#happens a lot in a abusive dynamics- esp abusive family dynamics.

[snekdood]

sometimes people who are used to strife fight in its name subconsciously because at least they know how to navigate surviving in that environment vs something different. never under estimate the power of the fear of the unknown

[send-up-my-heart-to-you]

tips for writing arab characters

writer here!! im a middle eastern writer whos noticed that theres a VERY significant lack of info on how to write arabs, so im here to help !! (however, keep in mind that im specifically gulf arab and may not be able to provide as much info on levant arabs or north african arabs. if there are any on here, feel free to reblog w more info !! )

dont get arabs mixed up w muslims. yes, a large portion of the arab population are muslim, but youd be surprised at the number of non-muslim arabs that exist. if you wanna write abt a muslim character, a post i made that might help is here 

list of arab countries, with the adjective:

algeria — algerian

bahrain — bahraini 

the comoros islands — comorans

djibouti — djiboutian

egypt — egyptian

iraq — iraqi

jordan — jordanian

kuwait — kuwaiti

lebanon — lebanese

libya — libyan

morocco — moroccan

mauritania — mauritanian

oman — omani

palestine — palestinian

qatar — qatari

kingdom of saudi arabia (ksa) — saudi

somalia — somali

sudan  — sudanese

syria — syrian

tunisia — tunisian

united arab emirates (uae) — emirati

yemen — yemeni

dialects/language:

dialects greatly differ—the egyptian dialect is the most common, followed closely by the levantine dialect

classic arabic is called fusha (fuss-ha), used in things like official documents, media, education. every arab knows it but its not used in day to day language except in media (all dialects basically come from fusha, but with slight changes)

'p' and 'g' (as in 'gurgle' or 'goal') dont exist in the arabic alphabet, theyre replaced with 'b' and 'j' 

depending on where theyre from, they may also learn a third language besides arabic and english (e.g. moroccans know french, a berber arab may know berber)

appearance:

arabs look different based on where theyre from. if theyre from the arabian peninsula, they have thick curly dark hair, tanned skin, and dark eyes. levant arabs are lighter skinned, and green/blue eyes are more common with them

adding on to previous point, arabs have a variety of skin tones, even if theyre siblings. using a real example, me and my older brother respectively look white passing and afro hispanic

dark irises are considered better looking than lighter colored eyes. eyes are usually thick-lashed, with big round slightly upturned eyes 

big noses are common, along with full lips (and hereditary dark circles for those with more tanned skin)

high cheekbones and well structured faces are also prevalent

culture:

varies depending on location

influenced by indian culture, IS NOT INTERCHANGEABLE WITH INDIAN CULTURE. that was aladdins mistake

poetry is so common, especially with romantic themes

songs also have romantic themes

youd be surprised at how romantic arabs are

dances vary extremely, from dabke (palestinean dance done in groups, consisting largely of leg/foot movements) to yola (emirati dance with battle origins, done using canes or fake guns) i recommend watching videos (tiktok has a lot of videos esp of dabke)

women also dance but you wont find a lot of videos of it bc its inappropriate

etiquette:

things such as giving someone your back, or facing the bottom of your feet towards someone are considered rude 

pda is also taboo (even with straight couples or even sometimes married couples)

cheek kisses are a common way of greeting, but not between genders

in some gulf countries, men greet each other with a nose kiss (not in an intimate way) just stubbing their noses against each other

genders do not mix at all. schools tend to divide girls and boys into two sections starting at a certain age (around age 10/11), and mosques are split into the mens side (usually larger than womens bc men use the mosque more)

having an extramarital relationship is very very taboo (even w hetero relationships) but it still happens. a lot. 

family dynamics (note that this is obviously a spectrum. this is the general dynamic, but obv it ranges from family to family):

NOT ALL OF US HAVE ABUSIVE PARENTS. sure theyll spank you if you skip school, but thats not necessarily abusive. its more strict, and youd be surprised at the amount of freedom some parents give their kids

yes, arranged marriages do happen. no, they arent necessarily forced, it just means that your parents had a hand in deciding who youll marry. yes, marrying cousins is a thing, but its much less prevalent now (also, ew)

fathers care. a lot. they dont show it, but they do. they also tend to joke around a lot

mothers tend to be the rule enforcers, and by far our moms are our best friends. we tell them EVERYTHING i swear 

aunties gossip a lot

uncles are a safety hazard

its not uncommon to have a large number of cousins (mainly bc arabs tend to have a lot of kids)

the average number of children 3 per woman, but from personal experience the older the generation the more kids (e.g. my great-grandmother had a whopping thirteen kids, my grandmother had seven, my mom has six, but a couple of my aunts only have one or two)

social class/work environment/school environment:

schools tend to be either arab curriculums but there is a high density of american/british curriculum schools

boys and girls tend to be separated in school around age nine/ten but some schools will be mixed genders up till graduation

yes, women work, tho admittedly some of them tend to have careers more than jobs (e.g. photographer, writer, etc while the men handle engineering, economics, etc)

no, not all of us are rich. in fact, countries like jordan, egypt, tunisia, morocco, and yemen (and infamously palestine) are acc struggling w poverty. its mainly just gulf arabs who are rich

furthermore, gulf arabs may be generally rich but a large chunk of them have the same lifestyle as an upper-middle class family in the usa. rich but not too rich. dont be fooled by the videos of guys wearing kandoras and driving lambos

speaking of kandoras...

outfits (keep in mind that spelling may vary since its all transliteration, and pronunciation may vary depending on region) (also keep in mind that even if we still live in the middle east, WE CAN WEAR JEANS AND HOODIES AND BAND SHIRTS. just, usually cover up more in public):

abaya: loose overgarment worn by women

jilbab/chandoor: also worn by women, type of long dress or tunic

the white robe all of yall know is known as a thobe, dishdasha, or kandora

the colored headscarf worn by men is known as a ghuthrain in the gulf, kevfiah in the levant. its kept in place with a black cord called a aghal, and under it they wear a skullcap called a thagiyah

those are the most common ones, however if youd like to get a lil more specific on clothong, the ultimate guide to arab clothing is here (it also has specified clothing for individual countries)

hope this helps, feel free to reblog w more info if you have any !!

[quietwingsinthesky]

You’d like the show Lucifer simply because the guy who plays Lucifer is hot as balls

oh you fool you have no idea the minefield you have just walked into that is my opinions on the tv show Lucifer.

for one, he’s fine, not really my type, but what was more interesting to me is what a handle he had on the character as written in the first few seasons (and hell, he had the charisma to keep me watching long after the show fell the fuck apart, if not to the very end.) Not only the charming-smug playboy aspect, but the incredible amount of anger boiling just below the surface. admittedly, lucifer’s my type of character, and not just cause he gets bonus points for being the devil, but. well. fictional characters who came out the other end of abuse not soft or easy but. fucking difficult to live with. he’s just kind of an asshole, for all his better qualities, and i love that about him.

and oh but if nothing else, i think i’d revisit s1 for just how well it Gets it. the cop show bit of lucifer was always the weakest bit, sort of rote but fun procedural drama (imo also at its best in s1 because of the tension chloe was dealing with in the workplace/with dan as a result of The Case That Went Wrong but it was never great.) but everything else? the way ‘lucifer goes to therapy’ could play both humorously and also for serious drama? that was fantastic. and s1 didn’t feel the need to pull its punches about what was happening here: this is the devil, and what god did to him was wrong and fucked him up.

which is. you know. more than the later show can say about itself or the takes it had on the dynamic between lucifer & god. (if i think about the way the show slowly began to dismiss lucifer’s trauma as it went on, how by the time we got to. what, s5? and we have a scene where god himself describes lucifer’s fall as a temper tantrum, it’s not a moment of horrifying dissonance between what we know about how lucifer was hurt vs how his father is portraying it, but a moment where we’re meant to laugh and agree, yeah, it probably was, lucifer is so dramatic and god is right. and if i think about that coinciding with the show removing lucifer’s agency in the bad shit he did do, literally just having a different character act the role of the devil and removing the whole point of a show about what the devil has to do for redemption- i get quite frustrated. is what im saying.)

