#i get both sides of the argument!!

[emmyrosee]

I was gonna put this in a comment under your poll about bnha but I felt like it was really long☹️

I LOVE how you write Kiri and Bakugo but that being said, I don’t want you to write it if you don’t want to. Cause frankly whether I’m in the fandom or not I’ll read just about anything (I can’t handle angst😭) you write because I enjoy your writing.💕

IM GONNA KISS YOU BE READY FOR MY AFFECTION ☹️🩷

[inkskinned]

i'm still trying to piece together the truth of it. when you left, you said: feel free to spin this narrative however you want. i have no idea if you were being cruel or if you just genuinely don't remember what you've done to me.

it's hard because i'd done so much of the work for you. i had seen the parts that flaked off, the rust underneath. i started separating you into two people - the one i loved, and the one who hurt me. i had this fantasy version of you - my partner - and then i had this stranger, a third person who would show up randomly to shatter me. i am deliriously glad i'm no longer with "the stranger". i miss the gentle (unreal?) "other" you terribly.

at first, i was so strict about my boundaries. i remember telling you to get the fuck out of my house if you were going to talk to me like that. by the end: i would justify your behavior for you, accepting even your mistreatment as "my fault" in the grand scheme. i look back on the person i was before you - smart, independent, confident - and i feel a strange sense of detachment. i don't even recognize me.

even in one of our last conversations, you said: if you want a partner that always talks warmly to you, find someone else. there was a time that a comment like that would have made me leave. and instead, somehow, i just placidly accepted that kind of thing. you were literally telling me that i wasn't allowed to have a reaction to your cruelty - and i just took it, because you'd so fully turned things around on me.

when people are faced with irrationality, a rational brain tries to make sense of it. this is the trap. they're lovely in the morning, gentle and blue-eyed and sweet. like nothing even happened, they breeze around the house and kiss you on the mouth. but at night; who is that? they snap almost randomly; flying into an impotent rage about just-about-anything. it just doesn't make sense. so the problem must be me, and my brain, and how i think.

the traumatized brain just wants peace. so maybe i'm misremembering. maybe you were just having a bad day. maybe it's actually me.

you eventually would fully turn on me and start implying that i am the bad actor in our relationship. that's what happens, right? that's literally in the playbook. you went to therapy for all of a month, told her a half-truth, co-opted therapyspeak. you figured out how to reframe your actions as "seeking peace." any time i stood my ground, i was "gaslighting." when i asked you to be more gentle, you said i was "tone policing." you said, randomly, i had emotionally manipulated you - i still have no idea what that's even specifically referring to. maybe my consistent requests for calmness and empathy?

and while i literally know better, and i'm sitting here, trained by you, thinking: wait, fuck. was i actually the person you made me out to be?

and the thing that scares me is that i literally do not know if you ever actually saw what you were doing to me. when you'd tell me how you remember arguments, you'd always summarize them in a way where you come off as gentle and easy: "i was trying to set an important boundary." what had actually happened was 15 minutes of you shouting at me i know you did something shady, just admit it already. eventually you'd say my reaction to your shouting (when i finally reacted, which usually happened around hour three) was inevitably "disappointing" and "another way i'm silencing your feelings."

how many times did i ask you - beg you - to just take accountability? looking back, i don't think i ever heard you say: you're right. the way i talked to you was wrong of me.

i am trying to tie together the two people into a full version of you in my head. yes, you made my coffee and made me laugh and spent hours on the phone with me. and yes - you would scream at me until i had to run away and hide behind something.

i wish i did have a narrative i could pull out and shape to my whim. i wish i did have some semblance of reality. instead i just stand here, strange and vibrating, wondering: what the fuck just happened?

[kahluah]

*puts hand up* sorry I’m very new here what’s the context with what’s happening with the tag war??

Alright, I will give my run down, but I will not be naming any blog names on either side even if I have the info and the action was net positive. I just like to use my blog to scroll and reblog for the most part and refuse to embroil myself in the drama more than just giving my view on it as a bystander. One that definitely has an opinion on the events, but also as someone who would rather curate my own experience than fight.

So all this fighting that is going on, it used to just happen in the normal "Jiang Cheng" tag because back then there was no "canon Jiang Cheng" tag; it had not been created yet. (By that I mean it was not a tag used as a tag, Tumblr's shitty search algorithm might still show posts if one typed it in to the search bar because those posts had the words 'canon', 'Jiang', and 'Cheng' in the tags separately, but there would not be posts with "#canon Jiang Cheng" because nobody normally creates a post with a tag like that when "#Jiang Cheng" was suffice. Sometimes I see irrelevant posts in the canon Jiang Cheng tag, but the actual tag isn't on the post, the tags just happen to have all three words in them. Those I ignore because that is Tumblr's fault, not the poster.)

