remnant of wuyong they don't entirely despise. "you don't wish to be dead, and yet you allow me to put a blade to your throat as if it were nothing? do you value your life so little in comparison to my happiness?" his hands were still shaking, almost violently now, and some part of him wants to once again wrap them around mei nianqing's throat, but what would that do? what would it achieve, when he is clearly incapable of actually ending the other man's life? he's killed thousands, perhaps even millions, has razed armies and destroyed nations, but he can't make himself slice his blade across the throat of one fool traitor who had quite bluntly asked for death. instead, one hand goes to his own forehead, as if rubbing at his temples will relieve some of the pain, when even tearing their forms out of his flesh over and over with everything from a dagger to his own blunted nails hadn't achieved that goal. once again, the others words hit too close to home, and he turns from the other rather than face him head on. why is he determined to insist that mei nianqing hates him, wants to betray him in some way? it's not a question that he wants to think to hard on, he's sure the answer would be something absurd about him pushing people away before they can do the same towards him, but he doesn't want to hear that potential unpleasant truth about himself, especially not when the consequences of that are currently staring him in the face. "what does it matter what i want? all i've wanted has burned to the ground before my eyes twice now, for what purpose would i attempt to rebuild for a third time? even i am not that masochistic, nianqing."

[thegirlwhowrites642]

Many people criticized Harry because of his behavior in Order of the Phoenix. Do you consider it was understandable his behavior and why people don't understand his actions?

This ask is very recent and I have a bunch of old ones to answer but today I'm in a bad mood and I need to rant, I'll also give you the more analytic answer but let me rant for a bit ok?

OotP is my favorite book of the saga and Harry is absolutely amazing there, he is so angry and he has every right to be! He was even far too nice, he should have stepped on one of the tables of the Great Hall and shouted at everybody to just fuck the hell off. This book could've been titled Harry Potter and the year everybody decided to gaslight him (besides Ginny, because she is amazing, and they are perfect for each other my two adorable dorks). Anyway, Harry had every right to act like he did! And not to overshare, but I'm quite familiar with trauma linked to witnessing death so, trust me, Harry handled it majestically.

*goes to punch a wall*

*clears her throat*

So, you were asking if Harry's behavior in OotP was appropriate or too much? Well, let's paint, very calmly, a picture of what Harry has been through up until this point in his life, and let's find our conclusions.

Harry becomes an orphan at fifteen months, he then starts living with his blood relatives that, for a reason unknown to him, hate him. So he spends every single day for ten years living in an abusive household. When he turns eleven someone tells him that his life is going to drastically change. Turns out, he is a wizard! He gets introduced to all this new magical world, he has a bunch of money, but something is still weird about him. Apparently, he is famous and the reason why is linked to his parents' death and him doing something he has no recollection of. Then his second year arrives and he finds out that there's something even weirder about him. It's not anymore about some mysterious thing that he did in the past, he's singled out for his abilities and the link he has with Voldemort. And he finds out for the first time that there are things that are his responsibility not because he takes that responsibility upon himself like the previous year, but because he's the only one who can do certain things. Also, by this point, he was forced by circumstances to kill a teacher and to witness a girl he really cares about (for unspecified reasons) being five seconds away from death. In all of this, he keeps being forced to go back to his abusive relatives.

In his third year he finds out that a crazy assassin is after him and again, for something he doesn't even remember doing, he gets singled out from his peers and punished for this condition of never fitting in, never being like the others, all for motivations out of his control. He finds out that the crazy assassin is actually his godfather and that he betrayed his parents. Giving Harry, who has an incredible craving for official positive bonds, another shitty family member. But wait! The man was innocent all along! Well, that's great right? They'll live together now, he will finally have a proper family, right? Nope.

By his fourth year, one would think that he had enough troubles. The Durselys are finally backing off under the menace of Sirius, Sirius is away from the country sure but safe and free and he writes to Harry. Ok, maybe there's no Quidditch but he'll be entertained by the tournament, won't he? And of course, that's when he gets put against his will in the mortal tournament. All in all, he manages quite well, by the third task he's in the game so, of course, it turns out that it was all a plot to kill him. The teacher that he had trusted all year is actually a death eater and Cedric dies and it's indirectly Harry's fault. Add to that Harry was never Cedric's biggest fan, between being competition for the tournament and Cho's boyfriend. I'm sure that didn't add any sense of guilt. Let's not forget that he nearly gets killed by Voldemort and that the other guy trying to do him in was his parents' best friend. Someone who was supposed to love Harry, that probably held him in his arms just a few hours after he was born, someone who probably bought onesies that Harry wore and toys he played with. As we see in DH, Harry doesn't like to acknowledge Peter's existence, and for good reasons. Not only he betrayed his parents, he betrayed Harry.

The fifth year comes and Harry is hated by half the wizarding world for no good reason, they try to expel him with some plot, it's his fault that Sirius had to suffer coming back to Britain, dangerous for both Sirius' mental and physical health, and there's a crazy professor who tortures him. He also has normal fifteen-year-old problems. Now you would think that by this point someone would tell him what is going on. It's clear to Harry that he's not normal, that he is at the center of all these troubles, it's undeniable at this point that in one way or another Harry is special. But Dumbledore refuses to talk to him, the other adults keep treating him like he is just another teenager while for years they forced him in and out of situations exactly because he wasn't normal, and even Sirius with all his love for Harry, has so many personal problems that he ends up making Harry believe that he is the one who needs taking care of. Ron and Hermione, poor things, try to be there for him but they don't really understand. And if it isn't the perfect summary of how shitty Harry's life is that he needs to end up in all this trouble to find out that the person who truly understands him is Ginny, I don't know what is.

OotP is a book whose main point I'd say is that all the people, but especially the adults, who should be there for Harry, in one way or another aren't. Harry understands to be special before anyone else is ready to admit it, to listen to him, to acknowledge what he has gone through. This is why the easter eggs scene is so important, and now it seems like I'm trying to make this about hinny but I'm not. That scene is important because Ginny just seats there and listens to Harry. For one fucking time in his life there's someone who is not telling him what to do or not to do, how to feel or not to feel, she listens to him, and then she offers a solution to what he said his problem is.

If you notice, Harry is a lot calmer in HBP despite the fact that Sirius died, because Dumbledore has finally told him the truth and he lets him in. People stop treating him like he's a crazy attention-seeking narcissist or a reckless teenager and acknowledge things for how they are: Harry is not normal. He would very much love to be but it doesn't change the fact that he isn't and ignoring this fact doesn't make it any less true.

So yeah, I'm sorry if I think Harry had every right to be an angry little shit after years of just internalizing all this trauma.

...

Right.

You also asked me why people don't understand his actions.

Well, the options are two: they don't know how to read which is very popular these days or they are lucky enough to have no idea of how people respond to major life-altering traumas and don't care to find out.

[latte-fairytaekwoon]

Ateez: Accidentally Sending Them An Explicit Photo (Rated)

Warnings: Suggestive/ NSFW content. Also, guys don't send nudes or suggestive photos to anyone. They can use it against you and they can fall in the wrong hands. Don't send anything that you wouldn't send to your parents.

❥𝓚𝓲𝓶 𝓗𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓳𝓸𝓸𝓷𝓰

Picking up his phone thinking Mingi had sent him the lyrics to his rap part, Hongjoong nearly fell out of his chair when he opened up a picture of you holding up your shirt in front of a mirror, your boobs out for him to see.

Y/N: I finally went through and got them pierced. What do you think?

Y/N: :)

Hongjoong fanned his face rapidly, trying to calm himself down from that unexpected attack.

HJ: I mean, didn't know you were going to get nipple piercings, but they look good.

He tried to be as supportive as he could be, even if he was flustered as hell.

Y/N:.........

Y/N: Please tell me I did not just accidentally sent you a pic of my pierced tits instead of my other friend?

Hongjoong threw his head back and started laughing. Of course he should have expected you to do something as stupid as that. Although he wanted to make fun of you for it, he knew you were probably trying to bury yourself underground for your mistake, so he decided to merely comfort you.

HJ: Yeah, don't worry about it though. I'll delete this picture and pretend like it never happened.

Y/N: Thanks Joong :")

HJ: BUT PAY ATTENTION WHO YOU TEXT NEXT TIME AND DON'T SEND NUDES LIKE THAT >:(

Y/N: I'll be careful. Calm down naggy bag :/

Hongjoong quickly deleted the picture, his head furiously shaking as he muttered out some words about your irresponsibility. He only got back to work for about 12 seconds before another message popped up from you. He face palmed as he read it.

Y/N: Ok but do they look good?

❥𝓟𝓪𝓻𝓴 𝓢𝓮𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓱𝔀𝓪

Sitting back and watching your show, your phone suddenly started blowing up with tons of notifications. You were puzzled as to why Seonghwa was mass messaging you out of nowhere.

SH: WHAT THE FUCK?! WHAT IS THIS?!

SH: I'M OVER HERE TRYING TO LINT ROLL MY ROOM IN PEACE AND YOU SEND ME THIS WITH NO WARNING?!

SH: ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME? CAUSE LET ME TELL YOU IT'S WORKING!

SH: >:(((

You wondered what the hell he was ranting about. When you scrolled up and saw that you had sent your picture to him, you immediately dropped your phone. You felt your heart ready to burst and you became overcome with embarrassment as you realized what you did. Grabbing a pillow, you stuffed your face in it and screamed as loud as you could. Picking up your phone again, you quickly began typing.

Y/N: IT WAS AN ACCIDENT! I DIDN'T MEAN TO SEND IT TO YOU, I'M SORRY HWA!

Y/N: GOD I'M SO EMBARRASSED

Y/N: >_<

You dreaded seeing his response as 3 dots appeared, informing you that he was typing away. It took a while before a long message popped up.

SH: WAIT! WHO YOU SENDING THESE THINGS TO THEN? WHY ARE YOU SEXTING? DON'T YOU KNOW THE DANGERS OF SENDING NUDES THESE DAYS? YOU KIDS NEVER LEARN!

You let out a groan, not needing anymore of his criticism.

Y/N: I'm sorry about all this but please spare me the embarrassment and block that image out of your mind please :(

SH: Already did, thank you -_-

Y/N: Thanks Seonghwa <3

Finally feeling relieved, you went back to watch the screen in front of you, the whole incident soon being forgotten. Hearing a beep, you picked up your phone to see the newest message Seonghwa sent.

SH: But let me just say that you look fine ;)

Giggling at his response, you decided to play with him a little.

Y/N: Wanna see it up close? ;)

It took a while for Seonghwa to respond, no doubt because he was too flustered by your teasing and trying to think about what to send. But when he did, it was your turn to be flustered.

SH: I'm on my way, you better have that lingerie on.

❥𝓙𝓮𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓨𝓾𝓷𝓱𝓸

Ignoring the wild discussion that Wooyoung and San were having across the table from him, Yunho focused on eating the bowl of beef soup in front of him, too immersed to even pay attention to them. Feeling the buzzing on his pocket, he whipped out his phone and quickly unlocked it. Seeing your bare ass on display for him made him spill out whatever he had in his mouth back into the bowl under his face.

"See? Told you your cooking sucks." San piped up.

"Let's see you try to do better. You can't even turn on the stove without screaming cause you're afraid of fire." Wooyoung retaliated.

"IS IT MY FAULT THAT SOMEONE GOT A GAS STOVE?!" San exclaimed.

Drowning them out again, Yunho hid his phone under the table just in case the other two accidentally saw anything.

YH: I'm going to take a wild guess and say this wasn't for me right???

Not even a second later, you realized your mistake and responded.

Y/N: .....no.... no it was not...

YH: I'd ask but...... probably better if I don't.

Y/N: >_<

Y/N: I'm so sorry Yunho.

He smiled to himself, already picturing you pouting intensely while letting out embarrased yet cute groans over your mistake.

YH: Don't mention it. But I just wanna ask a favor....

Y/N: Ask away, I'm in your debt at this point.

Holding the camera further up, he silently snapped a picture of his lap, emphasizing the bulge in between his thighs.

YH: Can I keep your picture just a bit longer until I get my little friend down? :D

When he saw your response, Yunho immediately jumped up from his seat, confusing the two other guys when he said he'd be back later. Putting on his shoes, he smiled smugly as he reread your text.

Y/N: Why have the picture when you can just come over and get my actual ass? ;)

❥𝓚𝓪𝓷𝓰 𝓨𝓮𝓸𝓼𝓪𝓷𝓰

Doing a double take and adjusting his glasses to make sure he was not seeing things wrong, Yeosang took a moment to process what he was seeing before coming up with a way to respond to the explicit image you decided to burn into his memory for as long as he lived.

YS: Don't think that you're getting a dick pic in return.

YS: Don't get me wrong, I love boobs just as much as the next guy...

YS: But I don't think seeing one of my friend's chest was in my bucket list.

He waited for your response, which took longer than what he would have expected, especially given the circumstances. But it came nonetheless and he couldn't keep himself from face palming as he read your text.

Y/N: That. Wasn't. For. You. Please. Delete.

