#it's the sort of weird thing that makes me want to write an essay honestly

[timeslipcamp]

towa is a character that i didn't really look too closely at until i read an episode with him in it. he was funny and cute and honestly loved how they write him, LOVE a character with flaws. and then we get on that dock and he can speak and he asks if we believe in soulmates--

i was now smitten with towa.

but there's something else that's made me so interested in towa from the very beginning with the way his stigma seems to work so different from everyone else's, and it's been bugging me from the beginning.

i don't think towa is a ghoul

spoilers through episode 12

it sounds like a crack theory, i know. i'm aware. i said it to my friend and she replied, "then why would he be here?" and you know what? fair question! but we've seen plenty of anomalies so far, and a couple that are very human like. you know what else we've seen? a god that's lost its power.

now i'm not saying towa is a god. i'm also not not saying that. i'm just saying that ever since we first saw him, towa's been extremely different from the other ghouls.

this theory is all guesses. i don't have a lot of evidence other than vibes and screenshots. i guess that's how all of my theories are, but this one has even less evidence than the others given how little we know about the ghouls powers and pacts and how they affect a person when they make a pact.

my main arguments for towa not being a ghoul are his characteristics, his stigma, and his behaviors. parts of each of these set him completely apart from the other ghouls, enough so that it makes me suspicious that he's not actually a ghoul, but potentially some sort of spirit.

lesskettit

towa's characteristics set him apart enough alone. like, we could literally just have this theory based on his behavior and it'd be like yeah, he's weird, he's not like them. thankfully--or unthankfully if you don't want to read a 2k essay on him--i have more than just that. but allow me to take you back to the first jabberwock episode when we meet towa in person for the first time. the first things we see are him striking something with lightning and eating a dandelion. also!

interesting shape for his bubble wand to be in. unlike our ring (the sage's ring or whatever) this one does that the six pointed star often depicted in solomon's seal. it is, however, a shape that's used in multiple places with multiple meanings. but. still weird.

towa cannot speak in sunlight. his voicelines on the homescreen are only during the night, and in game, 9 times out of 10, he is only speaking to us when the sun has set. however, in the episode with the cat anomaly (funniest anomaly ever btw i was cackling every time that thing was on screen) he's able to speak when he's in the cat's shadow. this is the first time i considered it being linked to sunlight and not just time of day. however, to argue against my own point, when he was in the caves and zenji approached him, he couldn't speak. so maybe the writers just forgot it wasn't night when he spoke from under the cat. or, he just didn't want to talk to zenji. who knows.

another characteristic: his eyes. LOVE the fucking rectangular pupils. always a fun character choice. i think he's goat coded, but goat are not the only ones who can have rectangular pupils:

deer is another fun idea, considering all the flowers he's eating, and his eyes looked a LOT like the kraken's in the first jabberwock ep, but i'm still going with either deer or goat, and i'll get into that in a bit.

part number two! his stigma!

what the fuck is going on with his stigma!

maybe it's because i'm autistic but the rules for the stigmas were very clearly laid out for us early on: you received a stigma from the demon you made a pact with, it requires a trigger word to use, and we can enhance it with our super special ring.

towa follows literally none of these rules.

he's never had to say a trigger word before using his abilities (weather, controlling anomalies, jumping insane distances...), he seems to have more than one stigma if so (plus a weird consequence of losing speech in the sun) and he's never taken advantage of us making his powers stronger when we touch. disclaimer because it's necessary, the staff said they're still researching ghouls and they don't know everything yet, blah blah blah. STILL. it's mainly the stigma rules that made me think, "oh, these don't apply to him because he's not a ghoul." and ever since i stopped thinking of him as a ghoul, his place in the story has made a lot more sense.

(EDIT: i have since been corrected on this yes thank you but my point still stands that his stigma and abilities feel way different idc)

lastly, his behaviors.

he's VERY into flowers. that doesn't make him any different, nor does him giving nicknames to the other ghouls make him different, but it's clear that the flowers have a very significant meaning to him--and they're also a very tasty snack. i love that the wiki points out that he can eat them "without digestive issues". like, hell yeah. no tummy problems. you go girl

the flower symbolism feels significant for the fact that i think it has something to do with what he actually is, and it's the flowers that are making me lean toward some sort of nature spirit. i'll add his nicknames for people into my flower meanings post for their warding cards to keep all the flower stuff together. or make a post on its own. either way. yum yum

another characteristic of his that strikes me as different is his attitude. i've seen people call it childish and black and white, and those are both very good ways to put it, but it still feels more...persistent? to me? like he has his opinions and how he thinks things should be done and he will not waver, whether it's his attitude towards ren or his ideas on how to gather up animals. it's not quite childish to me, but i do think this also plays into the fact that he's not a ghoul. while taiga also follows wild impulses and kaito can be incredibly stubborn, towa's feels different. all of the ghouls were people who were human before their pact, obviously lived lives, and now they're here on campus to help further the institute's research. (yet again begging for any info regarding how any of them made their pacts, PLEASE!) towa doesn't feel like he came from a background in society as we know it, at least.

(another crack theory i had was he was some sort of creature who made a pact and asked to become human. wouldn't that be crazy?)

towa's behaviors, especially given that this is a piece of media where werewolves are real and matches can make you forget things, give me the vibe that he was something who was plucked from where he was living a certain way and put into this new life and expected to adapt. haru seems to be the one helping him adapt, and towa looooves haru. that's his dude for sure. haven't quite figured out if it's in a romantic way or in a "he's mine" kind of possessive way, but i don't think that really matters to towa.

it might matter to haru, though. him making the joke about someone back home "getting jealous" was funny as hell.

so, with all of those facts constantly running around my head, i have come to the conclusion that i don't think towa is a ghoul. what he is, exactly, i'm not sure yet, but i have a couple ideas. the main problem is i don't know what all is like, an option. they could tell us he's a demon pretending to be a human in like three chapters and that would change like, 85% of my belief system around this game. so i'm making an educated guess and staying vague. always a good option to be vague.

given towa's nature symbolism, issues with sunlight, and general behaviors, i'm proposing that towa is some sort of nature spirit.

in greek mythology, one of the bigger nature gods (and there's several theories that this god carried over from some sumerian and even more ancient religions) was a god called pan. he was said to be father of the satyrs and also depicted rather goat-like himself in most of the medias he was depicted in. along with the satyrs, pan was god of the flock, nature, fertility, and the wild. a lot of his tales are a little graphic in nature. in the same vein tales of zeus are, so heads up if you look into them. his main representation in myths was the wildness of spirit and of nature and then, at the very end of the greeks rule over the west, it was said that pan is dead.

that itself is a super big topic of debate in history. supposedly, one person was calling to another that "pan is dead." that itself can be interpreted in a few different ways. one interpretation was that it meant the pantheon was dead: christianity had just hit its huge uptick in followers and the greek society was collapsing, so perhaps it meant the death of the pantheon and the rise of a monotheistic religion. the other popular interpretation, especially in fiction, was that pan is the only god who died/disappeared. the main reason for this is that the god of nature is dying/disappearing as humans begin to spread further into the world with their technology. we see this represented over and over in media (the kaijus in japanese stories like godzilla, ubtao in dungeons and dragons disappearing, the movie ferngully, etc). a popular interpretation of this story was in percy jackson, where we see many satyrs go on a lifelong quest to go find the god pan.

given how many other references we have to greek mythology, i think towa is going to be associated with pan. he's got the goat eyes (and is called goat-like by haru in a home screen line,) has capricious in his bio (constellation of capricorn (a goat), root word capro comes from goat with a Latin association of frisking or turning suddenly), is an aries (goat), has a weird control over animals and other anomalies, and is in LOVE with love. also, connected to the weird love tree only we can see.

another interesting tidbit to point out, we see towa in the caves pretty often. pan's altars were almost always found in caves and out in nature. also hold on

this is driving me insane what do these numbers mean towa. towa what do they mean.

this is the only one that seems vaguely relevant. there used to be ten houses and then three are now defunct. TOWA WHAT DO THESE NUMBERS MEAN WHAT ARE YOU KEEPING TRACK OF

anyways those are my main arguments for towa being a non-ghoul. like i said, i don't really think he's the god pan. most likely, he's a nature spirit who now looks like a human. also, i've gotten this weird feeling that towa may have initially been in dionysia. dionysus as a god also represented the wilder side of things as i said in my defunct houses post, and he was also associated with the satyrs. it was said (in myth) that the satyrs regularly participated in his wild feasts. soooooo possible connection? who knows

towa you vex me and plague me and i cannot stop thinking about what you are. mwah

asks and dms always open!

[genericpuff]

the last few episodes of persephone moping around have felt like less of a self-reflective moment for her to grow and change and more rachel griping about criticism and surrounding herself with yes men

this isn't gonna be in any way a formal essay like my usual sort, more of a slam post honestly, so fair warning that i'm gonna be a little salty here

EPISODE 263 SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

but seriously, it's been a pity party of greek proportions because this constant "woe is me" shit with persephone that's constantly met with "no queeen you're amazing and perfect" has been going on for DAYS (real time and comic time)

literally every episode since the comic returned has had some segment of either persephone or hades (or both) being upsetti spaghetti over their current situation because oh nooo persephone made the deal with erebus and had to sacrifice something. even though they both knew that was gonna happen and yet she did it anyways. so she just continues to lock herself away in her mansion and spout adorkable quips while her husband, mother, and colleagues deal with the mess she caused.

and of course there's the constant inclusion of apollo spitting straight facts about persephone being a terrible queen and person, but of course because it's apollo saying it, it's not meant to be taken as gospel, essentially clapping back at the words of the critics who call out persephone for being a shitty and toxic protagonist by putting those words into the mouth of a literal rapist.

and yeah episode 263 had a lot of the same shit, to the point that you could literally swap out the names of the characters and the words they were speaking and it applies exactly to rachel and the corner she put herself in u.u it's been a thing for a while now that apollo has just felt like a mouthpiece for LO criticism but as mentioned by users within the subreddit during the discussion of this newest episode, it's never felt more apparent than now.