s1 left scenes seared onto my fucking brain, though. the show just. Got it. in a lot of ways that i think were lost, especially after the netflix buy-out. early lucifer is so fucking good at fantastical events as allegory for abuse. i cannot get the scene of linda deadnaming him out of my head. (which is just. what’s happening. like lucifer may not canonically be trans (and their commitment to even making him pan as advertised was :/) but oh my god. we just Have a scene of him being deadnamed and its painfully fucking real.) because on the surface, we’re literally just saying fun biblical facts, hey did you know the devil was also called this, once? but the way lucifer reacts to his name, to linda trying to tell him that no maybe god did love the devil, and the way that builds up until it explodes. violently. and he just. flees. tries to literally cover it up. its a good fucking scene. someone in that writer’s room has been trapped with a therapist getting all their information from your family and not listening to you, i swear, because i don’t know how you could get it that accurately stressful without the experience.

or or or. wing scar scene can we TALK about the wing scar scene ive been dying to talk about the wing scar scene. because now it’s not only us the audience reading between the lines of the metaphor to understand lucifer but chloe herself. the wing scars are, in canon, a result of lucifer choosing to cut them off

(and we gotta at least mention what a radical crossover of self-harm and self-determination that act is, esp combined with him keeping them locked up and later burning them completely, and how later seasons dIDNT GET THE POINT AND JUST GAVE HIM THE WINGS BACK YOU DONT GET IT- (they almost did. too. one of the best moments later is amenadiel finding the many, many wings lucifer has to keep cutting off of himself because they grow back. it’s body horror, it’s one of the few moments where we get to see lucifer’s wings being back as the violation of his self and autonomy that it is, and then they fuck it up by going eh he just needs to accept himself and this thing that will forever serve as a connection to his father.) man i wrote a fic about this thats how bad it wormed into my brain.)

but the wing scars. ohhhh that scene. because the literal explanation isn’t what we’re meant to take away from it. it’s fantastic use of emotional whiplash, straight from sex jokes to chloe’s horror at seeing them. lucifer is quite literally honest about what’s happened, but to chloe, he’s dancing around something incredibly fucked up, hiding behind metaphors. and. well. isn’t he? however casually he tries to dismiss it, the scene still ends with him needing her to back off, don’t touch and don’t ask further questions. and. i mean, we’re talking about the guy who has fucked his way through more than half the city, hesitation over being touched is. not really something we associate with him. and yet. it’s a good fucking scene, the scars themselves are still rattling in my brain, and im never gonna stop thinking about what a loss it was that the show eventually started being all silly all the time rather than using the silliness of the character and his antics and him being Thee Literal Devil to disarm you for moments where we have to look in the eyes that Something Horribly Fucking Wrong Happened To Him.

(even the way lucifer himself is a character he’s constructed to live in means that chloe’s insistence that he’s not and can’t be the devil is true, if not literally, because the devil is both a persona developed in response to and labelled as such by trauma.)

i was never really in the lucifer fandom, per say, didn’t participate much. so i dont know how much my opinions on the show reflect other people’s. but yeah, my core enjoyment of it came from it being willing to lean into how fucked it would be for lucifer to have to exist as he is: to be both rejected and still beholden to his father’s whims. to have to serve as warden for his own mother’s prison. to be the devil and lean into it hard when the other option is to buckle under the weight of that role.

man. they had all the pieces. and then they lit the puzzle on fire.

[cartyrs]

How do you feel as a CielDoll shipper with recent chapters

this just reminded me that a new chapter is out and i just read it and i'm in the brain dimension. throwing this ask under a readmore bc it got long but it basically just sums up my opinions on the series as a whole rn:

my feelings on kuroshit have been complicated the past few years ngl! more than anything i'm very frustrated with how the story's been paced since the twin reveal, and i've found it very hard to stay engaged as a fan with how slow things are progressing. but that's also not what you asked so i won't rant about that LOL

I have very mixed feelings on this current arc - it's what finally got me back into reading bc DOLL! MY FAVORITE CHARACTER EVER! IS HERE AND I WAS RIGHT THAT SHE'D BE RELEVANT AGAIN!!! I'd really, really like it if Doll lives past this arc and is able to confront Ciel again. I think I might actually drop the series entirely if she dies here because it feels very pointless to me after all these years to bring her back if her whole point was just to [207 spoilers]. I'm really interested to see Ciel's reaction to her rebirth, esp if after coming clean about his true identity that he's able to be honest about the guilt he harbors over killing her. (SINCE YANA PUT DOLL AND JOKER IN THE SAME PANEL AS MADAM RED, CIELS PARENTS, AND R!CIEL IN CH 100, OVER 70 CHAPTERS AFTER NOAHS CIRCUS, ID GO CRAZY IF IT DIDNT MEAN ANYTHING)

I've always seen Doll as being one of if not the most significant character into understanding Ciel - his sympathy for her in Noah's Arc shows that despite how emphatic he is that he's forgone his soul, he does still care about people underneath it all. I'm pretty sure Yana's even said that if circumstances had been different (plot wise and also wealth wise), they could have been really good friends. I think Doll as a foil for Ciel reveals a lot about him - the biggest being her double-identity and reveal, as well as her playful, childish side vs. her cold, killing side (which even then, Doll doesn't want to kill - she just has to. I think deep down, Ciel is the same way). Same with Doll discovering Ciel's brand and having that empathetic moment with him over it, they don't go too deeply on it but Doll's backstory prior to living on the street is that she was abused by her parents and they scarred her face. She knows better than anyone else in the story what that permanent mark of abuse means for Ciel, and that's why she's so sorry she accidentally exposed his brand.

I've never shipped Doll/Ciel in a "canon" sense (like it just wouldn't make that much sense post-doll's "death", she despises him for killing her family, and after knowing what the circus did, she's nothing but a child kidnapper to him, criminal scum that's not worth anything). Their dynamic to me is so much about the "what if things had gone differently?" - which I also apply to Ciel's other friendships, particularly with Soma, Lizzy, and Alois (though season 2 is it's whole own discussion LOL). So much of Ciel's characater arc is about how he was willing to throw his own life and soul away thinking he had nothing after his parent's and r!ciel's deaths, as well as his own disgrace, but kuroshitsuji has shown us time and time again that there are people who deeply love and care about ciel, and if things had been different, if he hadn't sold his soul to the literal devil, he could have lived for them. i love Doll for him in this regard, because she's someone who doesn't know what happened to him. I think a big crux to Ciel's relationship with Lizzy (ignoring the incest aspect because of the period accuracy, but also because of the incest aspect I obviously do not ship them in a romantic sense) is that she knows more than most people about what happened to Ciel and his family, and that humiliates him. Pity and vulnerability humiliate him. This is a huge reason why he can't be honest with Lizzy about what happened - he doesn't want her pity, it only makes his reality that much worse. When he meets Doll, she's a stranger. And despite knowing nothing about him, she worms her way in and tries at every angle to befriend him. Also, given that his betrothal to Lizzy was by force (esp with how he steals her actual fiancees identity lol), I think if Ciel had been able to choose his own partner, he might have chosen someone like Doll.

ANYWAY - that's why I'll be really disappointed if they don't reunite at some point. I have some vague hope, since this is the last of the servant's arcs, maybe we'll get back to Ciel soon and Doll will get the confrontation she deserves. I actually really wasn't expecting [207 spoiler], that changes a lot for the character dynamics in this arc. I unfortunately haven't been a huge fan of Doll's actions in this arc, it feels horrifically out of character for me to believe that after her moral values are laid explicitly clear in circus arc (she feels guilty for kidnapping children and doesnt want to do it, but fears her older siblings retribution and fears Kelvin and feels an obligation to keep her family safe above all else), that she'd be willing to both make connections with the children at this orphanage as well as let them be used to keep her body alive... for what? To kill Ciel? Obviously she was brought back by Undertaker, but I doubt that Undertaker's true intentions are to kill Ciel, given how important the Phantomhives are to him (I think he's probably way more after Sebastian, but that's another thing entirely). So, why did Undertaker bring her back at all? Why is it Snake and Finny that find her, and not Ciel? Her personality once Snake and Finny discover the truth too is just all over the place, I don't particularly buy it.

