#i think thats all the context i can add to make this understandable. everyone point and laugh at vegito

[skyyxlite]

guys i think vegito is really bad at naming things

[nightcolorz]

I must confess something, I do not understand white Vox lol is it just his VA? He may be just a TV with a body but his eyes seem to be drawn as east asian and thats his most prominent human feature. Majority of the time I see people draw him as a human they actually erase his real eye shape to (I assume) make him look more white. There's no real canon so people can hc whatever but I am so intrigued by how people are interpreting him white. I promise there are nasty tech/media ceos that overwork their employees all over the world... maybe im reading too much into it because the show is otherwise verrrry western-centric. Just curious how you view it, you're definitely in the majority and i realize people like me are the outliers but just saw your post and had to ask (if you didnt mind sharing).

Anon is referring to this post btw for context: https://www.tumblr.com/nightcolorz/746235899544813568/my-hot-take-is-that-i-think-that-a-vox-human?source=share

Anon ur hella polite and ik u got good intentions so I was stressing a little over how to respond without invalidating ur headcanon cuz like, I never want to be the guy saying “this character is white and u can’t headcanon them as a racial minority” cuz that’s pretty shitty no matter what. We definitely have different takes but when I’m explaining my interpretation I don’t wanna sound like I’m trying to boss ppl around and say there’s only one way u can see these characters. This is just my personal interpretation and I was being funny in my og post implying that my interpretation is the “correct” way. But since u asked I’ll explain my reasoning why I (and prob other ppl) see Vox as extremely white lol.

I don’t take Vox’s physical appearance into account at all when thinking about his ethnicity cuz in a show were everyone is pretty racially ambiguous design wise Vox is one of the most ambiguously humanoid characters, like my guy literally has a tv for a head with eyes and a mouth, and that’s it. I don’t see ur point about his eyes at all tbh, to me Vox’s vaguely slanted eyes have always come off more like a devious squint than an ethnic feature. Even still I don’t read slanted eyes as Asian automatically so it never occurred to me.

I don’t read as Vox as white bcus of his VA being white or him being a tech bro billionaire (but ig they play a part). I read Vox as white mostly bcus I see his background as a former religious extremist/cult leader from the 50s with a skill in life and in death for male manipulating ppl and using them for his own gain as very white and western. (I got this info from his official reference sheet for auditioning va’s, here that is)

His capitalistic ideals and business practices r meant to mirror (extremely white) billionaires like Musk and Bezos, which adds to my perception of him. Of course being a billionaire tech guy is not a western white man exclusive thing, but I feel that if we were meant to perceive Vox as someone not from America that would definitely be coded or in some way communicated. And I say this with as little ill will as possible, but for me I wouldn’t want to perceive Vox as an East Asian tech bro billionaire specifically bcus there r negative stereotypes and connotations attached there. East Asian men have a history of being negatively stereotyped as corrupt tech business owners. I don’t think u are trying to imply those stereotypes with ur head canon (frankly it’s hard to avoid negative stereotypes in fiction a lot of the time bcus stereotypes encompass such a vast range of things that its hard to take them all into account). But regardless, it’s smth we should try to be conscious of.

Anyways, I also usually take these character’s personalities and values, self image, etc into account when im thinking about race, bcus race is more then color, and especially for characters with lives and personalities based in much less tolerant time periods, it’s significant to consider how race would play a role in forming the way they navigate the world. Based on how Vox behaves I can’t see him as being racially marginalized. I’m gonna compare Vox to alastor a little cuz alastor is canonically creole and I think he serves as a good reference for someone I perceive as not white in comparison to Vox and how I think he differs and contradicts the experiences of a racial minority.

Vox to me comes off as someone who thinks he is entitled to power, respect, privilege, etc, which is a very standard type of attitude for a white man who was alive in the 1950s to have. He’s very emotionally immature and volatile, doesn’t seem to concern much over his public image beyond petty dick measuring contests with alastor (he regularly publicly has angry tantrums and doesn’t break a sweat over how this will affect his status). He obviously cares about it (scolding Valentino for embarrassing him and such) but he doesn’t seem to worry about loss of reputation in any sort of real way. I get the impression that Vox has always had at least a standard amount of social standing and privilege and can’t see a life for himself without the fundamental privilege he feels owed there to support him. He’s basically a man baby, a man baby who still manages to garner power and respect effortlessly (it comes naturally to him) while remaining whiny and insecure. Very white man of him! White man behavior!

in comparison, Alastor, (who I do not read as white) is always frantically clinging to his composed self image and his power as if it will slip away from him if he loosens his grasp at all. He has an extremely firm grip on his composure to the point where he never allows anyone to see him slip at all, let alone frown (despite his mental health and emotional well being being equally fragile as Vox’s). Alastor understands deeply how little the world owes him and how difficult and unreliable his acquiring of status actually is. He is borderline neurotic about retaining his power and staying on top. Despite the smile, Alastor is always defensive and fearful, picking fights with anyone he thinks might be a threat like a small dog or a prey animal would. Meanwhile, Vox conducts himself like a man with nothing to loose. I feel like Vox grew up with money and doesn’t know poverty or a lack of privilege in any intimate way that would drive him to guard it in anyway beyond flippant. To Vox power, status, and privilege are inherent. Same can’t be said for alastor.

tldr in conclusion Vox’s brand of bad feels very specific to a white man, alongside his emotional immaturity and his attitude, mindset, and behavior. This is why I see him as white asf, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong or it’s in anyway less correct to headcanon him as a different race. That’s just how I see him. Thank u for sending the ask anon it was pretty interesting to write! Have a good day! (btw i love Vox he’s one of my fav character lol me calling him a white as shit privileged entitled man baby douchebag is out of love and all I find interesting and fun about him)

[castlebyersafterdark]

I don't understand the hate about this outfit like he looks goofy but he was cute in this!!!

omg it's my time to shine hahah i love talking costumes! firstly, mike's shirt is described as orange here by the costume designer so its not part of the blue and yellow theory really, sorry y'all! but we dont need that as byler evidence cos theyre clearly in love anyway. will was definitely judging his ensemble and my fav part is the way it says 'SURF' splashed across the back in huge pastel letters. it's an all-round cringe shirt for mike wheeler whose personality does NOT suit surfer boy style let alone fake, ill-fitting surfer boy knock off style haha. so really what the costume designers were doing is not trying to make mike look objectively bad in terms of out of context outfit, but rather its so awkward for his character and delivers the awkward vibes in as little time as possible in order to set the tone of the scene. so we can add into this...

the camera angle showing him cluelessly looking around for them

the way he's wearing sunglasses indoors, a feat only julian casablancas can pull off. mike wasnt on the concourse, he was never exposed to sunlight since he got on the plane in indianapolis and perhaps not even then lmao, no need for shades!

his goofy wave and squeaky, performative voice 'oh! oh hi will! fancy seeing you here!'

and the biggest culprit of all: THAT HAT

I mean, what is that hat? its the way its sat on his head making his hair look like a wig. major worzel gummidge vibes tbh. that hat cannot be worn with hair down, it should be with a high ponytail which makes me think is this even a man's hat? subtle costume design.

and lastly, the clothes are ill-fitting (just like his hellfire shirt which hangs off him and washes him out, making him look pallid and weary in episode 1). the orange washes him out, making his skin look extra pale (compare to the warmth of the van scene and how golden his skin looks there). the purple shirt does the same, and the vest is far too big for him. finn described the whole outfit, but mainly the flip flops as 'gross' lol, but its made worse by the sheer contrast of mike to will and el and everyone. he's so not cool here, in every way. perfect costume design storytelling!

so yeah, these details are subjective really, but then again you could say all of art is subjective. they try to create a mood and make you feel certain things when watching, and some people just won't get it. thats not a bad thing, but i think recognising when your taste butts heads with the artistic intention is very interesting! i always found mike to be a babe but i cringed so hard when he rocked up in this ensemble lmao. and i think the duffers wanted me to! compare it to how much his brown hair and pale skin suits the forest greens of season 1 and 2. mike is an autumnal colour complexion, not spring/summer pastels :)

THANK YOU for this! I love costume and wardrobes but I don't really feel like my knowledge base is adequate to deep dive beyond surface level vibes and this was a cool read.

Also yes! to the minimizing 'color theory' a little - it's a nice element for these two but I think too much stock is placed in what's a minor detail when so much more is important about these characters. And agree, Will was totally judging - even if he's into Mike, it's so clear that he's doing something out of character and awkward and trying to put on a different image for his girlfriend. I don't necessarily think the outfit is ugly - simply not Mike. That's what I'm saying but oh man, so right on every point. It's a very good storytelling tool. Yes, it's ill-fitting and the coloring makes him look off, like everything about how he's presenting himself is wrong. Overcompensation. Desaturation. I find the mistaken effort endearing, which I think is the point as well. The cringe along with the oh, Mike. He tried so hard and it turned out so wrong. You feel for him!!

(Hides though 🫣 as I'd absolutely wear the hat, I love an ugly hat. Then again - I go out of my way to wear ugly fashion on purpose sometimes because it's fun and amuses me, but that's a pointed choice haha. Mike probably thought it all was cool. I am not trying to be cool ever.)

He is an autumn boy! Fall colors and fall in general! Loved your take, very good insights. Agree agree, there's a lot of meaningful layers here and reasons for what we saw in that scene.

[reverera]

genshin 3.3 scara spoilers bc im crazy and literally CANT get my mind off of ghis shit

disclaimer i havent played through the patch but i HAVE read up on what i need to know and i probably wont be playing it for a while. im really pissed off. i don’t think this patch was given the respect and care it deserved.

my problem is literally this: things don’t add up. and not just in an annoying ‘something is off’ kind of way. no. in a blatantly misleading way, like the rug is being pulled from under my feet and i’m expected to stand there and let myself hit the ground. facts don’t line up. the timeline of events isn’t consistent. the characters involved and their motives don’t make sense in context.

before i keep going, i want to say this. i’m obviously giving the devs and writers their due credit. these jobs arent easy and, especially in a story with as many characters and moving parts as genshin, inconsistencies here and there are inevitable.

that’s NOT the issue here.

as u go back and read what we had on scara’s past before 3.3, ull start to see how confusing and contradictory the 3.3 version of events is from what existed in the aged notes on tatarasuna and the ‘husk of opulent dreams’ artifact set descriptions. note that this information on scara’s life, as well as scara’s overall design and personality, has been in development since the game began. his first appearance was during the unreconciled stars event. thats version 1.1. 3.3 feels like it’s telling a completely different story, some wacky dream version of what we first read about, and it’s… it’s bad. to the point where i was stunned by the amount of detail and clarity lost. i puzzled over why hoyo would make it harder for themselves like this. because that’s what this does- they had a timeline already. it fit into the overarching plot just fine. the added and altered details, like niwa, like dottore’s inexplicable presence literally everywhere, don’t contribute depth to the existing story. they don’t give us clarity. at all.

for example: the katsuragi/niwa being two separate people situation. it can be funny, sure, but yall. niwa was not in the notes. he didn’t exist before the irodori festival. and if the notes were a witness’ (kinjirou’s) record of what happened within the tatarasuna group during that time, why wasn’t their freaking superior and kunikuzushi’s closest friend mentioned in any of them, while a supposed nobody like katsuragi was? according to 3.3, niwa was one of the sources of scara’s betrayals… but the old notes heavily imply that the trigger was the murder of katsuragi. why was katsuragi’s conflict with nagamasa cheapened like this? literally what was the reason, aside from finding some way to drag dottore into it?

tbh i personally believe that there’s a chance katsuragi was always meant to be the trigger/kunikuzushi’s closest person/the one behind the unique brown-haired npc character. katsuragi was too involved in kunikuzushi’s life and the incident at the furnace to be just some guy, while niwa… barely makes an appearance before 3.3. i wonder what the reason was for bringing niwa so high up in importance. just because he’s a kaedehara? (honestly i’d assumed katsuragi was the kaedehara) btw, if scara wanted revenge for niwa ‘leaving’… why did he ultimately spare the isshin art along with amenoma? why did he even wipe out the other sword arts, like- if we take these events to be the truth, what purpose did that serve him? am i missing something here?