so yeah enjoy this satirical text edit of a sequence from the newest FP episode, which I honestly can't tell is meant to satirize the critical community or Rachel's reactions to the critical community because the weird reality this comic and its community exist in has just become that wack that it's hard to believe it's not directly from The Onion sometimes LMAO

-and as much as i find myself empathizing with the pressure that rachel is surely under right now - no one should have to be subject to the screeching howls of the peanut gallery - i can't help but be reminded of the memes and tweets she's put out that basically outright say "persephone is supposed to be celebrated for being a shitty person, if you can't handle her at her worst you don't deserve her at her best 💅"-

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A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

-and how often she's ruined her own day looking for critical groups or people with the "wrong opinions" that were minding their own business, or how much she's stifled her own community's attempts to discuss the story openly by having her mods ban anyone with even so much as a question regarding persephone's integrity.

so yeah, as much as i can empathize with her from one creator to another that being under this amount of pressure and scrutiny must be immensely frustrating and exhausting, beyond that one similarity i just can't empathize or relate to this mindset of almost learned helplessness that's taken a firm grip over her writing. this is the story she wants to tell and by all means no one is entitled to make her stop, but if she's gonna keep using her greek myth "retelling" comic that's trying to be "feminist" as a mouthpiece for her own griping over criticisms that are largely on-point and justified - to the point of putting the words of her critics into the mouth of her token villain like she's playing some single player barbie doll "act out that fight that sounded cooler in your head" game - then she's gonna keep getting called out, full stop. i figured she didn't have any nose left to rip off in spite of her face but apparently not.

look, i get it, there are some opinions and behaviors within the critical community that even i'm not on board with. there are people who absolutely take shit too far on both sides of the fandom, and i think both sides need to do more to hold themselves accountable for how they interact with each other, the comic, and rachel herself. i make it a point to keep my shit in my own house, i'm not entitled to rachel's attention and frankly it's the last thing i want because i have a lot of fun here and i don't want that to be potentially ruined or dampened! but if you come into my house and complain about the decorating, then i legitimately don't know what to tell you. i used to love LO and i'm so sad for my past self knowing fully well they're not gonna be able to wholeheartedly enjoy this comic forever due to how manipulative and shitty the storytelling has become. a story that i once connected to as an AFAB who was a victim of assault and abuse and generational trauma.

if persephone being the true main villain in her own story was ever meant to be the point of Lore Olympus, then it's taken way, way too long to get to that point, and rachel herself definitely doesn't seem to be of the mindset that that's what she's become with all of her blasé meme'ing on a plot arc that she's still expecting us to take seriously. persephone was never a very complex character to begin with - being an easy self-insert for the audience and rachel to project themselves onto and relate to - but at least in the beginning she felt like she had so much legitimate potential, she was naive but put her best foot forward and clearly wanted to make a life for herself, made by herself.

now she's just mean. jaded and mean. dependent on the constant validation of others to the point of being manipulative. an absolute shell of a person who can only grow a spine when she's punching down on people weaker than her, completely incapable of standing up to the people who are a legitimate threat to her. it's not empowering, it's not subversive, it's just another pick me story about women pitting themselves against other women and never taking accountability for their own behavior, mistakes, and deliberate actions meant to hurt others, often teetering on the line of straight up narcissism all for the sake of a "boss babe" moment.

anyways, if you want an actual well-written and GOOD scene of an empathetic female protagonist struggling to find their footing in adulthood being called the fuck out for their learned helplessness behavior, go read Tamberlane, it tackles this topic much better through its main character who keeps using her brokenness as an excuse to never do better, it slaps and it's so real.

[sapphosremains]

“i love it theologically but in my personal religion idk how it makes me feel. this is actually a super common phenomenon - christian theologians are often very liberal in their theology and more conservative in their own religion.” Can you please please please talk more about this distinction????

Of COURSE! I’m still trying to find where I got this fact but I always have like 10 books on the go not including journal articles etc so I have a lot to dig through! So firstly, it’s quite an important distinction. There is a massive overlap between theology and religion, and exploring theology naturally impacts one’s own religious beliefs, and vice versa, therefore it’s not a hard line per say. However, it is crucial that theologians can have some separation. For example, one of the first questions they asked me in a certain unnamed university interview that you’re not meant to give any details about picked up on this. I was given a few passages taken from different religious traditions, and we discussed their similarities and differences. A little into the conversation, they told me that the passages had been written sequentially, with each a few hundred years after another, and asked “Could the later ones possibly have been inspired by the earlier one?” One of the later passages was taken from the New Testament, with this question carrying the suggestion that an author in the NT had been inspired by Ancient Greek mythology. If you’re answering that from a religious perspective, no, absolutely not! This is where they start to separate. 

A good part of theology requires looking at religious texts as a piece of literature. In my Extended Essay for IB I wrote about Cozbi, and a significant chunk of my work looked at word choice in a variety of translations, including the original Hebrew. This meant looking at how she had been named (Cozbi was probably not her real name - it means ‘to lie’ and ‘lies’, and the Akkadian equivalent of her name, ‘kuzbu’, means ‘voluptuousness’, ‘sexually vigorous’, and is a euphemism for genitals) to convey a message, and the use of grammar and vocabulary in order to pin the blame on her as opposed to the Israelite man Zimri. So in this, I’m looking at the Bible as literature, and making arguments which are quite tricky to make from a Christian standpoint - to look at my religious text and say ‘The author of this text has chosen these words to manipulate the reader’, when in my Christian head, the author of the text is God (as discussed in earlier posts, expressed by humans). So, I think that interview question aimed to very quickly sort out those who are not able to have that distinction. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it would make it very difficult to study Theology, and be taught Theology, I think.

But this distinction is where the liberal theology vs conservative religion comes in. My argument in my Cozbi essay, that the Bible deliberately uses women as plot devices and scapegoats, is liberal, and, honestly, not something I really want to believe! And arguing something academically, especially in the field of Theology, doesn’t necessarily mean you have to believe it. If you’re arguing something in Chemistry, that’s a bit different! Do I think my Cozbi essay is academically compelling? Yes. I am academically persuaded by it. Do I believe it religiously? Do I think that’s what God’s word is really trying to say? No. Do I think my icons essay is academically compelling? Yes. Do I think it justifies the use of icons in the Church of England? Yes. Would I have icons without it? Also yes. Writing that essay, although informative, did not alter my personal religious beliefs.

I think there’s also this weird overlap in the Tumblr-Christian-Theology little niche that you and I like to sit in. You do it much better than me. Your theological arguments persuade me, and I do think I often believe them religiously. However, my theological arguments aren’t meant to do that. Mine are often purely academic. This also links back to a post you made a few months ago that I wanted to talk about but didn’t have the words for. You talked about not liking people distinguishing between ‘theologies’ ie ‘feminist theology’ ‘liberation theology’ etc etc. And I agree and disagree, once more based on this distinction. If ‘theology’ is your personal theology, what you believe about God and religion, then yes, this idea of ‘feminist theology’ is really weird. However, when I say I’m a ‘feminist theologian’ or I’m interested in ‘liberation theology’, I mean I am interested in the niche in the academic subject Theology that belongs to ‘feminist theology’ or ‘liberation theology’.

So, why are Christian theologians often more liberal in their academic theology and more conservative in their personal religion? I think because we’re not compelled to believe it. You can try out ideas, and argue for them, and find evidence to support them, but none of this means you have to believe it. This gives Christians the space to figure out ideas that they may not agree with religiously, or might get push back from their religious community, in an academic sphere.

[Throwback to this great conversation with my (LDS) coursework supervisor:

Her: *finishes reading coursework* Oh no, you can’t submit this. I hate it, I really disagree.

Me: Oh gosh, sorry! Which arguments are the weakest?

Her: Huh? Oh, no, all your arguments are really strong. I can’t pick holes in them.

Me: Oh, that’s good. How can I improve it then? What’s wrong with it?

Her: I really disagree with it.

Me: That’s… that’s fine… You don’t need to agree with it.]

Also, I think it’s a lot easier to be liberal hypothetically! And academics can argue whatever they want. You could put a claim I hated in front of me and I could still defend and support it just as strongly as something I agreed with. Also, there’s less responsibility. If you’re consciously publishing a religious opinion in a religious space, that’s something people might take away and believe, which comes with an element of danger! Obviously you don’t have control over how people use your academic work, they might well go away and incorporate it into their religious beliefs, but that likelihood is lower, so this throwing out of ideas and ‘what if God meant this’ and ‘what if Paul meant this’ is a little safer, and comes with the understanding that it’s not necessarily your belief or a belief you endorse! 

Anyway yes this was actually a very difficult question to answer and, despite it being true of me, I don’t really know! But this is an attempt for now, and I’ll come back to it after I’ve done some more Theology!! Definitely next academic year after I’ve done some uni :))

[nicksolemnlyswears]

HOTD S2 EP3 THOUGHTS

SPOILERS AHEAD

sorry it took longer for me to post my thoughts. i had to take a moment to calm myself. i was shaking and crying. and then i wrote most of the post when tumblr decided to simply not save it 😒 this is my second attempt. enjoy

let’s start at the beginning shall we?

so happy to have milly back on another episode! the scene was weird as fuck though. daemon seriously needs to get out of harrenhal.

i feel very disconnected to daemon when he’s in harrenhal. i know most of the scenes are dreams but like he barely reacts to them? i don’t know how to explain it other than it’s sort of out of character?

then we get the bit at the dock. makes me wonder if rhaenys knows that alyn is one of corlys bastards? i think she does especially the way she says that their mom must’ve been really beautiful.

alicent asking for moon tea is hilarious. she’s trying to be so slick and failing. but also i thought moon tea was a plan b situation i didn’t realize it was fully an abortive tea!

love how larys catches on to it within a second. and he says what we all think NO ONE FUCKING CARES. my god alicent! you’re fucking criston cole. we all know. no one cares. you served your duty as wife to the king now he’s dead and your ‘free’ literally no one is judging you for fucking around.

now baela and jace are serving 💅🏽 with the outfits. i adore them they look so good! they are the IT couple rn and they deserve that title.

why must criston cole feel the need to call rhaenyra a whore? honey you are projecting. you are in fact the whore.

