#it's literally so insulting to people that have actual experience with addiction and also you sound like an idiot

[shanastoryteller]

whenever I see someone equating sugar and caffeine to narcotics and alcohol I'm like Hm! weird and off-putting way to let everyone know that addiction has no presence in your life, but good for you I guess

[br1ghtestlight]

"hello burger lady!! tiny people. BOB."

THE SLOW HEAD TURN WHILE FISCHOEDER IS STARING AT THEM LMAOO he's such a freak. what is he doing

aww linda put a smiley face on the check thats so cute. "nooo i enjoyed it :)"

A BROTHERHOOD?? BLOOD OATH? love how louise hears this and immediately stands up she's like hello. hello im interested. PLEASE let me into your blood oath club mr fischoder

babalon like the ancient uhh. thing.

ooooh :0

(also my dad used to call my mom babalon among MANY other creative insults when they were married and this immediately brought that memory back to me. but he said it like babble-on like she was babbling. sorry idk why i wanted to share that)

"and the other members already picked all of the best chefs in town soo im asking you" i literally dont believe fischoeder lmao he definitely just wanted bob to come along as his personal chef and couldn't come up w/ a better excuse like. come on

"a billion dollars" "nope." "a million dollars" "no...." "a billion dollars :D" "she just said that"

i know bob is holding onto fischoeder's back bcuz he cant see but also its like. kinda intimate?? like?

also love bob's new jacket. these are the kinda things you only notice when you've watched WAAYY too many bob's burgers episodes but its a nice jacket :) the blue color suits him. and it has a hood

personally i would be a little more concerned that mr fischoeder only has one eye and it is NOT looking in the direction of the dangerous sharp cliff theyre walking beside. i know he's driven bob in his boat before but he's SOO BLIND WHY ARE YOU WILLINGLY GETTING IN A BOAT WITH HIM <- saying this as someone who doesn't really have vision in one eye or depth perception. i wouldnt give in a boat with myself driving either

"it was actually kinda fun to come up with!! i-i hope you like it :)" bob is so sweet im gonna cry. he's so excited about cooking SOMEONE LET HIM RANT ABOUT HIS SPECIAL INTEREST RIGHT NOW. he's in autism heaven

NOT THE TIKTOK MENTION 😭😭

recognize some of these guys from the gingerbread house episode which was another horrible experience for bob lmao

"can i keep hiiim? 🥺" what is his PROBLEM

WAS HE WORKING THE OMLETTE STATION AT YOUR LAST SEX PARTY??? <- brand new sentence

also this 100% confirms to me that fischoeder has had sex with every old ass man on this camping trip bcuz NO WAY he's getting rich old woman pussy im sorry. i do think he's bisexual but his sex parties are male-exclusive. he fucked those old men

not looking forward to whatever is going to happen to bob in this episode.

I ALWAYS FORGET FISCHOEDER IS LIKE A HARDCORE DRUG ADDICT remember that time he did mushrooms in s13 That would explain some things. that weren't already explained by the alcoholism

bob is surprisingly chill considering the circumstances and the fact that he's getting less than a thousand dollars of restaurant equipment out of this. i know he trusts fischoeder (for some reason i dont entirely understand) but being blindfolded and taken to a secret island with a bunch of rich old men and having NO CELL SIGNAL and everybody is drugged as hell.... he doesn't even know where he is..... GIRL RUN‼️‼️

also there's only one bed in fischoeder's tent which means there's either a seperate camping section for the chefs (unlikely) he expects bob to sleep outside in the storm (very likely) or bob and fischoeder are going to have to share a bed 👀👀 i know its probably not going to be addressed but i need somebody to write And There Was Only One Bed bob x fischoeder fanfic about this episode immediately. like that needs to happen

bob realizing that the chances of him dying on this camping trip are quickly reaching eighty or ninety percent ooh he's COOKED

"Don't wear brown and black. Never look into someone's eyes..." "Bring your own fork. And briefcase." "Of course. Everyone knows that." "And leave one of your shoes as a gift." "But you have to hide it..." gene and louise are SOO silly i love them so much. they play off each other so well its like a constant improv class

this subplot is Trying To Teach Tina Social Skills meanwhile gene and louise don't have them either they just dont give a fuck about learning them. well louise knows them she just disregards them. gene doesn't know ANYTHING

HAHAHA BOB REALIZING THEYRE LEAVING HIM THERE TO DIE. ITS NEVER BEEN MORE OVER love him not even acknowledging their crazy fire drug-induced dancing he's so used to this bullshit. bob should get a week off after this MINIMUM but we all know he loves cooking too much for that

NOT MR FISCHOEDERS GAY ASS HIP SHAKE?????????

mfw im the only sober person at a crazy drug party full of rich people on an island during a deadly storm and its only Tuesday. 😐

UH OH IS THE CORRECT RESPONSE. BOB REALIZES HES SO FUCKED

aww its kinda cute he's making sure that fischoeder is taken care of too and packing up all their things. dad instincts

at a certain point u kinda have to call him calvin dude. like you're WELL past "mr fischoeder" territory in this situation <- is also calling him mr fischoeder in this review

"shh he's hunting us" is probably NOT what bob wanted to hear

there's something about this that is sooo.....

in defense of bob he has almost died or been killed with fischoeder SEVERAL times before this episode including in the movie. its like a male bonding thing for them at this point

"and i invented a new way to tie a tie" I KNEW I WASNT CRAZY FOR THINKING THAT LOUISES TIE WAS TIED WRONG IN THAT SCREENSHOT i love that i picked up on that and felt the need to point it out. having never worn a tie before in my life (not to my knowledge at least)

this is literally what it feels like when ur autistic and trying to understand neurotypical social conventions. tina is trying SO HARD she's such a sweet girl :( its okay baby girl i understand i get it

THE BITEY GUY HAS A NAME BOB

am i allowed to say that bob with wet hair is kinda 👀👀🔥

why'd he kiss him like that ??

he's suuuch a sweetie in his oversized jacket <3

"No, no. Plants don't like sweet drinks!" "Just hard liquor?"

"dad is missing a WILD night" *hard cut to bob tied up and being used as a human sacrifice for cannibalism*

WHAT WAS RHAT. WHY DID CALVIN LOOK AT HIM LIKE THAT. YES IM USING HIS LEGAL FIRST NAME BCUZ WTF WAS THAT GAY ASS GUILTY LOOK?? HES NEVER BEEN GUILTY BEFORE he care so much about bob im gonna throw up. what the hell

HE LIIIKES HIM 😭 HE FELT GUILTY BCUZ HE LOVES AND CARES ABOUT BOB THIS IS SO FUCKED UP 😭😭💕

he probably also feels guilty that this is like the sixth time he's gotten bob into a near death situation. like at a certain point it starts to feel personal yknow

*howling* "god. i hate when he does that"

straight up on the verge of a meltdown. i dont even blame him tbh

bob isnt WRONG but also we are talking about a crazy drugged up cannibal who thinks he's a wild animal so maybe we could leave saving him until tomorrow morning? like idk i feel like he wouldnt exactly fit on their dingy. and even if he did what if he bites

"and you do have to come for ice cream!! it wont be any fun without you" okay thats kinda cute. this episode definitely kept up to pace with the insane homoerotic relationship between bob and fischoeder and im happy about that. almost gave us the tiniest hint into what fischoeder really feels/thinks about bob which. yeah

VERY UNHINGED EPISODE BUT REALLY FUN AND CUTE?? everything between bob and fischoeder was so. soo. yknow. and the subplot was funny and cute too :) very sweet little episode i always love when they go off on adventures like w/ teddy in sea me now. and of course their (many many) near death experiences together thats truly what its all about baby!!! really enjoyed this episode it was exactly the right amount of unhinged and funny

[iiikaruz]

It’d be like- totally cool and awesome if you could share more ivan headcanons if you have any :]

i hope ur ready for the most random, unorganized hcs on the planet bc WHOO BOY DO I HAVE SOME STUFF TO SAY ABOUT THIS CRINGEFAIL INCEL!!

- tried learning how to do jumpstyle and is actually pretty decent at it, despite his skinny-ass toopthpick legs. also he literally can’t dance in any other way. like, he sucks at anything besides that.

- however, learning that forever ruined his music taste, since he now listens to breakcore and slavic dnb: just the most ear-rupturing, bass boosted music with anime samples

- he was definitely a Creepypasta & Invader Zim kid when he was younger. no questions asked. also he probably had unrestricted internet access as a child and fell upon gore & shock vids.

- furthermore on middle school ivan, he probably wore eyeliner and covered one of his eyes with his bang. he also never grew out of covering his eye with his bangs (i hate/adore his gay-ass bangs so much. maybe they’re the reason why he gets no bitches lmao)

- was raised learning russian by his foster parents and only started learning english when he was 6. (side note: i fucking love his accent it has me thrashing around on the floor)

- his hands are always sweaty but always cold at the same time?? bro is a physical anomaly and gets the worst of both worlds.

- absolutely sucks at eye contact, but not in the usual way. he ends up accidentally staring at people for way too long when they talk to him/when he’s talking. like, straight-up not blinking for a good minute.

- inherited schizophrenia from his clone father. he mostly just deals with paranoia and bouts of depression.

- is unbelievably touch-starved. to the point that if someone even touches his shoulder for more than a second, his brain just explodes and he immediately just crumples up like a piece of paper.

- swears a LOT in russian and in english (get you a man who can do both lol). his favorite insult is just “kill yourself” and other variations. it always works, definitely/s

- he thinks that any advance towards him is either someone making fun of him or that it’s just him reading into it too much it. he physically cant accept the idea of someone being into him.

- is chronically addicted to Monster Energy.

- greasiest hair ever. i just KNOW he probably washes his hair once a week.

- his favorite anime is Serial Experiment Lain (he’s absolutely a lain kinnie and you can pry this hc from my cold dead hands)

- has an incredibly shitty sleep schedule. like, 4 hours AT BEST. this is made from the combination of him having mild insomnia and him being online all the time.

[veryflirtytransportalate]

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"Wow. This is going to be a great story! Just wait till you see this in print. You won't regret this, Blue." - Piper

Oh, Piper. Always there. Always chilling. Always ready for whatever. I cannot stand how she is about me stealing stuff, but other than that we get along great. She runs a newspaper with her little sister, although she's been following me because she wants to publish my story. In exchange, she takes some pics for me to post here. We all win.

She and Dogmeat get along really well. I'm actually kind of confused about Dogmeat on the whole. He's... I met him on the road one day out of the blue, and ever since, he's been following me. I'm not saying we met, got to know each other, I literally looked at him and went, "Hey," and he just made himself my dog. I don't feed him. I pet him, stab him with Stim when he needs it, but I don't know where he gets water from. I've never seen him poop. He can take a .303 round like a champ, too. He is also a vicious murderer who attacks anyone I get into a scrap with. That's true friend material right there and also, maybe, a, robot, I'm suddenly realizing. That's cool, actually, robo-dog. Why do Stimpa-eh they work on Nick too, funk it, like anything else makes any sense here.

Honestly, I get why people are falling over themselves to be with me (see: my legs, my torso, my face), but I'm sometimes weirded out by how into me they can get? And it does not take a long time. Preston made me dad of his local cub scouts after knowing me for fifteen minutes. All I'd done up to that point was get high, kill like two dozen dudes in a suit of armor (I think one of them turned into a dragonman but I was pretty up there), and insult his old lady friend right to her face. Hell, Strong Mad can't stand me, and he still spends all day riding my Red Rocket. ...okay hold on, I just meant he hangs out where I told him to, okay, me and Strong Mad aren't... we... well... let me go to the Red Rocket, and take a good hard look at him, and get back to you. There... may be potential there.

(Outfit credits, my thoughts, and a few more shots below the cut.)

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Cait is here too! I use Koozebane's Loving Cait mod (opens in new tab) to change her general vibe some. Piper's hat is Niero's CROSS_MojaveManhunter mod (opens in new tab).

Fallout 4 companions, dude. I've only ever gotten as far as Virgil's cave so I haven't met most of them, but like... bro, they are in rough shape.

Cait's storyline I think lays it out the best, which is to say, is one of the worst: it combines a desire to tell a deeply empathetic story of sorrow and trauma and regret and redemption, but that desire is so mishandled and poorly considered that it feels more like an insult to people who have lived experiences similar to her's - if you've ever been told 'you're so brave' by someone and suddenly felt a not terribly intense form of insulted, that's the exact emotional response I think this combination elicits. Her description of the physiological and mental effects of her intoxicated lifestyle feels like only a rough impression of what long-term functional intoxication feels like in the body, she doesn't follow the rules of addiction the player does, her story has to actively ignore the magical addiction cures around every corner*, but then plops a science-magic chair McGuffin into play with the same 'it's an instant cure' handwaving that the rest of the game already does as a deus ex machina to a story that could have been about the redemptive power of self-forgiveness, and there's not even time to mention that the story of the Vault you find the chair in implies that a group of addicts would turn kill mode over a single stash of drugs so fast that they'd storm in and murder an entire therapy group in their chairs, implying a discovery to murder timeline of less than an hour, and the fact that someone signed off on the only Irish character in all of Fallout just to have her be defined by violence and addiction and red hair and an accent feels funking nasty. Irish people in post apocalyptic Boston? Super fun. Thematic. Represents the reality of Boston and would have been an excellent addition! But Cait... the elements of her story could have been something really powerful to explore in a second person narrative, but instead, the writing placed on top of her damages the cohesiveness of the world in every place it touches.

We're all on the same page here**, and literally all of the characters are like this, although most other companions don't have narratives nearly so long or with nearly such personal themes (thank goodness). Nick is a hardboiled detective who smokes cigarettes. He does not have lungs. He also has memories of his previous life? I never do his quest. Piper is a scrappy reporter lady. She is upbeat and supportive and cares about her sister. The end. Codsworth is a robot who is a butler. Mr. Handycock is a ghoul dressed like a red coat, and, in his free time, something like a character. McGravy is a merc and a lazy Fallout 3 callback. Strong Mad is just Fawkes again but worse, which is ridiculous when we could have had Fawkes be the lazy call back, or another lazy call back, I guess. Danse is the words "semper fi" injection molded into a human shape (with a hot face). Preston is... actually a fun combo of dorky dude in a bad situation with good intentions, Preston gets... ugh, as much of a pass as I'll give anyone, even though he holds the terrible distinction of radiant quest giver. You never wanna be the radiant quest giver, okay, even Mike Rowe wouldn't do that dirty job. Lucky for him I kind of like the radiant quests, but that's only because the un-radiant quests usually have writing in them, and I have a hard limit on the amount of Fallout 4 writing I can stomach (I can't remember if I've ever through mods or whatever gotten to the Institute but I remember the cutscene with Father where you meet him and I Just... oh wow... if... if I was in a class, and someone presented that scene as a project, I'd be so embarrassed for them).

I downloaded a few mod companions (the super mutant lady, an Enclave general, and someone else, I forget), but they don't quite fit in with the general mood I'm trying to tweak Fallout 4 into: this Cowboy Bebop-esque colorful and bombastic adventure world with weird tech and sexy badasses.

I'm going to keep trying to Collect 'Um All! but... I don't have high hopes.

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*Addictol, which I carry on me at all times, doctors, who are in every town we stop at, a special tea from the chemistry station, or a funking omelet can cure addiction and if you don't believe me well than (opens in new tab) - your move, funko.

**Oh my gosh I just Googled "why is cait irish fallout 4" and the top answer suggested by Google was "The reason Cait has a (terrible, stereotypical) 'Irish' accent is because Bethesda didn't stop to think about how little sense it would make." YES, JUST RIP THEM APART. Oh, internet, you weird commercialized corpse of a thing - thank you so much, that made my day.