The fighting was between people that like the character and prefer to see the good in him and the interpretation of his character, and those that may or may not like the character (just because you like a character does not mean you need to defend their every action after all) but do not share that opinion of his character and have a more neutral or negative portrayal by contrast. The former also tended to favor or have only read the novel as it is the source material for all other adaptations.

Now things really came to a head when hate and threats were being thrown about on posts that were just quotes from the book showing the negative actions of Jiang Cheng. The people posting the quotes were basically told "if you hate the character why don't you just tag the post as anti-JC?!" but is it really right to call those anti posts when they were posting how the character acts in the source material? That is the character. That is how he acted. Look it is in the book! The character really did that! It is not somebody's negative headcanon that the character may act like that, it is something the character actually did. Personally I can not consider that as an anti character post, and neither did the people who made posts like that.

But things did get heated enough that some people finally took a step back and said "Fine. You want us to make our own space to make these posts so that you do not have to see us talk about JC this way? We will. It will be #canon Jiang Cheng and you can block it if you don't want to see the posts." Was the name picked in the spirit of schadenfreude? Very probable, but it is also not an incorrect name as the people who wanted to use it base their opinion on the novel. But the point was that the tag was created so that people now had their own space to make the posts they wanted and those that did not want to see it could block the tag. Curate your own experience; we can block tags on this site for a reason and advertising tags to block is a courtesy. (Because as said previously, the search here sucks, because the posts contain the character's name they are still likely to show up in the main tag, but block the newly created tag and you will not see those posts either way). Could the other people come into the tag in good faith and make arguments with textual support? Yeah, that was welcomed, but in the spirit of debate they should expect rebuttal. Was that what happened? No.

No instead what happened was basically this meme

They did not like the name chosen for the tag. They read the novel too and still believe that JC is good, so they should be able to use the tag too! Never mind the fact that the tag was made so they could block the posts they didn't want to see. So that they can go on with their days no longer having to deal with the people they constantly fought with. No. Instead of curating the experience of this website, they would get so hung up on the fact that there was now a tag called #canon Jiang Cheng in use that they had to use it too to defend JC from the people that post 'negative' things about him; even if it is novel text!

So while the fighting didn't stop, it did get slightly better because not everyone felt the need to jump into the new tag to defend their fave. Some people actually did curate their experience. Plus there is a block button and people do use it, so things got to a point where I would say it was relatively stable even if there was still fights here and there. (But once again I lurk, I do not participate. Things may not have been the same for more outspoken people).

But then a certain muskrat bought Twitter and a chunk of the fandom there fled here. That's when the main push to "reclaim the tag" and the new influx of people hopping into the tag to argue and defend their fave appeared. These people did not know why the tag was made, they just saw blogs that they liked telling people about the "JC-antis" that made it and how with the new people pouring into the Tumblr fandom from twitter, they had a chance to flood it and reclaim it. And since then the fighting has not really stopped.

As for what has happened in the past few days, you have JC defenders flooding the tag with fan art (not canon), screen caps from CLQ (not canon), and screenshots of a sentence or two from the novel (canon, but usually out of context or lacking additional lines that go on to rebut what was previously said) in the tag and the people who made the tag for a specific purpose getting mad about the spam. (I block so I have no clue how big the influx was or whatever but there was definitely like at least 3 new people I had to block). So when they made posts venting the anger, you got JC defenders coming back to them and going "But I never sent any hate or harassment! I just used the tag to talk about the canon character!" And perhaps they didn't, but these people in their defense always ignore and never respond to the question of why they are in the tag instead of blocking it because that is what the tag was made for. Instead they come back with "Well if you want to talk about JC that way, why don't you post in the anti tag or make your own tag!"... Remember that meme picture I used above. Yup.

The tag war began because people did not like negative posts about JC in the main character tag for JC. When told to use the anti tag or make a new tag, a new tag was made, but instead of curating the experience the stans of JC got so tilted at the name of the tag that they decided that they would come into the tag and continue the fight instead of just blocking it. Twitter fallout made the fighting worse. And now we have come full circle to the JC stans once again telling people to just use the anti tag or make their own tag.