In old Yeosang fashion, he of course wasn't going to let you off the hook that easily. He just had to tease you about it, just for a little bit.

YS: Well congratulations Y/N....

YS: You've officially tipped the level of stupidity WooSan set before you.

YS: And let me tell you, that was a high bar. Guinness world record level.

He let out a laugh at your little outburst.

Y/N: ASSGHJLKFTTSDFGG

Y/N: I WAS NOT BEING STUPID YOU ASS!!!

Y/N: I just wasn't looking correctly at whom I was texting

Y/N: [insert crying noises]

Opening up his camera, Yeosang held up a peace sign to his face and took a selfie before sending it to you with a caption.

YS: That's what glasses are for, to help blind folks like you

Not liking his jokes and seeing an opportunity, you decided to retaliate.

Y/N: I thought you said you weren't gonna send a dick pic??????

YS: I didn't though???? That's my face

Y/N: You, you Yeosang.

Y/N: You're the dick..

Y/N: NOW who's the stupid one? :P

Yeosang blinked a couple times as it dawned on him what you meant.

YS: Well played my friend.....

YS: But remember I still got your booby pic so it's in your best interest not to piss me off <3

❥𝓒𝓱𝓸𝓲 𝓢𝓪𝓷

San was already feeling horny as it was, so to have you send him a nude out of nowhere only fueled the ache he was feeling inside his pants. He looked around in confusion, debating whether or not to do something about it.

"Fuck it." He ultimately said before pulling his sweatpants down to free his cock and start jerking himself off.

Turning on the camera, he quickly sent you a photo of him pleasuring himself as he thanked you for providing him with fap material. Of course, seeing not only your enormous mistake of sending your picture instead of saving it, but to also see one of your friend send you a dirty pic as well had your jaw dropping to the floor. You couldn't believe that you were actually staring at a picture of San's cock.

"Holy shit..." You whispered softly, tongue coming out to lick at your lips.

Y/N: Dang...I knew you were big but... i didn't think you'd be that big

San chuckled softly when he read that, happy to know you were impressed by his length.

S: And I knew you were hot, but I didn't think you were THAT HOT

Y/N: Oh....you think I'm hot?

Y/N: :)

Quickly snapping another photo, San quickly responded to you.

S: I'm literally here in bed, jacking off to your picture. Hell yeah I think you're hot.

Without even thinking about it, your fingers dipped in between your folds. The knowledge that San was jerking off to the thought of you got you aroused. Wanting to continue, you decided to take a short video of yourself playing with your pussy, making sure to moan out San's name to further tease him.

Y/N: What a coincidence.....

Y/N: I think you're hot too.

San let out a deep grunt when he played your video, needing to stop his hand so he wouldn't cum right then and there. Hearing you say his name that way just riled him up even more. Taking hold of himself once more, he started jerking off once again, his soft moans soon turning into whines.

S: Oh God, please keep sending me things like that..

S: And I'll send you a video of my cumshot.

❥𝓢𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓜𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓲

Mingi wheezed, hand coming up to cup over his mouth, shocked to the extreme when he saw your picture. The intimate pose, the nudity, everything about it sent him into a frenzy. He felt it was wrong, seeing you, his friend, in such an intimate way. But for some reason he could not look away. He knew he had to say something, so he typed the first thing that came into his mind.

MG: OH. MY. GAWD.

MG: BOOBIES!

MG: :O

Seeing the fat mistake you made in accidentally sending him that, you quickly typed away, knowing you needed to fix the situation.

Y/N: Mingi...... I'm so sorry. I'm so blind and stupid, I didn't realize I accidentally sent that picture to you.

Mingi pouted slightly when he read your response. Although the rational part of his brain told him beforehand that it was most likely a mistake, part of him hoped it was done on purpose and you had really meant to sent him that.

MG: It's ok Y/N, no worries.

MG: :D

MG: But OH MY GAWD YOU HAVE REALLY PRETTY BOOBIES.

You couldn't help but blush and giggle at how cute he was. He certainly made you feel better with that compliment.

Y/N: Thanks Mingi <3

Y/N: Now could you please do me a favor and erase that photo?

The three dots on the screen lasted for quite a while. Mingi took quite some time before finally responding.

MG: Do I have to???

MG: :'(

Y/N: Mingi what even would you want to do with a picture of me naked?

Like last time, Mingi took another moment to respond.

MG: I'm sorry......... your picture made me get a little problem....

You snorted. Of course something like that was bound to happen.

MG: Could I keep it just a while longer until I fix it?

Mingi's hand fisted the end of his shirt nervously, trying hard to calm himself and his body. But it seemed he didn't need to after all since he now read your response.

Y/N: Only if you promise to send me a video of you fixing your problem, which I know is not little ;)

❥𝓙𝓾𝓷𝓰 𝓦𝓸𝓸𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓰

Wooyoung's face reddened significantly, his lips sputtering out incoherent mumbling mixed with the fit of giggles he was having. Anyone passing by would have thought he was crazy, and he felt like he was. It took him a while to compose himself and steady his hand to be able to type back a response to you.

WY: Holy merry Christmas and happy birthday to me.

WY: I must have done something right in my past life to be blessed with nudes.

WY: :")

The embarrassment of knowing you sent the pictures to the wrong recipient was soon replaced with annoyance when you saw who it was that got them and his response, even more when his new texts came up.

WY: Is this your way of telling me that you like me and want me to tap that pussy?

WY: Cause if so, I accept babygirl.

WY: Always knew you had the hots for me, I saw through your game of pretending to dislike me.

You honestly couldn't believe him, especially when he got so full of himself.

Y/N: First of all, I don't pretend, I really don't like you at times.

Y/N: Second of all, those pictures were actually meant for someone else.

Y/N: And thirdly, he's the only one who gets to tap this pussy :)

Wooyoung stared at his phone in deep silence that would have scared anyone. With tongue poking out from his cheek, he quickly replied back to you.

WY: Who the hell is he? I want names and I want it now.

WY: How long have you been fucking him?

You bursted out laughing at his response, finding it hilarious how jealous he sounded.

Y/N: Is someone a little jealous over the fact those nudes weren't for him?

Y/N: Jealous that another dick is fucking this hole?

Wooyoung huffed at your response, tongue clicking against his teeth in annoyance. Not caring about anyone walking into the kitchen, he whipped out his erect cock and sent a photo to you.

WY: Bet I can fuck you better than what he can with my cock baby.

When you saw the photo, you could hardly believe your eyes. Wooyoung was thick, thicker than what you imagined and his glistening tip made your mouth water. Seeing as you already had in mind to fuck somebody, you decided to just give in and let Wooyoung be the one to come over.

Y/N: Don't keep me waiting, my pussy needs to be filled.

WY: Don't worry baby, I'll make sure to fill that dirty hole of yours with my cum until you're begging for more.

WY: ;)

Wooyoung was so engrossed in your chat that he didn't notice Seonghwa walk in.

"What's that smile for?" He asked, noticing the shit eating grin Wooyoung was donning.

"Oh nothing.... just getting some pussy tonight."

❥𝓒𝓱𝓸𝓲 𝓙𝓸𝓷𝓰𝓱𝓸

The 98 liners calmly sat in their room, one of them cleaning imaginary dust with his lint roller while the other attempted to catch on some much needed rest. Both of them were disturbed when they heard what sounded like a banshee cry coming from the room next to theirs.

"What was that?" Hongjoong asked, sitting up in his bed.

"Judging by the fact it was a perfect high C, it was definitely Jongho." Seonghwa calmly stated as he returned to his task.

"Oh ok. I'm sure it's nothing."

Unbeknownst to them, Jongho was not ok. He looked panicked and in utter shock as his eyes continued to stayed glued to the lewd photo in front of him. He swallowed hard, silently praying for help from a non-existent force.

Jongho: Umm........ can you please explain to me why you decided to send me a close up pic of your wet kitty?

Jongho: I'M STILL A BABY! HAVE SOME MERCY!

Jongho: Now I'll never unsee this even though I deleted it.

Jongho: [insert crying baby sounds]

Jongho waited for your response, but 15 minutes later and you hadn't even read his text. He began to get fed up and started spamming you until you answered him.

Jongho: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR ACTIONS!

Jongho: YOU BETTER PAY FOR MY THERAPIST AFTER CAUSING ME SUCH TRAUMA!

Jongho: I SHOULD SUE YOU FOR DAMAGES TO MY MENTAL WELL BEING.

Finally able to find your charger, you quickly plugged in your phone and smiled when it lit back up. But your happiness was short lived when you saw Jongho's endless messages that were brought on by your carelessness.

Y/N: Calm the fuck down Jongho, it was a mistake ok?

Y/N: I'm sorry.

Without another second to waste, Jongho was typing away again.

Jongho: NO! SORRY IS FOR WHEN ONE OF US ACCIDENTALLY STEPS ON SEONGHWA HYUNG'S WET FLOOR.

Jongho: THIS IS NOT A SORRY Y/N!

You rolled your eyes at how dramatic he was being.

Y/N: ok then you oversized baby panda, then what do you want as an apology?

Clearly as displayed by the array of emojis he sent, you knew it was not going to be easy.

Jongho: nothing from your disgusting and unholy ass, thank you.

Jongho: You're blocked and unfriended until further notice or when you cleanse yourself of your sins.

Jongho: Go drink some holy water >:(

Unable to contain a smirk and seeing a way to mess with him further, you texted once more.

Y/N: Trust me, that's exactly what I was planning on doing ;)

Seeing the suggestive emojis, Jongho let out another scream.

Jongho: BLOCKED

Gifs not mine, credit goes to their respective owners.

[plus-size-reader]

Why

Cato Hadley x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 2108 words

Warnings: none

Summary:  Reader is a tribute for the Hunger Games, no one thinks she’s going to make it until Cato steps in. The one thing you don’t understand is, Why does he care? 

Updated version of “Why Does He Care” an old fan favorite. 

—————————————————————————————————

They knew you wouldn’t win. 

It hadn’t even registered as a possibility in most of their minds, but that didn’t matter all that much. 

All the game makers cared about was that you made a show of it, and if you could, got stabbed in view of one of the thousands of cameras surrounding the arena.

That was all you had to do. 

You weren’t the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest that your district had to offer and everyone seemed to have already come to terms with the fact that you would be leaving the arena in a body bag.

They just didn’t see how a woman of your status and stature could ever hope to compete with others in the games. Against the Careers, a group of highly trained young people whose lives revolved around being able to win, you would surely meet your end. 

However, you weren’t going to just accept defeat right off the bat. 

Even if you didn’t win, you were going to put up one hell of a fight once that canon went off. You owed that to your family, and your district, and yourself. 

No one in their right mind wanted to participate in the Hunger Games,and you certainly didn’t want to either, but you had been chosen to represent your district and you weren’t going to shy away from the responsibility. 

At the very least, you had to try. 

If nothing else, the fact that no one believed in you could serve as an extra push, the push you would need to take down as many other tributes as possible in the process. 

You knew that you could do that. 

Though, that fire did sort of dull as soon as you walked into the large training room, surrounded by all the other tributes from all the other districts. Once you got a look at them up close, you were less sure of yourself than you had ever been. 

How quickly it had all changed.

From the moment you walked into that room, which was more of a cell of brushed aluminum and cool steel, you were forced to recon with the reality of the situation. 

This was happening. 

You were going to die. 

The way in which you would die wasn’t something you were all that fond of considering, but as best you could tell, the Career pack would be to blame. 

Stories of what they were capable of, training tirelessly to volunteer for their games and slaughter the competition were widespread all over Panem but you couldn’t have imagined how intimidating they were in real life. 

Each one of them was a skilled, and accurate, death machine and you had no chance of surviving an altercation with even the weakest among them, who you had ultimately decided was Glimmer. 

She was talented and smart but lacked the determination that the others had. 

Even in her case though, you could see what they always said about the Careers. They were raised to believe there was no other point to their lives other than to win the Hunger Games. 

If they didn’t win, they weren’t worth anything, not that it would matter. If they didn’t win, they would end up just the same as all the rest of you, in a shallow grave somewhere. 

That was just how it was. 

You did your best to keep to yourself at first, not wanting to elicit any more violence than absolutely necessary right off the bad. It was no secret to you that the other tributes didn’t take you seriously. 

The last thing you wanted was for them to try and prove themselves at your expense before you were out in that arena. 

Unfortunately, the other tributes, namely the Careers, had already made up their minds. In the few days that you had been training, they had been making fun of you the entire time.

For them, it was one big joke.

When they looked at you, it was clear that all they saw was the first person they were going to stick their swords into. They didn’t take you seriously at all and at this point, you weren’t even sure if you blamed them. 

Each time you threw a punch or swung your axe at a target, they hooted and hollered from their place on the sidelines and called you out for each imperfection they saw in your maneuvers, and they weren’t wrong. 

You had no idea what you were doing. 

This was all new for you, because where you were from, hand to hand combat just wasn’t something you would have ever come across. Before now, you hadn’t even seen most of the things in front of you here. 

You were out of your element.