‘he was erased from everyone’s memory’ reads to me like a cheap excuse to get away with being inconsistent. “oh the timeline is just fucky” no. time and memories can be really interesting themes to explore… but not when they’re misused at the expense of the characters involved.

i know a lot of people came out of 3.3 enjoying it. and that’s fine. i’m not coming at yall.

through my understanding, tho, it’s obvious that this is not what was originally intended for scaramouche. it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. he was (is) a beautiful character… he deserved attention and care. he deserved his story faithfully told.

did the individual(s) who initially created and helped develop scaramouche leave the company? did the new writers hired for sumeru not have enough information? did they decide to just say fuck it and do their own thing? did they dislike what was established for scara before? was it management meddling with the creative process? was it crunch and an impossible deadline? was it some lazy way of tying up loose threads for the next act? was it spite? is there more to it? i think it must be a mix of multiple things.

doesn’t matter now. all i know is i don’t care for whatever it is. it’s already been difficult to find the energy to play through the story given how depressing sumeru was for me in general, and this definitely didn’t help. i’m going to be here blissfully creating my own content following the original sources and ignoring this patch ❤️

anyway who will even read thjs far thanks if u did i guess

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[kyoryu]

My big problem with the ending is that the story had the characters like. At least a few times discuss how they could totally still be friends even after the adventure was over. And like, I understand there’s a metaphor going on about how your life changes and you don’t stay as close to people as you think you might, but like… it kinda comes in out of nowhere in the last two or three episodes. And on top of that, Anne losing Sprig ENTIRELY and then the dialogue implying she, Sasha and Marcy all drifted apart until that reunion just felt overly sad. Puts a lot more ‘bitter’ than sweet in that bittersweet ending than they meant to, I think.

this is gonna be a long answer so sit tight lol.

disclaimer: I LOVE AMPHIBIA OK? my criticism means i care and i am passionate!! maybe too much, but hey, who's doing the math am i right.

ok i absolutely agree with EVERYTHING u say. i think everyone who disliked the ending is in the same page tbh, we all agree on the same stuff.

what u said about mostly bitter than sweet is EXACTLY what i keep saying. like...i do not see the sweet ANYWHERE in that ending. the "sweet" is the girls finally making it home, yet we dont get to see that. we dont even see anne hugging her parents again or anything, and dont get me started on the marcy and sasha's parents thing (ok i will briefly: refusing to give us anything about them just cuz "you wanna leave it up to interpretation" is bullshit. ur writing a story. commit. not showing us sasha and marcy's home lives and families means youre not showing us ANY signs of us rooting for them to go back home, we aren't attached to the idea of it as opposed to sasha's bond with grime and marcy's love for amphibia. it is lousy)

like, people keep telling me im missing the point of an ending that was obvious since episode one and i just disagree so much. where in the world of episode 1 did we see that anne was going to fight the moon, die, meet god and be offered to become god? what the fuck. i keep saying this ending could only work if the stakes weren't so high and the girls didn't spend as much time in amphibia. for anne to separate from the plantars permanently just because "people in life come and go and it hurts but oh well thats life" is so... devastating. like, imagine not being able to see or talk to your family EVER again. because hey thats what lifes like.

"but vinnie they'll obviously see each other again!!!" if u keep saying this, then u just disliked the ending as much as i did and ur in denial lmao. we can make all the hcs we want, they can add all the fix-it they want to marcy's journal (context: matt braly implied marcy's journal could include terri and mr x giving the girls "a surprise" in the timeskip) but yknow the damage is done. the ending is there and it tells you that the plantars and anne say goodbye forever and thats how it is. at least accept it.

"its been set up since ep 1" i completely disagree. season 1 in its entirety is about anne learning to love wartwood. sure it makes sense if u just watch ep 1 because anne is desperate to get home but um, the point is that anne comes to love wartwood and its people and becomes a part of the plantar family. how is that ending an ep1 set up? well, wheres the WHOLE SHOW set up? it makes no sense.

and even for the trio, i understand the growing apart thing but man, after what they went through wouldnt they be bonded for life, having been the only ones to have ever experienced this same trauma, and be closer than ever? especially with the portal permanently gone. id totally be behind it if the portal was open, cuz anne sasha and marcy choose their new amphibian friends over each other to spend time with and eventually come together again as teens, but still close all together bc i cant stress it enough. you dont just grow apart from someone u fought the moon with.

amphibia was already their time apart yknow. again, if the stakes were lower id get it and it'd work. but u cannot have these 3 go through all they did and then try to apply a Down To Earth realistic ending. i dont get it.

like, ur telling me marcy had to move away and she did it happily after being stabbed, comatosed, posessed, etc? sasha and anne stop talking in hs after anne had held onto sasha's arm for dear life before she lets go to her possible death, after they both leaded a fucking army together for a WAR AT 13 YEARS OLD? they just...move on? with a smile? sure it works if you say it does. but if you look it from a writing perspective its just weird, incomplete, lousy. no drama.

everything happens and we dont talk about it. everyone's just freaking happy ig.

i could excuse the sashannarcy separation though but that along with the goodbye forever to amphibia are TERRIBLE combinations. like sasha anne and marcy close this book and open a new one, and how on earth are they even able to do that after everything they we through???

sure im happy theyre happy. it could be that simple. but to me its not. to me this ending ruins the entire show lmao. if u were gonna go for this ending then dont write such an epic story bro lol.

and for the "YOU JUST WANT A STVFOE ENDING/WHAT, IS ANNE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE HER PARENTS EVER AGAIN?" gang: shut up dingus. no one talked about mixing both worlds or keep anne just in amphibia. thatd be just as bad. they should just have a way to access amphibia whenever they wanted, they met GOD. they literally had any excuse to make this work.

"but thatd be unrealistic" oh so sorry if i dont mind the story about 3 humans landing in a world of frog people, getting superpowers, leading an army, fighting a war, fighting an evil king and posession and the moon, doesn't have a completely realistic ending

"it would be too good to be true" so u agree. u agree the ending wasnt good.

what i would've done to make this ending Work, i would've added 3 simple things.

1. anne is a whole lot more broken up over saying goodbye to amphibia forever. shes not that calm about it. she's upset and thinks its unfair.

2. we get to see anne reunite with her parents back home

3. in the 10 year timeskip, we get an open ended situation with the trio opening a portal and its up to interpretation if this is the first time theyve done it or not.

thats it. i still wouldnt be a fan, i think anne deserves to grow up being able to see her family, but i think if they wanted that ending that badly they shouldve at least added those things. idk.

BASICALLY: i get what they were trying to do. it just does not work with the kind of epic high stakes story they've decided to write.

[himehimestar]

Hey I just curious about this all of the sudden, Hey there, what is the difference between amejaki & haady gyaru? Also what do you see of gyaru being considered as bl@ckf@ce & EA baiting/Asianfishing? Because people all over the internet including TikTok & IG are saying that it considered as it. What are y'all thoughts on it?

hey!! so amekaji and haady do (sometimes) have a bit of overlap, so they are pretty similar! 

amekaji is based off of an idealized version of america (tbh more like california specifically; like everyone surfs and eats burgers lol its very stereotypical “american”). so amekaji is a bit more boxy, and definitely more brand central. most of the brands that are heavily associated w amekaji are just covered in their names and logos. some brands associated w amekaji are cocolulu and blue moon blue. 

haady is actually based off of rave culture, so its a lot more saturated (typically; amekaji is also a super bright style. but haady usually has more neons) so haady tends to have a more revealing style, with more shorts, skirts and dresses present. also a lot more animal print (zebra, cheetah, etc.) and black incorporated in the clothes. some brands associated w haady are jsg and galaxxxy.

tbh they are both out of mainstream gyaru as they are out of fashion now in 2022 (the styles peaked in like 2008-2010), so honestly you dont see it much anymore (with the exception of dede, but tbh shes kind of doing her own thing; i tag her as haady bc of the rave influence, but honestly its her own style at this point. super cute tho dont misunderstand!)

alright, onto the more serious side of this question. 

to start, i am white, so no matter how educated i try to be, i will always be coming from a place of privilege. (bi)poc please feel free to add to this conversation!

so when it comes to blackface. yes absolutely there are styles in gyaru that absolutely resemble blackface. there’s no denying that. manba and yamanba, although their origins were not racist (as it started as a rebellion against japanese beauty standards), are examples of that. additionally, theres the entire style of b-kei or b-gyaru. literally “black gyaru”, as in trying to look black. like, thats literally blackfishing. 

that being said, that definitely isn’t the case for all styles of gyaru. is amekaji blackface? no absolutely not. is agejo blackface? definitely not. i think it really comes to the more severely tanned styles of gyaru where you get into a grey area or just outright blackface. 

and even then, you can do darker styles without doing blackface! literally, just do the makeup without making your skin darker, its not that hard. even when it comes to manba, there literally is banba, which is the same makeup with less tan. just do that. and when it comes to tanning, as long as you are tanning to a color that naturally occurs for you, then fine, that’s cool. over tanning and pushing your foundation to be darker and darker... well that’s where issues start. 

now heres the thing. do gyaru in japan know that their looks are seen by us westerners as blackface? not always. im not justifying that at all, but there isn’t a cultural context that we have here. japan is a monoethnic country for the most part. there isn’t the same understanding of race and intersectionality that we have. again, i am not justifying this at all, just explaining as to why there are still gyaru in japan wearing manba. 

that being said. us gaijin gyaru, we know better. we should know better. white/nonblack gyaru have a responsibility to not participate in these styles. its really not that hard. theres so many other styles of gyaru, no one needs to do these intense and extreme styles. 