[blueflyingturtleontheway]

I found some old posts wondering about why in the entirety of EoA only Elena and Isa have double surnames and I just wanted to share my headcanon that it might've been something that was eradicated during Shuriki's rule

[racerback-parallels]

okay i know i'm not a comics expert but this strikes me as such a bizarre characterization of clark. like. you can't do more because you're not from here? what? do you also think that people who are adopted from overseas shouldn't have citizenship? and you're not even gonna talk about abuse of superpowers? what are we doing

[operationslipperypuppet]

the way i was like “fucking finally” when suvi started yelling at ame…

[ssruis]

Nene getting angrier and angrier explaining that there are Pokémon who can harness power equivalent to a nuclear bomb and there’s a Pokémon that is literally god and a Pokémon who embodies death and and and vs an increasingly defensive tsukasa who refuses to back down and just keeps going “yeah but it’s a lot of lions”

[wreckedhoney]

i don't know what flavor of obidala lucas had in mind when he was considering it and i know there are different vibes to go for. but i adore an obidala that's treated as a narrative foil to what we have in canon - not just in regards to anidala but towards what makes us call these films the "skywalker saga" as a whole.

obidala would be coming from a story that has anakin as a central point for other characters' motivations and conflicts - and even interrelations with each other outside of him. ahsoka is viewed as anakin's padawan, ahsoka knows padmé as anakin's love interest, and both of them view obi-wan as anakin's mentor and friend. obi-wan and padmé begin aotc as friends or having the potential to be friends even when in conflict, but in short time that deflates. they regard each other through anakin; obi-wan knows anakin adores her, padmé knows anakin admires & resents him, and their perception of the other is clouded through that filter, even if they both know it's not the whole picture, and it isn't even accurate.

but aotc padmé is still young and brasher, and obi-wan hasn't settled into a more stable relationship with anakin yet - and thus, people he knows primarily through anakin. time passes and they develop. obi-wan struggles in the clone wars but is more comfortable and mellow in his own skin. padmé's competency grows but she alienates herself from most of her friends and community outside work to keep her marriage a secret, to keep the tusken massacre a secret, because love is worth it. she is still in the trenches of clinging to her ties with anakin for years.

what lucas and tcw wanted to convey without having to hammer it in is that they're in love, they're friends, the love is there but that doesn't make the situation right, and not just because it was a lapse in judgement to dive into this attachment in the first place, but more so because after some years' long opportunity to rectify it, they still don't. they choose to stay despite the strain of living against codes and principles, despite never learning to communicate through conflict past someone-is-right-and-the-other-was-wrong, or unwittingly enabling distance between themselves and the rest of their loved ones. meanwhile, what does obi-wan look like to padmé while she goes through all this?

a foil. obi-wan adores anakin to moments of blindness, but she's yet to see him do any of the things padmé's felt the need to in order for anakin to safely stay. obi-wan reprimands anakin openly, he does not choose him or any individual over "order" as an entity - be it the council, the jedi order, the republic, democracy. through his overall canon narrative, he does not choose to lose himself or his principles for anyone, including anakin, even if it hurts him or others, even if it hurts himself. he is still with anakin without the same trappings of attachments that the marriage has - he is with anakin, and the jedi order, and the council; he still has his community and whole social sphere. and if ever padmé gradually came to perceive obi-wan as this alternative to how she and anakin have loved, wouldn't she start to question why she chose to compromise herself all this time when she now recognizes someone who doesn't, and he is still loved?

and i feel like it would start with some mild resentment, at least - less at any one person and more at the situation, but she can't help but aim some of it at obi-wan just for being the one to lead her to see, for being a contrast. but it wouldn't take long for admiration to overshadow it, and for the friendship that they have, however tepid it's been, to serve as an open door for padmé to eventually approach him - for guidance, or comfort, even if engaging more closely with him starts with just curiosity at first. she's begun to see him as obi-wan kenobi, and he sees her as padmé amidala naberrie, without the "anakin's" attached. and it's at this point, perhaps regardless if an outright romance blooms, that obidala becomes some narrative foil; a strong relationship between them without or outside of anakin is an inherent defiance to an anakin-centric narrative and storyline. with romance in mind in the backdrop of a hidden marriage, it can become some tainted glimpse of adoration without the star wars concept of attachment. does an obidala romance have to happen for both characters to gain this sort of independence and clarity? no, but it's part of what the pair on their own could be indicative of, almost symbolic of, if taken in this direction.

it rocks the boat of the narrative, it creates contrast and encourages themes of growth even and especially when that growth is painful, it's based on support and admiration and trust even through the bitterness and betrayal. there's potential for it to be both tainted and genuinely healing. and i am here for it, i'm here for this flavor of obidala, star wars' little ship-that-never-was impacting the tone of the saga. obidala is good and This Flavor of obidala can be so, so good.