By the end of the first week, you hadn’t even begun to make any progress. However, there was one thing that had changed and you couldn’t even pinpoint when or why it had happened. 

At some point, Cato had stopped criticizing you in the same way his compatriots were.

You weren’t sure why he would even bother, but seeing as you didn’t really talk to him, you couldn’t ask. It was much easier to just be silently grateful for the break, and try to focus on what you were doing. 

While it wasn’t looking good to start, you didn’t want to sabotage your chances of survival with any more wasted time.  

The other Careers had noticed the change in him too, but not one of them dared to comment on it, even if it didn’t make any sense to them. The anger that they would risk in doing so just wouldn’t be worth getting answers. 

Instead, they let him do whatever it was he was doing, waving it off as some kind of tactical maneuver. He knew what he was doing, and it wasn’t their place to ask too many questions and get him off his game. 

When Cato first headed in your direction, closing the vast distance between you on the training floor, you assumed that he was intent on proving to you just how out of place you were here. 

...But that couldn't have been farther from the truth. 

In truth, what Cato was doing was far from a tactical measure. More than anything, he just couldn’t bring himself to make fun of you anymore. 

He didn’t think that your weight alone was enough to warrant the constant abuse you were suffering. 

Besides, It was clear that you were putting in a lot of work to get better, which was more than most of the other tributes were doing. You weren’t going to take this lying down, which he could respect. 

From the looks of it, your technique just needed some polishing, and you would be just as good a fighter as anyone here, with the exception of himself.

“You need to strike higher” he prompted, coming out of nowhere and nearly shocking you out of your fighting stance. You had been so focused that you didn’t even hear him approach. 

Still, it didn’t occur to you that he might have been trying to help at first. After all this time, he didn’t strike you as the friendly, just trying to help type. He was much more of the scowl and stab sort of person. 

You couldn’t be blamed for feeling that way. 

“Strike higher” he repeated, closing the space between you to wrap his arm around your frame, moving your axe in the exact way he had been telling you to do. 

There was nothing snide or rude in his tone, but you couldn’t focus on that.

All you could think about were his strong hands on your body, and the clear concern he had for whatever in the world he could have wanted from you. 

You tensed under his touch, desperately trying to decipher how you had gotten to this point or what you were supposed to do now that you were here. 

There was nothing particularly romantic about his touch, which you understood, but it was still foreign to be on the receiving end of. No one had ever held you like this, under any circumstances.

“Hit here, not here” he muttered, his voice far too close to your ear this time, forcing a breath from your lungs you weren’t aware you’d trapped there. He moved the axe, and your arm attached to it, to demonstrate what he meant. 

...And as much as you hated to admit it, he was right. 

When he moved his arms, in succession with his words, he hit the target at jugular height, instead of in the trunk where you had been aiming.

It was a much better hit than you had been landing all day, showing how much more experience he had with this than you. 

“Thanks” you muttered, glancing at him quickly, desperately hoping that he wouldn’t look at you but you wouldn’t have been so lucky.

Cato looked down just at the same moment as you turned your head to take in his profile. 

You expected him to say something about it but he offered nothing, content to just stare back down at you with a slight smirk on his face. 

“Somebody bigger than you is going to be able to push back if you aim here” he explained finally, lightly resting the palm of his right hand against your abdomen where you’d been aiming before. 

It made sense, of course. 

“If you aim at the weakest part, it doesn’t matter how much stronger an opponent is” he hummed, this time bringing that same hand up to where your throat was, not missing the way you gulped under his touch. 

“And you can’t kill anyone aiming at their ankles” he laughed, shrugging at that, as if he shouldn’t have to explain that part to you. Even someone who knew nothing about this wasn’t going to be shocked at that. 

Cato just didn’t want you to think that he was playing some sort of sick game with you. He was really trying to help, even if that wasn’t really in his nature. 

Never in his life had Cato cared about anyone, or been drawn to another person like he was with you. 

His entire life was all about winning the games, and there was nothing more than that. 

That was all he’d ever cared about. 

...But for some reason, making sure that you survived this whole thing was becoming really important to him. 

There was just something about you that he couldn’t put his finger on, but whatever it was, he didn’t have all that much time to figure it out. This whole thing was happening, whether he wanted it to or not. 

The best thing he could do for you was prepare you to survive, with or without him. 

“Oh, I couldn’t kill anyone” you hummed, doing your very best to be as nonchalant about it as you could. You were doing your best to figure out how to protect yourself out there but you had already made you mind up on that front. 

You weren’t going to kill anyone. 

It was something you had decided on before you even knew your name had been drawn the day of the reaping, but this was new information for Cato. 

New information that almost shocked him into silence. 

Cato had always known that he would need to kill someone, at some point. It was never a question in his mind, or something that even had any effect on him. It was part of his life, and to hear that someone else had never even considered it was new for him. 

If you didn’t kill anyone the entire time you were in the arena, you would die. 

You had to know that. 

Surely you knew that. 

“If you don’t, you’re going to die” he spoke, the words leaving his lips before he even had time to react. There was a finality to it, something you hadn’t seen coming, and at first, you thought it may have been a joke. 

The two of you really didn’t know each other all that well, or at all, so making jokes seemed sort of strange but it wasn’t necessarily something that upset you. 

You were just shocked at his urgency. 

This really was something that was bothering him, but there was one thing that was still bothering you. This was the first time you had ever spoken to him in your life, and as flattered as you were that he cared about what happened to you, it didn’t make any sense. 

Why did he care about someone like you? 

[bendarius]

the way the initial reaction to s4 was blown to be because of brooklynn and kenji. not saying it isn’t justified as i get ppl can be uncomfortable w it, but the fact is that it wasn’t about how darius wasn’t really given the space to show emotion even as the main character. he’s the youngest and has the overwhelming pressure of being leader while dealing with loss and the season told us no he did not notice other people having nightmares implying that he doesn’t have them (they could’ve said “wait, the others are having nightmares *too*?” but they didn’t). for gods sake dreamwork’s post about “this is what a natural born leader looks like” That boy is traumatized beyond belief

why are they so afraid to show us him suffering the traumatic effects of the events that have happened so far. And anyways i started off with mentioning the fan reaction at first because when i first watched it i didn’t notice it until someone pointed it out. and man, when that was brought to my attention…the proportion of people angry over the ship vs over how darius was treated in writing. like i like camp cretaceous for diversity. i love the fact they have a black character as the main one. but they’ve been treating darius like he’s indestructible. He’s 12/13 how are you going to treat the main kid like this

1.) the responsibility of keeping 5 other people alive. he’s just a kid and even older people would have that eating away at him. did no one try and comfort darius about ben aside from yaz. no one just asking how he was doing sure they brought ben up but more as a “we all think about him” moment. knowing how critical darius is of himself why weren’t we given moments where it focused more on his guilt. we got one nightmare in the first episode and it being brought up in the reunion but…the lack of clarity we have on his feelings aside from the one-off Yeah he feels guilty okay back to survival really bugs me the more i think about it bc it clearly stuck w him enough to affect his self sacrificing mindset

2.) nearly died on the boat! he almost drowned and got eaten by a mosasaurus and i know the boat ship wrecked immediately after and they’re all “used to being at risk for death” but why did they all agree to let this kid down. no one but kenji jumping in to save him like it’s nice that they show him as not the one that always saves people but. Him being the first to ask if they’re alright when they wash up on the island. no one asking if he’s okay after suffering the water (honestly howd they all get on the island without drowning or getting eaten they were pretty far but that’s another thing).

3.) bringing up his dad only to have darius use him as a device in his lie and having kash discount that as a lie! i get that man is terrible but doing that to darius esp w us knowing he’s still grieving (cause there’s no way he’s gotten over it even if it’s been 6 months. stacked trauma on grief = Not Processed Properly!). and having darius only bring his dad up for that purpose when grief is still fresh. Man. Man i just think about it and i get pissed

4.) was held hostage by a white man. i get it. he’s bad but the amount of times darius had to appease that man made me so sick. the simple act of being held hostage is traumatizing in itself and he was with this horrible ass man who tortures dinosaurs (one of the last connections he has to his father), being watched over by robots nonstop even when he’s trying to sleep, knowing that if he makes one wrong move kash could easily decide to kill him; this emotionally volatile man, Almost having to contribute to the project before brooklynn hacked BRAD-X. it’s like they can only show him be vulnerable if he’s in physically precarious situations where his knowledge can’t save him

5.) during that part we dont see darius process the situation in his own time. sure there might’ve been a crunch where it would’ve interrupted the plot but you know what? we didn’t need all those brooklynn and kenji scenes either. s3 worked so well bc we had equal time in all the dynamics they wanted to show us and from the start of s4 that was clearly skewed (the fact that romance wasn’t ever a big factor in jwcc and just. the amt of screentime). we didn’t get to see darius being comforted by someone other than brooklynn for less than a minute about the tension between kenji and him, and we don’t even see ben and darius interact. not even through ship goggles. yaz and sammy were shown talking aside from the large chunk that brooklyn and kenji took up. Why not darius feeling distraught over how kenji is treating him. i’m just saying if there was a time issue and bc of that not being able to focus on how darius is feeling, MAKE TIME. that’s how i’d understand b/k being brought up as much as it did; bc it intrudes on darius’ time and the equal spread of dynamics. they couldve added in a moment where darius had time to himself in his designated bedroom while hostage (which we don’t get to see. why) and thinking to himself. What was he eating during his time there. all we are shown is how much he’s suffering bc of the things he’s forced to do to survive under kash but he still doesn’t break. he has to keep going

6.) i’m hoping this overt treatment was only for this season bc they did show his dad feelings (if only for a little s1-2) and his feelings of guilt toward ben (s2-3) but while this can be interpreted as him repressing his emotions for the sake of keeping the group going, we haven’t been shown that in a specific moment. this is all still speculation even as obvious as it seems to me as a viewer i’m just trying to make sense of what they’ve given us in canon. can we have darius show us how he himself is feeling without having it based off another person

the one thing i enjoyed is darius having been given space to finally have to choose between dinos and his friends. he may have had his eyes set on the obvious choice back when he was arguing with sammy about releasing that dinosaur, and i can see how he’d be stuck between the big picture of the right thing vs the local right thing (although it’s strange how thatd usually be a choice made in a healthier mindset where you’re given the space to think abt morals rather than a need to survive in which the obvious choice would be to save your friends. perhaps it can be explored as a way for darius to hold onto his sense of self/his father) but i’m glad they showed there’s not always a compromise which is what they had darius do in the past 3 seasons. that was a nice moment, i had thought….until immediately hes in the hostage situation, having to lie about his father, and deciding to stay in the hostage situation (seriously. ben and yaz the only ones logical enough to say NO to his plan…my favorite trio for real). and you know it’s nice that they gave us ben and darius’ arcs reflecting off one another, but the fact that ben feels like he progressed more than darius (from his identity confusion to finding himself, and from “i don’t want to hurt by leaving dinos behind again” to “i will open up despite the vulnerability”) having two different starts and endings…i don’t know. feels really off. technically all the kids are main characters but darius was introduced as the main main one. s3 gave us some emotional vulnerability when he was fighting to save ben, desperate not to repeat his mistakes, and this was one of the times where he gets to confide in someone (the other being sammy while he was being critical of himself before she tries to say it isn’t his fault and he immediately counters her with Get to the boat. so. not rly) and while it’s a Woo ben and darius bonding moment giving fuel to how they can understand and confide in one another, i just wish that wasn’t the only instance and we had another one where darius got to talk about his dad and all the complex feelings he must be having. it makes sense for him to repress it to keep moving forward in fear of not being able to function but that’s all speculation. as a kid whose brain is still malleable (like the others but since he’s the youngest) he should NOT be left to do this i just know he’s fighting inner demons

my point is: even if he wasn’t a COMPLETE plot device in this season like how people are saying (not complete bc as little as they were we got peeks into his psyche. Even if it was only for a minute total adding up), i totally get why they do say that because the ratio of his inner struggles vs what the show focuses on is so skewed. as the main character, shouldn’t we have more insight on how he’s feeling aside from having to speculate off things given to us in s1? and from the way the fanbase treats this boy sometimes, like multiple people saying they didn’t know that darius was the main character because of how much of the fandom is focused on other things…yeah. alright. like 2 people i saw talking abt his treatment this season whats w that. maybe this fandom treatment in itself is a sign of how much the show itself doesn’t flesh him out as much as it should, but i can easily counter that considering how much the fanbase fills in the blanks with other topics. i’m holding out for s5’s treatment in hopes they actually spend some time exploring his feelings and that this was just so they could have space to introduce elements, but it’s a flimsy hope because they had the space to explore other campers feelings and just. urghhhhhh.

[raxistaicho]

I posted 722 times in 2022

That's 651 more posts than 2021!

