#gonna need some people that have read this book to come interact bc i am obsesssed

[panevanbuckley]

get yourself someone that will literally put themselves between you and a wall of fire 🥺

[i-can-read-to-him]

The Wesper Fic Club's Author Spotlight is a post series that aims to feature two to three fic authors a month, randomly selected from a pool of names put forth on our server. The authors are then asked to answer three interview questions, select up to five of their fics for us to feature, and finally, recommend three fics by others in the fandom.

(Note: Our spotlighted fics are not limited to Wesper, though they tend to be a central pairing in most of our authors' featured works.)

This week, we are putting a spotlight on Lou's writing!

Socials: @waterloou (Tumblr) | hugharekillianmelou (AO3)

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Part One: Author Interview

Q: What do you consider your strengths as a writer?

A: I’m using these quotes from sparrow bc I’m gonna be honest and say I really don’t know how to perceive myself: “Off the top of my head, I would say you are very good at lyrical prose, imagery and atmosphere, thoughtful characterization, anddd I don’t know how to articulate this as cleanly, but like… the way you handle dark subject matter (like MCD) in a way that makes it feel... like something that should be dangerous to handle, but it is safely contained. Like one of those poisonous Victorian era books with the striking green colour [Scheele's Green] displayed in a glass case. Also, you maintain canon characterization even in AU settings, which is honestly a skill not everyone has. I love AUs, but some people lose sight of canon so quick and it ends up feeling very OOC.”

Q: What’s your favourite fic you’ve written for this fandom?

A: It’s called Lay Me Gently in the Cold Dark Earth and it’s from Wylan’s perspective when he’s 6 feet under and how he interacts with the earth around him and Jesper. Idk how else to describe it. 

Q: What advice do you have for those facing writer’s block?

A: My only suggestion is just to switch to notebooks and use prompt lists. I struggle with writers block far too much it’s hard for me to sit down and write something most of the time. 

Q: When did you first start writing? What keeps you going today?

A: Jonas Brothers YouTube imagines. I had a little flip notebook on a family vacation and lots of time to kill so I wrote my own imagines/fanfiction. It was also like not a self insert but like I’d insert someone age appropriate and live vicariously through them.  I have so so many ideas and only I can execute them correctly so obviously I need to keep writing. It’s a tough job but if I want the content I need to make it 

Q: Who is your favourite character? What do you love about them?

A: JESPER LLEWELLYN FAHEY!!!! He’s just so complex and loving and I also relate to him most bc of his sadness and feelings of inadequacy and using humor as a cover up. I saw the trailers before I read the books and then I read the books before I watched the show but that one clip of Jesper in those first trailers had me hooked ever since.

Q: If you could travel anywhere in the Grishaverse, where would you go?

A: Shu Han because it looks like I’d have the most fun there. 

Q: If you could be friends with any character in the Grishaverse, who would it be?

A: Tolya!!! He’s got a lovely disposition and it’s nice to have someone with similar interests.

Q: Have you had a chance to interact with the SAB cast? Tell us about your experience(s).

A: The only interaction I’ve had is Jack liking my drawing of him. Honestly tho even tho this cast is amazing I think I’d be fine never meeting any of them. There’s already all my questions answered and I’d probably make a fool out of myself if I met them. 

Q: What are some recurring themes you’ve noticed in your writing?

A: I am using more sparrow quotes bc my only answer was “Hozier coded” and idk if that answer was enough: “I think grief/death/mourning is definitely something that comes up a lot. Related to that... I want to say 'transcendent love,' if that makes sense. Definitely also strong platonic bonds, so friendship... Oh, balance and opposites (how the latter interacts and achieves balance)... sometimes with concepts like life and death, but also with people like Wylan and Jesper.” Ty sparrow ur iconic 

Q: What kind of music do you like to listen to while writing?

A: Hozier, lots of like folk or floaty type of genres. 

Q: Are there any songs you strongly associate with a favourite character or ship?

A: "half return" by Adrianne Lenker could be associated with either Wylan or Jesper and their childhoods. I do think it’s odd that this is the first fandom where music is not the driving force of my writing or associating with characters.

Q: What is one of your favourite scenes from the source material (book or show)?

A: Jesper’s introduction in the show is a classic and he’s just SO COOL.

Q: If could change anything about (book or show) canon, what would it be?

A: 😭 besides it being cancelled? Matthias’ fate. 

Q: What are some headcanons you have that you consider your personal canon?

A: MODERN AU: Jesper is an engineering major. Wylan is a chemistry major (hates it), switches to biology and music double major. Jesper makes and sells jewelry on the side.  REGULAR SETTING: Jesper lives for a long long time and Wylan reincarnates many times and they are together until they both pass. 

Q: Tell us about something in your fics that you’re proud of and wish would get more notice.

A: I do like the poetic flow they have from time to time! It’s nice reading something I wrote and being invested. This is a cop out answer but I think they’ve been appreciated an adequate amount! Everyone is so sweet reading and commenting!

Q: What’s something you haven’t written yet, but want to write in the future?

A: OH BOY I have a list: - This is written but mouse wylan  - sci fi au  - Hozier song wesper series  - human meat business crows serial killers  - Hellraiser au wesper  - whump wesper jesper shot  - Halloween series  - vampire crows au 

Q: What’s something you wish you could write, but don’t think you ever will?

A: Most of the ideas listed above. My brain just doesn’t want to write the ideas. Also Smut. Did it once idk if I could write it again

Q: How do you feel about your fics being translated into other languages?

A: Go ham. As long as it’s credited to me idc

Q: Apart from sight, what is your favourite of the senses to describe when writing?

A: Touch I love touch descriptions because you can get an insight into how the characters experience the world.

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Part Two: Selected Works

Two corpses we were, two corpses I saw

Not Rated | 275 words | Wesper Hozier coded, Decay, Burial, Happy Ending

Short diddy about knight/pianist wesper

Golden slumbers

Teen | 460 words | Wesper Grief/Mourning, Pre-Grief, Aging, Jesper-centric

Jesper would always be a mourner

Lay me gently in the cold dark earth

Not Rated | 388 words | Wesper Hozier coded, POV Wylan, Character Death, Happy Ending

Wylan needs Jesper, even after life

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Part Three: Author's Recs

without pity by demigodbeautiies

Mature | 21.9K | Wesper Non-Con Drug Use, Whump, Mild Gore, Angst with a Happy Ending

It’s 10 am on a Wednesday when Wylan Van Eck’s life crumbles around him. Which feels ridiculous, honestly, but that’s life, isn’t it?  - Jesper gets drugged with jurda parem. Wylan tries his best to deal with it. That, apparently, is hard to do when his life is falling apart.

A Lack Of Air Supply by Milkfrog

Mature | 106.7K | Wesper Past Child Abuse, Agoraphobia, Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Wylan Van Eck

"Wylan Van Eck, until the age of 8, felt like royalty. Like the world was made for him, and him alone. He could do anything he wanted to. He could dream of a future so expansive he'd have to live multiple lives in order to fit everything he wanted to do. But Wylan Van Eck, at 22 years old, cannot even leave his apartment." (aka. Wylan has agoraphobia n Jesper moves into the apartment next to him <3)

Before Sunrise by @aphroditestummyrolls

General | 2.1K | Colm & Jesper, Colm/Aditi Good Parent Colm Fahey, Colm-centric, Baby Jesper

He’d like to say he expected it— it’s a well known fact that babies cry. The first months of parenthood are a tiring business. That was what everyone said, and the ones who didn’t say it were certainly thinking it. But, not all babies cried like Jesper Fahey cried. Just like every night for the past 2 and a half months, the second Addy stopped her gentle rocking and pacing, it started up again— first, as disgruntled fussing, huffing and puffing like a grumpy little bear cub. His downy fluff of curls pressed against his mama’s palm as he scrubbed his nose into her collarbone, tiny fist clenching in her night dress. Colm sighed. OR Jesper is a colicky little baby, and Colm just wants his poor wife to be able to sleep.

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Please support our authors by commenting and leaving kudos on any stories of theirs you read and enjoy! Don't forget to also reblog this post and check back soon for our next author spotlight to come.

Interested in joining our server and getting to know our community? Feel free to request an invite via the @i-can-read-to-him ask box.

[a-very-fond-farewell]

WIP tag game!!!

Lamb Loose 👁️👁️ (u know me very well)

(hehe I do know you dear 👀)

so, I will try to use my (nonexistent) pitching abilities to both: 1) introduce new people to what I’m currently working on; and 2) give you (yes you Fifi) some more intel to munch on while you wait for the next update. let’s see how it goes.

1) how it began:

it was a dark and stormy night when I finished the drama Evilive, in mid-November of last year, and I couldn’t sleep. for days I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters and I decided to put my Word of Honor big fic on hold to give this new fandom a chance. the plan was to finish everything around the 80k words mark but.. oh boi. I knew myself. I knew I wasn’t gonna cut it, verbose as I am, so I decided to be diligent about it: I took 1 month to plan this fic at the best of my abilities before I started typing like a maniac on my laptop.

at the end of the month I posted the first chapter and since then I woke up at 5am (almost) every single day to chip away at this project. long story short: it changed my life. not in a big way, it didn’t magically get me a super fancy job or a stable paycheck. none of that. but it made my life significantly better.

because you have to know that, before I decided waking up at 5am was a good idea, I was so used to be dreading the new day that it was messing with my brain. I didn’t want to go to sleep because “then another day would have started” without me enjoying myself even a little bit. but the difference between going to sleep at 3am (to wake at 7) and going to sleep at 11pm (to wake at 5) made me look forward to the new day time and time again. that way, if I manage to fall asleep on the right time every day, I get to start a new morning doing what I love most: writing.

this came at a cost, however, bc apparently waking super early is bad for my blood pressure (?? rude and biphobic of my body to do me so dirty, if you ask me >:/ like.. hello??) and I get (almost daily now) a sensible energy drop around lunchtime but it’s worth it in my book. this fic turned me into an optimist and I’ve always been a realist at best.

cons of this project: the fandom is tiny. so tiny infact that there are not many “work in progress” fics besides mine on ao3 ;—; I remember this being the case for Beyond Evil too, even if I was just a casual reader at the time, back when it first aired: we were starving for new content and I recall translating Korean fanfics into English just to have someto dig my teeth into xD

moreover, I tend not to read for the fandom I’m writing for, because I’m a sponge and (like my friend Amethystina said once) “I don’t want to accidentally steal someone else’s idea” just because I have shit memory (I’ll admit I caved at the beginning of 2024 bc I was in a bad place mentally and I read a couple of one-shots on Evilive, it’s ok, ik. I forgot the majority of them anyway, I just know they were lovely and their authors very smart indeed). so it’s a very lonely process! I churn up content, I don’t consume content, I wait for comments, I joyfully reply to comments and then, if I want more human interaction I have to (*checks*) come up with more content?? ahah. Ik it doesn’t work like that, and that I have to put effort in talking with other people in the fandom for it to become larger.. but this is why I do these tag games :D to engage with other lovely people in fun activities like these! good thing this fic keeps me going, bc I would be lost without it.

the general plot idea comes from a need I wanted to see fulfilled: I wanted to read a story about a group of women going apeshit crazy on the world. no repercussions, absolute power, no remorse. women from different levels of society, different ethnicities, different nationalities, different sexualities just.. being allowed to do whatever they wanted. I wanted to explore the pros and cons of such circumstances and yet I didn’t want it to be merely focused on that alone. I also wanted to point out how every person is capable of evil and that there still needs to be a moment in our life when we choose to be better instead.

one thing that made me side-eye Evilive specifically was.. well, the lack of women. there are 3 adult women in the whole drama taking some sort of role inside the story and all of them felt rich with the implication of a personality underneath, but no actual character to be seen. I love all 3 of them, from the “wife”, to the “mother”, to the “femme fatale” as they are, yet they still are flat compared to the other people in the show, even the more stereotypically evil or corrupt among them. I needed more, so more I made.

in addition to this, I really wanted to write from the point of view of a nasty, selfish man who has been corrupted by power long enough to have forgotten how to be human again. someone who believes they can fix it all by taking revenge on the person who turned them into a monster.. not realizing they had the potential to become a monster all along and never noticed.