that lord deserves an award for defending rhaenyra. i was so damn happy when he told criston cole he doesn’t deserve the white cloak. YOU TELL HIM LORD. he should’ve called him alicents little bitch while he was at it.

the greens council…it was hard to watch. first of all, all aemond does is smolder and fangirl over daemon. whenever he’s not plotting some agenda he’s writing fanfics about his uncle i swear!

that being said i felt second hand embarrassment when aegon was not able to speak high valyrian. then again i thought he wasn’t going to even understand in the first place so its better than nothing.

now i’m gonna go on a big tangent regarding aegon.

i didn’t like him at all in the first season. he did some horrible things and i have not forgotten about them but i truly feel for him.

the fact that he’s inadequate at being a king is constantly rubbed in his face and it doesn’t fail to hurt him. he never wanted to be king. he knew viserys did not want him as king. so he never prepared.

he was forced on the throne as alicent and otto wanted more power for some reason. so now he’s trying his best to be a king and act like one but he’s always being undermined by everyone around him.

otto straight up told him viserys didn’t want him there. and alicent literally told him to sit pretty and let them do all the talking. it’s humiliating and frustrating.

i get alicent’s point about listening to others around you who have more experience but in reality they don’t want to offer advice. they want to act in his name. they don’t want him to do anything. they don’t think he’s capable and maybe he’s not capable but he’s trying to be. he could honestly be an actual king if anyone actually gave him a chance.

they all treat him like this object not like a person which is why he keeps making all these shitty decisions.

then she has the audacity to talk about all the sacrifices her and otto made to get him the crown?? HE DIDNT WANT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. YOU HIGHTOWERS ARE A GREEDY BUNCH.

aemond is the person he thought could help him but that fucking psycho has plans of his own.

it’s isolating. it fucks with his mind. but i guess that’s enough for now. i could write a whole fucking essay on aegon.

so then we are back with daemon at harrenhal and honestly it’s getting a little boring. except for the moment where daemon is displaying as aemond. top tier comedy.

but we get a glimpse of laena!! i love having these actresses back if only for a scene. i hope we get a vision with viserys. i miss paddy ☹️

oh they mentioned benjicot!!! now we all look stupid cause that ‘davos’ guy was really not benji. (i still love the fanfics though. he’s a handsome man)

so rhaenyra disappears once more and the council doesn’t take jace, baela or rhaenys serious enough. it’s frustrating but omg the way jace spoke to rhaenyra when she retuned ???!!

my mother wouldn’t have taken that lightly

but it’s rhaenyra so she’s a sweetheart as always. i gotta say though that she’s taking things so calmly? like she took forever to return to dragonstone while the greens kept plotting. where were you girliepop?

i understand wanting to make sure the only way to get through this is through war but some urgency would be nice.

did jace learn how to speak like that from daemon? cause it was giving daemon including how he rested his hand on the sword handle.

now onto the battle at rooks rest:

where do i fucking start?

rhaenys is a queen. she is a true soldier. she knows how to battle. SHE IS THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

if she said dracarys once…it was a lot.

ATTACK MELEYS. that’s how you fucking do it. that’s how you fight with dragons not just spewing fire at each other.

rhaenys is a queen and i had so many high hopes but i knew…we all knew she wouldn’t make it. i think she knew as well and it was so devastating. it’s one of the reasons why i was shaking at the end and crying too.

hey alexa please play ‘birds of a feather’ by billie eilish.

she survived so much but vhagar is just too fucking big. maybe if she hadn’t been sent alone this wouldn’t have happened.

so far this has been what has hurt me the most because i love rhaenys’ character and its gonna be so sad not having her around.

granted she went down like a true warrior. it was honorable.

sunfyre is the prettiest dragon to date. i’m so happy we finally got to see him. my gosh it brings me so much happiness to see aegon interacting with sunfyre. that man deserves some happiness in his life. it was truly heart warming.

now i don’t know what the fuck has gotten into aemond. i went to liking his character to completely hating him.

it’s truly each man for himself with this fucking family. tell me how aemond looked straight at aegon (who was happy to see his brother coming to aid) and yelled dracarys. WHAT THE FUCK MAN

this is what happens when you have shitty parents.

i’m not going to fucking stand here and say aegon was innocent when he has teased aemond all his life but does it warrant KILLING YOUR BROTHER? all because he teased you on the brothel when he saw you with your substitute mommy? GROW THE FUCK UP. I know he’s thirsting for the throne but my man you’ll get the chance trust me. THIS IS NOT THE WAY

FUCK i never thought i’d be on aegons side but then again no one on the show is on his fucking side. they don’t treat him like a fucking person but yet another thing to manipulate and it pisses me off

stricking him down wasn’t enough aemond had to find him and put his sword through his body too. thank fuck for criston cole. now that’s something i never thought id say

now i don’t know if he’s alive or dead. i personally think he’s alive but geez aemond. what the fuck?

why didn’t you give him the opportunity to flee in season 1? why must you do this?

if aegon is dead…i’ll be devastated. i’ve grown to like his character these last couple of episodes.

HELL EVEN CRISTON COLE WAS SHOCKED

THE ONLY ONE WHO WORRIED FOR AEGON THIS WHOLE EPISODE

Just goes to show how shitty these people are.

Bottom line. Meleys and Rhaenys had an honorable death. Inevitable once Vaghar joined in because that dragon is much too big. I wanted her to flee but I knew she wouldn’t. She has honor. ✊

also is alicent’s brother dead? or is he around somewhere?

i desperately need more helaena next episode. we didn’t even get a glimpse of her this episode. but if she’s gonna get hurt then i’d rather not have her on the episode. don’t know how ill live if that precious bean is hurt.

this post could’ve been better but my progress was ruined when tumblr decided to delete the post i was working on.

as always feel free to comment so we can talk more about this.

kisses! -Nikki 🤍

[david-talks-sw]

any new Star Wars essays in the making, or are you moving on?

I don't know, honestly.

Part of it is "life gets in the way," I'm working a lot and so whatever time I have left is spent just messing around or meeting with my loved ones.

I've got a bunch of stuff in my drafts. I don't mind sharing it here, most recent to oldest:

Sort of a joke post of me pointing out how stressful being George Lucas' producer must've been, like this guy really DIDN'T WANT to write his fucking scripts, did he? Poor Rick McCallum. Abandoned because who gives a crap.

'Ask' reply on how EU-fueled fandom perception of the Jedi was flipped by the prequels.

'Ask' reply about the themes in Ahsoka and why the show doesn't know what it's about. Problem is, I go about it starting from the basics, so nobody's gonna sit through reading a tematic breakdown of the first Pirates of the Carribean movie, The Batman and the original six Star Wars films before I even get to the show at hand.

"Part II" post about what Ahsoka, Rebels and TCW get right about lightsaber duels, which the Prequels never did.

Quote collection & analysis on just how complex the Prequels were meant to be (in the late 80s, Lucas intimated that the Sequels were the story that was supposed to have gray morality, not the Prequels)

Quote collection on how the themes and principles of Star Wars align with Lucas' own opinions and philosophies.

Quote collection on Lucas defining Anakin's flaws.

Quote collection on Lucas talking about the fact that we need to be more proactive, which aligns with what Lumi points out sometimes about the Jedi: they should've been more politically engaged because we all should be.

Why I approach Lucas as "word of god".

Personal life/joke-y post dating from the time of the WGA strike about how Jack Black's School of Rock lyrics "In his heart he knew, the artist must be true, but the legend of the rent was way past due!" applied to me. Abandoned because I didn't wanna bum everyone out.

Correcting the notion that Dark Times-era Jedi such as Kanan or Ezra or Ahsoka represent what Jedi were supposed to be.

A comprehensive end-all outlook on how Anakin's flaws all tie together. I've written this one twice and I don't know how to differentiate it from my other posts.

A secret "Part 3" to my TLJ Luke post, in which I point out that RJ's being too "indie", while being a strong point for a big chunk of the film, hampers the film's ability to make Luke feel as badass as he does on paper. I want to illustrate a storyboard for this one, but that takes time.

The evolution of Star Wars' approach to transmedia.

Debunking Star Wars myths: a (very) comprehensive outlook on children in the Jedi Order.

Problem is that only like 2/3rds of these are fully-written... and I still need to find the relevant clips, turn them into GIFs, etc etc.

There's many other interesting Asks in my inbox btw. But I'm already behind on all these, so I haven't begun to touch them.

Then there's the drawings.

I wanna draw a comic of the meeting between Yoda and Dooku in Dark Rendezvous. I wanna finish the comic fight between Maul and Ben. I wanna draw Mace, Shaak Ti, I've got a Luminara fan-art that was supposed to be ready for Jedi June 2022 and an Anakin drawing that looks weird. No time, nor am I skilled enough. (Like, I trace, that's what I do, it's not a secret I've said so before... but it takes me a long while to do so. I'm not fast at drawing, let alone coloring.) I could commission some of these, but there are obvious obstacles there.

There's fun tidbits I've discovered here and there but nobody will care about them and I usually try to not drown my blog with bs posts.

Then there's the bigger problem.

All the things I've listed above? I'm not 100% motivated to finish. But a lot of the new stuff I wanna write about is hella negative.

I had a lot of stuff I wanted to say about Ahsoka. But it wasn't all good. It was mostly me bitching, be it about the show or the fandom's reactions to it.

I've also got more stuff to say about Filoni's take on Star Wars, but I've talked about why it's inaccurate like 8 times already, and I don't actually dislike the guy, like there's plenty of things he knows and does that I think are awesome but also people won't stop putting him and his takes on a pedestal and--

oh shit, there's Acolyte too, I forgot about that, gray morality galore, here we come. But here too, like... I've talked a couple of times about why this entire gray morality thing is actually just the gen X-ers trying to make the prequels "cool" and "complex". but I've never explored properly, with quotes and research and shit. but i've talked about it so many times that at this point it'd end up like the Filoni rants, redundant. "we get it already." as if this show didn't have haters lined round the block for absolutely sexist reasons.

Don't get me started on the mountain of lies and/or idiocy that is the YouTuber Star Wars Theory.