607 posts created (84%)

115 posts reblogged (16%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@mittelfrank-divas

@strawberry-crocodile

@butwhatifidothis

@gascon-en-exil

@raxistaicho

I tagged 482 of my posts in 2022

Only 33% of my posts had no tags

#fire emblem three houses - 251 posts

#edelgard discourse - 220 posts

#edelgard von hresvelg - 167 posts

#edelgard positive - 153 posts

#three hopes - 98 posts

#fire emblem three hopes - 53 posts

#triangle strategy - 51 posts

#dorothea arnault - 30 posts

#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd - 26 posts

#edelgard critical - 23 posts

Longest Tag: 134 characters

#i mention socialist theory a couple times while discussing edelgard and i get fucking weirdo capitalist bootlickers crawling up my ass

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Edelgard haters get pretty gross about Jeritza

Something I see pretty often from Edelgard’s detractors, both on gamefaqs and here on Tumblr, is referring to Jeritza as just a murderer or serial killer. Not even hyperbole, they’ll just call him “a murderer” or “Edelgard’s serial killer.”

Like... you’re referring to a man in constant severe psychological distress, not fucking Light Yagami. Jeritza is fully cognizant that what he’s doing isn’t okay, and he believes himself to be wrong for it, to the point that he rebuffs Edelgard’s suggestion that he finds some way to make up for his crimes. In his mind, the only suitable response is punishment, even if it lasts for the rest of his life. He kills because he can’t stop himself, not because he’s rationalized himself into it.

Prior to Hopes coming out we didn’t really know how Edelgard felt about Jeritza’s actions, but their support chain makes it clear she’s doing her best to minimize the damage he can cause (in both Houses and Hopes, he emphasizes that without her help he’d just kill civilians instead) while trying to sincerely help him however she can. Are her methods perfect? No, but she’s operating within a society where mental health is clearly a non-existent concept and which would prefer to just execute him as a first resort. That she’s even broaching the concept of redemption and acceptance is an amazing step given the world she’s in.

Really, what’s different between Jeritza and Jaffar? I don’t see nearly such vitriol aimed at the latter, and he doesn’t even contemplate the idea of redemption or punishment before he meets Nino. So seriously, just writing Jeritza off as a murderer is disgusting and ableist.

109 notes - Posted July 2, 2022

#4

Sena: Our queen is really elegant. Refined and graceful.

(Probably) Sena’s Queen:

114 notes - Posted July 31, 2022

#3

Edelgard’s not responsible for Dimitri

Of late I’ve seen some very bizarre takes that seem to be indicating that Edelgard wasn’t properly respecting or feeling sorry for the man pain horrible things Dimitri has been going through of late, such as Cornelia’s coup or the Tragedy of Duscur.

And I wonder why... should... she?

She doesn’t remember her past with Dimitri until well beyond the point of reconciliation with him in Crimson Flower and Azure Moon, and she still places her cause as more important than Dimitri’s - one person’s - wishes and comfort. She didn’t kill his family, there’s no indication she was the one to get Cornelia to do a coup, and she didn’t make him glower in the wilderness for five years because he isn’t getting his deathmatch with Edelgard today rather than go to Rodrigue for aid and shelter.

It’s really strange and gross, a general theme I’ve seen from some of Dimitri’s fans ever since the game came out is the unspoken assumption that since he’s obsessed with her, she should return his focus.

Well, she doesn’t. As I said in a previous post, Dimitri just isn’t important to the person Edelgard is now; he’s symbolic of the life she lost. Edelgard has the whole of Fodlan to worry about; Dimitri’s just one man. He’s the past, she looks to the future.

I think the issue at hand here is that Dimitri, more than anything, wants as much of his golden past back as possible. This comes to the point of him not respecting her final wish nor the reality that just extending his hand to her won’t erase the fact that they cannot co-exist after the war began; she has to plunge a knife into his shoulder to drive the point home to him, while to Byleth words are sufficient. Dimitri’s fans want what Dimitri wants, so they think Edelgard is being “mean” by not yielding to his wish to make peace with him.

Edelgard’s not responsible for the things that happened to Dimitri, nor is she responsible for his reactions to them.

146 notes - Posted May 8, 2022

#2

The chaos of war

One thing I think gets lost in the endless flood of “lol it’s unfinished” comments surrounding Crimson Flower is that the route portrays the chaotic conditions that arise in war far more elegantly than Gronder Field in Azure Moon and Verdant Wind could ever hope to.

AM and VW insists that fog, which totally exists, trust us bro, caused Dimitri and Claude to be unable to recognize the armies of each other despite all three armies wearing color-coded uniforms.

Meanwhile, in Crimson Flower, at Tailltean, the allied Kingdom and Church armies are soundly defeated by the Black Eagle Strike Force in spite of their pride and honor, and their sacred weapons, Crested blood, golems, and Relics. And their ultimate defeat comes not at the hands of the Sword of the Creator, or Aymr, or the Black Eagles themselves but from the weather.

The Kingdom and the Church intend to strike the Imperial army down with a simple by effective pincer attack:

And Hubert concludes on his own that their allied armies would be very difficult for the Imperial army to overcome:

See the full post

156 notes - Posted November 27, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

“The Agarthans were toppled so easily!” Except not really.

Something I’ve seen frequently since the Three Hopes demo came out is a claim from Edelgard’s detractors that Three Hopes “proved” she could have eliminated the Agarthans at any time and that she was never subject to their orders.

If anything, I kinda feel like it proved the opposite; she needed some rapid spur-of-the-moment plan changing and for her scheme in the woods near Remire to go perfectly to have a chance to oust them early on.

Shez isn’t actually very important beyond making sure the trio do not meet Byleth. Alois crossing paths with Byleth and Jeralt ruins everything before it can even begin.

Now, to begin her coup against the Agarthans early, she needs to rescue Monica. This is absolutely essential because Monica’s testimony is necessary to getting Solon outed, and Edelgard needs Solon outed before she can secure Church aid in attacking Arundel.

To rescue Monica, she needs;

-The Iron King Thieves to be at the compound they’re holding Monica in.

This is something Edelgard cannot manipulate. She can only react to the convenient opportunity as it arises. This appears to require Kostas being dead; if alive, he tromps off to Zanado instead.

-For the Church to send an expedition after the Iron King Thieves.

Again, she can’t make this happen on her own.

-For the class sent after the Iron King Thieves to be led by Jeritza.

Hanneman and Manuela would have likely followed procedure and waited for support before storming an unknown enemy compound; Alois’s dialogue upon catching up with the class after the rescue suggests they went way ahead of what was necessary. The conditions of the battle itself strongly suggests they only barely got to Monica in time.

Now, she doesn’t actually need for the Eagles to be the class doing this. If you’re not playing Scarlet Blaze she’s seen talking to Jeritza before the mission, suggesting she asked him to look for Monica during the attack.

So why wouldn’t this have worked with Byleth? Having Byleth fight the thieves was just a pretext for Rhea to get Byleth to Zanado. Every mission during the first part of White Clouds is carefully crafted by Rhea so as to test whether Byleth really harbors Sothis and to teach them lessons about the church and their responsibilities as a member of it.

Next, Edelgard needs for Monica to be believed; her quip about Rhea “clapping [Monica] in irons” suggests Rhea would have taken a flippant and groundless accusation against a member of the church as a grave offense.

Next, Edelgard needs for Rhea to support the expedition to Enbarr. Not so much for the extra military help, but to control the situation in the city. Edelgard’s still very much the underdog in this battle, and it’s only the support of the Knights of Seiros outside the palace and Bergliez and Hevring inside it that helps her to win the day.

On that note, she needs Bergliez and Hevring to agree to help. Dialogue from the cutscene beforehand seems to suggest that they had planned something akin to this ahead of time, but she’s still acting way ahead of schedule. If the two men had opted not to get involved things could have gone quite different.

If she can get all that, she doesn’t really need Shez for the actual fight. Shez is an able help, but they’re not irreplaceable. It’s also worth noting that Jeritza helps in the battle off-screen even if you are not playing Scarlet Blaze;

So, to fight back against the Agarthans early in Three Hopes, Edelgard needs so many successive lucky breaks in a row that she even points out how miraculous the situation is in her clandestine meeting with Hubert before the Monica rescue.

And for all that? Thales escapes, barely worse for the ware. The Agarthans are ousted from the Empire, but they’re still very much at large, and will likely be a thorn in Edelgard’s side going forward.

Not only was ousting them not easy, it might very well turn out to have done more harm than good. We’ll have to see when we get to the full game.

303 notes - Posted June 13, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[blind-rats]

The Rise & Fall of Joss Whedon; the Myth of the Hollywood Feminist Hero

By Kelly Faircloth

“I hate ‘feminist.’ Is this a good time to bring that up?” Joss Whedon asked. He paused knowingly, waiting for the laughs he knew would come at the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer making such a statement.

It was 2013, and Whedon was onstage at a fundraiser for Equality Now, a human rights organization dedicated to legal equality for women. Though Buffy had been off the air for more than a decade, its legacy still loomed large; Whedon was widely respected as a man with a predilection for making science fiction with strong women for protagonists. Whedon went on to outline why, precisely, he hated the term: “You can’t be born an ‘ist,’” he argued, therefore, “‘feminist’ includes the idea that believing men and women to be equal, believing all people to be people, is not a natural state, that we don’t emerge assuming that everybody in the human race is a human, that the idea of equality is just an idea that’s imposed on us.”

The speech was widely praised and helped cement his pop-cultural reputation as a feminist, in an era that was very keen on celebrity feminists. But it was also, in retrospect, perhaps the high water mark for Whedon’s ability to claim the title, and now, almost a decade later, that reputation is finally in tatters, prompting a reevaluation of not just Whedon’s work, but the narrative he sold about himself. 

In July 2020, actor Ray Fisher accused Whedon of being “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” on the Justice League set when Whedon took over for Zach Synder as director to finish the project. Charisma Carpenter then described her own experiences with Whedon in a long post to Twitter, hashtagged #IStandWithRayFisher.

On Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, Carpenter played Cordelia, a popular character who morphed from snob to hero—one of those strong female characters that made Whedon’s feminist reputation—before being unceremoniously written off the show in a plot that saw her thrust into a coma after getting pregnant with a demon. For years, fans have suspected that her disappearance was related to her real-life pregnancy. In her statement, Carpenter appeared to confirm the rumors. “Joss Whedon abused his power on numerous occasions while working on the sets of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and ‘Angel,’” she wrote, describing Fisher’s firing as the last straw that inspired her to go public.

Buffy was a landmark of late 1990s popular culture, beloved by many a burgeoning feminist, grad student, gender studies professor, and television critic for the heroine at the heart of the show, the beautiful blonde girl who balanced monster-killing with high school homework alongside ancillary characters like the shy, geeky Willow. Buffy was very nearly one of a kind, an icon of her era who spawned a generation of leather-pants-wearing urban fantasy badasses and women action heroes.

Buffy was so beloved, in fact, that she earned Whedon a similarly privileged place in fans’ hearts and a broader reputation as a man who championed empowered women characters. In the desert of late ’90s and early 2000s popular culture, Whedon was heralded as that rarest of birds—the feminist Hollywood man. For many, he was an example of what more equitable storytelling might look like, a model for how to create compelling women protagonists who were also very, very fun to watch. But Carpenter’s accusations appear to have finally imploded that particular bit of branding, revealing a different reality behind the scenes and prompting a reevaluation of the entire arc of Whedon’s career: who he was and what he was selling all along.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered March 1997, midseason, on The WB, a two-year-old network targeting teens with shows like 7th Heaven. Its beginnings were not necessarily auspicious; it was a reboot of a not-particularly-blockbuster 1992 movie written by third-generation screenwriter Joss Whedon. (His grandfather wrote for The Donna Reed Show; his father wrote for Golden Girls.) The show followed the trials of a stereotypical teenage California girl who moved to a new town and a new school after her parents’ divorce—only, in a deliberate inversion of horror tropes, the entire town sat on top of the entrance to Hell and hence was overrun with demons. Buffy was a slayer, a young woman with the power and immense responsibility to fight them. After the movie turned out very differently than Whedon had originally envisioned, the show was a chance for a do-over, more of a Valley girl comedy than serious horror.

It was layered, it was campy, it was ironic and self-aware. It looked like it belonged on the WB rather than one of the bigger broadcast networks, unlike the slickly produced prestige TV that would follow a few years later. Buffy didn’t fixate on the gory glory of killing vampires—really, the monsters were metaphors for the entire experience of adolescence, in all its complicated misery. Almost immediately, a broad cross-section of viewers responded enthusiastically. Critics loved it, and it would be hugely influential on Whedon’s colleagues in television; many argue that it broke ground in terms of what you could do with a television show in terms of serialized storytelling, setting the stage for the modern TV era. Academics took it up, with the show attracting a tremendous amount of attention and discussion.

In 2002, the New York Times covered the first academic conference dedicated to the show. The organizer called Buffy “a tremendously rich text,” hence the flood of papers with titles like “Pain as Bright as Steel: The Monomyth and Light in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’” which only gathered speed as the years passed. And while it was never the highest-rated show on television, it attracted an ardent core of fans.