[encyclopediamorbidica]

hey could you two like. not take what i said in such bad faith that you compare the opinions of a black jewish trans man to the fucking mormons.

i literally stipulated in my first statement that i am fucking furious with people who use the term porn addiction to refer to the act of enjoying porn or sex or masturbation. i hate that a genuine mental health term like addiction has been twisted into moral grandstanding for cranks who want to sell self help courses to vulnerable people grappling with some form of religious or moral guilt regarding their porn use, and i don't ever want to associate my own experience of addiction and with addicts with the same kinds of people who look down on drug addicts to the point that even saying the word "addiction" brings to mind the personal failings of an inherently flawed person who is beyond help because they somehow enjoy slowly killing themselves to being in a healthy enough state of mind to not be entirely chemically dependent on something.

when i say porn addict, i mean someone who is chemically dependent on the endorphins released by watching porn, who has to escalate in their amount of time spent consuming porn and in the subject matter of the porn they watch. frankly i find it deeply insulting that this observable phenomenon is being entirely discredited by the both of you who presumably have only layperson's knowledge of psychology, a deeply difficult to prove social science that has been used both to excuse the imprisonment, harm, abuse, and murder of disabled people, women, and people of colour and to classify any form of deviance from social norms of the day as a defect deserving of institutionalization and crackpot "therapies" that involve forms of torture such as ECT, ABT, and "conversion therapy" based on deeply outdated rhetoric the psychiatric community has yet to fully address let alone take reparative action for.

in the same way there has been no published data on how porn acts as a mechanism of behavioral addiction, because we have been so thoroughly outpaced by the ease of access to and social stigma around the discussion of pornography and masturbation in the internet age, there has also been no published data on how social media acts as a mechanism of behavioral addiction despite multiple studies suggesting that social media use contributes to an increase of dependency on external validation through the form of likes, comments, and sharing, and can negatively affect its users' mental health as well as serve them further radicalizing content that contributes to user dependency to form allegiance and notoriety within an in-group.

i don't think you understand just how social sciences work or even what the word "objective" means in that context, actually, let alone how recently these forms of addiction have been recorded and thus how little research has been done up to this point. i do genuinely believe that you care about addicts and about how best to treat addiction while removing the social stigma surrounding both addiction itself and pornography as a legitimate form of labour and art, but come the fuck on. jumping onto a post about porn addiction to separate my take specifically from both the context of what i said and who i was referring to when i said it in order to try and explain to me how i'm inherently wrong about a phenomenon with very little data behind it to validate your own interpretation of the study of addiction feels quite a bit like unnecessary conjecture where you didn't fully grasp my statement and refused to engage with it on the grounds that i was somehow demonstrably incorrect and had to be publicly interrogated over beliefs that in no way underpinned my actual point.

Addiction is a disease that destroys the body and mind. They need mental health support from a professional. It is not my or your place to treat them with gentle hands when they demand we enable them.

The only thing you can do for people suffering from addiction realistically as a layman is take care of yourself and encourage the person to get help.

Enabling them makes it worse and that's what these people want. They don't want help, they want enablers.

[apparentlyaswarmofbees]

Hello I hope your doing well! I have a headcanon idea how would the brothers and previously undatebles react to a masseuse/masseur (people who give out professional massages)

Let's try this shall we~

Edit: I was informed by someone who is actually familiar with this field that the term Masseuse and Masseur can be seen as insulting in the profession, thank you for informing me again!

.

The Boys and a Massage Professional/Therapist MC

.

Warning: uncensored swearing, a lot of it asfkfkajshfkslajd

.

Lucifer

Tense shoulders that could cut steel, harder than a fucking nokia phone from centuries to eons of stress, if I was a professional at massages I think I would be itching to grab onto those muscles of his like dough.

He will probably feel chills down his spine whenever you are around.

Won't take much convincing if the time is right to ask him to please let you release the pressure on him because dear fucking lord I wouldn't be able to just stand and watch either.

Good fucking luck in the process, when I say this man is stiff this man is STIFF.

He will be feeling so much better by the end of it there's a chance he will be slightly dazed.

Also it improved his mood which led to less harsh punishments, which now has led to more demands from others than from Lucifer himself for you to massage him.

I think you should start asking for payment at this point-

.

Mammon

And talking about payment, you will definetelly need to ask it from this one because after the first time you gave it to him for free out of your own good will he started to come back for it all. the. time.

Okay, he's cute and the sounds he makes are so 👌. But damn boy this is not exactly so easy so please give something back??????

Well, you just need to say the word and he will always have something in ready to give you. A date at a place you have been wanting to go for a good while now or something you have had you eyes on for a good time.

It's a very win win kind of deal.

Though at some point when you massaged his legs he felt so light he ran faster than he could control and almost ran into a wall, actually no, he did ran into a wall there's a crack in there ouch-

.

Leviathan

In which the cause of the second oldest running was probably to scape the demands for his money back from the third oldest, though Levi was definetelly too stunned by the lighting speed to react right away.

He now makes sonic jokes when refering to Mammon.

But going back to massages, this fucking snake has such a bad posture I would be in back pain just from watching him sit.

And don't expect it to be easy to fix that because everytime you touch him he just tenses up further.

I swear it would be easier to just knock him out and acupuncture him.

You will succeed at some point if you don't give up, and BOY he also makes some 👌😩 sounds.

They're a lot more dorkish and high pitched and he will definetelly not be functional by the end of it.

He will start trying to fix his posture from now on to not make your work go to waste.

.

Satan

A curious cat that would just straight up ask for a session (not for free of course he already has something to give you back in ready) after witnessing the shenanigans above.

Not so stiff as Lucifer but still fucking hard, which is to be expected since he has so much rage bottled up.

Chances are he's turning into his demon form unconsciously.

It's a bit of an intimidating session not gonna lie, he is basically using it to relieve himself from part of his wrath so with every groan it feels like he's going to jump at you and rip you to shreds.

He won't of course, instead he will smile brightly by the end of the session and give you your reward for such a good job.

It's honestly worth it though you will probably be needing a massage yourself after-

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Asmodeus

And that's where pretty boy comes in! He doesn't have a professional tittle on him but he has centuries of experience so that's close right?

He will have all things ready, just say the word and he will give you the best payment for all your hard work ever: a chance to relax yourself.

And man he's good.

It's also not very tiring to massage him either, his smooth skin is addicting to touch, the atmosphere he will help set up will be perfect, and he also spills a lot of tea in between so that's a plus for entertainment.

Seriously whenever it becomes too much to be with the rest of the brothers just hit Asmo up and he's gotchu.

Private spa day comming right up.

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Beelzebub

He won't ask because it will completelly scape his mind.

He plays a lot of sports and does a lot of exercising so of course he has a lot of sore muscles.

And you can't tell me you wouldn't want to massage his belly, he's a glutton, it's literally asking for you to massage there.

Baby boy is always so gratefull, thanks to your aftercare on his legs, arms and torso, he has never felt lighter!

Which has led him to accidentally break some of the gym weights, win a sports game almost all on his own and make another restaurant suffer because he felt he could eat more than usual.

Although I would like to say you should proceed with the massages with caution, his smile is too precious to ever say no to.

.

Belphegor

Easiest target ever, will probably sleep for 24 hours in one go right after.

And he won't wake up for shit.

Though once he wakes up after those 24 hours he will basically be wide awake for the next 24 hours, so honestly? This has turned out to be very useful in important ocasions.

Will often give out some whines in the middle of a session, possibly half asleep for the entire time.

I feel like he would feel quite ticklish in some places even though you wouldn't be purposelly trying to tickle him, probably.

And I know many of you love his laugh, so yeah that's a plus.

He will definetelly offer to massage you back, and yes he will be good at it, and no it's not because of experience, yes it's because he's too much of a genious and has basically learned through osmosis just from getting massages from you.

.

Solomon

Let me tell ya, he's stiffer than you think.

Bad posture, centuries of responsabilities, strain from excessive use of magic and pacts and the weight of existence when you are both immortal and unable to die.

He could easily rival Lucifer and he won't even realize it.

Will definetelly agree to get a massage and will definetelly say "well I do feel a bit under the weather" and his muscles will definetelly feel a little bit more than just under the weather.

It's easier to chew on hard bread than massage Solomon.

He also offers to pay you back.

Do not agree to get a massage from him, I repeat, DO NOT.

.

Simeon

If you didn't feel like touching that exposed waist of his then you're lying.

If you don't offer first, he will ask you for it at some point.

And man to have a literal angel right under you, letting out a few exhales of satisfaction and bliss with every move of your skilled hands and arms, sometimes a chuckle followed by a comment that could start a small conversation.

Smooth skin, perfectly shaped body, I don't think I would be able to get my hands off him either.

Massage his hands, from his palms to his fingertips, massage his shoulders, from his blades to his neck, thumbs pressing close to his spine.

He will gladly let you indulge yourself for as long as you wish.

.

Diavolo

Another one who's stiffer than you think.

You could literally jump on his back and it would feel like pavement.

Oh and he's now definetelly addicted to massage.

Of course he will also be paying you back with whatever you wish (don't make a joke and say something like 100,000,000 grimm, he will take it seriously-).

Depending on the day he may actually fall asleep, which is very cute.

On another note tho, have you ever thought about sleeping on his back? Because I have-

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Barbatos

Good luck getting him to take off his clothes, even more good luck to catch him not being busy.

This man will gladly give out massages of his own (which could probably knock out a dragon because damn boy those hands are skilled) but will probably not be as easy to convince to get a massage.

It will take an extremelly tiring day to make him agree and it will be so worth it.

Why you ask? Because the look in his face will alway be so soft by the end of it. Pure gratefullness.

Since then he will start to actually seek you out from time to time, the little smile on his face almost looking excited.

[mc-critical]

your analysis of selim? i think he's hated way more than he deserves. hating him for valid reasons is fine but telling that he's gonna be such a bad sultan is really stupid [and especially because only now do they bring out history & say selim was bad which is historically inaccurate as well]. out of all of suleyman's sons, it was only mustafa who was loved by all & talented [show only cuz apparently mehmet was also extremely talented & selim wasn't a bad sultan] enough for the throne. bayezid was extremely hotheaded and you can't tell me that a prince who can't control his emotions, especially in front of state officials, will be a good sultan. everyone tells selim was extremely selfish & the instigator of all their fights, when they were younger & older. siblings are always like that?? mustafa obviously wasn't like that because he was way older than mehmet, mihrimah, selim, bayezid & cihangir to get into stupid fights w/ them. mehmet & mihrimah had frequent & annoying arguments because they were closer in age. selim & bayezid had frequent fights because they were closer in age. this is a thing with many siblings; the elder provoking the younger & the younger disrespecting the elder. why do people point out their sibling fights as evidence for selim's personality? i feel sorry for bayezid as a kid but i feel less remorse for him as he's older. i don't say he deserves execution, especially at the hands of his own father, but he did rebel against his father's order & then proceeded to flee to another empire; like, the punishment for that is execution, what did he expect after rebelling? i feel extremely sorry for all his sons though, they didn't deserve this fate when they were just victims of their father's rebellion. also, unpopular opinion but bayezid is lowkey overrated pls don't cancel me i love him but he's annoying at times like all characters & no one really acknowledges it back to selim, he was honestly very underrated. he was really slandered in the series and he didn't have any real support w/ him until nurbanu & sokollu. although hurrem did vouch for him to go to manisa, it was literally only because he was 'peaceful' [we can read that as untalented as well] and no harm would reach him because he wasn't a threat [i actually really liked this plan of hurrem's, tough & clever; only if she was actually supported in this]. even mihrimah, till the end, is quite unfair to him. he had a problem w/ alcohol & people telling him to just stop? like, it doesn't work that way? people have to suffer so much in order to stop their addictions & they're actually restricted from their addictions; selim was a prince, no one around him could restrict him [his parents could but they weren't w/ him in his provinces]. he did become politically active w/ nurbanu's growing ambitions & he took smarter, more cunning & dirtier measures than bayezid to win the throne. the battle for the throne was bloody; resorting to honour like mustafa did was obviously not the best decision & people insult selim for being cunning enough [or being influenced by cunning people] to win the throne. let's also keep in mind that selim didn't even have much of an interest for the throne until manisa & nurbanu. i also like his relationship w/ nurbanu. it paralleled suleyman & hurrem's w/ the concubine arcs but selim did end up being monogamous to her in the show. their chemistry was fantastic [props to engin & merve for their acting] and although i don't really enjoy the 'a woman makes a man strong & influences him in everything; good or evil' kind of take, i did enjoy their relationship [he also sometimes looked at her like she was this ethereal type miracle, appropriately so w/ her courage]. i like what the show did w/ bayezid's execution a lot, the whole scene was such a wonderful cinematic experience; the music, bayezid's agonizing screams, his sons falling one by one, selim crying because he didn't want it to end up this way, bayezid falling & his screams ceasing, selim's heartbroken face because he was always a soft person & he always loved bayezid;

ahh, what a scene, so much love for it. anyway, that's just my opinion; i think he's hated way more than he deserves, especially in comparison to other characters & he's actually one of my most favourite characters from s4 [but i honestly love all characters w/ their good & bad, mc has many complex characters & i live for it]. what do you think about selim? sorry if you got annoyed at the long ask, i can get really heated when talking about selim [especially in reference to his historical figure], hope you don't mind if❤ [if it is annoying i'll stop it]

(okay, I'll talk strictly about the show, since I don't feel like delving deep into historical waters. There is still stuff we don't know for sure and I do want to keep the line between show and history in my head, except for the similar themes.)

While he isn't particularly my favorite character, I appreciate MC Selim and he is a very interesting subject when it comes to analyzing him. I'm actually amazed with what the show did with him in the span of a season (and something, counting some S02B and S03B moments) - he was one of the most fleshed out characters in S04 and we could get a clear picture as to why he does what he does.

Some people consider his debut to be an insult, for it immediately showed some of his weaknesses, putting him in a bad light right out of the gate. But all I can see in this debut is a showcase of his predicament of the prince no one sees as a capable heir of the throne. It’s as if he sleeps with women and drinks as a coping mechanism he’s delved into, with Mihrimah having to do effort to snap him out of it. The Selim we see in the beginning of S04 is a hopeless person. He doesn’t have dreams and ambitions, it’s as if he’s a already a lost cause and he has no one to truly support him. Even Hürrem wanted to send him to Manisa not because she deemed him as worthy, but to use him as a shield in order to deceive her enemies and protect the actual favorite. That may seem like a clever plan, but in actuality, it failed spectacularly - not only did her enemies not get confused for a second and didn’t attack Selim at all, but she forgot to tell Bayezid why she did it and made Selim confused to the point of demotivation, because none of his brothers were truly happy with this decision and they were all opposing it, directly and indirectly. And while he may not show it that much, because of his more composed and pragmatic nature, Selim is sensitive to the opinions of his brothers and the people around him and their prevailing disapproval may be a part of why he became so different than the rest. It’s like no one wanted to get to know him.

Nurbanu’s entrance in Selim’s life is very cathartic in this aspect, for she actually worked with him and gave him the needed motivation and ambition to fight, awaking sides of him that were dormant for a long time. And yes, I do think that Selim’s pragmatism is something he always had, if the whole arrow incident in S03B where he sabotaged Bayezid’s arrow, which caused him to lose is any indication. 