EA-baiting/asianfishing definitely happens. and it’s not okay. there are ways to do gyaru without trying to make your face look another race. i literally made a multiple part series (with the help of many gaijin gyaru) on youtube about how to make gyaru makeup suit your face. there are ways to do gyaru makeup without being disrespectful and without changing your entire face to change your race. 

yes, gyaru makeup has kind of strict standards of what it is supposed to look like, but that doesn’t mean that it has to look only one specific way. anyone can contour in any way to suit their face. anyone can wear top and bottom lashes without making them look a difference race. 

personally, when i wear gyaru, i still look white. like, honestly, it takes more effort to try to look another race than to just wear the makeup as is. 

tbh this is a bit of tricky thing to explain without using photos, but i really don’t want to become a call out blog lol. so i’ll leave that up to your imagination. but i have seen it many, many times. over the many years i’ve been involved in the gyaru comm. god, ive even seen people openly say theyre trying to look japanese, like hello????????? 

do i think following gyaru style itself is EA-baiting/asianfishing? no. can it be? absolutely. 

hope this helps!!

[low-budget-korra]

Lets talk about Korra (again)

i already made this analysis, and it was well received but i dont know, i wanna do it again. Why not right? My english is better now than was when i made that analysis so i think  this one will be better written

What a way to introduce a protagonist. This line and this scene tell us everything we need to know about Korra at that time and everything she knew about herself.

In book one Korra is a 17′s old teenager who have no idea how the world, how life is outside the training center she grew up in and had been locked up since ever. So she is not only naive but have lack of social skills

Oh, and not everyone who lack’s social skills will act like Zuko and Azula okay? Korra can be confident, expressive and outgoing and still have problems when it comes to social skills.One thing dont exclude the other.

“I’m the Avatar and you gotta deal with it” did you guys notice that only for that line we can see the entire opposite on how she treat her role as avatar in comparisson with Aang? And im not here to judge because is two very different contexts.

As far as we know, Korra grew up without friends or romantic partners. Of course, she had her training partners but i believe that they are just that. 

So her entarely perception of herself was around her duty as Avatar, she didnt have personal life, she barely was Korra...She was The avatar and thats that.

So she came to Republic City, it was a mess. 

Its funny to see that she have no touch when it comes to simply talk to people, i guess when you grew up away from society, this happens. And yes, she is cocky and had to learn that people arent there to somewhat please her, and she learned that quicky. 

Thats why the Pro Bending was important for her character, not only for training but also as means of socilization.

Now lets talk about the villains: Amon and Tarrlok

The two of them represents two differents threats to Korra. Amon represents a threat to her duty as Avatar while Tarrlok represents a threat to Korra as a person.

In episode 4 we have what i still thinks is the darker episode from TLOK. In this episode Amon ambushes Korra in the final moments... Even knowing that they did their best to make Amon’s power and control be non-sexualized as possible still...He have her down on her knews, totally helpless and he even invades Korra’s personal space by touching in her face forcing her to look at him. He didn't have to sexually touch her to violate her.

And right after, the fear in Tenzin voice when asking what happened after seeing her laying in the ground like that, and how Korra is sobing in his arms teeling him how powerless and helpless she felt. I mean...Oh, and she keeps terryfied by him until he takes her bending.

Tarrlok in the  other hand doesnt do much different from his brother and started to harass Korra because he cant take ‘no’ as a answer when Korra didnt wanted to join his task force.

Whats interesting is that if it wasnt for Tarrlok harassement and maniputation, Korra wouldnt have joined his task force and wouldnt have confronted Amon and wouldn't have gone through that terrible encounter.

The thing is that Korra is caught right in the middle of a politcal power dispute over the city, something that she for sure wasnt prepare for it. And both Amon and Tarrlok woud hurt or kill her without think twice about it if that means gain  power. And that was exacly what happened

Tarrlok tried to manipulate her and keep her on leash where he could, and when his tatics didnt worked anymore he alreay had a plan B. Yes that whole metal box in that cabin in the middle of nowhere was made especifically for her and maybe Tenzin if he also get in his way.

In the end Korra lost the physical battle against both but won the ethical battle also against both. She was the responsable for expose both of them as corrupted and hypocrites. But at what price? Amon was able to remove the bends of the Avatar. And without them, how could she be the Avatar?

Remember that her entirely conception of herself was built around her duty as Avatar, be the avatar. After all, everything she was, everything she'd trained so hard for, had been destroyed in minutes. Thats why i still strongly believe that she was thinking about killing herself at the end, nobodys goes all sad and crying to in front of a clifft without thinking about jumping from it. 

But she, i think given up the idea and just sit and started to crying when Aang appeared and help her, giving her bendings back in one of the best scenes of the show. So after have everything solve and still managed to get the boy she was in love with, things where great and she “move on”

In that first half, Korra is unbearable. Everything she learned in Book 1 how to be more mature, less spoiled and all, was thrown in the trash and she was the same "child" of the book one only worse.

Until I stopped and realized that I was also unbearable and childish like this when I had my bad phases of anxiety and depression, as defense mechanism and keep people away. Returning to Korra, and if this way of acting of her was nothing more than this defense mechanism?

Because guess what, i dont think she “move on” from all that happened in Book One that fast, and for add more drama she discovered that was her father idea of keeping her locked up training in that training center we saw in book one and not traveling like avatars before her. No wonder she felt betrayed. And for adding even more drama, people still keep treating her like child, so she was despered for some validation. Something that she found in her uncles arms but she was betrayed by him after.

In the end, Korra again goes through a traumatic experience when she has her connection with past lives destroyed. We see how it affected her when she apologizes to Tenzin, through tears. And Tenzin, as the excellent master he is, tries to motivate her to face Vaatu again (now merged with Unalaq, her uncle) and again she saves the day even after go throught a traumatic event

In the final moments, we see the innocent decision to reconnect the world of spirits and the world of men. And we also see Korra and Mako permanently end their turbulent relationship.

Book 3 begins in a more mature, we see all the characters being presented in a more mature way and it seems that Korra now has overcome everything that has passed. We have the relationship between Korra and Asami deepening as well

In Book 3, called "Change" we have a great sacrifice from Korra. Her life goes down a notch when she decides to save the new airbenders from Zaheer and the Red Lotus, the only villain until now that really threat her life since their sole goal was to kill the avatar.

Korra won again but this time victory costed way too much. Yes she save the day again but now she was  physically and psychologically defeated. It was too much, she broke.

Book 4 begins and we only saw Korra in the final minutes and she is unrecognizable. We see that, once proud and courageous avatar, in someone depressed and cowerd. We never have saw Korra like that, even when she was afraid of Amon she wasnt like that.

Korra is afraid of being the Avatar again and her fight against PTSD is still one of the most sensitive, responsable and honest representation of Mentall Issues that i saw, and it was before this subject gain more space on media. It was before people started to give attention to this

I also think that she was having flashs from her other fights and not only the one against Zaheer.

Another thing I think is worth mention is that Korra took 3 years to feel safer and re-embrace her duties as Avatar. It was not 3 weeks or 3 months, it was 3 years. And anyone who suffers from some mental illness knows very well the stigma that is, the fight that is, because everyone wants you to be well faster as possible  when the truth is that many times you spend years fighting against this.  And this is a pressure that falls on you.Imagine, seeing all your friends moving forward while you continue "stock in the same place"?

Only after Korra confronts Zaheer, I think that was a way to show her coping with the trauma, she improves to the point of returning to be the great Avatar we know. I personally still struggles with this scene because put the victim in front of her agressor may not be the best idea but i understand that she needed to see that he was just a man and not the invencible monster her mind was telling her

One of the lines that stuck with me the most was in the TLOK version of the ember island players, the one that made a recap of the show before the finale. When Korra said “I was so naive” just before we watch her narration of her journey, we can feel pain, sadness and strenght. Janet was amazing in the way the delivered this line.

And this fucking quote i saw here on tumblr still is the goat: “The Last Airbender is a story of a boy who becomes a god. The Legend of Korra is the story of a goddess who becomes a girl "

And I still get really pissed when someone comes to talk shit about  Korra because she is such an incredible heroine and her journey is also so incredible.

The story of how life can be hard and unfair, how it can hurt and paralyze, but there is always a reason to move on. We should always move on.

Korra is definitely not weak, quite the opposite, she is one of the if not the strongest heroine I have ever seen. Korra inspires overcoming 

[rebloging-everything]

I would like to add a little ✨spice✨ to Vil's headcanons by saying "Mirror" by Lil Wayne ft Bruno Mars is the perfect song to represent Vil.

(I'll put both the Original and Lyric video here)

Why I think this song represents Vil's character so much (other then the obvious Snow White reference in the song) is because of the heavy identity theme it has.

Lil Wayne and the mirror he refers to, have this almost toxic relationship with each other.

In the beginning when the "Mirror" is talking "Look at me when I'm talking to you" and "Your looking at me but I'm looking through you". It's referring to the power the mirror has over him. Like it this friend that knows everything about him, even though it's just him judging himself.

"I see the pain hiding in your pride" "I see your not satisfied". Lil Wayne is not talking about his looks in these, but in context with Vil it could mean the struggle he sees in himself, where he's constantly fighting to stay the fairest and no matter how much effort he puts in it's never enough to meet his standards or in his eye surpass Neige .

"And I don't see nobody else, I see myself" is admitting that there is no mirror telling him all this it's his own mind making this up on his own.

"Mirror on the wall, here we are again, through my rise and fall you've been my only friend" Everytime something goes wrong in Vil's life he goes back to the mirror for validation or it points out everything that he could change to make he's dreams come true. In return when he's achieved something like getting a movie deal, a big modelling gig or even just being popular he owes it to his looks that he's worked so hard for.

"You told me that they can't understand the man I am". In his mind it doesn't matter how many people tell him that he doesn't need to be the fairest. He wants it and has convinced himself that no one understands how he feels and why he needs this so badly. That he doesn't neeed to prove to anyone why he needs it. It should be obvious that he deserves the title because he worked so hard for it.

"So why are we here talking to each other again". At the same time he's contradicting himself because in a way he's trying to prove to everyone that he deserves to be the fairest and is constantly looks at his mirror to impove himself.

Then it goes back to the "Mirror" talking to him. "I see the truth in your lies" "I see nobody by yourside" "But I'm with when your all alone". It's the mirror convincing Vil that he needs it. That it sees how much Vil tells himself that he's the fairest and that he deserves it but points out all the things that are making him fail at getting his dream. It points out how Rook "betrayed" him for Neige but how it's still there to confort him and help him impove.

"And you correct me when I'm looking wrong" Is Vil response falling for the "Mirror's" manipulation.

"I see that guilt beneath the shame" The "Mirror" is pointing out about how bad Vil feels about not achieving his dream.

"I see your soul through your window pain" The "Mirror" is referring to Vil's eyes and how it's the only thing that can help him archive his dream.

"I see the scars that remain" The "Mirror" talking about the hard work (trauma) Vil's been through and how he deserves to be the fairest.

"I see Wayne" This is the first glimpse of the truth Vil is seeing about the "Mirror"

(Imma ignore the lines about the mother and father since that's about Lil Wayne's feelings and we're not here to talk about that. :) )

"Light it up, thats smokin' mirrors, I even look good in the broken mirror" Vil is finally seeing that it's not the "Mirror" talking to him it's his own insecurities manipulating him. It him coming to terms that he won't be the fairest but he's still looks amazing to himself and is no longer trying to prove it to anyone.