But what stood out the most was the show’s protagonist: a young woman who stereotypically would have been a monster movie victim, with the script flipped: instead of screaming and swooning, she staked the vampires. This was deliberate, the core conceit of the concept, as Whedon said in many, many interviews. The helpless horror movie girl killed in the dark alley instead walks out victorious. He told Time in 1997 that the concept was born from the thought, “I would love to see a movie in which a blond wanders into a dark alley, takes care of herself and deploys her powers.” In Whedon’s framing, it was particularly important that it was a woman who walked out of that alley. He told another publication in 2002 that “the very first mission statement of the show” was “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it.”

In 2021, when seemingly every new streaming property with a woman as its central character makes some half-baked claim to feminism, it’s easy to forget just how much Buffy stood out among its against its contemporaries. Action movies—with exceptions like Alien’s Ripley and Terminator 2's Sarah Conner—were ruled by hulking tough guys with macho swagger. When women appeared on screen opposite vampires, their primary job was to expose long, lovely, vulnerable necks. Stories and characters that bucked these larger currents inspired intense devotion, from Angela Chase of My So-Called Life to Dana Scully of The X-Files.

The broader landscape, too, was dismal. It was the conflicted era of girl power, a concept that sprang up in the wake of the successes of the second-wave feminist movement and the backlash that followed. Young women were constantly exposed to you-can-do-it messaging that juxtaposed uneasily with the reality of the world around them. This was the era of shitty, sexist jokes about every woman who came into Bill Clinton’s orbit and the leering response to the arrival of Britney Spears; Rush Limbaugh was a fairly mainstream figure.

At one point, Buffy competed against Ally McBeal, a show that dedicated an entire episode to a dancing computer-generated baby following around its lawyer main character, her biological clock made zanily literal. Consider this line from a New York Times review of the Buffy’s 1997 premiere: “Given to hot pants and boots that should guarantee the close attention of Humbert Humberts all over America, Buffy is just your average teen-ager, poutily obsessed with clothes and boys.”

Against that background, Buffy was a landmark. Besides the simple fact of its woman protagonist, there were unique plots, like the coming-out story for her friend Willow. An ambivalent 1999 piece in Bitch magazine, even as it explored the show’s tank-top heavy marketing, ultimately concluded, “In the end, it’s precisely this contextual conflict that sets Buffy apart from the rest and makes her an appealing icon. Frustrating as her contradictions may be, annoying as her babe quotient may be, Buffy still offers up a prime-time heroine like no other.”

A 2016 Atlantic piece, adapted from a book excerpt, makes the case that Buffy is perhaps best understood as an icon of third-wave feminism: “In its examination of individual and collective empowerment, its ambiguous politics of racial representation and its willing embrace of contradiction, Buffy is a quintessentially third-wave cultural production.” The show was vested with all the era’s longing for something better than what was available, something different, a champion for a conflicted “post-feminist” era—even if she was an imperfect or somewhat incongruous vessel. It wasn’t just Sunnydale that needed a chosen Slayer, it was an entire generation of women. That fact became intricately intertwined with Whedon himself.

Seemingly every interview involved a discussion of his fondness for stories about strong women. “I’ve always found strong women interesting, because they are not overly represented in the cinema,” he told New York for a 1997 piece that notes he studied both film and “gender and feminist issues” at Wesleyan; “I seem to be the guy for strong action women,’’ he told the New York Times in 1997 with an aw-shucks sort of shrug. ‘’A lot of writers are just terrible when it comes to writing female characters. They forget that they are people.’’ He often cited the influence of his strong, “hardcore feminist” mother, and even suggested that his protagonists served feminist ends in and of themselves: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism,” he told Time in 1997.

When he was honored by the organization Equality Now in 2006 for his “outstanding contribution to equality in film and television,” Whedon made his speech an extended riff on the fact that people just kept asking him about it, concluding with the ultimate answer: “Because you’re still asking me that question.” He presented strong women as a simple no-brainer, and he was seemingly always happy to say so, at a time when the entertainment business still seemed ruled by unapologetic misogynists. The internet of the mid-2010s only intensified Whedon’s anointment as a prototypical Hollywood ally, with reporters asking him things like how men could best support the feminist movement. 

Whedon’s response: “A guy who goes around saying ‘I’m a feminist’ usually has an agenda that is not feminist. A guy who behaves like one, who actually becomes involved in the movement, generally speaking, you can trust that. And it doesn’t just apply to the action that is activist. It applies to the way they treat the women they work with and they live with and they see on the street.” This remark takes on a great deal of irony in light of Carpenter’s statement.

In recent years, Whedon’s reputation as an ally began to wane. Partly, it was because of the work itself, which revealed more and more cracks as Buffy receded in the rearview mirror. Maybe it all started to sour with Dollhouse, a TV show that imagined Eliza Dushku as a young woman rented out to the rich and powerful, her mind wiped after every assignment, a concept that sat poorly with fans. (Though Whedon, while he was publicly unhappy with how the show had turned out after much push-and-pull with the corporate bosses at Fox, still argued the conceit was “the most pure feminist and empowering statement I’d ever made—somebody building themselves from nothing,” in a 2012 interview with Wired.)

After years of loud disappointment with the TV bosses at Fox on Firefly and Dollhouse, Whedon moved into big-budget Hollywood blockbusters. He helped birth the Marvel-dominated era of movies with his work as director of The Avengers. But his second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, was heavily criticized for a moment in which Black Widow laid out her personal reproductive history for the Hulk, suggesting her sterilization somehow made her a “monster.” In June 2017, his un-filmed script for a Wonder Woman adaptation leaked, to widespread mockery. The script’s introduction of Diana was almost leering: “To say she is beautiful is almost to miss the point. She is elemental, as natural and wild as the luminous flora surrounding. Her dark hair waterfalls to her shoulders in soft arcs and curls. Her body is curvaceous, but taut as a drawn bow.”

But Whedon’s real fall from grace began in 2017, right before MeToo spurred a cultural reckoning. His ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a piece in The Wrap accusing him of cheating off and on throughout their relationship and calling him a hypocrite:

“Despite understanding, on some level, that what he was doing was wrong, he never conceded the hypocrisy of being out in the world preaching feminist ideals, while at the same time, taking away my right to make choices for my life and my body based on the truth. He deceived me for 15 years, so he could have everything he wanted. I believed, everyone believed, that he was one of the good guys, committed to fighting for women’s rights, committed to our marriage, and to the women he worked with. But I now see how he used his relationship with me as a shield, both during and after our marriage, so no one would question his relationships with other women or scrutinize his writing as anything other than feminist.”

But his reputation was just too strong; the accusation that he didn’t practice what he preached didn’t quite stick. A spokesperson for Whedon told the Wrap: “While this account includes inaccuracies and misrepresentations which can be harmful to their family, Joss is not commenting, out of concern for his children and out of respect for his ex-wife. Many minimized the essay on the basis that adultery doesn’t necessarily make you a bad feminist or erase a legacy. Whedon similarly seemed to shrug off Ray Fisher’s accusations of creating a toxic workplace; instead, Warner Media fired Fisher.

But Carpenter’s statement—which struck right at the heart of his Buffy-based legacy for progressivism—may finally change things. Even at the time, the plotline in which Charisma Carpenter was written off Angel—carrying a demon child that turned her into “Evil Cordelia,” ending the season in a coma, and quite simply never reappearing—was unpopular. Asked about what had happened in a 2009 panel at DragonCon, she said that “my relationship with Joss became strained,” continuing: “We all go through our stuff in general [behind the scenes], and I was going through my stuff, and then I became pregnant. And I guess in his mind, he had a different way of seeing the season go… in the fourth season.”

“I think Joss was, honestly, mad. I think he was mad at me and I say that in a loving way, which is—it’s a very complicated dynamic working for somebody for so many years, and expectations, and also being on a show for eight years, you gotta live your life. And sometimes living your life gets in the way of maybe the creator’s vision for the future. And that becomes conflict, and that was my experience.”

In her statement on Twitter, Carpenter alleged that after Whedon was informed of her pregnancy, he called her into a closed-door meeting and “asked me if I was ‘going to keep it,’ and manipulatively weaponized my womanhood and faith against me.” She added that “he proceeded to attack my character, mock my religious beliefs, accuse me of sabotaging the show, and then unceremoniously fired me following the season once I gave birth.” Carpenter said that he called her fat while she was four months pregnant and scheduled her to work at 1 a.m. while six months pregnant after her doctor had recommended shortening her hours, a move she describes as retaliatory. What Carpenter describes, in other words, is an absolutely textbook case of pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the type of bullshit the feminist movement exists to fight—at the hands of the man who was for years lauded as a Hollywood feminist for his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Many of Carpenter’s colleagues from Buffy and Angel spoke out in support, including Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar. “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon,” she said in a statement. Just shy of a decade after that 2013 speech, many of the cast members on the show that put him on that stage are cutting ties.

Whedon garnered a reputation as pop culture’s ultimate feminist man because Buffy did stand out so much, an oasis in a wasteland. But in 2021, the idea of a lone man being responsible for creating women’s stories—one who told the New York Times, “I seem to be the guy for strong action women”—seems like a relic. It’s depressing to consider how many years Hollywood’s first instinct for “strong action women” wasn’t a woman, and to think about what other people could have done with those resources. When Wonder Woman finally reached the screen, to great acclaim, it was with a woman as director.

Besides, Whedon didn’t make Buffy all by himself—many, many women contributed, from the actresses to the writers to the stunt workers, and his reputation grew so large it eclipsed their part in the show’s creation. Even as he preached feminism, Whedon benefitted from one of the oldest, most sexist stereotypes: the man who’s a benevolent, creative genius. And Buffy, too, overshadowed all the other contributors who redefined who could be a hero on television and in speculative fiction, from individual actors like Gillian Anderson to the determined, creative women who wrote science fiction and fantasy over the last several decades to—perhaps most of all—the fans who craved different, better stories. Buffy helped change what you could put on TV, but it didn’t create the desire to see a character like her. It was that desire, as much as Whedon himself, that gave Buffy the Vampire Slayer her power.

[bigskydreaming]

I will forever squint suspiciously at a fandom that overall makes a bigger deal out of Dick Grayson expressing he didn’t want to replace his father when he was still young and actively grieving than they do Tim Drake literally hiring an actor to be his fake uncle and saying no to Bruce’s first actual offer of adoption.

Like, if you can get on board with Timothy Drake-Wayne after that, because Tim changed his mind after he was further along in his grieving process, you can get on board with the idea that at some point after the age of ten or twelve Dick similarly changed his mind about thinking a second father would be an insult to his first father’s memory.

*Shrugs* I just don’t get how hard some people go to bat for the idea that Dick never wanted or needed someone he viewed as an actual parent at any point after he was eight. Because you can’t deny that whatever Dick has said about that in the comics, he’s NEVER made it nearly AS big a deal as most fans who cite it at all do. Like, when you run with the most extreme extrapolation of that but gloss right over Tim’s far more extensive efforts to keep Jack Drake the sole father figure in his memory at first, I feel like something else is going on there.

(And I’m not trying to turn this into a Tim vs Dick thing, btw, I’m honestly just using Tim’s story there as a benchmark for how a clearly parallel sentiment is overwhelmingly referenced in regards to just one character but not another. My issues with the way people engage with this particular idea in regards to Dick like, exists without Tim being in the equation at all. That was simply an example of the fact that there IS a discrepancy.)

But point being, as all roads in this particular direction of thought almost always seem to lead to Dick being slotted into some nebulous category separating him from the rest of his siblings, where he’s only partially Bruce’s kid but not FULLY, not like the others....I am the Wary. 

Because whatever the surface intentions behind that, it almost inevitably voids some of Bruce’s responsibility to him as a parent, while at the same time making it easier to heap parental or caregiver style responsibilities for the others on Dick. If Dick’s more like Bruce than he is like his siblings in the overall family dynamic, this not only lessens the need to show him on the receiving end of Bruce being a parental figure, it simultaneously heightens the urge to make him a parental figure to the others to pick up Bruce’s slack there, because they’re more partners than they are father and son, see. So why wouldn’t Dick pick up Bruce’s slack and help him out there, and why would he need Bruce to actually be fulfilling that very role with him instead?

All the things people are critical of Bruce for in his parenting with Dick aren’t quite as bad, right, when Dick’s not fully his son or doesn’t quite view Bruce as his father....its easier to reframe it as fights between colleagues. Or recast Dick’s estrangement from Bruce as not actually a failure on Bruce’s part to reach out and cement exactly what Dick meant to him every time Dick flat out says “I want to know what I mean to you, give a name to it, give me an explanation for why you made these choices that isn’t that you don’t want me because all I see when I look at those choices is you expressing you don’t want me.” 

Because if Dick doesn’t actually want that explanation ever, if Dick doesn’t actually want that rock-solid expression of Bruce putting a name to what he feels for Dick and what he views him as, then the arguments between Bruce and Dick in his late teenage years DO become two-sided. Its just them butting heads back then. Rather than what they actually WERE in the comics, which was Dick clearly expressing insecurities about his place in Bruce’s life and Bruce repeatedly letting him leave or outright telling him to leave without actually giving it to him.