[aropride]

the "nonconsensual drug use" discourse is so irritating Like as someone who has kind of been actually non-consensually-drug-use-d Someone smoking around you-- while occasionally annoying or actively harmful (specifically for people with like. medical issues.)-- is not "forcing nonconsensual drug use" on you oh my god

[sonnycrsi]

Every time there are some discourses on who’s side is correct on any slight problem TK and Carlos have, I always come and read this.

They’re both imperfect people with different trauma and coping methods but they do love each other so much to work on being better and be together

[dreamspring]

sigh. people putting oversimplified batman no kill rule discourse on the dash again...

[stardustasincocaine]

Vote and I’ll draw some really fucked up porn

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The whole discourse about the privacy/secrecy/support thing has been sitting with me for a few days (I mean other than it always does to a certain degree) thanks to all the excellent discussion happening and I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said a million times before, but I think what we're seeing and what we're going to learn (e.g. from TTPD) is that it wasn't just the support issue, but how it was shown/handled.

We've all gone out of our way to show that introversion =/= lack of support. Someone can be shy, reserved, etc. and still show up for their partner, whether in public or at home. To chalk any of the differences up to the clash between introversion and extroversion is unfair to folks who count themselves among either tbh.

@thisisctrying said something the other day that hit the nail on the head about how if that support had been offered in private, there very well may not have been a Joever to begin with, or at least not at this point in time. (Sorry for loosely paraphrasing, and for namedropping you! Long time listener, first time poster.)

If this were a case where the "shy" partner said, "I am really uncomfortable with the spotlight personally and do not want to court it, but I will support you in your ambitions and offer you whatever you need to make them happen and make the glare bearable," I suspect that would have gone a long way to making Taylor feel seen and comfortable in pursuing her goals in the way that she now has. Again, that might have been more akin to the balance that seemed to have been struck around 2019 from what we can see, but even speaking in a general sense, there are lots of couples out there, celebrity or not, that have similar approaches where there are highly driven people and busy careers involved.

(A famous example being Dolly Parton's marriage. Tbh I know next to nothing about her and Carl, but she's always heralded as an example in this regard, because her husband is famously uncomfortable with the spotlight and hasn't accompanied her to public events in decades, but she's said that she never minded that because that was always work to her, and what was important was that he supported her in pursuing all her career goals and basically ensured she had a place to call home to return to at the end of the day.)

We're kind of in a brave new world with her current relationship because it felt like, at least at the start, we were maybe watching her figure out her boundaries in real time as to what she was comfortable with or not and adjust accordingly. Like so many have said, I fully believe the extreme privacy thing was initially driven by herself and her experiences in 2016, and she needed that quiet time to recover from all of the things and figure out how to exist in the world again.

Stating the obvious, it seemed like eventually privacy was equated with secrecy, turning the relationship and the celebrity into the elephant in the room and something to never be spoken of to the outside world. People are free to choose whatever works best for themselves and their relationships, and for some the separate public lives might work, but the “kept me like a secret but I kept you like an oath” theme is all over her work and it’s clear that it’s a sore spot for her, because she’s been made to feel shame just for the life she leads so many times in the past.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s pretty obvious something Not Great was happening behind the scenes, which didn’t just amount to “she wanted to be a public celebrity and he wanted to be a private hermit.” (Also, in case anyone forgot, this is a person who also chose a public-facing career who also has to engage in press for it, but I digress.) As her career reached new heights post-folklore, if she had the support at home to do all the things without judgment and with encouragement, and in turn offer the same support to her partner, she may have very well lived just fine with that, not unlike Dolly Parton’s case.

By reading between the lines in all the press since, as well as comments on tour and general ~vibes~ with TTPD teasers, it seems like one of the issues was that that was likely not the case. There was all the stuff that we saw — the reticence to acknowledge each other in the media (particularly on one side), the lack of public support even at events at which they were both in attendance for their respective jobs, the great lengths they went to not to be photographed together at events they attended yet no problem taking pictures with other friends and coworkers, the jobs that separated them, the withdrawing from the public even for work accomplishments, etc. Which could all be manageable if a couple chooses to do so together and are not inherently a sign of trouble in themselves.

But what we’re seeing now I think is a reflection of the things we weren’t seeing then, and it seems to indicate some very deep hurt. (I know, call me Captain Obvious.) And like so many have been saying, it feels likely that that part of that hurt is rooted in that very lack of private support where a person would expect it from their partner. Obviously as a Taylor fan blog I’m going to be more inclined to understand her side of a story, but tbh, it’s also because… this is sooooooo common, and something I’ve experienced in my friend group. (@taylortruther is right when she says most breakups are the same one way or another lol.)