And yet he said one thing a few months ago which struck a chord within me and it's the fact that Andor is awesome, excels on all levels because it's treated seriously, like a proper show, not a Disney Plus one... why wasn't Obi-Wan Kenobi? Why wasn't Book of Boba Fett? And I've already established multiple times that I enjoyed Kenobi (yes, including the Reva parts) and I've established that I know what they were going for in Fett and I've established that this is mainly a "Disney Plus didn't know how to structure a fucking show pre-WGA strike" issue more than anything else... but when I think about how these could've been treated instead? When I look at the characterizations and emotional stakes of like Fargo Season 5? It's infuriating. Because it's not bad (talking about Kenobi, BOBF is awful)... but it could've been EXCELLENT and instead it was just "okay" to "good".

I just miss live action lightsaber duels, man. Like, good ones.

and i dunno. maybe I should just let it rip on all this. "go off, king!"

but I think there's so much negativity re: Star Wars that adding my thoughts on these subjects, no matter how structured and reason, will just blend into a wave of needless, un-constructive hate.

maybe I should finish the writings in the drafts and just post them with no gifs, maybe just still images?

but doing any of that feels like a step back.

So that's where I'm at right now.

[neowinestainedress]

Hey, I'm one of the very very frequent readers on your blog and I just read your last ask about your last fic "flopping" on here and I just wanted to share my opinion on that.

I'm pretty sure that the fic you're talking about is Wave, and someone who was so excited for you to post it last year and loved it, the problem wasn't the story for why it "flopped", but the way it was written.

I remember even asking you about it (don't know if you remember) and you explained to me that you used a translation app for a lot of sections since english is not your first language. And I think because of that, the phrasing of a lot of parts of the story felt weird. It was kind of disconnected, unlike your previous stories and sometimes felt repetitive or as if I had already read the paragraph I was reading before.

As someone who has read almost all of your work, and loved it, Wave, didn't feel like it was from you. The writing felt so odd, especially for native English speakers or people who are generally good at english. I honestly, particularly always enjoyed your writing style in previous works, which wasn't very evident in wave.

A lot of times, most readers on here, like myself, try to gauge what kind of a story it is, and wether it is worth reading by looking at the summary, the notes and reblogs at the bottom, and by reading the first few hundred or thousand words. And I think Wave kind of disappointed that.

Even though, the story was AWESOME and I loved the progression of the romance and how it felt natural and not forced in any way, writing matters too. A well written bad story is better than a poorly written good story, and it holds true for majority of people.

And besides that, I just think since the last couple of years, the amount of people who read fanfics has certainly decreased mainly because most of the fans are now adults in working jobs and don't have time for anything anymore. So you shouldn't take it to your heart if the crowd is not the same. It definitely wasn't on your end. I definitely get where you're coming from, as someone who used to write before. It's disheartening to see your work being under appreciated, especially when you had confidence in it. I get it, I truly do. Which is why I hope you can try writing for your own happiness instead of forcing it for any external validation.

I mean it genuinely from a place of sincerity that your work is still appreciated by many here, and I hope you can stop undermining your talent here. Seeking external praise is obviously a normal thing, but please don't make it the reason you write at all. Atleast for me, your fics are amongst the best NCT fics on Tumblr, and I always revisit every now and then. ❤️

Anyways, sorry for this long ass essay, and all the rambling. This was just meant to be as light constructive criticism in case you needed it, but I would completely understand if this isn't something you were seeking. 😅

Like you can literally ignore this all if you want, lol, I don't mind. Just wanted to let you know the audience's (or just my) thoughts

Stay safe! And I hope you sort out whatever you're struggling with soon🥰

Hi! I think I understood what your ask was (I think it’s that one, since I only have two anonymous asks about that story, one it’s about the second part) and I think you misunderstood what I said. I don’t use translation apps to translate entire paragraphs, never. I said that, since English is not my first language, I’m never sure when the right negative form is “don’t” or “not”. When I write in Word and then edit it again on Grammarly, they sometimes tag it as wrong, but 1) I don’t see every mistake 2) sometimes the “not” sounds so wrong (sometimes Grammarly wants you to change thing even if they’re not wrong) so I keep it anyway. If my English was so bad that I had to use translation apps to write the entire thing, I just wouldn’t do it. Also, why would I start doing it just for Wave after years of writing in English? Did I forget English all of a sudden? (You can see the difference if you read even just a bit of this one, translated from Italian. I still remember how much I struggled to get everything to make sense. I still didn’t copy and paste on a translation app, but I relied on it more because translating is harder than directly writing in another language (I had started writing in English a year before this one)).

This ask confuses me a little because if I got the right ask you sent before, you didn’t say there were so many problems, so I’m struggling to understand why it is so badly written now. Like, was it so bad? To the point it looks like I didn’t write it? Maybe it’s too much work for you, but can you give me some examples? I always felt that my writing was too pompous and prose-y (I don’t know how to explain it in English) so in my last works I tried to cut it down a bit. I also mixed up points of view a lot, and I tried to correct it (but I don’t know if that’s something that made my writing style, because I remember people telling me they loved knowing the thoughts of all the characters involved, so idk). I haven’t read Wave since I posted it, but I know I’m a perfectionist and worked on it for months. I thought I made progress trying to change the things I thought were my weaknesses, and I wouldn’t consider it my worst writing. I would consider the “christmas must be something more” small series my worst writing of the past years, for example. That doesn’t feel written by me (I did, obviously, but it was rushed and I was way too focused on the kink aspect, and I hate it, especially compared to the main body of the story, it’s a downgrade.) Or all the drabbles.

Also, this will definitely sound bitchy but I’ve been in fandoms for years and I feel like the quality of writing is rarely what makes a story popular. Published badly written books are best sellers just because they have smut in it, but the majority of people on tumblr deeply care about the form? I don’t think so. (And I’m like you, and I’m not saying that you can’t think that of Wave, but simply that I don’t think that the majority of fanfic readers care too much about the form. Like I’ve read fics use quotes from books as if they were their own and nobody noticed.) Native English speakers make mistakes, and I’m not saying that if it’s not our native language we need to write like shit, but I don’t know, I’m trying. I feel like Gloria from Modern Family like, try to write a story in Italian and see if you don’t make mistakes. Or if it’s not more repetitive. I know so many words in my language, and their synonyms, if they fit or if they would be pretentious, but in English it’s not the same. And it’s harder to find another way to say something when you don’t know the other way. (And I’m also aware of the “sometimes felt repetitive or as if I had already read the paragraph I was reading before” because it’s one of the reasons why I can’t seem to write smut anymore. I don’t know how to switch it up anymore. I feel like I’ve written about sex in every way I could and that I'm copying myself every single time.) I also have no one to beta-read for me, so even if I read what I write ten times or more (and I do) I can’t see it from a different point of view. Sometimes I see mistakes or phrases I don’t like, and I’m like “I’ll check again later” and then when I read the second time I already forgot. I already feel like I care and do too much for something that’s free. Grammar, style, characters, plot, etc, they all matter, but I won’t be published, I’m not getting paid for it. And again, I’ve seen stories on Tumblr, Wattpad, Ao3 (and I could go on) with no story (like you said Wave had), but no grammar either, get many likes/comments/etc. So this is what I mean when I say I feel like I already do too much: I outline the story, the characters, do my research, write it down, make visuals, try to include most people possible when making them, edit it, then edit again on another site, then put it in the drafts here, edit it again and then post it, and still make mistakes and still it’s not good, what more can I do? And I’m sure you’re thinking, and who asked you? And you’re right, nobody did, but I still do, so one single story takes me a lot. And I’m not the only one, so no, not necessarily good work/good writing gets repaid. (I’ve seen gems from other writers even on other fandoms get little to no interaction)

I know that, and there’s also been more hate towards fanfiction in general so less people read them. I couldn’t force it even if I wanted to. I have a half-request from Halloween, but I’m so stuck with that kind of thing, I simply can’t write it, even in the worst way possible, I can’t. I also have always seen writers have a strong community, and I never got that. I have an anon list, and there’s only one person from that list who has ever sent something again after claiming an emoji. I used to get asks like “I hope you see this” and I would always laugh because my asks were always dry, of course I’ll see you (they couldn’t know, but it was funny that they were used to other writers losing their ask in a list of other asks and worry that would happen to me). But anons aside, I have 6k followers (let’s say 4.5k without bots and inactive accounts?), where are they when I post? When I tease a story, or simply when I try to post about NCT to talk with someone? I also think that the NCT fandom is a peculiar one, I can’t explain how, but I feel that there’s less space for creativity when it comes to fanfictions (like bts ff on ao3 have the most various plots and have many kudos and comments, while nct are always kinda the same).

I wrote and published an original story, and I didn’t care that it obviously didn’t reach many people (also it was in Italian and on ao3 so...) but when I did that, I knew it was for me, you know? When I write for a fandom, other than writing for myself, I expect that the story has a bit of life outside my head. That’s it.

The sandwich method of praise-critic-praise “shocked” me anyway, but thanks for liking my stories. Though I’d truly like to know with some examples what was wrong with Wave because the “It didn't sound like you” is “haunting” me. (Especially with this wave (lol) of people writing using AI there’s nothing that scares me more than not sounding like me/having a tone)

I hope I didn’t sound rude or mad, I kept re-writing cause I didn’t know how to explain myself, and maybe I didn’t always choose the right words to express something. There will surely be mistakes but I hope you will still understand everything I wrote. Thank you ❤️ Have a great day/night!