(I’m not even talking about NTT #55 for once, I’m actually talking about when Dick went to Gotham after he found out about Jason being Robin now. And as the events of that issue get referenced a TON in fandom, its HIGHLY suspect that one specific part of that issue gets rewritten in particular: where its acted like it was Dick that stormed off in a huff there or Dick who didn’t want anything more than to confront Bruce about Robin. It really doesn’t get addressed enough IMO that yes, Bruce said outright that he did it because he missed Dick....and then two panels later, Bruce literally asks Dick to go now. Says I would like you to leave now. Bruce is the one who blew up and lost his temper, literally smashing something while Dick was just heated because he was understandably upset, while Bruce somehow made it like he was the one being hurt by Dick and asking for space from him. Yeah, he said I miss you, but he never DID anything with that and in fact just turned around two seconds later and drove Dick away again, like Holy Mixed Signals, Batman! Y’know? Like what exactly was Dick supposed to do with that? “Oh, so Bruce misses me, but also he didn’t want me there, like I was literally RIGHT THERE for the first time in seventeen months and he missed me so much that....he didn’t even ask me to stay for dinner? Or call or reach out to me afterwards? So....my conclusion is.....what, exactly?”)

Ultimately though, my big beef with the stuff about adoption or Dick not wanting to replace his father, its not even about those specifically. Its about that period when Bruce very visibly was NOT in Dick’s life....and that was BY BRUCE’S CHOICE. That is the thing that needs addressing in my book, and far too often goes unresolved. No matter what the particulars of Dick’s views or wants re: adoption, there is literally no confusion about the existence of comics where Dick is repeatedly the one to reach out to Bruce, at a point in his life where he no longer had any legal ties to Bruce whatsoever.....and clearly express in one way or another that he is there and willing to talk, that in fact he WANTS to talk about why Bruce doesn’t seem to want HIM, specifically. 

It was Dick who brought up the issue of Bruce adopting Jason but not him and asked WHY at that one issue with them at a party. It was Dick who returned to Gotham and asked Bruce WHY he made Jason Robin when he hadn’t wanted Dick to be Robin - (and for the record, NO version of events where Bruce is the one to make Jason Robin aligns with Dick voluntarily giving up Robin.....the one and only continuity in which Dick did that, HE made the choice to pass Robin on to Jason. Mixing and matching continuities specifically to make Dick unable to claim hurt or resentment for the identity he crafted for himself being given away to someone else without his approval because ‘he was the one who said he didn’t want it anymore’ is yet again, suspect, as it serves absolutely no purpose other than to lessen the hurt done to him and abdicate Bruce’s culpability in hurting him when he did that). 

It was Dick who returned to Gotham after Jason died with no intention but to express his condolences and share their grief, and it was Dick who returned to Gotham to check on Bruce after Tim said he was worried he was going to get himself killed, as well as again more longterm in order to help with Tim’s training.

And in each and EVERY one of those situations.....it was Bruce that ended those encounters, and ALWAYS without ever offering Dick any actual resolution or change in their dynamic. Despite Dick’s very presence in each of these being a very clear sign that Dick was unhappy with their estrangement and wanted a change to it or else he wouldn’t even be there, he would be off being comfortably estranged somewhere else and totally content with that.

THAT’S the bigger issue and always has been, I think. That no matter how else you parse it, Dick repeatedly looked for and asked for reassurances, some kind of actual TIES to Bruce, and that Bruce for whatever personal reasons of his own, repeatedly did not give....even when Dick walked him right up to the perfect opportunity to just fucking say “I would like you to come home more, I want you here, I want you as part of my family even though you’ve already aged out of our existing legal bond.”

Bruce still just WOULD NOT SAY IT. Dick was very clear about needing and wanting something from Bruce that Bruce DID NOT GIVE HIM. Bruce gave him basically nothing to work with in these encounters more often than not. 

(In the interest of not being disingenuous here, I do admit that at the party when Dick asked Bruce why he’d adopted Jason and not him, Bruce did give a fairly touching response about how by the time he thought Dick would be open to it, he thought that Dick was too old to actually want or need it anymore. BUT, problem is, even with that it does absolutely nothing to change or address how the very fact that Dick was expressing insecurity about this now meant that Dick WASN’T actually too old to want or need it. It was literally a smack in the face that Bruce’s conclusion was wrong and not actually about Dick’s wants. And Bruce knew this, even referenced it at later points when he threw it back in Dick’s face to accuse Dick of resenting Bruce adopting Jason and not him.....which is a clear indication that Bruce knew it was something Dick still wanted or else there would be no reason for resentment, and THAT is the issue there. That no matter what Bruce said at that party about his reasons for not adopting Dick sooner, that very conversation itself should have been reason enough for Bruce to rethink his stance then there....but he didn’t. Also he ended up adopting Dick like five years later soooooo.....if he could do it then when Dick was even older, that doesn’t work as a barrier for him not doing it then.)

And that’s the troubling part.....how many people try and make that period of their lives unclear with no other visible purpose than to make the fact that Bruce WOULD NOT OUTRIGHT CEMENT DICK AS FAMILY OR ASK HIM TO STAY, like.....less problematic.

And as I’ve said before and will no doubt say again.......that logic process bugs the hell out of me, because it ultimately tries to claim the responsibility for Dick’s unhappiness in this regard back then is at least as much his fault as Bruce’s. That it was some kind of fight between equals, or that it was something Dick initiated or that Bruce had no power to resolve on his own via just his own choices or gestures.

Because it wasn’t! That’s not remotely what all of that was! And like I’m also always saying, you don’t HAVE to stick with the canon by any means. You can literally rewrite things so Bruce adopts Dick before he’s eighteen and they never HAVE that period, you can rewrite things so that Bruce reaches out and ends that period early on by DOING THE WORK of being the parent in that situation, you can ‘fix that’ by any number of means......yet over and over we see that period of estrangement repeatedly upheld as a thing that exists in the history that fics and headcanons reference having happened......but with the only ACTUAL change from the comics being that its framed as though it was just growing pains or Dick being stubborn or a dozen other things that somehow keep coming back to Dick doing something wrong there instead of repeatedly standing in front of Bruce asking for him to clarify their relationship and Bruce changing the subject or asking him to leave.

Again. THAT’S the problem.

You want Good Parent Bruce Wayne? Then WRITE Good Parent Bruce Wayne. Don’t just write Stubborn Teenaged Asshole Dick Grayson who btw doesn’t even really want Bruce to be his parent so there’s absolutely nothing Bruce could have done to bridge that gap back then anyway. 

(As that’s an equally critical part of the equation here as well. See, since Dick DID clearly express a want for a clear connection to Bruce back then, acting like Dick never really wanted a second father is a super convenient way to write over the part where Dick spelled out for Bruce how to bridge the divide between them and make things good again.....by demonstrating an actual WANT to have Dick in his family!)

But writing Stubborn Teenage Asshole Dick Grayson Who Did This To Himself.....that is something entirely different from writing Good Parent Bruce Wayne. You haven’t actually done or said anything with BRUCE’S character by just making Dick the fall guy for every conflict between them as though they were just equals all along and there was never any kind of actual parent child relationship or even a DESIRE for there to be a parent child relationship. Where the responsibility for being the PARENT like, lands on the....y’know. Parent.

And for the record, I don’t think this issue is confined just to this period of the comics, I think rather that its kinda the point of origin of a very large recurring problem in Dick’s conflicts with other people.

Because like I said, it was abundantly clear that Dick was expressing a want to be acknowledged as family, or just flat out acknowledged by Bruce at all, during this time. And if people can somehow make THAT period into just his fault.....then of course it should be no surprise that they can make any conflict he’s part of into his fault. Its a freaking blueprint for doing just that! 

And that’s exactly why this pattern recurs so damn often with EXACTLY the same fanon beats......whatever role the other character plays even in initiating a conflict is shifted onto Dick and somehow made into his own proactive choice and not something he’s actually reacting to. Thus Dick does double duty as both the CAUSE of the conflict and the resulting EFFECT - aka how he reacted to that thing that originally, he did not actually cause or initiate. While meanwhile, the other character not only gets off scot free bearing no actual culpability....no, now since DICK is the one making all the actual choices in the conflict from start to finish, now the other character is actually his VICTIM in it as well.

And that’s just.....so....blegh.

[thankskenpenders]

Enerjak Reborn: Epilogue

It’s time to answer the question on everybody’s mind. How did Ken respond to Ian killing off Locke, one of his pet characters?

Well, the answer, as you should expect, is: poorly

Now, it’s important to remind everyone that Ken has not actually read the arc. He never read any of Ian’s run, to my knowledge. But his fans were sure to tell him all about it and ask him how he felt

Eventually, in 2010, two years after this issue dropped, we got a response from Ken talking about how he felt about Ian’s run. (Again, even though he wasn’t actually reading it himself.) Said response is worth reading in full if you’re interested in all this drama and Ken’s mindset. You literally get to see the guy brag about how he actively ignored what Bollers was doing when the two were sharing writing duties, as if this is a good thing that makes him a better writer. He also criticizes Ian for using the previous writers’ characters instead of introducing even more characters to the bloated Archie cast in his first few years on the series. But the relevant part to the discussion of Enerjak reborn is here:

“I especially don’t consider anything either does with any of the echidna characters – especially Locke – to be canon as neither created the characters nor established them in stories as the viable fan favorites they’ve become. No matter what Ian writes, he can never alter the fact that in MY universe, the events of Locke’s passing as depicted in SONIC #143 is canon. Anything he writes can easily be counter-written by a better story with an alternative solution.”

Let’s just brush past the very funny part where he calls Locke a “viable fan favorite”

So yeah. Penders was VERY unhappy with the way Ian wrote Locke, and the way Locke’s death in Enerjak Reborn meant that the timeline depicted in Mobius: 25 Years Later wasn’t the one true future of the series. He’s also gone on record saying that he thinks Ian didn’t get the relationship between Locke and Knuckles. When asked about Ian’s work, this has always been one of the major things that’s bothered him

On a broader level, his ramblings here are reflective of how he views comic franchises in general. A particularly illustrative quote from him is provided in the comments section below the article I linked:

“The only work I consider significant to any character is the work done by the original creators. Anything done afterwards by anyone else pretty much doesn’t count. For example, I consider the original issues of FANTASTIC FOUR by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to be the only stories that matter in the entire run. Anything being done today is by writers and artists who are simply building off the work Stan and Jack originated. I apply this standard to just about every character I ever enjoyed over the years.”

This odd mindset explains a lot about Ken. It explains why he hates that Ian kept using his characters, and why he actively avoided building off of the work of his contemporary writers at Archie. I can see what he means on some level, of course. When another writer comes in and adds more novels to a series after the original author dies, I generally tend to ignore those. And I skipped a good chunk of Twin Peaks season 2 because it had less involvement from creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, making a lot of it feel like filler. But we’re talking about a licensed comic, one that had been a collaboration between multiple writers based on the work done for the games and cartoons from the very beginning. Ken was never the sole writer--he wasn’t even there for the first year--and he was writing stories centered around characters he hadn’t created like Sonic, Sally, and Knuckles. He doesn’t take credit for creating any of those characters, but the hypocrisy still seems to be lost on him

But of course, we’re not just talking about Ian’s handling of all of Archie Sonic here. We’re talking about Locke. And as Ken has said himself, Locke was based partially on his own father. And that’s really the kicker here

As I’ve said many times before, I try to avoid psychoanalyzing Penders and digging into his personal life. I don’t know the guy, and that’s his own business. But it’s hard not to when he literally says shit like THIS to fans

Locke is emotionally abusive towards his wife and son. Locke is also based on Ken’s dad. Ken refuses to see Locke as abusive, even though that’s exactly what he wrote, because that would mean acknowledging that his own father was abusive. So there’s always an excuse for why father knows best. It was a different era! They’re not humans! He could see the future! He might have hurt Knuckles, but it toughened him up, and he was always there for him in the end! The dad is never, ever at fault. The moms, on the other hands, are mere bystanders to the child rearing done by the dads. It’s just sad, really

I get why Ken would be bitter that Ian took this fictionalized version of his late dad, went “hey, this guy’s an asshole,” and then killed him off. I get why that would upset somebody. He wrote a very personal story there. But it’s not like Ian was pouring salt in a fresh wound--Ken lost his father all the way back in 1982. I know this because Ken literally dedicated the M25YL story about his version of Locke’s death to his dad. It had been nearly 30 years when he wrote this response to Ian’s work. That’s plenty of time to see a goddamn therapist instead of projecting all of your baggage onto Knuckles the Echidna and writing stories for kids about how you should never question your dad ever

The irony, though, is that Ian’s different take on Locke is arguably way more nuanced than Ken’s ever was. In his final moments, Ian’s Locke turns into this tragic figure who only realizes too late that the way of life the Brotherhood had raised him to believe was a mistake, that he had failed his son by passing those beliefs on to him. But he’s still held responsible for what he did. He’s a horrible dad, and the characters around him call him out for his failures, but you pity him for only now realizing what he had done