{I don’t think that the quarrels Selim and Bayezid had when they were little are so much indicators of Selim’s personality as they are foreshadowing of their future conflict. Right, these quarrels are normal for siblings and Mehmet and Mihrimah also fought like that (heck, even little Mehmet and Mustafa had a fight once in S01 and that fight was used as the conflict of the remainder of that one episode), but they weren’t as frequent as the ones of Selim and Bayezid. I don’t know, it’s just the atmosphere of these scenes was different and hinted at something more. It could be because we know the historical events and we could see every tiniest bit of early sibling rivalry between them as build-up, but still, I always felt there just was something else. Like the whole arrow incident I mentioned, a presumably harmless little situation gains a whole other meaning later on. It sets up neatly Süleiman’s opinions of both of them (his reaction to apparent disobedience and the making of a scene by someone he doesn’t expect to, by which I mean Bayezid), Hürrem’s retroactive ignorance of a possible bigger enmity and the roots of the whole conflict. It’s not Selim deciding to sabotage Bayezid’s performance as a last resort, maybe knowing that he surely won’t do better than his brother (doing a pretty typical ,,prank’’ for a little, naughty kid) that is exemplary of his cunning later, it’s his validation and him getting away with it that eventually becomes it, just like how he ends up getting away with stuff in the next season. Selim definetly isn’t the instigator of all the fights, especially because Bayezid, thanks to his more impulsive nature, is much more likely to start a fight in the first place and contrasts to Selim’s overall better composure. Provokations among them were mutual and both were consistently throwing darts at each other, one after another. Their conflict is a very nuanced issue: while people try to play right and wrong, both sides were at fault one way or another. The conflict between them is mostly caused by insensitivity, favoritism and ignorance and the desperation of both to try to prove themselves to their parents and win their support, at the end of the day. Why did they always calm down in front of their mother? Not only because of their joint respect for her, but also because of these same attempts to earn her support. Even Bayezid, who obviously had to be sure of her support, wasn’t completely certain of it after Hurrem turned it on Selim for a while. Selim, on the other hand, obviously never felt her support, it’s like something was missing right from the start. Combine that with their completely opposing personalities and the whole system encouraging competition for the throne and there you have the inevitable ultimate conclusion. That’s why I also love the set-up, the pay-off and the aftermath of Bayezid’s execution. It may be historically inaccurate that Selim, not Süleiman, executed Bayezid, but when you think about it, it was the most logical thing that could’ve happened, ending their conflict with a heart-wrenching bow. I love the scene of the execution itself, too - the action, the dialogue, the direction, the character moments, the themes... I don’t know whether Selim loved Bayezid by that point, per say, after all they went through, but it was clear that he knew that he had to do it, that it couldn’t have ended any other way, but he was broken over it. He was aware that it was, ultimately, a sin, which would continue haunting him. He couldn’t catch a break afterwards, he couldn’t stop. All was solved, but at what cost?}

I love his dynamic with Nurbanu - they balanced each other off so well, their chemistry was amazing, such a power couple. Nurbanu’s biggest contribution is hiding some of his flaws and mobilizing him to fight. Her cold pragmatism ,,grounds’’ Selim’s softer side, she’s there to always remind him of the stakes of the game and to shut off the last ounces of his vulnerabilities after Hurrem died. He sure is influenced by her, but that doesn’t mean that he blindly takes her word for everything - he is always ready to call her out when necessary and assure her that there are lines she shouldn’t cross. Despite of her pleas, he kept having affairs with other women (that is honestly a trend with all the men of the show, but still..), he got mad at her after what happened to Huricihan and most notably, after he found out that she possibly stole his mother’s ring. A part of why their dynamic works so well is precisely this strenght of character and their awesome compatibility. 

I have heard affirmations that Selim doesn’t care about Mustafa, which... simply isn’t true? While they have the least scenes together and Selim is the one that considers him most as a rival and his most dangerous competitor for the throne (which would explain his startled reaction after Musti saved him from the janissary), it’s precisely Mustafa’s death that is the turning point of his character arc. He was upping his game slowly but surely and before then, but he didn’t do much in terms of attacks. Neither Selim, nor Nurbanu once considered attacking Mustafa, the supposed biggest danger to them, which I find respectable and admirable. The bomb with the death drops and then every hope about a fair game is abandoned. Selim gets the realization that being honorable won’t work. The only way to win is bend the system and play dirty. There’s no time for sitting around or looking nice. And even though Nurbanu realized this, too, as well as Selim, Nurbanu was always more inclined to act this way than him and now the righteousness of her methods were only getting confirmed. It was Selim that had to reach this end. Discovering that he is no longer allowed to show any kind of weakness. Every chance that appears on the horizon, he’ll take it. That brings him to his first true dirty plan - the trap he set through the fake Mustafa rebellion.

Speaking of which, the worst deed of Selim’s for me is connected to that rebellion. I know I may be very biased in this regard, since it affects my personal favorite character and isn’t as recalled as others, but I hated when, in Selim and Sokollu’s attempts to wash their hands from the pulled off stunt, Sokollu, his man, told SS that Mahidevran was giving money to the rebellion. Okay, it’s not said outright whether is this directly tied to Selim or it was something Sokollu himself came up with out of desperation or something (though it was hinted that both thought something through in a scene where both were saying that they should come clean out of this all somehow) and it’s not outrightly confirmed whether Mahidevran gave the money or not (I highly doubt she did it; not only because it would destroy her whole S04 arc and she would become, well... MCK Gulbahar, but also because after the messenger told her of her alleged blame in E129, her eyes widened in surprise.), but all it does is be the only explicit case where Selim indeed looks bad, for his proposal to return Mahidevran in the castle doesn’t seem to stem from genuine guilt and remorse, but rather a late and empty attempt to placate his own conscience. Oh, not to mention (for the upteenth time, sorry in advance) how the scene back in E58 where Hurrem tells Mahidevran that her kids will be there taking care for her when she’s alone, which was treated as some big foreshadowing in the show, as well, by both the voice of the S02B narrative and the fandom alike, loses its value even more with that framing, because Selim and Sokollu themselves brought her to this state in the first place!!! Despite it making sense anyway, it’s still such a disservice to Selim as a person both inside and outside of the writing. 

One aspect of Selim’s pragmatism I find most interesting is his ability to turn his enemies into allies, knowing exactly how to amass them and get them on his side, be it through giving them more money and promising them the world. These alliances are all opportunistic in nature and may not be as loyal as those of Mustafa’s or of Mustafa’s people (like Atmaca) with Bayezid, but I think Selim knows this and wants to keep them steady enough for the common goal. As for what kind of a padisah he’ll be.... I believe that state matters would be the least of his concerns, since he was shown to not care so much about them, compared to his other brothers (but then again, the show itself doesn’t put the political capability of the princes at center stage - their personal virtues are always the determining factor of what makes a good padisah and what doesn’t, more of a psychological outlook, if you will.) and he perhaps won’t plan as many campaigns or conquer as many territories, maybe he won’t be that successful at all, but his cunning would bring him advantage in front of his people, he will be at least a bit careful of who he’s choosing and won’t simply lose it in front of everyone, compared to Bayezid’s impulsive temper.

[I love Bayezid as a character, but the shadier aspects of his personality sure tend to be overlooked. While his anger is directed mainly at Selim and Suleiman, it often reaches such extremes to the point it becomes destructive and affects everyone. He doesn’t deserve his execution at all and most of his actions stem from a very sympathetic place, given how SS never truly gave him a chance and he went on the inevitable path, because he, just like Selim, realized that honor won’t work in this war, but took the opposite approach from Mustafa, direct rebellion. And predictably, both approaches didn’t work since Bayezid, too, was taken advantage of. While he didn’t get justice, the lead-up to his execution is a character arc of his and there are many reasons and events linking it all together and showing us why it took place the way it did.]

Selim’s dynamic with Suleiman is proof of how you can be presumably favored, but you have to work to get there. The reasons Suleiman favored him are very telling and sad and we see that he also doesn’t favor him because of any and all capabilities he may have, but because of his self-imposed distorted view of loyalty Selim has to do a lot to preserve, actually. He constantly has to make it so it looks like he’s loyal and obedient and doesn’t work behind his back. He doesn’t get the fullest appreciation from his father, as well, and I certainly feel it impacts him, in a way.

I agree that Mihrimah could be unfair to Selim. They weren’t that close and she had this open preference to Bayezid. Most annoyingly is when, in their confrontation in E139, which highlights even more their parallel sins, Mihrimah doesn’t seem to face that sin of hers when Selim calls her out on it. She has a reason to deeply resent him after what he did to Bayezid, but was offended when he reminded her of the crime she also committed. More solidarity on that front would be a bit better, at least a hint of like recognizing like even for a moment. (but maybe then her scene with Mahidevran later wouldn’t be as impactful? Huh.)

And lastly, about his drinking - Nurbanu tried to restrict him, but it’s true that such habits aren’t easy to give up on, especially knowing how his drinking is a coping mechanism as much as it is something he enjoys. He knows he shouldn’t do it, he’s told he shouldn’t do it, but he can’t help it. He doesn’t drink when he’s planning or scheming, but he keeps on doing it more and more with every problematic action of his. It’s an attempt to supress his otherwise strong conscience to the max, seeing how after his brother’s execution he apparently always took a drink when he was alone at night, fighting an inner conflict with himself. I don’t think there was a way he could stop doing it permanently in the show. It was a part of who he was, unfortunately or not. 

[brotherhoodoftheblade]

*low whistle* Can't say I disagree either. 😬

It hit a lot of nails on the head of things I dislike about OL - why I can low-key like some things and characters, but only in a compartmentalized sense. I can never truly love it as a whole, and the later books in the series didn't especially improve on it.

Tbh, I liked OL a hell of a lot more before I'd read the books, and that's something I can really only attribute to DG.

And they certainly called it about how annoying it is that literally everyone is in love with Jamie, with his creator being the most madly in love of all. 🙄 It honestly probably did more to put me off him over time than anything else, because it's just so f*cking heavy-handed (and I'm a contrarian by nature lol) (also every time it's listed just how multi-talented he is, it makes him sound like a Gary Stu smh). It's like the adult version of YA novels that can't stop going on and on about how hot and utterly gorgeous and brilliant the male love interest is - regardless of whether they regularly act like a douchebag. 💀

I mean, please. Some of us actually think with something other than our libido. 😐

(Sorry not sorry. Surely by now you guys know I just say what I think, right? *one-shouldered shrug*)

(article below)

Outlander (Book Review)

Why’d I hate it so much?

If I had to explain why I hate Outlander in a single word, it would be “Jamie.” If I were given three words, I’d go with “Jamie,” “sexist,” and “homophobic.”

Trigger warnings for this review/book: rape, homophobia, ableism, misogyny, sadism, violence, torture, spouse abuse, incest, and pedophilia.

But everyone loves Jamie! What’s wrong with him?

Everything.

I did not expect to hate Jamie. As far as I can tell, everyone loves him. People who read the book love him. People who watch the show love him. Every character in the book loves him. He’s seemingly a universal fan favorite. He’s also a rapist, a hypocrite, a masochist, a sadist, an abuser, a misogynist, a homophobe, and a sex addict. Basically a dream man, right?

I can already hear what Outlander fans are thinking: Jamie is a product of his time, and people were trash back then. They saw their wives as property. They beat their children. They didn’t see gay people or women as equal to straight men. They didn’t know about consent. Well, guess what? I don’t care.

Outlander is a romance novel about a woman who travels back in time. Romance novels are meant to appeal to their readers. Gabaldon meant for the people who read Outlander in the 1990s to be attracted to Jamie. The show is still airing, so modern women are also supposed to like him. Claire isn’t from Jamie’s time, either. No one from Jamie’s time is going to experience him or Outlander. Jamie exists for modern women’s consumption, and he is an insult to modern women.

I refuse to believe that any modern, self-respecting women could go back in time and fall in love. I have no problem with Laoghaire being in love with Jamie. She doesn’t know any better. She has no concept of a world in which women are more than property to their husbands, or of men who don’t see beating as an acceptable method of childrearing. But Claire does. Claire is supposed to be spunky, smart, and self-sufficient. She knows enough to be aware that it’s not appropriate for a husband to beat his wife for misbehaving, but she is entirely too quick to forgive and forget.

Everyone who dislikes Jamie or Outlander talks about the spanking scene, but it’s impossible not to mention it at least in passing. Claire, at Jamie’s hand, is “beaten within an inch of [her] life” and while she does eventually get him to promise not to do it again, it clearly never gets through his thick skull that it was disgusting and inappropriate, because on later occasions he laughs about it. He takes one of the most humiliating, painful moments of Claire’s life and turns it into pillow talk. He might have agreed not to do it again, but that doesn’t change the fact that he thinks of the incident as a funny and sexy anecdote. He got sexual pleasure out of hurting his wife, and expects Claire to be grateful that he didn’t rape her afterward. Claire completely forgives him for this, and the reader is supposed to continue viewing him as a dashing, lovable hero.

For the record, he does rape her at other times, notably out in the open while twenty men sleep nearby; Claire specifically tells him no, he ignores her, and it is presented as okay because Claire responds physically. Jamie refers to Claire as his property, as the spoils of war, etc. on many occasions and Claire lets him… because he’s handsome, I guess. To Claire and Jamie, love and lust are one in the same. Because Jamie wants to have sex with Claire, he loves her. More to the point, because Jamie wants to have sex with Claire, he does. A lot. If Claire objects, he either reminds her that she belongs to him or promises to be quick. He’s lucky that he’s attractive enough that she wants him back, because if he were ugly Claire might see that he is as despicable as anyone else in the novel.

Actually, literally every man in Castle Leoch is a rapist. While Claire stays there, it is stated baldly and repeatedly that at certain times women have to hide because if any man sees a woman while drunk he’ll rape her and think nothing of it. Jamie protects Claire from this, supposedly, by sleeping outside her door and walking her places, but it’s hard to see him as any kind of anti-rape hero when he clearly sees consent as optional and has no qualms whatsoever in using his considerable strength to get whatever he wants. Sometimes he says lovely things like this:

JAMIE: “I didna ask your preferences in the matter, Sassenach […] You are my wife, as I’ve told you often enough. If ye didna wish to wed me, still ye chose to. And if ye didna happen to notice at the time, your part of the proceedings included the word ‘obey.’ You’re my wife, and if I want ye, woman, then I’ll have you, and be damned to ye!” (431).

And if Claire did get raped—and she gets very close many times because this is a historical fantasy so there’s gotta be the threat of rape every ten pages or so—you can bet your life savings that Jamie would be an asshole about it.

One major annoyance about Outlander is that literally everyone is in love with Jamie and likes to reminisce about his past and how manly and damaged and tortured he is (he’s the worst offender; how many creepily cheery stories does he tell about how much he loved that his dad regularly lashed him?). One of the most oft-repeated stories is about the time Black Jack Randall whipped him nearly to death and only stopped because Jamie’s sister stepped in; we’re told that Randall raped (and impregnated) Jenny, and that Jamie is so disgusted by it that he refuses to return home or write to Jenny.

When Jamie and Jenny finally do reunite, Jaime gives the most disgusting masterclass in slut-shaming and victim-blaming that I have ever had the misfortune to read. A quick reminder: Jenny went with Randall because if she hadn’t, Randall would have continued torturing Jamie, and might have killed him. Jenny saved Jamie by allowing herself to be hurt and violated by a dangerous sadist.

What’s that, Jamie? Oh. My bad. Apparently she disobeyed Jamie and chose to dishonor herself.

JAMIE: “Tell me why ye disobeyed my orders and chose to dishonor yourself and your family instead.” (578)

Apparently Jenny’s husband should be thanked for marrying a “soiled” woman (585). Apparently the pregnant Jenny should avoid going outside because doing so damages Jamie’s very fragile pride.

JAMIE: “You’re not content wi’ ruining your good name and my own, ye must go on with the scandal, and flaunt your shame to the whole neighborhood! […] you’re going about swelled out to here like a mad toad” (578).

And in case you’re wondering, yes, he also calls Jenny a bitch. He is only able to forgive Jenny when he finds out that Randall didn’t actually rape her and that her children were fathered by her husband. Because women who are raped are stupid sluts who should be shunned!