[i-just-want-to-destroy]

HELLOOO CHRIS originally i didn't wanna send this ask cus i thought i sound weird SO its totally fine if u choose not to answer,, i hope you're doing amazing as always.

not to get super cheesy with it but like, there's always been a lot of things that i've been dissatisfied with in life and writing/reading fanfiction, or consuming media in general—sort of lessened that empty feeling? like, within these stories you could find a way to live beautifully. back then it felt like i was completely dissociated from a reality that i couldn't bear to stomach. somehow reading shit w like, fucked up mcs and equal amounts of trauma made it seem like i could make it all work eventually. i would say its pretty embarassing to admit but it is what it is now. i don't mean to say all this to trauma dump either btw but to just convey how much ur work has impacted me.

anyway, what i wanted to ask was: what is your motivation to write? how did you begin writing/reading? like get into literature/films etc. what was it like when u first started writing? is it more of a hobby or something you'd like to make a career out of? have u ever written any original works? sorry for the barrage of questions, i've been a fan for a long time and ive only just now mustered up the courage to send a message in😭 HAVE A GOOD DAYYYYY💌💗

essay below

theres this common idea that fiction is escapism and theres definitely some truth with that, whether as a writer or a reader, but escapism is not all there is… i think fiction is a way to try to understand why life is the way that it is. imo its also why it can be really cathartic to read something sad and absolutely fucked up. as strange and as horrific a piece of fiction can be, real life is always worse. you can try to write the most out of pocket story with the craziest characters doing truly some insane shit, and real things that happen in real world will have you beat no matter what.

but a story isnt about being accurate to the real world fact by fact, right, its about reading someone elses perspective—or alternatively; writing *your* perspective—on how a series of events so absurd, so unfortunate, and occasionally beautiful, can make sense by the end of it all. there is a comfort in that, in making the pain and the love matter, even if we’re all dead by the end of the story. theres also the connection too, right? by knowing that someone out there feels the same way, or knowing that there is a different way to look at things, there is a knowledge that youre not alone.

this is to say that i dont think its embarrassing at all if reading (and writing) these stories help you to live. it helped me too, and still does. and tbh this is the healthiest a coping mechanism can get. it can be really, really difficult to let yourself feel things irl when things get really bad, and sometimes stories (whether a prestige movie or just some fluff fanfiction) can help you to release and process some of those difficult feelings.

moving on. yeah ive written og stuff before lol and i hope ill eventually write more .. or even better, finish at least one. id love to publish one day but, not to be pessimistic, i also know its not an easy thing to achieve due to a myriad of reasons (skill level, opportunities, etc). so its not smthg im dead set on. im happy as long as i can keep writing! its fun, its a cope, its my main way to express myself.

on why i got into lit/writing/film its honestly such a boring answer. like a lot of people i was a big reader as a kid which led me to be on my parents’ laptop plagiarizing stories on microsoft word. i torrented movies on IMDB’s “Top 100 Movies of All Time” list before i could do algebra. i mind poisoned myself since young and im still dealing with the repercussions of that. i dont remember the first story i wrote but it was highly likely a plagiarization of X-Men.

thanks for the ask and it means a lot to know how youve connected with what i wrote, rly truly genuinely, and the interest is very flattering. i hope for an amazing week ahead for you

[merge-conflict]

#9 #10 #23 🔫

questions here, ty for the ask right out the gate with asking me about canon you know me so well :3

9. worst part of canon

listen I know it's because I'm in the field and so all the things that annoy me are just background noise to most other people but I really really hate the way hacking and networks and AIs and tech in general is handled in cyberpunk. I don't think it should be perfectly realistic or exactly what we have in real life. I do think it should have some internal consistency when it comes to power leveling and that it should make some sort of sense. cyberpunk worldbuilding is often its weakest feature and that it's a bummer.

and it's not just a matter of tech working basically like magic, but the fact that there seem to be no internal rules so you can never figure out what the consequences of anything might be. why do people not just shut off their bluetooth before getting in a fight with someone who has a netrunner? why does alt not simply archive the engrams instead of imply she's going to eat them in some weird digital cannibalistic fashion? (why not just delete them if she doesn't have the space) are we just adding arbitrary and tragic restrictions on at the ninth hour because it makes it dark and gritty? that's BORING. tell me from the start why I'm fucked because my android soul is incompatible with your apple hardware. maybe johnny's brain which has never dealt with kiroshi's might have vision issues. let's think about those restrictions and why all software sucks instead of doing weak philosophical gotchas at the worst moment because the game has made pains to never discuss anything fundamental about life after death until you have to suddenly make a decision.

you know what would be an interesting idea in this vein? that the AIs made before the fall of the net really did jumpstart all technology and since they've all been banished everything has stagnated because huge world-wide companies having their global communications axed is a huge blow to recover from- not to mention the literal brain drain. What if the reason everything's been getting shittier is because people have been slowly poking holes in software and infrastructure that's no longer maintained? That no one knows how to maintain? That society is doomed to slowly fail because of unsustainable processes and people are going to have to band together to- Oh, what's this? I'm hearing that the actual problem is all the AIs are mad and feral and will drive you mad if you commune with them and take over huge spider robots. Well. That works too.

10. worst part of fanon

I would like to get more fanon honestly. I so rarely see people's actual takes on characters or the game's story or the world. And that's not a dig at OC lore, which I do like. Sometimes my face-blind ass just gets tired of VP where someone is looking into my soul the camera.

Mild annoyance because I also write my own wish fulfillment fic so I'm not saying I'm any better half the time- if it was as easy to be a rebel as just quitting your corpo job with healthcare and a steady salary to become a merc or a hacker or something, then there wouldn't be much to be punk about. You know? The whole point is that life in cyberpunk is a grinding struggle, and you do have to make sacrifices if you want to fight against it. The "we're poor but happy" thing probably isn't going to work out that way.

Actually that's the start of another essay of how interesting Barghest's survival and its recruitment strategy is... and why there are so many powerful gangs in NC. Being independent ain't easy. But I guess that's really just an extension of the game's reality where V can turn into a hero-figure killing machine who no one can beat in terms of skill, isn't it? Probably why the tower ending is the way that it is!

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

Not really? I can't really think of any instances where I've changed my mind about a ship. Characters yes, ships no. I guess maybe silverv, before I finished the game? Johnny hadn't earned enough Felix points for me to care about him. But I think I came pretty willingly when it was time.

[haybuhay]

i am asking you about dermabrasion by pennydaniels 👀

THANK YOU FOR THE QUESTION!!! IM NOW GOING TO GO CRAZY !

DERMABRASION BY PENNYDANIELS is a canon divergent BNHA fic focusing mainly on Todoroki Shouto and Dabi’s relationship if Shouto had figured out his identity and tracked him down at the start of the UA school year. It is over 400k words, 41 chapters, and is one of my favorite BNHA fics (or just plain fics) ever. I cannot recommend it enough.

I will try SO HARD not to spoil anything in this rant/essay in case you haven��t read it… But minor spoiler warning anyway in case I mess up.

Some of the stuff I’m going to talk about is waay down the line (like 40 chapters out of 41 chapters type of down the line) but the fact that you know it’ll happen won’t take away from the joy of reading it because the execution is just that good. Probably. The build-up to these moments is just as good as them happening, if not better, I SWEAR.

OK. RANT BEGIN.

For reference, this fic began December 2020 and finished January 2023!! We got the Dabi is a Todoroki reveal November 2020 and then more about his backstory February 2021.

So this means that Dabi’s characterization and backstory here aren’t 100% canon compliant. Despite the fact that it’s in AU territory, the fic handles Dabi’s character and motivations really well?? Arguably, its because it’s not canon compliant that the fic is able to give us such a good insight into his character... Wow… When authors can expand on existing narratives while staying true to the essence of the characters… 😍…

Dabi’s motives, which I think are actually super close to canon (!!!), and how they inform his choices within the timeline of the fic and in his backstory make me so crazy. I am going to be cryptic and just say that the glimpses we get of young tweenage Touya in this fic is everything to me. His whole relationship with Endeavor at literally at any point in the story is especially well done…

A large part of this fic’s appeal to me is how it handles Endeavor. I am a huge fan of the Todorokis’ whole plot and since Enji is the dead centre of that fucked up family storm, I think getting him right is probably one of the most pivotal points in writing fics that puts emphasis around literally any Todoroki. Not even just how Enji himself is, but also the way other characters think about and act around him should be given thought and written with care... Dermabrasion does him, his affect on his kids and his wife and his development so much justice.

The fic begins with Season 1 Shouto’s Endeavor hatred. His vehemence for the guy is so obvious even in just the first few paragraphs where he dubs him ‘that fucker.’ He does this consistently throughout the fic LOL

Tbh. This put me off the fic a little, since I’m not interested in reading Endeavor-bashing fics (no matter how deserved they are HAHA) but I just got over myself and realised no, yeah. This is in character, it is completely understandable and a little hilarious...

What I like here is that his feelings towards Endeavor (negative or otherwise) aren’t a static thing — it progresses not just as Endeavor changes, but as he grows closer in understanding Dabi and the rest of his family and as he, himself, grows up. It’s so rewarding to see it unfold throughout the storyline little by little. I want to say that it happens in the background but honestly Endeavor haunts this entire fic. It’s not that he’s always there. Honestly, he doesn’t show up that much, but it’s only by virtue of his actions that this storyline exists at all so it’s like every action taken is an echo of his. Something about how even when he’s not there, everything is always about him and what he’s done. It’s great, and I mean that genuinely. I love this so bad.

Shouto’s character here is perfect for this sort of fic, I think. He’s stunted and it’s openly acknowledged by other characters how… weird?? he can come across. I think it just makes his arc all that more apparent... He becomes somewhat of a moral paragon and I’n not even upset about it. His development as a character is thoroughly explored and so hard-earned that his transformation from a dead-faced, dead-eyed kid to who he is at the end of the fic is just. rewarding.

AND ITS NOT JUST HIM… Almost every main-focus character goes through some sort of gratifying journey and are made to reckon with parts of themselves that in Dabi’s case, would mean redefining his entire identity. You can tell that all the characters in this fic want to be better, not just for themselves, but for the people around them. It’s one of my favourite things about this fic, how personal improvement is such a huge part in it. This is definitely the Mob Psycho 100 lover in me speaking.

(Side tangent: MP100 being a story about an overpowered, stoic, repressed kid who, with the company of a dubiously moral older brother figure, learns how to become a better version of himself and by doing that, he inspires those around him, including that dubiously moral older brother figure. This is Dermabrasion in a different world. If you love MP100, I will eat my entire shoe if you don’t enjoy Dermabrasion too.)

While the focus is definitely mainly on Shouto and Dabi, the entire family has their part in it. Natsuo, Fuyumi, Rei and Enji all get their moments to shine and show their growth and unique personalities. A fun thing about this is how similar Shouto and Enji are… I think it really drives home that they’re family.