Ken, on the other hand, gestures at Locke doing horrible things, then tells you to forget about all that and stop questioning him. Knuckles pretends he has a totally normal Leave it to Beaver-ass father-son relationship as soon as they reunite in the Knuckles series. As an adult he thinks back on how great a job Locke did raising him, even though Locke literally took him from his mother, raised him to believe that his mother and the rest of his species were all dead, and then pretended he himself was dead for six years of his son’s childhood (among MANY other things)

M25YL gestures at those very same themes of not repeating your parents’ mistakes that Ian touched on in Locke’s final moments. Knuckles is raising Lara-Su very differently from how Locke raised him, and Locke admits that he wishes he had raised Knuckles differently on his deathbed. But his decision to suddenly admit wrongdoing in this flashback to his death feels unearned and arbitrary. Locke is never at fault. We cannot question Locke. Knuckles turned out fine, so don’t worry about it. Locke might regret the way Knuckles raised him, but Knuckles is not allowed to hold any ill will towards his father or question his methods whatsoever. We’re allowed to gesture at the idea that Knuckles doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the previous generations, but those vague mistakes aren’t allowed to be anyone’s fault. That’s just “how things were”

Ken would do a lot more than just complain about Ian’s handling of Locke on the internet, though. Because you see, the way Ian wrote Locke is commonly cited as one of the main reasons why Ken started copyrighting his work, right up there with Bioware basing the story of Sonic Chronicles partially off of the Knuckles comics without his blessing. And those copyrights, of course, were what started the legal battle that would kill off the original Archieverse

[didanawisgi]

Martin Luther King Jr., Guns, and a Book Everyone Should Read

BY JEREMY S. | JAN 15, 2018

“Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 89 years old today, were he not assassinated in 1968. On the third Monday in January we observe MLK Jr. Day and celebrate his achievements in advancing civil rights for African Americans and others. While Dr. King was a big advocate of peaceful assembly and protest, he wasn’t, at least for most of his life, against the use of firearms for self-defense. In fact, he employed them . . .

If it wasn’t for African Americans in the South, primarily, taking up arms almost without exception during the post-Civil War reconstruction and well into the civil rights movement, this country wouldn’t be what it is today.

By force and threat of arms African Americans protected themselves, their families, their homes, and their rights and won the attention and respect of the powers that be. In a lawless, post-Civil War South they stayed alive while faced with, at best, an indifferent government and, at worst, state-sponsored violence against them.

We know the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857 refused to recognize black people as citizens. Heck, they were deemed just three-fifths a person. Not often mentioned in school: some of that was due to gun rights. Namely, not wanting to give gun rights to blacks. Because if they were to recognize blacks as citizens, it…

“…would give to persons of the negro race . . . the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, . . . and it would give them the full liberty of speech . . . ; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”

Ahha! So the Second Amendment was considered an individual right, protecting a citizen’s natural, inalienable right to keep and carry arms wherever they go. Then as now, gun control is rooted in racism.

During reconstruction, African Americans were legally citizens but were not always treated as such. Practically every African American home had a shotgun — or shotguns — and they needed it, too. Forget police protection, as those same officials were often in white robes during their time off.

Fast forward to the American civil rights movement and we learn, but again not at school, that Martin Luther King Jr. applied for a concealed carry permit. He (an upstanding minister, mind you) was denied.

Then as in many cases even now, especially in blue states uniquely and ironically so concerned about “fairness,” permitting was subjective (“may issue” rather than “shall issue”). The wealthy and politically connected receive their rights, but the poor, the uneducated, the undesired masses, not so much.

Up until late in his life, MLK Jr. chose to be protected by the Deacons for Defense. Though his home was also apparently a bit of an arsenal.

African Americans won their rights and protected their lives with pervasive firearms ownership. But we don’t learn about this. We don’t know about this. It has been unfortunately whitewashed from our history classes and our discourse.

Hidden, apparently, as part of an agreement (or at least an understanding) reached upon the conclusion of the civil rights movement.

Sure, the government is going to protect you now and help you and give you all of the rights you want, but you have to give up your guns. Turn them in. Create a culture of deference to the government. Be peaceable and non-threatening and harmless. And arm-less, as it were (and vote Democrat). African Americans did turn them in, physically and culturally.

That, at least, is an argument made late in Negroes and the Gun: the Black Tradition of Arms. It’s a fantastic book, teaching primarily through anecdotes of particular African American figures throughout history just how important firearms were to them. I learned so-freaking-much from this novel, and couldn’t recommend it more. If you have any interest in gun rights, civil rights, and/or African American history, it’s an absolute must-read.

Some text I highlighted on my Kindle Paperwhite when I read it in 2014:

But Southern blacks had to navigate the first generation of American arms-control laws, explicitly racist statutes starting as early as Virginia’s 1680 law, barring clubs, guns, or swords to both slaves and free blacks.

“…he who would be free, himself must strike the blow.”

In 1846, white abolitionist congressman Joshua Giddings of Ohio gave a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, advocating distribution of arms to fugitive slaves.

Civil-rights activist James Forman would comment in the 1960s that blacks in the movement were widely armed and that there was hardly a black home in the South without its shotgun or rifle.

A letter from a teacher at a freedmen’s school in Maryland demonstrates one set of concerns. The letter contains the standard complaints about racist attacks on the school and then describes one strand of the local response. “Both the Mayor and the sheriff have warned the colored people to go armed to school, (which they do) [and] the superintendent of schools came down and brought me a revolver.”

Low black turnout resulted in a Democratic victory in the majority black Republican congressional district.

Other political violence of the Reconstruction era centered on official Negro state militias operating under radical Republican administrations.

“The Winchester rifle deserves a place of honor in every Black home.” So said Ida B. Wells.

Fortune responded with an essay titled “The Stand and Be Shot or Shoot and Stand Policy”: “We have no disposition to fan the coals of race discord,” Thomas explained, “but when colored men are assailed they have a perfect right to stand their ground. If they run away like cowards they will be regarded as inferior and worthy to be shot; but if they stand their ground manfully, and do their own a share of the shooting they will be respected and by doing so they will lessen the propensity of white roughs to incite to riot.”

He used state funds to provide guns and ammunition to people who were under threat of attack.

“Medgar was nonviolent, but he had six guns in the kitchen and living room.”

“The weapons that you have are not to kill people with — killing is wrong. Your guns are to protect your families — to stop them from being killed. Let the Klan ride, but if they try to do wrong against you, stop them. If we’re ever going to win this fight we got to have a clean record. Stay here, my friends, you are needed most here, stay and protect your homes.”

In 2008 and 2010, the NAACP filed amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court, supporting blanket gun bans in Washington, DC, and Chicago. Losing those arguments, one of the association’s lawyers wrote in a prominent journal that recrafting the constitutional right to arms to allow targeted gun prohibition in black enclaves should be a core plank of the modern civil-rights agenda.

Wilkins viewed the failure to pursue black criminals as overt state malevolence and evidence of an attitude that “there’s one more Negro killed — the more of ’em dead, the less to bother us. Don’t spend too much money running down the killer — he may kill another.”

But it puts things in perspective to note that swimming pool accidents account for more deaths of minors than all forms of death by firearm (accident, homicide, and suicide).

The correlation of very high murder rates with low gun ownership in African American communities simply does not bear out the notion that disarming the populace as a whole will disarm and prevent murder by potential murderers.

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated 1,900,000 annual episodes where someone in the home retrieved a firearm in response to a suspected illegal entry. There were roughly half a million instances where the armed householder confronted and chased off the intruder.

A study of active burglars found that one of the greatest risks faced by residential burglars is being injured or killed by occupants of a targeted dwelling. Many reported that this was their greatest fear and a far greater worry than being caught by police.48 The data bear out the instinct. Home invaders in the United States are more at risk of being shot in the act than of going to prison.49 Because burglars do not know which homes have a gun, people who do not own guns enjoy free-rider benefits because of the deterrent effect of others owning guns. In a survey of convicted felons conducted for the National Institute of Justice, 34 percent of them reported being “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim.” Nearly 40 percent had refrained from attempting a crime because they worried the target was armed. Fifty-six percent said that they would not attack someone they knew was armed and 74 percent agreed that “one reason burglars avoid houses where people are at home is that they fear being shot.”

In the period before Florida adopted its “shall issue” concealed-carry laws, the Orlando Police Department conducted a widely advertised program of firearms training for women. The program was started in response to reports that women in the city were buying guns at an increased rate after an uptick in sexual assaults. The program aimed to help women gun owners become safe and proficient. Over the next year, rape declined by 88 percent. Burglary fell by 25 percent. Nationally these rates were increasing and no other city with a population over 100,000 experienced similar decreases during the period.55 Rape increased by 7 percent nationally and by 5 percent elsewhere in Florida.

As you can see, Negroes and the Gun progresses more or less chronologically, spending the last portion of the book discussing modern-day gun control. It’s an invaluable source of ammunition (if you’ll pardon the expression) against the fallacies of the pro-gun-control platform. It sheds light on a little-known (if not purposefully obfuscated), critical factor in the history of African Americans: firearms.

On this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I highly recommend you — yes, you — read Negroes and the Gun: the Black Tradition of Arms.

And I’ll wrap this up with a quote in a Huffington Post article given by Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter: 

https://cdn0.thetruthaboutguns.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/huffpo-maj-toure.jpg”

[wasflypaw]

I feel like I need to make a post like this so people dont keep Assuming what I think so have my detailed opinions on the characters. I'll be main tagging this bc I havent main tagged anything in SO long and I wanna find more people who share the same character opinions as me.

My opinions on characters have heavily grown and changed in the last few months so I thought I'd write this so people are aware my current thoughts and dont take my old biased posts from January or February as how I feel now

This is c!Dream critical (I guess? I mean he's a villain) but that's about it. I talk about character flaws and bad things characters do but not in a critical way? Bc I say these things about some of my fav characters. If you think something is too critical tell me and I'll tag it

What I Do think about c!Tommy: He is a kid who has been wrongfully accused of "causing all the wars on the server" and "ruining the peaceful server" when none of this is true. Him being a kid doesnt excuse when he does wrongdoings but he Does grow and learn from them and you can See him trying to become a better person. He lashes out due to trauma responses and has been through a lot. He's very misunderstood by a lot of the fandom and blamed for a Lot of stuff he didnt do. Characters are usually given a free pass by the fandom to hurt him. I dont think it's a coincidence that "dont judge characters by how nice they are to c!Tommy" is posted literally only by fans of the characters who hurt c!Tommy and nobody else. Everything he does is framed in a more malicious light than it was by the fandom and he's treated as more of a Problem or a Burden than an actual human being. He makes me sad. As someone who's watched him from the very beginning of the server (found him nearly a year ago :] ) you can tell how much he's changed and grown as a person, people wrongfully accuse his character of "he doesnt get character development he just gets trauma" when that's not true and you can tell this by what he's been saying and doing in the last few lore streams. He's still traumatized and easily manipulated yes, that's not gonna go away, but he still has moments where he stands up for himself and just,, the way he talks about c!Wilbur man,,

What I Dont think about c!Tommy: He's never done anything wrong! He's just a kid so all his actions are excused uwu! Poor baby traumatized boy!! X Character hurt my Fav Boy so they're automatically a Villain! Never done anything wrong in his life every other character is bad. Him killing c!Jack was the most fucked up thing he's done despite him not knowing it was a canon death and he Has hurt other people either unintentionally or when he's at his lowest moments and lashing out

What I Do think about c!Wilbur: He has been wrongfully accused of and butchered to hell and back by the fandom for "villainising c!Dream" when there's next to no evidence that this is true, people base all their opinions of him from... c!Dream's actions as if he's the reason for them, when he isnt. He's accused of being "bad from the start", or a "dictator" or "coloniser" when you can go back and SEE he wasnt. I find it kinda odd that he's blamed for villainising the guy who slaughtered him and the rest of his group when he barely even fought back. You can see his spiralling and paranoia started After the L'Manberg war. I barely even talk about Pogtopia era or Current era c!Wilbur. He hurt a lot of people which I think is important to be acknowledged and I dislike that there's more criticism towards him for something he Didnt do rather than the bad things he Did do. He's a very redeemable and sympathetic villain though very destructive and the cause of a lot of trauma. it's kinda weird to refer to his death as "abandoning people" too. He is not healthy for c!Tommy to be around. You shouldn't take everything Current c!Wilbur says at face value (glances at the "I dont care about L'Manberg" thing. I promise you as someone who was there for the entirety of OG L'Manberg that he cared a lot, didnt create L'Manberg for a malicious reason, didnt control his citizens, etc) L'Manberg wasnt the drug van btw

c!Wilbur 🤝 c!Tommy: Wrongful scapegoats for the servers issues

What I Dont think about c!Wilbur: He's mentally ill so that excuses everything and its ableist to get mad at him!! He was a morally good paragon of light during the L'Manberg era! L'Manberg was a pure utopia uwu! c!Wilbur didnt hurt people on purpose so therefore they cant be mad at him..