I've felt that Yana's writing has seemed rushed and lazy since the twin reveal, whether it's her shifting her focus onto TWST, or that she's just trying to wrap up the series as fast as she can, while also still attempting to churn out monthly chapters (if you compare recent kuroshit volumes to old ones, old volumes had maybe 4-5 chapters, while new ones fit about 10 chapters at the same pagecount, so it's also waaay shorter chapters each month that don't quite move the story along). It's obvious to me that now that R!Ciel is out of the bag, the servant chapters have been a way for Yana to finally write plotpoints that she's had on the backburner since early on in the series (Meyrin, Bard, and Snake's backstories) - but IMO, terribly integrated. Finnys backstory in witch-arc is still some of my favorite parts of the series - because the arc itself is incredibly written, and Finny being highlighted fit in so well. It feels like with these mini arcs that Yana's just like oh shit what kind of plot should X servant's backstory come up in, and none of the newer plots/characters have felt deserved (i.e. the maids in meyrin/ran mao's story). Same thing goes for the characters in this arc, the children dressed like the phantomhive servants are just so weird and out of place to me. Why is this a thing??? An orphanage dedicated to making children act like ciel and sebastian and others and then sacrificing them as blood for Doll????? Why???? The whole scenario is weak and far-fetched IMO, I would've rather Doll's reentry (as well as Meyrin/Bard/Snakes backstories) been introduced in a more natural way, it genuinely feels like Yana is throwing all her cards on the table to wrap the series up without any loose strings.

SO, I don't have like, a TON of hope for Ciel and Doll's story to be wrapped up in a way I personally find satisfying for their character arcs, I'm vaguely hopeful that they'll at least just meet again, but as you can read I've had very mixed feelings on the direction that the series has taken for years now (servant backstory arc has been going on since MARCH 2019 LMAO..), so I'm sorry that your very simple question turned into a rant HAHA but this is like, the crux of my relationship with Kuroshitsuji atm.

Kuroshit has had its fair share of problems, many of which I'll be the first person to go out of my way to critique. I've been able to rationalize being a fan by touting just how good the manga's story is. Nowadays, really not so sure I can stand by that opinion! However, Doll's also like... is The character of all time for me. I've even been contemplating getting her tattooed lately LOL. So, regardless of the direction the series takes, even if it just absolutely tanks, she'll always remain incredibly special to me, as will Ciel and all the characters I've loved over the years.

[samuelroukin]

First, genuinely surprised you haven't seen Dog Soldiers (2002) bc it's soldiers vs werewolves in Scotland with a Scottish protag and special forces based fuckery. You would like it a lot! Second, and spoilers for a 20+ year old film I suppose, you can A) be infected w lycanthropy in this verse and B) the I suppose "native" Scottish werewolves live their life as an ordinary multigenerational family and they aren't being overtaken by the Change they are very much thinking and are eating people and shit on purpose. It's implied one character was uh, turned for the purpose of being a bride to the family's young male wolf and that they do also reproduce normally (aka they have werewolf babies, they are not dependent on needing to bite people to have kids/make more wolves) There is a really cool short vid speculating on them that I can share when you watch the movie.

But anyway in my head it def turned into one of Soap's sisters went up to the highlands for studies or whatever and became the new Mrs. Wolf up there which could lead to plenty of juicy storylines. Esp depending on how. Accomodating the family might or might not be. Bc you could go with the 141 is given the Dog Soldiers mission and he realizes his sister is one of them? Or after an op gone bad he runs off to hide out at his sister's place and slowly realizes what the fuck is happening. My personal fave though is his sister appeared to abruptly cut ties with the fam:

Back in the day their Good Catholic Daughter just up and called like "hi I'm actually abandoning my enviromental engineering degree that I came up here to do field work for also I'm getting married right now immediately also he's not Catholic okay bye" and became estranged esp since the fam assumed she was GASP pregnant out of wedlock. While she was actually werewolf'd to be a bride. But she does have children clearly, and Soap just after a fucky op, and maybe at a weird juncture with Ghost (maybe he got too close talking about family/Christmas and Ghost snapped at him and so on) just suddenly goes FUCK IT I AM GOING TO FIND HER bc he's like I miss her and also wtf and also our fam cut her off and if they find out I like men- anyway! To find her!

But showing up on the doorstep of a family of murderous werewolves with messy family dynamics to possibly "steal" her away since. Like even without the werewolf stuff it def reads like an abusive situation and she was turned to be a bride so. Shit goes sideways fast, his nephews are bitey but also kind of wondering about the wider world and the 141 has to go off books to rescue Soap from wolf death up North or similar.

lssjkhkhgst well i think i can count the werewolf movies i've seen on one hand but it does sound interesting so i will def check it out!

and you're right that is Juicy and ripe with possibilities 👀

[anghraine]

I don't know why, but I've been thinking about my f!Tarrlok fic this afternoon. It's very much more about Noatak and, iirc, told entirely from his POV.

One paragraph summation: it's about Noatak's evolution from sweet kid to Amon, mediated by his shifting dynamic with his sister Taraka over the years. The first fic is a version of their childhood influenced by Taraka's gender, but ending the same. The second skims over the years between Noatak leaving and his arrival in Republic City, then goes over his rise as Amon alongside Taraka's as councilwoman and his unwitting enemy. I drifted into other fandom obsessions shortly after he takes Taraka prisoner per the canon scenario.

It turned out quite differently than I'd planned originally, in fact.

[much longer rambles below the cut]

I meant the B1 storyline to go much further off the rails. But I couldn't really justify it with no other changes than Tarrlok -> Taraka. I mean, I definitely thought that Yakone's fury over Tarrlok's "weakness" as a son would be still worse with a daughter, esp in the Northern Water Tribe of 30+ years earlier. That's the premise of the fic, basically. Their dynamic as children is a bit different, because Yakone's amped-up hostility reinforces Noatak's view of himself as Taraka's only protector, even as bloodbending changes them and Noatak grows more remote and calculating.

I could see this Noatak being slower to turn his back on her after Yakone tries to make them bloodbend each other. Noatak might even try to convince Taraka to leave with him, which under pressure, I could actually see her doing. But that wasn't the story I wanted to tell, and I could see the canon separation happening just as easily. So he still ditches her in the end, and it fundamentally breaks his sense of himself as her protector; it breaks him on a level he can't really process.

And he spends over 20 years trying to get away from his past, but he's unable to ever really move on. He subconsciously tries to "make it right" by saving people the way he couldn't or didn't save Taraka. He does genuinely think non-benders are profoundly oppressed and he cares a lot about that. But part of the reason it's so important to be this outsized glamorized protector figure to them, while calling them his brothers and sisters, is that it (sort of) fills the "Taraka" space in his psyche with a narrative of heroism and self-glorification that distances him from the messier and nastier story of being abused.

That's one thing, but it gets far more emotionally complicated when the real Taraka shows up in the city and turns out to be—well, Tarrlok. My original idea was that the story would swerve here because the childhood dynamic was different, and protecting her was more essential to his self-image. I'd meant him to gradually maneuver things in order to recruit her as a stealth Equalist (a scenario I'd briefly written but never explored, and which I still really like the idea of).

But in this scenario, I couldn't believe it would happen, not without something else to push them. Even given the changes in their dynamic, I couldn't see him as self-aware enough to consciously try and make things right with her, much less to put in the work that would honestly be required to subvert Tarrlok of all people, especially after such a long separation.

Instead, his plan is what I assume his canon plan was—capture her, keep her safely imprisoned until the city is under control, talk at her until she sees the light of revolution, and then they can be a family again. This is basically what he advises Hiroshi to do with Asami, while holding Tarrlok captive, so... yeah, I've always headcanoned that it was his ideal (detached from reality) scenario for how things would go.

But I did not write that much (especially of the story following their somewhat altered childhood) to just kill them off at the end. So while the major chance for changing the narrative would have been to have them leave together and be on the same side all along, I also thought it possible that what he tells Taraka might not be identical to what he presumably has said to Tarrlok in canon.