"I see the change, I see the message and no message could been any clearer" "So I'm stared with the man in the mirror on the wall" He's finally seeing the change in himself and is truly seeing that he's good enough to himself. And that the man in the mirror was himself self-sabotaging his life and friendships to achieve an impossible goal (Being perfect).

Then the rest of the song is him lamenting on all the things that he forced himself to believe. And how it finally got through to him that no matter how many times he consults his mirror that he will never be perfect because no one can be perfect.

I wanted to add this because whenever I see posts about songs that fix characters personality they never seem to have Rap, R&B or Pop songs. As someone who loves all those things I want expand peoples opinions on them. Becuase they're not all about sex and raunchy things. It can be a way to express other times of emotions like other genres do.

Feel free to add more in the commets. :)

[antiterf]

So I’m posting my genuine thought process here so that way people get a good context. If it sucks then I have ADHD and you’re going to have to deal with it.

Me, watching a new wave of transandrophobia discourse come up: Why are people saying that trans men don't oppress trans women? (Genuine)

"The experiences are too different to compare"

But trans men oppress trans women on the basis of being men and women. Why would that be disagreed with? Gender is odd with us, and shouldn’t be taken as black and white, but I don’t think it’s this odd. It’s probably because if you’re specifying an oppressed group of men (bi men, disabled men, etc) as holding privilege over another gender, it comes as a different form from that specific group.

So how did we reach this point where trans men are holding a specific form of transmisogyny where others are saying it? Does it exist? If it does then how and where did it come from? Why does transmisogyny keep getting a red underline it’s a word damn it WAIT I CAN ADD IT TO DICTIONARY SUCK IT WINDOWS.

And why do trans men and other trans masc people have an adverse reaction to being told this? I found myself checking recently if these calls for unity are ever coming from trans women, and I’m sure some agree with them, but it always seems to stem from other trans mascs. It reminds me of when other white people are rallying to me saying that we should set race aside. It sounds fine on the surface, racial differences shouldn’t make anyone feel less welcome in a space, but what was really happening was ignoring the issues of an oppressed group and silencing them for speaking out. While my fellow trans men may not intend to do that, or be doing the same exact thing, I’m still very wary.

Maybe it’s just another instance of people not knowing how privilege and oppression works. That not everyone experiences the same exact thing but that there is a pattern of one group treated better than the other when it’s averaged across the population.

Trans mascs are using transandrophobia, and I have definitely seen instances of some saying that trans women are the ones who are silencing us over our own experiences. Thats not the case from what I’ve seen. Trans women have an issue when we say to “stop focusing so much on them!” and try to act as if people cannot care about more than one thing. It’s like we think there’s one spotlight and we need to push the other group out to get into it, but that’s not how it works. Trans women have hypervisibility and saying that they hold power over our invisibility with it is incredibly harmful. I can understand that it’s frustrating when we look up anything regarding transgender rights or media and it’s mostly if not all trans women because we are looking for something that relates to us, but that is not the intent or fault of trans women.

And when it comes to us talking about our experiences without that and someone says that it’s taking attention away from trans women, yeah, that’s probably wrong, but we need to be able to differentiate that.

Overall when trans men and women separate to talk about our experiences, it does not end well and we commonly end up complaining about one another. This is not beneficial to either of us but we do it because it’s much easier to do that than to acknowledge the transphobic society we live in. Being trans will make you distrust a lot more people, because someone can become your enemy the second you mention your gender identity when they were your friend a second ago.

There is without a doubt transmisogyny within transmasc circles and as a trans man I still find myself there because I want to have a sense of community. It’s hard to tell that when there is critique if the intention is pure or not.

I’ve had plenty of experience being told that I can’t reclaim the t slur even though I’ve been called it for being trans since it’s only used against trans women, and I see myself reclaiming it anyway because before it was used in self-hatred and reclaiming it has improved my internalized transphobia and mental health. I’ve been told to delete my anti terf blog because I don’t experience transmisogyny and that terfs don’t target me, when that’s a lie. So maybe when people say that trans masc people have privilege over trans fems, that’s what we think of. We think of our experiences where people forget that transmisogyny will always include transphobia, and that transphobia effects all of us regardless of gender identity or agab. And instead of continuing to fight the outside transphobia, the oppression we are facing in the first place, we end up arguing who is truly facing that.

The fact that many people treat transmisogyny as just “transphobia towards trans women” is not helping either.

So trans men do oppress trans women, but on the basis that men oppress women. Trans men have an issue with transmisogyny but there is still the issue where trans men have their experiences with transphobia down played.

---- End Process ----

And I don’t like spending my time on this because after interacting with terfs A Lot I know that this benefits them more than anything. I know that they will say that us trans men are being abused by trans women and held hostage because of our agab and other bullshit. But maybe this long fucking mess of a post will get critique or others to expand their way of thinking a bit.

[starlightsearches]

with your story, Mixtape, i loved it. so much lmao it was so angsty and sweet and i like how you do miscommunication. i normally hate when characters dont "just talk to each other", but you make it unannoying and understandable, even with your shorter works. i love it lmao

me being me though, i do want to add what Mixtape made me think of. and thats, arrogantly enough, me. bc. y/n. of course. buT STILL, hold my hand, listen to me-- i got this thing right, called an Auditory Processing Disorder. its part of the D/HoH. (actually, i have a lot of processing disorders, probably, but Mixtape made me think of that one) its where your ears are fine, but your brain has problems processing language. so a lot of the time, if you arent reading lips (their back is to you, theyre in the other room, or theyre a recording on a mixtape), or if theres competing sounds (like the melody can make lyrics hard to hear), if there's an accent, or if youre just having a bad processing moment-- people sound like theyre speaking Simlish. they sound like the Peanuts parents. theyre suddenly speaking a foreign language you dont know, and maybe you can catch onto the meaning via context clues and pass by the "i heard your voice but didnt hear a word you just said" moment. other times you have to ask people to repeat themselves (and sometimes you process belatedly and realize what they said in the middle of their repetition, meaning the repetition was useless, its annoying). it's like,you can hear a car door slam down the street just fine, you can hear the faucet dripping in the other room-- but trying to hear your bud that's driving while youre in the backseat?? with their face away from you, the sounds of the car itself moving and the sounds of traffic, god forbid if any music is playing or multiple people in the car are talking at once-- you cant hear a thing anyone is saying. its all gibberish

i have a point to this, promise. the end result is cute, i just have to explain a lot about this disorder first because idk if you know it already or not, and yeah

growing up, i couldnt figure out what the fuck people were saying while they were singing because of this disorder. the melody was competiting with the singer, i could hear the singer's voice but none of the lyrics. so what i always had to do was search youtube for the lyric videos or try to find the lyrics online. because if i couldnt do either (and i very often couldnt growing up. i generally can now, but every once in a while, i still google it and come up with zilch), and i had no lyrics to reference, then that meant looping the song until i could "get" what they were saying. and very, VERY often?? id get like. two or three lines of every other verse, and the rest was a garbled mess of English-ish words and im just sitting there going "i guess i'll never know"

now. call me crazy. i was born in 1997, idk what tech was available in the 80s. but i know youtube was NOT, and im pretty fucking positive googling song lyrics was also not something one could do. youd have to find the album's song books somewhere or hope the lyrics were printed on the vinyl case (idk if cassette tapes also sometimes had that, idk). a mixtape?? you definitely dont get the lyrics printed anywhere. buying several albums of song books for a single mixtape of miscellaneous songs is just expensive

actually, as a genuine ABBA fan, the fact that rheir voices are never comepting with the melody (the voices are always SIGNIFICANTLY louder than rhe melody) and they ennuciate well, shit sounds crystal clear, i dont have to look up lyrics usually. same thing with musicals, they usually have to put a lot of focus in vocal clarity since not everyone can see the actor's face on stage, so that's part of why im a musical nerd. its easier to process

so. im here. just sitting. imagining my y/n with their auditory processing disorder, wincing at eddie and going "I'm taking it slow. I've been re-listening to the songs until I can actually process what the singer is saying. It's hard to, like, hear the words. I haven't let myself move onto the next song until I figure it out. Because. Y'know. You made it for me, and I want to appreciate it and understand what you've made me."

"Oh. That's right, your brain-language thing. Uh. Well, how far have you gone?"

"I've been on the first track all week, actually. But I promise I'm trying! Really! I do like how it sounds, I just want to get what the guy's actually saying before moving on to the next one, y'know? I'm sorry."

and i say this because. god. eddie probably knoes all the songs. and i dont think hed like sernade someone who he wasnt dating, bUT

the idea of eddie having to "make it physical", like, him having to hand-write the lyrics for y/n (he knows the songs afterall, hes probably nemorized them or at least can re-listen and pause the song to write the next bit down bc he can hear better than them) so they can read the lyrics while listening, him having to take this ethereal concept of trying to communicate his feelings and WRITING IT DOWN, knowing y/n will have his heart in his hands (as opposed to the slight distance of putting a cassette in a player, no longer touching skin) and see all the mispellings and scribbles and smudges, and just. god. the fear of what if your handwriting betrays what youre feeling. the addition of paper and pen makes the will they/wont they get it, get me, get what im saying mystery of a mixtape feel even more like a love letter now, aw fuck. poor eddie. he already went through the nervousness of handing them the cassette, now this is like the sequel and he still has no emptional pay-off from the first one yet on if this is just him or what

ugh. i just thought thatd be so fucking cute. him writing down the lyrics for them. god

i cant write a fic, i dont have the time, but i thought youd like this vague outline of one in return for the gift of what you crafted and polished so well. thank you for it. again, shit really tugged at my heart strings, i love the angst and pining of it all. i hope this attempt of a return gift made you at least smile. i know it doesnt parallel with your AUDACIOUSLY wonderful idea of "i cant listen to this tape because i love you", but it still was an idea generated because of you. and i just love the tenderness of eddie doing the Love As An Act Of Service in it, and i hope that you end up enjoying at that aspect of it too. again, what youve done is an utter delight, and i hope this outline gives you a fraction of the leg-kicking squeals kinda feelings you gave me. thank you again. good luck to you in all you do ♡

Hey friend!!

I'm so glad you liked Mixtape! I actually also have auditory processing disorder (because of ADHD) and I totally get what you mean about not understanding lyrics. Thank god for google 🙌🏼

Also, I do think the idea of Eddie writing out the lyrics would be pretty cute—going through half a notebook of paper because his handwriting looks like shit or he keeps misspelling words. And then he knows that you'll look at it, see the lyrics written out and how scary that would be for him.

[enderspawn]

It's alright if u don't wanna answer this cuz this argument gets people really riled up but do you think c!Techno is a tyrant or nah?