Claire, of course, saves all her sympathy for Jamie. When Jamie first tells her this story, she cares only about him. She never says anything like, “Hey, asshole, people don’t like to be raped, and she did it to save your life, so maybe you shouldn’t treat her like a pariah.”

Of course, at the end of the book Jamie does the same thing Jenny did. When Claire is in danger from Randall, Jamie offers to be raped so that she can go clear. The hypocrisy of this does not register on Jamie.

This is probably because Diana Gabaldon is so madly in love with her own creation that she doesn’t realize that Jamie isn’t as hot and cute and heroic as she thinks he is. At one point Jamie literally tells Claire that she has a sheep’s face, but that she makes up for it with her nice butt. Claire takes it as a declaration of love.

It’s just… Jamie is so gross, and I could let some of it slide, except that everyone is so obsessed with him. Every chapter is full of characters talking about how great he is. Even Jenny, Jaime’s sister, talks about him in a weirdly erotic way. His flaws are all ignored in favor for repeated adulation. He’s so strong! His hair is so beautiful! He’s so good at sex! And then to distract us from the fact that Jamie is as violent and possessive as anyone else in the book, we’re told repeatedly about all his beatings. Jamie spends half the book being a dashing hero and the other half being whumped. Gabaldon describes Jamie’s many, many, many beatings in a disturbingly romanticized way. There’s a lot of sex in Outlander, but the torture scenes are even more lovingly written. There is so much torture porn. It’s ridiculous. And gross.

Authors should call their characters out for their behavior, and while Gabaldon occasionally pretends to chastise Jamie through Claire, he is always let off the hook too quickly and too completely. He’s not an angel, but you wouldn’t know it from how Claire and the other characters act towards him.

That’s enough about Jamie. There’s more to say about how trash he is, like all the inappropriate times he has sex or his offhandedly sexist remarks or how he tries to act like he’s just a poor nobody when actually he’s like the most important Scot of all time or something, but I’ve had it with him. Romantic heroes are often problematic, but Jamie Fraser takes the cake. I hate him. I hate him so much. The only way I was able to make it through the book was by choosing to laugh at how awful Jamie is instead of letting him make me mad.

Now let’s talk about that rampant homophobia

My other major complaint about Outlander is how homophobic it is. Again, I can hear fans saying things like Audra, people were homophobic back then. Again, I don’t care. It’s gross and I don’t want to read it. And it’s not just the characters who are homophobic. The book itself is. There’s a difference between books that deal with homophobia and books that are homophobic. Outlander is definitely in the second category.

Pretty much every single man in this novel is a domineering rapist. Frank, Claire’s first husband, is pretty much the only exception… probably because he’s from the 1900s not the 1700s (again: I don’t believe any woman could travel back in time and fall in love). This is just… understood. If a woman comes across an unexpected man, he’ll probably try to rape her. For most of the characters, this is seen as a little drunken quirk. Hide out for a few hours and come back out when they’re sober! Jamie, as we’ve already discussed, derives sexual pleasure from beating his wife. The unambiguously evil Black Jack Randall is also a sexual sadist. He’s also a rapist. He is absolutely abhorrent, yes. So is everyone else. But Black Jack is the only one who is portrayed as irredeemably despicable. What’s the difference?

Yep. Black Jack Randall is gay.

It’s fine to have gay antagonists. LGBTQ+ people are people, and some people are evil. There are good LGBTQ+ people and bad ones, just like there are both good and bad straight ones. What’s not fine is to make sexuality a shocking reveal or to use it as a shorthand to mean even more evil!

Downton Abbey film spotlights 'horrific' treatment of gay men in …In case you need a quick explanation about how this sort of thing works. Thomas, in Downton Abbey, is gay and an antagonist. He’s an antagonist because he likes making trouble and hates the people he works with. If he were straight, he’d be pretty much the same character. You could argue that he’s so unpleasant because of the way society tramples on him as a gay man. There’s text to support that, but narratively it’s clear that the societal homophobia is the issue, not Thomas’ gayness. Thomas is an asshole who is coincidentally also gay. Being gay and being an asshole are not synonymous and, in fact, Thomas is more sympathetic when his sexuality is being addressed than at any other point, and it actually only rarely comes up because it’s not usually relevant.

Black Jack Randall, however, is a villain because he’s gay. Once Gabaldon shockingly reveals Randall’s sexuality, he rarely appears again where it is not mentioned. When Jamie first tells Claire about Randall’s preferences, Claire says this:

“I was seeing Jack Randall again, in a new and revolting light.” (413)

Claire already knew that Randall regularly tortured people and raped women. He tried to rape her when they first met. Jamie has already told Claire about the way Randall tortured him before attempting to rape Jenny. The only new revelation is that Randall also rapes men. He was already maximally despicable. Now he’s just maximally despicable and gay, but that’s enough to cast him in a new, “revolting” light.

The rest of the book makes sure to remind the reader that Black Jack is an evil deviant. He can’t do a single evil thing without Gabaldon being like, now remember, reader. This murderous rapist is also very GAY. Don’t forget that. She has to keep reminding us because being gay and being British are the only things that distinguish Black Jack from the other characters. When your heroes are murderers, sexists, sadists, and rapists you have to make your villains gay, I guess, or the reader wouldn’t know they’re the villains.

Black Jack Randall isn’t the only evil homosexual, either. The Duke of Sandringham also preys on little boys. Because for Diana Gabaldon it’s not bad enough to demonize homosexuality. She also had to conflate it with pedophilia and incest.

How do people like this book? Seriously? It’s so popular. Does everyone who reads it just pretend that this intense level of homophobia is okay? Do you ignore it? Do you not notice it? There’s a very long, very damaging history of homosexuality being tied to deviancy and villainy in fiction. This is textbook homophobia at its worst and it’s not okay.

Don’t come at me with Diana Gabaldon said Black Jack isn’t gay! She said he’s just an equal opportunity sadist. Well, that’s bullshit. She goes out of her way to make it clear that Randall is physically incapable of raping women because he’s not attracted to them (he struggles physically before Jenny starts laughing, and has the same issue with Claire), and she makes a point of having him say this at the climax of the novel:

BLACK JACK RANDALL: “I may have what are called ‘unnatural tastes’ myself, as I imagine you know by this time. But give me credit for some aesthetic principles.” (715)

Because heaven forbid he do anything evil without first reminding us that he’s gay. Then of course he rapes Jamie, which is portrayed as considerably more disgusting and violent and evil than any of the other rape. Which it isn’t. Rape is rape, regardless of who does it and to whom it’s done. Black Jack being attracted to men is not unnatural. Rape is an unnatural taste, but Outlander bends over backwards to try to convince the reader that gay men are evil predators and that rape is sometimes okay if the rapist is straight, handsome, and physically good at sex.

If you’re writing about a time period that was deeply –phobic or–ist towards a group of marginalized people, leaning into that bigotry is the worst way to do it. From best to worst, here are a few other ways to deal with it.

Write fully realized minority characters, and let their stories directly engage with the bigotry they face without being entirely defined by it. Ignore the bigotry; give your characters anachronistically progressive/accepting values.

Ignore the issue; if the only way you can include a gay character is by playing into the most damaging queer stereotypes, just don’t do it. It’s better to have no diversity than diversity that is going to reinforce dangerous biases that might result in hurting actual, living people. Black Jack Randall is clearly intended to be gay, and Outlander is blatantly and exuberantly homophobic. I’ve heard that there is a non-evil gay character later in the series to balance the scale (but apparently he’s also in love with Jamie because of course he is) and that’s fine. Good, I guess. Maybe Diana Gabaldon realized how horribly she screwed up with Outlander and tried to fix it later down the road. I don’t know now and I will never know because you’d have to pay me to keep going with these books. I absolutely hope that things are better from book two on, but I wish Gabaldon would acknowledge that Outlander is homophobic and then say that she later course corrected instead of acting like there’s nothing wrong in the first place.

So that’s a lot. Is there anything else bad about Outlander?

Yeah, but this is already a really long, really ranty post, so we’ll do the rest of this quickly. In addition to being sexist and homophobic, it’s also ablest. Neither Colum nor Ian can be described without unnecessary attention being drawn to their disabilities, and Jamie specifically describes Ian as being less than he was before he lost his leg.

Then there’s the actual plot of the novel. Claire decides to just… abandon her old life and forget about her husband bizarrely fast. Not to mention how joyously Claire goes into the whole having-sex-with-Jamie-while-married-to-Frank thing; the first time, sure. She was basically forced into it. After that… she didn’t think twice even though she supposedly loved Frank and still felt very much married to him.

I already talked about how Gabaldon is so in love with Jamie that everyone forgives him everything. She does the same with Claire, albeit in a different way. At the end of the book, Claire meets a priest and confesses her bigamy and murder and the priest is just like, God says it’s cool! And that’s just disingenuous. Claire was basically forced to sleep with Jamie the first time, and several of their other encounters were rape, but there are definitely lots of scenes where she happily and enthusiastically goes into the sex even though she still considers herself married to Frank and has every intention of finding a way back to him. It’s fine if Claire herself believes that she is in the right, but I can’t imagine any priest would.

What’s the verdict?

It’s just… eurgh. Outlander is just one gross thing after another. I’m skeptical of romance as a genre because of books like Outlander that romanticize abusive partners and male dominance. Outlander may be historical fiction, but it is being widely read and enjoyed by modern readers which worries me because of its dangerously backwards treatment of women and LGBTQ+ people. It has a few enjoyable moments, particularly in the first half, but by the time I hit the halfway point the rampant sexism and homophobia were too heavy for me to ignore and I spent the rest of the time repeatedly asking myself can I hate Jamie any more than I do at this point? The answer, by the way, was yes. Every time I thought Jamie had maxed out on repulsiveness he managed to outdo himself.

Maybe Outlander the TV show is less sexist, less homophobic, and less obsessed with justifying Jamie’s every abusive thought. I hope it is.

~*~

https://funfandomblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/08/outlander-book-review/#more-6409

Wish I could disagree. But ...

[bondsmagii]

(cw: I'm about to get real crass about CSA because it makes me real mad and that's how I cope)

the cultural reaction to cuties is infuriating to me, especially how even defenders feel the need to criticise the hypersexualised camera shots for ""normalising sexualistion of children in film"". Like, this is a thing that is happening in real life, right now, folks! Real Life Kids commonly do dances like these, in clothes like these, in an attempt to copy adult women being framed in shots like that! That's basically a good fifth of Tik Tok! The shots being of kids instead of adults is intentionally horrific, because it's trying to highlight that that kind of societal gaze is what pressured them to do the dances and wear the clothes and everything else; to take a thing that we've all come to accept as normal (8 year olds online twerking to songs explicitly about sex) and make us see how horrific it is, so people might give a shit for once. (A real shit, not that Pizzagate-adjacent thing where people only bring it up in service of criticising something/someone they already didn't like, and never exploring why it's so prevalent to begin with). You know, the filmic opposite of normalisation?? It's incredibly disappointing that people's takeaway appears to be: "ew gross, look at how horny this camera is for literal children. Glad this absolutely isn't a thing that happens in real life that I will go straight back to ignoring while patting myself on the back for identifying this media as Problematic

And the idea that "a pedophile could get off to this" makes any sense as criticism! I guess pedophiles only get off to children in revealing clothing, huh? So all children need to do to avoid pedophiles is, uh... *checks notes* "dress less slutty". I *wish* I lived in a world where pedophiles were genuinely waiting on feature films to deliver them a few shots of children in revealing clothing, instead of trading real CP that has caused untold suffering. Sometimes it really feels like people are more invested in weaponising the idea of suffering children in rhetoric, rather than the welfare of real children. It's the same disconnect that makes it impossible to bring up things like early intervention programs for pedophiles without being called a pedophile yourself (a rich thing to call someone who was on the receiving end, and takes about a year off my lifespan every time).

Every time someone brings this movie up, I feel like I'm losing my marbles. Otherwise smart and insightful people seem completely willing to misread it in the most infuriating way possible. It's like it's the Asch conformity test, and I'm the rube in the last chair wondering whether I even watched the same movie as them. It's comforting to see at least one other person on this godforsaken planet comprehending that The Sexualised Children Shots Are Horrific On Purpose in this movie trying to push people out of complacency

honestly go off like I could not have said this better myself. this is exactly what's been pissing me off about the response to this movie and my post about it in general.

the cultural reaction to cuties is infuriating to me, especially how even defenders feel the need to criticise the hypersexualised camera shots for ""normalising sexualistion of children in film"". Like, this is a thing that is happening in real life, right now, folks! Real Life Kids commonly do dances like these, in clothes like these, in an attempt to copy adult women being framed in shots like that! That's basically a good fifth of Tik Tok!

this is what I cannot get my head around. like, people are freaking out over how this movie normalises the sexualisation of young children, but somehow miss the point that it's already been normalised. the movie would not be necessary if this hadn't already become a completely normal part of society. even walking around the shops in town I see children maybe 10 or 11 years old dressed like Instagram models, faces full of makeup, revealing clothing... it's honestly disturbing. these kids think that's acceptable, they think that's what they need to do in order to have worth, and it's terrifying. if I had my own children, I would be terrified for them. the movie is not the problem. why people can't direct this anger and outrage to websites like TikTok instead, I have no idea. probably because that would require actual work, and we all know these people are addicted to outrage and self-righteousness and absolutely allergic to any kind of effort to create real change.

It's incredibly disappointing that people's takeaway appears to be: "ew gross, look at how horny this camera is for literal children. Glad this absolutely isn't a thing that happens in real life that I will go straight back to ignoring while patting myself on the back for identifying this media as Problematic"

people get so offended when they're made to feel uncomfortable. I have no idea why. I'm trying to work out this thought process but it's simply beyond me. it baffles me that people can see something that's actually happening in the world, and instead of getting angry about the actual issue, they decide to attack the female director of the movie about said issue, who is writing from her own experience. like, how in god's name these people managed to miss the point so badly, I do not know. the manoeuvres they had to do to miss a point that big and obvious should make them all automatic gold medal winners in Olympic gymnastics.

(I do think that a lot of people yelling the loudest about Cuties have probably only seen the Netflix promotional poster and then devoured a bunch of Twitter threads highlighting the apparent problems and possibly a view video essays on YouTube showing the most dramatic and out of context shots of the girls, however.)

And the idea that "a pedophile could get off to this" makes any sense as criticism! I guess pedophiles only get off to children in revealing clothing, huh? So all children need to do to avoid pedophiles is, uh... *checks notes* "dress less slutty". I *wish* I lived in a world where pedophiles were genuinely waiting on feature films to deliver them a few shots of children in revealing clothing, instead of trading real CP that has caused untold suffering.

right? like. this point is so fucking useless. by this logic, we should ban everything with photos of children in it. if a paedophile is going to waste time going to see a full feature movie just to see some young girls twerking-- I mean, why would they in the first place? why would a paedophile do that when they can just sign on to TikTok and see thousands of hours of footage of young girls twerking? and if "revealing clothing" is all it takes, what's stopping this paedophile from going to the local pool and watching the kids in swimwear? what's stopping this paedophile from going and picking up a clothing catalogue and flipping to the pictures of little girls in dresses? the fact that people can compare the content of a feature-length film to actual CP fucking baffles me. like. it's actually insulting to compare things like that -- and by extension, any child on the street in a t-shirt or a dress or a skirt or a swimsuit -- to actual CP. like, who looks at a kid and thinks like that? if you want to stop paedophiles being creeps, you'd have to lock kids up in the house until they're 18 and ban all depictions of kids forever. paedophiles are gonna be creeps no matter what, and they're not going to bother with a full film when they can log onto TikTok and comment something creepy on footage of a real life child who might even message back and enter into communication with them. like, damn. why aren't more people getting mad and outraged about that?