Lamb Loose may be a “fix-it” of sorts based on the happenings (and the finale) of Evilive, but I also think it can be some sort of Atonement Arc rather than a Redemption Arc all in all: just because you become self-aware of the evil deeds you’ve put in motion and want to be better now.. doesn’t mean you can redeem yourself for the sorrow you caused. and, sometimes I also like characters who don’t change in their (evil/selfish) ways but somehow still learn to broaden their perspective after meeting new people. restoring one’s trust in humanity is hard, but maybe it can start by looking into our own selves and look for humanity within us first and foremost.

Han Dong Soo as a character seemed the best option for me, even if it is challenging to write from his POV at times. some of the things he thinks and does are truly horrendous to me personally, but it’s a necessary step towards understanding someone as bad as him in my opinion. not to justify his actions, but to learn how to recognize them in other people instead.

there’s also horny thoughts, not gonna lie, but those feel more like an extension of all that Han Dong Soo as a person has repressed along the years. so, in a way, the sexual tension is just another character in the script, unnamed and all-encompassing, but never at the center itself. since Han Dong Soo is also an unreliable narrator, I can play with him and make the reader question everything he is going through at the same time, which is fun to me :)

2) a treat for Fifi bc she was patient and read to this point eheh:

dear, ch16 may not be full of plot-relevant quests but there’s a lot of yearning involved 👀 and I know it’s tough to wait for something more juicy to happen 😥😔 but I’m finally seeing the end of the big draft (working on ch31 now, aiming to finish the whole thing at ch40 ending a ch37 was too optimistic of me apparently ahah) and I promise you it will be absolutely worth it.

sometimes I feel very dejected about this project, bc it’s taking forever and I absolutely want to finish it before the end of the year :(

but your constant support and care are one of the reasons I keep going 💪😤💘 your art is extraordinary in itself, but your enthusiasm for this fic truly has made me appreciate living in the moment and enjoy the process more and more. so thank you dear for always cheering me on and for indulging me with your lovely comments and messages :)

I’ll see you very soon :D (I’ll reply to your comments and DMs as soon as possible! but I wanted to give you a little something today)

- Niki out :*

[sowthetide]

GREETINGS AND SALUTATIONS this is teainabowl AND IM BACK WITH MORE NONSENSE AS PROMISED. family crisis almost averted?? i havent slept in 2 days but lmao who cares. (you cant see me rn but i want you to know that im doing a happy little jump skip dance as im writing this)

BECAUSE!!!!! ok. lets talk about genderbending in fandom. i think what usually gives me the ick in those fics is they do nature vs nurture wrong??? like a lot of the time they’ll just change the NATURE of the character and use the different gender as an excuse which. idk idk it runs me the wrong way. BUT QUENN!!! shes very much still theon?? just, nurtured differently. am i making sense? i have been traumatized by some bio-essentialism bs in the past when trying to look into similar fics bc i love gender fuckery PEOPLE JUST DONT GET IT LIKE I DO (or you, appearantly hkdhhfjh i love your story it means so much to me) 

and asoiaf is SUCH a gendered world??? like it has so much untapped potential where even a single characters gender can have SO MUCH IMPACT (can you imagine if joffrey had been a girl?? or if sansa had been a boy???) 

but what originally started my spiel was the realization that jon wouldnt have gone to the nights watch if he was a girl. and. what then?? slightly horrifying tbh, and makes me wonder if one of the other character had been male (read; they had been given more agency and autonomy in their lives) what would have changed???

but back to jon, bc then i immediately thought, ok, lets backtrack a bit, who would jon even BE. bc a lot of jons character revolves around his (lack of) a relationship with catelyn, his siblings mother. but she would have a harder time avoiding him if he was a she, right?? am i making sense???? a girl isnt seen like as much of a threat to her children i thinks?? idk i love cat and jon so much a love picking apart their relationship bc bc bc ARGHhhgg yk? also i like to think of ned being haunted by lyannas carbon copy who happens to be great with swords (would he be permitted to practice swordplay??) idk

ANYWAYS no we come to the part where i tie it up to what you mentioned in your answer. bc as much as JON being a girl might change his relationship with cat, it would be much more fucked up if it were robb, me thinks. (i too am a bit guilty of using robb as an accessory to cat) but but but. are. are you seeing my vision. catelyn stark with her three daughters when ned leaves for the greyjoy rebellion. catelyn whos convinced that the reason her husband wont send his bastard away is because she cant give him any sons. in the books she calls bran her special little boy and. idk the double meaning this would give it. and bran!!! being the heir!!! hiw would that change things??? would the reception to his accident be different?? and speaking of, what about king robert and his obsession with joining his family with neds? i havent talked about how robb (robyn?) would be different in this au but i cant think hed be as pleased as sansa was? his first shown interaction with joff is him trying to curb stomp the fucker lmao. i dont think he would be likely to have a different opinion bc of gender changes. in the books hes often rash and impulsive and prideful, and id want him to keep those traits, but peoples reactions to them would be different?? and so he would shape them in different ways??? am i making sense i feel like im just rambling. this is getting way too long and wayy to incoherent i need to stop. ok bye for now ill be back (threatening)

GO TO BED!!!! GET SOME SLEEP!!!!! But yay! to family crisis averted? Maybe?

Okay. I'm gonna indulge in some haterism for a second cause I've actually poked around the ASOIAF genderbending tag quite a bit. Unfortunately, a lot of those fics? Lame as hell. There's a preponderance of genderbent Jon Snow, which I think is totally cool! Very interesting genderbend to explore because of how much it changes the trajectory of his story. But then the character isn't really written as Jon at all? Maybe I'm just picky about characterization, but oftentimes fem!Jon just becomes this cookie-cutter "strong/feisty" female protag and it's like...

Sorry. I'm being mean. Obviously, there is no singular "correct" take on a given character, as we're all influenced by our own experiences and perceptions. My take on Theon isn't the exact same as yours, or goddcoward's, or Ashen's, or GRRM's. A unique Theon exists in all our heads, each one a bit different from the others.

But! Genderbends are so much more fun when you can see the underpinnings of the character you know, and there are moments where those aspects really shine through. And it's like OH!!! (pointing vigorously) THERE THEY ARE!!!! Otherwise, why not just write an OC, or adopt a minor character with very little canon characterization? (Admittedly, this can become a problem when you start collecting minor characters like Pokemon cards. I am my own evidence of this phenomenon.) If it ain't Jon, then why have it be Jon at all, y'know?

ngl female Joffrey has been rattling around in my brain lately... 👀fem!Joffrey would definitely be betrothed to Robb, which would be a complete and utter shitshow (appreciative/affectionate). Joffrey as a true mini-Cersei has such insane juice to it as a story idea, especially considering that Joffrey never liked Cersei all that much lol... the mother-daughter dynamic would be BONKERS.

Back to Jon though:

First, you're definitely right that fem!Jon wouldn't be seen as much of a threat to her siblings as Jon was. She would probably be married off pretty quickly once she came of age, as high as possible for a woman who was bastard-born. I don't see Catelyn liking her per se, but Catelyn wouldn't have the same misgivings about her as she did about Jon. Since fem!Jon probably wouldn't become the vessel of the wildling/Others plot, she might have an interesting role to play if she went south... to marry Robert's royal bastard Edric Storm, perhaps? I could see Robert "having his Lyanna" by marrying fem!Jon and Edric. But then shit hits the fan with the usual plot of AGOT, and maybe fem!Jon gets taken hostage by the Lannisters in King's Landing? Or gets caught in Renly's shit since she was with Edric at Storm's End? I am NAWTTTT talking myself into writing another fic. Go to hell. I need to finish Sow the Tide first.

fem!Robb (Robyn between myself and goddcoward) is even crazier. Catelyn would NOT be fucking happy to have Ned's spitting image hanging around Winterfell, while all her sons are under 10 and have the Tully look. I could see Catelyn successfully arguing that Jon should be fostered out, perhaps in the Vale (as a favor on the part of Jon Arryn)? Like, oh, Ned, you and Robert became such good friends fostering together in the Vale... that way, Jon is waythefuckoverthere and can't make any allies in the north.

I'd love for Robyn to have some of the same anger and pride, and she'd probably be similar to Catelyn in that she was raised as the heir for a good bit of time before the "real" heir came along years later (Bran+Edmure). Also, Catelyn would absolutely NOT trust Theon around Robyn. Not At All. Kinda fair though? Robyn would also be older than Sansa was in AGOT, so I think she'd be at least a little bit more worldly and pick up on Joffrey's... Joffreyness. Robb/Robyn are still dutiful characters, but I think there would be a lot more immediate friction between her and her betrothed. Double genderbend Throbb is my true love, however (Quobyn my beloved).

I've gotta finally go work on chapter 40 now, so I can't answer everything, but do come back... I'll be here... revolving all of these genderbends around in my head...

[jamietarttownsmyheart]

please i need colinjamie headcanons or prompts i’ve been deprived of them for too long

i am. so so sorry for how late this is. and how uncoordinated the rest of this will probably end up being, but, just, ima unleash random colinjamie thoughts on u and hope it makes sense lol and that you enjoy them, but since idk how long it'll end up ima put everything under the cut

random hcs

colinjamie have definitely watched the owl house at some point. maybe this is fresh in my head since the final episode just came out a few days ago, but i definitely see colinjamie watching the owl house together. two options:

maybe colin was chilling with his niece (i want colin to have a niece or a nephew so bad, he gives uncle vibes and also i want jamie to interact with the kid at some point too) and she was watching it and he got invested. and then jamie got invested via colin. OR. henry was visiting the stadium on spring break and mentioned the owl house to jamie, who was curious, watched and episode, and then got invested. flash forward to colinjamie fwb era and colin dropping by one day and finding jamie losing his shit over the episode hollow mind. jamie needs to lose his shit with someone and colin is the poor soul who came over for a hook up but ended up having to watch two seasons of a disney cartoon.

that being said, i also think that jamie, if he ever watched avatar the last airbender as a kid, only ever watched until mid season 2. life got more complicated and he was more concerned with playing well than "lazy" things like cartoons. he never got to zuko standing up to his dad. he'll get there someday, it's gonna be great

colinjamie have a unique sense of style that they somehow make work, it drives so many people mad

colin had a crush on lightning mcqueen when he was a kid. (11 years old? idk how old colin is, so im putting him at 28 in s3, making him 11 when cars came out) he thinks about this childhood crush and figures its pretty telling that he's got a speedy car and a cocky but talented boyfriend

jamie is dyslexic, and when he realized audiobooks existed, he was thrilled. still, his favorite way to experience books is to have colin read them out to him.

that being said, his favorite way to enjoy drake is to have colin rapping along

colin takes jamie along to theater performances, musicals, and the ballet.

jamie found the "whose the worm now" moment so hot. he can't let colin find out

random prompt

prompt #1

so this might be because i just re read the seven husbands of evelyn hugo, daisy jones and the six, and carrie soto is back, as well as binging all of the daisy jones and the six show, and have been listening to taylor swift all month, but i am craving something specific?

like, i am so here for an au with actor or pop star jamie (have y'all heard phil dunster's voice?) and richmond player colin hughes. its giving posh spice and david beckham.

just the different flavors of it all. if we have it in modern times, as in, the time ted lasso is set in the show, we can do so much. (we can also have a colin who is not actually a fan of his bf's music. it's not that he hates it, it's just not his style. jamie knows this, and writes songs about colin anyways. colin loves listening to these songs regardless of them not being his style.)

then of course there is the other option--i am so bad at timelines and math, so dont come for me when this is all wrong, but i, on my 7 husband of eh kick, was like omg?? give me hollywood star jamie tartt and football player colin hughes who are "roommates."

prompt #2

im a sucker for vampires and vampire hunters. i think it can go either way for them in terms of whose the vampire and whose the vampire hunters.

prompt #3

a canon divergence au where colinjamie were dating s1. jamie and keeley were dating prior to his loan to richmond and stayed friends after their breakup. he really did love her, but still hadn't learned to be accountable yet. keeley still comes around to the club bc she's jamie's best friend and wants to test the playing field with roy.

