#i just. bro. this is a big part of why i identify so strongly with viktor as a character because it's so much about his loneliness

[asgardian--angels]

there's meta to be had about just how much of viktor's arc is about loneliness and the blatant visuals they use in his evolution about metamorphosis, butterflies, cocoons, in utero, etc, as he molts from a soft, vulnerable larva who keeps getting hurt in his bids for love and acceptance, into a hardened final form complete with an exoskeleton acting as both physical and emotional armor. a shield keeping his emotions in and the pain of loneliness and rejection out, until it's cracked and his humanity is forcefully exposed. like. sorry if it's just the entomologist in me but this was blatantly obvious the very first time i watched the show and I've been continually surprised that no one's really pointed this out. as a certified lonely person it struck such a deep cord with me, when he accepted his fate, his path ahead, to be one he'd have to walk alone, finally putting up that last seemingly impenetrable wall around his soft parts (but keeping the blanket, this signal that he never asked for this, and that he's not unreachable). So much of his s2 arc centered around not just his desire to right his wrongs and help the world, but to connect with others and not feel alone, both of which got twisted by the hexcore. His attempt to create a hivemind where no one would ever suffer loneliness or rejection or loss, and he would feel their souls with him as well (even though that was an illusion in the end, he truly believed it). The whole 'I now speak with all their voices' but he's just floating in an empty space. And for the consequence of the glorious evolution to be eternal solitude, it just drives home how that's the worst possible fate imaginable for Viktor.

[maxwell-grant]

What’s the difference between a pulp hero and a super hero?

There is a common sentiment when discussing pulp heroes, when compared to superheroes, that positions the two as if they were separate by entire eras, with pulp heroes being as distinct from the superheroes as the dinosaurs are to mankind. But then again, the dinosaurs never really went away, did they? 

Oh sure, they endured a great extinction, they downsized and ceded their thrones to the tiny little rats that scurried in their shadow, who then grew to become just as big, and then even bigger, but they never went away. They simply adapted into new forms and formed new ecosystems. We call them birds now.

The gap between Superman and The Shadow is merely 6 years, hardly much of a generation. There are those that argue that the Marvel and DC universes still have pulp heroes, that Batman is (or was) one, that characters like The Question and Moon Knight carry on the tradition. We have characters like Hellboy, Grendel, Tom Strong and Zack Overkill as original, modern examples of pulp characters, strongly identified as such. Venture Bros had in 2016 the best modern take on the Green Hornet. Lavender Jack is still going strong. So the idea that pulp heroes are defined solely by being old and outdated isn’t exactly true, when clearly there’s still enough gas in the tank centuries later for stories with them to be told.

Is there any meaningful distinction between pulp heroes and superheroes? If not, can we identify one?

Costume is definitely a big part of it, as Grant Morrison famously argued in his own summation. Of what he considers the big difference between the two: 

“What makes the superhero more current is the performance aspect. That's what The Shadow and those other guys don't really have. Their costumes are not bright, and they don't have their initials on their chest, and everything isn't out front and popping like the superheroes. I think we can relate to that about them because in the world we live in, everyone has a constant need to be a star. I think superheroes are keyed into that parallelism. They're performers. They're rock stars, and they always have been.

And he’s right, to an extent. It’s definitely tied into the central differences between The Shadow and Batman, as I’ve elaborated. While The Shadow was far, far from the only type of pulp hero, the superhero’s costume has long been defined as THE thing that sets it apart from every other type of fictional character. At least, when it comes to American superheroes. 

Because the “criteria” for superheroes is nowhere near as set in stone as some would like to believe. Our basic definition of superheroes is based around comparisons and contrasts to Superman and Batman, and how they fit into what we call “the superhero genre”. The existence of a superhero genre is, in and of itself, debatable, and any working definition for superheroes is inevitably going to have too many exceptions. 

Superheroes are not defined by settings, like cowboys or spacemen, or their profession, like detectives. They can’t be defined by superpowers (Batman), a mission statement, having secret identities (Fantastic Four, Tony Stark), being good people, or good at their jobs. The costume, the closest there is to a true, defining convention, still has a considerable share of exceptions like Jack Knight’s Starman, a great deal of the X-Men who do not wear uniforms, or most superheroes created outside the US. The most basic definition of superhero is of comic book characters with iconic costumes and enhanced abilities who fight villains in shared superhero universes, but even that falls short of exceptions by including characters who are not superheroes (John Constantine and other Vertigo characters, Jonah Hex, the Punisher). Some people would call Goku or Harry Potter or Lucky Luke or Monica’s Gang superheroes, Donald Duck has literally been one. “Character with a distinctive design and unusual talents who fights evil” includes virtually every fictional hero that’s ever achieved a modicum of popularity in a visual medium.

Even telling stories with super characters doesn’t mean you’re going to be writing a superhero story (Joker). Superheroes are not defined by settings and genres, but they can inhabit just about any of them you can imagine. Horror, westerns, gritty crime drama, historical reconstruction, romance, space adventure, war stories, surrealism stories. As Morrison put it, they aren’t so much a genre as they are “a special chilli pepper-like ingredient designed to energize other genres”, part of the reason why they colonized the entire blockbuster landscape.

Aviation became a thing in the war years, so they started producing en masse aviation pulps as a subgenre. Zeppelins became popular, so they had a short-lived zeppelin subgenre. Celebrities starred in their own magazines. The American pulps were different from the German pulps, or the Italian pulps, or the Canadian pulps. In China, wuxia arose at a similar time period and with similar themes and distribution. In Brazil, we have “folhetos”, short, poetic, extremely cheap prose often written about romantic heroes and “cangaçeiros”, the closest local equivalent to the American cowboys. In Japan, “light novels” began life as pulp fiction, distributed in exactly the same format and literally sold as such. Pulp fiction has long outlived any and all attempts to define it as 30s literary fiction only.

Likewise, “pulp” and “pulp heroes” are terms employed very, very loosely. Characters like The Shadow and Doc Savage arrived quite late in the history of pulp fiction. You had characters like Jimmie Dale, Bulldog Drummond, Tarzan, Conan, a billion non-descript trenchcoat guys, and before those the likes of Nick Carter and Sexton Blake, dime novel detectives who made the jump to pulp. You had your hero pulps, villain pulps, adventure pulps, romance pulps, horror pulps, weird menace pulps. Science fiction, planetary romance, roman-era adventures, lost race adventures, anything that publishers could sell was turned into pulp stories starring, what else, pulp heroes. 

How do you make sense of it all?

The main difference to consider is the mediums they were made for. 

Pulp heroes were made for literature, superheroes were made for comic books.

Superheroes NEED to pop out visually, to have bold and flashy and striking designs, because comic books are visual stories first and foremost, who live and die on having attractive, catching character designs and the promise of an entertaining story with them. Pulp heroes, in turn, can often just be ordinary dudes and dudettes and anything in between in trenchcoats or evening wear or furry underwear, or masters of disguise rarely identifiable, because the only thing that needs to visually striking at first glance in a pulp magazine is the cover, so your imagination can get ready to do the rest. Smoking guns, bloody daggers, a romantic embrace, monsters hunched over ladies in peril, incendiary escapes. The characters can look like and be literally anything.