I don’t think this is a huge spoiler, since it’s kinda implied in the premise, but when Natsuo reunites with Dabi the interaction is so. Real. And the fact that it takes time and effort for their relationship to be built back is so poignant and crazy and SICK. Everything in this fic is earned through a lot of tears and pain and misery. It’s a cathartic read.

Okay, now that I made it sound like the entire fic is just one huge therapy session, let me mention humour once then immediately go back to doing that HAHAHA I think this fic is funny as hell. Humour is subjective, yesyesyes, but it grew on me and it WILL grow on you. The back and forths between characters, Shouto’s natural temperament making him predisposed to being absolutely Comical, the inherent comedy of being in a Hero Society... As someone with siblings the way the Todoroki siblings interact here, fights and messy reuniting shit notwithstanding, has so much of the annoyed love and care that you get from the people you grew up with. I particularly like Fuyumi and Natsuo’s dynamic together.

They’re outcasts in different ways than Dabi and Shouto are outcasts. The guilt and remorse they feel not just from not being able to step in for Shouto, but for leading their own lives is GAHHH. The entire thing about being in a different world to their brothers and dad is … Augh. Heroes and Villains.

Rei. Rei… I am GUTTED by every scene she is in. I reread ‘when your love has always been enough (for me)’ by classicequinox to cope. That is a different post to make one day when I have the energy.

Idk if I said all I wanted to say. There’s definitely more to this fic. DabiHawks, for one. I think they’re great here. Somehow they AREN’T horrifically toxic, WOO!! The details of this I will leave for you to read… Another thing I like about this fic is how 1A reacts to Todoroki family lol. LOV also has its part in this fic, I think it is sweet what happens to them but ofc since they aren’t really the main focus, it’s more a fun bonus to see what happens to them.

Ok I need to wrap this up. One day I’ll write a proper spoiler-full essay about this with a thesis statement and everything but yk. Life.

To conclude I’ll just talk about the ending of this fic. It’s my favourite, absolute favourite thing about it. The author themself quoted a comment they received in the last chapter that I am going to quote here too: “Even at the end there's the clear sense that the character's lives will continue and that this is only the beginning for them.” That is literally the best way to sum up this fic. These character’s will continue growing and bettering and it gives me so much real, genuine hope in myself that I can change, too. So yeah. Read this fic and if it changes your life let me know.

[sadgirlautumn]

Your last set of tags...100% agree. I just wish it stayed about the music (and tour), y'know? I honestly am not super interested in TK, he seems nice, that's nice. Good luck to them. And genuinely the songs could be about whoever, I'm just interested in the way they sound and how they're crafted. Sometimes people's reactions just veer too far into gossip fodder for my taste. I like Taylor, I think she's talented, I love how her brain works to make these songs, but I'm not interesting in analysing her every move and analysing her every move like a character in a tv show.

You said it so well! We have so much to talk about but it always seems to circle back to her current or previous relationships. Don’t get me wrong her and TK have their cute moments but it’s weird that some people have to analyze every part of his life too now that he’s dating her. It just feels like an invasion of privacy even if the stuff that they are looking into is technically “public” that doesn’t mean that it needs to be over analyzed to see if he’s hiding a ring shaped box in his pocket or something. 😭

I remember I saw someone say a few months ago that “newer swifties wouldn’t have been able to handle Taylor’s relationships prior to Joe” and I feel like that is true for me because I joined tumblr during the drought right when Taylor and Joe had started dating and as I said since he was so private he wasn’t constantly giving the fans new things to talk about so I never realized how intense this fandom could be about her relationships until I got a little sampling of it with how people treated Jake during red tv and now with everything that happened in 2023.

I think why it’s been getting to me so much recently is i didn’t realize how much I didn’t like gossiping about this stuff until this past year because it didn’t seem like a big part of swiftie culture since when I joined it was just an occasional joke about a guy she dated a few years ago. I miss when we had silly little nights playing games (which we still do occasionally) and when people would write essays about a single song lyric. It just makes me sad to see some people I follow not be as active because the gossip gets too much. Myself included, i purposely tried to keep myself busy on Sundays so I wouldn’t get annoyed at people for having fun on tumblr dot com. (Which is another thing: I really see both sides to this because the people who want to talk about TK want to have fun and so do the people who don’t want to talk to him. I also think people are trying too hard to label people who agree or disagree with talking too in depth about it but everyone’s different so it winds up just being something to make people who already agree with you feel better rather than solve an actual problem that’s sort of unsolvable.)

To summarize: certain aspects of her personal life are always going to be relevant to the art she creates and can add layers or change perspectives by knowing certain things. But to dwell on them and act like the only interesting thing about her is her relationships just makes me sad.

[ace-robot-things]

Things I like and didn’t like about hazbin hotel

I watched it last night with my friends. My basic thoughts are that it’s pretty good.

!!THIS IS ALL 100% MY SUBJECTIVE OPINION ON ASPECTS OF THIS SHOW!!

Stuff I liked:

Most of the songs were pretty good, and of course the singing as well. The visuals for the songs are also very cool a lot of the time as well. Visual standouts included the vox song and the husk song

I’m still sad about the loss of the original cast, but I will admit that the new cast is also good. RIP Michael though. I still miss him in this show but he’s In everything now so whatever.

Vaggie was cool. She really felt expanded from the pilot version, even though I kinnnda miss her old design. The other new designs I got used to, but hers still strikes me as weird.

Niffty was epic. Honestly just like me fr.

This show made me come around to Alastor. Liked him in the pilot, but he was never my favorite (probably overexposure). But he ended up being a very goofy character, which I liked. The mystery element of what he was doing for seven years is also interesting.

I actually ended up liking the Vees. I didn't expect to like them lol. Vox is funny and has a cool voice, Val is cartoonishly evil (and scary at times so that's neat), and I never cared about Velvette before, but she turned out to be my favorite of the three.

One thing I really like about vivziepop shows is that she puts all those hidden text stuff in that you can actually pause to read. She does this in helluva boss, and she keeps up the tradition here. I like when shows do that.

So for years I've been calling him Anthony as a joke to lovingly bully him, and then it ended up being shown in canon lol. For some reason this made me lose my shit. Oh and also the angel dust stuff was really good too yeah yeah

My absolute favorite part was unironically Sir Pentious. This is mostly due to the surprise that he actually ended up in the main cast. I had no idea that was going to happen. I thought he'd be a sort of villain-of-the-week guy who sort of joins the party, but nope this goofy idiot hangs out at the hotel for the rest of the show lol. That was awesome. I never knew how much of his character I needed until now.

I'm pretty easy to please when it comes to television. I'm willing to excuse a lot of things, which is probably why I'm one of the like ten people who still thinks Helluva Boss S2 is okay. Therefore, there were only a few problems with these episodes that I actually didn't like enough to put here.

I really really didn't like Adam. His voice is good, his song is good but that's pretty much it. I don't even really like his design. He was just so irritating and unfunny. I know he was supposed to be annoying and unlikeable, but usually I still find enjoyment in those characters, and I just couldn't here. Case in point: Mammon is basically the same character but actually funny.

This is the only nitpick that really bothered me. Zestial is a cool character. BUT HOLY SHIT THEY COMPLETELY FUCKED UP HIS DIALECT. It happens a lot and it's so irritating because it does not take very long to look up the difference between thee, thou and thy. They didn't even change it to make it rhyme, it's just legitimately fucked up. This annoyed me way too much admittedly but it made me cringe in like every scene he was in, even though I liked everything else about him.

Yeah episode one isn't great. It's not very focused. This is kind of par for the course for vivzie shows though.

Spoilers I guess? I did not like the reveal of who killed the angel. It turned out to be some lady we just met five minutes ago?? It felt very underwhelming and made me angry. However, this one I'm willing to make my peace with because it's episode three, there will probably be a better payoff later. Hopium.

Write me an essay in the comments about why I'm wrong about everything or whatever. I'll read it and maybe adopt it into my perspective. There's probably other things I wanted to talk about that I forgot, but I don't care. Anyway I like this show give it like a 7.6 out of 10.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

1, 17 and 37 for Vetinari?

Ahhh our difficult to pin down patrician!! A classic and a favourite <3 <3

1. Canon I outright reject

Hahaha well. I mean. TP wrote a Trope, a caricature, not a character with Vetinari. He's too perfect to be believable as a real person*. So, you know.

--

*I get why. Vetinari can't have any real fuck-ups, because then TP would be writing a different series than one-offs "the baddie of the week," which is what his bread and butter was. To have Vetinari be a real man would mean there would be true mistakes and real repercussions that couldn't be resolved as easily as TP liked to wrap up his stories. And that's fair! He wasn't writing complex political fantasy. But that does mean the canon is limiting and 2D when it comes to side-characters, including Vetinari.

--

I suppose, I reject the portrayal of Vetinari at seventeen in Night Watch because lol like hell is that any seventeen year old I've ever known. And I've known (and was my myself) "firm head on your shoulders, grounded, hyper realistic about the world" sorts of kids. They're still kids. Vetinari in Night Watch was just Mini-Patrician.

And I reject that whole-heartedly. This is one of those instances where TP really shone with his bit-characters because Downey is a perfect Stroppy Posh Obnoxious Dick-swinging Prick as only a fundamentally rich, privileged seventeen year old boy can be. Vetinari is very bland in comparison. Again! Too perfect. It's boring.

So yeah, I prefer an Awkward, Weird, Posh Prick of a seventeen year old to whatever TP wrote with Vetinari. He can still inhume a patrician. Just give him pimples and make him awkward and weird. The Tiger Scene is a small recompense - and even then, it feels too....adultish? In a weird way? That just doesn't jive with me.

17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them

Too many to list outright. Fuck. Here are a very, very few that I've compiled offhand. Honestly, this is deserving of a whole second ask.

Poems/Books

Blitzed Out, Lauren Turner (poem) - granted, I apply different aspects of this poem to almost all characters.

The Glass Essay, Anne Carson (poem)

Willful Subjects, Sarah Ahmed - a full book on the concept of will and willfulness. Particularly of the concept of "willfullness" as a charge to be laid against others in a means to remove their will/agency. Anyway, it's always struck me as a book Vetinari would have on his bookshelf.