Sometimes it really feels like people are more invested in weaponising the idea of suffering children in rhetoric, rather than the welfare of real children.

they are. "somebody please think of the children" is now the rallying cry of the right (all leading Democrats are secret paedophiles, the LGBT agenda is making Our Innocent Christian Children into perverts) and the left (problematic media is Harming Our Innocent Children, everything needs to be censored and squeaky clean so the Metaphorical Children don't stumble across it and think it's acceptable). it's the quickest way to get people outraged and it works like a charm. as soon as somebody starts rallying under the flag of protecting kids, it gives them a fast pass to power and influence. who wants to be seen to not care about kids? who wants to risk being called a paedophile or a child abuser? unfortunately their eagerness to declare everybody such has resulted in it losing its meaning. now when I see someone accused of paedophilia I no longer feel the usual revulsion but instead a tired suspicion followed by hours of research to determine if they are actually abusing children, or if they ship the wrong thing. to put the numbers into perspective, the one and only time I found out somebody was actually abusing minors, I was genuinely shocked because I had never found a true accusation before in oh, six years? which is unsurprising, seems I have been called a paedophile and told I shouldn't be around children because I like a villain from a YA series. as for real children, none of these people give a shit.

It's comforting to see at least one other person on this godforsaken planet comprehending that The Sexualised Children Shots Are Horrific On Purpose in this movie trying to push people out of complacency

that's exactly it right there -- it's horrific on purpose, but these people can't understand that. to them, literature and art and film is supposed to always make you feel good, and if it doesn't it's mean and abusive and you should have warned for it and also you're an asshole for making it in the first place. for people who only consume media to feel good, and only create it to feel progressive and wholesome, it's inconceivable why people would create something depressing or disturbing. because they're consuming media of only things they like, they assume everyone else is. ergo, if you make something nasty, it's because you're into something nasty. if you write about a murderous villain, it's because you want to be a murderous villain. if you direct a movie about children being sexually exploited, you must want to sexually exploit children.

these people cannot understand that art is supposed to teach and inform as well as comfort and coddle. some art is there to make you feel good, and other art is there to make you take notice of injustice and suffering and make you angry and upset enough to want to do something about it. these people do not understand that at all, and with this kind of logic they would try to ban Holocaust survivors from speaking at schools because it's too upsetting to think about, rather than paying attention to the message that such things get across. we cannot change society without empathy, and to experience empathy for something outside our own understanding and experience, we need to come into contact with people who have lived through it. we need to see it depicted. that's how we learn to feel for others. it puts a face to the suffering and makes it easier to stay motivated and stay mad.

but no. these people just want to be nice and fuzzy and safe. that's all that matters to them, and anyone who thinks they're wrong for doing it must be a paedophile or something. right. gotcha.

[bndz]

(jennie kim, twenty-three, cisfemale, she/her) * hey, i’m looking for the office of valencia lee. they’re the intern who’s known around the office as the paris hilton, if that helps? not to be a gossip, but i’ve heard that they’re outgoing but two-faced, is that true? i also heard that they’re the one who lost her virginity in the broom closet. anyways, here’s the coffee they ordered.

omg  hey  y’all  !  it’s  so  good  to  be  back  .  my  name’s  tay  ,  your  fave  powerpuff  girl  addict  !  this  is  my  baby  valencia  ,  the  most  annoying  little  spoiled  brat  ever  !  a  little  about  me  ?  i  thought  you  never  would’ve  asked  .  well  ,  i  am  currently  studying  to  become  a  teacher  ,  i  love  fashion  &  makeup  ,  a  textbook  gemini  &  pop  culture  connoisseur.  anyways  ,  i  have  some  points  about  valencia  below  .  i  am  so  excited  to  rp  with  y’all  omg  .  i  have  been counting  down  the  days  !

𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒔  !

NAME   :    valencia  lee  . GENDER   :   cisfemale  . PRONOUNS   :   she  /  her  /  hers  . AGE   :   twenty-three  (  23  )  . BIRTHDAY   :   18  april  . ZODIAC   :   aries  . HOMETOWN  :  las  vegas  ,  nevada  . CURRENT  RESIDENCE  : new york city  , new york  . ETHNICITY   :   korean  -  american  . SEXUAL ORIENTATION   :   bisexual  . OCCUPATION  :  intern  .  (  social  media department  )

𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌𝒈𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅  !

FAMILY   :    growing  up  in  las  vegas  to  an  erotic  fiction  author  (  anna  lee  )  &  a  chain  casino  owner  (  jiwon  lee  )  ,  valencia  was  highly  neglected  for  a  good  portion  of  her  life  .  up  until  like  eleven  years  old  ,  valencia  was  raised  by  a  rotation  of  nannies  .  her  parents  threw  whatever  she  wanted  at  her  to  make  up  for  lost  time  ,  but  attention  was  what  valencia  truly  wanted  .  although  valencia  didn’t  mind  being  spoiled  ,  in  the  back  of  her  mind  she  truly  wanted  time  with  her  parents  .  

being  that  her  parents  were  pretty  absent  ,  valencia  got  away  with  a lot  .  you  couldn’t  even  really  call  it  rebelling  because  her  parents  didn’t  really  care  what  she  did  as  long  as  she  didn’t  get  in  trouble  with  authority  .  she  would  do  things  on  purpose  to  get  reprimanded  because  she  just  wanted  her  parents  to  see  her  .  in  addition  ,  i  wouldn’t  really  say  she  is  close  with  her  parents  like  that  ,  but  it’s  not  really  a  negative  relationship  either.  she’s  almost  like  an  accessory  to  them  &  they  are  a  bank  account  to  her  .

also  ,  valencia  is  the  middle  child  ,  so  that  has  a  big  influence  on  her  relationship  with  her  parents.  middle  child  syndrome   ?  she  has  that  !  

SCHOOL   :  valencia  wasn’t  really  that  good  of  a  student  ,  honestly  .  she  barely  did  her  work  &  really  only  went  to  school  to  socialize  .  she  was  sent  to  a  private  catholic  school  ,  but  got  kicked  out  her  freshman  year  so  she  had  to  go  to  public  school  .  she  didn’t  really  care  though  because  school  was  school  .  

her  parents  tried  to  enforce  education  being  important  ,  but  knew  that  valencia  really  wasn’t  going  for  it  .  she  was  just  a  lazy  student  &  never  really  pushed  herself  when  it  came  to  her  academics  .  this  caused  her  to  skip  school  to  hang  out  with  her  friends  &  by  her  senior  year  she  was  flunking  to  the  max  .  she  knew  she  couldn’t  tell  her  parents  she  flopped  out  of  school  so  she  forged  her  diploma  &  faked  that  she  was  sick  af  on  her  graduation  day  to  make  it  seem  like  she  graduated  hs  when  in  reality  ,  she  did  not  .  

because  her  parents  didn’t  really  have  much  expectations  for  her  ,  they  wanted  her  to  at  least  get  into  a  bare  minimum  college  ,  so  she  forged  acceptance  letters  &  would  go  around  vegas  when  she  was  supposed  to  have  class  .  her  parents  caught  wind  of  it  after  three  years  &  were  legit  pissed  .  they  threatened  her  multiple  times  that  if  she  didn’t  get  her  act  together  they  were  going  to  cut  her  off  .  they  never  really  fell  through  with  it  ,  so  she’s  still  gallivanting  around  with  their  black  cards  . 

MASTER’S  :  getting  the  job  at  master’s  with  no  type  of  work  experience  was  like  a  fever  dream  .  the  only  reason  she  was  looking  into  the  company  was  because  her  parents  were  continuously  nagging  her  about  being  a  mooch.  she  was  ,  but  that  wasn’t  her  fault  !  at  twenty  -  two  ,  valencia  was  googling  places  that  had  open  internships  that  were  considered  easy  &  fell  on  master’s.  it  was  in  nyc  ,  which  she  loved  &  was  a  top  company  .  she  wouldn’t  even  deny  that  her  parents  helped  her  get  the  job  &  she  was  off  to  nyc.  she’s  been  an  intern  for  a  year  &  doesn’t  really  see  herself  moving  up  .  she’s  just  here  to  make  sure  she  doesn’t  go  broke  &  to  have  as  much  fun  as  possible  . 

𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒚  !

OUTGOING   :   val  loves  to  meet  new  people.  she  has  always  been  extroverted  ,  even  if  she  can  sometimes  rub  people  the  wrong  way  .

TWO-FACED   :   this  girl  is  fake  as  fuck  99  %  of  the  time  ,  y’all  .  she  will  smile  in  your  face  &  turn  around  &  stab  you  in  the  back  .  she  doesn’t  really  consider  loyalty  a  concept  that  she  is  competent  in  because  she  is  usually  friends  with  people  that  she  can  gain  something  from  .  she  will  openly  admit  that  she  doesn’t  care  for  people  &  then  act  like  she  said  nothing  of  the  sort  seconds  later  .  she  just  likes  to  stir  the  pot  &  talk  big  shit  lbr  .

BRATTY   :  because  she  was  spoiled  her  whole  life  ,  she  has  this  notion  that  things  should  be  handed  to  her  .  if  she  doesn’t  get  her  way  it  will  ruin  her  whole  mood  &  then  she  will proceed  to  try  &  ruin  everyone’s  mood  with  her  annoying  ass  behavior  .  beware  ,  she  will  complain  a  lot  !

LAZY  :  she  has  never  worked  a  day  in  her  life  &  it  shows  !  she  will  refuse  to  do  things  if  she  feels  as  though  it’s  an  inconvenience  to  her  .  she  will  sit  around  on  her  phone  &  ignore  her  duties  .  valencia  will  literally  do  things  on  her  own  time  just  to  get  a  rise  out  of  people  .  she’s  terrible  !

UNFILTERED  :  she  really  just  says  what  she  wants  because  she  went  unchecked  growing  up  .  she’s  just  a  little  mouthy  .  she’s  not  gonna insult  you  ruthlessly  ,  but  she  is  brutally  honest  &  doesn’t  think  before  she  speaks  .

**  also  ,  the  reason  why  her  label  is  the  paris  hilton  is  because  her  personality  is  loosely  based  off  of  paris  .  like  y2k  era  paris  that  was  terrible  to  lindsay  &  brit  &  was  like  lindsay  invited  herself  to  their  little  c*ke  binge  clubbing  nights  .  she’s  not  fake  dumb  like  paris  &  doesn’t  have  her  fake  voice  ,  but  more  -  so  her  little  bratty  ass  ,  unfiltered  mean  girl  vibes  that  was  saying  &  doing  reckless  shit  for  attention  &  to  get  under  people’s  skin  .  **

𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔  !

001  .  an  ex  -  relationship  .  was  she  using  them  for  the  attention  ?  probably  . 002  .  a  best  friend  .  she’s  fake  with  them  too  ,  but  y’know  .  this  girl  does  not  know  the  definition  of  loyalty  .   003  .  a  boss  .  they  probably  cannot  stand  her  ass  &  makes  her  do  the  most  knowing  she  hates  working  .  she’s  probably  in  the  social  media  department  ,  so  there’s  that  for  you  . anything  really  .  i  am  not  creative  when  it  comes  to  plots omg  .

𝒇𝒖𝒏  𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒔  !

001  .  she  is  left  -  handed  . 002  .  collects  juicy  couture  tracksuits  . 003  .  the  epitome  of  cherry  emoji  twt  when  it  comes  to  her  style  . 004  .  has  a  love  for  cooking  &  is  actually  good  at  it  . 005  .  is  highly  allergic  to  peanuts  . 

[lochnessies]

Hey same anon from that long post you made earlier. I wasn't trying to say that the church of Serios is an ACTUAL threat and evil or whatever. At worst the Church is kinda shady sometimes.

What I mean is the knights of Seiros are more able to actively do things without having to sneak around or needing stealth or whatever. Hypothetically, if Rhea wanted to attack the empire during the war, she could send the knights of Seiros to a place and wreckshop.

If TWISTD wanted to attack the empire, they'd have to be sneaky as fuck and would probably have trouble since Edelgard kind of knows what kind of sneaky shit they'd pull?

Like, if she worked with rhea (which she wouldn't since she paranoid af) to take out the snake men and then went "alright time to fuck up the church". She'd absolutely get her shot stomped. If she takes out the church and THEN goes "alright time for operation: fuck the molemen" then she has a chance (Since for whatever reason TWSITD can't just go and march to wherever to fuck shit up, or atleast not without having empire troops to back them up).

As for why she teams up with them in the first place... I don't fucking know. At first glance it SEEMS as though TWSITD are basically puppeting Edelgard, yet she's got way too much freedom (her insulting them, etc.) to be strictly some unwilling pawn. At the same time, Edelgard seems to absolutely loathe those fuckers and their actions.

Still at a point TWSITD clearly had more power then Edelgard with their replacement of some noble and the experiments and shit. Honestly it seems like TWSITD DID have power over Edelgard up until some point. It's just that at a point they failed at holding the reins and Edelgard was able to get more power independent of them and suddenly "master and minion" became "barely a partnership" so they went "okay whatever we've got other weapon and she might talk shit but so long as she does what we want and doesnt act against us we cool."

And then Edelgard takes control of the Adrestian Empire, ousts a lot of the nobles that were buds with the molemen, and suddenly they aren't really able to rein her in that much anymore. I dunno, their relationship is weird (much like everything involving them).

Hey same anon from that long post you made earlier. I wasn't trying to say that the church of Serios is an ACTUAL threat and evil or whatever. At worst the Church is kinda shady sometimes.

hey nonnie!! sorry if the first time i came off a bit bitchy. it’s hard to tell people intentions at times especially since my acc gets annoying anons who very clearly want to start a fight lol also sorry for long with i just ⭐️ s u c k ⭐️ at time management

What I mean is the knights of Seiros are more able to actively do things without having to sneak around or needing stealth or whatever. Hypothetically, if Rhea wanted to attack the empire during the war, she could send the knights of Seiros to a place and wreckshop.

honestly, i would agree with this assessment if we weren’t shown again and again that the church of seiros has a very small number of knights. like, it’s addressed more than once that at the slightest bit of trouble they’re stretched thin. then the fact that edel takes them out in ONE day

If TWISTD wanted to attack the empire, they'd have to be sneaky as fuck and would probably have trouble since Edelgard kind of knows what kind of sneaky shit they'd pull?

or they could just kill some other noble or hell, even ionius, hubert, or edel herself. like, there’s more than one way to attack an empire when you have the ability to shapeshift. it doesn’t have to be through war. just take over the throne and puppeteer mass destruction.

Like, if she worked with rhea (which she wouldn't since she paranoid af) to take out the snake men and then went "alright time to fuck up the church". She'd absolutely get her shot stomped. If she takes out the church and THEN goes "alright time for operation: fuck the molemen" then she has a chance (Since for whatever reason TWSITD can't just go and march to wherever to fuck shit up, or atleast not without having empire troops to back them up).

the problem is that why should she want to take out the church? what have they done to her? they’re not even in the empire at all so her reasoning is still faulty. taking out the church of seiros shouldn’t even be a factor in all this because taking out twsitd should be the number one priority.

and this isn’t even a case of ‘well she believes it so you can’t fault her’ and more of a case of ‘did edelgard learn anything about her own empire?’ because like… if she’s paranoid why the hell would the most logical choice be to join the people who have personally victimized her and not literally anybody else? i would trust the crack addict on the street before i trust these guys.

As for why she teams up with them in the first place... I don't fucking know. At first glance it SEEMS as though TWSITD are basically puppeting Edelgard, yet she's got way too much freedom (her insulting them, etc.) to be strictly some unwilling pawn. At the same time, Edelgard seems to absolutely loathe those fuckers and their actions.

hubert says she teams up with them bc he said too. but as to why he came up with such an idea? idk guess he was dropped on his head one too many times as a child.