Comic books are a sequential art form where art and writing come together to tell a story, and every illustration must serve the story and vice-versa. It needs to give you an incentive to keep being visually invested in whatever’s going on. Pulp literature stays dead on the page unless animated by your expectations; you may have the illusion of submitting to an experience, but really it’s you expending your imagination to otherwise inert signals. You have to provide the colors and flashy sequences and great meaning yourself, and as a trade, you get much more text to work with in novels than you do in comic books, where the dialogue and narration are fundamentally secondary to the visual, whether it’s a superhero punching stars or a monster covered in blood.

Each art form has its strengths and weaknesses, of course, which are only accentuated when each tries to be of a different kind. There's been pulp heroes that tried making the jump to comics, and comic heroes that made the jump to literature. There’s good, even great examples, of both, but even at their best, there's always some incongruity, because that's not the medium these characters were made for. 

Superheroes are characters defined by being extraordinary. The pulp heroes are too, in many cases, distinguished from their literary antecessors because they were too uncanny and weird, a middleground between the folklore/fairy tale heroes and the grounded detective and adventure characters such as Sherlock, and the later far out superheroes. But they don’t necessarily have to be extraordinary. Sometimes they can very well just be completely ordinary characters, caught in bizarre circumstances and managing them as best they can, or simply using skills available to anyone who puts in effort to do good. Often enough the extraordinary comes in the form of a bizarre villain, or a tangled conspiracy, a monster from outside the world, a unique time period. The extraordinary is there, but it doesn’t have to be in the hero. 

That is, I’d argue, the other big fundamental difference between the two. "Superhero” is a name we use to define a type of character who fits an extraordinary mold, a Super Hero. It’s a genre, it can be every genre, it’s a shared universe and a stand-alone epic. There are guidelines, structures at work here. Grids, page count, illustrators. The Big Two and their domain over the concept. Academic usage of the term, standards that rule the “genre”, when it is defined as a genre. Malleable and overpowering and adaptable and timeless as the superhero may be, it’s still bound by a certain set of rules and trends.

The term “pulp hero” is a term that we use to label just about any character that happens to star in something we recognize as “pulp fiction”, even if it isn’t literally written in pulp, even if it’s decades later. It’s a “metaphor with no brakes in it”. Superheroes can be pulp heroes. The most powerless, unlucky, homeless bum can be a pulp hero, there were entire subgenres of pulp stories based on homeless protagonists or talltale stories told in bars. The cruelest villain can be a pulp hero. Boris Karloff about to stab you with a knife named Ike IS a pulp hero, and so is a space slug on a warpath (look up what happened when Lovecraft and R.E Howard collaborated).

As much as I may dislike the idea of pulp heroes largely only existing in the shadow of superheroes nowadays...that is kinda appropriate, isn’t it? Of course they are going to live and make their homes in the place where the sun doesn’t shine. Where Superman and co would never go to. 

Of course the 90s reboots of these characters failed. Because they tried turning these characters into superheroes, and they are not superheroes. They can visit those world, but they don’t belong in them, or anywhere else. They live in places where the light doesn’t touch, worlds much bigger and darker and more vast than you’d ever think at first glance, worlds that we still haven’t fully discovered (over 38% of American pulps no longer exist, 14% survive in less than five scattered copies, to say nothing of all pulps and pulp heroes outside of America). Not lesser, not gone, despite having every reason to. Just different, reborn time and time again. The shadow opposites.

In short: One is represented by Superman. The other is represented by The Shadow. There are worlds far beyond those two, but when you think of the concepts, those are the ones that things always seem to come back to.

[oldstriderbot9000]

HS^2/Epilogues accidentally did Ult Dirk kind of right.

This is gonna be a long one. 

So I figure I will make this, whether it gets shared around or not. I need to get it out of my system and on Tumblr. 

Lets look at what an Ultimate self is, in essence.

An Ultimate self is not the combination of every possible version of a person. So humanstuck Dirks aren’t going to be part of the Ultimate Dirk we are seeing in the comic. 

An Ultimate self is the combination of every possible version of a person in a certain universe. Ultimate Dirk is both a special case due to how Homestuck had 4 universes linked together, but also because of how his aspect includes all splinters of himself. For normal Ultimate selves I will use Rose and Dave rather than Dirk.

You have a start point, the origin point of the alpha timeline you could say, and every moment there are new branches of timelines and possibilities. From there, you have successful timelines and doomed timeline. An ultimate self will combine all of these. All version of Dave will include all timelines from that base universe. Rose as well, all versions from that base universe.

Perhaps there are timelines that diverge from the alpha with, say, a less abusive Bro, or a non alcoholic Mom Lalonde. It will also include timelines that maybe Rose was alcoholic before the game began, or even one’s where Dave may have had an even worse childhood. They all are diverging timelines from the same base. So Davebot and Rosebot both have all of those possible timelines in their heads and memories. 

Luckily due to their non organic makeup, it is easier for them to sort through all of it, without the biological aspect of emotions to get in the way. If they did have biological bodies, I have no doubt the process would leave them split and having very intense internal struggles. I know Dave’s who diverged from canon because they went apeshit and killed Bro. Davebot has those timelines in his head supposedly.

It is a internal war of all kinds of morals and stand points. Most Dave’s are pretty straightforward, but there are too many possibilities. 

The same can be said of Rose.

However, if we look at Dirk, he is a special case. 

I am not going to diagnose Dirk any mental ilnesses. But I will pull from both people I know and my own research/experience. 

Ultimate Dirk is the combination of not only all of his possible timelines from the base alpha timeline, but also all of his Splinters. One such splinter affects one of his main Splinters, and leads to severe issues. 

I am talking about Lil Cal. Yes, he counts as a splinter. ARquiusprite, Caliborn, and a portion of Gamzee were all put into the Lil Cal puppet. And considering how Caliborn has experience eating the soul/dominating the soul of others who inhabit the same body, I have no doubt he did as such in Lil Cal. But it was a mix then. And Lil Cal went on to affect Bro, manipulating his mind and making him even more fucked up. Instilling extremely Toxic Masculinity, Misogynistic behavior, etc into Bro over the years. Caliborn’s influence is big here, considering his own misogyny and toxic masculinity ideology. 

Therefore, all Bro’s that were affected by Lil Cal are included in Ult Dirk, but so are all those Lil Cals. 

So now we have an idea as to why he may behave so… well. Shitily. It isn’t an excuse, but a possible explanation. His behavior is vile. So now we look at Dirk in canon that we have seen. 

Dirk was so lonely he created a copy of his own mind, and it just spat his deepest fears in his face. I think Hal actually had a hand in Dirk’s self loathing, what with “being the same person.” Dirk already hates himself, and he hates his splinters as well. But he doesn’t hate himself for “internalized homophobia”. Nope. He is very accepting of who he is, and accepts it. The only thing is, he knows who he is and accepts it, and he hates who he is. Or rather who he sees himself as. 

So you put someone who hates himself, and combine him with all of his worse selves who also have a core of self loathing, and you get someone who truly loathes himself, and has an internal battle, with biology adding onto it, against himself. Because for all the bad versions, there are just as many good ones. But part of Dirk is self loathing. It’s almost at the core of who he is. Not to say he can’t heal and grow, I know he can. 

But we know Dirk wants the best for his friends, his idea of how to give that to them is somewhat flawed already when he is a kid, and he trie to move past it as an adult, but a lot of who he is is the puppet master. 