Cuz many c!techno apologists argue that he isn't just cuz he's an anarchist but I've also read a lot of essays that go against it and it'd be really interesting to see ur opinion on this

i think he, in some contexts, can most definitely be called tyrannical, yes. a tyrant? no.

to avoid spamming ppl w discourse we've all def heard before (and bc this ended up MASSIVE (like 2.3k ish), but fairly in depth bc i didnt wanna speak out of bad faith and wanted to be EXPLICTLY clear-- oops), the rest will be under readmore

so heres the thing i want to preface: i used to really LOVE c!techno. i joined beginning of s2, right when exile started, and he was arguably my favorite character. since then though i've fallen out with him a LOT, to the point i almost... actively despite him at times (though mainly in a toxic kind of way which i can acknowledge is flawed).

in short, his actions started to speak louder than his words and i lost investment in his personal character struggles because of the actions he took (doomsday was my breaking point. i get feeling angry and betrayed, as well as seeking revenge against lmanberg, but his actions went too far for me to CARE and it hurt so many more characters as well.)

so when i speak, i come from a place of disliking him but also somewhat understanding the position c!techno apologists come from: i used to be one of them myself.

NOW, do i think he's a tyrant? no. for reference in my analysis, i try to look up the definition of terms to make sure they are utilized properly. while "tyranny" and "tyrannical" can have multiple uses, tyrant itself is a more specific term. to combine the top two definitions, a tyrant is referring to "an extremely oppressive, unjust, or cruel absolute ruler (who governs without restrictions, especially one who seized power illegally.)"

techno's position as an anarchist, imo, DOES indeed make him unable to be a tyrant. tyrants are rulers with very clear power over others from a structural way. anarchists are about the lack of structure or power over others and instead viewing the people around you as equals in power.

in forming the syndicate, they very explicitly worked to not designate a leader and instead make it so that no one would have any power over the others systemically. techno may have taken a integral role, yes, but it doesn't make him suddenly "the leader", its a role that wouldve had to be filled by someone (even if it was democratic to decide who to invite, they'd need someone to hand over the invite itself yknow? like no matter WHAT there needed to be A ROLE)

one could argue that he IS a leader in the shadow hierarchy of the syndicate (which, yes, is a real and professional term used in management courses despite sounding like it comes from a 4kids yugioh dub) in that everyone CONSIDERS and looks to him a leader without him having any actual structural basis behind it, but to argue that allows him to be a tyrant is in bad faith i believe. especially because to the people he would be "ruling", he ISNT oppressive, unjust, or cruel. they are his friends and support network and critical for a lot of his personal development (since feelings of betrayal and trust issues are critical to his character and why he acts the way he does). I wish we were able to SEE this develop more, but oh well.

but like i said: tyrant is fairly specific in definition. TYRANNY, and thus TYRANNICAL are not as limited. I've discussed their definitions here. originally, i made that post because i was angry at a take i had seen that claimed that, like you said, because techno was an anarchist and not part of any government or leadership position, he couldn't be tyrannical. to which i heartily disagree.

for something to be tyrannical, they simply must have an overarching/oppressive power over someone or something. it would not be inaccurate if i were to say that something is "under the tyranny" of a concept, because what it means is that something is under the power of another thing/concept. you can frankly call anything tyranny if it is widespread/overarching and you don't like it. mask mandates? tyranny, its forcing me to act in "rigorous condition". hell, theres even such things as tyranny of the majority in which people agree too much on one thing and it gives them unfair power or tyranny of the minority where people with minority opinions have too much power (thats a very grossly oversimplified definition of both, but it covers the base idea well enough for my point)

the point im making above isnt meant to be taken as "anything can be worked to be defined as tyranny thus it is a meaningless claim", it is that tyranny (and again, thus tyrannical) are very open and nonrestrictive terms.

to make it easier to define, alongside the definitions provided i want to add an explicit clause that is (imo) implied in the original definition: tyranny is... well, bad. that is to say if someone has power over a group but literally everyone is fine with it and agrees to it, its not tyranny. thats just a group of people getting along and one happens to have power over another. a leader does NOT equal a tyrant (as discussed above), so leadership should not be equated with tyranny.

thus as an example: wilbur acting as president (before the election) may have been "unelected" with power over his citizens, but no one was upset with that power. thus, he is not a tyrant and not acting tyrannically (as well as the fact his power was, arguably, NOT rigourous or absolute but thats another topic for another time). SCHLATT however IS a tyrant, as his power was absolute (he did not consult his cabinet) and forced people to comply instead of them complying willingly, thus he was acting tyrannically.

now to finally get to the damn point of this essay: where does c!techno lie? honest answer? it depends slightly on your perspective, but it depends a LOT on the future of the syndicate.

techno is incredibly clear in his goals: no governments, no corruption. in fighting with pogtopia, he is actively working to topple a tyranny-- he isn't tyrannical for doing that.

when he strikes out on nov 16th, it is because he opposes them forming a new government. when they oppose him and disagree, he launches an attack against them. is this tyranny? maybe, but probably not. he IS trying to impose his own physical strength and power (as well as his resources) over the others to stop them from doing what HE doesn't want them to do.

however its more nuanced than that:

1. hes lashing out emotionally as well as politically. he feels betrayed by those he trusted and he believed that they would destroy the government then go (i'm ignoring any debates on if he did or did not know that they planned another government, though it is a source of debate). but typically idk about you but i dont call tyranny for someone fighting with another person.

2. he also may be acting with good intent again, in HIS EYES. if tubbo was part of manburg, whos to say he wont be just as bad? he, in his pov, is likely trying to stop another tyrant before they rise.

3. and finally, and tbh the most damning from any perspective: he gives up. he quickly leaves then RETIRES without intent to try and attack again until he is later provoked. tyranny is defined by it not just being power, but power being USED. if he doesn't use his power to try and impose any will, then he's not tyrannical.

Doomsday I am also not going to touch very in depth on for much of the same reasons. My answer is again a "maybe", depending on the weight you personally place on each issue:

1. he's lashing out as revenge for the butcher army and as revenge against tommy for "betraying" him (though this one we explicitly know he was ignoring the fact tommy did not want to go through with it, however he still did trust and respect tommy regardless so his feelings are understandable anyway)

2. he sees new lmanberg as corrupt and tyrannical (which is undeniable: house arrest for noncompliance, exile without counsel, execution without trial, etc), and thus obligated to destroy it

but also, theres the implicit understanding he's doing this to send a message: do not form a government, or else. its a display of force that also works to warn others unless they want a similar fate. phil even explicitly states that he is doing so to send that message, so one could assume techno is doing the same alongside his personal reasoning listed above.

what i just described is the use of a oppressive and harsh (physical) power in order to gain compliance from people (that compliance being 'not making a government'). does that sound familiar? exactly. it follows the definition(s) of tyranny given previously. technoblade is acting in a way that is, by very definition, tyrannical.

so the debate shifts: is he valid in doing so because he is trying to PREVENT corruption and tyranny. like i said, new lmanberg was undeniably corrupt at points. i held nothing against techno for trying to topple manburg, so does that apply to new lmanberg as well? short answer: i dont know. it depends on your specific opinion of what is acceptable. its like the paradox of tolerance: to have a truly tolerant society, you have to be intolerant of intolerance. to have a truly non-tyrannical society, do you need to have a tyranny enforcing it?

personally (and bc im a lmanberg loyalist /hj) i say it is. regardless of the corruption of new lmanberg, they are also giving a threat to EVERYONE. even those who are innocent, they are presented with the exact same threat and rule set: if you make a government, you will be destroyed.

(which, small divergence here, is part of why debating c!techno is so frustrating. so many times you end up hitting a "well it depends on your political views" situation and there ISNT a correct answer there. im here to analyze characters for fun, not debate political theory)

so: the syndicate then. this is where this debate really "took off" and i think its due to one very specific miscommunication about its goals and plans. the syndicate, upon formation, declares itself to stand against corruption and tyranny. when they are found, the syndicate would work to destroy it. so heres the golden question: what do THEY define as corruption and tyranny? if you were to go off c!techno's previous statements, seemingly "any government" is a valid answer. however, he also states he's fine with people just being in groups together hanging together.

what then DEFINES A GOVERNMENT for them? what lines do they have to sort out what does "deserve to be destroyed" and what does "deserve to exist freely"

this is a hypothetical i like to post when it comes to syndicate discourse:

i have a group of people. lets say 5 or so for example. they all live together and build together. any decisions made that would impact the entire group they make together and they must have a unanimous agreement in order to proceed, but otherwise they are free to be their own people and do their own thing. when you ask them, they tell you they are their own nation and they have a very clearly defined government: they are a direct democracy. does the syndicate have an obligation to attack?

there is absolutely no hierarchy present. there is no corruption present. but, they ARE indeed a government. is that then inherently negative? my answer is fuck no (see the whole "difference between a tyrant and a leader" thing above).

but THATS where the issue of this discourse LIES. in some people's eyes, the answer to that is YES. techno's made it clear "no government" is his personal view, but does that spread to the syndicate as a whole? do they act preemptively in case it DOES become corrupt? is it inherently corrupt because its a government, regardless of how it is ruled? the fact of the matter is because of how little we've seen the syndicate work as a SYNDICATE, we don't know that answer. so we're left to debate and speculate HOW they would act.

if the syndicate were to let that government exist, then they are not tyrannical. they are showing that they are working to stop tyranny and corruption, just like in pogtopia again.

if the syndicate were to destroy/attack that government, then they are tyrannical. simple as that. they are enforcing a rule of their own creation without any nuance or flexibility under the threat of absolute destruction.

miscommunication in debates comes, in my opinion, in the above. of course theres more points of nuance. for example:

would the syndicate allow a government like i had described with early lmanberg, where there is an established hierarchy but everyone in the country consents to said leadership? on one hand, there is no tyranny or corruption present which is what they are trying to work against. on the other hand, theres more a possibility of it occuring. perhaps they'd find a middle road between the two binary options of "leave or destroy" i am presenting, such as checking in occasionally to ensure no corruption occurs.

but if they were to destroy it without, for lack of a better word, "giving it a chance" they would be, in my opinion, tyrannical. they would be going aginst their words of opposing corruption and instead abusing their power to gain compliance.

your/others opinions may differ, again it depends on if you see it as worth it to possibly stop future tyranny or if a hierarchy is INHERENTLY a negative thing.

part of the reason so many blog gave up this debate, beyond not getting very clear answers for the syndicate, is because of the nuance present. there. is. no. right. answer. every single person will view it differently, because there is no universally agreed upon truth of right or wrong here. BUT, i hope this helps shed some light on the discussion and my thoughts on it

[snickiebear]

yo nadia <3333 i'm bored in my online classes and u reblogged the questions thingy at the right time lmao, so get ready: 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 17, 23, 24, 28, 30!!!, 34, 38, 39, 40 (the intimacy of being understood) (imma stop here lol) (also i'm sorry u're not feeling well, ily and hope u'll feel better soon!! <33333)

ELE ILY. (and thank you, i’m stayin home today cause,,, yeah. i appreciate you sm.) you’re the literal best, i adore you. 

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction?