Coyote in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered, Mary Oliver (poem)

Two Atheists Banking on an Afterlife, Lauren Turner (poem)

The Awake and Sleeping Ye, Anne-Marie Turza (poem)

The Undying, Anne Boyer - another full book. Granted Vetinari doesn't have cancer, but her writing on illness and disability are things I lean on when writing Vetinari.

Litany, Billy Collins (poem)

Songs

Feel It Still, Portugal - the Man

Bury a Friend, Billie Eilish

When We Were Young, The Killers

If I had a heart, Fever Ray

Devil's Backbone, The Civil Wars

Fair, The Amazing Devil (this is truly The Downey/Vetinari song)

They Provide the Paint, Streetlight Manifesto

Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious, The Amazing Devil (another Downey/Vetinari one lol)

Quotes

"If God exists he isn't just butter and good luck. / He's also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "At the River Clarion"

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way." - Plato's Republic

"When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks? / Aand should we not thank the knife also? / We do not live in a simple world." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "At the River Clarion"

"What I want to say is / that the past is the past, / and the present is what your life is, / and you are capable / of choosing what that will be, / darling citizen." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "Mornings at Blackwater"

"I don't know what God is. / I don't know what death is. / But I believe they have between them / some fervent and necessary arrangement." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "Sometimes"

(Honestly - every Mary Oliver poem has a small set of lines somewhere within it that will remind me of Vetinari. Or, rather, I will call them to mind when I write him. Obviously, when I am reading Mary Oliver I am too busy weeping over small and gargantuan beauties to be thinking about fanfiction.)

"Regardless, I want to spell out that, in Judaism, a person can do real, profound, comprehensive repentance work and even get right with God—experience atonement—even if their victim never forgives them. Repentance and forgiveness are separate processes.” - Danya Ruttenberg excerpt from On Repentance and Repair

"Monuments are interesting mostly in how they diminish all other aspects of the landscape. Each highly perceptible thing makes something else almost imperceptible." - Anne Boyer excerpt from Garments Against Women

"It took me so long to realize / there are people who start fires, not to tend them, / but to see how things burn, and it took me even longer / to realize some places need fire simply to survive." - Caitlin Scarano, excerpt from “During the Wildfires” (this is also a Grima quote, honestly)

37. What they really think about themselves

As noted in the first question - Vetinari is a hard one to read and write because he's two dimensional in the text but given enough that he's not a full blank slate. But it's also a lot of nonsense we're given to work with. Masks, really.

And I think that's partially it - does Vetinari know what he thinks about himself? Or is he wholly Patrician, now? When he looks in a mirror, what does he see? Ghosts of previous patricians hovering in the hinterlands? Nothing so melodramatic as that, likely, but maybe. He has his maudlin moments in the books.

Fundamtenally, though, I think Vetinari's biggest trick is that he isn't faking anything. There's no mask. There's no cover. This is just who he is as a person. Cold, ruthless, calculating, cunning - but also given to a dry sense of humour, partial to moments of sentimentality, of being maudlin or philosophical when the mood strikes - also loves his irony and sense of occasion or moment and so on.

I think he has a fairly grounded sense of self. We're never given reason to think there's misalignment between how Vetinari sees himself (practical, efficient, capable) and how he behaves as patrician (practical, efficient, capable).

I'm not sure I'm really get at this question. But that's what I have to say on it for now. More may come to me later.

----

Thank you so much!! I do love talking about this weird freak of a man. Bless him that scag.

[gumy-shark]

okayh okay HI you said you wanted to know about the freedom/passion dichotomy thing? ive got the graph and i am going to do my best to explain this to you despite me barely having a grasp of it on myself. THIS IS VERY LONG IM SORRY.

so the first thing you need to know is this just started as a way to split my ocs and help me make character arcs and motivations, and it became a little bit of a habit to categorize my favorite characters this way as well. its is in no means a perfect dichotomy, and im constantly looking for ways to refine it, but for now the best way ive found to illustrate it is this:

basically its which think they represent most... or what they value the most? idk its kind of a case-by-case basis and is dictated by Vibe. like I said THIS IS VERY FLAWED so bare with me pls

when i first started watching lmk i sorted all of the characters i knew into either category. this was within the first four/five days are watching so some of it might be.. off? but i think its still worth something as my first impression of the characters, and it'll probably help illustrate what i mean

Wukong -> Freedom Macaque -> Passion Wukong and Macaque have this thing where one has too much freedom and is learning to temper that with passion (wukong) and the other has too MUCH emotion and is trying everything he can to gain true freedom (macaque) (this is true even when he isn't under LBD's control but is esp prevalent then). they each value the opposite thing they stand for and are trying to be more like the other, without even realizing it. MK -> Freedom Dont get me wrong! He very much has passion! He holds a lot of emotion in that body! but a lot of that passion is the passion for freedom. he just wants to be able to be himself and hang out with his friends, he doesn't do well with all this responsibility :C Mei -> Passion Does this need defending? High sense of duty (mainly towards her ancestors and her friends), and so incredibly passionate. and impulsive. She spits fire when angry! Nothing more to be said honestly. Red Son -> Passion Is a really good parallel to Mei, has too much passion to fit in his body. [In the original notes, I noted that he was 'scared of true freedom, but doesn't know that yet. I'm pretty sure this references his relationship to his parents? Smth smth he's too scared of making them angry so he doesn't explore who he is outside of his relation and loyalty to them?] Pigsy -> Passion this man doesn't need freedom when he as his passion for food. what does he need to be free from? he has everything he wants HEART EMOJI! Tang -> ...Its complicated The thing with tang is that he kind of gets like a character arc with like. Responsibility and his care for his friends? He goes from low passion/high freedom to low freedom/high passion over the course of the show. please note that i am insane about him and if i really wanted i could write a whole essay about him. Sandy -> ??? ONCE AGAIN ITS WEIRD. I WISH THE SHOW FOCUSED MORE ON HIS CHARACTER AND BACKSTORY BC I CANT GET A READ ON HIM.

okay thats the main cast, and HERES THE ALIGNMENT CHART ACCORDING TO THAT. WITH OTHERS AS WELL.

theres not a lot of people without any value of freedom and passion at the same time so the grey area is pretty empty LMAO.

ANYWAYS. I BROUGHT THIS UP TO BEGIN WITH BECAUSE OF THE CHARACTERS WITH EYE SCARS TRIFECTA!!! Basically i see them all of how i described macaque earlier. He's trapped in a situation that he doesn't want to be in, whether it be LBD's control or his situation wiht wukong or his own creepy and standoffish persona/his trust issues making it hard to make real connections with others.

(in contrast wukong loves doing his own thing and just Hanging Out and never stopping his own momentum, but he also has trouble caring about... a lot of things actually. he's just soo easygoing! responsibility harshes his vibe!)

But anyways, macaque's problems are very similar to quackity and tempest's, i feel. Quackity constantly feels trapped by physical threats like techno or dream, and also his own circumstances and trauma (a lot of it from schlatt and manburg). a lot of his actions are him trying to reclaim the freedom he used to feel when he was younger. tempest felt she couldn't be truly herself without her horn, but in trying to get it she got herself in a really bad situation where any wrong move could get her killed.

The passion part comes in play in different ways for them all. Quackity tried not to care about people for a while, but still can never stop being extremely loyal and protective of his friends. Tempest had lots of rage inside her and was so intensely driven to get to her goal. And Macaque canNOT stop obsessing over wukong honestly. All three of them are very passionate, and all three of them are constantly trying to gain more freedom.

This is a super long ask, but thank you for inviting me to ramble about this lmao. I think everyone represents freedom or passion in their own way, and this dichotomy really only matters for characters BUT I THINK ITS FUN. THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TEDTALK!!!!!

i had a whole Thing written out and i was so proud of it and then my phone decided to delete it before i could post and not save as draft. but yeah im putting this chart in the microwave and then eating it and then putting it in the fridge so i can keep it overnight and microwave and eat it again. this is so fucking Good. in their attempts for freedom macaque cquack and tempest all disown the people they were when they Were free, bc they want to be unbound entirely, but they Feel too deeply for that to ever be a possibility for them. so they do the next best thing and try to pass those "lessons" they've learned on to others OUGH it makes me sick!!!

[imunbreakabledude]

Maybe im being too harsh on osrs players in general since plenty of rs3 players are having stupid suggestions as well but most of the osrs suggestions are pretty much what it would take for them to come back to the game. They range from no cosmetic worlds, which was mentioned in the video and i personally think it a tempoross bucket tier suggestion. But whatever, the technology already exists in game for this to be possible so i dont care much, a few worlds dedicated to it doesnt really matter The other suggestion i see a lot of is completely new worlds separate from the main game since the main game for rs3 is 'tainted' with mtx xp already. This was the genuinely stupid suggestion i was referring to in my last ask because rs3 already ran an event like this called fresh start worlds that was like a mini leagues and osrs players already didnt show up to that along with other reasons. It sort of just feels like people are moving the goal posts of what it'd take for them to play again, osrs and rs3 players alike, and then they most likely wont show up or care to play for any amount of time. I think the fact that this announcement/experiments are even happening has me a little hopeful for the future. Of course i'll hold my breath till the actual changes go through but I can't think of one person ive met on rs3 that likes the mtx in the game and id say most of the more involved players and me are chomping at the bit to get it reduced in any way possible. So when an announcement like this rolls around and it just leads to people posting their stupid demands that are never gonna happen and bickering with each other constantly it kind of leaves me annoyed and jaded with the community. I've certainly given osrs players flak but at least when the jmods ask for their opinions on a change or new content osrs players are generally willing to have a discussion about it. So thats why i asked you, osrs player who's willing to have a discussion about the games changes. Im not willing to give mod north any credit though screw that guy

Anyways sorry to write an essay in your asks about some stupid stuff

yeah, i can understand that would be annoying. a lot of player suggestions are naive and self-serving always, and it must be so much worse when it's talking about a game they don't even play anymore and (likely) won't want to play seriously again, even with changes.