I believe the Homestuck^2 and Epilogue writers didn’t fully grasp this, in fact I think they accidentally portrayed him somewhat correct. Ultimate Dirk is an idiot who makes himself the bad guy to ensure his friends have a chance to be happy. Yes, he treated Jake and the others horribly. No doubt. That’s where they were wrong with him. See, it should be about a 50/50 balance of “bad” and “good”. He would still have left Jake, but perhaps a bit softer, with the idea of protecting everyone from who he is now. Because Dirk is fucking stupid and like that™. 

But yes, he is a piece of fucking shit in the epilogues and HS^2, so they fucked up there. But they kind of accidentally showed him properly. Ultimate selves are also really fucking messy. 

Pretty sure Hussie also just wanted another way to go further than God Tier too. So. Meh.

If you read all of this, thanks. I know it’s somewhat scattered, but I have a lot of thoughts on it as a whole. Not to mention that as someone who struggles with a God Complex, and with friends who suffer from Bipolar, BPD, and others who identify really strongly with Dirk and Ult Dirk, he just both frustrates me because I know he isn’t quite right, and also validates how I feel. But I have the brain to not go apeshit like him.

[streets-in-paradise]

Fictional Sibling relationships i live for

I had been thinking about this topic lately and decided i would like to make a post about it because it is a very fun and interesting one for me. I had mentioned a few times here that in terms of fandom involvement i am more invested in family and frienships than in shippings, particulary i have a fixation with strong sibling bonds or sibling like friendships. I think it must be because i have a strong bond with my younger sister, i identify with that and that’s why i tend to get more involved and interested in this sort of character interactions. 

I will keep this just in movies, movie adaptations of books and tv shows because i don’t want it to be super long but still want to talk. In movie adaptations i will try to stay in movie’s territory as much as i can, if i add commentary on the book versions this would never end but i may slip a bit towards it because i can’t help it. 

As always, i make the disclaimer over the images i will use here, they belong to the sites where i found them.  

Sorry for my pathetic language skills in english. 

Note: this got so long that i will probably make a second part for more characters i coulnd’t include 

Boromir and Faramir in lotr 

Lotr is full of great material for people who, like me, obsess over families. Frodo and Bilbo, Merry and Pippin, Elrond and Arwen, Theoden ,Eowyn and Eomer are other great examples of family relationships i’m interested on from here ( i pretty much love to overthink stuff about almost all the lotr family relationships). I choose to talk about this bros because they have a particular place in my heart. How many times we had seen the common trope of a royal or noble family where the father is a dick who gives all his love and attention to the older brother, neglects the little one causing him to grow up resentfull and ending up as a villian while dad’s favourite is the hero of the tale? Not this time, and it is so refreshing. 

Boromir and Faramir choose each other over their father’s bullshit, you can see it in the lovely deleted scene the gif up here comes from. When Denethor shows up they are both annoyed, when he is mean to Faramir Boromir calls him out and tries so hard to make him show some appreciation for his youngest son. it is clear that, in this version, Boromir is more family to Faramir than his father ever was. I love how much they care for each other, how they pass beyond the differences. Boromir is a super amazing big bro, i love how he protects Faramir and is there for him instead of letting his father’s praise get in between. I could talk for hours about this two because i love them so much. I’m doing a hard effort in stopping myself from throwing a whole set of headcanons i have for them so i will stop now before i get too excited. 

Fili and Kili in The Hobbit

Staying in Middle Earth for one more mention i had to talk about this two. Being fully honest, the movies broke my heart because they took the exact opposite way i would had wished for. When they were introduced In An Unexpected Journey this two adorable brothers were one of my favourite aspects of it because i loved their Merry and Pippin like dumb chaotic energy. One of my biggest complains with the Hobbit adaptation is to have shifted the narrative of the strongly family focused story arc of the Line of Durin. Kili’s romance with Tauriel shifted the focus and, in my particular perspective, i hated that because i was already super involved in the family story. Besides from the “I belong with my brother”  iconic line we don’t see much more of Fili and Kili’s bond after the introduction of Tauriel. In fact, Fili loses a lot of his initial screentime in Desolation of Smaug and Battle of the Five Armies.

 I love this two, the relationship with their uncle as it was introduced in the first film and i would had loved to see more of their family dinamic explored. One of my biggest complains, besides from the change of focus on their supposed ending, is that i’m convinced that they should had entered the mountain with the rest of the company. It is such an important moment they would probably waited for since they were children, is the legacy of their family. In short terms, i love them and i would had loved to keep seeing future developments of the Line of Durin story they had in AUJ. 

Hector and Paris in Troy 

This two represent the opposite case. The relationship they have in this movie is very different from the source material but i love the great development it has here. It is outstanding to see the importance the sibling bond has in a movie that is supposed to be about a war caused by a romantic passion. 

The sons of King Priam are absolute opposites. Hector is the embodiment of a true hero, a Steve Rogers of ancient times. His strong caring nature and will to protect everyone reminds me of Boromir as well. Unlike Faramir,Paris is a freaking mess. He is the careless, adventurous and reckless little brother Hector ends up protecting every single time he gets into trouble. I had stated before that i think Paris is a selfish prick but i think that is a slight confussion of mine with the original. This Paris is more a reckless dumbass and, unlike Iliad Paris, his arc in the movie it’s a bit more simpathetic. In this version Helen is trapped in a loveless marriage to an old prick who treats her like trash (in the director’s cut Menelaus jokes about how he only cares for his wife for breeding purposes on a conversation with Hector). I can understand at some point that, if he trully fell in love with her, he felt horrible for letting her stay there as a prisoner of her husband. Going back to the my focus for this talk, i like that the movie had decided to make this two close brothers who actually care for each other despite being absolute opposites instead of two guys who barely know each other, are barely aware of being brothers and share only hatefull interactions. 

Hector’s protectiveness over Paris warms my heart. He had threated him a few times ( director’s cut has the “ i will rip off your pretty face from your pretty skull” excharge. I love that scene), he gets furious at him for his foolishness, they argue but when the time comes he always chooses to protect him. Honestly, that’s such a big bro thing, i can’t help to feel identified. The weight that this relationship has in the development of the story is a surprising thing and it makes everything more tragic. Paris being the killer of Achilles has a more significant meaning because, now it’s not just the irony of the weakest character killing the strongest. Paris is aware that he owns the memory of his fallen brother so much, he wants revenge. Hector was there for him all his life, the least he can do for him is to kill his killer and avenge his death. Briseis begs him to stop but he can’t let himself do that, he owns it to Hector and that debt is bigger than anything. 

I will not delay this any longer, the family relationships on this movie are my favourite aspect of it and i have a soft spot for the bond between the trojan princes. Don’t get surprised if i one of this days i end up making an entire separate post talking about the family dinamics displayed in the film (same goes for lotr but that would take me ages and i would have to make an entire series of posts if i wanted to discuss every lotr family relationship i would want to talk about). 

Sam and Dean Winchester in Supernatural 

If you reached this point you may had noticed that i have a big thing with family tragedies involving siblings. Supernatural is my favourite show because it combines lots of elements i love. To mention just a few: horror, mythology,classic rock and a strong family approach in its pretty tragic but outstanding plot. 