The first fanfiction i read was for The Lunar Chronicles when I was like 11?? and it was 100% on accident and it scarred me because it was a hardcore porn one with a period kink and i was like WHAT IS THIS??? OH MY GOD???? LMAOOOOO i didn’t pick it back up until i was 13-14 and really got into the Fairy Tail fandom. I still reread my favorites on ff.net cause i love them. 

As for writing, I wrote a horrible, terrible x-men fanfiction when I was twelve. (my friend still brings it up and REFUSES to delete it so it still gets comments and views, that shit HAUNTS ME ELE.) then tried again for Fairy Tail, posted like two chapters before taking it down cause i wasn’t really feeling it. And then I posted The Intimacy Of Being Understood and here we are. 

4. Link your three favorite fics right now.

OMGG okok 

@murd3rm1ttens ‘s The Problem How Time Works IF YOU HAVENT READ THIS YOU GUYS NEED TO HOP ON IT ASAP. MITTEN’S WRITING SO SO SO SO GOOD. SAKURA AND INO ARE TOTAL BADASSES. KAKASHI IS A SIMPPPP. ITS SO FUCKING GOOD. 

@mouseymightymarvellous ‘s We Were Screaming In Color (Only A Possibility) yes, yes I KNOW. i always point into mousey’s direction but i WILL always advocate that everyone reads her fics, they’re literally so beautiful???? i just happen to be rereading WWSIN rn 

@safelycapricious ‘s Shaking Up And Breaking Down series. I found this like?? idfk but i’ve been raving about it ever since. ALSO CHECK OUT THEIR FICS IN GENERAL. 

fuck i have more than three but also check out @ambivalens999 ‘s Masks

i do wanna make a fic rec thing where i just rav about my favs,,, might do that later or sum

5. What are your fanfic pet peeves? Do they have a huge effect on whether or not you decide to read something?

Omniscient third person. I don’t like it. Like I can understand that it can be a little hard to stay in one person’s perspective but, in my opinion, if you can, it shows how disciplined you are as a writer. Plus, i just get so confused when I go from A’s thoughts to suddenly what B is thinking about A. 

When writers use ‘ ‘ instead of “ “. When writers put thoughts in ‘ ‘ instead of just italicizing them. It’s small things but like they just bother me sO MUCH. most of the time i can ignore it and try to enjoy but other times i just dip. 

9. Tag 3 fic writers you think are underrated/unknown in the fandom/fanfiction community.

@espoir-et-reves !!!!! THEIR SHISAKU FICS ARE SO SO SO SO SO GOOD. And they have a warring states one going on THAT I AM SO OBSESSED WITH. 

@writer168 idk if they’re really “underrated” but THEY HAVE SUCH GREAT FICS ON AO3. Like theres an AU with sakura, kiba, and shino that i reread constantly because it just. is. so. fucking. GOOD. and they posted a new one that i’m YELLING about. 

@eggtoasties okay they only have 2 in the naruto fandom (one shisaku which is still ongoing) BUT THEIR WRITING STYLE IS SO NICE?? I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. I still go back and reread their shikasaku one cause UGH i can’t get enough. I love it. 

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

Fandoms: Naruto, Soul Eater, The Old Guard, ATLA

Parings: KakaSaku/ShikaSaku/ShiSaku/MultiSaku, SoMa, Joe X Nicky, Zukka

Character: SAKURA. I will read anything with Sakura as the main character and her being a fuckin badass or becoming a badass. I love her.

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback?

aha.. haha.. well. I check my email like three times an hour. its the first thing i check in the mornings too. I’m literally a whore for praise and literally eat up feedback like its going out of style. I also reread a lot of my stuff because i make so many mistakes and spelling errors, or the spacing is weird oR SOMETHING. plus, literally any and all comments make my day, i go back and reread them cause they just make me feel so tingly and warm like “wow. this person enjoyed the fic/my writing enough to tell me. thats HUGE!”

23. What’s your absolute favorite trope to write?

Angry, feral, bloodied, morally gray women. They aren’t bad guys, they’re probably the good guy, but that doesn’t mean they cant be fucking raging at the world with raw knuckles and blood on their teeth. I just love an angry woman who struggles with her emotions and just has so much inner conflict but that doesn’t take away from her character or badassery, it adds to it. 

24. What’s a trope that you’d like to never hear about as long as you live, let alone write?

The fake dating or miscommunication troupe. LIKE GUYS JUST TALK. AND TELL EACH OTHER OMFG. the entire like obliviousness of “nah they dont like me” while the They holds their hand and kisses their cheek. MOFO WHAT. it makes me so impatient and like mad HAAHHAHA. its probably because i’m a pretty confrontational person so seeing stuff like that just “cmon bro, USE YO HEAD.”

28. How do you deal with writing pressure (ie: pressure to update, negative comments, deadlines, etc)?

I have yet to receive a negative comment! Which i was really surprised about tbh. As for deadlines or pressure to update, i just kind of do whatever. I do set goals, but i set them flexible enough that hey, if i can’t do it, that’s okay. 

I have a lot of mini goals, like “i want to write this chapter and get it done this week” and then the large goal is “FINISH BY END OF MAY” so i have time. 

Actually, now that I think on it, the entire pressure to update thing is probably why i’m waiting until I have all of OL&W written to post it weekly,, cause well. I wouldn’t wanna leave you guys waiting as I tried to write and work out the next chapters and stuff, you know?

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

AAAAAA YOU KNOW I LOVE THESE AHAHAHAH

Have you seen the way the dead dance, World Breaker? They roar, half mad and starving. Do you not wish, do you not hope to see them twist and bend and dance to your will?

Shikamaru snarls, looking behind his shoulders to where his Shadows lay. “Patience.” He spits. “Is of the essence, Things of Ancient. Know your place as the dark you are.”

34. How much of yourself and your life experiences do you put into your writing? What do you think your readers’ image of you is?

None of my experiences match up to anything I write tbh,,, probably the only thing that is me in my writing is maybe the emotional turmoil? I’m pretty emotionally and mentally mature because from a pretty young age i started forming my own opinions, started looking into the world around us and being like “dude what the fuck this is not what disney advertised”. Then i started talking (read: arguing and debating) with my dad about a lot of it. So, like emotions are kind of hard for me. Like i’m pretty good at controlling them or understanding them, but still. idk its hard to explain ig.

Like the weight of stress, the anger, the sadness. It’s kind of therapeutic to write. Cause i don’t know how to put those feelings to verbal words so writing them really helps. 

As for my readers’ image? Probably like some kind of hunched over figure typing away in the dark with a maniacal grin on their face. I honestly don’t know AHHAHAHA but it is fun to think about. I think they’d see me as someone with potential but a lot of room to grow and someone who is imperfect but in a charming way LMAOOOO

38. What does your writing process look like? How chaotic is it on a scale of 1 (very tame) to 10 (you can’t handle this kind of chaos)?

I’m gonna be real honest. Its probably like a 2. I’m a bit of a control freak so I almost always go in chronological order, my writing is pretty linear. Unless, i get bored and jump to one of my fav parts. It's pretty much i sit down, i open the doc, read over my notes and just start writing. 

It’s a little boring to explain AHAHAHA but once i get into the groove of things its really fucking great, I can like feel myself in the world, I can feel what i want the characters to, i love it. I catch myself mouthing the words as i type too, which i find hilarious.

39. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

I rather like how raw my writing is sometimes. Which might sound really vain, but i do like the way i word things or describe things. I love juxtaposition and repetition, or making a good ole circle back to some minute detail that wouldn’t stand out until i repeat it at the end and you’re like “omg” AHAHAHAHA.

Like those little poetic snippets or certain wording i just sit back and go “damn thats kinda good nadia! go you!’ HAHAHA  

40. How did you come up with the idea for The Intimacy Of Being Understood?

AAAAA this fic is like my first child, my pride and joy LMAO

so the idea initially came when i was reading some fic, idk if it was even naruto, but i was like “i don't like this, but i do like the rain symbolism.” And I knew i wanted to write something kind of slow paced, something a little sad and angsty, but would show KakaSaku slowly but surely falling in love.

Idk if you’ve noticed but a lot of my fics, the pairings don’t change each other dramatically. They accept each other as they are and then they grow with together. Like that acceptance is something i just love writing, its so subtle, it isn’t something you declare. Its simply “I am going to love you. I am going to love you despite your flaws and faults. I am going to love you unconditionally because I know you, I understand you, and there is nothing you could do to drive me away.” 

The fic kind of wrote itself after that first scene. I kept going back to the rain, go being ghosts, and resurrection, and the small epiphanies one gets. I wanted to focus on each character’s growth with each other. They didn’t find light in life because of each other, but with each other. And i think that’s my favorite thing about that fic. 

I wanted something raw and real and just something beautiful. I’m actually really proud of it tbh. Would i go back and rewrite/edit it? Oh of course! I’d do that with every single one of my fics, but i’m not gonna cause i think its in its rawest form right now. :))))

ask me shit plz

[mr-and-mr-dameron]

Learning to love ALL of Star Wars

I’ve grown a lot the past few years, and with that I’ve came to appreciate a lot more things about what I love. I’ve went from bitter and spiteful about what I don't have to appreciating what I do have, and at the centre of that storm is Star Wars. A franchise I’ve only really been invested in the last year. 

The beginning

So I was always a “fan” of Star Wars, sure. I grew up with the prequels and I was excited when Disney was releasing their new movies. But the past year is where I really got invested and found a whole new love for the franchise. And strangely enough, it was through the simplicity of Lego.  You see, I started watching videos by Brickvault about Lego Star Wars minifigures, and something about seeing the toys I loved as a kid from a modern perspective took me right back to wooshing my Jedi starfighter around my room. From there, I started moving away from Lego and dipped my toe in theories, lore videos and eventually discussion and review videos, the turning point being Cosmonaught Variety Hour.  Now, I have some opinions on the guy now, but Cosmonaught was perfect for me at the time. He was opinionated, entertaining, but most importantly knew his shit, and I liked that. His videos on Star Wars are pretty good, and really helped form my opinions back then... In a bad way... Now I’ll make this clear, this is NOT on Cosmonaught, it was just how impressionable I was as a person back then. I’m just saying how his video affected me on a personal level.  Up to this point I didn’t really understand the hate for the prequels besides the fact they were “bad movies” and “people don’t like them”. Cosmonaughts video on the prequels gave me those reasons, and I finally felt like I got the distaste for those films. However, like they say... A little knowledge can be dangerous, and boy was I about to learn that lesson the hard way... 