Still at a point TWSITD clearly had more power then Edelgard with their replacement of some noble and the experiments and shit. Honestly it seems like TWSITD DID have power over Edelgard up until some point. It's just that at a point they failed at holding the reins and Edelgard was able to get more power independent of them and suddenly "master and minion" became "barely a partnership" so they went "okay whatever we've got other weapon and she might talk shit but so long as she does what we want and doesnt act against us we cool."

And then Edelgard takes control of the Adrestian Empire, ousts a lot of the nobles that were buds with the molemen, and suddenly they aren't really able to rein her in that much anymore. I dunno, their relationship is weird (much like everything involving them).

indeed it is all weird as hell. but in the end, there’s still no logical reason as to why edelgard allies herself with them. literally none. she doesn’t even have to ally with the church. if she’s distrustful of them for whatever reason then go to the kingdom. dimitri clearly has a hatred of the ones who killed his family. just become buddies with him again and start to plan what they want to do when they’re adults and how they want to kill twsitd. even if she doesn’t remember her relationship with him she should know from personal experiences how one might want revenge for their family.

[ryuichirou]

Hi, Ryu❤️ Hope u’r doing well❤️

Since u’r talking about ships lately, I’m really curious to hear your opinion about Aru//Ani, its execution, development and progression throughout the whole plot👀, if it’s not a problem and especially if u have the time to. Its shippers claim Isym has been doing a great build up since FT arc (???) and that, despite the lack of development onscreen, the dynamic makes sense (???) cause they “complete” each other and they learnt how to “love and respect” each other throughout the past 4 years (???!!!).

And... I don’t know, Ryu: I really tried to consider their pov, even reread the A/A interactions and look at the dynamic with shipping goggles on, but I really failed to see and understand what they claim. Actually, I keep seeing this dynamic as insulting not just for Armin and Annie’s characters in first place, but also for Eren, Mikasa, Hitch and Berthold. Moreover, it seems nothing but an addiction made out for fanservice, cause it serves absolutely nothing to the plot: if u cut their interactions post 131ch, the story wouldn’t change in the least. Also, their interactions weren’t even that romantic and weren’t focused at all about their supposed “crush” for each other. I personally believe Armin is using Annie as coping mechanism and/or just a mean to substitute Eren; whereas Annie is substituting Armin with her father, cause she feels adrift and desperate, and seeks for someone who cherishes her and appreciates her for the person she is no matter the harsh things she did in the past (I’m crying for Hitch in the mid time....). Other than that, I’m believing also in Berthold’s influence on Armin, cause it’s the only explanation for the sudden interest of boy towards girl, that happen to begin exactly after he ate Berthold: it can’t be just a coincidence imo.

So yeah, at the end of the day, I’m pretty sad cause I used to love both the characters and now I’m much conflicted atm, cause I see nothing but a huge derailment for both and a waste for Annie’s one, who’s developing literally over a love interest... And it’s a very huge pity to me.

Sorry for the big ask, lol... I have this weight on my chest and I confess it’s actually ruining my love for SnK: I feel like everything after 131ch started sucking pretty hard... Plus, the fandom became more toxic than ever😔😔😔

I was waiting for someone to ask me about them eventually, and honestly... Anon, you're such a big mood lol

You’ve guessed correctly: I don’t like AruAni. Not because we personally don’t ship it, but because it doesn’t make sense and (for now) it’s unclear what it the purpose of this storyline and if there’s even going to be a purpose. I don’t recommend anyone shipping them reading my reply.

Basically, Anon, you’ve described everything perfectly, so I’m just going to agree with all your points. I also don’t see a reason for Armin to have this type of love for Annie. I see a coping mechanism, I see something to escape to from the Eren problem, I can even see a self-punishment of sorts, but I don’t see that sweet crush we’re led to believe is there. See, Armin didn’t even know Annie that well. They talked like twice, and then the Female Titan thing happened, and then… he was talking to her for years, but he still never learnt anything about her. How can he love her if he doesn’t even know who the fuck Annie is? And yeah, it’s convenient Bertold timing, I wonder if it’s going to come up later.

We feel like it’s unfair to other characters. It’s also extremely unfair to Hitch that’s also been here for Annie for all those years but didn’t get the special treatment for some reason. Like... their reasoning would be pretty much the same, they could’ve made Hitch her love interest for all the same reasons.

It’s unfair to Annie herself, because, based on what we know about her, she’s drawn to stubborn idiots going against the flow. Because she herself could never do that. This is the point of her character: she could never stand against what people asked her to do, even when she knew it was useless or wrong. This is why Eren intrigues her, this is why Marlo intrigues her.

Of course I’m biased here, and don’t get me wrong: I don’t see EreAnnie becoming a canon thing either lol and I talked about how I don’t care about ships being canon in general a bunch of times already. I’m saying this as an example of a dynamic that actually... works for her type of character. But all the development Annie’s got was kickstarted by Eren being interested in her fighting style and being the first person who legitimately interested her on this island (and who was interested in her too to some extent, at least interested in something she was proud of and deeply loved). She also deeply appreciated it, they had funny dialogues together, and he was the first and only person she had flirted with, which is a huge step for a character as shy, distant and serious as Annie. Seeing her now blushing for Armin looks like a joke when you keep these things in mind. You can listen to his stories all you want, but it’s strictly one-sided. And, like I said, Hitch can also have the same chances with this type of logic. Their pie-eating scene has more chemistry than all AruAni moments.

The “good person/bad person” dialogue with Armin doesn’t feel like a development to me because they were just mirroring each other’s thoughts, so it’s like talking to yourself…

Ok, that was a little bit off topic lol. But yeah, this is why for now we think that either there will be a twist of sorts (i’ll take killing Armin as a twist) or the editor just made Isayama push this narrative, since Isayama doesn’t strike me as a type who likes romance that much or ships his own characters, plus he used romance for proving the cruel world motif so many times already. Or this is just exactly what it is, a last minute het romance, and we’ll end up sitting there like bitter losers being all upset, Anon haha

The fandom’s always going toxic and pretty feral as soon as het couples pop up, and in general huge fanbases mean nothing good unless you want that sweet clout to make money or get attention, so the only thing I can advice you is to distance yourself from them so that it won’t ruin your SnK experience even more. I don’t know you or your feelings, but I think you’re just upset about AruAni thing, this is why the manga sucks to you right now (well, you basically said it yourself, if I got you correctly). And that’s fine and we’re annoyed by this thing a lot too, so we can definitely understand this sentiment. Personally, we pretend like this bs romance never happened so it won’t ruin our experience, and we’ll see what to think about it when SnK is over. Like, what if it’s just a plot device and we get ourselves worried about nothing? I wanna believe that... :”)

And can I just… use this chance to say how frustrated I am that the majority of Annie content there is is either AruAni or BerAni (or the trio)? It’s like she isn’t important when she’s not in the context of those relationships… It upsets me a lot.

Let me just say this… Reiner had more development with Annie than Armin and Bertolt combined. There, I said it. And Reiner’s fucking gay.

Overall, we’ll see how everything plays out, and then you can come again to us and we’ll bitch together lol

[corancoranthemagicalman]

C’s (1/?) Destiel Rec List:

That gets less and less coherent as it goes.

So here is a rec list by order in which I read them and not by preference. They’re like, All Destiel, because that’s how Post-November C rolls:

First on the list is The Courtship of Combat by bendingsignpost 18k

I KNOW it’s not Thee fic by bendingsignpost that everyone is talking about. I know. BUT, I dearly enjoyed it. It’s the first in a series and it’s A/B/O. (I know. I know. Don’t @ me. Or do.) It’s pre-relationship and the characters are definitely themed toward early-Destiel if you catch my drift. Omega!Dean’s hand is being fought over. This wouldn’t matter to Castiel except he totally told Michael that the reason he wouldn’t marry anyone is because he’s head over heels for the Winchester Omega that he doesn’t even have a real recollection of ever meeting. It’s like the perfect balance of a meet-cute and meet-ugly. I just LOVE bendingsignpost’s Castiel voice. It’s such a great characterization.

I’M GONNA SCREAM THE SECOND ON THE LIST IS ANOTHER A/B/O?!? I swear I don’t read that much A/B/O, but this is another exception because it’s Biological Imperatives (Or Not) by tiamatv  29k

Tiamatv is one of my favorite writers. If you’re unfamiliar with their work, I’m gonna rec more of it to you. No worries. THIS lovely piece of work is a Beta/Beta narrative that focuses on how hilarious A/B/O tropes are from an outsider perspective, but doesn’t do it in a way that feels insulting to the classical tropes. It’s just people living their lives where these situations happen not often but enough that they know how to deal with it. Dean and Cas have several first dates trying to figure out what’s happening between the two of them. Castiel is thee love of my life in this piece. And Dean’s headspace makes for a witty narrative.

If you know me at all, you know this next one HAD to be a regency and it’s Of Lords and Letters by MalMuses 14k

Dean is the master of the Winchester estate after his father passes. Unfortunately for the estate (but much to Dean’s pleasure), he can’t run it personally because he’s at war. Not that he likes war all that much, but it’s what he knows. War he knows. Sam is a conniving but well-meaning little brother and puts him in contact with Mister Castiel Shurley. (I KNOW. I KNOW. I allow Castiel Shurley in recent fics only if Chuck is cast as an asshole, and he is :)) But seriously, it’s SO Regency. There’s letters, pining, propriety, and men in period suits. What more could you ask for?

Y’all probably gonna immediately peg who I am as a person when I say Always Together, Eternally Apart by EmiliaOagi 27k is probably one of my top ten Destiel fics.

Here’s the thing—Ladyhawke is probably my second favorite movie in the entire world beat only by The Princess Bride. (Seriously, if y’all wanna bribe me with anything, it will always be that.) NOT ONLY does EmiliaOagi beautifully incorporate the source material, but once more Dean Winchester is SO Dean Winchester it hurts. This piece is from Sam’s perspective, and his running inner monologue is both insightful and entertaining. If you’re unfamiliar with the plot of Ladyhawke, I refuse to spoil it for you. Some things must be experienced, and this is one of them. Either by reading this lovely work or by viewing the original film, you’ll understand the legend that so captivates me.

OH ANOTHER DELICIOUS ONE and it’s like in that vein of Retired Hunters But Not Yet Together Destiel is Welcome to Pine Shores! by andimeantittosting (Saylee) 20k

It’s always fun reading Dean character studies, and this is definitely one of them. So the long and short of it is PINING FOR DAYS (this was written for Pinefest) and Dean trying to set up Cas with other people because he thinks Cas might want more. Oh, and did I mention they’ve been running this motel for like thirteen years? And they share a bed? *Tropes Intensify*

There is also Dean Winchester and the Patron Saint of Blind Dates by goldenraeofsun 18k which I think some of y’all are familiar with.

Sort of what it says on the tin, to be honest, folks. Dean’s friends set him up with some blind dates and the bartender—Castiel—grips his Purple Nurple tight and raises him from perdition. (And no, it’s not a euphemism.) The dates are sort of outrageously in character and interestingly enough this is a Sam/Ruby fic too! I sort of liked how it played out in this piece. If you’re worried about the Sam/Ruby dynamic, fear not! They were both former addicts and have since been clean for (a year or two? I don’t recall the time frame.) Dean has a love/hate sort of relationship with an emphasis on hate with Ruby since she’s the one who got Sam into drugs (allegory for the demon blood) but she’s also the one to try to go clean first. I just thought that was an interesting take, and one I would’ve linked to have seen the show pursue to be honest, but Supernatural has to keep the hot ladies dead or villains or both haha ;)) I digress. It’s a smaller read but the subject matter is pretty heavy. From former religious cults to the former addicts, please keep in mind if mentions of these things make you uncomfortable. It’s definitely the one whose subject matter stuck out the most to me. So apologize if I’ve missed mentioning anything specific for y’all in the previous recs or this one.

WAIT THIS NAME LOOKS FAMILIAR!??! IT’S andimeantittosting (Saylee) BACK AT IT AGAIN BUT THIS TIME WITH The Winchester Affair 34k !!

SAYLEE YOU HAD TO MAKE IT ONTO THIS LIST TWICE. Another Regency, except this time Castiel is long time friends (with benefits *eyebrow wiggles*) with Dean. He’s in love with him, obviously, so this means that an asshole named Zachariah that we all know and loathe comes around planning to frame his poor sister (Hael) with stealing Mary Winchester’s brooch if Castiel doesn’t find some damning evidence on the Winchesters for him. DRAMA AHOY!!! This is a very harlequin/regency novel. It’s actually based off of a novel called Ware the Marquess as is the wont of the Destiel Harlequin Challenge. Very good challenge to check out; very excellent fic to read. And the author so nice we listed them twice. ;) SIDE NOTE: This is totally one of those Regency ones where It Simply Isn’t Done, if you know what I mean. Like, no one is outright slurring or something that I can recall (and it isn’t tagged so I doubt there is), but it Isn’t Done, But They Love Each Other Very Much.

So you guys know Scoobynatural is my comfort episode, right? Well, one of my favorite things that I’ve delightfully discovered is the trope of building off of Cas’ one-liner about being effin’ married, so have The Nikkah by Maxine (WinchesterPooja) 28k!

Reads like a Case-fic as there’s an entire sub-plot happening with Sam. So this story happens well within the canon despite being canon-divergent. This one does end happy!! There’s a view episode like fics I might rec that end in canon-fashion with Dean repression and I love the pining and all but sometimes I need sweet fandom closure. Long and short of it: Djinn culture? Djinn queen? Fake-relationships? Sam dealing with nightmares? This baby can fit SO MUCH ACTION into a fic.

Okay, so you know the fic with the Bee Movie allegory? (It’ll come up on this reclist.) This has the same vibe, except for the relationship is out of order and Dean is Diagnosed with If I Do It This Way It’s Okay. Yeah, it’s Command Me to Be Well by prosopopeya 28k

Human Cas, back from the dead, post-finale, and Dean is trying to figure out how to get his happy ending. I’ve seen this one make the rounds on fic rec’ing so I think it’s a bit familiar, but I enjoyed it. Even though—as my bookmark says—I usually don’t go in for hurt/comforts with heavy on the hurt because my poor heart can’t take it. This is one of my few exceptions. This one has a healthy dose of Castiel standing up for himself with the bittersweet tang of him literally willing to do so much for Dean. But it’s a Dean perspective, so it really deals with a lot of his inner thoughts.

This one is,,,, in a similar vein as Command Me to Be Well. I guess I was in a mood. Baby, Come On Home by woodenducks 9k.

IT’S SEASON NINE WITH A SIDE OF PINE. What more could you ask for angst? Human Cas in Rexford trying to make a life for himself when all he wants is to go home. But he’s also trying to figure out what home even is for him. There’s a lot of drama between Dean and Cas, because of course Dean wants him there. But blah blah angels and blah blah whatever excuse the writers wanted so we couldn’t have human Cas and Dean in the bunker. We KNOW obviously the only thing keeping canon Dean from snapping was the fact that Cas was not human around him. *heavy eyeroll*. Anyways, this is a heartbreaking read from Castiel’s perspective.

One of my favorite Rescue Cas from the Empty fics is (they'll never break) the shape we take by auroralynches (teresavampa) 9k.

There’s this super cool concept of how Castiel experiences his regrets within the Empty and how Dean navigates through them to get to Castiel. I really enjoyed it, and of course the greatest love story ever told has got to have SOME theatrics and sentiments that are definitely reflected in this fic. My point is, I really love when Empty Rescue fics include analyzing Castiel’s regrets, and this one does so but from Dean’s perspective. As in Dean is viewing Castiel’s memories and trying to perceive his regrets.

Sooooo Epistolary by tiamatv 9k eh?

I love love LOVEEEEEE epistolary fics. I love them. I’ll always read them. And I totally told you I loved tiamatv. This is probably another one for the top ten fics just because it plays into my things. Love letters, music, and misunderstandings, oh my!!