like part of the reason I didn't watch the whole video or think about it much is because I don't go there. my thought seeing the headline was, "oh, interesting, good for jagex and good for rs3 players, I hope it works out well." but not to make suggestions because I don't even know enough about how MTX are really implemented in the current year or how they affect the non-mtx parts of the game to say anything. so it's interesting to hear from you, the only person I regularly talk to who is an rs3 player haha

cosmetic-free worlds sound like an okay suggestion at a glance to me - but the more you think about them the more weird it is, very much tempoross buckets. like, if jagex isn't *removing* cosmetic MTX transmogs, it'd be kinda strange for them to be like, "we acknowledge these are such an eyesore to some players that we will let you pay to avoid them, while also encouraging other players to pay to have them." talking out of both sides of their mouth. that's the kind of thing I think is best handled by jagex quietly allowing a third party client to offer a "hide transmogs" plugin for players who hate them without acknowledging anything in the base game. (idk if RS3 has anything like runelite, i know it's not a given to say 'someone just make a plugin', lmao, it takes infrastructure + volunteer work, but in an ideal world i think that's the most elegant solution to the divisiveness of cosmetics.)

as for the "xp reset", wow, that is incredibly dumb, i agree. you're totally right, because OSRS ALSO had fresh start worlds and they were also incredibly unpopular. that suggestion honestly sounds more spiteful than anything - wanting to punish people who played the game "wrong" in a way that would not actually make anyone who left want to play again. because be real, anyone who cared about hiscores in RS3 enough to actually feel like they'd play if not for the 'integrity breach' of MTX boosts, probably cared enough to play anyway.

as I said I can't give much of a good discussion because I really don't know that much detail about the current state of RS3, and I am honest enough about the fact that I will likely never go back to playing it in any meaningful way. admittedly, I HAVE thought about trying it out again for a short period, potentially when they have their first League, since OSRS isn't having one this year. I have a feeling I might get overwhelmed/turned off by the new interfaces and graphics, but I might give it a shot. I have no ill will toward RS3 and I hope these MTX reductions work out well for the actual dedicated community! and the best thing I can do as someone who hasn't played the game since like, 2012, is keep my mouth shut on things I don't know about lol

[malleusmaleficent]

Witch Hammer deep lore and really long personal post inbound, lol. Hiding it to spare you all from having to see the essay, but read on if you want.

The character of Gon is largely informed by someone whom I had the great privilege of dating. Absolutely brilliant person, shined brighter than any star. Warm and loving. And oh god, was he smart. And funny. AND hot. He was so affable, the sort of person that could become best friends with anyone in a matter of seconds. I had really lucked out, lol.

He was Asian, people would joke about me having "yellow fever" and I'd get so upset because it felt like it demeaned my very real love for him, like there's no words for the affection I had for him. Just the thought of anyone thinking my love for him was skin deep was deeply offensive to me, lol.

We had a chemistry that was infectious. Oh man, that shit was so real lol. He loved to get on my nerves but he'd do it in ways that made me even more mad because you could tell he was just barely holding in laughter the whole time and I'd be too busy finding that adorable for me to actually be mad at him.

He loved me in a way, and I loved him in a way, that was so new to me. It overwhelmed me, completely shattered my world. I became codependent, and long story short we broke up because I didn't know how to live without the man whom I loved very much. I had low-key become toxic because of it.

Not knowingly, I would never knowingly be toxic towards the person whom I loved so much. But I was so insecure that it was simultaneously like he could do no wrong yet also could do no right.

And so we broke up.

It's almost 4 A.M., I'll keep the rest abridged lol.

We met up again, said what we had was really special and that we should try again, but it never ended up happening.

There was no second try.

A storybook setup with a real-life payoff.

That took a lot to figure out how to feel. I'm still sort of numb on it, honestly, even though it's been a year. It's scary to dwell on for too long, that's quite a long spiral that I have to inch my way down lol.

Anyways, a teensy part of Gon as I write him is just to like. Idk, explore my ex vicariously. Like how does his brain work? Why did he fall for me? I don't know. I think that, perhaps, my difficulty in writing Gon is maybe reflective of the fact that I never really understood where our relationship stemmed from for him. I just knew that he loved me in a very real and very meaningful way, and that was enough.

Maybe there was nothing to make sense of anyways, love is often irrational.

Things ended in a way that was so bizarre, so aloof and so distant that it's left my relationship to romance super weird. Part of why I write is also to try and examine romance ig, see if I can re-spark anything inside me.

Which, honestly, I would say has been mildly helpful.

Anyways sorry for the ramble, congrats and I'm sorry if any of you actually read this lol.

[rise-my-angel]

Honestly, this fandom exhausts me to hell and back. It's difficult to exist in as someone who needs my opinions affirmed by someone else for me to even consider seeing them as valid.

In general, though with some nuance to be found inside, I'm someone who likes the Starks, supports Northern independence, dislikes the Targs and dislikes incestuous ships. Now, since I'm so fucking insecure about my thoughts and opinions, I need to find someone who I generally agree with in order to be able to engage with a fandom in a way that doesn't make me want to behead myself.

So I look for supporters of Northern independence, whom are usually Sansa fans, but I don't make it for long before seeing that they have some wildly Stark/North-negative takes. I go on to look for people who actually like House Stark but end up finding out that a lot of them are pro-Targ restoration for some reason. So I leave and look for people who don't want a Targaryen to rule Westeros again, only to end up circling back around to the Sansa stans who not only actively look for reasons to dislike anything Northern and Stark that doesn't relate to Sansa, but also ship her with her own brother. So I look for people who don't hate any and every thing Northern only to find Dany/Arya stans (who are in a weird sort of alliance for whatever reason) who compare the North's want for independence to MAGA (That's an actual thing people believe in... for some reason.) and either ship Arya with her brother or Jon with his aunt. It's a neverending loop, and a personal hell for someone who has kind of insecurities that I do.

The loop this fandom throws my brain into is something along the lines of 'See, this opinion that I have is valid because this other person has it as well! But that other opinion is the spawn of satan, actually, and you're dumb for believing it.' and 'Well, actually that other opinion is objectively correct! This other opinion that you have, however, is objectively evil.' and it's not a nice loop to be stuck in.

It's not even as if I have takes that are contradictory. It's just that this fandom has been so insane for so long that it has become normal for them to be viewed as such by some people. And it's difficult to be a regular here, because even though I have written essay-length metas, I'm in constant need of outside affirmation for me to be able to have even a crumb of confidence in my own opinions. Which is something that says more about my damaged psyche than it does about the fandom alone, I know, but the very fact that the social structure of this fandom seems to encourage and enflame such insecurities says enough, if you ask me.

Conclusion: This fandom fucking sucks, and if I could press a button that would magically destroy all asoiaf fandom spaces, I would in a heartbeat. Good news though, I bought a giant fuckign plushie that'll hopefully help me deal with all these stupid assaults of anxiety that this fandom semi-regularly puts me through. Anyway, I am very sleepy as I'm writing this and, if it wasn't obvious enough, Not Doing Very Good mentally. So if it sounds rambley or doesn't make sense at all, that's probably the reason, I just wanted to put my grievances into words. I felt like I'd explode if I didn't.

Well, first of all, your views and opinions are always welcome and valid here! I am thrilled to get asks like this and discussions like this, because, like you, I am in the minority on these issues. I know I'm only one person but I am always happy to hear your thoughts!

Now, the thing I learned a while back is a lot of the stances on the North and Targaryeans in relation to Sansa, Arya, and Dany, is a LOT of it has to do with the never ending Jon shipping wars.

Now, Jonsa shippers typically aren't pro targ restoration, because they want the ending from the show of Sansa being Queen in the North. But, they also want Sansa to be in charge as regent, so they reduce Jon to King consort who is happy not to be a leader. But, because these people typically do not engage with the Starks as they are, they attribute a LOT of Sansa's more southern traits to her entire personality. So, the North needs her as their Queen becuase she will rule and tame and civilize them the way the North needs, instead of allowing her to embrace the fact that Sansa is still a Northerner and does value her home and traditions and wouldn't want things to be like they were in the South where she suffered. So, thats what a lot of that comes from in the Sansa side. They are typically more hardcore Jonsa shippers that see Sansa as the one who needs to be Queen to tame the North and Jon to being civilized becuase they wrongly think that Sansa's Northern traits aren't important. They normally arne't pro targ restoration, but not because they look at the Targaryeans the way say you and I do. They are against targ restoration, because they are simply anti jonerys and thus hate that idea because it means that ship gets in the way of theirs.

Arya's weird side tends to come from two places, but more often then not it comes from an anti jonsa place. They sometimes are Jonrya shippers, but they know that is unpopular and less accepted, so they shift typically to the next thing they can that isnt jonsa which is Jonerys. Sometimes its just Jonerys shippers straight up most of the time. These people typically are the ones who think that Arya will love Dany and Dany will love Arya, because of how important Arya is to Jon, they need Arya to be a #1 Dany supporter because they are shipping Jonerys and Jon would prioritize Arya over Dany if it came down to it, so they have to have Arya on Danys side to avoid that. They normally are just targ stans deep down, and thus will always support targ restoration because Arya and Jon to them are just tools to give Dany what she wants.

So, a lot of these people do not advocate for the North in any good faith, because it gets in the way of their shipping goals. A lot of Northern independance is staked on the efforts of Robb, and Jon going forward in the books. But, because they mostly view those characters, especially Jon, as just vehicles to accomplish things for their favourite female Queen character, what Robb and Jon stand for, which is inheirintly the North in it's purest form, cannot be a priority because then it would nessesitate Jon still being in charge.

They want either Sansa or Dany or Arya in charge and thus Jon and his goals have to be reduced, which means the importance of the North and their culture or independance needs to be diminished to justify why the most suited Northern character cannot be the one to lead them.

There are some outliars that are just very negative and bad faith for little justification, but a lot of the time when I've dug deeper, a LOT of these anti North people tend to be the very same people who are locked into the toxic Jon incest shipping wars, and their views of the North are corellated into what suits their ship the best and it is never with the Norths bests interest in mind.

I don't blame you for being exhausted with it, it is very exhausting to me, but what helps is being so vocal on my blog about how I feel about it all and the North, and maybe it will inspire at least some people to look at the topic in a different light.