Tarrlok is very sure that Noatak is a true believer in his cause, which has always inclined me to think that they've talked (or at least that Noatak has) since his capture. I could totally see Noatak doing Amon monologues at Tarrlok to justify what he's done, which would be all the more psychologically urgent IMO when faced directly with the real Tarrlok (the only person Noatak seems to regret de-bending, or indeed, to regret harming at all). And I could also see those monologues differing somewhat between Tarrlok and Taraka since the dynamic was that bit different—just enough that she doesn't ultimately conclude that they're hopeless cases and too dangerous to live.

But actually writing those monologues, well. >_>

[lordelmelloi2]

Like obviously there's been the rising problem in fate fan spaces where a lot of pedophilia/incest content is excused because Nasu wrote it or anything like that, or people call it ""dark"" content (be fucking for real), and people generally not also understanding that people are rightfully repulsed when they see that content because of the way it impacts ppls brains to excuse it when society already excuses media being used to groom ppl into incest/pedophiliac relationships. Like

Idk. I think there is a lot that Should be said about the way media functions as propaganda and that many different types of media do go into glorification rather than showing it realistically. There's a lot of really really good nuanced takes and writings about the border between it, and about what it does to people who see these things and think "well it must be fine". But I think also fate series as a whole fails a lot to not glorify a lot of things (coughs, prisma illya) and the way takeuchi and nasu treat Castoria in particular esp. in this recent event shows that they also still very firmly believe in that toxic male otaku mindset where it's ok if pedophilia happens if its an anime girl.

And then idk wht it is with people's fascination with incest lately. Quote unquote the "last taboo". I don't think incest is the "last taboo", cause none of you are into scat, and if it was just about being allured by things that are taboo more people would be openly into scat, but I guess scat doesn't have much aspects of power play which is what people really want to fantasize about... they want to fantasize about an intimate setting where they know someone very well and there's a connection and so they change the dynamics of the relationship into something more, idk what people truly see. Dangerous and hence alluring? People like to say that incest as a "kink" (LMFAO) is about the allure of taboos and doing something that society calls wrong but no you see it's not actually wrong because there can be healthy incest you guys! So it's society that's wrong about incest even though incest abuse destroys families and destroys people's souls inside out on the regular but if only people just did healthy incest. Oh here's my 3k word fic about an uncle grooming and fucking his niece. Incest isn't that bad you guys. (end sarcasm)

[another-dra-anew]

maybe maki you don't talk about her enough...

i dont!!! so i will answer this because shes neglected. not because im procrastinating. sobs sobs sobs-

cw: icky bad parents/abuse mentioned. but like. that cw is equal in severity/detail as the actual point where its mentioned. no detail/infos on how theyre icky bad, just that theyre icky bad

My identity hc for them

canonically sapphic! i feel like ive spoken before on her identity past that uhhh. i dont know what im on about?

+ trans lass! i think she still overall just has a journey ahead of her when it comes to feeling secure in her identity and etc etc? thats kinda just a general thought. she's got some internalized issues she needs to work through but like. w/o getting into backstory spoilers shes being so brave esp for her age and im so proud of her <33. she's having a vv normal and expected relationship with her identity and im so proud of my girlie. she can work through her internalized stuff now that she has fwends by her side, she's already done so much on her own and im so proud of my girlie

Thoughts on their home life/family

maki comes across veryyy. edgy and like "oh duhhh this character has trauma they're wearing their pain on their sleeve" and so i worry her backstory is too. ouch the edge? but i think like... ultimately her relationship with her parents and her relationship with ryutaro are accurate to like... toxic households/what happens when ur a child abuse victim. even if what exactly Happened there is a bit more nonsensical, the dynamics portrayed are (hopefully) accurate depictions which hold weight because of what they're like, if not how they came to be.

thatsss meta reflection tho lol. for something in-universe... hm. how do i say things without spoiling. i think her being a big sister is very important to her and she wants to be like. part of the club with yamaguchi and hatano and uehara and etc etc. but her relationship with ryutaro is like. Explodes. so while the fact she's a big sibling is something that holds a lot of weight to her shes like. well i cant really call myself a big sibling now can i. hm. (<- dont worry about it its just the horrors ! )

How i feel about their canonical writing/handling

she's... a hard character for me to nail. this is something ive noticed with her and uehara both? its funny i used to feel fine with writing them but now im comfy writing yamaguchi and inori and not these two. ugh. buuuut.. i feel like i just need practice? maybe ill revisit that old maki fic.... i think i just need to spin her a bit in my head, and actually. im confident in her writing but not how i portray it. i need to do more to show that she's very... withdrawn and on the defense 90% of the time.

The one thing i’d want to make canon about them

hmm- OH. she and tsu would be/should be besties. but like. even in non despair itd take monthsss for them to be in the same social sphere + interacting enough to be besties. and in the kg tsu is busy trying to be bob the builder for everyones mental health ("can we fix it? yes we can!) and maki is Not Well. so. sadly no "pls my kids take care of ur ears look at ur talents oh lordy" besties :(...

My number one favorite ship for them

obligatory makitomo per tomoris ask meme! i think they'd 100% have a mutual crush in non despair, and even in kg there's definitely like.. hints of stuff there, romance just isn't reallyyyyy... what's been on makis mind.

…Now everyone else i ship with them

i think she and kurokawa r cute, and i think her and inori could be fun... maki is funny cuz she's one of the few girls i dont especially ship with hatano or iranami? but yeah! tbf i just think kuronori/makitomo is cute. polycuuuule!

The thing i will NEVER ship

i meaaaan? damn. i really just don't have m/f ships in dra. wow. uhhh anyways. there's nothing im against for her, just stuff im not too interested in of my own volition!

a dynamic/relationship i wish was explored more (in canon, or in fandom)

i miss talking about my edgy trio :( (inori maki uehara)..... uhhhhm.. i dont think there's really anything else? but yk. actually in terms of makis relationships being talked about. do u all ever question whats going on with maki and ryutaro? or makis past in general? ???

thoughts on their design (appearance-wise)

im preeetty happy with her fit, but im thinking about changing her color palette.... i need to upload fit explanations in general? but thats not something im gonna get to for awhile- like.. two weeks after i graduate im going on a out of country trip (its through girl scouts!) and so i wont be on my phone much... so i wanna get to a good place w/beta, and its just... this mess of me trying to organize everything so im in a good place to be offline for a Bit (+unproductive), so we'll see what i get done before then- maybe ill type up fits when im out of country, maybe ill do them before as filler before we advance with the plot! we'll see jesus fuck this was supposed to be about maki

mkay. yeah i like her fit! i like the new one wayyy more than her og fit, but i struggle a bit with her hair/eye color and making it fit with her look... ive lightened her hair so its not quite the neon yellow of canon, but i'm still toying with it! it'd prolly be good for me to be more adventurous with like... i dunno. i tend to use/reference hair and eye colors in character's fits, and i need to be more Okay with not doing that.

A music-related thought- a song that reminds me of them, or what their music taste is, etc

MAKI HAS A PLAYLIST. it hasn't been updated in forever but it exists. i deserve to bleed - sushi soucy. a vv commonly used song/prolly expected but it works very well for her. i feel like there's other songs that are like... on the tip of my tongue for her? but i cant think of any </3. sorry girlie...

[roomeight]

Graham Coxon Allegations: Part 1

(Masterpost)

This post is to serve as an archive of evidence known about Graham and his alleged predatory behavior with his young fans.

It's been almost a year since the allegations against Graham came out. However, it must be noted that they existed well before Britpop Abuse made an account on Instagram in Nov 2021. We have been Blur fans since 2004, I've been privvy to most of Graham's online presence during that time and friends with those who knew him during the early twitter days when he was much more public with his egregious behavior with fans.

The Mexican fans involved with Graham

I had a friend who was hurt by Graham. I haven't spoken to her in years and she doesn't talk about it. I witnessed it. It haunted me how cruel he was to her. He love bombed her, he wrote songs for her, I saw them flirt. We all knew he only replied to girls with attractive profile pics but we hoped it was just in our heads. This was early 2010's. Allegations came out shortly after from a close friend I trusted who was close to him that he was allegedly DMing girls "his daughter's age." She only told our friend group, that I'm aware of.