Sam and Dean are one of my favourite duo of bros of all time. I don’t think i have a lot to say about them because their relationship has been analized lots of times by the very big fanbase of the show. My main difference with the common interpretation is that i don’t see the Winchester family in a similar way to the movie versions of the Steward of Gondor and his sons, which means i don’t think John has been the shittiest father ever despite his many mistakes. Unlike movie Denethor he tried hard and in the interactions we saw of him with his boys he actually cares for both of them. 

This bros were the ones that made me realize in an actual concient way of my tendency to get too attached to families, story arcs regarding them and sibling love. I’m super attached to this story, i don’t know what the hell i’m going to do with my life once it ends. 

I will end this post here. It is more than sure that there would be a part two because i have tons of more brothers,sisters and other family relationships to talk about. 

Thanks to everyone who has read my very long ramble 

[patchdotexe]

arcanist-valtrois replied to your post “on one hand, the way we better understand ourselves through seeing...”

ohhh what you said about "problematic" kins reminds me. Like.... bro.... being able to see yourself in the villian doesnt mean you're a bad person, nessicarily. Like, for a while when I was trying to figure kin shit out i was like "hm. Pretty sure I was some sort of monster with big claws and teeth who lurked in the woods and Hurt People. I was put on this earth to do better this time" Like!!!! Seeing yourself in the villian can be a powerful tool of Self

yeah!! and also like. oh my god im gonna die on the spot but there IS someone in my system who kins k,omaeda which im still sure is grounds for us to get taken out by a sniper but they have that kin for complicated trauma reasons? like there is a very long backstory about Why they identify so heavily with that character

and like, seeing yourself in a ~problematic~ character can still be like... you can find ways to improve yourself from it, too? like “i relate to this character so strongly but they did fucked up shit but im going to do my best to Not be that / be a “better version” of that”, or even just . i know people make fun of it but there also is still the thing of “i kin this character that did fucked up shit but my interpretation of them is totally different / that fucked up shit didnt happen in my personal timeline” and that’s ok! that’s fine! but seeing ppl shit on them anyway makes me So Fucking Mad bc ive had that happen to friends recently w/ one of their fictives (which like. there is a lot of overlap here.) to the point of them feeling hated by literally everyone

and then there’s problematic media which can be “i know this media is horrible but this specific character from it means a lot to me” and honestly that’s the kind of problematic kin thing we have the most of. like, absolute trashfire sources that also happen to have like, extreme emotional and personal significance to us to the point where we latch onto the characters as a way to define ourselves. which is... very difficult, bc like.

for example, there was a fandom we were a part of when we were 14 and we were totally obsessed with it and it heavily influenced us, and when we understood fictionkin better we realized we kinned from it, and then a couple years later there was a Reveal that the creator was an irredeemable shithead. like, legitimately “no improvement made could make up for what they did”. and that was devastating. and the part that sucks ass is that we Know theyre horrible, we Know that there’s not a way to separate art from artist here bc their actions heavily affected their work in a way that wasnt obvious until after the reveal, but also a couple of us in this system kin heavily from that source and struggle with that bc even tho sometimes our connections to stuff does fade out / “drop”, that... hasnt happened, and it’s been years, and we’re Stuck with it

it’s so fucking complex

[jaredhollyheiditruth]

Lexi Camille

You may not know who Lexi Camille is. That’s not surprising. While she is a cosplayer and convention goer, she’s not one of the more well-known ones. Here’s her Twitter profile.

If she’s on this blog, you know there’s a reason, and you know who it’s related to. Lexi was a participant in Jared’s porn blog, SinJared, back while it ran, and even met him and Heidi at a convention. I’ll save you the trouble of doing the math: Lexi was over 18 when the blog started, so she was legal the entire time.

The reason she’s on the blog is because she’s been saying conflicting things about Jared ever since the drama started to unfold. I’m obviously not going to make an entry on every single person that has something negative to say about Jared, or even everyone that’s had interactions with him. Lexi is here for the same reason Heidi is here; she’s been caught contradicting herself.

Ever since the split between Jared and Heidi began, Lexi’s been very vocal about how terrible Jared is, and how he abused her interest in him, how he manipulated and controlled her. 

Lexi’s statements are crafted in such a way as to imply that she was led to believe that Jared’s blog, which was called Sinjared, I remind you, wasn’t supposed to be about sex, and was supposed to be about “body positivity.” She says this as if those two things are mutually exclusive.

She goes on to say that Jared would tell her that he masturbated to her pictures, and that “he would tell [her] when he was horny to get [her] to send him more.” The blog contained a lot of heavily sexual conversations between people, so this really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The point of this blog was��sexual, and that was never really a secret. Not even to Heidi.

So, just to sum that up, she was sending him nude pictures in direct response to him telling her he was horny. He would say he was horny, she would send pictures, so it’s very evident that she not only knew Jared was sexually aroused by her pictures, she was content enough with this fact to send him more.

The flaw in her logic in this statement is that it would only be fucked up if Jared knew she was “star struck and easily manipulated.” There are a lot of 18-19 year olds that are sexually confident, and unless you’re an expert at reading people, it’s difficult to know whether someone’s sexual confidence is genuine or an act. She believes that Jared was able to somehow sense that her apparent confidence was actually just an act, but there’s not really any evidence to support that claim.

Lexi has a tumblr, by the way.

It’s archived here: http://archive.is/MpqnA

Her Tumblr served as her primary method for contacting Jared, and in that Tumblr were many things that would make it very unlikely that Jared would somehow be able to sense how “easily manipulated” she was. While it’s clear she was very excited to meet Jared, there’s a very clear difference between being excited to meet someone and being easily manipulated. Such a difference that they’re not even remotely the same thing.

Back on June 20th, 2016, she had some positive things to say about getting to meet Jared. In her defense, she does sound a bit star struck.

She did, in fact, meet him at RTX in 2016, and meeting him must have definitely left an impression, because here she is on January 6th, 2017 (seven months later) telling him that despite being a lesbian, she would “so want to fuck [him]”.

Sexuality is fluid. The fact that she identifies as a lesbian shouldn’t impact her desire to occasionally have sex with men. One can identify with a certain spectrum of sexuality and still find attraction outside of that spectrum without having to change their “label.”

It’s hard to believe that this is the result of manipulation on Jared’s part. A woman tells him she wants to have sex with him, and his response is an animated GIF of NPH reacting with glee. There’s nothing in that interaction to imply anything other than Jared approving of the idea. She’s an adult being sexually aggressive towards him. There’s no way for him to know where her head is at, and it’s easy to see why he might assume she’s sexually confident.

However, it turns out that Jared wasn’t the only person Lexi had an interest in. Lexi was also a fan of Jared’s wife. A big fan.

They’re both cosplayers, and she does mention Heidi’s cosplays and tutorials. While this could be considered to be simply a professional interest, it turns out that further tweets from Lexi prove her interest in Heidi to be far more sexual.

Lexi admits in the tweet above that she was actually more interested in Heidi than she was in Jared. In fact, the below tweet goes so far as to imply that she was just using Jared to get to Heidi.

She states here that she was “always open” about the fact that she was attracted to Heidi while Jared was “just a cool bro.” It’s unclear just how obvious that was to him since she was telling him that she wanted to have sex with him. Telling someone that you’d be willing to step outside of your typical sexual preferences to have sex with them implies very strongly that you’re sexually attracted to them.