[georgieluz]

getting a few things off my chest about Gen Kill. sorry im in your inbox. but i am. you can publish this ask or keep it in the DM, both are fine.

First, actually the hardest series to watch in all three shows for me. I'm ok with the level of violence in the other two (as well as other trigger-warning content) but the level of civilian casualty in GK just really fuck with me. I find it very hard to want to rewatch GK, even tho I do like the show a lot.

Second, Both TP and GK, for me, are the anti-thesis and deconstruction of BoB. In two different ways. TP talks about another theater and how fucked up these stories are and basically pushes the audience away. Don't look, it's not a story to share (vs BoB that invite you to take part and be with the characters). GK is the modern day glory-seeking meaningless chaotic and toxic reality of the US military (vs BoB's fighting for the right thing, our officers are smart and capable). And they're both meta answers to BoB's more propagandistic story.

Third, ok, let's get silly lol. I have to say whatever is going with Brad and Nate is fucking homo. "Not to be homo sir, but I can kiss you right now" um what. And the eyes contact. Bro. Bruh. That being said... I ship BradRay xD Their bantering old-married-couple dynamic is more my speed, than BradNate victorian yearning dynamic xD

hello, no worries, it's all good, my inbox is always open for thoughts, insights and opinions! this got pretty long so i'm gonna put it under a read more so it doesn't annoy anyone

i published this bc i ended up adding a lot of my own thoughts about it and didn't want it to seem like i was directing them specifically at you or your opinion bc i do go off track a lot.

it was the hardest series for me to get into as well at first, for a similar few reasons. first of all, it felt like i was being dropped into a locked room with men who would hate my guts, and not just have bullied me in high school, but detest my existence too. so i think that atmosphere of over the top toxic masculinity instantly made me uneasy, but that's the point. that's the whole reason the articles, book and show exists really. to show how that mindset and atmosphere laid the groundwork for what happened. i think if they were to have made a show where we as viewers are allowed to laugh along with their jokes, enjoy their interactions, but not be forced to confront the realities of both the invasion and the people taking part, then it would defeat the message and themes that the show is trying to present to us. i think the civilian death, and basically the way the military treated civilians in general, has to make you uncomfortable, otherwise it's not doing its job as a text or piece of media. at least from the writer's perspective and what they wanted to say about what happened there, bc ultimately, everything is a construct with biases and a goal. so i 100% agree with you in that it's easily the most uncomfortable show to casually watch in that regard, but if it didn't show all of that, it wouldn't be a show with a purpose, imo.

i would personally put the pacific a bit closer to band of brothers than gen kill when it comes to discussing its propagandism actually. bc whilst it has the caveat of "this is the reality and brutality of war, it's horrific, you don't want any part of it" and "it's not all camaraderie and brothers being bonded for life", the show still has its 'heroes' who are depicted as sacrificing either their lives or their mental wellbeing for 'the cause', and it still carries the message of "yes this is terrible but it's needed". two things that propagandist themes can thrive amongst. just reading some of the more bootlickery youtube comments about the pacific shows how some of those people cling onto the brutality and harshness of that theatre of war, and the show itself, as a display of heroic bravery and badge of honour. i've seen a few commenters on reaction videos and stuff and they're basically frothing at the mouth about how it's so much more brutal than band of brothers, and they aren't saying it from a critical perspective either, which is what the show may have intended, but more from a "omg brutal war porn nice!!" kinda way. i know i'm rambling off point from what you said, but it's just some of my thoughts. i'm probably gonna ramble a bit in the rest of the post so don't see it as me disagreeing with your points bc i think we have pretty much the same opinion in most ways, but i guess your ask has prompted a lot of thinking from me so i'm just getting some of my thoughts out about the shows.

i think for me, i would say the pacific is a stepping stone between band of brothers and generation kill. i do agree in that it is pushing the viewer away from the idea of war as noble, in favour of saying "no! it's dirty and cruel and harsh and you won't survive it, even if you're alive when it's over" but it's also presented in the same way as band of brothers in regards to how we're supposed to view these men. there's many competent and intelligent guys making decisions and the humanity of those men is always on display. they're still shown as heroes, even if they're broken ones. so i think i can't fully align it with gen kill as a direct opposition to the messaging in band of brothers, but more one that says "ok, we've seen it from that perspective, now let's open up the casket up a little more and try to understand it looking through another lens".

whereas for me, gen kill sets explosives in the casket and blows that shit to pieces. there are no noble heroes competently achieving great feats, or sacrificing their lives for 'the greater good'. the people who do die, or get wounded, are seen as wasted casualties and missions gone wrong, fuck ups that we see in the corner of exterior shots to remind us that it's not all singing avril lavigne in a humvee, that there are consequences, even for the invaders. we see the destruction they inflict on civilians constantly, but the marines that get wounded/die are essentially proof of the incompetencies and fuck ups that even the most militaristic audience has to admit to.

the line of morality is non-existent, apart from a few people that we meet, but they have no power whatsoever. they can't actually do anything even if they disagree with what's happening. they stand by and they watch. we get nate who hates it, very clearly, but his whole thing is that he literally can't do anything. he has no actual power or impact on anything there. i saw a meme on here a few days ago where it was like "i'm competent at my job but i'm starting to think i'm just decorative" and it's funny and just a silly meme but it's also kind of the truth. we see him make a few decisions that go over the head of the initial orders, etc, but in the big picture, they have so little effect that it's a drop in the ocean comparatively. so the little competency we do have is ineffective. and even the more authoritative roles within the narrative that we get to see, like ferrando, are shown as not just making bad decisions, but actually not having much control over matters themselves. they're all floundering from top to bottom. there's no basilone or winters or ack ack there to make us sigh with relief as viewers bc finally, someone will make things right, make the right choice, do the right thing. instead we have these very complex people who have a lot of messed up flaws and shit within them, but some realistic relatabilities too. and sure, a good few of them want to do better and will call out certain shit they see in different ways (doc bryan, nate, espera, brad) but ultimately, they're forced to not just watch and let it happen, but a lot of the time, take part and be culpable for those actions too.. and it's not depicted as a noble sacrifice of their morality, it positions them as helpless and incapable. so the viewer doesn't get their usual hbo war heroes, which to me, feels like a direct answer to both band of brothers and the pacific in that kind of way.

i feel like walt's character shows us that (on a surface level basis but still). he's presented to us as the more appealing contrast to trombley. they're both young and in brad's team, two sides of a coin you could say bc we're shown immediately that trombley is the problem child and walt is the pretty golden boy that spends his scenes telling brad to get some rest or trying to fix the dodgy equipment they've got, or essentially is just trying to be helpful. but they both fuck up bad and kill civilians as an individual. we don't get to keep our clean innocent pretty boy. he fucks up. bad. his hands aren't clean. none of theirs are. not nate's, not even doc bryan's. he says that himself. walt clearly feels terrible afterward and that's the difference between him and trombley (though i will say i do think trombley is much more complex than we see on the surface), but walt doesn't get to escape the blood on his hands. even the most seemingly "innocent" characters never get to remain that in this show. there are no heroes.

and then the second point i mentioned above about the message of "yes was is terrible but needed sometimes" is the other thing that gen kill throws away and abandons. nothing, not a single thing, is depicted as needing to happen. yeah, they're told it's needed and honestly, a lot of those marines were brainwashed into believing it, but the whole point is that it wasn't. it was a colossal fuck up in every way and the show holds up a massive flashing neon sign showing us exactly how, but from the ground.

so absolutely fully agree with you that this show is positioned as a meta deconstruction to band of brothers themes, and even the pacific, especially when the shows are presented as a package deal, as hbo war so often is. it's all a lot more nuanced than what i've said bc i've just been rambling AGAIN, but i think there's a lot of dialogue going on between the three shows when you analyse them from further away that is really interesting to discuss.

so yup, definitely agree with what you said and thank you for dropping by my inbox to talk about this kinda stuff with me! i'm sorry if i went into too much detail or overtook this ask with my own opinions or anything but yeah. i think we all know by now that i tend to ramble when asked about anything!

NOW ONTO THE FUN PART!

it genuinely feels like bradnate have taken up residence in a very large part of my brain. i had heard a lot of people mentioning bradray on here before i watched, so i was expecting that to be the main 'ship' of the show, and kinda thought i'd probably end up getting onboard with that, but i actually only got platonic besties vibes from them. i'm always down for as much gay as possible, so i support it, but i just don't really see anything outside of platonic love between them? i do really enjoy their relationship and interactions though, and some of their scenes are my absolute favourites.

but i'm ALL about the victorian repression and yearning, so ofc bradnate is where it's at for me. as a gay man who repressed all his emotions growing up it just calls to me like a siren lmao. i think that's why i'm like a feral little gremlin about nate actually

[tothestarsinvelaris]

(please no spoilers if interacting w/ this post. i have somehow avoided all TOG spoilers and know nothing more than the lil blurb on the back of the book and what i have read so far. thx <3)

{finished chapter 42 in Empire of Storms}

Everyone in this damn series is too fucking hot okay?!

Likkkeeeee I'm sorry, but we have been blessed by the all the gods in all the words in this series. And now the ships are shipping and I am deceased.

Lorcan is gonna make me misbehave. He is so hot I seriously cannot handle it.

When Elide is watching him throw the swords around for the lil crowd of people and she thinks "but what he lacked in charm he made up for with his shirtless, oiled body."

and when a trickle of sweat slid through the crisp spattering of dark hair on his sculpted chest. Elide watched, a bit transfixed, as that bead of sweat wended down the muscled grooves of his stomach. Lower.

and when he said "Having two women and one man offer a spot in their beds tonight will [put you in a good mood]"

also when he says to himself that like a gods-damned dog, he'd picked up her scent among the crowd and followed her back to this tent.

and how he was staring at that ripe, sinful mouth and he'd been too busy contemplating what sounds might come from that full mouth if he slowly, gently, taught her the art of the bedroom.

and then when she finds Lorcan covered in black blood, sitting on the bench behind the driver's seat, legs spread before him. His axe and sword lay discarded beside him, coated in that black blood as well, and Lorcan idly chewed on a long stalk of wheat

excuse me?! he isn't even the MMC and I am ready to climb him like a tree?! ((I need to finish this series asap so I can read some fanfics bc gaddamn))

[rollercoasterwords]

i always find the discourse about wlw rep in the fandom sk interesting. like. i’m not gonna lie and say that it isn’t something i haven’t agreed with and gone “yeahh i do want wlw” “yeah omg why is there an attention on mlm”. it’s frustrating sometimes. esp when i was younger i distinctly remember being freshly new out of the closet (and by that time i was alr reading mlm ff) and then going to look for wlw and being kind of. disappointed. being older now, and interacting with a lot of other ppl, and understanding things more i wholeheartedly agree with ur points abt this. it’s true. it makes sense. but i can see why it’s so hard for ppl to grasp. and i understand why ppl are always always bringing up this discourse. before i had someone point it out to me in that sense like “look ff is different than the main media we consume” i hadn’t rly made that connection, bc to me, it was just media. it was entertainment, it was a silly little story just like so many id read before. and like. obviouslyyy now i see how while it may feel like it’s all the same to me, it’s not and it warrants a different type of behavior and attitude almost. but it can be hard to get to that point, even after someone points it out. and it can hard to let go to that way of thinking even after you know it’s “wrong” (i say this in quotes bc i don’t rly think it’s wrong per so but like. uninformed. or ignorant almost). there is a very fine line between the mainstream media we consume and ff but that line is hidden under layers and layers of ideas and concepts we alr have (and it’s hole only dug deeper with things like tik tok, where you see multiple multiple videos telling you every day that “we should demand more wlw rep” etc and considering it’s an app that doesn’t encourage ppl to think critically at allll) so yeah idk where i was rly going with this, but it’s just always smth i think abt when i see this discrouse.