One partner is resentful of the other’s success, or resentful that the other’s priorities begin to evolve as new experiences unlock new goals, or feels the other’s ambitions are not worthy of pursuit, and coupled with perhaps their own struggles in the same domain, it’s easy to see where that can chip away at the other partner’s morale and faith in the relationship. I know I’m just speculating here, but I also don’t think it’s totally unfounded. (Again, because a) I’m picking up what she’s putting down and b) it happens to sooooooo many women even among us dull normals.)

With all the pointed mentions about how much Taylor feels supported in her current relationship and how she in turn loves to offer the same show of support to not only her partner but other loved ones, how she’s stepped out more in the last year to a whole host of events, how she’s mentioned feeling like she locked herself away for years and she’s just proud of her partner and happy she can show up for him even if the chaos around it is unsettling, it paints a picture of what perhaps was happening before last year.

To feel like you’re all alone in carrying the weight of the relationship (or burden of it), of twisting yourself into knots to accommodate the other person’s boundaries (or insecurities) but not feeling reciprocity for your own has to be so painful. (The idea that it may have been even darker and to have a partner not only be unreceptive to your own needs but even perhaps resentful/dismissive/belittling of them is even more painful to think of. I guess we’ll find out when TTPD comes out if that was the case, too.)

At a certain point, that lack of acknowledgement will force your hand to be able to reclaim yourself. And it feels like the further removed Taylor in particular is from it, the more she moves from being sad about the life she felt she gave up by leaving, to angry at the life she felt she was giving up by staying. Especially being in a relationship now where it seems like everything comes much easier, where she can be open about the person she’s with and show up for them, all the stuff that seemed as challenging as climbing Mount Everest in her past is nothing more than a molehill at best in her current life.

TL;DR: I don’t think it’s privacy that inherently spells doom for a celebrity relationship like this; it’s the mutual support and respect that does. If Taylor had felt that in the later years of her previous relationship, I think we could be seeing a different, though not necessarily unfulfilled, person right now in 2024, who’d be happy on tour but whose personal life would look a little different. But it seems like by losing that support she lost parts of herself, and we’ve seen her reclaim that in spades in the last year, and perhaps to degrees she didn’t even realize she could from before all the Bad Stuff started happening in her young adulthood.

I know this was extremely long-winded and unnecessary, especially about total strangers we only know through scraps fed through the media, but I just always bristle at this idea that issues like these boil down to “personality differences,” as though one person wants to live in a city and the other on a remote island, or some shit like that. The whole support (and gender tbh) issue is one that’s just very close to my heart because again, I have seen it play out with so many of my friends in long term relationships and marriages and I just think people in relationships (and women in particular in some circles) deserve better than to feel like they’re being, well, tolerated.

[orphiicheartd]

Self-indulgent notion, but I love the idea of Jamil and Kalim choosing to just. Duke it out whenever they have a more serious fight, as of Book 7

[alpanmix]

I keep thinking about bodyguard Mashita trying to talk to Masamune, only for him to be intimidated by Mashita's social skills (they both have non existent social skills). Masamune trying to run away cuz he doesn't like talking to people but being middly intruigued by mr policeman

In my headcanon, Masamune's awkwardness is to either outright ignore or try his best to end the convo as soon as possible, vs Yashiki's willingness to try and continue any conversation to be polite but also slowly try to steer it to ending as soon as possible (and failing, goddamnit Yashiki).

Tfw when you're trying your best to avoid everyone by looking busy and sticking close to your sister, but you keep stealing glances at the hot mr policeman across the room (who is also stealing glances at you.)

But oh my god when he's approached by Mr. Policeman he would definitely absolutely try to slowly move away from the hall into a more secluded part or even outside to the gardens (Where gasp! mr policeman can find him easily and talk to him by his lonesome oh no)

[anotherhumanperson]

What is your hottest take? Mine is that AI is bad sometimes and good sometimes. Like

For Creating things like Art and Books: Bad

For Detecting Cancer: Good

For Denying healthcare: Bad

For Chatting for Funzies: Okay, but still not great for the environment, so. Debatable. Bood? Gad?

For tech support or tutorials: Bad. It sucks at this. Please just get people to do it

For driving Vehicles: There have been more human-driven cars in wrecks than AI-driven ones. This is also true for planes, boats, tricycles, and horses. However, AI is infamously bad at navigating via Dyson sphere,and is thus disqualified from this category, as Dyson Spheres are integral parts of the locomotion industry.