The fall

So here I am, knower of all things, the CORRECT things... I’ve watched my fair share of videos from a handful of sources, I know my shit. I’m making my opinions known, and I’ve become that friend.  But whats this! A dissenting opinion!? My boyfriend actually likes the prequels more than the Original Trilogy!? SACRALAGE!! I must prove him wrong! And prove him wrong I...! Did not... In fact, something rather bizarre happened... He convinced me.  I was stubborn at first, but I’ll admit, my wall got broken down at long last. He (bless his soul for dealing with me) managed to get through to me exactly what it was he loved about those films, and it wasn’t just the nostalgia. I had always seen the politics of the Galaxy like most other people did, some boring preachy nonsense that had no place in Star Wars, but I came around to it.  Granted with a little help from the Clone Wars I managed to piece together just what it was there was to like about these films... I wont say they’re perfect, far from it. But internally they have so much more going on compared to the Original Trilogy. The Era has some of the most fun and expandable concepts and ideas in all of Star Wars, and while it may not be as iconic, the visual artstyle of it all is still its own recognizable brand of Star Wars.  And almost like magic (or my phone spying on me) youtube started recommending videos that disagreed with Cosmonaught, and I got my first taste of how his video wasn’t as sound as I thought. Now as a side note: I still like Cosmonaught. He’s a funny guy who like I said knows his shit, but he obviously isnt the be all end all right and wrong which I hadn’t quite learned. I can enjoy his content while disagreeing with it, and I think thats just fine. I find myself disagreeing with a lot of creators I watch now and he’s just joined them.  But hang on, we’re missing something here... A certain... Mouse? Perhaps?

The dark times... The Disney Empire... 

So hop back to modern day for a sec, this timeline pretty much lines up with the end of the Disney movies right? So how do I feel about those? Well... When the first three came out, I liked them. Like everyone else I was loving new Star Wars. As a young art student, I loved Rogue One and TLJ for their stunning visuals, deeper themes and their attempt at something new and fresh. I loved the throne room fight scene, the light speed ram and how Rogue One had such a bitter sweet ending.  But ho ho no one else felt that way! And whether it be peer pressure or my love of dumpster fires my opinions changed like that. I laughed at the Rose Tico and Snoke memes, I hated the Canto Bight subplot and poor Luke being butchered on screen like that, and then there's Rey...  Solo came and passed. I refused to go see it, as I did with TROS which came out around the time I was getting back into Lego, and along with the prequels I was watching video essay upon video essay about why the sequels sucked and how to rewrite them. Some of them coming from a positive place, others... Not so much..  And so my hatred for them grew as I got back into the franchise and came to appreciate the originals for what they done great, and loathing the new films for lacking that same spark. And unlike the prequels, I didn’t really get enough pushback to change my mind. But what I did get was the full brunt of spite and hate the fans had for these new films, and honestly? It was depressing. 

Hate leads to suffering. 

I finally reached my rock bottom. I genuinely reached a point where I debated giving up Star Wars for the sheer amount of negative feelings I had towards the state of the franchise (which might I add is valid if you ever end up feeling that way about something you’re meant to be enjoying). 

I struggled to get past how Disney “ruined” Star Wars, and clearly nothing was going to change. 40 Years of history had been wiped out and the new timeline was a contorted mess, and the amount of discourse and disagreements in the franchise honestly did not help at all. 

Nothing was simple, everything had a catch. You like how Kylo was irredeemable in TLJ? Well he’s redeemed in TROS. TFA is a fun film but it sets up a lot of the things people hated about the sequels so you cant even just head canon that the other two never happened. And then...

Saved by Lego

There was Lego, making the best of a bad situation. It didnt care if you didn’t like that Palpatine was back (somehow), it didn’t care about the clunky prequel dialog, and it didn’t care about the thousands of retcons from the entierety of the franchises existence. 

Whether by contractual force or not: It was pure, distilled Star Wars. 

I loved how a set with Rey could stand beside a set with OT Luke and thats just how it was. It put into context that this was reality, and I could either be bitter about what could have been or accept what was, which wasn’t easy and I’m still not really over it. But I reached a place where I could accept the fun in all of Star Wars, that I liked how some of these characters looked, that these characters all existed in one Galaxy, and it was nice. 

And it led me straight back into... 

Learning to love Star Wars

One of the most important lessons I learned in the past year was trust your gut. Sure, hear out other peoples take on something, and if it changes your opinion all the more power to you. But don’t fight the fact you felt something in that initial reaction. I liked the prequels as a kid, so why don’t I as an adult? Is it because i outgrew them and see them for the disasters they are? Or is it because a someone who watched them as a fully grown adult that grew up with the OT was underwhelmed? 

And to that extent... I rewatched TFA and TLJ with an open mind and an open heart. The result? 

Im indifferent towards TFA. It has fun character moments and has a decent adventure, for what it is its good. But I actually found myself enjoying TLJ after all these years of hating on it. I liked their take on Luke, I liked the mutiny subplot, it didnt push the story forward leaps and bounds but it was a more methodical take on the franchise and for the I liked it. It wasn’t perfect, its biggest flaw is how bleak it can feel and its lack of doing anything interesting with its setting, but it does do a fair amount of decent things and I’ve come to appreciate it for that. 

I’m planning to watch TROS at long last soon, so maybe I’ll update it here. But what I will say is that I hope Lucasfilm don’t give up on the sequel era and characters quite yet. There is still a lot to love here as much as you may not like it, and I hope that they can explore more interesting meaningful themes and narratives in external media that they couldn’t in mainline films cough cough Stormpilot cough cough...

I know not everyone will agree with how I feel now, heck a lot of my problems I had still stand, but I’m at peace with it all now. I just want to sit back and enjoy this franchise for what it is. While I might not forgive Disney for its severe mishandling of... everything (a rant for another time) I’m content just not them supporting to the best of ability.

Star Wars is in such a unique position where each generation has a different stance and appreciation for different parts within the franchise. The prequels were hated until its fans grew up and started defending it, The Clone Wars was hated until its fans grew up and started defending it, and the sequels ended last year, their fans haven’t quite got their voice yet. But I’m interested to hear what they have to say. 

[ambitionsource]

hi can we get some zaley friendship headcanons whenever you're free? ☺️

im not the best at headcanons just bc of the way my brain functions but im gonna do my best for you, sunny my friend. let’s go zay and riley let’s go!

thrift shop buddies!! one of the most common ways that they hang out is definitely going thrifting. considering they arguably have the two most eclectic wardrobes on the show, this makes sense. esp i fully believe they’re the perfect people to thrift shop with where they encourage each other to try on everything, even if it seems outlandish (and sometimes even more in those moments). that’s the only way to really get some good finds! and i feel like, beyond S1, when they wear items for performances in the show that are clearly unique / seem thrifted, it’s more than 50% likely the other helped them pick it out at some point

on this note, i think that they both have really good senses of what looks good on the other bc they spend this time together, probably better than anyone else (yes, including their significant others. not that that’s hard, since both of their significant others have notoriously bland fashion). like even when theyre not out together i can totally imagine them seeing something and being like “oh this is so riley / zay” and getting it for each other. they know each other’s sizes and have like an ongoing swap credit system gfJSKHJDLFH

riley and zay usually run performance by the other person before they perform them for the class / at an audition. like they find a specific time (usually during breakout sessions during class) to get in front of the other person and run them through their concept + do a run-through for them. they just really appreciate the other’s perspective, especially since they tend to complement each other -- zay is able to identify places where riley could heighten things or add some flair or just like... assert her talent more lmao, whereas riley helps zay pull back on some of his more overwhelming instincts when necessary or find the moments to truly lean in emotionally rather than blowing us out of the water the whole time

if we could actually Watch the show, i guarantee 9/10 times when riley or zay is performing, we would cut to the other enjoying the performance. like theyre always bobbing their head along and truly feelin the other’s performances. excellent vibes luv!

i also think they harmonize well with each other, which is why its kind of a shame they dont do more performances together within the context of assignments (as for why, couldn’t tell you... it might just be a weird psychological thing of like i have These people i perform with when it matters and these who are just for fun... like maybe zay and riley tend to see each other as easygoing comfortable duet partners and thats why they try not to overdo putting pressure on it). but yeah they absolutely have days where they just hang out in one of the rehearsal studios and play around on the piano and try to find ways to harmonize on their favorite songs. this is some of the best singing riley ever does, bc its so low stakes and fun

i also think that honestly, zay really helps strengthen riley’s vocals over the time they’re friends -- especially early on. riley is someone with good raw talent but she’s never thought about honing it seriously prior to joining aaa, whereas zay has been on a career mindset since he was little. so he is good at teaching her like small technique things or helping her expand her range and she really values that esp bc hes so selfless about giving it, but it doesnt come off naggy or unnecessary like maya’s advice often does

sometimes it can be hard for them to find songs they both wanna sing though bc their music taste is so different. i think they have like three small categories where their favorites overlap -- select big names (sza, chloe x halle), jazz / old-time crooners (frank sinatra, nina simone, and the like), and select musical theater. but i think this is mainly on zay, bc he’s much more picky about music than riley who will give anything a listen without much nudging. as we know zay likes to pick on his friends’ music taste (like charlie and harry styles / 1d) and i don’t think riley would escape this affectionate teasing. they exchange song recs and riley gives him like her usual piano ballad-y sara bareilles tswift rachael yamagata energy and shes like oh yes, another piano ballad and hes like STOP!!! JUST LISTEEEENNNN GFSJKLHJFDSKLHKDLFH

that said though, they’re definitely go-to friends when it comes to like checking out a new local artist or coffeeshop open mic nights. this is probably a typical zay / riley / yindra outing

zay doesn’t spend a ton of time watching tv bc “he has better things to do with his time,” but riley and zay are definitely the type to watch a show together. like not always Together, but they’ll try to keep up with each other so that they can talk about it (and riley has to try really hard not to keep binging and get way ahead of zay). theyre good at this bc they can have really intense and opinionated conversations about it but in a way where its like safe and neither of them feel like theyre actually being judged / are stupid if they disagree (something thats not common for riley, and zay usually is trying to discuss media with super strong personalities who aren’t great at Debating).

in general, though, they tend to agree on favorite characters / relationships. for example, they both hate rachel berry -- which always gets maya and farkle extremely heated if they’re around. i can only imagine why...

they’re also definitely safe-space vent people for each other. they don’t use the privilege all that often bc i think both of them try to like keep their cool and not get hung up about things, but if they really just have to pop off about something they know they can go to the other person and they’ll actually Listen and keep it under wraps rather than either spilling it to everyone else and/or immediately trying to problem solve rather than just listening to the Emotions. and it’s helpful bc for the most part, their friends don’t actually really overlap that much, so they don’t really like harbor the emotions the other person unloads on them or let it affect their dynamics with other people? like riley can talk about dasher and zay can talk about yingel without it having any ripple consequences bc theyre different circles.

for example, i can totally see riley talking to zay about how she feels like -- at first -- asher doesn’t really like her and won’t really let her in and like he doesn’t want her to join the friend group (even tho that isn’t really true). like she can’t talk to dylan about it bc she’s not going to put him in that position and she’s not foolish enough to think that’s a good idea, she can’t talk to lucas about it bc he like doesn’t get stuff like that gFJKHGLFJSDLH and also he has such a set impression of asher it would be hard for him to understand it from her perspective. zay has none of that, so hes a good person to listen to her nerves about it.