and like side note, that’s not to say that there isn’t wlw there are so so so many great fics out there, and like you said, if you want it so desperately just simply do it yourself etc etc, but in the context of this, i think ppl cling to the idea of wanting a mega popular everyone’s read it this is the fic™️ fic for wlw abd they want the same kind of discourse and tik tok popularity and attention that mlm fics get yk? that’s why a lot of the times, the need snd incessant screaming for that drowns out the voices alr there.

yeah i mean i understand where it's coming from when people say they wish there was more "wlw rep" in the fandom and i do think that the people who act as if they need to Crusade for more wlw fic are mostly coming from a place of ignorance re: the way fanfic functions as an inherently different form of media from books, movies, etc. and i'm sure that part of it is coming from a place of wanting to feel like u can make some Real Change in the media u consume. however i do think a large part of it is also coming from wanting to virtue signal for brownie points and also knowing that stirring up controversy and acting as if u are Crusading on behalf of a Good Cause will get u more likes and views. and at the end of the day regardless of where it's coming from it is all equally annoying and equally harmful in the way that it seeks to drag fanfiction into some sort of internet profit economy. so! it's like...do i think that many of these people are just misinformed? yes, absolutely. but i will be honest and say that personally i am running out of sympathy for people who are just soooooo sad because they want more wlw fics simply because. well me myself and i when we looked around the marauders fandom and thought "hmm this could use some more lesbians" we simply wrote fanfiction about lesbians. and it's like well yes i understand that me myself and i are an immortal being with godlike power who is better than everyone but these people could still at least TRY to get on my level like c'mon now....this is perhaps one of the only forms of media where u actually have direct control over what "representation" u can find. and complaining that "there's no good wlw fic" is insulting to everyong who writes good wlw fics. not very #feminist methinks!!!

also to ur sidenote--i think this is so true! in my little foray into the tiktok comments on all these discourse videos over the last like week or so i have seen over and over and over again people going "we need an atyd but for the girls!!!" and it's like....why. PAUSE for one second. rewind. think about why u feel that it is necessary for there to be One Big Viral Fic in order for a ship to Officially Have Representation. what does that say about the way you engage with fandom. what does that say about your definition of "representation." what does that say about the metrics u are using to like....assign value to fanfics. because personally to me it signals that u have been so sucked into this weird tiktokification of fanfiction that u only think fic is worth engaging with if it's reached a certain level of virality on tiktok, which is half of what's giving way to this whole "representation" issue in the first place, because the problem isn't that people aren't writing wlw fics, it's that you aren't seeing them because they aren't one of TikTok's Top 5 Most Popular Fanfictions and you refuse to venture outside that corner of the fandom. and the snake eats its own tail once again </3

[carpisuns]

New anon, but I saw the last one and I have some thoughts. Specifically, I have been obsessing over ml for the last month or so, and I’ve only seen three episodes, and they were the three released before crocoduel. And you know what? I wasn’t that into it, it wasn’t bad it just wasn’t half as engaging as fanon and fanworks have been for me.

I’ve also done this with the Magicians, Supernatural, and a couple others. I think the reason that this works, for some people, is because it is a more familiar and in many ways, easier way to discover and become attached to new material and new characters. Fan writers and artists are coming from a place of love for their source material (no matter what issues they may have with it) and that bleeds out into their work. Time is spent developing the characters and their feelings, their relationships, in ways that canon so often can’t or isn’t allowed to, and reading that, it’s very easy to fall in love with new characters very quickly. There’s also common AUs and dynamics that make it much easier to start something new.

And also: comfort characters. So many fans find common ground with characters and further project onto them, particularly in fanfic. And because of that it’s often easier to identify with a fan’s interpretation of a character than it is to identify with the canon’s, since you have these more deeply explored feelings and relationships based on a combination of canon and the personal experiences of the fan writer. Also, with these kinds of fics it’s extremely emotionally affirming since for someone who doesn’t have much of any connection with the source material, it feels like the original, even if you’re reading a large body of work by a lot of different people. And I’m so used to fanfic as a substitute for the emotional work and character development that shows/movies/books don’t have room for or aren’t willing to get into, that approaching a fandom as it’s own original piece of media in a way, feels very comforting.

That’s my perspective on it anyways, and why I do this. I do think it is a good thing to engage with the canon to an extent, even if it’s just watching a few clips (how I found ml) but I also don’t think you need any real connection or knowledge of it to be deeply invested in the fandom. Sorry, this got very long.

you know, i totally get being on, like, the fringe of fandoms and interacting with fanon to an extent without a proper investment in canon (I have a couple fandoms like that), but i honestly just can't imagine becoming super invested in a fandom when I am not invested in the source material...maybe that's just a difference between you and me, idk.

but also, i gotta admit that i'm struggling a bit to understand the reason. you yourself pointed out that fan work is enjoyable because the creator's love for canon bleeds into it. and isn't that the reason that you would want to give canon a real chance? obviously there is fan content made out of spite lol (and sadly a fair amount in this fandom), but to me most fan content is like a love letter to canon. like, "i adore this thing so much that it inspired me to create and share with other people who adore it." and what better recommendation is there than that?? i would think people would wanna familiarize themselves with canon in order to better enjoy fanon(?)

i completely understand your point about fan content delving further into characterization and relationships where canon hasn't/can't, and that is such a big appeal of fanfic/fanart. but i don't feel like that's a reason to not engage with canon? on the contrary, i feel like you are missing something important in your understanding and appreciation of that wonderful exploration if you haven't experienced firsthand the foundation that canon set. and maybe that missing thing is just your personal interpretation of a character/dynamic.

for example, i could say, "adrien agreste is this, this, and this and he would do this but not this." and of course i will think im right because my characterization is always perfect 😌sakjdfaldjks but someone else might have a slightly different interpretation, and someone else will have another interpretation, and when you mush all those individual takes on a character together, you will get a good sense of who they are, but you still don't have the Original™️ to draw your own interpretation from. idk, to me it sounds like basing your opinion of chocolate ice cream on what other people are saying about it without ever trying it yourself? ajsldakljf maybe that's an oversimplification but i do think that without experiencing it for yourself, your understanding will always be kind of incomplete.

idk, i big agree with everything you said about why fan content is special, but everything that is a point in fanon's favor is not a knock on canon. to me fan content feels pretty inseparable from canon, so it just doesn't compute to me to take canon out of the equation? then we would have nothing.

i feel like it's almost kinda trendy nowadays to be like, "oh this show actually sucks lmao but the fanon and AUs are good." like it's shameful to actually...enjoy source material? 😭 i mean i completely understand that miraculous ladybug is not gonna be everyone's cup of tea and that's fine! but if you truly enjoy the fan content that much i encourage you to give canon a real shot. it's not that surprising to me that you watched 3 recent episodes and didn't vibe that much, since you haven't seen the 3 seasons of buildup that lead to them. miraculous has a neat way of tying a bunch of things together so if you aren't familiar with all of it, you're probably missing out.

personally my love for miraculous was kind of a slowburn at first. i only started watching the show because my sister and i made a deal that forced me to watch the first few eps lol. and i didn't really vibe either. but there must have been enough of a spark there for me to keep watching bc for some reason i did and the more i watched the more i fell in love with it until it became the thing that occupies my brain more than anything else. i started with canon and then got into fanon, but it could easily go the other way too. and if you're already invested in the story and characters, i have to imagine it would be much easier to push past the initial cringe of "this is a show about a couple of teen furries rated TV-Y7 on netflix" lol and give anything you don't vibe with the benefit of the doubt.

again, to be clear, i'm not trying to judge or gatekeep here! i'm just saying this because i genuinely LOVE miraculous. it's my favorite show. that's why i make things for it. that's why i have this blog. i want people to watch it. so maybe, pwetty pwease, try watching the show you like so much? 🥺👉👈

(source bc i was too lazy to make my own so i stole this from twitter)

[pumpkinpaix]

this is gonna sound so harsh but im legit tired of chinese diaspora people who think that bc they are of chinese descent and they have pleco they can act like voices of authority in the fandom. if modao is the 1st chinese book you have read pieces of with a dictionary, if you have never interacted with the actual chinese fandom, you are not part of the intended audience and your biased opinion is not the One And Only Valid Truth 🍵

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree | this is really hard for me to express in terms of an agree/disagree axis lol

genuinely cannot tell if you’re trying to shade me here anon lmao 😂

this got long and rambly (of course) asldkjfslj. i would love to make the excuse that it’s bc i’ve got a migraine and had No Sleep but. let’s be real i’m always like this.

ok i’ll start with where i agree: i don’t think anyone has the right to act like an ultimate voice of authority in fandom. i think different people with different backgrounds have varying realms of expertise and they should be respected when they share that knowledge, but that the instant someone starts to use that kind of power as a weapon against people they personally don’t like, i think they forfeit that privilege. no one has the one and only valid truth about a piece of media because that’s fundamentally impossible. i have definitely interacted with diaspo who behave like their heritage gives them some kind of incontrovertible authority over everyone else, and they’re fucking insufferable and often rather cruel, even/especially towards other diaspo. meet me in the denny’s parking lot and fight me for real. i’ll kick ur ass. >:c

however, I also think it’s true that there’s a lot of dismissal of heritage fans in this fandom, if that makes sense, from both sides of the equation: non-Chinese fans ignore our cultural hangups because they’re inconvenient, and non-diaspora disdain us for being not Chinese enough. that puts a lot of us in a position of feeling disrespected just for being who we are, or having our very real knowledge and unique experience as individuals devalued because of it.

regardless of my identity, I have formally studied a lot of things: literary translation, media analysis, the politics of oppression, film critique, religious studies, philosophy, four foreign languages etc. and that is all knowledge that I had to work for, and work hard for. I do have a certain measure of authority on all of these subjects over a layperson (to varying degrees), and there are going to be times when i will be more correct than someone who disagrees with me -- but I’ve also absolutely experienced people talking over that specialized knowledge because of who I am, which is, to be clear. extremely infuriating and hurtful. like, i have cried so much about it in the last 18 months. people see my racial and cultural identity before they see anything else, which is understandable to a degree, but upsetting when it becomes the basis for how my work is judged, whether positive or negative. i don’t want you to trust me blindly because i’m abc. I want to you to trust me because you have examined my work critically and judged it to be trustworthy!

so i guess this is getting into the strongly disagree part of the answer: i’ve been speaking a lot with other diaspora fans lately, and it’s been simultaneously hugely relieving and also really saddening. relieving because oh thank god someone else Gets It, and saddening because pretty much all of us, no matter what kind of diaspo we are (north american, european, SEA, taiwanese etc), we’ve all experienced a lot of pressure in this fandom, from non-Chinese, Chinese, and other diaspora fans alike. we’re all acutely aware that we are not modao’s intended audience because being diaspora vs being “from the mainland” or whatever, are actually quite different things, but modao still feels close to home. even if it was not written FOR us it is still familiar to us.

and, because so many of us are multilingual and multicultural, we end up being the bridge between the “actual” chinese fandom and the english-speaking fandom, which is largely made up of non-chinese. (sidenote: I hate it when people say things about being “actually” any identity because it’s almost always for the exact reason you brought up: to use heritage as street cred. it’s like damn, being “actually” chinese doesn’t make ur opinions any less rank. sure you might be “actually” chinese, but do you have basic reading comprehension and literary criticism skills? no? ok then sit your ass back down) many of us are most comfortable in english! so we produce our content in english! but we also DO often have a somewhat privileged access to the culture that underlies mdzs and can explain it in a language that other non-Chinese fans can understand. so it’s not surprising that people flock to us for answers to their cultural questions. and like. if we think we know the answer, it’s natural for us to try and help. this is fandom! we’re here to have fun and find community! and it is definitely a little bit nice to have my culture treated as something desirable for once instead of just like. a weird exotic curiosity that no one really cares too deeply about. and, since a lot of us are able to do things that non-Chinese fans can’t (research in chinese, for example. ask family members for help and more information etc.) we end up just having more information to share.