Using someone to get to someone else is very manipulative behavior, and the more she tweeted about the whole ordeal, the more evident it became that she was manipulating Jared because she wanted to find a way to score a three-way with him and Heidi.

Lexi constantly refers to Jared as manipulative, and herself as “easily manipulated.” In fact, she claims that Jared’s powers of manipulation are so strong that he was somehow able to convince her, a lesbian, that she wanted to have sex with a man.

Yes. People are going to come after you because that doesn’t make any sense! 

Not only does it not make any sense, but it’s insulting to many members of the LGBT+ community (especially lesbians) because it reinforces the old, bigoted idea that a man can “convert” a lesbian so she’ll sleep with him. As previously mentioned, sexuality is a spectrum. Implying that Jared manipulated her into wanting men is disingenuous

Lexi is essentially claiming that when she messaged Jared seven months after meeting him at RTX and told him “I’m a lesbian but I’d fuck you.” that’s because he somehow manipulated her into falsely believing it.

However, her other tweets make it clear that it wasn’t actually Jared she wanted to sleep with, it was Heidi. To her, Jared was a means to an end.

Let’s look at those words more closely...

“Jared manipulated me, manipulated what he knew I genuinely wanted and desired and used it for his own advantage.”

That quote is her admitting that she didn’t want Jared, she wanted Heidi. It gets worse, too. Read the next tweet.

“He would [use] Heidi as bait for mainly WLW and then convince them that sex with him is something they want.” 

I need to emphasize this because of how outrageous a claim it is:

Lexi is claiming that Jared would use his wife as bait to lure lesbians in, and then convince them that they wanted to have sex with him.

I don’t think Lexi truly realizes how incredibly offensive towards lesbians her implications are. Not only does it imply that lesbians exclusively only like women, it also implies that a lesbian-identifying individual that finds a man attractive either isn’t truly a lesbian (they are) or that they can be “tricked” into attraction towards men.

“You dangled Heidi in front of me like a piece of meat.”

Like a piece of meat...

In the event you’re wondering whether Lexi maybe only realized these facts shortly after the blog, here’s a tweet from her flirting with Heidi and clearly not on hostile terms with Jared on April 20th, 2018, well after her time on his porn blog.

Lexi never said a single negative thing about Jared until the trouble between him and Heidi became public and Jared was no longer a viable route to get to Heidi. It was only then that suddenly all of her attraction to Jared was caused by “manipulation” and “using his wife as bait” to lure lesbians into bed with him.

Update (8/30/19) - After carefully looking over the article, I realized that the original version was too aggressive. I’ve re-written its tone to be more professional. Apologies for anyone that felt the tone was too hostile.

[dotthings]

My history with Sam & Dean’s close emotional sibling bond is a little complicated, but it is important to me. It isn’t my fandom focus for a lot of reasons, and probably would never be my sole/primary focus but that’s not a reflection of how much it means to me emotionally. That was kind of part of the problem, in fact...it matters a lot and canon finally hurt in the wrong way one too many times.

I’m encouraged by the slow repair SPN has been doing to it for me, slow steps, starting S11, and S14 is doing some very very interesting things I’ve been waiting on for years.

So here’s a bit of a review on my ups and downs with it.

In the S1-5 era I was heart-first absorbed in the Sam & Dean bond. It was my anchor, even if I never, ever was a “brosonly” or watching “only for Sam & Dean”--other characters always intrigued me. But Sam & Dean was my “Brotp.” When Cas arrived and I started to ship Destiel, that continued, this is why Team Free Will was necessary--I had to put all those feelings somewhere. While platonic duos and romantic ships don’t elicit the identical type of emotions, both can be potent with the screaming/crying/squeeing/flailing. I just added Destiel onto that. That’s a lot of feels to cope with all at once.

S6-9 I was still into the bro bond and getting more and more into Destiel. But as SPN canon continued to make certain story decisions with the Sam & Dean bond, the harder I found it to relate to it. It became less of a comfort space and more alienating, while Dean and Cas has steadily made sense to me. I know it hasn’t for everyone, but this is a personal, subjective thing, buttons pushed or not pushed, nerves hit or hit the wrong or right way and Dean and Cas became more consistently my anchor in the SPN storm. This isn’t an either/or thing to me, I felt the loss of my connection to the bro bond, and I’d just go back to multi-squeeing if SPN continues to go in the direction I hope.

S9 was a bit of a struggle but I still believed in the strength of the bro bond. My feelings were starting to burn out on it but I was still there.

S10 slammed the door shut on it for me. With a big resounding clang. It was cumulative, it was too much at last. I still loved Sam and Dean, although Dean has been my more consistent touchstone character than Sam, I’ve always loved them both. I cycle in out of feeling connected to Sam, to Sam making sense, but I love them both, always--and Castiel. SPN at times in latter-era engaged me on each of the brothers, while the bond itself got elusive. 

Team Free Will became my anchor platonic bond and brotp, a new comfort zone. Who knows why, maybe something about the alchemy of Sam, Dean, & Cas together, these three battered soldiers who start to become each other’s home, with Cas being the wanderer that Sam & Dean finally give a home to, but the interactions of all the relationships therein, Sam & Cas, Sam & Dean, Dean & Cas are important to me. Team Free Will enfolds multiple relationships and accommodates fans who tend to multi-love and consider multiple character pov’s. 

Some people think just because somebody intensely ships Destiel that platonic bonds can’t or won’t matter to them; that’s not how this works at all.

When I say I was into the Sam & Dean bond in early SPN--I mean it. I was into it, emotionally. Never shipped it, never will, never did I think “this is the only thing on the entire show that matters” and I never will. But it bone-deep matters to me, as these characters do. During the past few seasons I’ve been warming back up to the Sam & Dean bond again. It’s never going to be what it was in S1-3 but that’s not a bad thing to me. Because one of my problems during Carver era was the refusal to let them grow enough.

So it means a great deal to me what Dabb era is doing, to advance things, to be more emotionally honest, to finally move beyond some of the things in the Carver era that were holdovers from the Kripke-Gamble era that and that I got desensitized on and burned out and hurt by it to the point where I had to step back from investment in it. I’m not saying Dabb era is perfect or Dabb era has never angered me. But this is how my tracking of the bro bond maps.

S11-13 have been very much transitional stages for the bro bond and maybe at some point I’ll try to go into more detail as to how/why, but I felt S11-12 canon presented them a bit distantly to each other, but growing more functional, and S13 was a lot warmer between them, and for me, and S14 so far...I am shook. There are things happening I have waited a long time to see. Now I’m holding my breath, not wanting to spook it off. 

Charting my engagement with the bro bond would look like a wavy line: a sharp upward climb, then a drop in the middle, then a slow climb back upwards. It never stopped mattering to me, but I did dis-engage from it for several seasons for a time, for canon story and emotional reasons. And I find it weird, given my long history in the fandom, and with the bro bond, and my positivity for both characters, even if I had to step back from the bond itself at times, the false narrative that gets around about “bro bond hater.”