What I Do think about c!Dream: He's not as sympathetic as he's portrayed to be by the fandom, and a lot of characters are very incredibly wrongfully blamed for his actions/causing his downfall? When it's not true. L'Manberg turned nobody against him that didnt already have bad feelings towards him (...so basically just c!Wilbur and c!Tommy) and he remained a respected leader of the SMP after L'Manberg's creation. He still had friends, only one person questioned him (Skeppy) based on his own word but then sided with him anyway. He never spoke about c!Wilbur like, ever, and repeatedly only focused on c!Tommy, even during the L'Manberg war. The fandom assigns motives for him that just dont match up - for example his reasoning for declaring war being "sometimes you just gotta kill some people" but the fandom saying "he was doing what he had to / he just wanted to restore peace!" Which just,, doesnt paint him in a good light anyway? Ive been watching since Last July and it's weird to see him painted as some peaceful mediator when he has always been involved in chaos. His reasoning for a lot of things is "I enjoy destruction" or "you're too fun" with no evidence to prove otherwise as you can hear him cheering, laughing or having fun during conflicts, even after he beats down and slaughters the L'Manbergians unnecessarily. That doesnt match up with the fandom's "he just wanted peace back" motive at all... Here's some essays I've made about his character that touch on how I feel about him: [Essay 1] (please read this one I'm so proud of it it shows how I feel the most and it's my least critical one) [Essay 2] [Essay 3] [Essay 4]

What I dont think about c!Dream: I dont think he deserves torture. He deserves what's happening in prison. In fact, I very rarely talk about the prison arc because it makes me uncomfortable. I've been an advocate of "punishment does nothing but make things worse" in regards to c!Tommy and people have taken that to mean I think punishment is making c!Dream better? He confuses me - I dont think he's being manipulative in prison when he shows his feelings and I've never said as such. I don't feel sympathy towards the guy at all and I mainly talk about season 1-season 2 c!Dream.

What I Do think about c!Techno: I disagree with his actions and feel he went to extremes that he shouldn't have, and hurt innocent people (glances at Ghostbur on Doomsday) that didnt need to be dragged into it and weren't part of the Butcher Army. He's not very considerate of other people's feelings. This is more of a character flaw and not a reason to think he's badly written or dislikable in my opinion. He has some of my favourite moments (the entirety of November 16th, I enjoyed The Butcher Army stuff and the Bedrock Bros arc) I tend to relate to him a lot I'm gonna be honest? I find it hard to criticize him for The Festival despite disagreeing with what he did because I Always put myself in his shoes as someone with severe social anxiety. I just cant help it man. I struggle to differentiate Fanon c!Techno and Canon c!Techno because regardless of what he does he radiates vibes of "man I feel bad for this dude". I look at him and I feel sympathy and I can never pinpoint Why. I used to be very c!Techno critical but that was back when I was admittedly very biased and felt too salty at his fans shitting on c!Tommy everywhere I looked to bother looking into his character properly

What I Dont think about c!Techno: He's emotionless, monotone, unable to care for people, any other borderline ableist stereotype similar to this. I dont think he's evil or The Worst or irredeemable I literally just dislike Doomsday and that's it at this point jdkfkf I also dont think "victim complex" is the right word to use, i used to say that about him and yeah i disagree now

What I Do think about c!Philza: My feelings on him are still very mixed as I've read a lot of conflicting opinions on him from both sides and I havent came out with a conclusion yet? I dont think he can be considered a villain despite Doomsday and I think he Genuinely thought he was doing what was right and was still hurting from c!Wilbur's death. It's been a WHILE since Doomsday so I feel bad holding that against him when he hasnt done anything like that since,, I think he cares about his son a lot and there's no evidence to say he was a neglectful father to him, however I disagree with how he treated Ghostbur. Whether he saw him as a son or not, Ghostbur saw him and had memories of him as a dad :( I think it's understandable why he'd feel uncomfortable around Ghostbur but man. Again he's another character I struggle to differentiate Fanon and Canon with but he has some of the prettiest fanart so I dont mind. When thinking about c!Philza my brain is stuck in the Season 2 era I'll be honest

What I Dont think about c!Philza: He's c!Tommy's dad and a shit father. He was neglectful and uncaring to c!Wilbur. He has no right to be mad at New L'Manberg/c!Tubbo/c!Fundy. Again its understandable if you see his POV on things Why he felt the way he did

What I Do think about c!Fundy: Underrated boy has one of the best character arcs and was one of my fav characters back during September-November 2020. I really really enjoyed all his moments in season 1 (sorry if I dont ever talk much about season 3 my hyperfixation was at its strongest during season 1) and his entire POV is just so underrated?? People say Coconut2020 came out of nowhere or dont take him seriously but I have an entire essay on his POV during the Manberg vs Pogtopia arc, why he ran for president, etc etc. His relationships with c!Niki, c!Eret and c!Schlatt are so very underrated. I'll let the essay I linked say the rest

What I Dont think about c!Fundy: While I enjoy him a lot I dont think he's without flaws and he Has Genuinely Hurt people in the past without really meaning to / thinking of the consequences (not telling c!Niki he was a spy before burning her flag, disowning c!Wilbur, etc) again this is a Character Flaw not a reason to dislike him. Character Flaws Good

What I Do think about c!Tubbo: He's a very very smart character, smarter than a lot of people let on. He's usually treated as an extension of other characters (people complain about him being an extension of c!Tommy but in an attempt to get away from that they instead treat him like an extension of c!Ranboo... especially with the fights over who's "better" for him). I dont think him bottling up and repressing his trauma is healthy and he needs to talk about it man he was done so dirty. I think about c!Tubbo being a victim of the Final Control Room, being made into Schlatt's right hand man, being shot with a firework, being thrown into presidency, being forced to exile his best friend, trusting c!Dream who manipulated him and then berated him in front of a crowd, having his entire nation being blown up to bedrock and then compared to Schlatt, nearly being murdered, etc etc like. Jesus Christ! Its uncomfortable how his execution is treated so trivially because "he forgave c!Techno" and people get annoyed when its brought up like ,,,

What I Dont think about c!Tubbo: I don't agree with The Butcher Army situation. I dont think it was justified bc again the whole "punishment doesnt work" thing but I feel it was incredibly understandable why c!Tubbo would wanna do that. I think he had a lot more say in the situation than people let on, but yeah c!Quackity was the main instigator

What I do think about c!Quackity: His season 1 lore is so underrated please watch it from his POV!! He's treated similarly to c!Wilbur, "bad from the start". If you dont watch his POV you miss so many pivotal moments like him talking with c!Niki about possibly overthrowing Schlatt, him secretly freeing c!Niki when Schlatt imprisoned her, him feeling incredibly uncomfortable with Schlatt's actions, his attachment to the White House he built and his devastation when Schlatt tore it down in front of him while mocking him. He's a victim of c!Schlatt, people seem to paint him and c!Schlatt as a villain duo sometimes? You can tell Quackity wanted to please Schlatt but was uncomfortable at how he was hurting people, and his decision to leave Schlatt was so good!!! Him wanting power and forming The Butcher Army, the Mexican L'Manberg conflict, c!Karlnapity, his descent into who he is now, bro he's so well written and good. You can tell he's not entirely evil and you can see his "old self" coming out at times. I think about his first friends on the server being c!Tommy c!Tubbo and c!Jack a lot. Come back

What I Dont think about c!Quackity: I dont think his torture of c!Dream is deserved or justified or a "girlboss" moment it just makes me sad at what he's become :( the depiction of Las Nevadas as "found family" is uncomfortable to me also

What I Do think about c!Niki: Please please please please go watch her POV of Season 1 Please I made an essay and a list she's one of my faves. I dont talk about her as often bc we just dont have much c!Niki lore anymore but her season 1 lore was up there as some of my favourites. Genuinely The Pet War with her, Fundy and Sapnap is one of my favourite things I think about it SO often. Her relationship with the rest of the L'Manbergians is so underrated, she was friends with c!Fundy, she was friends with c!Tubbo (they hung out before the festival too :[ ) she was friends with c!Tommy,, in fact the two would constantly help eachother especially if a pet was killed. We all know Rocket Duo, and of course her relationship with c!Wilbur. She's the one who built the L'Manberg flag!! The one who stood up to c!Schlatt! The one who wanted to form a rebellion and blow up the White House!! Those are all girlboss moments!!

What I Dont think about c!Niki: I dont think her burning the L'Mantree, trying to kill c!Tommy or being upset with c!Wilbur are "girl power" or "go queen go!" moments. She was so clearly in pain and spiralling and it's weird to celebrate that imo? I also find it kinda weird that she used and nearly framed c!Tubbo for the death of his best friend and it was never mentioned again but oh well. After all he's just c!Tubbo :')

What I Do think about c!Jack: Spare closure?? His arc has been going on for like 6 or 7 months now man can he please get closure or therapy?? Anyway his moments during season 1 were also very underrated! Him joining the server and immediately being bribed into destroying his best friends items and having to make a choice between the Dream SMP and L'Manberg, his chat with c!Eret about what to do, this was my First impression of him and it was a good one!!! Its nearly been a year :,] The moments I think fit his character best pre-spiral are lost to time, he had a speech before officially joining L'Manberg about how much c!Tommy trusting him meant, he had a speech at one point about how important the discs were because they were important to c!Tommy and as a member of L'Manberg he feels he Has to fight for them. I made an essay on his and c!Tommy's relationship. Reminder he was 17 when he joined the server and L'Manberg

What I Dont think about c!Jack: I dont think he's justified in killing c!Tommy, because I just dont think murder can be "justified", similar to the Butcher Army conflict. He's in pain and lashing out and I'd find it hard cheering him on in doing something I know will cause him a lot of pain if he goes through with it. I think He has an understandable reason, possibly THE most understandable reason for wanting to murder a guy but it's just kinda sad to watch as it can Only end badly for both him and c!Tommy. We've seen how he reacted to his death already and we know at this point he just wants his friend back and not actually dead :( dude needs help and closure man please

What I Do think about c!Sapnap: That's my boy!! My underrated boy!! He's so heavily slandered on the c!Dream enthusiast side of Twitter n Tumblr and it's sad bc he quite literally did Nothing to deserve it. Out of all the things to criticise him for - kickstarting like 6 wars, murdering people's pets, etc people choose to shit on him for turning away from his toxic friend who had repeatedly been hurting him and the people he cared about? He never "abandoned a spiralling friend" he cut off (And still cares about!!! He still cares about and misses him!!!) someone who was beyond helping, it was Never his responsibility or obligation to stick by c!Dream's side if it hurt him to do so. c!Dream betrayed his trust so many times and he was Still willing to fight beside him man. He was unsure about whether to go against him on Doomsday. He cares so much he makes me so sad. :( Not to mention c!Dream blowing up the Community House, a place he cared about? How many times does c!Dream get to hurt him before its valid for him to turn away from him? Get behind me

What I Dont think about c!Sapnap: I have nothing to put here. Leave him alone

What I Do think about c!Eret: They were my second fav character during OG L'Manberg. :] I watched all their streams every day and their antics with the L'Manbergians were SO fun along with them eventually regretting what they did. So many of their old moments are lost to time now and it sucks. I really enjoyed early c!Eret, before the Redemption Arc and the Pogtopia they were a bastard and unapologetic about it and it was SO fun. Constantly bragging about winning the war and betraying them. Again, here is a link to the same essay I have posted Twice now just in case you forgot I wrote it

What I Dont think about c!Eret: I dont think the Final Control Room was justified. Their motives for doing it were understandable and I dont think they knew what a canon death was but like,, 4 people died man. This isnt saying they're a horrible person, they havent made up for it or they're the main person at fault for it but imagine the sheer amount of regret they feel after learning what a canon death was, the realization of what Actually happened in that room.... (sorry for the angst)

What I Do think about c!Sam: BRO he's so depressing. As someone who watched him from season 1, watching him spiral into what he is now is one of The most saddest things to come out of the SMP. Bro he was so,,, his pumpkin pies,,, he nearly cried when c!Tommy got exiled,,, he,,,,,, :( if you want an example of "good guy turned corrupt and bad" you got your answer right here!! He really was just a guy. He thought he could take the job of Warden and he thought he could protect c!Tommy and he failed man he failed and it fucked him up. So very well written and sympathetic and sad

What I Dont think about c!Sam: again I dont think the prison treatment is justified or deserved. Him murdering, torturing and cutting off c!Ponk's arm is unforgivable imo I'm still not over that

Other characters:

c!George, c!Ponk, c!Bad, c!Ant, c!Punz, c!Purpled, c!Hannah, c!Puffy, c!Skeppy, c!Schlatt, c!Karl, c!Slime, c!Foolish, c!Ranboo - these are characters I just watch for fun rather than to analyse, I dont have a solid grasp on their character and I dont usually see discourse or analysis posts on them that sway my opinions. Enjoy their lore no clue where to start analysing it (influence my opinion maybe? 👀)