I didn't want to believe it at the time. But after seeing his behavior on twitter and hearing that allegation I had to take a break from the fandom for a couple of years.

When I came back, my old friends caught me up on everything that had happened. They said that something very bad had happened (vaguely) and Graham was giving his socials over to management or something. I saw G had announced he was having or had kids with Essy. I buried the allegations in the back of my mind, 100%. I admit that now. I didn't want to lose my fandom writing and so while I knew about Graham's behavior I assumed that he had settled down with Essy (esp because his twitter interaction with fans had vastly changed to being more appropriate).

In 2013, something went down because of three Mexican fans: Mirja, Michelle, and Scarlett. Many remember them as toxic and known for making up lies. They liked Gramon and roleplaying and reading fan fic. They told their friends that they were DMing & dating Graham & Damon and everyone thought they were crazy.

These are personal chats bpa didn't want me to post but I am because they need to be in order for people to see the dynamic between him and these girls much, much younger than him.

DMing young fans

Complaining about his family

Mirja and Michelle

There was jealousy - both Michelle & Scarlett liked Graham too, but he only loved Michelle. He said he would marry her if the age gap wouldn't look so bad. Graham would complain about his family to Michelle. He would get mad at Scarlett for being jealous of his and Michelle's relationship.

We also know that around this time Graham was not sober and was photographed drunk in public. He recently confirmed this in an interview that he was not sober until around 2016.

Mirja and Scarlett

Mirja and Scarlett still talk to Graham. In fact, they are the people who go to bat for him when the allegations happened. The video of the Hangouts chats that pissy.water posted as "proof the Google chats were fake" - that's Mirja's hand in the video the email shown in the "debunking" hangouts video is the same email she uses for her fandom roleplay account. All the "I have a source" pro-Graham people were talking to Mirja.

Here's a photo of Mirja with Graham on his birthday (?) without Essy or another time I guess 🤷‍♂️

Graham came back into Mirja's life right around the same time as Essy and G split and G flew back to London abandoning his kid and Essy in L.A. Mirja pathologically lies constantly. She's pretended to be multiple accounts now, even made up personas in her head to talk about her real self. She's a dangerous person who has spread a lot of misinformation about the allegations under alt accounts. As a scapegoat it's perfect, because if she ever said anything about Graham, fans would just call her crazy because of how she lies. She has no believability. It's the perfect situation for him. The joke of it all is this is terribly very real.

Mirja used to go by Mirja Lolita which is gross knowing what age they first started talking to G to say the least.

That's all I can fit here for now.

I would have hoped that at this point Mirja and Scarlett would realize how fucked up this all is. But I don't think they care. They care about the little bits of attention he gives them while he's not living his fake life. 30...ya'll should know better.

(PART TWO)

[kingsroad]

Hi! I love your edits for Alyse and Aegon and Danielle is such an underused faceclaim!

I'm not super into Aegon myself but your OC Alyse and her family are amazing and well developed and you've created a really interesting dynamic between them. ☺️

Will Alyse ever be queen? Can you give more details on her relationship with the royal family, esp. Aemond and Helaena?

thank you so, so much for this! it means a lot to me that you find alyse interesting enough to be curious about a pairing with a character you're not even fond of! 🥰

as for alyse being queen, i intend to make some changes with what happens in fire & blood to make sure that they have at least a thimble of marital bliss after the cavalcade of nonsense and pain that happens to both of them during the dance. they can have a taste of happiness before everything falls apart even further, lmao. as for her relationships! i adore her dynamic with aemond because it's so slow to start, but by the end, they are vicious for each other rather than with each other. what begins with terse comments and the occasional teasing ends with two people who are tethered together by how cruel the world has made them and all that they would do for each other. what helaena sees in alyse is relief. with three children born and two of them male, she doesn't have to suffer aegon's drunken interruptions anymore, and she is content with that. happy with it, even. she doesn't understand why alyse finds such joy in her brother, but she is also unwilling to ask questions. ALSO — alyse spends a lot of time with jaehaerys and jaehaerya and maelor, too, and the children seem to love her, which is another point in her favor! alyse's relationship with alicent is by far my favorite. (apart from her relationship with aegon, obviously.) she loathes feeling as if she is throwing a sweet, highborn girl to her son, but at the same time, it is a matter of weighing a single willing sacrifice against a dozen or perhaps a hundred women that aegon might abuse. alicent feels immense guilt about her part in everything and so she shows alyse the kindness that no one ever showed her while she was suffering through her marriage and all it entailed. i can't even begin to say how excited i am to write scenes between the two of them!!

[llycaons]

I maintain that wwx’s longing for LP doesn’t rely on jc nearly as much fans seem to think it does. a lot of his grief postres is of course wrapped up in nostalgia and homesickness and regrets for LP as a whole, but jyl is dead and he will never have that sibling dynamic again because jyl was required to sustain the jc and wwx relationship...and that’s tragic, that is, but the way things fell apart and the way jc and wwx’s relationship fractured before her death makes it so clear how fundamentally different their paths were always going to be, and it’s not a step forward or a ‘happy ending’ to have him return to someone with whom he’s had such a longterm and severe falling-out with. honestly jyl MADE that place his home. it was her compassion, and her love, and her generosity, her encouragement, her understanding that allowed wwx and jc to even have a relationship in the first place. and they did become close obviously but they could barely communicate with each other without her, of course the relationship didn’t survive her death

wwx clearly bitterly regrets what happened with jc and is upset that jc hates him (or so he thinks) but he also doesn’t particularly seem to miss jc in BM  the way he misses jyl or lwj which is interesting to me bc I don’t think wwx even likes him on a personal level which is another layer on complication here. there’s a lot of textual support for him loving jc and being protective of him but not really respecting jc as a leader, with a lot of subtext about him being very homesick and still caring a lot about him...which don’t contradict! they can both be true! but I still think that acting like a longterm survivor of unbelievable trauma can only truly be happy in a home he saw his entire family slaughtered in, at the side of a man who’s repeatedly assaulted him, encouraged him to kill himself, and triggered him intentionally, goes past stupid and into actively harmful, considering wwx’s lifetime of sacrifice and his willingness to be mistreated for other people’s sakes, especially the jiang’s. and it wouldn’t make him happy! it wouldn’t!

stating that LP his only ‘true’ home is...a reading that I can see people taking for sure, esp since in the drama he never really settled in CR. but stating that jc is the family he would be happiest with is so blatantly untrue like it ignores literally over half the story, essentially the entire ‘present-day’ arc and the many other people who wwx became family with, including jin ling, who is literally the last link he has to jyl and someone he clearly cares a lot about.

like. jc is the one sibling left but that doesn’t mean he’s okay to go back to, and it doesn’t mean that wwx would even be happy going back to him after developing such strong relationships with people who don’t routinely mistreat and abuse him, people he’s genuinely liked and been interested in since he was a teenager, people who he’s been through hell with and who shares his beliefs and principles. and we’ve obviously seen that wwx isn’t safe with jc, that jc isn’t in control of his anger, that he hurts wwx to personally gratify himself, that he triggers him with his phobia for no other reason than he thinks wwx deserves it. I feel like that should be clear to anyone with critical thinking skills even if they are jc fans?