I think this sometimes results in a tendency for fandom at large to put heritage/diaspo fans on pedestals and tout them as authorities (or use our conflicting viewpoints as ammunition in fandom drama) when the diaspo in question have repeatedly stated that they should not be taken as authorities on something -- and then, once you reach critical mass, your reputation starts to precede you, and I think there’s a lot of misconceptions of how a lot of diaspo act in this fandom simply because of that phenomenon. most of us know that we’re not ultimate arbiters of some kind of cultural gateway, and it can be very tiring both to be treated as such when we insist we are not, and then punished by other people who assume that we acted like we were.

i don’t think there’s a benefit in trying to keep en fandom and cn fandom totally separate, and I also think it’s unfair to consider the cn fandom the “real” fandom. i think that way lies deeper misunderstandings, gatekeeping, etc. i think we can definitely acknowledge the differences between them, but i think trying to make meaningful connections between fandom circles is really valuable! i don’t think i’ve ever made it a secret that modao is my first cmedia fandom? so it’s also the first time i’ve had reason to interact with chinese fandom, which has been super enlightening and interesting! i’ve made some super cool friends and learned a lot about how fandom works in china, how it’s similar and how it differs from the fandom i’m familiar with.

and then, kind of circling back around, there’s also a bit of a sense like, okay, so if diaspo don’t belong in the CN fandom, but we can’t talk about our own culture with some degree of confidence in EN fandom, then like..... where do we go...? if we see EN fandom doing something that contradicts our cultural knowledge, do we just. not say anything? do we not count unless we’ve already ingratiated ourselves to CN fandom? that’s probably where the core of my strong disagreement comes from, because criticism of diaspora fans as like, acting above their station so to speak, feels just like a tired continuation of the same shit we’ve had to deal with for our whole lives, being told we’re not good enough for anywhere and that we should just be quiet and keep our heads down and get over it. that our opinions, despite coming from a unique perspective with a unique relationship to the subject in question, are less valid or real than “actual” chinese people, you know? and sometimes i see that and im like lmfao just sneer at me for being jook-sing and leave then if you’re so eager to think of me as lesser.

so yeah, basically im of a few minds: true! diaspora fans don’t get to throw their weight around just because they’re diaspo. they don’t get carte blanche to act like bullies or try to shape the fandom to their own personal liking and crusade against people who disagree with them. they don’t get to pretend their heritage makes them superior to everyone else, and i think western diaspora especially need to be careful when asserting any kind of moral lens over the text to acknowledge that we have our own biases to interrogate. i am not immune.meme etc. on the other hand, this vein of criticism tends to put all diaspo in a bit of a double-bind, and also, however unintentionally, plays into the general, continuous trend of dismissing diaspora for being diaspora, and i’m really not about that. i don’t think that’s the motivation behind opinions like this, but i do think that when the basis for the argument hinges on the idea that diaspora are not “real” chinese, no matter how much I too have beef with certain diaspora fans, the argument needs to be revisited. 

(ko-fi)

🍵 ((un)popular) opinions meme

[saintobio]

Sainttyy!!🥰I don't know where to start as my thoughts are in a mess right now!! Girl⁉️You should start writing a book!! 🙌🏻

I'm just gonna put my comments in random. So pls bear wit mee:

✨First, can we put a BIG EMPHASIS ON HOW MUCH EFFORT YOU GAVE FOR THE RESEARCH‼️Good lord, everything was surreal. This one made the cut. Not just for the sake of writing angst, humor and lust everything was planned out VERY carefully👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻💯

✨ SCREAMING HALLELUJAH FOR THE LONG SATISFYING CHAPTERS!!🙌🏻

✨I feel so happy about Satoru's character development, I am overwhelmed tbh but very touched by his gestures just to make it up to y/n. I felt bad for him at some point. But yeah, HE DESERVES THAT😁.

✨I loved that y/n could also answer back and stand her ground on some scenes. Like how she would remind Satoru the exact words he told her. It was like slapping him back on the face!👍🏻 Yea girl! Destroy him!!

✨She's not that "victimized female lead" we always get. She has a pure heart but nevertheless, a strong person as well. She knows how to shut the fvcking Satoru up.

✨When I learned they were actually been close during their childhood, it really hurt me. Yeah, like how could Satoru treat her like trash?! TF is wrong with Satoru and his misplaced anger?

✨Let's not forget the angsty scenes, the Bora Bora trip!! My heart breaks for y/n 😫💔This is where I also had my anxiety attack!🤣 I need to stop reading at some point. I love how she articulated how she felt in regards with their marriage, about how she was worried raising a child considering their setting, the hellish things she had to endure (does she has to though?) She was just so selfless.

✨Satoru begging on his knees??! He must be so inlove with her right?! Him shedding tears?! I could not, I NEVER imagined this coming, with you portraying him like a bastard, a total ASSHOLE?!🤣 I didn't even expect too much from him. I was starting to hate on him fr.

✨I loved Toji and Satoru's phone interaction in chapter 18!! I wouldn't have thought they would share that moment. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 There's always this great plot twists, like whoah didn't see that coming.

✨I'm so worried on the upcoming chapters, I wanted them to stay together during this hurricane. I hope things would not break them apart. Their making up was just so satisfying it brought joy to my boring life!

✨I know Gen would do everything for her sister but I was silently begging "Gen, can u pls not?"

✨I really hate Eula. What a biatch. Serves her right. She should rot in hell.

✨You couldn't really imagine what you put me through. I literally binge read until morning and cried my eyes out, then put myself on the same misery the next day to re-read the chapters. Their relationship was toxic, okay. But the development was so satisfying.. I'm praying like please-don't-stop-let-them-be-happy-oh-my-god-please-have-mercy.

✨BABIESS!! I want them to have BABIESS!!👼🏻

✨I cannot wait for the sequel!!! cause girl you are EPIC!!

I'm so sorry for the rambled comments. I am worried you'll close your inbox soon.. 🙇🏻‍♀️ You deserved more thorough and proper feedback but I'm not really good at it (not as articulate as u are babe) so I'm sorry.. and THANK YOUUU FOR BEING THE AWESOME WICKED WRITER YOU ARE. You did great in making me suffer!! Lol jk luv uu🥰

hellooooo i can’t believe u found me on ao3 bc people hardly ever do :’D but thank you sm <33 it makes me happy to know that you genuinely enjoyed this series !!

[sugar-petals]

Hey Caro ☺️ I just took your super m quiz - thanks for making such a fun quiz, I feel like it helped me get into super m! I know nothing about them yet but I thought it fit soo well that I got Kai bc I’m a full time dancer - now you have me super curious about him 👀👀

KAI :: INTRODUCTION MASTERPOST (dance focus)

so you wanna know about the god of k-pop choreo? oh yeah, i’ll talk to you about fucking kai! if you dance, this guy is the #1 must-know. once you see him move, there’s no going back. i don’t exaggerate: kai is the gold standard. brace yourselves, i’ll show you why.

kim kai aka kim jongin (27) is a solo artist and super m’s plus exo’s main dancer — est 2019 and 2012 respectively — heading either group with a passionate, hyper-physical style that roots in his early practice of of jazz dance and ballet. the influence definitely shows. 

learning choreography, he’s become the gorgeous fusion of emotional grace and explosive power that unites both tension and extreme accuracy. while at the same time: never sacrificing his interpretation. and HOW MUCH HE BLEEDS FOR HIS CRAFT. he enjoys it so much. 

and he’s communicating it 100%, jongin’s dance is so interactive and raw, luring. i swear to god, put the seatbelts on for this one. it’s never just him, it’s you as well. you’ve never seen this before. he’s like “yes, i meant you, i’m looking at you”:

he’s even gonna modify the choreography to point right at you to underline that very thought. he’s so good, he can learn it, ace it, epitomize it, and do his own thing anyway. even the person in the last row will get whatever point kai wants to make. this is dance that belongs on the biggest stages.

even when he films without a crowd, it’s like you’re literally standing opposite to him. he focuses on two people: his moves, and the viewer. he has it look like you made him smile and self-aware, or you made him determined. INCREDIBLE. he shows his charisma, BUT he also shows your own (!) impact on him. it’s a duet. he wants you to join him on the dancefloor. this is from exo’s call me baby mv where kai does his famous come-hither:

he flirts and he encourages. he values the audience and wants them to be confident as well. i think it’s the reason why he’s so outstanding and addictive, kai thinks beyond himself. it’s a tango he involves you in with his eyes and how he opens his body, interprets a lyric.

it’s not about imposing himself going one way. instead: he plays the back and forth ALL. THE. TIME. in any context. whether it be frivolous, or fun, or gloomy, or sweet. even with a simple little smiley wink it’s happening. and he acts like you had a reaction to it. there’s literally just a camera.

this guy’s physique, strength, elegance, feeling for the beat, character portrayal (!), and control is unbelievable. he’s destroyed it in every fancam out there. he can’t switch it off even if he tried. your eyes would go toward him in the largest group formation still. put him in the center, that’s his spot, he showcases it.

because he doesn’t just show learned moves, he makes it radiate something dynamic and animalistic (he embodies superm’s ‘tiger inside’ all the way). 

jongin’s dance says: i love this, you love this, let’s do this, the feeling is right. he makes bodies and unrestrained touch the opposite of wrong, he pronounces it a source of having fun and being instinctual. and he never breaks the tie with you throughout, and uses his shoulders and lips to put the oomph into it. 

he uses innuendo and a ‘we both know’ sentiment perfectly as an invitation rather than just going through his routine. that’s how he can make each move fascinating. you can tell kai knows exactly how to make everyone scream their lungs out. i bet somebody held their breath just reading this post already.

exo’s most famous choreo is ‘monster’ (kai focus linked) with good reason: jongin can turn himself into nothing short of a roaring beast. it’s one sharp, complex move after the other. kai can bend any gravitational law he wants to show any feeling and pose he wants. a glimpse:

now, how to spot him in general if you’re new to him? here are some pointers. kai’s execution is clean, fast, and powerful. those are two decades (!) of experience showing. kai is an all or nothing dancer, he plays no games. he treats every group and solo stage like his best and last. his work ethic is beyond words. yeah, he’s a capricorn. his style is direct as can be, working every axis.

as you can see, jongin is hard to overlook anyway: he’s a 182cm giant made of steel. he strives to acutely visualize impact in his style and it is always successful. in fact, it’s his signature. it’s like he creates invisible objects and pushes through them. boom, he just burst another bubble.

when the song gets to his part, i guarantee you won’t miss him and all the boldness and expression he brings to enrich the performance. hell... he carries it. jongin can handle the center, i’m telling you. (look how fast he rotates here)

talking features — this is what to look for when he dances in a group setting: you can recognize kai’s face by how wide, bluntly structured and sensual it is. jongin is a sight. he has such an aura, serious, sultry, and smiling alike.

with a very recognizable silhouette (like... holy hell!):

he’s very cute as well ♡ the fandom and kai himself have an adorable analogy going on. jongin calls himself a teddy/nini bear and we joined in on it. (i made a thread about it here, it talks more about his offstage life) — hence kai’s fans are called eri-gom, eris as in exo’s fanbase and gom meaning bear. 

and i mean. look at him. what an attractive guy. he’s that handsome. strong brows, teddy eyes, square jaw, swept hair, glorious lips, tan skin. 

now yes, something important concerning his appearance and a serious topic: i don’t want to list you the endless instances of colorism that kai has to endure but it has to be mentioned. jongin has been called every name in the book and people agonize him over his skin incessantly. it goes on and on and on. every day a new terrible comment about him emerges because some pitiful person thought it was funny and would elevate them. 

he’s had to deflect, ignore, reframe, defend, remotivate, assert, harden, prove, denounce, and push himself, protect his confidence, decline skin bleaching constantly, laugh along, dance and practice thrice as hard to get the respect, and still see his dignity torn to pieces all day. i’ll just give it to you straight, that’s all fucked up. kai’s skin is perfect, he’s amazing and wonderful. 

in his own words:

— exactly right. say it even louder.

having him at the bottom of every joke is weird and messed up. this man is an utter beauty and nothing has to be fixed. it is up to him to define himself rather than get called ugly for his skin’s appearance by default, and get whitewashed at every opportunity. it’s been going on for 27 years, he scrunitizes himself all the time and doesn’t look at himself fondly because he hears these beatdowns daily.

it’s heartbreaking that this happens literally with no end in sight (’kai is just a stripper!’... ‘he has bad vibes’... ‘darkest guy jongin!’). for his skin, and how he decides to show it, too. jesus christ his skin looks fantastic, end of debate. they just can’t handle him, kai couldn’t be any more immaculate.

♡

jongin has vigorously protected fans from discrimination, bullies, and shaming himself whenever it came up. in a very straightforward and deadpan manner because he knows exactly how it damages you. (”J” in the subtitles = jongin, he’s wearing the plain white top at the very back)

we need to protect and praise him that way right back. it’s important.

so, needless to say. all in for jongin getting the center stage he deserves. because he has the wow factor in every regard. kai usually opens an MV because there’s no better way to get people’s attention with that level of presence. with kai, you can’t go wrong. if you get the center in a an all star group like superm, you are the king.

being part of that presence, kai’s stage alter ego has reached levels of infamity you can’t even imagine. it’s great to see him being sovereign without apology.

and it doesn’t stop there. he shows time and again that acting, props, and commanding the audience has to be mastered to be an exceptional dancer. kai owns his sex appeal. sometimes, he even dances a portion of choreo with his eyes closed because he’s feeling it so much.

he is a pro in using his surroundings as well, superm’s stages are a glorious opportunity for kai to show how he comfortably ‘lives in’ the 3D space around him.

which makes the viewer do the same: watching kai makes you feel amazing, energized, but also serene and enjoying the moment. 

there’s always balance. it’s the magic of it. e.g. he comes along with so much impetus and decisiveness but eventually, he halts to offer himself. here i am — take me. i’m yours. closed arms, open arms. walking, kneeling. looking down, looking up.

kai goes every extra mile there ever was and makes each eye contact count. involving the audience, one grin at a time. it works. it’s about establishing contact. he connects to the onlooker with so much nuance. 

kai’s smirk is notorious and you can see why it’s so raw and real: he makes it linger. it’s such a duality since his dancing says i’ll come over, while his message is come and get me, i know what’s on your mind.

with a hilarious twist – kai expertly uses humor. you don’t get that in many dancer repertoires. i love it. all those quick expression changes. his smile! 😊 what a man.

so — what makes him so good and known: yes, his style doesn’t deny that dancing and eroticism are one in his business. that takes courage. kai has it. iconic performances have been his reward. point dance/killing part: exo’s love shot choreo. 

that suit has swept the nation. what’s more: kai shows you it’s more than just good hip movement that a good dancer needs. he does everything at once, he puts the pleasure on his face, all his limbs are following the template he chooses.

the thing is. kai couldn’t be any shyer, but when the music starts he becomes a oscar-winning madman. he emotes constantly (!) and stays in character. this is gold.

jongin always plays it up. he knows how to use that face and does a lot of power posing. this is how visceral looks like. he’s interpreted exo’s aggressive concepts to a T.

and he has so. much. fun. it propels him. on every beat.

past every hurt, heartbreak and injury, man. if you know about his genre you knew this was coming, kai does all of that with 4 herniated discs. since debut days, never recovered. every gif in this thread, he dances with a battered spine. wheelchairs, stage collapses, relapse-recovery-schedule tales, the dilemma of injuries being inevitable, limping, kai falling into depression during breaks, constant pain killers, countless tears on stage, we’ve seen it all, the extreme end of it. 

kai works out like hell to literally keep his body from falling apart. but it doesn’t help the nerves in his back that are impacted. doing choreo you can sometimes literally see the pain kicking in and he pulls himself through with force for the last minute. once you know how strained his back is, you can see it.

at the end his expression goes fuck now it’s coming when the adrenaline fades. he takes every second-pause he gets to rest but still finishes each move. even when he holds back, he keeps it together and executes each turn. sometimes, he has to restrict himself and soften his movements to protect his health (especially in hard choreographies such as lucky one which is universally disliked by exo — still jongin makes the very best of it smiling bright and dancing so hard his sleeves come off).

he frequently states he ‘dances in any case unless his legs are affected by something’. all torso injuries are fair game, this guy is hardcore. and people claim he’s just pretending. chen (a fellow exo member) says not a single part of jongin’s body is intact. he has paid every price to get this far to follow his love. he’ll step on stage with crutches. he works SO HARD.

that being said: exo being called the official nation’s group, i say kai is the nation’s dancer. period. he has had his great moment at the korean olympics flawlessly dancing in a hanbok with traditional instruments and fulfilling his dream. 

i love the tension and drama he can bring. he can also thrill with slow, vulnerable movements alike.

kai’s is called a legend, he’s all that and even more. the facial expressions alone are feared by any kai stan because they hit home. 

this guy is a sex icon and goes off like a gun, messing around was never kai’s incentive. 

while at the same time being incredibly nuanced and so, so descriptive with his movements.

point dance: baby don’t cry. yep, kai has danced in water. must-watch.

this man loves what he is doing. he said he wouldn’t regret to die on stage because dancing is his destiny. boy, it shows. this guy has found his purpose. he can tell any story he wants. he’s a complete artist.

he’s perfectly portraying his incentive and he couldn’t look any more like a god on earth.

long story short, kai is dance and motivation goals. if you dance professionally, you can easily look toward him for the right words.

if you want to further your study and knowledge: he released a self-titled solo album recently. highly recommended. he worked forever on it, and he’s really dishing it on there. you get to hear his soft voice plus sizzling footwork. and he isn’t even getting started yet. you’ll hear from kai, i promise. he constantly achieves new levels of artistic perfection.

a last remark. jongin is amazing for a myriad of reasons that go beyond what i show you here given the post focuses on his work on stage. but the point stands, while other people have tried to break him, he broke through every barricade instead and stood up for himself. we can be extremely happy to have him and witnessing his unreal dance is an exceptional pleasure. here’s to jongin continuing his passion and confidence, healing, and getting the sweeping respect and acknowledgement that is his.

[percyjacksonfan3]

The Last Olympian Thoughts

So because I have absolutely 0 self-control or restraint when it comes to this series and its characters, and for The Last Olympian in particular, I could not put TLO down. Because of this I figured I couldn’t do the usual photo reaction posts I have been so far, because the spam would just be ridiculous, so I am stealing the idea from @yourstrulytaaay​ to do a masterpost instead. (Adding a Read More cause this got ridiculously long)

Fun fact, TLO came out right after i finished reading the series for the first time so it's the first PJO book i bought  and my only hard cover one for the og series. I checked the year and turns out it was published 2009, which means i was actually 9 when i read the series for the first time. I realize this is not really a fun fact but i thought i was older when I first read the series so it's blowing my mind a little ‘cause now I’m 21 and everything hits different and i still have so much love for this series and the characters Okay onto book thoughts: - i was right that this book is gonna destroy me, the first line alone made me so excited and nostalgic it's ridiculous - I love Rachel and Percy sm tbh. Her being a bit of peace and normalcy in his life without always reminding Percy of who and what he is is so good for him. Just a little escape

- of course by the end of the book that's not the case any more but by the end he's lived his prophecy so he doesn't need it as badly, plus he and Annabeth are solid again - Percy saying Annabeth has been hard to be around lately... Ouch my heart. Luke really is the last thing that keeps them from being together and Percy is so jealous and Annabeth so torn and in pain, i feel so bad for them both

- Beckendorf 🥺🥺 - the telkhine with the Lil Demon lunchbox!! I forgot about him. Percy: 'i left him alive, partly because his lunchbox was cool' is one of my absolute favourite lines tbh - Paul taking Percy crabbing and being imperative in helping Percy kill the giant crab 💖 Paul Blofis is important and deserves the world, okay? - aw Percy, you can't save every demigod bb

- 'i had to fight him eventually. Why not now?... What difference would a week make?' Oh Percy you have no idea - real talk tho, the fact Kronos possessed Luke's body would also mess me tf up. Percy keeps forgetting it's not Luke anymore and yeah, that would be so so hard and confusing af, like what another smart little mind game for Kronos to pull on top of everything else - the fact Percy fights Kronos before getting the Achilles Curse and actually doesn't die within seconds is... Astounding. He kicks him in the chest! And yeah Kronos is weaker and still adjusting to Luke's body, but Percy is having trouble fighting Luke cause they used to be friends - Percy breaks Kronos' time magic!! Like?! Boy is POWERFUL.

- OUCH - honestly Luke, Thalia and Annabeth's family breaking the way it did... Don't talk to me. Poor Annabeth, Luke betrayed them, Thalia joined the Hunters because of Luke's betrayal so she's pretty much AWOL all the time and then Luke dies. Like Rick wtf, my heart can't take it? -Percy and Tyson having each others backs when talking to Poseidon in the underwater palace is the brother-brother relationship we love to see - Percy trying to stick a sand dollar in the vending machines at school 🤦🏻‍♀🤦🏻‍♀ - the whole underwater interaction at Poseidon's palace? Perfection. Awkward family drama and all - Connor falling out of the tree when he sees Percy because he's so excited 😂😂

- 😭💖

- k, ik Clarisse isn't perfect but tbh if i was a child of Ares whose father was disrespected and hated by my fellow campers (ares deserves it but still) and that disrespect trickled down to how the other campers treated ME (which if Percy is reliable here, it obviously does) then i would also be irritated at being used for muscle and nothing else? And just expected to fight with the people who act as if they'd rather not have Ares kids around the rest of the time. Like Clarisse isn't totally wrong - Percy reading the prophecy, seeing he's meant to die and just being like 'i do not see it' and refusing to outright think about it makes me so sad for him - (but it taints every action after and he's super reckless afterwards bc of it- including finally breaking and accepting the Achilles Curse) - (also him taking this as the last straw and finally beginning to show Annabeth how he really feels, cause fuck it, he's dying anyway) - Give me more info about Rachel's backstory and family Rick!! -  how did i forget Percy willingly eats chocolates that taste like cardboard because 'i didnt have anything against cardboard' like sir? Ik Silena didn't want them but still? - 'she'd always been cute, but she was starting to be seriously beautiful' STOP, MY HEART CAN'T TAKE IT - Percy staring at Annabeth and forgetting what they're talking about cause hes so distracted 👌🏻

- hmm yeah... For some strange reason.... - i forgot how Percy totally bombs this convo bw them and now want to cry 😭 Annabeth is trying to talk about what's important and Percy, you sweet oblivious man, you're shooting her down without even realizing - love that they're both on the same wavelength tho. Percy two lines before, hmm it's cool to date ppl from other cabins, wonder why im thinking that around Annabeth, my best friend in the world, and then Annabeth a beat later, hmm, let me bring up Silena and Beckendorf and how it's important to be with the people you love when you have the chance, no way Percy will miss this huge hint right? - they're the best - k i honestly forgot Percy full on physically intimidates Leneus like that - luke telling his mom if he ran away the monsters wouldnt get her..i can just imagine luke crying when he says good bye before running away because he thinks it's his fault his mom is like that and he cant take care of and protect her anymore because it's too hard - uh oh now i have angsty pre-lightning thief luke fic inspo... Him, Thalia and Annabeth on the run... The ANGST -  Rick holds absolutely nothing back in this book and i am in pain - HESTIA!! 💖💖🥰 - actual loml - i love that Rick titled this book after her and that he wrote such a great series about the importance of family (biological, found or otherwise) and home, and that he said actually Hestia is the most important bc shes the most humble and keeps the peace and knows when to fight and when to yield and you protect what you love, which is your home - i just... Adore Hestia - Grover! Missed you babes - Hades is so so horrible to Nico, always comparing him to Bianca :/ - but i do love Hades, Persephone and Demeter together they make me laugh - oh god the River Styx - Achilles 🥺 - Annabeth being Percy's lifeline is, and continues to be, A Lot™ - 'my name was Percy Jackson. I reached up and took Annabeth's hand.' LOL Why am i crying? - Like the fact there is no Percy without Annabeth, and that remembering her literally reminded him of who he is in his very soul... It's fine im fine - i won't even get into the parallels of her being his lifeline now and then later when Hera takes his memories but leaves the memory of Annabeth for Percy to fight to get back to (anyone who wants to yell about it with me... Feel free to message) - badass Percy is my fav Percy tbh - him defeating Hades?? Like? Hades is arguably the most powerful god, okay - i feel bad for Nico but if i was Percy I'd do the exact same, Nico, sorry man but this is a high stakes time crunch deal and Nico is literally the only hope of persuading Hades and distracted by his own internal stuff - flashbacks to Luke, Thalia and Annabeth hurt, ow - George and Martha are the best - damn i forgot Hermes full on nearly kills Percy here, yikes - Luke stop cockblocking Percabeth challenge

- i love!! Percy's love for New York!! So much!! - Percy leaving to live in New Rome in HoO is a lie and this is all the proof i need for why - the fact the entire last half of the book is the battle and aftermath... Such great buildup and pacing. All the tricks and twists and battles in this War of Manhattan? I would not take out a thing, Rick, you legend - of course then the final battle in hoo with the gods is what? Two pages? Ugh, don’t talk to me about my hatred for BoO and HoO - 'no detours you two' is still the cutest thing!!! - THE HUNTERS!! Thalia i missed you - good job Percy, you finally spent your sand dollar - Minotaur!! - 'dont i get a kiss for luck? Its kind of a tradition right?' Percy finds out he's gonna die and is out of fucks to give and honestly I support him - also Michael just standing beside these two while they're flirting like umm 👀 👀 while a monster army marches towards them, nbd - Annabeth taking Ethan's knife meant for Percy!!! Cause she just knows his weak spot without him even telling her! They literally invented love - Feral Percy is so scary omg, i love how well Rick incorporates the Achilles Curse in this novel, with the whole heightened weaknesses and stuff ans the parallels to Achilles arrogance being what killed him and Percy's loyalty, fierceness and protective instinct being his own heightened weakness - the fact that Percy is the one who inadvertantly kills Michael Yew tho, I'll never recover from that - the fact Hades offers Maria di Angelo a golden palace by the Styx like how Poseidon offers Sally a palace under the sea tho. Let's talk about that parallel - the entire talk with Prometheus is so so good - not me picturing young Luke hiding in the closet to get away from his mom when she has an 'episode' -i love callbacks in stories and all of the callbacks to the rest of the series in this book make me very happy (medusa, minotaur, the underworld, Rainbow!! My baby!!, Daedalus and more) - Percy summoning a wholeass hurricane against Hyperion - the Party Ponies! They're so chaotic, i love it - Dionysus! 😁 I can't help it, i love him - Percy absolutely losing it when he sees Sally and Paul asleep in the car 🥺 - Rachel telling Percy he's not the hero screws with him so much :( poor bb - although i really really love how Rick wrote this, it's so refreshing to not have one chosen one save the world, but a combination of people - the drakon, Silena and Clarisse make me cry - the Patrochilles references, im not okay - Annabeth giving up on Luke after hearing what he did to Silena and Percy telling her that doesn't make him happy 😭 that whole interaction makes my heart ache - Percy giving Hestia Pandora's pithos 🥺 - and Hades, Nico and the others coming for a final attack is so badass, i love it - listen im glad the og trio were the ones to confront Luke on Olympus but the fact Thalia got so close and then pinned by a statue of HERA makes me so sad. Ik her and Luke were finished and she coped by cutting him off completely and giving up all hope but i would pay money to know what they would have said to each other to say goodbye - Ethan 🥺 - Poseidon joining the fight against Typhon is so cool, such a great scene - 'PEANUT BUTTER!' - Annabeth you brilliant badass you - RIP Luke, you werent great but you werent the worst either - the gods just rolling up seconds too late, wondering wtf happened in Olympus and who the dead body is - the chapter where the Olympians meet and give out rewards is one of my absolute favourites (again i am incensed we didn't get anything like this in HoO) - will Percy turning down immortality ever not make me scream in glee? No? Alright then - Annabeth being relieved like Percy was relieved at the end of Titan's Curse tho - oh Hermes :/ - its so hard reading all this and knowing what comes in HoO... Like it's such a cathartic, earned and mostly happy and peaceful ending and then HoO comes along and undermines it all - aww Rick let Paul see Olympus somehow pls, he deserves it, he killed a dracanae - (i would also love to see it) - Percy being more upset Rachel took his pegasus than her going to Camp and possibly dying, lol, priorities dude - i honestly think that Rick had other ideas for the second Great Prophecy and how things would go down in BoO, cause the prophecy like... Barely applies to BoO, Doors of Death are in book four, and explabations of it is all so unclear when Rick is usually pretty good with that stuff - PERCABETH - lol Percy complaining about privacy when he and Annabeth are caught kissing literally in the middle of the very open and public dining pavilion, okay - BEST UNDERWATER KISS OF ALL TIME - that's it and im a glass case of emotion - very happy to say that this series remains my favourite of all time 💖

 If anyone ever wants to come gush about anything Riordanverse related feel free, because as you can see I have a lot of thoughts about it all

[qinghe-s]

GETTING TO KNOW ME

i was tagged by @melodious-tear ♥

why did you choose your url?

i feel like that’s obvious to anyone who’s followed me for, like, two days. i know where my heart belongs. besides, the aesthetic of cql!qinghe fucks

any side-blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them.

well, this. i also run @masseffectcaps although i haven’t posted in a few months; i probably will again once i get my hands on the legendary edition. i started it because original default female shepard didn’t get the respect she deserves from bioware especially. don’t get me started on this bc i will not shut up. i have a lot of feelings.

@celestecraft used to be popular on mineblr; i went on a lot of adventures while playing with a small group of friends and wanted to save them in some way + sharing a hobby is fun. in the past i also had a fairly well-known lgbtq+ blog and a terry pratchett-centric one but that was years ago and my energy to keep up with providing things for others (rather than just enjoying myself) waned.

how long have you been on tumblr?

t...twelve years by now... oh no

do you have a queue tag?

nah. i used to, on my personal, but i almost exclusively post things through the queue so it doesn’t feel like it matters.

why did you start your blog in the first place?

i was lured into this fandom because a good friend of mine played a character based on him in a d&d oneshot and i was immediately and helplessly charmed, saw this gifset a little while later and told her “this. this will make me watch your show” and, well.

it started consuming enough brain space, especially as i was reading the book, that it made sense to keep it contained rather than expose my original followers to this endlessly when they come for — actually i don’t know. pretentious aesthetic and me being gay over star trek women (well, janeway, mainly) and crying over mass effect?

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

that woman is wife city to me. it was nhs previously because... baby

why did you choose your header?

it matches my blog background on desktop. that’s it. it’s for the aesthetic.

what’s your post with the most notes?

on this blog it’s probably this one of me calling lwj a bitch (honorific). i believe this wangxian fic i wrote for vday is a close second. (a couple of my gifsets of nie mingjue looking beautiful are gaining though which is very pleasing to me)

i also have a few posts that have reached the thousands on my mass effect blog, but i don’t keep track of those anymore.

how many followers do you have?

five hundred... something. six hundred? who knows.

how many people do you follow?

a couple of hundred? many are lgbtq+ resource blogs that post very infrequently though, so my dash generally isn’t that cluttered

have you ever made a shitpost?

a couple! i’m not all that funny (perk of being my friend is that you’ll always be the funny one, it’s the main service i provide) but the bitch!lwj one and an outofcontextyaoi text post edit.

how often do you use tumblr each day?

ehh, depends. some days i’ll only check in at night and refresh the dash once in a while when doing other things, other days my brain requires constant input and i’ll open the app on my phone every hour. there is no average.

did you have a fight/argument with a blog once?

yeah, but not here. i pissed a lot of people off a few years ago when i expressed my opinion on sexist portrayals of women in video games in general and mass effect specifically. my opinion was sexism = bad and some people decided that i was wrong and it’s empowering to put career soldiers in styled hair and a full face of makeup for the sake of marketing, actually, while male characters get to have weathered faces and grey hair. it was a fun time. (it was not)

how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this post’?

my dashboard is carefully curated and i never see those posts. are they still common? because they suck. don’t guilt people into caring.

do you like tag games?

mostly, yeah! sometimes they require energy i simply don’t have but i also think they’re a nice way to interact without having a direct conversation

do you like ask games?

i’m a lot less fond of those, personally. the chain letter type in particular.

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

a lot of them are well known in the fandom actually! which makes me question why they follow me but i am always flattered

do you have a crush on a mutual?

oh absolutely @evakant since we decided we were willing to die for each other after one conversation. wenzhou levels of love happening here.

i’m gonna tag already-mentioned @evakant because reasons but also some people i see in my notes a lot but haven’t talked to — feel free to ignore but also let’s be friends ♥

@shippingsavesmylife @radishsizhui @ahatfullofwords @inappropriatewenning @whateverthemoonhasalwaysmeant

[ceilingfan5]

professor or teacher au?

YOU’VE OPENED A CAN OF GUMMY WORMS MY FRIEND

idk if you know this. but i am a teacher and i have many strong opinions about this sort of au

first of all the teacher/parent trope is WEIRD AS HELL

dont even get me started on a few. other ones. 

but IF YOU WANT IT DONE RIGHT (idk if i would write it bc i would want it to be perfect but maybe i am the pal for the job) 

1) (forgive me for this indulgence) taako is a primary teacher. we’re talkin little ones. you’re gonna be like what the fuck. and so would he. but also i dont think he would like teens as much as he thought and probably figured out after his first year that some of the big kids are mean little fuckers and when you cannot call them mean little fuckers they get hard to deal with and also little kids are the greatest and so full of wonder for the world and you get to take them from knowing BASICALLY NOTHING to being LITTLE READERS and the first time taako experiences this he almost considers religion

but definitely not kindergarten. He cannot. Nope. 

AND KRAVITZ, WELL, HE’S ON THE OTHER SIDE COMPLETELY. he’s that high school teacher that doesn’t even necessarily want to interact with the freshmen, but he’s much beloved. he teaches english and drama and is also in charge of the drama club and he has many strong, strong opinions on shakespeare and he’s the one all the baby pre-out gays latch onto hard 

2) and they work for the same school district and their bubbles barely even touch and they kind of like it that way and they meet at a big district meeting and make dumb jokes the whole time and they’re a team for a dumb kahoot quiz bc kravitz doesnt have a smart phone, he’s got a fucking ancient nokia with a slidey keyboard which he asserts is too much for him even. anyway they play kahoot together as a team and they get incredibly competetive and they ALMOST WIN and they have STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT IT and taako looks at kravitz and he’s like. hey how about a drink sometime

3) and they exchange numbers and they go out for a drink maybe something really dorky like a trivia night at a bar and this time they KICK ASS TOGETHER and they get a tiny little trophy and decide they have to have joint custody of the damn thing until they win another one. anyway this isn’t a meetcute au this is an incredibly self indulgent established relationship au

4) and kravitz grades papers on the COUCH and taako teases him and cooks DINNER and they live together and theyre HAPPY and theyre domestic as hell and people either want to be them or have no idea theyre together and they come home and collapse on the couch together and fall asleep at like nine pm after a glass of wine and a half on a wednesday and they are happy 

5) and theyre in love love love and they love what they do and they enjoy it so much and they have someone to talk to about teacher things and not annoy and taako listens to the drama club drama and kravitz watches taako light up as he talks about his lowest kid finally getting all 26 letters, kravitz, every last damn letter!!!!!!! letter names, we’re still working on the letter sounds, but theyre on their way babe and theyre gonna be blending by the end of the year if he has anything to say about it and he’s gonna make cookies to bring to the staff lounge because he needs attention and he packs lunches for himself and kravitz so kravitz eats his vegetables and kravitz makes them coffee in the morning and sends taako with two tall travel mugs every day and theyre so in love, so, so in love, and sometimes taako comes and picks him up from work not because of car reasons but just because they like each other and theyre so happy and in the SUMMERS

6) BONUS IN THE SUMMERS THEYRE GAY AND THEY TRAVEL DUAL INCOME NO CHILDREN BABEY THEY SEE THE WORLD AND READ LOTS OF BOOKS AND KISS SO MUCH 

im sorry if that was boring but from my perspective, that’s some fucking romance

[moiraineswife]

Jasnah Meta - The Importance of Context

AKA: PLEASE stop saying that Jasnah is pro-genocide when she is. Not. At all. In any way. Shape or form. Whatsoever. 

TL;DR: Nowhere, at any point, in four ginormous books of text, does Jasnah ever say ‘you know what’s great? Genocide.’ She never even implies. It she never even actually, seriously, suggests it. Please stop saying she does as though it’s canon I lose 12 years of my life every time it’s mentioned. 

AND NOW FOR THE LONG VERSION BECAUSE Y’ALL KNOW I CAN’T LEAVE IT AT THAT!!!!! 

PLEASE NOTE! THERE WILL BE SOME MINOR RHYTHM OF WAR SPOILERS IN HERE. PLEASE AVERT YOUR EYEBALLS IF THIS IS A DISTRESSING CONCEPT TO YOU.

So first things first, let us discuss The Scene Itself: 

“Yes. The answer is obvious. We need to find the Heralds.”

Kaladin nodded in agreement.

“Then,” Jasnah added, “we need to kill them.”

“What?” Kaladin demanded. “Woman, are you insane?”

“The Stormfather laid it out,” Jasnah said, unperturbed. “The Heralds made a pact. When they died, their souls traveled to Damnation and trapped the spirits of the Voidbringers, preventing them from returning.”

“Yeah. Then the Heralds were tortured until they broke.”

“The Stormfather said their pact was weakened, but did not say it was destroyed,” Jasnah said. “I suggest that we at least see if one of them is willing to return to Damnation. Perhaps they can still prevent the spirits of the enemy from being reborn. It’s either that, or we completely exterminate the parshmen so that the enemy has no hosts.” She met Kaladin’s eyes. “In the face of such an atrocity, I would consider the sacrifice of one or more Heralds to be a small price.”

“Storms!” Kaladin said, standing up straight. “Have you no sympathy?”

“I have plenty, bridgeman. Fortunately, I temper it with logic. Perhaps you should consider acquiring some at a future date.”

So the only time Jasnah actually brings up this concept it’s to, hyperbolically, point out that asking the Heralds to return to Braize and trap the Fused may not be the worst idea.

She’s not actually suggesting this as a valid or legitimate tactic. It’s to contrast the plan Kaladin just called her ‘insane’ for suggesting (I bet that’s gonna hurt a million times more than it already does in 900 years when we get Jasnah’s book and backstory but hey. Back on topic) and point out that, in the face of the apocalypse, this is the kind of level they have to think on. 

I’ve already talked about the nuances of this scene at length here, so I’ll just do a quick summary: Jasnah is not as composed about any of this internally as she makes out to be - even what she suggests with the Heralds. 

When we see her alone with Ivory, reading Taln’s repeated mantra, Ivory notes that she’s troubled. The words (and where he was/how he was being treated when they were recorded) is enough to trigger a twenty year old flashback in her. 

This scene is one of the clearest moments (along with the Kharbranth thug scene, I suspect) where Jasnah’s outward projection of her internal feelings and thoughts least matches up with reality.

In spite of the inflammatory remark that sparks this all off,  she doesn’t want to assassinate any Heralds. She quite clearly says she wants to “see if one of them is WILLING to return to Damnation.” She wants to have a conversation with them, understand the Oathpact, and see if any of them would consent to buying them some time. She is not suggesting they knife one of the Heralds in a back alley. That’s Moash’s job.

This is supported by what she does in canon. Jasnah is actually the one who recognises Taln and Ash and, somehow, manages to persuade them to join her at Urithiru and help. She treats them with nothing but dignity and respect in her scenes with them in Rhythm of War, and tries to find out more about the Oathpact and their options - as she said she wanted to do.

But since Jasnah is a Kholin, which means the ‘D’ in her DNA stands for DRAMA, she doesn’t say that, instead she says: “let us find the Heralds and kill them.” (I love her so much y’all. Ahem. Anyway).

But there’s method to this madness, too. Please click the ‘keep reading’ button to discover why! (have to turn my own posts into clickbait bc they’re so long I have to put in a cut to spare ur dashboards). 

Jasnah likes to push people. She likes to force them to think, and consider all angles of a problem, and come to terms with their own thoughts and opinions. This is one of the things that frustrates Shallan about Jasnah in TWOK: 

Shallan caught a victorious glimmer in her eye. She wasn’t necessarily advocating ideas because she believed them; she just wanted to push Shallan. It was infuriating. How was Shallan to know what Jasnah really thought if she adopted conflicting points of view like this?

-TWOK 36

Jasnah doesn’t want to brutally murder the Heralds and force them to return to their maddening idea of hell. But in phrasing it as she does, she can get an insight into Kaladin. Despite the fact we know him very well at this point, this is, this is the first time Jasnah has interacted with him on-screen, and only the second time she’s met him ever. 

“That Windrunner. What do you think of him, Shallan? I find him much as I imagined his order, but I have only met him once. It has all come so quickly. After years of struggling in the shadows, everything coming to light—and despite my years of study—I understand so very little.”

Oathbringer, 33

Jasnah in that scene is deliberately being as exaggerated, ruthless, cold, and harsh as she can get away with. She’s trying to push Kaladin. She wants to bait responses from him, to get an idea of what kind of man he is, and what he stands for. She focuses entirely on him on that scene, and the reactions we as readers get see that as well. 

“If you wish, Captain,” Jasnah snapped, “I can get you some mink kits to cuddle while the adults plan. None of us want to talk about this, but that does not make it any less inevitable.”

“I’d love that,” Kaladin responded. “In turn, I’ll get you some eels to cuddle. You’ll feel right at home.”

Jasnah, curiously, smiled.

 Jasnah likes to be pushed as well. She likes to have people push back with her, and stand up for themselves, assert themselves, make their arguments. She all but encourages Dalinar to publicly do so in RoW. 

Socially, in spite of Kaladin’s rank or status as a Windrunner, it’s probably 100% Not Acceptable to ask an Alethi princess if she wants a basket full of eels to cuddle because she is one, effectively. But Jasnah’s unphased - and even pleased - by Kal’s response. She likes that she’s seeing this from him, that he’s unguarded, and passionate, and more than willing to go toe-to-toe with her, which few people are.

Also, because I foresee potential problems in this meta that I would like to nip in the bud right now, I don’t think that Jasnah is doing this to play with people? That’s not really in her nature or who she is. There’s a purpose to everything she does, and there’s a purpose to her doing this, too.

With Shallan it was to encourage her to think for herself and form her own thoughts and opinions. Just before in that scene, Shallan asked why Jasnah couldn’t just tell her what to think and what was the right philosophy to have in life. Jasnah replied it was something she had to discover for herself - and that’s how she approaches all of their studies. 

Jasnah never teaches Shallan what to think, or even what happened, despite that being the meat of her study. Instead, she teaches Shallan how to think, how to study, how to learn, how to critically reason, and how to form and argue her own thoughts and conclusions. 

With Kal, I think it’s a quick and brutal way of quickly getting to grips with a new, very important, element in what’s going on in her world. Remember, too, that one of Jasnah’s most obvious aims, aside from protecting the world, is protecting her family. And Kaladin is very close to everyone that she loves and holds most dear, while she knows nothing about him. 

However, something else that’s important to note, which, for me anyway, RoW all but confirmed: Jasnah has low cognitive empathy.

She’d come to realize, early in her youth, that she didn’t approach relationships the same way everyone else seemed to. Her partners in the past had always complained that she was too cold, so academic. That had frustrated her. How was she to learn what others felt if she couldn’t ask them?

Chapter 99 really was an absolute fucking gift, I mean really. Asexuality AND low empathy, all in one go. What a delight.

This little snippet can be read as her being asexual, potentially, but I actually think it reads more heavily and obviously about her being neurodivergent? And specially low cognitive empathy. Brandon says that, to him, Jasnah is not autistic spectrum, but you just keep giving me more evidence to say she is buddy!! Anyway. Diagnostic debates aside. 

I would guess some of y’all don’t know what the heck I mean by ‘cognitive empathy’ (I didn’t before I researched all of this a couple of years ago). 

There are two types of empathy, in strict psychology terms (and then there’s the colloquial way we use it to just mean ‘a good person with feelings’ which drives me BANANAS but that’s a rant for another day): 

Affective empathy - which basically means ‘this person around me is happy/sad/excited, I am also now feeling that way. Because emotion is infectious like a cold! How thrilling’. 

Cognitive empathy - is the ability a person has to pick up on/know what others are feeling without having to be told. Using tone/body language/facial expression etc etc. It’s something I, and a lot of other autistic people, are bad at. 

So is Jasnah! 

Her previous partners disliked her probably verbally vibe checking them every other week to find out where they were at. Jasnah was frustrated because how the heck else is she meant to know wtf?? What an absolute mood this woman is. Anyway. 

This revelation/confirmation makes a LOT of Jasnah scenes make a lot more sense. Including: chapter 64, and her insistence, to the point of it almost being illogical, that she fight without her Surgebinding to try and get as clear a picutre of what her soldiers are facing as she can. Jasnah starts off that chapter by saying she’s never actually been in a war before, and states throughout that she wasn’t prepared for what it was actually like. 

Her low empathy means that, without a personal context/experience to relate to and draw emotional experience from, she struggles to understand exactly what her troops are going through. 

Obviously she knows that ‘war is bad, battles are scary and not fun’. But she has no way of emotionally relating/truly understanding what they’re feeling. This is one of the reasons I think it’s so important to her, despite Ivory’s chiding, to do it that way so that she can understand. 

Similar thing is happening here with Kaladin. Jasnah struggles to instinctively Get Vibes from people, so she goes about things in a very scholarly way. 

She does research and makes notes (see: her little folio on the highprinces (which, by the way, misses out on several important aspects of them Shallan picks up on pretty quickly by the power of Intuition), she asks questions - and she sets up scenarios that push people into blatant emotion so she can observe and get an idea of what makes them tick. 

TL;DR TAKE TWO: Jasnah does not want to murder all of the Singers. Jasnah never says she wants to. Jasnah only uses it as a ‘see, asking the Heralds to go back to Damnation isn’t actually that bad now is it?’ hyperbolic counterpoint after Kaladin asked her if she was insane. Jasnah is not actually what she pretends to be in that scene. She is but a hapless gay who cannot detect emotions so she has to conduct her Vibe Checks differently from other people. She is highly valid in every way and i stan her.