#it's not That Bad™ here but it is 'I am going to need to build one of those box fan filters aren't I'

[blujayonthewing]

wheeee yaaay so excited to finally get up to the dark sky park for our anniversary! :) can't wait to lay out under the stars with my love and see the milky way! :)

[region's worst wildfires ever recorded fill the entire northeast united states with smoke beginning one(1) days before our planned park night]

[littlemoriflower]

hii im new to mori kei and havent had much luck thrifting atm, do you have any keyword or search ideas to use when looking for skirts? im struggling to find one but i might just be picky .. thank you if you decide to answer 🍀

Heya there, dear! I hope you are having a wonderful day! (⁠人⁠ ⁠•͈⁠ᴗ⁠•͈⁠)

For starters, I am so glad you are trying mori kei out! I welcome you to the community with open arms, and hope you find joy and happiness in mori ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶

Now, shopping online for mori can be tricky, because all you want to do is search up "mori kei" or "mori girl" and hope for the clothes to magically show up in front of you. ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ

However, soon you'll see very few people know of the style, let alone tag it, so here's some easy keywords you can use instead:

• Lace/Linen/Cotton/Denim skirt

-> Not all skirts used in mori need to be super convoluted! You can have some basics (and I urge you to do so) that you can use underneath other pieces to create that classic layered look. The fabrics I listed above are the most common in mori, but you can also find corduroy skirts, for example, that would work wonderfully with mori as well!

• Striped/Polka dot/Gingham/Plaid/Scandinavian skirt

-> The patterns I listed above are some of the most common to find in mori kei outfits. But remember: you are not limited to these patterns. Anything with "natural motifs" like animals, flowers, leaves, trees, etc can be and would fit wonderfully with mori! Like I always say, this part always boils down to personal taste, at the end of the day! (*^▽^*)

• Tiered/Layered/Patch work skirt

-> Sure fire way to find those cute, multi layered skirts with a bunch of different fabric and patterns on them! These skirts are usually "statement pieces", which means they are often used as an outside layer. Of course you can layer something else on top of them, like a dress or a tunic, but hiding these often beautiful skirts is a disservice to them. You could use a base cotton skirt underneath this one to create a more fluffy, layered look if so desired, for example!

• Boho skirt

-> This also works wonders if you are trying to find that lacey, often layered look for skirts. The boho style had a big boom some years ago, so there's a lot of variety not only for skirts, but for dresses, tops or tunics!

• Cottagecore/fairycore skirt

-> I know, I know. How dare I mention the Big Bads™, but truth is that mori gets often pilled up with these, and to those who don't really understand the fashion, they will tag these two bad boys in a very cute skirt you wouldn't find otherwise have you not used the tags.

I hope this little list helps you in whatever way possible, and if it didn't I hope I am able to help you even further if you wish! (⁠づ⁠￣⁠ ⁠³⁠￣⁠)⁠づ

But before I go...

Gentle reminder: Don't expect perfection in the beginning. The initial stage of slowly building up your wardrobe might be a little awkward, but the more you put outfits together, the less you'll want to take them off. (⁠ ⁠◜⁠‿⁠◝⁠ ⁠)⁠♡

[averageambivert]

GUILTY AS SIN? BUT WOLFSTAR

Okay so everytime I listen to this song, I imagine Remus and Sirius (the ATYD ones) singing it for each other. And I really need to get this out of my head so here we are:

Drowning in the Blue Nile He sent me 'Downtown Lights' I hadn't heard it in a while My boredom's bone deep This cage was once just fine

This whole part is Remus. It's literally about HIM. Him talking about his "cage" (i.e. St. Edmund's) , which he had accepted before Hogwarts, and even the Shrieking Shack before the other Marauders transformed into animagi and helped him. Before Sirius told him that he doesn't deserve to suffer alone.

Am I allowed to cry?

This line is TOO accurate for ATYD Remus, as he's always avoiding crying and sees it as a weakness.

I dream of cracking locks Throwing my life to the wolves

Basically him after he meets Livia. My guy was ready to leave Hogwarts before NEWTs to go to the pack and kill Greyback ASAP.

Or the ocean rocks Crashing into him tonight He's a paradox I'm seeing visions, am I bad? Or mad? Or wise?

"Ocean Rocks". Taylor, you're not doing anything to disprove that you're NOT MsKingBean89. I think of them having confessions at the beach in Cornwall. Remus yelling at Sirius on the same beach and spilling his thoughts out after the staying with the pack for a month. Him having an identity crisis and screaming "I don't know who I am anymore!". Later that night, Sirius telling him that he's his Moony.

What if he's written 'mine' on my upper thigh Only in my mind? One slip and falling back into the hedge maze Oh what a way to die I keep recalling things we never did Messy top lip kiss How I long for our trysts

Them constantly fighting and then wanting for it to be over the next moment. Making up later.

Without ever touching his skin How can I be guilty as sin?

Now I think the next verse is from Sirius' perspective:-

I keep these longings locked In lowercase inside a vault

Sirius keeping his thoughts of Remus away from Walpurga. From the Dementors.

Someone told me There's no such thing as bad thoughts Only your actions talk

"Love is something you do"

These fatal fantasies Giving way to labored breath Taking all of me We've already done it in my head If it's make believe Why does it feel like a vow We'll both uphold somehow

Post Halloween 1976 Sirius thinking he's not gay and this is just his teenage hormones™, and wondering if HE has corrupted Remus.

What if he's written 'mine' on my upper thigh Only in my mind? One slip and falling back into the hedge maze Oh what a way to die My bedsheets are ablaze I've screamed his name Building up like waves Crashing over my grave Without ever touching his skin How can I be guilty as sin?

Finally, the BRIDGE:-

What if I roll the stone away? They're gonna crucify me anyway What if the way you hold me Is actually what's holy?

I imagine this to be from Remus because of all the hate werewolves get. He's always thinking that at the end of everything, he'd still be hated for what he is.

If long suffering propriety Is what they want from me They don't know how you've haunted me So stunningly I choose you and me ... Religiously

This is Sirius because everyone thinks he's guilty immediately because of his family. He never got a trial and was sent to Azkaban. The internalised homophobia and his love for Remus scared him so much, so it can be said that Remus HAS haunted him.

So yeah, in conclusion, Taylor wrote this song about them. Thank you for reading my gibberish ily here's a cookie 🍪

[queseraone]

Rank the episodes of season 6… 😈

This took me forever, because I had to go back and look at transcripts and watch clips for several episodes...

And being the insane person that I am, my ranking process involved giving each episode a grade for (a) the episode itself, and (b) the Chenford.

Fair warning, this is a loooooooooooooooooong post, but here we go (from worst to best, in my humble opinion):

6x10 | Escape Plan Listen, I hated this episode. Take out the Chenford content and it absolutely lands near the top of my list of most-hated episodes of The Rookie ever. Because it barely felt like an episode of The Rookie—it was a constant parade of villains. I don't watch this show to follow random bad guys, I watch for the characters I love. And we spent less than half of the episode with my people (one day I'll re-watch and keep track of the exact percentage). I haaaaaaate Monica (she's honestly like a cartoon villain at this point), and I still have no idea who the Big Bad is/was?? Could someone please enlighten me?

The Chenford scenes were about the only redeeming moments for me. Love, love, loved the return of our beloved Battle Couple™. I loved seeing them riding together (Chenford in a vehicle together is everything to me), and they had some great conversations that very much felt like small steps forward. But those small moments weren't enough to redeem an incredibly disappointing episode for me, so that's why this lands at the bottom of my list.

6x05 | The Vow This episode ranks low because nearly every plotline felt abrupt and forced. There wasn't much follow-up to previous plot (the Budny shooting was apparently resolved to the point that Lucy was okay with being gifted a reminder of a moment that had her breaking down the last time she was on our screens...), nor was there enough build-up to anything we saw. It very much felt like they needed another episode or two in between to fill in a lot of those blanks.

I liked the Chenford (or I guess the Tim and Lucy mostly) because it definitely packed an emotional punch (especially the scene when Tim shows up at her place and she turns him away), but the contrast between Lucy laying awake worrying about Tim and her almost comedic use in Aaron's storyline was jarring, like we were watching two very different versions of her character. We know she's damn good at compartmentalizing, but that felt like a stretch.

6x03 | Trouble in Paradise This one is tricky for me, because while I loved the Chenford in this episode (it included one of my new favourite Chenford moments!), the episode itself was a snooze. I give absolutely zero fucks about Nolan and Bailey, and spending a huge chunk of time following them on their snooze of a honeymoon is not it. I still can't tell you what happened on that island(?), I just couldn't get invested (also that was the least romantic/passionate honeymoon to ever happen). And we had very little of Angela, Nyla, Aaron, etc., so that was a bummer too.

Seeing Tim and Lucy riding with Celina was fun, the Chenford domestic moments were lovely, and it was so nice to see Tim being so supportive of Lucy through her detective exam and with the trophy (!!!!), etc. Great moments, but I just can't get past the dreadful A-plot of the honeymoon.

6x01 | Strike Back My biggest gripe with this episode was that it felt anticlimactic following the intensity of 5x22. Yes, they picked right up in the immediate aftermath, but it was lacking somewhere. I think because they did that time jump and seemed to leave that whole storyline in the dust until the end of the season.

There were things I liked and things I didn't like with regards to Chenford. This episode was a great example of the challenges that come from the transition from TO/rookie to sergeant/aide, to boyfriend/girlfriend. TO Tim and BF Tim are very different, and the lines got blurred a bit. I hated the sprinkler thing (that's not on Lucy or Tim, that's on the other officers, and that's the hill I'll die on), but the conversation at the end of episode was so intense, and that's exactly what I want, the show to make me feel things.

6x09 | The Squeeze I'm going to start this one off by saying (again)—it was Lucy's birthday. What in the Sixteen Candles!!!! This is a timeline fumble, even for The Rookie. In that opening scene at the apartment, I was fully expecting Nolan to open that pastry box and having cupcakes or something, so I was flabbergasted when they just blew past not only the fact that it was her birthday, but that she also spilled so many feelings and he was basically like “okay, cool.” Nolan is a terrible friend (if they can even be called friends at this point).

Moving past that... where the hell was everyone?! Tim wasn't in the second half of the episode, Aaron had all of four lines, Bailey wasn't in it at all... and yet Monica. was. everywhere. Ugh.

ANYWAY. I did love seeing everyone rally around Tim (even though it made it even more obvious when they weren't when it was Lucy going through a difficult time). And the highlight of the episode for me was the Chenford elevator scene. Watching Lucy clearly contemplating, then making the decision to follow him into the elevator—I love that she acknowledged how she was feeling, but still managed to set that aside and be there for Tim. What a showcase of her empathy. (But truth be told, she needed that hug just as much as he did.)

6x07 | Crushed I LOVE seeing them all working together on one case. The team dynamic is a huge draw for me, and it's definitely something they've moved away from in the last couple of seasons (a byproduct of moving half of them out of patrol). So that felt like a really welcome return to their roots.

I really enjoyed watching Tim and Lucy in the immediate aftermath of the breakup. Do I wish we'd seen Lucy opening up to someone other than Sgt. Grey? Yes. But more than that, I'm glad we got to see her processing. She's hurt, she's confused, she's angry, and she's earned the right to feel all of those things.

Dr. London read Tim like a fucking book, and his actions solidified that—this is just another example of the way Tim continues to delude himself into thinking everything's fine, when in reality it's absolutely not (ahem, lie detector scene). I'm really happy that we saw him pursue therapy of his own volition, not because it was department-mandated or because someone was requesting it. Recognizing that you need help is a huge step for anyone, but it feels particularly monumental for Tim.

6x02 | The Hammer What a fun episode! Was it the best? Absolutely not. Was it worthy of being the monumental 100th episode? Eh. But as a whole I really enjoyed this one! It started off strong with the return of “Daddy Cop”—HELL. YES. And I really enjoyed the way they carried plotlines early in the season. Th first few episodes flowed together quite well, and it really felt like it was spanning a handful of days. The group scenes (the bachelor and bachelorette parties) were a lot of fun, I really wish they'd do more of those! I actually liked Nolan and Bailey's wedding vows (it's probably the closes I've ever been to caring about their relationship). I was pleasantly surprised to see Henry again, though it felt like a waste to go to that trouble (on-screen and off) to not have a scene with him and his dad. There are a lot of other characters I would have preferred to see instead of Skip Tracer Randy (Elroy! Ben! Pete!), but I did love Grey's “Sit down, German.” 😂

And then the Chenford. Again, it flowed really well from their tense moment in the previous episode (I'm reluctant to call it a fight), and it was nice to see them navigating the aftermath of that, and then come back together at the wedding. The thing with The Hammer was ridiculous in the most TR way, so I enjoyed that whole interaction. The ring imagery was !!!!, but also feels a little bit cruel in hindsight, knowing where they were going with that relationship this season. But I'm going to stay firm to my thinking that they couldn't possibly be cruel enough to do that without actually making it happen for real one day. ANYWAY. I loved hearing them say “I love you” (though I still wish we saw the first ones), and the dance scene was, overall, wonderful. I loved that it was Tim approaching Lucy, the “it's about damn time” look on her face, the way they come together so easily, the way they look at each other... love.

6x08 | Punch Card Another instance of seeing the team working together, so that contributes to this landing high on my list. (The good parts outweighed the absolute absurdity of Nolan and Bailey seeking medical help when they've only been trying to get pregnant for about five minutes.)

It was fun to see Lucy as a TO. I've long thought that path could be a good fit for her, however I'm not on board with the idea of it being something she resorts to after not be able to pursue the career path she really wants... The show would never do it, but it would certainly be fun to see Lucy be an incredible training officer in parallel to Nolan doing a terrible job at it (no one will convince me that he's a good TO, he's awful). Regardless of the longer term intentions for this, it was nice seeing Lucy work with Celina and to see her kicking ass at it.

And then, of course, the Kojo scene, already such a favourite for me. Beyond seeing my beloved pup again, it was also such an important moment, for Tim, for Lucy, for Chenford. We've seen Tim put on this strong façade (as he always does), but this really shows the audience just how much he's hurting in the aftermath of Ray/the breakup. And it also lets Lucy see that Tim still cares, because until now, she's been more or less been operating on the assumption that Tim walked away easily. It felt so incredibly hopeful, and showed us just how deep their feelings run.

6x04 | Training Day There was a lot to dislike in this episode (Nolan saying the exact wrong thing to Lucy, Angela and Nyla not being as supportive of Lucy as I'd hoped/expected, seeing Lucy struggling post-exam results...), but there was so much to love.

I love Tim and Aaron working together, and Tim busting out a training acronym just makes me so damn nostalgic. And sorry not sorry, it was refreshing to see Nolan get called out (and face repercussions, however minor) for his ineptitude as a training officer. Because while, yes, Celina is a rookie and bound to make mistakes, like Nyla said, “as her TO, that is on you.” I know he's the main character, but I'll say it until I'm blue in the face—it's so fucking boring watching a character win over and over and over again. There's no depth there.

Lucy being an absolute badass was wonderful, and when I tell you my heart stopped when I heard that gunshot, my god. And that hospital scene??? What can I say but the hospital scene!!!!!! That was everything. Great music (*sidebar, they've made some really beautiful song choices this season!!), great to see Tim rushing to her side, and it was just the greatest of the great to watch him supporting her, the way she melts into him, how impeccably Melissa acted that scene... all of it was phenomenal.

6x06 | Secrets and Lies Oh god, what does it say about me that my favourite episode of the season was the one with breakup?!?! 😅 But seriously, the episode gave us alllll the emotionally intense moments, and I'm here for it. Loved the Tim and Angela scenes (my favourite relationship on the show outside of Chenford), loved Nyla working with Aaron again and seeing her dip her toes back into UC work, loved seeing Commander West(!!!!!) back.

Obviously the breakup (and the events leading up to it) was painful as fuck, but they did it SO well. Eric and Melissa acted the hell out of this episode, and it paid off in a big way. It was emotionally compelling and I felt (and continue to feel) so strongly about their scenes. They made it so easy to feel for both of these characters, and that speaks volumes. It hurts like hell, but it was so well done!

Whew, longest post ever! (I suppose I could just have gone 10, 5, 3, 1, 9, 7, 2, 8, 4, 6, but... that's boring!)

Again if I was ranking on Chenford scenes alone, things would certainly shake out differently. And even still, I could probably swap a few of these spots.

Thanks for the fun/exhausting question! 💗

[alexbraindump]

the optimism of mundanity in sci-fi

[word count: 980]

Mundanity serves my favorite role in worldbuilding. Beyond fictional politics, cultures or races sits the - often overlooked - role of the mundane. The things we do in our day-to-day lives. Where we keep our keys, our routines before going out for the day, the junk we may leave lying around. It’s part of a tiny picture that lingers in the shadows of the vast worlds we build and stories we weave. Yet from that snapshot blossoms a viewpoint dripping with relatability, one that places you into the shoes of a character living in that world to a capacity far beyond that which anything else could even hope to achieve.

When I’m writing a character introduction, it’s about more than just the character’s current position and desires. It’s about integrating the world into their life. If space travel is a commonplace fixture of their world and they own a spaceship, what’s the role of that ship to them? Is it like a car, a mobile home, a flying armory? If it’s like a car, have they left it stock, or have they modified and tuned the way a car lover would in real life? If it’s like a home, what furniture do they deem priority, do they keep it clean, is there any decoration? If an armory, what’s the weaponry of this universe like, what kinds of weapons do they want to keep loaded, how organized is it? (check out the first chapter of my story 501-b, also on this blog, if you wanna see where that though process brought me ;3)

Opportunities for both character and worldbuilding are already pouring out from that simple hypothetical. So many things can be said right away with the mundane relationship between a character and their mode of transport. To them, that’s just how it is, nothing special. The same way you’d look at a car. To the reader, though? That’s a nuclear bomb of information you just detonated in their face and they probably didn’t even realize. If you get how a character views their ship, you already start to understand their personality and the role of space travel in that world right off the bat.

It’s always been alluring to me, an element my mind would hook its foxy paws onto right away. While the lack of it wouldn’t bug me much, I’d always start to wonder about it later. Where does this character live, what’s their home look like? By no means am I arguing that this is an absolute necessity to make a good story. Every story has its own unique needs that can be filled however the creator sees fit. But for me, what I want to see and make more of, is something more down-to-earth. And while a good chunk of that is - admittedly - just me being a neurodivergent nerd, I feel like there’s something more to it. Forgive me for getting a little pretentious from here on out, but-

Mundanity in sci-fi is optimistic. It’s this tinge of reassurance that, no matter what happens, no matter how bad things get or how far we make it away from our home planet, we’re still individuals. Whether its huge, bombastic threats like scary evil aliens, or depressingly real ones like corporate overreach and profit motives, we will persist. There’s comfort in that.

When I get to see a character doing their morning routine in a world separated from our own by anything between decades to centuries, it feels good. Like the artist/writer is patting me on the head and saying “there there, things may be shit, but life isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.” And maybe there’s a nihilistic twist on it, like propaganda on a television or corporate products lining a comfy home’s shelves, but that’s still a television or a home. They may come home from the Sub-Minimum Wage Employee Pulper 9,000™, and that will inherently be sympathetic, but when we get to see them toss their coat aside and go to the kitchen to make a lazy, unhealthy meal and slouch on their sofa and pick up a television remote to flip to their favorite channel, the connection that forms is irreplaceable.

And I feel that it’s severely underutilized. When I watched Andor for the first time (amazing show btw, check it out even if you aren’t the biggest fan of starred wars) and we got to see a character return to their mother’s apartment and eat space cereal with space milk, it was somehow one of the most jarring moments I’ve seen in a Star Wars thing. Living situations are oftentimes such an understated part of popular sci-fi media that I actually felt jarred upon seeing one. And I loved it.

That’s just how uncommon they can be. And I hate that. I hate that sci-fi loves to dismiss the mundanities of life, because those are when I feel the most at-home in a universe. I can immediately feel a character’s vibe if I see them kick their feet up in a messy impromptu living room in their spaceship. While you can put in the work to make me feel that same thing through dialogue and actions, it’s arguably even more work.

So next time you’re making a story, why not save yourself some trouble and show your audience a little snippet of day-to-day life in your world? Show us what a character’s phone looks like and how they use it, or maybe if they have a wallpaper (if applicable) or any stickers on the back of it? Or give us some tiny details about how they get from place to place. Is public transport a thing, do they own their own vehicle of some kind, or do they just walk? Hopefully these thoughts conjure the same kind of inspiration in you as the ones that run around wreaking havoc in my little fox brain.

[rayshippouuchiha]

went ransacking through my ao3 bookmarks bcs i live vicariously through these when the going gets tough. some of these might have already been recc'ed alrd but im too lazy to check 🫠

The Menagerie by zegez

Tsuna collects everyone as pets, literally, most if not all of them are animals. it's glorious and very cute

Bad Influence by Emric84

Toji and Tsuna meet, what follows is a catastrophe for everyone else. Toji27 is the most left field ship i had ever encountered but by god was it good while it lasted. ABANDONED but had enough content to it BUT STILL GOD IM SO SAD THIS WAS SO GOOD????

body aches by HeavenlyDusk

In which KHR was originally a very different story.

This one is a little heart breaking but also really hopeful bcs tsuna is learning to be more comfortable w/ being Tsuna™ the protagonist while still maintaining some semblance of himself from a past life. its still ongoing but i have it as one of my comfort fics <3

Overcast universe by Ocearna

a khr rewrite where 1827 meet and bond as kids and tsuna getting that cloud influence. cloudysky!tsuna my beloved.

Beginnings and Middles But No Ends In Sight by Ourliazo

Arcobaleno shenanigans before the curse.

in the hearts of men (there be madness) by Silverfox579

YKNOW WHAT'S SOMETHING THAT'S ALWAYS FASCINATED ME IN CANON AFTER I GOT OVER THE ANIME ENOUGH TO NOTICE IT??? THE HYPER DYING WILL MODE PERSONALITY like after the kyaa badass tsuna lets gooo, you start wondering what the fuck is going on there actually bcs basil is not like this,, what goes on here 👀👀

or!! dark!tsuna au-ish in reborn's pov

Bargaining chip by Mina37

like the one before but in xanxus' pov this time

My Sweet Affinity by Chaotic_Roses

criminal minds au featuring tired w/ a mysterious bg leader tsuna, freshly released from prison hitman reborn, intern gokudera, Hana, and scammer kyoko.

[this could've been] a villain's origin story by petroltogo

Tsuna running into and unknowingly helping villains after helping release xanxus from the ice box should've really been the hill where it all went wrong, surprisingly tho, only shenanigans. featuring!! chikusa and tsuna childhood friendship that i very much adore

whisper in my ear (i'll build your dreams on bones) by Silverfox579

its only a one shot but gOD I WISH THEY EXPAND ON THIS ITS SO COOL I AM IN LOVE W/ THIS FIC I HAVE THIS FIC PLASTERED ALL OVER MY SOCIAL MEDIA, IF I HAVE ANY WAY TO CONTACT THE AUTHOR I WOULD ASK PERMISSION TO PRINT AND BOOK BIND IT FOR PERSONAL USE BCS THIS!! CONCEPT!!!

or!! the five times the stress of war and battle got to tsuna and wakes up the God in his head. (the last two are spoilers for the manga but hnnnggg i NEED to rec this)

a rose by any other name (would taste just as bitter) by heyimflamel

sealing flames has very, very dangerous repercussions. not only are you sealing this person's will to live but sealing someone w/ sky flames whose purpose is to harmonize? you get something dangerous indeed. dark!tsuna corrupting flames one guardian at a time.

High School Montage by HeavenlyDusk

a montage of vongola tenth gen as they navigate through high school through outsider pov. slice of life-ey and very chaotic (the side story w/ the childhood friends oc my beloved 🫶)

The Boy in the Ice by eloquentelegance

UA has to deal w/ these weirdos lurking around their courtyard all thanks to the mysterious ice pillar that just dropped from the sky w/ a boy frozen inside.

rattle this ghost town by blackkat

Mukuro meets Naruto and spirits him away lmao

Set the Skies Ablaze by cywscross

K(anime) and khr crossover that took me by the neck and never let go. it's essentially discontinued now but the 3 chapters it has??? keeps you coming back in hopes that it does, miraculously, update 🫠

To the Beat of My Own Drum by Seito

College AU where reborn is the normal one and tsuna and his friends bring the chaos in his life. the found family that this fic gives and radiates is so 🫶🫶🫶 like i love it so MUCH

that's it for now bcs im sleepy hehehe

!!!!!!!!

[iceglade]

wuk lamat could only have ever been a trans catgirl btw

1.4k words (sorry), dawntrail level 100 spoilers:

thats like the whole point when the dawntrail final arc antagonists are examinations/deconstructions the traditional gender roles. btw.

consider where mamook is in the story. consider who gulool ja ja is to tural.

ive been workshopping an essay about how a few of dawntrail's themes are connected, i think theres an in depth conversation that can be had...

95-100 cannot be separated from the cultural context that came before it , regarding the spirituality of Living Memory, sure, but also regarding legacy and filling the legendary gulool ja ja's shoes™ with mamook being where it is as the lid on a jar that was being filled the entire time to complete a jar mini ecosystem before we crack it open 30 years later in heritage found to see whats grown inside.

dawntrail doesnt go into sexism but it does go into racism, it does go into the psyche of the people who IN REAL WORLD TERMS want rich white men to be the ruling class and the people who arent traditional men who still support that concept. its all connected

like the WHOLE FIRST HALF OF THE GAME WAS ABOUT THE SECOND HALF OF THE GAME AND VICE VERSA GO BACK AND REPLAY THE FIRST PART PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE. you NEED to learn about your culture and your traditions and your history and you NEED to embrace change and growth and outsider perspectives DO NOT TOSS ONE OUT FOR THE OTHER. THEY NEED TO WORK TOGETHER TO FILL THE IDEAL, REAL OR NOT, THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO FUFILL.

MAMOOK LEFT AN IMPRESSION ON ME and the solution presented was learn about one another. understand one another. know their problems. offer and accept help from outside perspectives and grow. which while neither perfect nor fully realized is a lot more than ive ever seen a video game do ever lol. history of war, lack of sunlight, difficulty with getting food, self inflicted self perpetuating community trauma, shunning outsiders, clinging to a status quo so toxic that its actively killing both adults and children - all of these are deeply, undeniably connected.

so.

i grew up in the south.. y'all know how it is!! in some places its BAD down here!!

BUILDING FROM THAT,

IMAGINE YOU LEARNED ALL THOSE LESSONS.

heritage found says okay, we did that. we listened to each other, we learned. we improved. and we did not force this growth upon anyone who didnt want it. we DIDNT abandon our culture or tradition. and STILL our problems persist!! people still die and to keep them alive we have to remember them but it hurts. it still hurts to mourn them. we are still haunted by our past and the burdens we inherited

THIS PLOT IS SOOOO STEEPED IN REAL WORLD CULTURAL PHENOMENON. BTW. THE SENSITIVITY READERS ARE OWED A CUT OUT OF EVERY DOLLAR SQUENIX GETS OFF OF THIS FOR THE REST OF TIME. AAGHH

CAUSE THIS COULDVE BEEN SO BAAADDDD , AND INSTEAD, I LOVVEEEED IT

idk...!!!!! i love living memory as an escalation of the idea that if they're remembered they never really die, but it hurts to remember. (GO BACK AND HANG OUT WITH THE YOK HUY RIGHT NOWWW) this is something real world people live by. was talking abt this with some friends and one of them mentioned living memory's color scheme "being the same orange being associated with ofrendas" in the same conversation where we were just. absorbing how deeply horrifying uploading your loved ones' memory to the cloud os (the wording used was, "the excision of memories of the dead"). one youtube comment said its like playing records of the dead and imagining they're alive again. i am haunted by erenville and graha - "i dont wish they were here again, i just wish they never died"

living memory is "if they're remembered they never really die" twisted to its illogical extreme.

the weight of that spirituality is no mistake. and shutting it down because is SUCH an ethically devastating thing to have to do even on top of your friends' parents passing on and you thinking the place was idk pretty or something (cause it rlly was) what the fuck what the fuuck

theres so much in this expansion about learning about and respecting other cultures and offering aid when its hurting others and themselves

which like makes me nervous for the patch quests btw because we need to talk about, that, vs , this is how we honor our dead

we had to shut it down because it was an active threat and was going to go nuclear but that was how they honored their dead

but i do trust this story. so i look forward to it.

all this to say i think it would be a misstep to have us go "hey dont do the soul thing do this instead". just as much as it would have been a HUGE misstep to have us be the protagonist of this expansion instead of lamat'yi.

AND FOR THE RECORD WUK HAD TO BE THE PROTAGONIST OF DAWNTRAIL FOR THIS REASON. I STAND BY THAT.

fuuuck, flaws and all, i love this game.

i have more to say about sphene and zoraal ja hold on this is all relevant to the original premise trust me.

SO YEAH.

but yeah its no surprise that

1. sphene, a traditionally feminine uwu perfect angel princess queen of REASON

2. (erenville voice) Zoraal Ja, The Warmongerer, Mine Is The Power Mine Is The Path, I Must Surpass My Man-The-Textbooks-Teach-About Father burnt out gifted oldest child king of RESOLVE

are DIRECTLY IN OPPOSITION to

1. wuk lamat, catgirl naruto young and dumb shonen protagonist with a big heart and an open mind warrior princess vow of RESOLVE

2. and koana, emotionally reserved well-studied STEM club vp advanced placement poly catboy vow of REASON

there are people who do not fit the stereotype who are suffering trying to achieve it who want it to end, and then there are people who Double Down.

regarding everyone who lives in tuliyollal and the extremely diverse area of tural, it cannot be stressed enough how Gulool Ja Ja is the guy they write the textbooks about. he is the perfect adventurer who traveled the world and united the people. in the context of the story he is the man on the cover of the fantasy novel ripped shirt rippling abs two swords and all. imagine being his gifted full of potential son ON TOP OF how insane being an oldest child makes you PLUS The War thats why zoraal ja is like that.

i love love love sphene. sphene is using zoraal ja. shes based off of the ideal of the sweet beloved disney princess/queen. she was using his agency like a weapon and her lack of agency as a shield and when he turned against her own people , which he said very clearly that he would do, wuk tells her that she needs to actually help the people she loves and do what she can do, and she interprets that from there - it just so happens that "true to herself" puts her in direct opposition to the person who was encouraging her to be that way.

for the homestuck fans shes a muse and hes a lord IM BEGGING YOU DONT CLICK OUT PLEASE LET ME FINISH MY SENTA

WUK AND KOANA WILL NOT FILL THE SHOES OF THE IDEAL MAN LEADER IN THE EYES OF THOSE WHO WANT A MORE TRADITIONAL LEADER UNTIL THEY MARCH UPON THEIR CASTLE AND STRIKE THEM DOWN WITH THE SAME HATRED THAT THEY STRUCK THE PAST GENERATION DOWN, zoraal ja says, in no uncertain terms

and zoraal ja is wrong.

they repel the second attack on tuliyollal because they ask for help. wuk DOES get a good hit on zoraal ja in heritage found. and zoraal ja throws away the ultimatum he himself delivered by throwing away his army, kidnapping his son, overdosing on aether, and leaving the moment its clear that brute force is not going to take wuk lamat's community away from her.

and sphene cant use him as an excuse anymore.

sphene was programmed to do ANYTHING to accomplish an infinitely increasingly difficult goal. she who cursed me with this soft and powerless nature. my desire to protect my people transcends all others. is there no way to make peace with tuliyollal? if it were you, could you have found a better way? i cant bear to lose them - not again!

there will only ever be more dead, forever.

i rlly want to go into that but its a completely separate topic for another time i just.. love these characters. i love what theyve done with this place.

but no parts 1 and 2 are the same part. dont discard tradition, dont reject innovation. wuk lamat put it best

@ bakool ja ja

@ sphene

what do YOU want? beyond the stereotype your community wanted you to fill?

[somelegobird]

Doc Masterlist

Hi hi

Number of docs listed so far: 7

Rambling Doc:

My largest doc. Anytime I need to write something, I usually go here. Has:

Too many lists, counters, and graphs. (Ninja, Go! count, mech count, dragon count, bounty destroyed count, monastery fire count,,,)

All the named characters and places through the pilot episodes to DR s2 (+ DotD)

Colour coded seasons

An attempt at getting all the lore down and ordered

Commentary and rambles for Every. Single. Episode (I talk too much)

Basically anything that entered my mind during that rewatch

Dumb linking thing Doc:

Has two lists:

One where I tried to imagine how everything would change if the Ninja didn't just leave little Lloyd to hang off a building, most of the reasons are nonsensical

Me thinking about how bad the Ninja actually are at their job and how much mess each season has because of this

Actual insanity:

I swear I'm fine.

Very underdeveloped, made for when I desperately need to do something Ninjago related without too much thinking

Projection™ the Doc:

I started to believe this headcanon before I had any sort of fandom influence, I am proud of myself. Has:

A healthy dose of projecting my own life onto some random guy

AFFECTION YIPPEE

Finished! (DR s2p2 will be counted when it gets officially released in October)

counting all of the physical affection

Woah! An oc!

kind of a persona, actually yes it's a persona around this account

will never have a "finished" state, I just keep adding or removing details as we go

Wish counting

Counting every single time someone makes a wish

inspired by my curiosity about how often people wish in Skybound compared to other seasons

This account is made simply because I cannot trust anything private to reliably hold my rambles. This is public, so even if I end up losing access to this account I can still access and read my thoughts.

If you want to use these docs and the information I've gathered, go ahead! Credit for information gathering would be nice, but in the end none of the actual content is mine, it's just Ninjago, so credit is not necessary.

Also, I'm new to actually posting on Tumblr, so hi :)

[terris-mayweather]

There will be several spoilers for Nikolai's route and probably Cliff's route, too, and also probably Echo in general under the read more!!!

This is just going to be me ranting. I have a lot of feelings™ and I need to vent them.

OKAY SO THE SMOKE ROOM IS SO FUCKING GOOD!!!!!

Who had the right to make such wonderful, cute, interesting, characters?!?!?! And then the ROMANCE in it?! When Nikolai fucking proposed to Sam I fucking DIED.

THE UNEXPECTED THROUPLE WITH CLIFF AND MURDOCH TOO?! I was originally very dismissive of Murdoch, but interestingly enough THROUGH CLIFF'S ROUTE I really took a shine to him! And then his appearances in Nikolai's route also made me more interested in him!!! He seems to have a lot of demons, but is also a complete sweetie, secretly, and I want to know more!!!

I feel really bad leaving William last, but the others just stole my interest at the start!!! I'm sure William is great, though.

All that said, I am only finished with the public builds of both routes, and I am

SO

FUCKING

TERRIFIED

For all of them. Samuel is an oblivious and adorable sweetie, and is a much more engaging protagonist than Chase.

Nik deserves the world and then some (ALSO I'M SO CURIOUS WHY HIS HELMET IS SO IMPORTANT!!! My man's was literally fucking breaking DOWN about it. He deserves hugs and love so much. T_T)

Cliff is an adorable bean with a fiery streak inside him and I LOVE that contrast- and he's too precious to hurt. (Despite some red flags in his how shall we saaay- unwillingness to back down or admit he's wrong.)

And the other two I don't know enough, yet!!!!

But it doesn't matter because with the way Echo turns out and what we know happens to Samuel...

Well I don't see a good ending coming for ANYONE here, or ANY route. And that's the fucking worst. I want Nik and Sam to escape and be happy.

I'm going to need SO many fanfics of love and happiness. T_T

ANYWAY

Having a great time, always terrified, and loving the good things that do happen.

Btw all the side characters are so fucking good. Yao really stole the show for me in Nik's route. Chang is so cool, Dmitri is the best, Jebediah is wonderful, Avery is amazing. Like- the side characters all add SO MUCH to the game and the stories. Uffff.

This is peak content.

[morganaspendragonss]

intimate with brokenness

happy 2023! the strand family dynamics fascinate me, even more so after shift-less and i have Thoughts™ which i have finally sort of managed to collate into a fic. hope you enjoy! and, yes, i am an owen strand defender

title from son by sleeping at last

ao3 | 884 words | character(s) study, semi-coda to shift-less, mentions of 9/11 and canonical character death

Everything changes when Gwyn tells him she’s pregnant. 

They hadn’t been planning on this. Gwyn is still working to get her firm properly off the ground, and Owen is finding his feet as a lieutenant, and they’d agreed this isn’t the time to bring a child into the mix. But she is pregnant, she tells him one night across the dinner table, and Owen knows from the determined look in her eye and the hand she has resting protectively on her stomach that she wants this baby.

He doesn’t even need to think about it before he tells her that he does too.

That night, as they’re lying in bed, Owen reaches over to place his hand on Gwyn’s stomach, over where their baby is growing. There’s nothing to feel yet, not even a hint of a bump, but Owen can already imagine months and years in the future, taking their kid to Little League and helping them slide down the firepole and watching them grow.

And, right there in the darkness of their bedroom, he swears — he will never be his father.

*

The thing is, Walter Strand wasn’t a bad father. He wasn’t the over enthusiastic, or overcompensating, baseball dad Robert will describe him as in forty years, but he wasn’t bad. 

He was just…not there. Not really. Not after the accident. Perhaps not even before that – forty years of silence have jaded Owen too much to tell – but especially not after. Owen created a hole in their family, and his father disappeared into it. They all did, really, but it was Walter who they lost sight of the most. He got lost after the funeral; he drank and he argued and he stayed late at work because he preferred their company to his ruined family’s.

By the time his father wanted to fix things, it was already too late, and his mother was already packing the suitcases to go to New York. His father didn’t even protest once he realised her mind was set, and Owen has never forgiven him for that.

He’s never forgiven himself either, and Owen has always carried with him the dangers of building a family. He doesn’t give up on one though; he almost wants to prove to his parents and himself that he can do this. He is capable of building something and making it last.

And Owen knows that arguments are inevitable, but he’s sure he can make the foundations strong enough to survive.

And he does. He does.

Then comes the moment that rocked the world and, more importantly – to him at least, when he thinks on it later – Owen’s world. A great hole opens up in their lives. and Owen… God help him, but Owen does nothing to stop himself from falling. Worse, he digs even deeper, and he drags his family down with him.

“You’ve sucked the joy out of me, and you’ve sucked the joy out of our family,” Gwyn spits at him on that last night. Months of fighting and too many nights spent on the couch have led them here and Owen knows, deep down, that it’s entirely his fault. History has repeated itself; he’s ruined what he’s built, every brick he uses to rebuild the firehouse taken from those once sturdy foundations that held his family together.

He doesn’t acknowledge it then, though. What he does acknowledge is that Gwyn, ever the lawyer, is giving him an ultimatum.

“Get over it,” Owen scoffs, and he walks out the door.

*

Years later, TK will tell him, “You left when I was seven.”

Owen will reply, “I never left you.”

It’s not until even later, until Gwyn is dead and TK is on his way to building a family of his own, that Owen can accept that maybe both can be true.

He wasn’t his father in the end. He saw TK – Tyler, the embodiment of his second chance – as much as he thought he could, though he does know now that it wasn’t as much as he should have. 

Owen has regrets about how things went with his family. He can never make amends with Gwyn, not anymore, and he was blind when TK was at his lowest. Or… He wasn’t blind, but he did turn a blind eye; he knew something was wrong and, if he’s being honest, he knew what was wrong, but he couldn’t admit to himself that it was happening at all. 

He hasn’t been the best father, and certainly not the best husband. He missed milestones and he spent too much time at work, but he got to watch TK grow up. He knows his son. And he had something real with Gwyn that meant, no matter how far apart they became, they could always find their way back to each other.

Owen has been through enough, and seen TK go through more than enough, to know that they don’t have all the time in the world, nor can they stay in bed and let the world pass them by.

So he’s going to do better. He’s going to be better for Catherine, for TK, for Gwyn, for himself.

And there’s something he’s known for a long time, perhaps before that second hole even came into being.

TK is going to be even better.

[welllpthisishappening]

Hey there! You said to message you about what we're reading, and I felt like chatting about that (hopefully you won't mind). I really love hearing your thoughts on various books.

I've been reading the Rokesby series by Julia Quinn (Bridgerton prequels) which I am really having fun with. I'm also reading The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig, Darling by K. Ancrum, Impossible by Nancy Werlin, The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams, The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson, and An Unexpected Earl by Anna Harrington (second of a series called Lords of the Armory) As you can tell, I am really bad at picking just one book at a time!

What are you reading at the moment?

Please come here to talk about books with me whenever. I promise absolutely never mind. And gosh, do you have a lot of things to talk about! I am impressed, honestly. I would never be able to keep all those plots and storylines straight!

I'm a strictly one-book-at-a-time kinda lady. Which is not great for the number of books on my Kindle, actually. Because I have this horrible habit of just downloading them, so I don't forget that I want to read them, and then I wind up with, like, 15 books on there, and I make Justin pick a number as to what I read next or give him a general idea of what the genre is and make him pick from that.

I am horrible at making decisions, you see.

As to what I've been reading recently, I've been a bit all over the place. I mean, there's been kissing in.... all of them, but the type of kissing varies. Some of my recent ones ,though:

the last in a series where someone on this football team falls in love with some quirky™ girl, and the sports descriptions are only kind of incorrect

a historical romance that was truly TOP TIER where the main characters used to flirt in their first season, but then she got married because her father was going to die and he wanted her protected™ but the guy was an unfeeling, uninterested jerk and then he died and now his sister is threatening to take her children away and so she needs to prove there's a responsible male presence in the home, so she and her lawyer!brother devise a scheme to fake an engagement, and who is the perfect candidate for this fake arrangement than her former flirting partner who is now a decided rake and in need of funds???

a set of short stories set in the daevabad verse, which is a fantasy trilogy i read last year and LOVED, but it is INTENSE and the world building is vast and i'm still not sure i understood the first book at all, but the stories were gorgeous and some of them made me cry

the sequel to a modern-day supernatural book that has witches and demons and werewolves and everyone falls in love and i liked the first one way more

another sequel, but this one is part of a series that's a spinoff of a different series and is focused on this one candian family and they own a ranch and everyone is decidedly emotionally stunted and needs heaps of therapy but they fall in love really well and kiss even better and the last one was my favorite because they were idiots! and pining for years! and the dude played hockey

If you can't tell, I've been traveling a lot. And spending a lot of time on team buses. And planes. And, so, I read. When I'm not making more Instagram reels.

[leafdebrief]

Hi friends 👋

This is mostly a message for people on/from Twitter, and for me to repost as a link over there. Tumblr does long-form better and I can't think of any other way to communicate this effectively without a lot of writing, so here's the deal.

I'm getting close to finished compiling the various things I need to send for my pre-2023 mail people (yes, I am still doing this because I collect first and send when everything is perfect) and tying up a lot of loose projects. There's still a lot of work to do but with the time I've been not tweeting, I've been painting, soldering, building, videoing and editing my busy little hands away in preparation for surprises to come. BUT—

I need to get even more serious now. Or at least as serious as someone like myself can muster.

Right now, for me that means laying out my Grand Plan for this year on this post and then getting right to it. I'm addressing the Twitter fam directly because for you, dear friends, that will kinda mean I won't be on Twitter that much anymore. Really this time.

Yeah yeah, I know. We all threw up our arms and threatened to leave umpteen times, and then we all settled to stick around to watch it all burn, and for a while I was satisfied with that pace. It was fun watching the fire.

But the fire has already been reduced to embers.

Now it just feels like standing in front of a smouldering pile of garbage and gleefully inhaling its toxic fumes.

For the last few months, Twitter has slowly but very steadily been silencing the people I want to talk to—in a number of different ways—or outright making them disappear from me. Or worse still, replacing them. With what?

Antivaxxer

Antivaxxer

Transphobe

Elon Musk

Climate change denier

Literal nazi

Elon Musk

Antivaxxer

Everything I see everywhere in this place and now in my life is telling me in no uncertain terms: "mobilize now".

Bad actors are already mobile. The pandemic created an opportunity for our collective horseshit to fester, and now it is very commonplace to see people who publicly—and often violently—act out their racist, phobic, misogynist agendas in the real world. Stuff that nobody would dream of saying out loud 10 years ago for fear of getting punched are now everywhere I look. Nazis used be a Not Cool thing.

But people are literally dying.

I've been trying my level best to stick around and keep up morale on behalf of those who are being actively targeted, but then the shooting at start of the Lunar New Year gave me a shake. Once again, the target is people who look like the person I love most in the world. Her whole family. All of the people in my life that I hold dear, in fact, are targets in one way or another.

The funny thing is, violent extremism isn't even the worst threat we're facing. The walls are closing in from every direction: unfettered spread of deadly viruses is past the point of fixing, and ecological collapse the likes of which our civilization has not ever seen will happen in the next 10 years.

Does that mean I'm giving up the fight to go take care of myself and mine?

Don't be absurd. I'm just angrier.

Lucky for me and nobody else, the coping mechanism I developed for my anger in my 20s is doing everything faster. Like, way faster. More aggressively too.

But I need to focus and organize my efforts a bit better so I can start doing things out in the Real World™. The good news is that I already started preparing for this months ago and have a headstart now.

Basically, I think what I need to do is integrate all my various battles into one ongoing project/series/lifestyle, so I can just always be working towards those various goals while still creating content that can use any platform available to spread reach and find new ways to fix things.

Here's the plan:

Tour de'Brief is happening for real. I will be touching more grass this year, in different cities, to visit the various dispensaries I've become close with and talk with locals about local issues (keeping myself and others as safe from disease as possible naturally). Why?

Well for starters, it's the disposable thing again! I will be personally trying to make storeowners commit to getting rid of theirs, in exchange for an LD-exclusive battery recycling bin (to be sent to me for collection) and a bunch of assorted creations for all their employees. Yeah, I made stuff. Lots of it.

Twitter presence will ramp down to a mostly communicative one: announce things posted on other platforms, coordinate things with people, answer questions, and probably Spaces. Maybe the odd shitpost here and there, but I'll be draining my drafts folder for the foreseeable future. Does that mean... no more content??

Actually, no, it means NEW content—I'm going back into the YouTubes! Going full production mode, even more content hopefully. Big ambitious videos with all our friends, collaborations with musicians.. and Twitter hanging around in my back pocket to connect with those collaborators. I am turning into a television set.

Tumblr will still work for long-form writing, but also with more focus on showcasing finished works (paintings, trays, electronics, etc). There's lots of stuff to show now since I've been saving it up.

The podcast! (Wait, what??) That's right, I'm booting it back up! The format will be more guest-based since I have all you great pals to talk to now.

That mailing list! Once I'm done with friendmail, I'm going to just start randomly sending you shit, as was my original plan. #FreeDrugs is forever!!!

What I need most right now is a way to cover more ground. The way I've decided to achieve that is by being a pest, so.. the usual really, but much more personal this time around. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar though, so I'll be needing lots of time to make bad creations that will hopefully entice a store of people to temporarily tolerate my presence.

If this sounds like a bad plan, it might very well be. But stick with me here—

My thought is that I can use the opportunity presented by fighting my climate battle to shoehorn in whatever other missions need attention depending on the geographical area. Different places have different problems; I need to learn about how each community tackles them, if at all, and gather context.. read the vibes... then break shit!

Figuratively that is.

Of course there will be plenty of literal breakages, and that's part of the fun!

I am preparing for the world to look very different, and very Not Good, in the coming 5-10 years—the extent to which is not clear to me yet. I would be narcissistic and delusional to think I am going to save the world by collecting batteries from pot shops and arguing with the locals, but I need to do everything.. anything.. that I can, all at once preferably, while trying to expand my reach organically by essentially docu-series-ing the next year as it happens.

It's gonna be wild itellyouwhat.

This Friday we'll have a good bash before I quiet down the Twitter presence indefinitely, but I want to still be reachable and connect with the people I met there. It's a hard line to draw. There will be lots of mail goes back and forth though, so I'll still be retweeting and replying whenever possible.

If Spaces disappears, I have an entire mailing list of friends—digitally now!—and the means to operate outside of Twitter in a variety of different ways. We will continue to connect digitally until I make it to your hometown, and until then I will continue to mail things to anyone on that list... you're helping to make my video content, see?

We always make the greatest team.

[theultracharmingladynoire]

This has been a rant building up for a while now and I just need to put it in here but it's that. I remember the joy and excitement I felt when I watched y/o/i ep 1 - 10 because I literally. Knew nothing about the show except for the fact it was gay?? dvsjgshd but it just was so GOOD but then I. Came across a couple of interpretations of ep 11-12 (which I hadn't watched by then so I had no idea what went down) which was just people being disappointed, people thinking the ending was changed for a season 2, people thinking it was out of nowhere (especially V/ictor's comeback?? I guess??) And that really. messed up my perception of the show?? Like upto then I was forming my own interpretations of the characters and after this I. Was lowkey scared to watch the last two episodes because I was afraid of it being bad™ (if that even makes sense) and then one day even when I did watch them I didn't watch them properly?? Like I even missed a lot of scene and dialogue because I was too nervous about what I had read about it before.

And like. I don't even think those interpretations are entirely wrong for record. I understand that especially when there was a whole week between episodes and when the fandom was so huge and active people might have a very different viewing experience which directly plays into how they interpreted the character arcs! And those interpretation are extremely valid even though I disagree with them. The show definitely leaves a lot upto intrepretation of the viewers so there isn't any interpretation that is necessarily wrong™ (Idk how to phrase this sorry)

But it's just that I wasn't able to form MY own interpretation properly because I was influenced by others' ?? (In lack of a better way to word it) and I just. I've been mulling over this for a whole MONTH and going back and forth and back about the ending. And it just feels very draining when I go out to look for meta and people who had opinions similar to mine and find...like what ten people?? it kind of makes me feel like I am looking at things wrong, and that probably the finale WAS just bad or whatever (which seems to be a more common idea in what I've seen)

I do think there were pacing issues, and I do think the character arcs CAN be interpreted differently than what they are in the finale but I also am a bit sad that not many people tried to recontextualise the show in light of the finale (again, it isn't a MUST But I really wish people tried to if I am making sense?)

And it's sad because I know this can be fun if I just created my own bubble without all the meta and opinions I disagree with but it's hard when that is somehow always what I come across? And I KNOW I should stop reading a post when I see that it may suggest something towards the opinions that I disagree with (because that'll just waste my energy), but then what if I AM wrong? What if those posts are right and I am willingly closing my eye towards what the characters originally are or something?? Is what perplexes me out and really makes me sort of nervous and uneasy(?)

And now it is getting worse and I feel like I am slowly losing all the love I had for this show and it absolutely SUCKS because I just want to enjoy this silly little show and now this is all....just a mess

[onstoryladders]

so thought about getting into byler or rather stranger things latley but i remember your post about byler having strong gramblack vibes and i am still haunted by the disaster that was gramblack (my beloved). and honestly i dont know if i could turn off the shipping goggles when i know they are shipped by others when i start the show. so from a scale of like toddblack to gramblack what kinda mess is byler?

Oh, this is a nice one. I don't know how but anons on this blog ALWAYS manage to read my mind and ask exactly what I want to be asked 😂 I've wanted to talk about Byler and Gramblack for eons, you have no idea gdubdgsy so here we go!

Alright, I'm gonna preface this by saying that Gramblack is truly the ONLY thing in my past experiences that still manages to give me some doubts about Byler. If it wasn't for that, then I wouldn't have anything to fear, because every single detail in Stranger Things points to Byler, and even though many people joke about Byler ending up like Johnlock or Klance or whatever other Ship That Never Was™, those have absolutely nothing in common with Will and Mike, starting with the fact that Byler is already half canon, since Will is canonically in love with Mike.

Gramblack was just-- terrible writing, but it was also malicious (because the writers wanted to skew our perception of Gram and Black's relationship so they could “surprise” us with that shitty twist) and concerned characters that weren't as important to the story as the main ones (I don't care what anyone says, the writers cared about SeanWhite the most lol which is such a shame because between the three pairings they were the least interesting to me, but I digress).

In Byler's case, we have an established love triangle between three characters that are very central to the narrative. The Duffers said Will is gonna have an important role in season 5, and we're gonna see the resolution of his coming of age arc – which is not just about him being gay in general, but also about his feelings for Mike.

Now, I can't see the future, so I don't know what will happen in season 5. Maybe the Duffers will catch a bad case of Selective Bad Writing™ and start fucking up the Byler storyline out of nowhere, what do I know. What I do know is that everything points to Byler endgame, and many arcs and characters are gonna suffer if they decide to take a step back from a path that THEY chose – because there was absolutely no need to show how IN LOVE Will is with Mike if that storyline has to end up in rejection.

And since the other couples in the show are well written, I don't see why the writers should suddenly decide to make Mileven endgame when... well, I mean, there must be a reason if no one can stand them, even in the GA 🙄

What I'm trying to say is that what makes Byler similar to Gramblack is that both pairings are what the story NEEDS in order to work. In both cases, if you mess up the couple, you mess up everything else too, because the relationship is so strongly intertwined with the narrative that it's a crime not to see that.

In Gramblack's case, that's what happened, but as I said: it was malicious, and all the hints about Gram being in love with Black were put there for a reason. We weren't imagining things. We weren't delusional. The Not Me writers consciously decided to EXPLOIT our expectations to gain an emotional reaction from a twist that didn't work.

I don't think the Stranger Things writers are gonna do the same thing. The backlash would be a nightmare, and they seem to care about their characters enough not to fuck up on purpose.

Why build up a romantic connection for four season and make it end up in rejection? If Will was a girl or El was a boy we wouldn't be here rn 😭

[air3d3lalm3na]

some of my thoughts, starting off inspired by the last part of that last queued post — about intersex specific/exclusive language — but then going into a related ramble… Held back on this topic for a while honestly. Most of us who saw this stuff go down have just been tired of it and went silent a long time ago. might as well ramble on it now.

--

the whole Assigned (Sex/Gender) At Birth (AFAB/AMAB) framework did NOT need to be stolen and appropriated by non-intersex trans people. we all watched it happen online. and anyone saying otherwise got the tumblr treatment™…

…which amounts, to basically, got shouted down by the arrogant pricks who used basically cult tactics in their ~discourse~ around 10 years ago (Comply and subscribe religiously to all their hyper-strict and even at times wildly messed up viewpoints, or be cast out; fight everyone you know IRL on these topics until you’ve alienated them all. shit like “AFAB privilege” and “monosexual privilege” was bandied about lmfao. “butch privilege” for anyone who dresses butch, “misogyny” being framed as against anyone who dresses fem. all the bullshit.)

the people on here have been pretty good about casting out much of this nonsense as the nonsense that it is. there’s still a hyper-religious-about-it MOGAI-esque core (and i feel bad for some of them, at least those not in it for power/clique reasons, for how tied up in it they still are.)

but one thing that never got really dealt with was the fact that this language was outright stolen from intersex people, a word to talk about the actual physical abuse against them. on a site that loved to talk about appropriation, they appropriated this willfully and spited anyone who said something.

but yeah it’s dishonest. i was not medically, surgically and socially FORCED/ASSIGNED into something like (many) intersex people were. i am not “assigned” female at birth, i just was female at birth. i get shit every time i don’t tack on the “assigned”.

and they did it because they felt that being born the way we all were, was dysphorically, deeply, uncomfortably wrong. and i get their rationale, but it doesn’t make it right. we have our own different experience and it literally requires different description and language.

like, if you feel that the body you didn’t choose to be born with was that wrong? the trans community already made words and phrases for that. for the hardcore stealth types, there’s “woman/man of trans/medical experience” i.e. your birth and upbringing do not have to define you, and this phrase acknowledges that. for those who are ok with referencing and emphasizing their transness, “trans(gender/sexual) man/woman” with the adjective first. either way, we have words and can build on them.

not only does this disingenuous theft silence intersex people — a group probably smaller than us, being realistic — but yeah…

…the people who were always the angriest at those of us who just left the first word off, tended to HATE when those “~assigned” female at birth/raised female, talked about that experience, and the sexism involved. there were major, heavy efforts to silence us even for mildly referencing it, and even force us to apologize for acknowledging our own experiences.

this shit basically funneled a load of ftm spectrum/trans male/transmasculine people who wanted to talk about the sexism in their lives, into the only forms of feminism that would accept it. aka radfemism (i won’t call it feminism, it’s its own thing in itself tbh) — transphobic types who demanded they also acquiesce to harmful beliefs that actively hurt themselves and really, didn’t help anyone. you had detransitions back into the closet, followed by re-transitions when they figured out it wouldn’t work.

this shit headfucked so many people and i can’t help but feel that it was all social engineering. all orchestrated bogus shit from the right wing, astroturf style. to get the feminist voice out of trans activism and the trans voice out of feminism, to alienate everyone, divide and conquer stuff.

feeding people bizarre shit on both sides so that, eventually, they’d just be overwhelmed and leave and go quiet and be demoralized, in the end.

and all this supported by various twistings of language, on both sides.

and this specific piece of language, on the back of a group of people who have already been so deeply abused, by the medical institution, by their own families… yeah, more silencing is all they needed.

i’m just tired of the stupid convoluted nonsense. i support people being who they are and having a voice to talk about their lives, and talking about their lives in uncensored, authentic and honest ways. which this online nonsense was always the exact opposite of.

and back to the initial topic of the post — as to the origins of trans and probably all lgbt people, yeah, i’ve read the studies and i do think that what makes us this way at birth (even non-intersex, non/trans/cisgender gay/bi men and women), is probably hormonal, in-utero, and counts as a form of “neurological/occluded/occult (hidden) intersex/difference of sexed development” that we do not yet have the full ability to medically understand. it’s becoming pretty clear that testosterone plays a role in female at birth LGBT-ness and likewise estrogen/progesterone and male at birth LGBT people. (despite the resistance and stigma against that idea from some narrow-minded folks.) yes, there’s definitely more to be learned there. but what we experience is still so drastically different that i don’t like to put the intersex label on it… nor their other terminology like ASAB/AGAB. that’s theirs. some basic respect is and always has been in order.

it’s just so intellectually dishonest in every single way, the way that has been enforced to talk about this stuff. i refuse to be someone else’s intellectual pawn.

watching all this go down was like watching separate cults battle each other and i have no interest in membership in either, or any. i got swept up in the first one (specific flavor of ideas on queer/trans stuff), but refused to go into the second (radfemism, their distortion of otherwise could-have-been solid feminist ideas into a literal hate group against anyone who isn’t a strictly cis gay separatist woman who Does Woman Correctly/PC)……… both were like fucking nuns with their controlling rules about what was correct (groupthink) and what was incorrect (sin/thoughtcrime to be extinguished) ….

…just because one is bad, doesn’t mean another will be “better” for you. the only GOOD thing for you is mental independence. you don’t need some group ringleader doing your thinking for you, or telling you how to talk about your life. it’s so childish. if we’re all adults then we don’t need to lean on that.

…

And it bled out into IRL, off the internet.

Because of course it did. Because it was planned and fomented in probably some think tank.

So now you run into signs of it irl, you can’t escape it.

…

i feel like this makes making friends or romantic relationships so fucking hard. at this point i look for signs of THE most Normie cis straight/straight leaning people possible, who happen to have some progressive/somewhat left leaning viewpoints on life, who are open-minded rather than ideologues and snobs and nuns and…….who just live and treat you and others like a regular human being.

at this point anyone who is too plugged into the nonsense is impossible to be around. like just let me be gay or whatever (labels suck) and trans and not let it be a big thing and let us live in peace. we had our 15 minutes of being forced into fame with no protection and now we’re being culture-warred on and it’s a pointless mess and i’m just tired out of it.

and for god’s sake, while you’re climbing out of it, don’t step on someone else’s neck!

[khizuo]

I think there’s a lot more nuance to your f1nn5ter take that’s missing simply because it doesn’t really take into account… how and why people use tumblr?

most people don’t use tumblr to try and advance queer liberation or promote social justice and mutual aid…. they use it for entertainment first and foremost. they want to post/see things that they enjoy, instead of focusing solely on real life issues. hell, tumblr can also be an ‘escape’ of sorts from the shitty reality around them (or that they personally experience)

so they just… don’t want to make their entire feed about those real life struggles, and doom posts about those trying to kill and erase them, and people asking for help to escape their shitty lives. it’s distressing and sad and not what they come to tumblr for. instead they focus on things that are more simple and lighthearted and positive, like a popular gnc streamer.

the point I’m trying to make here is that…. I don’t think you can accurately judge someone’s moral beliefs or actions based on their posting/reblogging habits, because for them this isn’t the moral beliefs website— that’s not what they’re here for. It might be for you, and that’s okay! but that’s not how it is for, id argue, the majority of users. they want a safe space away from that and i don’t think pressuring or shaming bloggers for doing that (/for not posting about [X] issue) is going to help anyone.

hi anon! if anyone out there following me uses tumblr as an escapism site™, then good for you. i'm commenting less on the moral character of individual people as i am on a general culture i've observed on the site as a whole. and the fact is: posts about how "revolutionary" f1nnster are get tens of thousands of notes while trans crowdfund posts struggle to get to a thousand.

the thing is — very few people on tumblr are completely removed from the reality of queer oppression. posts on the topic are frequently reblogged, because such a large part of the userbase is lgbtq. this is why f1nn is so popular on tumblr rn — people are upholding him as a shining example of gender-noncomformity. the problem comes when people (mostly tme queer people) start legitimately calling him more "revolutionary" than trans women because he's "challenging gender norms" or something. this completely ignores context — f1nnster is a popular wealthy white streamer, while transfemme folks often face disproportionate levels of violence and poverty, often as a direct result of coming out.

a lot of tumblr activism is performative. i'm not saying this in a "this makes xyz a bad person" kind of way, what i mean is that posts about social justice and hating capitalism and shit will blow up with the people reblogging them doing nothing to actually build material solidarity, which, yes, involves mutual aid and uplifting marginalized voices. now, i don't know everyone on tumblr, so I'm sure there are people who do mutual aid/organizing work offline and then come on here to exclusively fandompost. but i'm also sure there are people who don't do any mutual aid/organizing work and who then come on here to reblog a few social justice-y posts and then never think about concrete actions to take to actually live up to that which they say they care about. and these are very often the same people who will reblog a post about how "revolutionary" f1nnster is.

I know of plenty of people on tumblr who could participate in mutual aid but don't. this popular tumblr idea that crowdfunding posts are evil or whatever needs to die. it screams of liberalism and a "not my problem" attitude that is actively harmful towards goals of liberation. my complaints are about the performative leftism that I observe a lot on here, and how this culture of performative leftism has chosen f1nnster to uplift as its newest hero. and honestly, I'm more worried about trans poc and multi-marginalized folks who are struggling to get their basic needs met than i am of white and/or class-privileged queer people feeling bad about their escapism site™.