I swear hardcore jc fans will just ignore the epic romance that’s literally the other most important wwx dynamic just because they don’t like it or whatever but like, not to criticize how people watch a show for fun but you cannot do a reading on wwx’s home or family or relationships supported by the text if you discount the significance of lwj to wwx or how their relationship is so utterly and intentionally different than jc’s. sometimes feels like these fans are taking the most bad-faith, shallow, face-value interpretation of  ‘oh wwx finds lwj boring and is stifled by CR’ and not bother to interrogate why maybe wwx is happy around lwj anyway and respects him and is excited to see him and brings him to important places like the shrine

I know none of this is saying anything new and I do like jc as a character, I just wish his fans would maybe use their heads and think through a complicated situation with respect to wwx further than ‘he misses this place so he will obviously be happy there with this person’ and then proceed to ignore 75% of the rest of the show that contradicts that or offers more nuance

[randomfansstuff]

100% guarantee, this is going to build up to the new characters breaking dream out. A real "Pandora didn't know evil was trapped inside the box so she opened it" type beat.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

I need this to happen BUT it's insanely frustrating to see people act like this when I get the feeling they haven't really looked at the lore??? before saying these opinions u really need to ooc catch up on what actually happened, ESPECIALLY if you're going to join.

while a lot of the reasons the dream smp got so big lie in the amazing creators and dynamics, I think we can all agree the biggest reason it got this popular is the STORYLINE. when actually joining the server you should probably INFORM YOURSELF ON IT. and I'm just really scared that some of the newer ppl aren't doing this and jus making assumptions.

which wouldn't be that bad, but the thing is what ppl who don't look into the lore dont know is how fucking heavy it and the themes represented it gets.

dream smp is fun, goofing around, spending time with friends and joking w everyone. but dream smp is also a direct story line if grief, war, abuse, mental illness and family.

the only way to actually establish yourself on the smp as a regular is to atleast SOMEWHAT balance both. and it's frustrating to see ppl who seem like they haven't looked at it make jokes about it and do very much weird lore takes </3

maybe im wrong!!! maybe they did look into the lore and know abt it and just chose this way for their character!!! i wouldn't know. it just seems that way. esp since a lot of the heavy themes are very much unresolved and on the brink of being brought up again.

[bitimdrake]

idk talia having sex with a minor esp one not in a great headspace kind of sucked

anon, you have certainly gotten me off on the wrong foot here with the passive aggressive tone but okay. I've taken a breath and come back, so let's actually talk about this, with sincerity and genuine analysis. hope i don't regret posting this one

First off, that post was really specifically about the widespread tendency of fandom to, when absolving Jason of the blame for all his villainy and murders, decide that actually Talia “made him” do it, or at the very least she was a terrible terrible influence who corrupted him. Which, as I said and stand by, is absolutely not accurate.

But as I also said in that post, Talia doing bad things in general is canon too. A lot of that is dc's extremely shitty tendency to turn their WoC into stereotyped villains, and people more eloquent than me have talked at length on that--but while I don't think many of Talia's actions in the last ~15 years have been in character, I'm not claiming that they were all totally okay actually. (Morrison's Talia, for example, is indeed a bad person, no arguments--but because of racist misogynistic writing.)

I don’t mean to imply Talia is perfect in Lost Days either. She cares about Jason and tries to nudge him to good, but, even discounting the terrible sex scene we're about to get to, she also has an ulterior motive of wanting to impress/appeal to Bruce by returning his son. That doesn’t negate her concern for Jason, but it complicates her very morality.

So getting to That Scene.

It sucks! I don't like that it happened, I don't like the way it was done, I don't like the lack of follow up, I don't like it.

However, at the risk of discourse, the reason that I dislike it isn't because it's blatant assault. On the contrary, my feelings are really messy because it's something that in real life would almost always be awful and predatory, but in this specifically written piece of fiction...isn't? Like, it's skeevy and doesn't reflect well on Talia, but it also determinedly avoids making her abusive.

Despite your claim, they are both adults. The sex is consensual in the moment. But it's a situation that raises a lot of red flags for potentially awful power dynamics, and yet...that isn't really written as an aspect of it.

First off, Jason is 100% meant to be an adult at the end of Red Hood: Lost Days when said sex occurs. By the logical timeline of the bat-family overall, he's 18. By the timeline presented in Lost Days, he's at least 18, and more likely 19 or older. Of course, through a realism lens it seems weird to count the time he was dead or comatose--but DC has kept to their pattern of declaring characters to be mentally/socially the same age as they are physically, for simplicity's sake. (see, e.g. Conner Kent and Bart Allen for other examples of this) It doesn't always make sense! But it's one of those things--like kid sidekicks being morally okay--that we are asked to suspend our disbelief about when dealing with dc comics.

Now, I am of the personal belief that “but they’re 18″ is a pretty shitty excuse and not that different from 17--but it’s about the gap, and Talia's age is even more unclear. When she was introduced, she was very close to Dick's age. But that was pre-Crisis, and may or may not be true post-Crisis. And Dick's age is unclear as well. And sometimes Talia is interpreted as Bruce's contemporary instead, since she is his love interest. And how old is Bruce anyhow?

Basically: Did Lost Days writer Winick think Jason was 18 in that scene, or more like 20? Is Talia in her mid-20s, or is she twice his age? We have no idea.

As for their headspaces--Jason is in a bad one, but I feel like you might have the wrong impression of exactly what that entails. He’s not in the middle of a breakdown when that scene happens, or desperately vulnerable for connection; he’s pretty put-together, coolly refining his plan to return to Gotham. BUT he also certainly isn’t “acting like himself” at any point during Lost Days.

And if we're talking about headspaces: Talia's has just been altered. That scene is stated to occur shortly after Ra’s’ (real) death, which means it occurs shortly after Death and the Maidens, where Talia was herself repeatedly murdered and thrown in a Lazarus Pit, and came out changed. And--though it’s annoyingly not given any editor’s note or other call out in Lost Days, so it’s easy for people who don’t know the story to miss the context--that’s not an incidental detail. Talia’s behavior is notably different in that scene (her last scene in Lost Days) than it was in all previous issues. She goes from trying her best to turn Jason away from revenge to suddenly endorsing his plan to hurt Bruce. And she goes from caring about him in a maybe-maternal way to...that.

Per an interview with Winick that I unfortunately cannot seem to find again, they're both in a bad place and reacting in unhealthy ways. And imo, that is successfully portrayed. (But don't get comfy, Winick, I'm coming back for you.) It's two people who used to be kind and are now acting in disconcertingly out of character ways, and they have very uncomfortable for the reader sex as a terrible coping mechanism and shared desire to hurt Bruce.

But most important, let's talk about the power dynamic.

Talia was a caretaker for Jason when he was catatonic. However, as soon as he gets out of the pit, he leaves the league and is taking care of himself day to day. Talia sets him up with teachers and gives him resources over Lost Days, and he wants those resources, but he doesn't actually need her. He could cut her off at any time he likes, which we know because Talia is very concerned that he will if she pushes too hard against his plans. And while there’s a maternal aspect to Talia’s feelings for him--which, yes! makes the sex real squicky!!--she’s not actually a mother to him.

Lost Days Jason is characterized as fairly cold and cut off, and doesn't seem to hold any strong emotional attachment or deference to her as a mother/caretaker. He likes her? I think? But his lack of emotional expression is a plot point in Lost Days, and he's fully independent.

Basically: their roles have been set up with Talia in the role of former caretaker and patron, but she just isn't portrayed with the power to actually coerce him, logistically or emotionally.

Which is mostly an example of fiction breaking off from probable reality. Because if some similar set up to this occurred in real life, there are very good odds that the older patron would hold significant sway over their younger trainee, and complete negate their ability to safely refuse consent. There would likely be grooming involved, a predatory intent, a coercive set up to the sex--

But none of that is present in the comic. In the characterization, in the relationship between them, or in the scene itself.

And that unlikeliness makes it icky and uncomfortable and questionable at minimum--with an argument to be made that it's outright irresponsible. Winick said the scene was supposed to be uncomfortable (and boy did he succeed on that front) but I think it was uncomfortable in a lot more ways that he intended, and there were much better and less messy ways to make his point. And ultimately it just feels like...he really should not have done this. This was a shitty thing to write.

Anyway, I would love a final answer here where I could either fully agree Talia is a terrible monster or pull out panels to prove she's innocent, but I can't do either. If she is meant to be notably older than him, sleeping with an 18-20 year old is certainly shitty, even if in this specific rare instance it's not predatory.

I guess if I have an overall thesis it is: the crafting and set up of this specific piece of fiction make Jason/Talia an icky yet fully consensual encounter, but the fact that a similar situation in real life would almost always be coercive makes the fictional scene even more uncomfortable.

[pocketramblr]

I've noticed after a while (and many posts) that you include Fuyumi-trying-not-to-resemble-her-mother in many of your tags, and I really want to hear your thoughts on that whole character dynamic. Or how you headcannon Fuyumi in general, I'd just like to know more and I haven't seen a lot of people delve into her character. It's always one of the brothers.