HERE’S A VERY SEXY TERRIBLE LIFE ----> Ties that Bind Us by TheTwistedWillow 13k

Okay, so BASICALLY what if It’s A Terrible Life happened in like, circa-season 13 and Castiel was thrown in with Dean Smith and Sam Wesson. Literally all that I wanted in this fic. I do mean it’s sexy, by the way. I can’t even begin to explain this fic beyond it’s Castiel’s perspective, and he has some awareness that something is off. And being inside Castiel’s head when he’s not Castiel gets me every time.

OKAY I KNOW THIS IS THE THIRD A/B/O FIC ON THIS LIST I KNOW I KNOW The Mills School for Distinguished Girls by SillyBlue 13k IS WORTH IT THOUGH?!?!

Alpha Dean Winchester is going off to war. In the meantime, his family still doesn’t know about his marriage to Omega Castiel (in fact, they still think Castiel is a Beta.) Male Omegas are very rare in this universe, and it is addressed along with the fact that just because Castiel might look different on the outside doesn’t make him any different than the girls. Which I thought was a thought-provoking interpretation. There’s prejudices here—a lot of them against women and omegas—and a temporary character death which actually moved me to tears. I bookmarked this saying bring the tissues; bring the tissues.

THE BEE MOVIE FIC THE BEE MOVIE FIC THE BEE MOVI— according to all known laws of life by sobsicles 29k sobsicles I owe you a great slice of pie.

Sobsicles, my beloved, my bestie <3 (am I allowed to say that? I mean it affectionately. Well and truly.) You REALLY got in my head with this one. This is literally such an insane read that I read it twice in a row. Yeah, whoops. Cas is back from the empty and Dean is an asshole about it because feelings are hard. Here is what I bookmarked this fic with: “Dean Winchester has issues. He gets through them. Like a Bull in a China Shop, but he gets through them. The metaphor works.” And that is EXACTLY what happens. Dean is such an asshole and I LOVE IT. 14yr me would cry at the concept of reading this but 14yr me is a tasteless bitch. This is where it’s at. Dean has so much he’s mentally working through and Cas won’t take no shit and Sam is tired. It’s great. I love it. I know we rec sobsicles left and right over here (and I know there’s a new one I haven’t read yet) but this one is really my favorite. And I know some people feel uncertain when fics/authors get popular in a fandom, so if this isn’t for you that’s okay!! But well and truly this is just one of those in the top ten Destiel fics of my heart.

Baby Jack during the Widower Arc truther here like Trial and Tribulations of Raising a Nephilim by Sickandtiredofyou 14k

I’ve seen this one rec’d before but not enough. Like this one SHOULD be talked about. Because I am a Baby Jack Truther, and putting a baby in the widower arc is my literal weakness. Dean goes crib shopping. He paints the nursery. He does that season 2&3 thing he does where he wrecks something so that he has to rebuild it. He’s mourning. He’s crying. Sam is afraid to hold a baby. There’s a lot of emotions and they’re raw. Promise there’s a happy ending, but be ready to cry first.

Another sam pov because i love my little brother Letters to Nowhere by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales) 28k

AWWW YES. So this is another Empty Rescue fic. This one plays up the Orpheus and Eurydice lore, but in a surprising twist this is Sam’s POV!! Sam doesn’t know the full story, and we as the audience aren’t granted omnipresence for this fic either. It’s just point blank is his emotions. Him worrying for Dean, missing Cas, and wanting a happy ending for all of them. It’s sort of epistolary with how Sam is texting Castiel’s phone, but in general it is Sam Winchester wanting to save both of his brothers. So despite it being Destiel, the Destiel is almost the background ship since this story is Sam’s story and how Sam witnesses their story. It’s pretty meta in that sense, in that he’s aware there’s this grand story going on and we as an audience know there’s this grand love story happening, but we’re reading Sam’s story.

One of those i mentioned where its like an episode and they just end with tension between them >:((( but SO enjoyable and very much like an actual MotW Soul Searching by Lottiethroughthelookingglass 13k

It is in a screenplay format, but I didn’t mind that. It’s definitely a fun read! I thought the characterizations were pretty grand all-in-all. No get together though in this one if you’re looking for Destiel. Sorry. But it does make its way on to the list because we deserved a body swap episode and never got it.

This is like the third fic by tia and im not sorry and it’s Filoplume by tiamatv 8k !!!!

Its SOULMATES BAYBEEEE!!! But it’s not destined Soulmates. It’s like… soul compatibility, but only AFTER you’ve forged the bond. Self-Made Soulmates as it were. Very achingly and lovingly sentimental. Like, I think I’ve read this one four times in one week? It’s the shortest rec on this list (and while I definitely have shorter works bookmarked, I wanted this rec list to be longer ones for some reason I guess) but it feels longer. Maybe because every paragraph is like a gut punch. egGH. It’s another Empty Rescue by-the-by and Dean’s soulmark (given to him by Cas after Castiel’s Despair Confession) helps get him into the Empty.

OHOHOH LEVERAGE AU!!?! The Jericho Job by giantteenwolforgy 20k

The first in a series and I am SO EXCITED FOR MORE. I absolutely adore Leverage, so seeing this was like clearing my skin with care products I’ve never used. The characterizations are amazingly well done and vivid. They feel so unbelievably real and it makes me an eager beaver to get to the meat of them connecting as a team and family, but the slow burn is well worth it.

Yes, yes, Dean needs him, and need = love for Dean’s vocab but what does dEAN WANT and what does want mean to Dean? Find out in if you try sometimes, well you just might find by JenTheSweetie 9k

I’ve always been a huge fan of metas that dissect Dean’s differeniation of need vs want, and this whole work was like one of those metas. It’s a Cas POV of him trying to figure out how to read this man that he knows so well. It pulls out the angst and it makes me ache, but promises there IS a happy ending and Dean WANTS it.

Shush you know you want Goodbye Stranger meets Detroit: Become Human you knOW YOU WANT IT Digital Heartbeat by Chancy_Lurking 14k

MHM IT’S SO GOOD. Talk about good characterization. This work is almost a time piece? There’s a few skips in the timeline but you get the good parts and what’s needed for a full narrative. Castiel is an android sent by Cyberlife to the Men of Letters for aiding in hunting. He’s—of course—assigned to the brothers Winchester.

Shush delicious content right here mwah Heartstring Promenade by SaltyWords (agent4hire22) 17k

Another Empty Rescue?!? Yeah, yeah it is. Dean is sort of reckless. And by that, I mean a lot. But it’s fine. All happy endings, and smutty endings too. ;))

This is one of two 36-questions inspired fics I’ve got bookmarked, but the sex in this one hits my preferences too perfectly so it gets the spot and this list is getting too long to include all of my bookmarks to include both of them anyways but Seek to Know You Better by ahurston 32k mhmmmmmm

This fic is very personal to me. I couldn’t explain even if you asked me to. It might be the Florida Citrus Tree expressionism in Cas’ thoughts, but idk it's such a mystery (the way you know me) by fleeceframe 20k has got it on the list.

Cas loses his memories for a short period of time. Dean and Sam introduce Castiel to Cas, and Dean and Cas have a heart to heart. <3

A vERY interesting premise in a fool's kind of careless by Paclipas 9k

Dean is SUPER off his game when he can’t tell the difference between Cas and Not-Cas over the summer. Canon-fic.

A FIC FROM 2018?!?! WITH TIME TRAVEL??!? Ye ye it is Crazy Diamonds by pantheon_of_discord 24k

Dean of 2018, married to Castiel, swaps places with his newly dragged from Hell 2008 self. Time shenanigans and Bobby Frickin’ Singer ensue.

This one is ONE I AM OBSESSED WITH ACTUALLY And Neither Do You by callsigntango 45k like if it's not the one everyone starts talking about :((( is SO GROSS how callsigntango describes the empty and i lOOOVEEEE ITTTTT. Also plays into a Florida myth I totally forgot about so high-key freaked me out. Hahah.

[barracudablue]

I just fucking can’t stop thinking about my own mind playground version of “HBO” SPN.

Dean Winchester smokes Virginia Slims but he claims it’s because they were his mom’s brand and defends the inherent masculinity of all cigarette smoking until a female character smoking Marlboro reds or Camels won’t stop calling him princess and babydoll with a smoke hanging off her lips while chambering a sawed off shotgun and saving his ass (and not being killed ever or showing her tits because this show is about inverting tropes so we just see male nudity in situations that emphasize physical vulnerability). Who knows maybe she even grabs his dick and it’s extremely wrong and inappropriate and he is rightfully upset about it but feels like he can’t say anything because he is a Man.

And sure, we all want him to have self destructive hook ups in rest stop bathrooms, but more importantly can I please have some terrible coffee that is way too hot out of the rest stop vending machine that he tries to convince Sam is actually good? Dean is addicted to stimulants of every kind so the coffee seems pretty good to him.

Sam btw literally listens to Hozier. Dean secretly loves Chris Isaak. (Please, someone mention the Chris Isaak show I bet Dean would love that shit.) Sam spends the entire series trying to convince Dean that it is OK to not be straight, but Dean doesn’t trust him because he’s way too academic about it. Dean directing some kind of class-based anger at his own brother who wishes he could escape the hunting lifestyle and therefore passes judgment on hunters because of his own insecurities. So eventually Sam realizes it isn’t a crime to be poor, stereotypes about poor people are designed to make people feel like they themselves aren’t victims of capitalism as long as their apartment is equipped with a dishwasher or whatever, and he ought to just accept himself, you can be smart and wear carharts (in the same way Dean should just figure out that being gay is fine).

Just for me, let’s put a sprinkle of Dean having a crush on Fox Mulder.

Castiel pops in, he is murdering a whole bunch of people like, “Who cares? It’s God’s will and their problem if they were sinners because we have a system in place.” And he smells like incense all the damn time, when he comes into the room people are hallucinating or hearing colors or whatever. Dean is like, “Oh my fuck this is the hottest person I’ve ever met. He terrifies me by being perfect and flipping over all of my ideas about myself by being both bone-rattlingly powerful and extremely gentle to ONLY me wtf. I must treat him like shit because I’m afraid of love.”

When Cas tries to use electronics sometimes they explode like a Star Trek panel so Sam is very protective of his laptop. Cas’ not liking Sam thing results in broken fingers, broken jaw, angel radio brain scramble, basically way worse things than little cute insults.

He also quickly gets addicted to trying all kinds of drugs, really likes taking pills because idk pillheads are the most annoying substance abusers so I think it would be funny. But whenever he feels like it he can just soberheal someone by touching them, so he’s going around spitefully sobering Dean up, who passes out and gets princess carried by Cas to get him a good night’s sleep.

Cas and Dean are obviously in love, perhaps this is clearly verbalized early on. But I don’t care if they ever fuck. But, if they do, it must definitely be an extra fucking weird experience where Dean literally? metaphorically? meets God. Like, if the freaky swirly scene in Altered States was blissful instead of terrifying, that would be fucking an angel probably.

Bobby is the same except sometimes he passes out drunk blasting Townes Van Zandt and the boys are like, “Jesus, this is depressing.” We can have a comedic scene of them walking in when he’s about to kill himself and then him refusing to admit that ever happened every time they try to bring it up. Bobby also openly talks trash about John Winchester day and night and curses like Al Swearengen.

I haven’t watched past like season 8 so I leave others to imagine the rest. However, based on gifsets I will say that Dean becoming more fatherly would be the top healing experience. He would definitely make sure his children know grabbing someone’s genitals is a big no, as was all of the other abuse that he suffered under the belief that it was normal. And he and Cas get married its so super god damn domestic it’ll make your teeth scream. Let Sam become a bartender or something. He can write novels inspired by his life on the side. I really don’t want to see him becoming an academic and remaining insufferable.

[floralkittygambler]

Reposting for reasons

Response to Honest’s post here: Doing this to spread this awareness more as I know theres a bit of a rift in the critical community - plus I really fucking go on. Im PISSED and I do apologise however it NEEDS urgent addressing. I know people will hate me for it but Im used to hate and honestly? Hating rather than helping to solve the issue only furthers my fucking point here. So yeah this is so more people are aware (no offense to any of those involved in said rift either, but this is an important message. Thank you for understanding and if I can do anything to make all sides comfortable, then please message me and I’ll do my upmost.) “ More awareness of this is needed. Even if it’s your favourite, you can’t justify their shit but rally against another’s shit. Have people tell you you’re experiences arent real or invalid because, like Husk, people have - in real life - shipped you with someone you are far from comfortable with but you still treat them like a person. Because you have basic respect. And people force you to accept harassment, touching, stalking, advances for THEIR satisfaction. People use you for their fantasies. But you’re just a ‘tsundere’ for it. Or you have addiction issues but people think being with another addict will ‘save’ you because you’re apparently too incompetent to save yourself. Love isnt some magic fuckin cure so stop romanticising it as a fuckin saviour. It’s gross and fuckin creepy. Get stalked and have someone NEVER accept your no just because you show youre still decent enough to not treat them shitty or any different from anyone else. Try having someone way older or way younger (both in morally fucked up ways) advance on you and people encourage that. People you’re supposed to feel safe around.

People touch you when you pull away or show discomfort. Follow you home. Have pictures of you and wont accept you dont like them like that and it’s not ‘playing hard to get’ or ‘the thrill of the chase’. Fuck. OFF. In fact, Im not only disappointed in the fandom. Im disappointed in the entire team who some should know better from their OWN personal experiences - or at least the bare minimal of being a fucking adult. Im disappointed in especially females (sorry idk whether girl or woman is more appropriate here-) who statistically are more likely to have experienced something similar at some point in their lives think this is a cute gay moment. No. Angel is made out as a fucking predator - Im not saying he is, Im saying that his persistence is very fucking unwelcome like one. People like Husk dont need that fucking invasiveness. They/We need patience and someone on our level. Angel’s I know are the fuckin polar opposite - and some of them I know are very sexually harassing, including unwanted touching. It’s a shitty way to present gay people. Gays are fuckin people. Some are cunts and some arent. It’s a HUMAN thing. But considering the shit theyve been subjected to, presenting a gay as a victim only to also show them as a perpetrator is insulting! And for those Ive seen argue this about how people like AD wouldnt know how to express their love normally and whatnot? His pig. His best friend. He’s in his fucking 30s. There are literal real life criminals who get molested as kids and then go on to molest kids. Not all who grow up like that turn into nonces. Stop just fucking STOP justifying and romanticising this bullshit! I used to see the good in AD but now he makes me fucking sick. Especially with my verrrrrry fucking real traumas and connections. But fuck me, eh? Because this fictional guy matters so much more. Fuck real victims. And whilst we’re at it, fuck AD too when it suits your fetishes! Sarcasm aside, the fans and the team need to straighten up their abhorrent behaviour. Stolas. Fucking clearly having an affair, knowingly fucking up his daughter’s mental health and bribing a guy into sex who only wants the book and nothing more. He even has a fucking warning button over Stolas- Guys, how do you think any of this is cute? Even the team gross me out- I genuinely see potential and talent and it’s all gone to shit to satisfy horny teens, horny adults, and literally everyone who doesnt for the life of them understand being an adult is more than sex, drugs, violence and swears! I REALLY want to keep enjoying HB/HH but it’s getting harder and harder with such ignorant and bordering lazy creators (note: lazy as in wont do the fucking research or actually listen to real criticism and victims), such despicable fans (yeah, some HDers fuckin mocked that they triggered my ED, yet they had the fucking NERVE to support Angel’s potential ED AND laugh and blame me for me getting treated so badly for actually having the balls to call Angel and the teams hypocrisy. I got told to kill myself, that my problems arent real - oh but Angels apparently is! Which... They *are* but AD isnt real so technically only onlookers will suffer and not a drawing  - and they just excused their toxic behaviours. These people are like “aww poor angie babey!” yet fuckin INSULT sex workers. All this red in Hazbin yet it feels everyone and they mama colour blind. The issues are getting worse and fans are outright becoming EVIL, VILE, Vindictive little bullies - from kids to adults. You SHOULD be ashamed of yourself if you conduct yourself in such a manner. And you need to readjust your attitudes and behaviours because the only fuckers getting hurt are actual fucking victims. Ever been violated and been gaslit so much you STILL fucking question it’s reality? So you drown that shit out yet somehow it’s effects still hit you? Fetishise it. Make it your uwu gae couple goals, you’re no better than people believing Harley and the Joker werent toxic af. If this shit happened to you, most of you would actually SEE where we’re all coming from. Also, stop making gay a fetish - you’re like those creepy old men in the alley heckling lesbians to make out so they can wank off. Gays, no ALL the LGBT+ are fucking people too. So dont give me that bullshit then start turning everything just gay or just straight to mentally wank off to. It’s degrading and dehumanising. And yes, fiction does effect reality. You crush on a fictional character? Mourn one? Support one? Hell, fuckin jerk off to one - that’s affecting reality. Remember how in fiction all blacks were treated as villians? Look how theyre treated IRL. JAWS, great classic unfortunately their was a spike in shark killings over a fucking movie - the shark in the movie wasnt even real for the most part because they dont behave like that! (Also the animatronic was so shit they genuinely had so many issues - I think they even took to naming each one! Some fun trivia there!). Tiger sharks are more nasty than great whites as tiger sharks will hunt and eat a human. Great whites prefer seals and dislike human flesh, they just mistake us for seals. Hell, theres the toothless basking shark - theyre often SWAM WITH by divers for being so friendly. Yet Jaws made people think all sharks are bloodlusting over humans. Slenderman was created for a fucking contest and that influenced a stabbing (NOT Victor’s fault). Watch a horror movie that isnt based on a real life event and tell me that at least ONE has left you peaking over your shoulder. Stella may be a bitch - we dont know for certain - but try getting cheated on. Y’know what? Try growing up in such a broken home like Octavia. Yeah reaaaaaal fucking cute now, huh? Funny how as well y’all petition for male victims to be taken seriously then laugh when fictional males experience this abuse, further adding to stigma. You can be hit on by the hottest mf on the planet but if you arent interested, that should be respected! Also we’ve all been inspired by at least one fictional character so yeah. Yknow, since I was little Ive been fighting for sex worker and homeless rights. But HH/HB treatment of both leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I’ll still fully support sex workers and the homeless, but that’s the fucking effect this show is having. Bearing in mind I wont ever share everything Ive been through - and I shouldnt fucking have to in order to be believed and validated (obvs proof is required in a legal case but that’s a whole other topic). Why should I share MY fucking pain especially when you fuckers have belittled and triggered it more so? We have our rights to our secrets but fuck ME you lot NEED to start acting appropriately and like decent fucking humans. ‘iTs HeLl’ yeah and welcome to Earth- the team and yourselves live HERE. You obide by THESE rules. And as someone with beliefs (and a LOT of ancient fucking texts and studies on this shit) their Hell isnt even a proper Hell! It’s closer to purgatory and even then it’s not. Regardless, it’s a poorly built world with the lore consistently changing per episode and tweet, with many plot holes, and is apparently easy to get into - even via accidentally watching porn according to a stream. If youre gonna parade youre a fucking expert and research into demonology and use real believed figures, at least get THAT right. In fact, Lucifer and Lilith (and Stolas tbf) are ESPECIALLY risky as theyre a lot more complex than most easy access texts will tell you. Likewise, Stolas’s first introduction and main focus is sex. He’s one of the FEW Goetia demons that dont have some involvement in relationship issues at ALL. He’s known for astrology, crystals and herbs but hes also known to aid MONEY troubles (it’s lesser known but it’s true! HB Stolas is an insult to the Prince). Turning Vodou into something evil is vile considering it’s powerful and liberated slaves. Pentagrams are nothing to do with Satan, they’re magic based sigils. Upside down cross is the symbol of a SAINT. It’s just some edgy attempt to trick people into believing they know more than they do. Also you should NEVER dabble and doodle sigils without knowing the meanings or respecting what they behold. Vox and Val, real fuckin cute way to make them look like a stupid fucking highschool drama instead of a fucking SEX TRAFFICKER (note: real pimps often target YOUNG folks too - aka minors - and groom them into sex work. Theres different types of pimp. Viv has shown barely any understanding of ‘the game’ and its a fucking insult to injury. Yes we KNOW what a fucking pimp and prozzie are! We dont need to see it. We need REAL AWARENESS.) and a fucking scheming bastard of a CEO salesman botman. And yet even THEN lets go a step further and make some yandere wuv on boyfweind aboose! Fuck off- Now I love a good anime but these tropes are getting fucking dangerous now. And unrealistic to real love and relationships. Kids nowadays know fuck all on a healthy relationship (neither did the fuckin 50s tbf) and Im seeing more romaticism and glorifying abusive situations. Like the show ‘You’. Ok, there’s a fuckin bloke online who slaughtered innocents and kidnapped yet people commented how cute he is on his IG and that they want to be kidnapped or killed by him next. Dont believe me? Look up Peter Manfredonia Connecticut and the comments people left him and then tell me why shit like whats being presented in HH/HB ISNT fucking concerning - because it is. For a series about redemption, it’s brilliant at the opposite (Quote from the creator herself, Viv has posted that it’s influencing her bad choices. Even as a joke, proof’s in the pudding). And the overall focus on sex in the way Viv does is so immature and really creepy, and this is from an ADULTS perspective. From one adult to another, Im concerned as to why any of them think this is a normal fixation. Then again they’ve hired quite a large amount of dodgy folks and even a child. Most of this shit gets avoided with a basic background check like most companies run. I DO like Hazbin. Or the premise. I love some of the cast and spite the others. In Helluva, I just like a tiny portion of the cast. And I critique it so harshly because Viv DOES need a wakeup slap, grounding to reality, people who arent going to big her up or kiss her arse for once and shape her up to be the best she can be. The actually reach and even surpass her potential. And to reach where you need to be, there’s a lot of harsh lessons youll face. That’s life. Shes chosen one of the most HEARTLESS industries and if she blocks out critique as ‘hate’ then she’s not strong enough and wont last. It’s just another unprepped YanDev again (except I dont believe Viv to be a nonce. Even with her dodgy past and dodgy present, I think her perspective on sex and relationship with sexuality is FAR from healthy BUT I dont believe she’s a pedophile. Ive bled my fair share and so far, I just think her sex perspective isnt healthy or mature for her age. But there’s little to nothing to suggest actual noncery - dont worry about accusations there. But YanDev is totally a dirty predator. Just clearing that up). Viv NEEDS some harshness and stability if she wants to do things right. And it’ll make her fucking cry but if she loves these projects as much as she claims to, then you’ll sacrifice blood, sweat and tears for that shit. Even the strongest points are mediocre at best when properly observed. She CAN do more, but she’ll have to face the harsh music. Viv wont see this, but if she does, I dont care if it upsets her. Why? Because this is that much of an issue - something she’s cultivated - that she needs to take action and not ignore it or be secretive about it. She needs to grow up and get tougher skin. Im not saying this to cause her pain. In fact, I wouldnt waste my fucking limited time if I DIDNT care. Trust me, I have duties to be met at a certain quota every single day. I say this shit only because I give a shit and care. If we met, she’d fucking hate me. But people like me are good for shaping people up to their potential. And we arent always this ‘tough love’ either. But when someone needs that level of harshness to help themselves, we’re not afraid to lose people or cause upset if the results end up being the best for them. If she ever saw this, she needs to re fucking evaluate her message, her story, and those she’s choosing to welcome into her circle. And all Im seeing is one rookie mistake after the other. Her paid patreon discord. Just like the messages Honest has posted on her side of being harassed (not in Vivs fyi), Ive experienced shit and bullying and even stay silent on their for being attacked for a group I fuckin paid to be in and yet I feel isolated. It’s all arsekissing and ‘thank you viv’ (thats an actual channel-) and it feels like a place of borderline worship and people trying to appease her 24/7 whilst kicking others with different opinions down. There’s so many I love but I aint kissin yer fuckin arse. Ask the closest friend I have - we’re fucking raw and wont just side with each other just because. We’ll call each other out if we think they’ve fucked up and then help each other build themselves up better. Because real fuckin people who actually care wont just want to be adored by you. They’ll care enough to point out your bullshit and help you, even if they upset you at the time. They’re real and upfront with you. People like us arent always the easiest to be close to either because we arent afraid of upsetting someone if it’s in their best interest and to help them. Likewise, we dont go out looking for fights either. Most times, we’re fuckin soft bastards- All this shit listed is the fuckin surface level of the real life hell of this fandom. And unsurprisingly, those who experience little to no toxicity have always been higher on that popularity ‘food chain’ - enough admirers and shared opinions that people wanna arse kiss regardless of their OWN feelings as well as neutral perspectives. I’d say you’re the lucky fans, but you’re not. You’re sheltered, and that isnt always the best way to be sadly. As for the fans. If Ive upset you. Well... I dont care. Because many of you have actively sought me out and weaponised my traumas against me. You never cared about my feelings then. Why should I care about yours? Im not doing this out of malice. Im fed up of humans behaving so pathetically yet claiming to be high and mighty. Most of you have been arseholes to those in and out of the community. The victims and non-victims alike. Hardly any of you considered once my real suffering. You put a drawing over a life. Many lives. You had the audacity to tell me Im full of shit. Some even using my real traumas to make a mockery of me and those Im around with a very similar history. Some with traumatic histories that differ from my own. You hardly ever considered the real lives of those effected. So no, Im not sorry for having the fucking balls to this day to still stand up for our rights and give us a voice that’s long been stolen. Im not sorry for being a fucking victim. Im not sorry for saying what desperately NEEDS voicing. And Im not sorry for not conforming to you or any fandom just to belong. We deserve better than to constantly be your fuckin arse monkeys (well... the trope is butt monkey but yknow-) and to be mistreated, misrepresented and harmed by you. You’re no different to the school bullies who give speeches on anti-bullying day. And I hope every single one of you starts looking into yourselves and improving. PS: Depending on the texts you read, Lucifer is said to have been redeemed or to be redeemed. Fun fact to haunt yalls with~ “

[alatismeni-theitsa]

answering LO/anti LO asks:

(1) Let’s also not kid ourselves, it’s creepy Smythe imagines the majority of her female characters as “PoC” and they only exist to be sexualized, infantilized, and be props for the male characters (Persephone is Hades’ prize, Psyche is a prop for Eros, Aphrodite is a literal sex object, Minthe is nothing but Evil incarnate, etc). As a person of color myself and as a woman, I do not feel represented, I feel insulted and mocked, though I’m sure her lily white self thinks she’s a beacon of progress!

(2) Did you read today episode of Lore olympus? It was so creepy. Hades watched on a tape how few years earlier teenage (around 15-17 years) persephone was sitting NAKED on him when he was drunk. Then he rells demeter about amazing pink goodess and how he wants to ask zeus is she available. Demeter freaks out and wants to get him more drunk so he wont remember her. And he is mad about that demeter protect her teenage doughter from a wine addicted old man.

Oh and also fandom didn't see anything wrong with moment when persephone ended up naked in front of him (and at that time she was an teenager) and they were like oww so cute he acted like an gentelmam and i was like bitch were? And level of oversexualization persephone in this episode was highlike showing her butt when she run or many svenes when she was nacked and this wouldnt be bothering me if the fact that in this episode pernephone was teenager. It was sick

(3) I don't think anyone can deny LO made Webtoons a big platform in the West but at this point they're big enough to let LO fend for itself and start promoting other works to get more people reading, especially now as LO is getting more criticism that Rachel won't listen to and dropping numbers. It'd be like Netflix only promoting Stranger Things or Amazon only promoting Ms Maisel. It's rude to the other series that are better in views/numbers but also isn't a good business practice either.

(4) I’m so glad i found your blog and the anti lo tag, everyone seems to love this comic... granted i’m not overly familiar with greek mythology but i know a bad story when i read one. Persephone really gives Bella Swan a run for her money in stupidity. She’s just such a bad character.

(5) I don't agree with the WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS! take that video took since i don't think young women are just that dumb to be manipulated by a comic, but the rest was on point. Smythe can't take criticism, she openly lies about her storytelling, she botches what could be interesting elements, Hades is downright creepy, the relationship is horribly toxic/imbalanced and he's aware/seems to relish in it, the teenager is way too hypersexualized, etc. Wish Webtoons would promote other comics...

(6) OOOF that video was rough to watch but way too true. I really never noticed how damn near father/daughter-like Smythe made her version of HxP be (&the power imbalance) and framed it as the only healthy relationship in story & claims its "supposed to be uncomfortable". Why would you want your audience to be uncomfortable supporting the main relationship? Though it was funny that the commentator said she obviously has a fetish for older men. He must not know she's pushing 40.

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(1) As I said in another answer, I am not sure if she imagines them as poc? She had casted White and Black people for most and maybe they wants to say some of the characters have “Black vibes“??? (which is weird ngl) Honestly, I don’t know. Plus, you cannot make a person Black in a predominantly White area and not talk about their experience or their different culture. Persephone made it a big deal that she was from a different area (Sicily) but she never mentioned she looked different than the locals.

I think if anyone from the main cast, someone on our screens most of the time, was Black or generally not looking like the average Greek we would know it because of references. So maybe Smythe just wants the African American and/or Black vibes for her characters and not actual Blackness. Everyone is like “deities can be whatever race you like“ and they forget that many times being a specific race gives you unique experiences, as well as advantages and disadvantages.

Psyche has probably an African mother and, unfortunatelly, she wasn’t depicted very respectfully.

I am Greek and not even I feel represented by any of those characters even those who are clearly white and old deities of my culture. (That is because they are just “White” and not “Greek” culturally). Smythe doesn’t know how to write cultures...

As a PoC, do you feel like we have any indication that certain characters (except Psyche) are not White? Because I haven’t seen such a thing. As I mentioned, I don’t even think they even act like Greeks but that’s another story xD Because of the setting, I see them as charicatures of White Americans who don’t even have the white American culture.

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(2) Yesss I read it!! And I hadn’t thought that she was so young back then! Jeeeez!! Smythe sexualized her even in the episode where she was barely legal!

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(3) That’s probably a good idea. More works need to be advertised so everyone getst an equal chance. Betting only on one horse won’t give profit to Webtoons.

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(4) Welcome!! Here, take some tea with salt!

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(5) It’s true that young girls are not going to be influenced only by this comic and then go ruin their lives with abusive men. It’s just that there is this general culture of women having more value the younger and more innocent they are, while for the men it’s the opposite. This comic and other works are part of a bigger problem which tells girls it’s ok to meet this behavior in an older man and you should want to be with such a man when you are 19. Again, it’s not only about this specific comic. But we have to start fixing this culture by beginning from something, right?

I am glad that you agreed with the rest of the points. That means the youtuber says what most of us think and want to express - but we don’t dare because the LO fandom will eat us alive.

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(6) I wanted to hear someone else talk about the problems of LO but at the same time it made me uncomfortable because it talks about difficult issues. There are some dynamics appropriate for certain ages. You CAN write about unhealthy relationships and leave the reader decide for themselves but now when your audience also has teenagers and when the HxP relationship is presented as the GOOD relationship in the story. Smythe went as far as to have the storyline with Apollo so we can see how Good Hades is in comparison.

Ah yes, she just likes men her age! But I think he was kinda correct on the “Daddy and Little“ kink xD Especially after I took a glimpse of that NSFW picture from her patreon with the spanking.