the only times this gets kind of complicated / janky is in the midst of zay x charlie stuff where riley is kind of unintentionally (or, sometimes, intentionally) in the middle. like, zay trusts her not to go telling charlie what he says about him, but he knows they’re good friends too, and its an awkward position to put her in. but still, i think when zay is really hurt or frustrated he’ll snap sometimes and just vent out all his anger about charlie to riley in one foul swoop, and she’ll just absorb it like a sponge without judgment and then not bring it up again. but you can also see little ways where this puts pressure on their friendship, like how when he was drunk in 304 zay expressed resentment towards the fact that riley also talks to charlie and sometimes he feels like she puts him first, even though that isn’t true. it’s just..... a very very complicated (and interesting, if emotional) situation with that trio.

that being said, when things are Good, i think that zay feels comfortable talking about his significant others (including charlie) with riley. he doesn’t really get too Detailed about anything personal or anything, but they definitely discussed charlie in s2 in the small window of time where riley knew and zc wasn’t actively imploding LMAO. on the flip side, riley doesn’t really talk to zay about her relationships, but only bc her relationship is lucas GJFSKLJHLKDJHFLDSH. like anyone else she’d be like okay sure this is fine but she knows zay finds lucas annoying 65% of the time and talking about him in a romantic context grosses him out so she respects that LMAOOOO. hysterical

in general, if they’re gonna hang out, they usually go to either a local coffee shop they like (like svorskis) or each other’s houses. its kind of a relief to have a person they can just take anywhere and have around their parents with no trouble at all, considering both of them are used to having a boyfriend who cant be seen in their house (for different reasons). and theyre comfortable enough that like i think when they hang out at their houses, they just spread out in the living area of both bc theyre not hiding anything, its like very lowkey and comfortable

that being said, riley doesnt spend much time in zay’s usual studio at school. most people don’t, its a place zay now likes to be alone (and it feels weird with someone else being there who isnt charlie)

as for how they come off to their families, the babineauxs love riley. jada has met her a couple of times and thinks she’s super sweet + zay could afford to learn a thing or two from her like how to chill the fuck out (cue zay going shut the fuck up). donna is excited that zay has another friend who isn’t batshit intense about stuff like maya / farkle, she figures yindra has the diva best friend role covered and zay needs more friends like nigel and riley to ground him. she’s right about this.

cory likes zay, but he also does have some prejudices from the teaching perspective about how zay doesn’t pay attention in class half the time and blows off his assignments -- but this isn’t partially because cory isn’t a great teacher and his assignments suck. so the feeling is mutual, tho zay gets along better with cory in a neutral, polite sense than say, asher and dylan, where it’s like guerilla psychological warfare. topanga has no opinion about zay bc riley doesn’t introduce her friends to her (wisely).

they’re still very common lunch buddies. essentially when riley isn’t eating with the techies (which is only when lucas is there usually) or bothering lucas in the booth once a week, she’s with zay (which usually also means nigel, yindra, and farkle, though not always)

ultimately, i think that when someone asks riley who her best friend is, her mind will always jump to zay first. not even because theyre necessarily the closest at any given time, but because he really was her first life raft at aaa and he extended that kindness to her in a moment where she was so used to being brushed aside, talked over, ridiculed -- and you don’t forget that. it stays with you. so when she thinks about her Best Friend, speed round answer, he will always come to mind first. i think she greatly admires his skillful balance of confidence and compassion, his sarcastic sense of humor, the way he gets so passionate about dance and music and how these elements come together, and his inarguable kindness that is at his core and so fundamental to everything he does (even when his more known reputation is a bit more barbed and witty).

on the flip side, i think riley came into zay’s life at the exact moment he needed it. we know he felt isolated in s1, and even though i think he thinks of nigel and yindra as his first-to-mind best friends, riley was a breath of fresh air who allowed him to be himself with someone who wasnt going to judge him on past decisions or impressions. just like he gave her the chance to define herself in his eyes with his extension of company on that first day, she does the same for him by not making assumptions about him and learning who he is on their terms. i think she’s also just a really great, measured system of support -- she’s not busting his balls or keeping him in check like yindra and nigel do (except when its really needed, like 304), but she isn’t as in awe / romanticized with him like charlie. i think he appreciates that he can go to her for an honest perspective, but she’ll take the care to deliver that honesty in a gentle way. it’s like, he’s tough enough to take a hit, but sometimes its nice to know you have someone who will be kind with you even then.

that’s what is at the core of their friendship overall. kindness.

-- Maggie

[rainingincale]

I just saw your tags on the "harry was oppressed" post. Might elaborate on that when you are not tired? How Zayn was oppressed? His relationship to ot4. Other celebrities? I love your thoughts!

*cracks knuckles* buckle your seat belts folks we’re in for a wild ride here lmao.

also for context *here* is the post this anon is referring to

I think to start off i should just make a little disclaimer, everything i am going to discuss will be based in my biases probably seeing as I am also a brown British Pakistani person who is Muslim. Zayn has been someone that especially when i was younger I looked up to and was very essential in my journey of learning to love and accept myself and my culture tbh. It’s cheesy as hell but it’s true and i think this is important to know before I go into this more because like I said i am definitely biased towards him. Another thing is that I’m just going to be discussing my personal opinions and also my memory is not very good so i will probably miss out a lot of other things that happened/could be discussed. please dont take this as anything more than just. my opinion.

A thing that really opened my eyes to racism and especially the racism in the 1d fandom was the day that zayn left. I dont think thats what the post above was about btw and ill go into that but i kind of just want to talk about this. The day he left was. a severe mess. Not only because it was obviously upsetting but because of all the bs that people were spouting about a situation that absolutely no one had any context on. the statement that was released on facebook gave us nothing. literally just stated that zayn was leaving the band and the accusations and hatred people were directing towards zayn when we didnt know what actually fucking happened (and still dont might i add) was disgusting. people accusing him of being selfish and how they hated him and why he had to ruin everything. Accusing him of using mental illness as an excuse and lying about it and so much more. i had unfollow more than half of the people i followed that day. it really opened my eyes to the fact that these were all thoughts and opinions people had underneath it all and zayn was fine as long as he was part of 1d and giving people what they wanted. which was essentially being the token in the group and once he wasnt providing that anymore? people turned and people turned fast.

i think its also important to point out the flip side of it and that was zayn stans saying that 1d were nothing without 1d etc. i want to talk about why this was different from ot4 stans hating zayn. of course it wasnt nice to see or hear EVERYONE arguing with each other. i hated it so much. but i think what people failed to realise was that when it comes to situations like this you need to look deeper and think about all the nuances of the situation. zayn stans being happy about zayn leaving the band and saying 1d was going to die i did not agree with. anyone who knew me then and knows me now knows that i am a 1d stan regardless (preferably ot5 but i supported 1d until the end even as a 4some) BUT these opinions were rooted in his mistreatment in the band and the racism he was having to face as a result of being in the band etc etc i apologise for not being a person who can better describe and explain this situation but hopefully you are getting the picture. when fans were hating on zayn. with no context with nothing. that was based on racism. point blank. the amount of tweets FROM 1D FANS talking about how he was leaving to join isis and how upset fans were gonna be vulnerable and join etc etc all this deplorable bs. and he had to deal with comments like that throughout his whole time with one direction and i imagine even now. 

Another thing id like to talk about is who zayn stans at least from my point of view usually were. For me i remember when i first got into the fandom i actively made the decision that i didnt want zayn to be my favourite because i didnt want to be a stereotype and this was a point in my life when i still tried to shun and push my culture down because i was ashamed of it. it was only as i slowly saw that zayn was considered as cool and hot and everyone else liked him that i kind of understood that maybe. being brown was alright and it was something cool and that maybe i was cool. it sounds fucked up and honestly i dont even know if i want to be admitting this so adamantly but argh if it helps someone understand then maybe its worth it. (mortifying ordeal of being known eh?) anyways i noticed as i engaged more in fandom and looked for more diversity, more fans like me, majority of non white fans were also... zayn stans. and honestly it makes sense because we all tended to flock towards the closest diversity we could find it seems. im not saying that there werent white zayn stans and that the other boys didnt have non white stans but i just wanted to point out this trend. so when you also take this into account and the fact that on the day zayn left it was majorly... white stans who were criticizing zayn it puts it in perspective for you. majority of fans who still like and support zayn are also not white.

there is a lot more to do with fans but hopefully thats enough of an insight and you can understand the kind of vibes that were present during 1ds prime and what not only zayn had to go through but also as a result the racism we ended up having to deal with as well tbh.

now!!!... something i dont really like talking about lol so this will probably be short but the other boys. so as far as i can remember liams always been kind to zayn since hes left (no surprise there <3 also please correct me if im wrong), niall was kind of indifferent/didnt say anything really, and then there was louis and harry *awkward smile*. hahaha. from my memory i remember when asked about what the most difficult thing was about zayn leaving harry said ‘the paperwork’ which was *awkward smile* and he also kicked that monkey mask/pinata? i cant remember with naughty boys face on it and honestly im sure theres more but his overall reaction to zayn leaving was kind of not caring and maybe being slightly nasty which :) with louis there was the massive twitter fight which literally tears my soul in half so lets not go into that haha and honestly other things where it maybe seemed like he was upset with zayn leaving as well. honestly i am a bit in two minds about these reactions because at the end of the day we dont know what occurred behind the scenes and we probably never will as much as we can speculate or whatever. not to mention that this 10th anniversary it seems maybe everyones on good terms which, who knows really im going to try be optimistic. i think whats important to note about heir reactions is that we dont know anything about their situations but the problem was really how fans reacted tbh (btw i forgot to mention earlier this is about basically everything except for harry and the nb thing. that is inexcusable). the boys reactions were understandable but the problem is that fans of course vicariously are influenced by the boy they stan so when one of them acted a certain way of course that ended up reflecting in fandom and resulted in more racism etc. 

another thing with zayn was that there were many files leaked with like promo or whatever basically describing what kind of role the boys would take on/ their image etc. and of course all the other boys got things like bubbly/funny/charming etc and zayns descriptors? moody, mysterious, dark horse etc etc like from the inception of 1d zayn has been victim to racist stereotypes being pushed on him. and i think this is where harry comes in because of course the image pushed onto him was also extremely harmful and i definitely dont think we should not talk about that but often you'll see that... thats all that is talked about because people are uncomfortable admitting racism and talking about it. 

When i mentioned other celebrities my point was basically just that while ive only talked about zayn in one direction this... is so present among any and every fandom. 5sos, Little Mix, Fifth Harmony... any fandom you can think of, i promise you it is there. racism in fandom is a real thing and a big problem and honestly this is why i always say representation is so important. and when i say that i mean everywhere!!! because if I didnt seek out non white fans to follow then maybe i would’ve had a completely different perspective on all of this.

The thing is also that a lot of this is just stuff that we’ve been able to get our hands on and also fan analysis and theories etc. there is probably so much more to talk bout or go into or stuff we’ll never even know about. I’ve kind of had to make peace with the fact that with celebrities you just really don’t actually know anything about them.

I think i’ll end this here if there’s any more questions you have about anything feel free to ask! and again this is all just my opinion  but hopefully i’ve been able to help answer you <3 have a nice day and i hope youre hydrated!!!