*vibrates at a totally normal speed* I would love to talk about Fuyumi yes

Warning: the following headcanons contain a decent bit of projecting. Is it me being a teacher? An eldest daughter? My complicated relationship with the idea of a "traditional family"? Probably all of it

First, if you don't mind a plug, I wrote a oneshot that has like 90 percent of all my fuyumi headcanons in it, The Walls Are Thin, and so. Obvious my headcanon that she's Touya's younger twin has been disproven but I like it a lot so,,, I don't care

So, there are some things about Fuyumi that didn't make it into the anime- manga!Yumi has blue eyes like Enji and Touya, and her arm was also bandaged in the flashback soccer scene when Shoto is talking about their abusive childhood which is very interesting to me.

Now, as for Fuyumi and Rei- I don't think Fuyumi hates her mother. I don't even think she hates her mother but is ok with full reconciliation like she is with her father. But I do think they have a very complicated relationship. Rei was institutionalized when Fuyumi was eleven, and from that moment on Fuyumi basically had to take over the raising of her brothers. Fuyumi lost her mother at eleven and then had to become one herself, because Rei burned her littlest brother.

Fuyumi was a child- and here's the thing. Rei's breakdown was sudden, but not surprising. She looked bad in the flashback right before it, she was begging her own mother for help. She looked sleep deprived and skittish. So even before Rei was sent away, I don't know how much she was actually mothering Fuyumi. Shoto can't really tell us that, and Fuyumi... Doesn't seem to want to think much on her past or give flashbacks to the two of them. So when Fuyumi is eleven, is ten, is nine- she's seeing this happen to her mother as a process. Rei is fading away, and Fuyumi is right at the age to actually begin to sort of understand it and be scared.

Shoto is aware that the marriage was motivated primarily to get a quirk like his. I see no reason that Fuyumi would be unaware of this ether, even when she was younger.

A lot of mental health problems can be hereditary- I remember my mother talking to me about her health history and her own mom's health history bc there's a looooot of problems there lol but Fuyumi didnt get that. She got to see her mother stuck in a hospital for a decade for a breakdown. She got to learn in school that those kinds of things can be passed down to children just like quirks. I'd bet anything that Fuyumi is terrified of having a breakdown like that. Of being like her mother- someone who cared for children that she couldn't protect from Enji for ten years or so, then being locked away when she finally snapped.

There's also her status as only daughter- besides the fact that all the wifely duties were put on her, there are still more expectations. Touya is dead, Natsuo is so ignored he didn't need to be disowned, Shoto is primed only to be one thing: the number one hero. Fuyumi, who has been mothering since she was eleven, would be looked to first for grandchildren.

This isn't to say that Enji ever expressed a single care about that- I doubt he did. But Fuyumi's grandmother was seen in some early flashbacks. I'm not sure if that was Rei or Enji's mother, but either way... Well, she'd certainly talk about how pretty she was. How sweet. How good to her brothers now that her poor mother is away. How obedient a daughter. And even if this grandmother doesn't talk about a quirk marriage explicitly, Fuyumi knows that she either raised a man who looked for one by the age of twenty, or was wholly complicit in her daughter getting one.

Even if, logically, Fuyumi knows her father wouldn't arrange her one- either because she's more useful at the house, or he doesn't pay enough attention, or he's going through a post Kamino character development- there's the fact that she also knows It's Not Impossible. She knows that if her family is as high up as it is and utterly rotten inside, there could be lots of people like that in their social circles. There could be someone who has that sort of interest in her.

Anyway, all that gives Fuyumi some very, very complicated feelings on motherhood and marriage. I don't think she wants either. Ever. She's a teacher, so she likes to work with kids- but we know a part of that is to make up for not being able to help her little brothers. She's full of guilt. I don't think she'd ever be interested in romance or anything else with a man, after seeing how it turned on and utterly broke Rei. And while I do sometimes have Fuyumi as lesbian, I also really think she might be aroace. This adds fun spice where she asks herself things like "wait is this just my trauma or my actual identity" and haha same I'm sorry I project on her a lot anyway sorry Fuyumi,,, you deserve a happy life. A normal life. But you don't get one ♥️

And the normal life thing- that's because Fuyumi is tired. She's tired of being a mother to her brothers. She's tired of having the responsibility of parenting without any of the power or control. She wants to be treated like a normal daughter and sister. And that can't happen if her brothers, esp Natsuo who she saw even more, keeps fully crediting his raising to her. Even if it's the truth, and even if Natsuo loves their mother and had no problem with her- he certainly wouldn't claim Rei influenced him more than Fuyumi did. That's why she's so desperate specifically for him to reconcile.

And she did see Natsuo more- but I think Fuyumi is also very close to Shoto. Closer than he thinks. Not just because her first two appearances are just her trying to protect Shoto by warning him when Enji is pissed off or when he will be, though that certainly helps- she's rather attuned to that stuff, and at least sorta used to Shoto sometimes listening to her about that kind of advice. But Shoto is being shaped deliberately to basically be Enji 2.0 . He has no choice but to be a hero. He has no choice but to train hard and get strong. He's supposed to beat All Might in a rivalry. All that stuff. Fuyumi, likewise, is shaped to be Rei 2.0. Take care of the children. Be soft. Not cut out for heroics. Not able to stop Enji from doing anything. Support Shoto. Cook. Clean. Take over when the housekeeper leaves, because why hire another one when there's a fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old who can do it? Don't go to anyone for help, because no one who can help you will believe you or want to help you.

Shoto is supposed to succeed where Endeavor failed against All Might.

Fuyumi is supposed to succeed where Rei failed in going against Enji.

And all this, in a house where "like Rei" is an insult that her father shouts- to have her mother's constitution is a terrible thing. It's why her first two brothers were failures. Being "like Rei" means you are weak, and useless, and going to break down, going to be sent away.

And Fuyumi is supposed to be "like Rei", but without any of those bad parts.

Anyway wow this is such a long post.

That's why I think Fuyumi has a complicated relationship with her mother and with her appearance! If Fuyumi had been a boy, there always would have been a housekeeper there. She could have been a big brother- a big brother overly relied on, yes, but not a father. Fuyumi is not a boy. She is "like Rei." She is like Rei, who poured boiling water on a child because he had red hair, and a blue eyes.

So I think Fuyumi looks in the mirror, and sees red lines in her hair, and blue eyes behind glasses that neither of her parents need. And I think she keeps her hair shorter than Rei, and doesn't let it hang long like her mother prefers. And I think Fuyumi looks in the mirror, and sees that she's not just exactly like one or the other of her parents- and I think she says "thank God"

[roguestarsailor]

You know what since we’re still in quarantine and i have nothing else better to do, i need to obsess over ACOTAR. I don't like a court of frost and starlight. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why I didn't like it. I aggressively read the book in maybe a day and I closed it feeling frustrated and annoyed. My version had A Court of Silver Flames preview so that definitely contributed to my annoyance greatly.

It's because it felt too perfect. Everything that had happened -- after the entire war was fought and won, they just go back to their normal lives? Yes there were hiccups and yes there were still aspects that made every IC character feel like their problems aren’t solved yet...but it didnt feel right. yes i enjoyed the snowball fight between the bat boys, feyre + rhys sexy time, and those little comfort moments too, the slice of life type things and seeing feyre accomplishing her goals and how hopeful the future seems BUT its too fast. the good parts of the book did not offset the bad parts of it.