To take a brief side-bar into fandom wank for a moment--because it’s relevant, I wish it weren’t, but it’s just so pervasive in SPN fandom and it does affect people emotionally--the following things will get you labeled a “bro bond hater” even if you’ve never bashed Sam, Dean, or their bond in your life:

-rooting for character development -recognition of Sam and Dean as autonomous individual people along with the bond being important -criticism of codependency -criticism of ruthless isolation -not shipping incest -shipping Destiel (automatic “you hate Sam”) -identifying strongly with the Team Free Will relationship instead of exclusively Sam & Dean

Feeling protective of them and wanting them to end some of the recursive, harmful cycles they seem to get caught in, and wanting their bond to flourish and grow stronger instead of being worn down by lying and codependency and inability to community...all that gets painted, by a certain sub-group, to be hostile to the bro bond. I know, it’s wild. 

The fact is, just as there are all kinds of Sam, Dean, or Cas fans, who ship any number of things, got into the show differently, watch differently, have different priorities, different favorites, different personal histories, nerves, buttons to be pressed right or wrong, so there are all kinds of Sam & Dean bro bond fans, from the most hard core ride-or-die ONLY Sam & Dean, to TFW fans who love the bro bond dearly but it’s not some exclusive thing, to fans somewhere in between, to fans who have Sam, Dean, or Cas as a favorite, who ship Destiel, who don’t ship Destiel, who ship S/D or don’t ship S/D, or somewhere in between, and who connect to different aspects of the relationship the most, different seasons, different storylines, and have different ids and wants.

I feel like “Sam & Dean fandom” should be a welcoming place, just as Sam and Dean take others into their family circle and offer people literal shelter at the bunker and who care so much it hurts, not just for each other, but those they love. That...hasn’t really worked out, in terms of the very specific aisles of fandom that are about “Sam & Dean” specifically. But the bro bond is widely loved by a lot of different types of fans and different shippers. Personally I find the TFW aisle the friendliest space for me to jump in and go HULLO HAVE YOU SEEN MY SAM & DEAN FEELINGS LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY FEELINGS but everyone finds their own way. There’s been way too much virulent gatekeeping from the exclusive “onlies” and I think that’s hurt a lot of bro bond fans. It’s even hurt some fans who are narrowly Sam & Dean focused because not everyone wants to be surrounded by intense gatekeeping and hostility to everything else on the show, they just want their Sam & Dean feels and go in peace. “Bros fandom” therefore is pretty big, and crosses fandom lines.

SPN is in its 14th season and these two characters have grown so much and their relationship has changed so much. While SPN is an inconsistent canon, and my positivity can fluctuate, and canon changes, I feel this bond has consistently all along remained the main fulcrum of the show, and the bond itself has endured in canon, and I want to know now what’s next for them and I hope it’s in my favor because I really do miss that sibling bond and what it meant to me and I’m appreciating this uptick in my wanting to engage with it a whole lot.

[alfstop50]

Game #1

January 31st, 2014.

It was a precarious time in my life: I had transferred universities halfway into my third year in college, settling back in with my parents after two and a half years studying in another part of the state. I had just purchased a used PlayStation 3 three weeks ago, both to take advantage of an online order being cancelled and to celebrate getting my driver’s license. My new school was still taking some getting used to (particularly the mountain of catching up I had to do in Japanese), but I was cautiously optimistic, and having a new system to play new games on was one way to help me through these times.

There was one game in particular that had caught my interest at that very moment. It was a game dearly beloved by a large group of friends I frequently hung around (and still do to this day). It was a game that, while not as beloved as its successor, was still held in high regard by these friends. It was a game that had been poured over countless times by these friends in the past, for research in forum games or just because they really liked the characters and story.

I was somewhat familiar with this game, having watched someone from this group streaming it a number of times back in 2013. I knew about how it handled every day life through school and forming connections with people, while blending it near seamlessly with darker fantasy elements. I was even intensely aware of how this game’s successor had a gigantic impact on someone from this group of friends, to the point where it had saved their soul and improved them as a human being just from playing it. But it wasn’t just him; the series from which this game and its successor came from was directly responsible for a number of people that I happened to know finding the will to better themselves, due to the messages imparted to them from these experiences. And now that I had the means to dive into that game and that series to see what all the fuss was about, it was an opportunity that I couldn’t say no to.

This is the story of what happened after that. This is the story of my yearlong experience with that game from the moment I downloaded it onto my PS3. This is the story of how, over the course of the experience, I grew to understand what made that game and the game after it so beloved by my friends. This is the story of how I came to discover how much the game actually meant to me years later, and how it became my favorite video game of all time.

This is the story of my experience with Persona 3.

The reason why it had taken so long for me to finish Persona 3 in the first place was due to a variety of reasons. The first such reason was that school was especially trying during this period, often giving me 4-5 classes to juggle per semester and keeping me away from video games most of the time. Secondly, my job situation had gone from me working roughly two days a week at my mom’s place to getting a full-time job at a Kroger immediately after school was out for the summer (which of course then became part-time work on the weekends during my next semester at school). Add to that many other things like new games coming out, my own ongoing projects, obligations with other friends, and general life mishaps and it was a miracle that I managed to even beat Persona 3 before the year was over.

But every time I did play it, it would suck me right in. I would learn so much about the characters and the setting, what time to catch people for Social Links, what to say to them to bond closer to them, what to do to avoid getting on their bad side, and how I could form more connections with more people. Even within a month or two after playing the game, I could feel the effect it was having on me as I conversed with people outside of the game; even if I never finished it, its sub-goal of getting me to interact with other people more was already working as intended.

Then came the dungeon crawling itself; going through them was usually a slog, but battles were really strong. Prior to playing it, my only experience with the Shin Megami Tensei series was playing SMTIV on the 3DS, so I was well prepared for a brutal “kill or be killed” style of turn-based combat. But I actually found the combat in Persona to be a lot more fun; the protagonist was endlessly customizable with various weapons and Personas to obtain, and the All-Out Attack mechanic was a brilliant way to reward going straight for weaknesses and knocking all the enemies down. At its worst, this would usually turn each encounter into a game of weakness sniping and make the novelty wear off fast. But in some of the more creative fights (usually bosses), it challenged you to work around specific gimmicks until you were in a good position to go all-out. Still kinda wish you had control over your party members, but that represents a part of the game that I’ll get to in a bit.

During the entire year that I played through Persona 3, I would continually make new discoveries about myself and other people. I discovered the deep connections some of my friends had with some of the other characters in the game (one friend in particular could relate really well to Kaz’s S. Link). I pursued the options that many had considered to be among the best in the game while making my own discoveries along the way. I learned, I grew, I was with the friends I had made through the good times and the bad, and especially when everything seemed its bleakest. I made as many people as I could happy, and it was through these bonds that I was able to overcome the unbearable darkness.

And once I had finally finished the game on December 17th, 2014, after all the work I put into it and all the time I had spent with the game... I hadn’t immediately recognized the worth of the game. I thought it was an exceptionally well-made game and I could see why people loved it so much, but for some reason at that moment, I couldn’t think much else of it beyond that. Funny how that just tends to happen sometimes.

The following year, when I started playing through Persona 4, I couldn’t help but think back on my time with Persona 3. It wasn’t that Persona 4 was a bad game or anything - far from it, in fact - but I slowly started to realize what made Persona 3 so special. I thought about the themes of the game, what it was going for, and how it stuck the landing on all of it nearly perfectly. I thought about one character in particular that I identified so strongly with that they became my all-time favorite video game character (that was back in February of 2015). It was enough for me to put the game in my list of all-time favorite video games, though it was still at #3 just below Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Kid Icarus: Uprising.

So now, what happened to bring this game to this position? What conclusion could I have reached to declare this game my absolute favorite game? What answer have I found that explains what this game is about and why I love it so much all in one sentence?

After extensively mulling over my thoughts on Persona 3 after finishing it and while struggling to complete this project, the answer I have found is this:

Persona 3 is a game about life.

People will often tell you that you’re in control of your own destiny, but for some of us, it isn’t like that. Life is crazy, turbulent, unpredictable, and seemingly random at times, forcing you to bear the brunt of whatever it brings you. You go through events and circumstances that you weren’t even prepared for, misfortunes that you couldn’t have seen coming, and tragedies that seemed designed to make your life miserable. And the absolute worst feeling is when you feel like you have no control over how these events occur or what you can do to avoid a crisis; sometimes you’re just expected to take these incidents on the chin and move on with your own existence. It sucks and it’s incredibly unfair. But that’s life.

Dealing with other people is its own exercise in frustration. Some human beings out there don’t want to listen to what you have to say, being so stuck in their own way of thinking that they block out all other reason. There are those who hate others just for being different, and will gladly take the chance to ruin their reputation just for their own satisfaction. Attempting to understand and connect with someone you do know can fluctuate wildly from “easy” to “nearly impossible,” because we are all so different from each other, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t possibly understand absolutely everything about anyone. And the reality is that no matter how much you say you don’t want to be around people, being completely alone in the world is the worst situation to be in by far. It’s a sobering thing to know. But that’s life.

There always things in life that we don’t want to do. At best, it’s just a tedious slog; at worst, it’s something that you don’t think you’ll ever make it through. Whenever you do something you’re not looking forward to, be it work, or school, or a hangout you begrudgingly accepted an invitation to, all you can do is act naturally and hope that it all passes soon. It doesn’t help when outside sources of stress come in to make the situation worse than it needs to be, like people being uncooperative, or a bug making you feel sick, or a situation from a while back rearing its ugly head to haunt you at every turn. It’s ugly and stressful having to do the things we don’t want to do day in and day out. But that’s life.

And yet, the biggest paradox to the ugliness and futility of life is how beautiful it is. Even if you’re not ultimately in control of where you end up, having a goal to work towards keeps you motivated and looking forward to the next big thing, all while you’re improving yourself as time passes. Even if some people can be aggravating to deal with, it’s the people that you stick with the most that end up becoming your most long-lasting friends; the kind that you laugh with, cry with, and bear the burdens of life together with to make everything more worthwhile. Even if you don’t want to do things like work or school, going through with them may give you the needs to survive, and learning from these experiences will better prepare you for the future.

It’s still not a perfect solution and it’s not guaranteed to work out for everyone, but the joy of life comes from continually improving yourself and your relationship with others, helping one another through the trials and tribulations of life, and sharing experiences that will last a lifetime. In that sense, I can consider Persona 3 the ultimate celebration of life itself.

But Persona 3 is also a game about death.

No matter who you are, or what you’ve done in life, death is inevitable to everything and everyone. It can happen when you’re old and frail, dying of natural causes when your body finally gives out. It can happen when you’re young and a horrible accident takes you before your time. It can happen from a disease, either when you’re in your senior years or from a horrible disease destroying you when you’re not even an adult. It can happen when an individual willingly murders another human being and forever taints their soul with their victim’s blood. It can even happen when an individual sees no point in living anymore, throwing their life away by committing suicide.

For many people, death is a horrible thing to think about. Whenever someone dies, that death is felt by someone out there; whether it’s just one person who cares or the entire world that cares, everyone mourns the loss of life. Desires and regrets bubble to the surface, making people wish they had spent one more day with them or had attempted to rebuild bridges that had been burnt down. The worst aspect about death is the painful loneliness that comes with never being able to see the dead again, no matter how much you miss them. And the fact that there is not one unified idea in all of human history on what happens to us after death is far too terrifying to even think about.

And the absolute scariest part about death is that no one knows when it comes or who it comes to. It could happen to you or someone you know, it could be decades down the line or within this very year, but no matter what, there is no escaping it. All that awaits us is the cold grip of death.

So why speak about death when there’s no joy in discussing it? Why talk about something so horrible that it seems like there’s nothing to be gained from talking about it?

Because death is part of life.

We live our lives because we want to make the most of them before we die. We want to take those precious few moments that we have on this earth to fulfill ourselves in any way we can before our time is up. We earnestly want to make a difference in the lives of others, whether it’s by supporting them in their time of need, or making things that speak to people and draw them together. We want to do whatever we can to make life better, for either a few people or a lot of people, and most importantly, for ourselves as well. Life itself is harsh and unforgiving with only death awaiting us, but if we can make the most of it through the things we do and the people we connect with, then we may be able to pass on with no regrets.

This is the ultimate lesson of Persona 3, and the one that stuck out to me the most. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many long nights and endless work hours led me to this conclusion, but after everything I’ve learned about myself through this project, it was the answer that made the most sense to me. Persona 3 was a game that taught me about the joy of life and encouraged me to take a more active role in connecting with other people. It taught me about the nature of death, how to best cope with it, and how to support those who were grieving over losing someone to death or how to deal with the looming specter of death.

And, perhaps most importantly, it allowed me to come to terms with myself. It’s helped me to acknowledge my own fears and worries over the future and my own life. It’s helped me to realize my own problems with anxiety, and what I can do to help fix that. It’s helped me to recognize that no one man is an island, how everyone has their own set of worries and anxieties, and how being with friends and encouraging them allows us to bring out the best in them. And it’s helped me realize the importance of just... living out my own life.

And for that reason alone, for everything it has taught me and how much of an effect it’s had on me, it’s only right for me to say that my favorite video game of all time is...

Game #1: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 “Death is not a hunter unbeknownst to its prey. One is always aware that it lies in wait. Though life is merely a journey to the grave, it must not be undertaken without hope. Only then will a traveler's story live on, cherished by those who bid him farewell.”

Released: July 13th, 2006 Synopsis: A young, teenaged orphan transfers to Gekkoukan High School for the start of a new year only to discover the Dark Hour, a period of time between one day and the next, where malicious Shadows roam. When they awaken to a newly discovered ability called Persona, they join other students with the same abilities in exploring Tartarus, a mysterious tower that appears in place of their high school during the Dark Hour. Chosen Music: Memories of You

[dankpaladin]

Heyo!! OMG MY OWN TAG! I feel very honored! Well I do have Google with all its extras and Skype(all these to talk to people directly) but ive been debating whether to get tumblr or Twitter. I don't which to get both have their merits and downsides so... Idek any more :// I saw the content you've been posting, IT IS AWESOME! You go tell em! I found ur blog on a Voltron Directory Blog they had u listed and said it's ship free so here I am! ~Z

Part 2 (bc I talk too much): I LOVED THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! It was beautiful (Lance lacked in that department tho but I feel like they’re building him up for S3) I wish they would regard Coran as more of a caring character than a comic relief one (so much potential flashbacks w/Altean past!). The Keith arc tho. My soul cannot take it anymore. Hunk and Keith bonding! (It’s precious)! ~Z

P3(shut youp Z!): I want a direct opinion on how to call Pidge? My siblings, my bestie (i brainwashed them in joining the fandom *cackles*)and I regard her as a she but the fandom say that we are against gender fluid characters and I got scared cause I didn’t mean that!? But Pidge was awesome! (Leads on her bro!!) WHERE IS SHIRO HE BETTER BE ALIVE DREAMWORKS OR THIS GIRL WILL BE MAD! All in all I love Voltron more. Ur opinion? ~Z

Yes! you have your own tag! :-) a good way to file our discussions in one place! and oh ok that makes a lot of sense. my sister doesn’t have social media either but she has a fair idea of what’s going on in fandom thanks to me & bcos of her own lurking as well. and thats totally fine! there’s no need to force yourself to make either! OH lmao I completely forgot abt the directory. the description is sorta inaccurate now since Im not Lnce biased anymore so. though I will still be ship free! Thank u for your support and kind words! 💓

I agree abt Coran. tbh he is the True Space Mom, like I really enjoyed his moments with Lance in S1 like when he consoled him on his homesickness & then when they were both cleaning the cryo-pods. and like.. how he cares about Allura so much!?! ok and also, Im sure you’ve heard this already bc i dont think anybody was impressed lmao but I wasn’t a big fan of how they shoehorned Hunk into a comic relief role either, like the food jokes were just.. poor taste. I don’t think the creators meant to demean him in any way, but with the more serious & weighty tone of the main arc focusing on Keith and his heritage, they needed to have that comic relief to balance it out. Not justifying Hunk’s treatment he rly did deserve better but I can see why they did that. I dont like it though.

Lmao the fandom is SO harsh Im sorry you were made 2 feel that way. I think both she & they pronouns are fair game. though its canon that Pidge identifies as a girl—whether trans or cis is all headcanon territory—thanks to that one scene where she was told to ‘man up’. To add though, I see her as sort of on the spectrum... like a demigirl. i don’t think she feels strongly about gender.. as in.. she doesnt seem to hinge a lot of her identity on it? not saying that gender unimportant to her, but compared to the grand scheme of things: the whereabouts of her brother, being a paladin of voltron etc, I doubt she puts a lot of weight into it. but when she is confronted with it lmao like that little scene in the space mall and how confused she was.. Pidge is still young and like, gender is fluid, like you said. she’s probably trying to get a grip on her own gender identity herself .. and thats very much an ongoing process. I think its really open to interpretation, so either one is all right. I think he/him pronouns would be misgendering though since she did express discomfort*

Pidge was really endearing throughout the season THOUGH! I have a little. bit of criticism. but its not about her, but how her intelligence was framed? it was poor taste how the show needed to make Lance & Hunk look dumb to make Pidge look smart. considering race and all, it’s really REALLY! poor taste having to discredit two brown boys’ intelligence in order to elevate a white person’s? Like i know the creators probably didn’t mean to do that, but thats what happened when they made both Hunk & Lance the comic reliefs! I’m sure there is a way to frame Pidge as her genius self without degrading H&L, like u could have them nodding along & extending upon her ideas. HUNK at the very least who’s supposed to be the engineer of the team should have been 😕. I read somewhere on a twitter that they could both be like translators lmao, and like explain Pidge’s rambles in layman’s terms to Shiro and Keith (who prob know nothing abt engineering and all that, being solely pilots and all) and Allura and whoever else is lost lmao. Like i don’t think making them look dumb was necessary at all 😔

Im super concerned about Shiro as well 😭 Other fans are guessing he’s stuck on that astral plane which makes sense of his really really abrupt disappearance. im really curious abt whether his stay in the astral plane will involve more black lion flashbacks + more fleshing out on the history of Voltron? That would be really interesting.

And no! dont shut up! Ever!! I’m eager to read & discuss as u can see w my own long response lol! This was really enjoyable to reply to!! 

*note: I’m not an expert on gender identity.. like I do relate to Pidge abt this a lot lol so if I said anything offensive/incorrect, please let me know so I can improve upon myself!

[a-h-arts]

5.0 out of 5 stars HE IS A GENIUS !!! BANKSY? WELCOME TO NYC !!!

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Wall Me in, Bro Banksy has no production problem, and he has no talent issue. Often, from what I've seen at least, those with the most talent have the hardest time producing something for the public. I have a good friend in New Hampshire who's a better writer than any of the New Yorker's 40 Under 40, but he can't seem to complete a novel, or novella, or even a short story that he's comfortable submitting. Meanwhile, I've had creative writing teachers who don't know the difference between a gerund and a noun publish on the merit of their networking skills. That makes me sick.In any case, part of why Banksy can produce so much is that he has a good paradigm to follow. Late in the book he writes, "Think from outside the box, collapse the box and take a [expletive] sharp knife to it." He doesn't mean that, of course, because his art form is a type of box: he uses spray paint and stencils to draw edgy messages in public places. What he means by box, it seems, is what Whitman meant when he wrote "Reexamine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults our own soul": don't accept what holds you back.And that's powerful. I don't know how Banksy funded himself, but I have a feeling he's of the mindset that the real work starts when the nine to five stops. If he even had a nine to five. He might have said screw it altogether. There are plenty of self help books and motivational speakers saying some form of Follow your heart. There are few, if any, books and speakers saying Be poor as piss, but do what you want. Banksy's not a self help guru; however, it seems to me the dissatisfaction he taps into in his audience is from the same place as the dissatisfaction that adults who listen to motivational speakers feel.That's not a bad thing.Read more › Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Collection of Banksy Book was used but it came in excellent condition. Aside from a dedication behind the cover page, you would have never known it was used.Book itself was a great collection of Banky's most iconic work, including several of my favorites. I purchased the book in tandem with a Bansky replica painting as a housewarming gift for a friend and they loved it as guests are always asking about it. Great for someone looking for a introduction to Banksy. Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars Graffiti with a purpose I purchased this as a gift for my husband who loves the city life and has always been a fan of street art. I'd heard of Banksy and was familiar with a few of the more popular pieces but I am so glad I got this book. This is so much more than just a collection of graffiti, its truly brilliant art and often thought provoking.When I think of the street art I see around town, it is usually poorly done, lacks purpose, and actually looks like vandalism. Banksy's work is none of those things. He is taking street art to a whole new level. There is a definite purpose behind each work of art- whether it is humor, a political statement, irony, or just playing into it's own environment. Each piece is a deliberately thought out work of art. He is one graffiti artist who is more than just his tag.This book is absolutely worth checking out and a must have for anyone who appreciates street art. Go to Amazon

5.0 out of 5 stars Banksy is a god! Banksy is probably the best known stencil artist and in my estimation, he's definitely the best. With a distinctly global view and wicked sense of humor he slams the status-quo all over the world and at the same time creates memorable art that is critical of the worst in human nature. But also celebrates the best of us too.I have enjoyed watching street art and creative graffiti grow over the last 30 years (I'm a 60 year old grandma). Banksy has raised the bar so much higher. His earlier work was strongly English, with commentary on uniquely British foibles, but every year it has expanded to lambast ridiculousness everywhere. I especially loved his rat series, which was brilliant.This book has a smidgen of his history with just enough details to give us a view into Banksy's perspective and goals, but not enough to identify him. And that's fine with me; I love the mystery of who he might be. He gets to remain "everyman" or any man and speak truth to power on our behalf. This book is a wonderful introduction to his work if you haven't seen "Exit Through the Gift Shop" or heard of him. And, if you're a big fan, it's a delight! Go to Amazon