Feyre literally accomplished pretty much every single goal she made back in ACOMAF just like that?? within a span of what a few months? a year?? She really came back from an entire war -- probably the first war of many since she's immortal and just like that, after her 21st birthday: she gets a whole entire estate, wants to start poppin babies, opens her art studio and starts teaching kids and then acting like she can rule an entire court?? the timeline is sooo short esp since its been brought up over and over again how everyone is literally 500 years old and have a super “messy” history and their changes seems to come super dupe slowly. but feyre, who has only lived 0.000000002% of her fae life, is out here thriving just fine???

the war devastated thousands of illyrian soldiers where its changing the politics of the illyrains and the faes, all of whom feyre has responsibilities over too as high lady. the mortal queens are still at large who left the humans on prythian to die which is why feyre was willing to go to war in the first place! what about the rest of hybern and their land and residents?? they wanted to enslave humans for social and economical reasons! then what about integrating humans w deep hatred and fear with deeply prejudice fae??? there’s also spring and summer court who are literally in ruins. thats literally so much. so idk how feyre is just chillin???? she gonna let rhys do all the hard work???

like feyre sit down. u should not be having a baby. esp since it took u literally a 700 pages to heal from those 3 months UTM. ur telling me shes gonna whole heartedly bring in a newborn in a war devastated world, with civil unrest (illyrains, other courts), with the messiness of human and fae integration, with trauma u and rhys will have to continue to overcome esp after THIS war??? even helping ur sisters w their traumas??

this is a personal opinion on this subject (and maybe my thoughts will change on this later on; opened to other thoughts) but when i read the part about how that weaver/seamstress artist who made that dark quilt that feyre loved talked about how her mate of 300 years didn’t come back from the war and her biggest regret was that she didnt have a kid to remember him by i just thought ur kid isn’t some sort of memorabilia. don’t have a kid to keep the memory of ur mate alive; have a kid cuz u want a kid purely for the sake of having a kid. ur memories and photos and shit will keep their memory alive but its not having a kid. some primitive need to keep the genes alive maybe?? but the way it was phrased and then in turn how feyre was like oh i need  a baby pronto cuz rhys might die in the next war and regret not having a kid with him didn’t sit right with me. also the other couple were together for +300 years and have a rich life together, while shes been with rhys for literally two years THATS NOTHING IN FAE YEARS. thats still the honeymoon phase and also ur problems arent even close to being over!!!

everyone was shitty to nesta. in ACOMAF, we saw how much the IC went through and still did all they could to help feyre. what made them not think nesta deserve the same welcome? nesta is mean as a defense but did no one try to figure out what would help (amren got close but shes so under developed)??? feyre knows nesta feels too much and yet she continued to be shitty. continued to flaunt her wealth, her status, her familiarity/borderline know-it-all attitude about fae/night court, her ~estate~. forcing nest to the solstice party when nesta was literally like i dont belong, im looking at everyone through a window type of thing; the fire cracking triggering her, etc. what kind of power play was that when she made nesta come to her estate, where nesta could SEE how ~homey~ and how suscessful feyre is and fully see all the lovely paintings of everyone feyre loves that explicitly exclude her to tell her to fuck off to a war camp?? bro???? cas was a dick too and elaine was rude. i think a lot of his actions were meant to make her angry since anger keeps u fighting (as was the method of rhys for feyre in ACOMAF) but what he said was stupidly shitty and i demand that he apologize properly. elaine could have done more to help her sister but whatever. mor was definitely an ass too (and im upset for how little her character growth is). 

Lucein. that man can’t catch a break tbh. im happy that hes w the band of exiles cuz he is whole heartedly accepted there. feyre was definitely an asshole to him even tho he helped as much as he could throughout the books. he tries so hard w elaine as well and it did hit my heart a bit when she was like gloves to work in my garden?? no ?? i use my bare hands see oNly aZiReL sEeS mE fOr WhO i Am. and at the same feyre is like flaunting her mate status to lucein which is mean as shit. its like this man can’t find love in prythain. then tamlin sending him his box of his things??? thats for sure brutral. tam was literally his partner through it all; savior of sorts even. no love from IC, no love from elaine, no love from feyre, no love from tamlin, no love from autumn court rejected everywhere! also HIS TRUE FATHER?? HEllo??? 

then on tamlin. i pity the guy! was i suppose to feel that way??? it felt like he is allowed to get a redemption arc and maybe i’ll even root for a redemption arc??? i was absolutely excited for freysand in ACOMAF but after ACOFAS, im like tamlin is....not completely bad??? his relationship w feyre was bad and the controlling parts were very much a no-no. i dont truly understand the dynamics of an abusive relationship but i can understand that it can be insidious and its the little things that hurt the victim. and i felt  feyre through ACOMAF and rooted for her to escape her abuser! but then it felt like i dont think he was doing any of those things out of malice. ill say tamlin is a bad leader and doesn’t know how to run a court outside of what he sees his father do. his understanding on everything is based on the traditions of the past which i think fueled most of the things he did i.e. not telling feyre she was in danger since maybe his mom didn’t do those war planning things. ACOTAR showed how he truly cared/loved and took good care of feyre and her family. he even talked about how he didn’t believe in the enslavement of humans! i think that tam wanted to preserve what he thought was the good (aka feyre + her love of painting) and get back a sense of control that he and his entire court lost while chained to amarantha. but at the same time, i think he truly thought feyre wasn’t safe. he knows rhys can crush minds and knows feyre can’t read/write so when he got that letter telling him shes safe of course hes gonna flip shit and made a deal w the devil (although those temper outbursts were DEFINITIVELY not ok!!!). he also didn’t listen and has sense of he knows best when feyre was not the type of person. but feyre destroyed his entire court. he lost all his sentries who literally went out to die for him during amarantha’s reign. he lost lucien too; his trusted right hand man. his people were cursed for 50 years and then continued to suffer UTM and was in the process of rebuilding too!  but just seeing spring court, WHO BORDERS THE HUMANS, be in ruins where his subjects left him, his people left him and hes all alone in the manson?? that was sooo sad. so im like why does what feyre did not feel satisfactory????? im mad that it didn’t feel right??? maybe there wasn’t a point where feyre talked to tamlin -- like really talked to him esp w her new found voice and power, etc. anyways, i dont hate tamlin and was like oh shit i think feyre fucked up a bit there.

rhys is a dick to nesta. which made me think, if feyre wasn’t his mate would he extend the same love and care to her???  i loved how he tried so hard to make sure feyre was ok. made sure she wasn’t breaking! all of it! but for nesta, he had the audacity to use his high lord voice and be an ass overall. even tho he can see how cas is fucken in love??? even just how he talks to cass feels off too. 

i’ll even go as far as to say because of how terrible ACOFAS was, it created this intense divide within the fandom. i remember reading the first three books and was absolutely 1) rooting for freysand  2) curious about the sister relationship and how it will be mended 3) i definitely didn’t hate nesta nor did i hate elaine either -- but i was adament about them talking it out with feyre for those tough times 4) saw a more realistic and charming healing arc 5) was rooting for feyre to be a stronger voice and grow into herself 6) love the dynamic of the inner circle + feyre

but after ACOFAS, I have this intense need to defend nesta and was super mad at how she was treated after the war and in turn a deep dislike for elaine for both her lack of agency, lack of grit that made all the other characters interesting, and lack of care for her sisters (who showed how much they would risk for her). i dont hate rhys but i was extremely not happy with him and his attitude and behavior. feyre became more arrogant and was acting like how asshole rhysand would act. like her life is perfect now and i was not rooting for her anymore. freysand didn’t feel like they have complimenting qualities that made them interesting in the first place but rather they are merging to become the same person but in a bad way. that mind reading thing was cute in the beginning but it became insufferable since all thoughts were shared so seamlessly it made reading feel weird. 

anyways those are my thoughts on ACOFAS. it was a 1/5 stars for me and im mad those events transpired. reading the other books made me excited to know what was gonna happen and i was truly ready to accept the characters as flawed and nuanced as they are. im not mad about character not liking each other but i am mad that everything felt off. ACOFAS just felt regressive in some parts and forced in other parts. i know not everything ends in a nice tied up bow but this book single handily ruined what i thought about these characters in the worse way possible. this book wasn’t suppose to wrap up all the problems that exists in the other books but it didn’t feel hopeful like i thought it would. it didn’t feel wrapped up and didn’t feel like i should be excited about the next books. theres so many missing pieces i feel that i think need explaining and at the same time, i think it introduced too many problems at once which made it feel like its jumping around everywhere. although im still excited for ACOSF because i love nesta, and nesta deserves so much better and i want to have hope that this bad ending will either make sense later on or it was just a blimp.

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone