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luvrrszn · 10 hours ago

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friends, right?

RAFE CAMERON x FEM READER

summary being rafe's best friend is already pretty darn good—but it's not enough

warnings angst, fluff, mentions of ward..., not proofread

a/n bruhhh the rafe obsession is real rn...

masterlist

being rafe's best friend had it's perks.

his undivided attention, sharing his kook privileges, and front-row seats to whatever questionable life choices he made (free entertainment 24/7 basically).

it also had it's downsides, being that you were just that. his best friend.

—

you were the camerons' neighbour. you'd lived next to them on figure eight for years, and you'd grown up alongside sarah. being best friends with her meant that you spent most of your time at her house, and that led to you and rafe developing a friendship.

almost everyone thought that you and rafe were dating, especially since neither of you bothered to correct them. however, nothing ever lessened the sting of the harsh reminders that you two were, in fact, not an item.

when sarah started hanging out with john b and the pogues, she didn't leave you behind. you became friends with everyone else too, much to rafe's initial dismay. he eventually came around when it became clear that both you and sarah were not going to stop hanging out with the pogues just because rafe "didn't like it".

so it became routine. almost every day, rafe would come to pick you and sarah up from the cut.

—

it was a day like any other. after hanging out at the chateau, everyone went their separate ways. you and sarah were waiting at the dock for rafe when you saw a familiar boat come into view.

rafe came into view, shirtless. his body was toned, sweat dripping down the side of his forehead. his hair was in a short buzz again, a haircut you'd teased him about multiple times.

you were about to say hello when you noticed a girl in the boat, wearing the tiniest red bikini.

sarah gets onto the boat first, throwing her bag onto a seat as she says, "hey. what's going on?"

"beach day. we're heading home now." rafe replies, offering you the usual hand as you step into the boat.

the girl has an unpleasant expression, as if rotten fish had been dragged on board. barely sparing in your direction, she stands up and wraps her arms around rafe's waist, resting her head against his back as he turns the boat around.

the whole ride back to figure eight, you're left wondering what she has that you don't.

—

and it wasn't like you were delusional either.

rafe had definitely been dropping hints, and giving you signals. there'd be some days where you were cooking for you and sarah in their house, and he'd walk up behind you and wrap his arms around your waist, burying his face in your hair.

there'd even be some days where you'd all be watching a movie in the camerons' home theater, and rafe would cuddle up next to you, wrapping an arm around your shoulders.

—

about a week later, you're at sarah's house again. feeling thirsty, you decide to go downstairs to grab a drink of water. you walk past rafe's room and you hear topper saying, "dude, what happened to that chick? the girl you were with last week?"

you couldn't help but stop to eavesdrop.

"dude she was so fucking clingy, i had to get rid of her ass." you heard rafe chuckle.

"bullshit. you just don't want anyone who isn't" topper continues. when you hear him end the sentence with your name, your heart skips a beat. your curiosity is peaked, wondering what rafe will say in response.

"nah. she's too much of a pogue to be anything. plus, she's my best friend."

your heart drops. too much of a pogue?

you thought rafe wasn't bothered by your friends, not anymore.

you go downstairs and walk straight out of the front door, without so much as a word to anyone.

—

sarah has called you, multiple times. you finally pick up and make an excuse about feeling unwell, and that you're sorry for leaving so abruptly.

you'd just stepped out of the shower, trying to scrub off the feeling that lingered on your skin after finding out what rafe truly felt, when your phone buzzed with a text from rafe.

beefy: hey bug, sarah said you left without staying for dinner cause you weren't feeling well but i know you're bullshitting. you were literally fine, i heard you laughing from sarah's room. what's up?

you: i'm fine

beefy: don't lie to me

you: ofc you'd say that

frustrated, you throw your phone onto your bed and ignore the dozen texts from rafe for the rest of the night.

—

for the rest of the week, you ignore rafe. you don't say hi when you go over to his house, you don't say hi at the country club, and you don't text him, not even once.

you walk straight past him at parties, without so much as a glance in his direction.

but he figures he'll leave you alone for a while, just while he figures out what he's done so he can properly apologise.

he realises he's out of time when he sees you dancing with some guy who has his hand resting on your waist.

he storms over, and throws you over his shoulder, walking towards the front door as people around him move out of the way.

"rafe, what the fuck are you doing? put me down!" you whisper angrily, hitting your fists against his back. he doesn't say a word, and only sets you down on the pavement outside the massive mansion the party was in.

you recognise the look in his eyes, the anger. but it was never ever directed at you. except today.

"what the fuck were you doing in there?" he grits out.

"dancing, rafe, mygosh. and i was having fun too!" you groan, exasperated. it had been your pathetic attempt to move on.

"dancing like that? in front of all our friends?"

"not my friends rafe. your friends. my friends are the pogues, which i guess makes me too much of a pogue for you, huh." you don't notice when tears start to roll down your face.

it makes him go pale.

he made his sweet girl cry.

he uses his thumb to wipe away your tears as he says

"look, i didn’t mean it the way it came out. i was just frustrated because you’re always hanging out with the pogues, and it’s been bugging me. i was angry and said something stupid—because the idea of you getting closer to them, it just... it didn't sit right with me. i like you, a lot. more than best friends like each other. i was worried that you spending so much time with the pogues meant you'd develop feelings for one of them, and i was an idiot. i was a jealous prick, and i said something i didn't mean. i'm sorry, bug."

"rafe, you're a fucking idiot." you grumble as you bury your face in his chest while he wraps you in a tight hug. a hug so tight, as if rafe thought you'd slip away if he didn't hold on tight enough.

—

the next morning, sarah catches you slipping out of rafe's room. she chuckles, and says, "took you two idiots long enough."

#📓—leawrites #rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #outer banks #obx #rafe cameron angst #this is so bad #idk what to write #someone please send in requests i beg u

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garpen · 2 days ago

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My January 2025

1) I deleted my gender, pronouns, sexuality, and spirituality off of all my public accounts (with my name and face) after you know who was elected. Having conversations with my ama about packing go bags just in case. Stock piling on necessities and food just in case.

3) I got hit by a car (ER doc gave me the all clear, so no worries)

3) My PCP sent me back to the ER two days later due to a neurological issues and possible brain bleed (Doc gave me the all clear, so no worries)

4) The hospital I was in caught fire (It was put out relatively quickly, so no worries)

5) Watched a man at said hospital die (I used to work in as a SS in a SNF/Rehab with tons of geriatric patients so I'm desensitized to death, so no worries)

6) My card information was stolen to pay for someone's onlyfans subscription (card has been canceled and I am in the process of getting a new one, so no worries)

See parts 1-4, and 6: Here

7) One of my dogs got out and ran away (we got her back after a few hours, so no worries)

8) My sorta ex's (we're still good friends it's been four years) crush asked me out and I rejected them. Funny actually bc they've tried setting me up with another one of their friends awhile back ago. Dang I got three bitches in that friend group, I didn't realize I had game like that (we're all chill though I think, so no worries)

Not gonna put the whole convo, but here's a snippet:

9) Many friends, family, and family friends are contacting me and saying we will not be able to see each other for a long time bc ICE raids are happening nearby and we are all very worried. Discussing with my ama that if something happens and we need to leave the USA, which family/friends would be best to go to in Mexico. (I am very much white passing but the fear is still there as both my parents are from Mexico, and especially worried for my non-white passing family members and friends)

Just one example-

10) Someone made a fake Instagram account pretending to be me. And tried to take money from my friends/family. One of my siblings was dead ass a minute away from sending them $150 (literally happened today at the very end of the month, but my peeps have already started to report and block them so no worries).

✨Can't wait to see what February has in store for me ✨

#I don't even know what to tag there's just too many things going on #ao3 curse #?#cursed #bad luck #ahhhhhhh

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nimrochan · 3 days ago

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Genuinely, Anon, what do you want from us?

Between 80 years of suicide bombings, cafe bombings, mall bombings, car bombings, bus bombings, plane bombings, school bombings, rocket attacks, shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, car rammings, rape, and infanticide, what do you want from Israelis? From Jews?

You want us to have specific, narrow opinions before you approve of us through little social media postings?

We KNOW that not all Palestinians want us dead! We know that innocent Palestinians have died or been horrifically injured by Israeli strikes! We know that some IDF soldiers did bad or fucked up! That’s a given that we know, or it should be! We don’t want the land and we don’t want innocents to die.

We shouldn’t have to express all this before you give us permission to talk!!!

We know they die in higher numbers than us! Anon, after 11 months straight of Hezbollah and Hamas UNPROVOKED rockets, how many more Israelis have to die before you approve of our country destroying the source of rockets? Because we’ve never sent a rocket first since Israel’s inception. Because through the same breath as “not all Palestinians are bad” so many of you turn around and say “all Israelis are evil.”

How many more Palestinians have to die by Israeli strikes before you say, “maybe Hamas should just stop sending rockets?” Instead of blaming US for others attacking us! And for not dying as much!

It’s very easy to have an opinion on the internet from a rocket-free home, when you don’t have to run into a bomb shelter twice a week, like my family does. It’s easy for you to have an opinion when you’re not bordered by a state run by Jihadist terrorists who want nothing more than you and your entire family dead.

We offered land 5-7 times, Palestinian leaders said No, we want you Jews dead.

We cured Sinwar’s brain cancer while he was in jail for multiple murders. And he wanted us Jews dead.

Israeli hospitals treat Palestinian kids, and sometimes this happens (spoiler: mom wanted her kid to become a terrorist and kill Jews when he grows up, literally after Jews treated his condition SAVING HIS LIFE, for free);

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Some of them hate us so much, they’ve raised their kids to martyr themselves against us;

youtube

Some of them hate us so much they crossed over the broken border on 10/07 to continue raping and looting our people after Hamas was done, 3000 of whom were noncombatant Gazan civilians.

Some of them hate us so much they celebrated with music and handed out candy while Hamas drove around dead naked bodies on 10/07:

Some of them hate us so much they celebrated the recent release of terrorist who have killed us and raped our women;

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Despite all of this and all of decades of antisemitic propaganda seeping into mainstream western culture, the current Israel-Palestine war has the lowest combatant-to-civilian ratio in modern warfare history (1:2, when the average is 1:9 for urban warfare) because the IDF literally goes out of its way to evacuate people from military targets and limit civilian casualty;

Hamas killed 1200 people in one day. With superior weapons, air space, and 100 times the soldiers, the IDF has not killed 1200 Gazans a day for 470 days straight.

(Imagine how much more violent the US and other countries would be after such an ugly terrorist attack.)

And then you sit there, acting like we have no right to grieve for our own losses? Like we have no right to demand safety for our own families? Like antisemitic assaults and vandalism didn’t rise 300% around the globe this past year because PEOPLE. HATE. US?

This isn’t some passing internet activism trend for us, this is our real life.

If you ACTUALLY care about Palestinians, you need to demand Hamas to stop firing rockets from densely populated areas! And to give back all our hostages! You need to demand other countries stop giving them money to build weapons and tunnels!

So I ask again, what do you want from us, oh Great Expert Of The Middle-East Anon? How would YOU fight an impossible evil willing to kill their own to kill yours too?

Why is the burden always on us?

Tell you what, Anon. Maybe next time another country’s literal leaders break over our border and kill as many civilians as humanly possible while putting some babies in ovens and beheading others, cutting open pregnant women, raping women with nails and knives, kidnapping people and dead bodies, and shooting their pets on top of that, we’ll just be nice and not go to war because a bunch of safe, non-Jewish people halfway around the world have opinions to express.

Next time we’ll just give them the land, and it’ll all be peace and rainbow and sunshine farts.

And when Jihadists have our land and kill us all, they will come for you next.

🙄 the AUDACITY of some of you people.

i genuinely used to follow u on ur main. i cant believe the heinous shit youve said on here. oct 7 was an atrocity and NO ONE not a single israeli that day deserved to die. but atp, why not a single post saying that you hurt for palestinians? even if not in the same way. what abt the hostages israel is killing? there is no plan to wipe out hamas, not without wiping out gaza. i cried seeing that little boy who was released from hamas eating food in a hospital, cried for the mothers and fathers begging for their children back, and i will continue to weep yet you can't even seem to shed a single tear for the thousands of dead palestinians.

ok i spent 3 hours writing a long and detailed reply to this and then tumblr fucking crashed and deleted everything and i am so so tired so :/. I did appreciate that you condemned October 7, and I was genuinely glad that you showed care for Israelis and Palestinians both, which is a rarity in my anons, which is why I tried to do a more lengthy reply in good faith. feel free to send me a dm if you want to talk further. cannot type that out again but please check out these:

Whispered in Gaza

Builders of the Middle East

Palestinian Youth for Development < please donate to this, info on how is in the comments. Started by Moumen Al-Natour, who's on the ground directly getting food to other Gazans, despite being tortured and targeted by Hamas. This org is a great way to provide actionable help and aid without Hamas stealing it.

rootsmetals < educator, meticulous sources in captions of her posts. frankly i'd recommend just reading every one of her posts since october 7

basic summary of what I typed: I have made posts about the Palestinian people caught in this war, and it is tragic and horrible and awful. I want nothing more than an end to the fighting, but this will never happen with Hamas in power. I'm also allowed to centre my own experiences and my own grief and fear on my private blog on tumblr.com, and it is deeply unfair to demand that a Jewish person should make more posts about xyz to prove they're compassionate enough, especially when antisemitism is rising at insane rates and the only people posting about it are overwhelmingly Jews.

#I am on fire today so here’s a novel #Gaza #Palestine #Israel #antisemitism #antizionism #Zionism #i/p #i/p conflict #i/p war #jumblr #Jewblr #i stand with israel

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prettyboysdontlookatexplosions · 1 day ago

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medialog august-december 2k24

i was like, should i just abandon this and start fresh in 2025... but no. also i'm putting this behind a cut bc it is long but it's shorter than it sounds bc LOL working 7 days a week is not conducive towards having the brain space to interact with a bunch of new art!!

watched

ponyo - THIS IS THE CUTEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!!! miyazaki/ghibli is a big blind spot for me bc as a kid i was like "but i want anime to be pretty, like sailor moon..." so i never got into kiki or totoro (very stupid but again i was: A Child) and then as an adult, this is embarrassing, i tried to watch spirited away and just literally didn't get it. i was like, i am so confused about what is happening and what emotions i am supposed to be feelings. and i know that spirited away is a movie for children and this makes me stupid. but i have never pretended not to be stupid. anyway i would die for just about every character in this movie and when i watched it a second time to make nick watch it i was so full of tenderness for how lovingly it captures what it's like to be a small child who has a small creature to take care of that i felt like i could explode!

deadpool & wolverine - i think if i had been in a better mood when i saw this movie i would have disliked it more but as it was i was in a HORRENDOUS mood and, basically, had a good time. funny to watch this, the Superhero Movies Isabel Has Never Watched Cameo Show (literally i had never watched an x-men other than first class, in which wolverine only appears to say fuck off, or either of the two deadpools), and still get to experience the same OMG IT'S HIM rush as everyone else did, but for matthew mcfadyen. the guy next to me was like "i love channing tatum" when channing tatum showed up and like, same.

trap - great movie to see with a group of like 10 people with whom to giggle the whole time. josh hartnett understood the assignment and his dad-vibe era is soooo much hotter to me than his twink years ever were (not always the case for me! but between this and how hot he was in oppenheimer i've really warmed to him...). i think it's nice that m. night shyamalan loves his daughter so much. ladyraven has a ballad with the line "faustian trade-offs" which caused me and no one else in the theater to laugh real loud. her music is pretty bad but tbh in an era when people want to put chappell roan on the A-list i'm not even mad. it was funny trying to figure out her niche though because like the vibes are obviously supposed to be taylorish (the cabin onstage... lmao) but the music was giving... idk, ariana? also it's just inherently funny to make a movie premised on the fact that it would be really easy to narrow down who the serial killer is by identifying the adult men at a pop girl concert + this movie REALLY captures the vibe during the opening act no one gaf about a pop event concert, like i saw 5SOS open for 1D and that's exactly what it felt like

popstar: never stop never stopping - rewatch, duh. is this the funniest movie of all time? it's gotta be up there, right?

josie and the pussycats - also a rewatch, duh. love everything about this but most of all the soundtrack, the songs are legit incredible, no fictional band has ever had better music (rip adam schlesinger who contributed some songwriting!!!). first time rewatching this movie since figuring out some Stuff and understand now that rachel leigh cook needs to be on the Oh Those Were Gay Feelings. That's What That Was list. (rosario dawson too, but i already got there with her.)

vice - really incredible to think it would be possible to fuck up a movie about how dick cheney is basically satan but somehow mckay managed. christian bale is a professional though, i feel like we don't appreciate enough that no matter how bad the movie or how stupid the writing he's out there giving an absolute top tier performance every single time.

aliens - sorta half-watched this one but idk i feel like me and james cameron just don't vibe. not as incredible-looking or cool as the first one.

godzilla minus one - really really cute!!!!!!

jurassic park - rewatch on the big screen, still slaps the hardest of almost any movie ever

twentieth century - this is i guess nominally a screwball comedy (howard hawks, 1934, for those of you for whom that means something) but it's about these two toxic theater people who are horrible for and obsessed with each other and it's... darker... than my experience of that genre has usually been. in a way that sort of works in its favor partly because it just gives it a certain interest and partly because the gender politics of screwballs can be so dark themselves so it's kind of a relief that this one lacks the cognitive dissonance of pretending this all isn't horrible? idk. it's a weird one. but i liked it, on balance. there's a (pretty funny tbh) running gag about suicide threats and a really bananas third act plot that comes out of nowhere... great performances across the board and some real bangers dropped into the screenplay!

the substance - i didn't, like, love this, and i think a lot of common criticisms of it are right, but some are also very silly (guys i think the director knows nothing about the morning exercise show makes sense... i don't think she was going for a realistic depiction of 21st century celebrity...), and i did have a good time for the most part (the last 30 minutes is gross in a way that doesn't do it for me... but i know it does it for some people and those people deserve movies too...) and respected its commitment to its own bit, as well as the fact that it's basically a fairy tale (a woman who lives in a tower makes a bargain with a force she doesn't really understand to regain her beauty...). oh also i liked that the thing that drives the back half of the plot is essentially the idea that you simply cannot have a 22 year old's body without also having to contend with a 22 year old's dumb dumb stupid ass piece of shit idiot brain. haven't seen a lot of people comment on that aspect of it but it was like my favorite part!

female trouble - people throw out the word iconic a lot but like what else is there to say? rude, disgusting, occasionally genuinely offensive, mostly (for me) delightfully so... really great to watch with a crowd that would whoop and cheer for I'M SO GLAD I HAD AN ABORTION and THE WORLD OF THE HETEROSEXUAL IS A SICK AND BORING LIFE... also like it's really key for the way this movie functions that divine is a fat drag queen that most people do not consider the pinnacle of beauty but it's incredibly clear that john waters and this movie does... like divine's constant proclamations of her own gorgeousness are in a kind of inherent tension with the average american's disagreement with that sentiment but in a way where it's like, if you disagree you are an idiot and this movie is not yours. she's so hot in this it's crazy!!

michael clayton - i wanted to watch a talky thriller-ish movie and the men of the ringer podcast network literally never shut up about this one so i gave it a shot and it delivered! clooney predictably great but i had no idea tilda swinton & tom wilkinson were in it and they are both also awesome, as is merrit weaver in a small but very well cast role

venom - you can sort of glimpse the movie this movie would be if it weren't shackled to What A Superhero Movie Is Now / loosely to the MCU even though it pretends it's not, and i bet that movie would be a lot of fun!

black christmas (1974) - perfectly done urban legend horror with an interesting little pro choice streak, great cast, camera work so perfectly spooky and tense even i noticed how well it was done, makes good use of the cinematic potential of christmas lights. i really liked that this movie is short and a slasher but all the characters in it feel very well drawn even though we don't spend much time with almost any of them... reminded me that this is actually possible to do and i should be harder on movies that don't do it!

black christmas (2006) - nowhere near as good as the first one, but it is, uh, absolutely bugfuck crazyass bananapants start to end. my favorite of many deranged writing choices in this movie is that the sorority mother makes them all open their secret santa every year with a gift for the murderer who killed his family years ago in this house and then when one of the girls' townie boyfriend is like "this is the house that used to freak us out when we were kids" the sorority mother is like, "why?" ?????????? ok!!!!!

heretic - hugh grant is a fucking movie star. i love sophie turner and the other girl was good too. sort of loses steam once the "actually" scary stuff happens because horror movie shenanigans are hard to make as scary as the situation of two young and not very experienced girls slowly realizing they are trapped in a house with a man who just keeps pushing the boundaries of the social contract a little further, but i had fun

the apprentice - not a good movie but a great viewing experience for those of us who have reblogged in our lifetimes approx. 1 million combined gifsets of sebstan and jerbear... like yeah those are my guys and my guys did great :) i think my favorite thing about it as a movie (other than the way the "look" of it updates with technology, which is a cooler idea i wish had been used for a... better movie?) is that it really beats home the aspect of trmp wherein he has no social skills at all and has never felt authentically comfortable in a group of people in his entire life, which is something i think we should culturally be meaner to him about

gladiator - dumb (affectionate) movie magic. russell crowe has so much movie star charisma while looking so much like Just Some Guy it's literally crazy. when he kisses the little dolly of his wife who's about to die ;_;

raising arizona - miracle movie, can't believe i'd never watched this before. the coens' control of their tone is so incredible to see so early in their work (still gotta watch barton fink one of these day). incredible cast, gorgeous colors, so funny, so weirdly sweet, when it finished i felt like i'd watched a magic trick

erin brokovich - watched this for the first time since high school and like what else is there to say but Queen Icon Legend Slay? i am speaking of course about steven soderbergh but julia is pretty fucking incredible too.

conclave - i'm gonna be real i feel like the hype got to me a lil with this one because it's not as bitchy and fun as i feel like i was led to believe... also requires more buy-in re: the moral direction of the catholic church than i anticipated. however it does have its moments and it's nice to see some of our best actors being good at their jobs and it looks great!

the philadelphia story - i found this movie so delightful to watch that for a moment i really thought she might run off with jimmy stewart at the end and not get back tamed with her abusive ex..... but such was the power of the hepburn/stewart chemistry in that one drunk garden scene that i found myself totally incapable of actually integrating the gender politics of this one into my feelings towards it... like i just couldn't be mad at a movie that gave me a scene that made me want to scream JUST KISS!!!! the most anything has since the first time i watched "cooler"... do you know what that is? for me to bust out "cooler" as a comp? my god... i understand why my friend has been like that about hepburn our whole lives and am also now fully baby jimmy stewart pilled

gladiator ii - the consensus is right on this one: not as good as the first, paul mescal is no russell crowe, but denzel really ate. my friends and i laughed out loud at almost every single denzel scene. we're so lucky to have him.

wicked - bad movie of a bad musical, fundamentally misunderstands the function of songs in a musical and thus shoots every single musical number abominably, as ugly as you've heard, we are not advanced enough technologically for me to emotionally invest in CGI Goat Voiced By Peter Dinklage, but ariana deserves an oscar. the prettyboy was pretty good too. orivo can really sing but her acting was kinda giving Distressed Pixar Mom for me although i'm happy to add this to john m chu's many crimes.

out of sight - the romantic premise of this movie is CRAZY but george clooney kinds of sells it actually because and not in spite of the fact that he's one of those curious Incredibly Handsome But Not Very Sexy actors... like you believe that she wouldn't really hold a grudge against him locking her in a trunk with him, because, what, clooney's gonna act untoward? no... not him... j. lo joins andie macdowell as an actress out of whom soderbergh somehow coaxes a much better performance than experience would lead you to believe she is capable of. shockingly stacked cast of pros doing great, INCREDIBLE production design - banner movie for characters costumed to match or complement their interiors!!!

burlesque - dr. sam from new girl fucks stanley tucci in this movie... i literally can't stop thinking about that. xtina maybe has the all time highest ratio of vocal chops to charisma, she has the screen presence of a recurring character on a cancelled WB drama and then she opens her mouth and you're like, damn. i would watch an 8 season HBO sitcom of cher and stanley tucci running a failing burlesque club. at one point i said out loud "chekhov's air rights." great time

logan lucky - "what if steven soderbergh made a heist movie but decided to put his coen brothers hat on and, also, cast channing tatum as a divorced dad who wants to support his daughter's dreams but is seriously wigged out by pageant culture?" yes please. absolutely. adam driver almost never acts in movies i actually want to see but he really is one of the real ones.

babygirl - one of those movies where i can understand lots of things that didn't work for people but i, personally, was completely rapturous the entire time because i wanted a movie where i could walk out saying "nicole kidman did that" and i got that AND ALSO (a) a story about a perfectionist who hates herself and (b) sex scenes that are funny and weird and awkward and warm and human. that's so many things i love happening at once, i will happily forgive and overlook any flaws. i really just loved how much the two of them are actively figuring this thing out as they go and how that's embarrassing and goofy and also sweet and fun. plus nicole kidman really did do that, i mean, like, my god... my god....

fantasmas - you have to watch fantasmas... why haven't you watched fantasmas yet... i really struggle to imagine the person who would follow My Dumb Blog but not be into fantasmas... "the gay ones don't draw dicks, they draw eyes"... julio torres is the voice of a generation

the franchise - not quite as much of a banger as i wanted to be but likable enough, & i'm a sucker for showbiz jokes (jokes about insecure actors, etc.), although i think chris ryan had a point on the watch pod when he was like, the thing about the satire elements of this show are that if you know anything about the actual production stuff on superhero/franchise movies it's hard to satirize because like, the real stuff is actually just that crazy... there's a running thread about the overworked VFX guy and it's kinda funny but also like, well this lines up more or less with what those teams have actually said... anyway. i want to say i'm a lil bummed it didn't get renewed nonetheless but also i forgot until i was typing up the list of things to document here that i had never gotten around to the season finale, so i guess i can't really honestly claim to be that bummed lol. (watched it while washing dishes - pretty good!) did love daniel bruhl as a sensitive artiste director being soul-crushed by the studio machine though! that guy's great.

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r. o. kwon, exhibit - this one's tough. ultimately, there were actually a lot of things i liked about this book. it had some moments that felt really human and well observed (when the protagonist says something about how usually orgasms aren't worth the guilt and then says she knows she's letting us down and her paramour says who's us and the protagonist says all women... that's funny and real and not unrelateable to me for different reasons!). the bones of it were i think ultimately solid - like yeah she's terrible at communicating but ultimately the book is about her running away from the hard fact that her husband wants a baby and she doesn't and the psychology holds water throughout, i think. (also a funny paragraph about how she knows how to cook but mostly subsists on like handfuls of nuts and bread dipped into olive oil or whatever and then she's like "and you thought i could raise a child?"... also relateable...) i REALLY related to the idea of being a person who simultaneously has the memory of experiencing the loss of faith in god as genuinely, actually traumatic and also being like "btw my family might be cursed by vengeful spirit, it's a whole thing, but i gotta try to talk to her before i do this because she kind of gave me the idea," and i really liked that the book didn't spend any effort on reconciling these two things because... i mean iykyk, like i really can't explain beyond "sometimes that's what it's like" - AND i also liked the ultimate reveal of that storyline and how it tied into the core character work of the main plot. plus the whole thing is like the "trying stuff out sexually as a vehicle/metaphor for owning your whole self" thing that i (a) have enjoyed writing in fanfiction and (b) really loved watching in babygirl lmao. unfortunately the writing was the most annoying tryhard I Get It You Have An MFA ass prose i have ever encountered... i complained about this at the time but it's craaazyyyy to use the word "mirific" three times in a ~200 page novel lmao. deranged. calm yourself. i also felt like the dialogue was really bad although i guess i can't totally rule out that this is a book about artists and artists actually are that annoying? idk though... it didn't feel stylized it just felt weird... who says "tippled"... so, ultimately i couldn't say that i "liked" this even though it had elements i admired or enjoyed.

naomi klein, the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism - as i mentioned at the time, very enamored of its framing device in a very popular nonfiction/thomas friedman lite kinda way, but when it's not doing that (which luckily is most of the time), this is an informative and well explicated accounting of the horrors milton friedman has unleashed upon the world. i liked her fundamental argument that you can't politicize along economic grounds horrors committed under communism but not do that for capitalism, which has sort of seeped into general internet leftist thought (a testament to the success of this book) but which i appreciate more having seen how she builds her case.

the red nation, the red deal: indigenous action to save our earth - read this for a mutual aid book club that never happened lol. at the end of this book they're like "well probably none of this is new in the climate justice conversation but we don't think things have to be new to be valuable" and like... on the one hand true... on the other hand if you're even vaguely aware of climate justice discourse... not a lot here is new. i also, perhaps unpopularly, have become kind of a... idk... i mean when people are like "we can't solve climate collapse without dismantling capitalism" these days my reaction is basically "well one of those things might happen in the next two hundred years and it's not dismantling capitalism." i'm not like a tech-zealot but a... tech-realist? idk. this is not what i want to be true but it is my honest accounting of the situation. so, any argument that's like "step one: dismantle capitalism" is... it's just not where i'm at these days.

patrick radden keefe, say nothing: a true story of murder and memory in northern ireland - there are no doubt quibbles or political issues to be had with this book, a story of the troubles focused largely on a particular group of IRA members operating in west belfast in the early 70s - as an idiot coming into this subject basically cold, i would have appreciated slightly more grounding in the political situation leading up to the swelling of violence in this period - but, damn, this book is fucking mesmerizing. keefe really brings the people involved to life, particularly the young IRA members at the heart of his chronicle, and while it's clear he doesn't condone all their actions, my own sense was that he was more interested in truly understanding and making clear their own understandings of their motivations & understanding of themselves & ethical framework than he was in passing judgment (and i also definitely felt like he had a certain admiration for the integrity of someone like brandon hughes or dolours price, who were always willing to own what they did and why they did it, and a genuine disdain for how fucking crazy it is for gerry adams to rebrand as a peacenik when literally everybody knows he spent the early 70s telling people to plant bombs lmao). (also having read empire of pain... he definitely holds the sacklers in lower esteem than the IRA, lol.) the final chapters of the book also touch on the really fascinating difficult question of how you morally reckon with the revolutionary violence you did if the revolution you did it for never came to pass - this is the heart of why his fellow ex-IRA comrades feel so betrayed by adams, who has left them to shoulder the burden of that guilt alone while pivoting to the compromise they once agreed would not suffice which was part of the reason for all the violence, and it is something i think about a lot as someone who would not self identify as a pacifist and thinks the historical record leaves no doubt that sometimes violence is necessary for change but nonetheless feels very reluctant to endorse specific acts of revolutionary violence in theory. thrilling and thorny, ultimately i would say deserving of all the accolades i learned after reading it has apparently received lol.

patrick radden keefe, the snakehead: an epic tale of the chinatown underworld and the american dream - not quite as tremendous-feeling as say nothing, but that's mostly because that's a crazy high bar; this is a really fascinating look at the human smuggling trade (& other organized-ish crime) in NYC's chinatown in the 80s/90s, including the middle aged woman who was at the heart of much of it. contains: some totally deranged gang warfare stories; a really fascinating look at the weirdness of chinese immigration policy in the 90s, when china's one-child policy pushed normally anti-immigration republicans to switch on this issue for pro-life reasons (the one child policy... maybe the one thing every american politician shares the same view on, for different reasons?); interesting background on fujian, the high-outmigration region of china from whence many of the principles in this story came; an accounting of an insane boat journey gone so wrong that at one point after the would-be migrants have been trapped in a harbor off the coast of africa (i forget which country), when they finally leave, two of them decide to stay because the chinese restaurant they've opened is doing so well. i keep thinking about the fact keefe highlights that of the hundreds of doomed migrants on this hugely traumatic journey who wound up deported after crash-landing, nearly all of them eventually made their way back to the US.

kazuo ishiguro, nocturnes - my first ishiguro since my teen ishiguro phase (a concept that should really be regarded the way that teens getting into heavy metal and grunge is in pop culture e.g. a sign to check in on their mental health lmao). didn't love these but i can't tell if that's because i prefer ishiguro as a novelist or because i'm just bad at reading short stories... also to be fair there were at least 2 ishiguro novels i read back then and was like "the fuck was that" lol. some very funny moments and a lot of like, amusing portraits of unlikable people, and i do love his style, which is like, a pathologically conversational first person that years of reading since has taught me is much more technically difficult than it looks, but ultimately it felt pretty slight.

naomi klein, doppleganger: a trip into the mirror world - klein takes on, like, "the wellness to alt right pipeline" is an oversimplification but topics in that neck of the woods, inspired by the wack ass shit constantly being tweeted by Other Naomi (wolf), with whom klein is frequently confused on twitter. this is an inherently very funny premise for a book and a lot of what klein says is in my view pretty accurate, and some of her literary/theoretical musings on dopplegangers as a Thing are interesting to read, plus the whole thing is on topics of interest to me, aka Alt Right Derangement And Weird Shit People Are Up To Online. however..... so klein says that she herself was very offline until covid happened, basically, and so if you have been online longer, and especially if you have been actively reading stuff about Weird Shit People Are Up To Online, then this book is basically a smart person catching up with topics you yourself already know a lot about. so in a funny way i found this a more enjoyable read than the shock doctrine, because it's less of an unrelenting fucking bummer about human evil and suffering, but it was also less enriching, because she didn't really bring any new insight to topics that, again, are probably in the top 5 of Post Headlines I'm Most Likely To Click On. like yeah, deranged alt right types are using the language of social justice and inequality and bodily autonomy to further their various causes... tru... i mean it is tru... i also think the fact that her default is a Not Online person who only changed her vibe after covid makes her a bit more of an internet doomer bc she doesn't viscerally get the nontoxic value possible to find in Online through diligent curation lol. but i do think it was a solid accounting of the subcultures and and ideologies she explores so like i said i basically liked it and if you're less tuned into weird internet radicalization currents than i am you will probably find it informative!

suzanna clarke, piranesi - i don't even know what to say about this one, probably tied with tender as my favorite book i read last year (strong fantasy year for me i guess). it's so crazy that suzanna clarke wrote jonathan strange & mr. norrell, the most perfect book of all time, and then did this, which is also the most perfect book of all time, in a completely different way. her gift for atmosphere and voice is second to none and in this one she uses it to draw us into caring so deeply for a narrator who can't even remember his own past - the book in some ways is a mystery and the doling out of information is perfectly paced but the reason it works is because we just love this guy because of how much he loves the universe. the final chapter expresses something about survival & upheaval & change (&, sure, trauma, if you want) that, as i said before & will come as no surprise, is so so so precisely keyed into an idea so deeply important to me... ahh! just sublime!

v. c. andrews, flowers in the attic - book club!! this book is CRAZY but there's only two real things i want to say about it: (1) a lot of what's totally deranged about it is that on the one hand, it has the most gothic novel ass set-up ever - horrible incest house of dark secrets and shame, children literally living in an attic, physical decay, etc. etc. - and on the other hand in all other respects its sensibilities are the most american 70s suburban ass thing, so that it's like, a gothic novel where the evil mother goes to secretary school and the kids watch sitcoms and cut construction paper in the secret attic... like, the tonal clash is soooo crazy, it's incredible; and (2) ok so like by the time it happens you 100% want those siblings to fuck. like. you just do.

suzanna clarke, jonathan strange and mr. norrell - counting this as last year even though i read the second half in january lol. ummm best book in the world. third time through and i genuinely think it gets better every time. most purely pleasurable reading experience of all time.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south - ditto re timing (technically i have like a couple pages of this one left and a few more quotes to post lol). i picked this back up as a comfort reread after the election and it slaps so hard it's crazy. love to read about how a bunch of war-losing loser traitors lost in no small part because it's hard to wage war as a modern state committed to resisting the tides of modernity!!!! sucks 2 suck!!!!!

listened

maude latour, sugar water - i'm kind of obsessed with maude latour not in terms of being obsessively in love with her music, although i think she's very good, but because she's my go-to example of someone out here doing girlpop toiling away in the spotify minds unremuneratively who i would easily and even gladly swap fame-wise with basically any of the pop girls in our current rising class (thinking of olivia/chappell/sabrina... none of whom are like terrible - well ok i have yet to hear a chappell roan song i think is actually good lol but i guess she can sing and it's nice that she's gay - but also alleged newcomers like tate mcrae? addison whoever? madison beer? these are not real people stop trying to act like they're real people! ladyraven ass pop girls...). she just makes really solid, well written, inventive but still catchy pop. i returned to this short album a lot more than i expected to, often thinking i wanted to hear just the first song (a standout) and then realizing i was happy to let the rest play through. also gay stuff, if you care about that.

sabrina carpenter, short n sweet - like it's all very competent and espresso deserves its flowers but who cares? who could possibly ever care? i've been SUCH an antonoff apologist and please please please is the first song where i felt like i was hearing him as his haters hear him, it sounds like shit. there are better moments and worse moments, some ok lines, she can sing, etc., but where's the vision? where's the personality? nothing to grab on to.

beabadoobee, this is how tomorrow moves - beabadoobee is obviously talented and intelligent and her music sounds enough like a kind of music i like that i always feel like i should like her more... but i think she's a little too stripped down and sophisticated for me. that said "ever seen" was one of my top songs of 2024, total absolute BANGER

charly bliss, forever - doesn't quite live up to the heights of young enough, but given that young enough is a strong contender for my favorite album of the past decade, i'm not really sure it could. this one is pop-punkier and very hooky lots of fun, and i just love eva's taffy-pull voice and wanna listen to her sing anything. also it has a song that sounds so much like a pop punk version of a kesha song it's legit uncanny to me.

pom pom squad, mirror starts moving without me - big step up from their last album, IMO, and i liked that a lot too! ambitious in an interesting way but also lots of fun. this one also has a song that at points sounds so much like a kesha song it's crazy, as does a 2023 album i was recently listening to by underscores... i feel like we're living in a big post-kesha moment and i don't know if anyone is appreciating it enough...

pale waves, smitten - i agree with pale waves that "what if avril lavigne got really into shoegaze and was also gay" is a great idea for an album. really pretty production on this one!

070 shake, petrichor - my friend dave was like "this album might be bad but i'm obsessed with it" and i listened out of solidarity and was like, i don't like this but i can understand why you specifically would. friendship!

charli xcx, brat and it's completely different but it's still brat - i never really listen to enough albums to justify having an album of the year but something about the release of the remix album really opened up the whole project to me and i was completely obsessed with it for a while and still love it. track by track most of the remixes are not quite as good as the original track (although some, like caroline polacheck's gorgeous turn on everything is romantic, are definite upgrades), but something about the spirit of generosity that infuses the project, the way it makes it all feel like a project more than an album, the sense that charli has thrown this party and she's invited up and coming spanish rapper bbtrix alongside ariana grande, the way it's less disciplined than the album proper but more expansive, at some points grimier and clubbier and at other points more emotive and romantic... idk. feels like a whole world. the so i remix alone, like - releasing a sad song about your friend who died, and then releasing a faster song about all the fun shit you used to do, that sounds more like a song your dead friend would have produced, is one of the most loving acts i have ever seen committed through art and it made me cry even though i never connected with SOPHIE's music bc i'm not really cool enough to be into hyperpop. rooting for charli at the grammies even though i know it's not gonna happen lmao.

other

jenny holzer at the guggenheim - there was a jenny holzer installation at the guggenheim!! it was really cool!! i finally understood something @rgr-pop said years ago about how it matters that she is a visual artist and her words (incredible as they often are as words) appear physically in a space. it is in fact Different, to see them in a space. in addition to The Classics (i got so fannishly excited spotting IT IS IN YOUR SELF INTEREST TO FIND A WAY TO BE VERY TENDER lmao), the installation also included a lot of her more recent and more overtly political stuff, some of which engaged specifically with the bush ii administration & iraq/afghanistan, which made for intense viewing given that i happened to go right around the time i read the shock doctrine (as did spotting the one about how mothers who have a reason to cry should do so in public....). jenny holzer is great! so glad i could experience that!

#isabel 2k24 #media 2k24 #OK now those can finally be put to bed lol

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theinquisitxor · 2 days ago

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January 2025 Reading Wrap Up

I read 10 books in January, which is a very high number for me right now, but January always tends to be the month were I read the most books. I was super happy with what I read this month, and I enjoyed a lot of 5 star reads, but there were a few disappointments.

1.A Dark and Drowning Tide by Allison Saft, 3/5 stars. This was my first book of the year, and a bit of a let-down. I've read Saft's other books and liked them all, but this one was an outlier. I liked the folklore and magic, but didn't care much for the characters and themes.

2.Spindle's End by Robin McKinley, 4/5 stars. I want to read everything McKinley's written, and this was the next one I picked up. I loved the magic and worldbuilding, as well as the changes she made from the classic or disney story. I loved the focus on friendship and family love as well.

3.The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This is a new essay published by Kimmerer which I listened to on audio. Another thought provoking and necessary essay about how we live and interact with the world.

4.Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, 5/5 stars. This was my Random TBR pick for the month, and this book had been on my tbr since 2020. I had such a good time reading this sci-fi horror, and I did not want to put this down. I enjoyed the deep sea horror, our ensemble cast, and the plausibly mad biology.

5. A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett, 4/5 stars. This was my other Random TBR pick for the month, and has been on my tbr since 2018. This was a classic I never read growing up, but I was glad to read it as an adult. I didn't love this as much as The Secret Garden, but I can see why it's so beloved.

6.Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik, 5/5 stars. I don't typically gravitate towards short story collections, but I'm so glad I picked this up. This was a mix of short stories from her publishes series, plus original works. The sneak peak at her newest project was a treat, I recommend picking this up if you are interested!

7.Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid, 2/5 stars. This was another disappointment, but one I can't say I didn't see coming. I've liked all of Reid's other works, but this was not good. I do think Reid is a talented writer, and the writing is very strong, but the rest of this is just not good. Bad portrayal of the middle ages, xenophobic of scotland, butchered the characters from the original. :(

8.The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by HG Parry, 5/5 stars. A new favorite, and HG Parry keeps getting better and better. This is a dark academia magic school book about faeries, portals, 1920s England, classism, friendship, and trying to fix things. I loved this book from start to finish, and it's my favorite I read this month.

9. Melmoth by Sarah Perry, 3/5 stars. An interesting little gothic (horror-ish) novel set primarily in Prague. This was much more gothic and dark than I was anticipating, with a bit of a speculative twist. I can't say I enjoyed this book a whole lot, but rather appreciated the writing, the story, and craft of it.

10. Forging Silver into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer, 5/5 stars. A reread that I enjoyed just as much as the first time in 2022. This is one of the few YA series I'm still reading and loving, and I can't wait to pick up the second book which just released at the end of the month. I've been waiting years for it, and can finally see what happens next!

Overall, very strong month and a good way to start the new year! I hope the rest of my year stays as strong, and I'm hoping to pick up a new series to start in February!

#reading wrap up #January 2025 reading wrap up #fantasy books #a dark and drowning tide #allison saft #robin mckinley #spindles end #robin wall kimmerer #into the drowning deep #mira grant #naomi novik #lady macbeth #ava reid #the scholar and the last faerie door #HG Parry #melmoth #Sarah perry #forging silver into stars #brigid kemmerer

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wyvernity · 10 months ago

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been thinking about the sinnohtrio lately......plus misc other stuff

also, casual ko-fi drop!! get something in this sketchy style starting at $10 woop woop

#finally decided to do a commission test run u_u #pokemon #trainer lyra #trainer kris #trainer dawn #trainer lucas #rival barry #rival silver #ayalumi #hisuian zorua #luxio #timeskip tag #rkgk #anyway it's sinnoh time !!!#still figuring out their designs and lore but this works for now #god's specialest little guys & their very normal bestfriend who they would kill/die for. up to interpretation who is killing/dying #dawn is the platinum protag who meets giratina and becomes champion #distortion world affected her way more than compared to cynthia and cyrus since she's still a developing kid. but hey cool ghost hair!#4-5 yrs later lucas gets blasted to hisui..lost his memory for the three years he's there and when arceus sends him back he's just like Man #the entire time barry is CHILLING PLAYING HAVING FUN #and forever worried abt his friends ): dawn & lucas are soo nonchalant about what happened to them it's a bit concerning to everyone else #design comments umm the only thing that matters is that they still have their og scarves 👍#and i guesss these are spring/summer outfits. winter dawn gets leggings and big coat ok. she already has too much yin energy #btw i use the cleanse tag as the direct opposition to the spell tag even tho that's probably not a real thing LOL)#oh yea barry wears the tower master ribbon 24/7. tower tycoon in training and won't shut up about it (i love him)#character dynamics i will talk abt that in another post if i feel like it... these days i just want to go replay pla aughh

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hibiscusseaart · 4 hours ago

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i have thoughts too First, once Konoha is made and there's more safety its actually possible that there could've been babyboom, since its more secure now to have kids (hospital, safe environment, education and ect). Then ofc the numbers would dwindle bc from what we can see irl more education = less kids. Plus i think more girls got opportunity to become a shinobi since there's an academy that teaches everyone. Plus Konoha really needed loyal shinobi, like those who never knew another life than to be loyal. Career striving could've also affect the demography.

Also lets not forget that clans could keep up child rearing, but civilians shinobi probably don't. "It takes a child to raise a kid" and in clans it's true, but civilians have less resources and free nannies. Like we don't see any kindergartens in Konoha huh?

I don't think that there's not that little spares in modern Naruto? Im gonna go with teams.

Team 7: Naruto has his own situation. Like Sasuke is the second child, a spare. Sakura is a civilian.

Team 8: Hinata has a sister and smth prob happened with her mom since only her father is around. Kiba is a second child. We don't really know what's up with Shino and Aburame's family structure ?? may be possible he's the only kid but we know so little about him

Team 10: yeah InoShikaCho all have 1 kids. that's on them.

So yeah most clan heirs have two kids (not a lot but its at least two), only inoshikacho clans have only children for some reason. maybe cultural thing in the trinity?

Two kids it not that many, but who knows, maybe if more kids had stable situation in their families they would've had more (Kushina and Kyuubi, Mikoto and Uchiha politics, Kiba's father absence, Hinata's mom absence). And tbf we don't know maybe Shino has like 10 siblings we just don't know about it.

Also I fucking don't believe the academy we saw is the only one in the whole village. Like Konoha is a big village, the most populated one of all. I don't believe that only 20 kids graduate every year. It's bullshit.

I believe that there HAS to be some other buildings of it. Like the one we saw is the main building, where most heirs and important kids/the one with higher marks study. Its just a pure security nightmare to get all shinobi kids in one building. Like what would happen if someone tried to get the academy hostage? like EVERY kid would be in danger. But if there's more buildings, at least some younger generation is safe.

Plus its just logical to spread it a bit so that teachers wont lose their minds with hundreds of hyperactive shinobi babies in one building.

Anyway I think that clans have less kids since there's better education for girls + contraceptives, but also since there's no point to make so much more shinobi, cuz there's also lots of non clan shinobi like Sakura who are filling up the place that used to be for 3rd or 4th clan child. Tho I have no doubt that Hiruzed could've start demography campaign after so many wars esp since there was so little adults he sent literal kids on battlefields in the 3rd war

naruto population worldbuilding is one of those things that i just. can't even think about without getting mad. why are your classes only like 20-30 kids??? a YEAR???? and you're failing half of them??????? and this is allegedly sustaining a military force with tens of thousands of people? No It Is Not. 20-30 people die EVERY FUCKING TIME you introduce a new bad guy for emphasis or whatever!!! replacement rate is NOT fucking working!!!!! chunin exams only letting like. jkgadfjlkj 1? 2 kids per village advance? it's literally sooooo bad kishimoto did NOT think it through. i simply have to tell myself that certain characters are lying <3 or wrong <3

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backpackingspace · 4 months ago

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I am once again thinking about how odysseus who witnessed the horrors that the captured women went through (one of his main duties in the iliad was taking the women back home and making sure they were as comfortable as possible and safe because he was the only one trusted not to violate them further due to his devotion to penelope. And in the odyssey part of the reason circe sent him to the underworld was so that he'd have to listen to all these women's stories (before he could talk to the prophet) ). Who was one of the few that saw women as people and respected their space and opinions. And was then put in those exact same situations. I don't have the motivation right now to do a full literary analysis of this (I'll site the sources too) but oh man one day I'm going to write a full essay on this.

#The odyssey #iliad #Odysseus #Tw: rape #Tw: sex slaves #Tw: camp slaves #Tw: That one time Calypso kept odysseus as a sex slave for 7 years #circe #Something about the inherent trauma of witnessing how your friends treat women #Watching them keep sex slaves #Then having to bring these girls home hearing about their stories seeing the aftermath #Then living in a situation where you have to let a powerful witch use you as she pleases half in payment for lives/food/medicine #Half because she has the equivalent of a gun to your best friends head and if you don't keep her happy then youre all dead #And then that witch sends you on a quest to the underworld where granted you'll benefit too but first #You have to listen to every single captured women from the Trojan war that you didn't Shepard home tell you their stories #Tell you that you're a horrible person while you are living in a disturbingly similar situation #And then later finding yourself trapped as a sex slave for seven years to an immortal nymph #And then being labeled as a horrible cheater for the rest of history #And none of this well historically everybody cheated or it's up to interpretation bullshit #Because it fucking isn't and granted a lot of abridged versions skip this shit #But if you read the full original stories and still think odysseus cheated then you just have an issue with men being victims #Or weren't paying attention i guess #Where's that meme where's it like the text was up to interpretation cut to the text where it very bluntly states what's happening #And I'm not saying odysseus was a good person or that he didn't have slaves because he did. And he wasnt #But first off nobody deserves to suffer that violation #Second they weren't sex slaves they were all nurses/maids/spys and I'm not getting into the ancient culture slavery issues rn #Third there's a lot you can pick to hate odysseus for but cheating/disrespecting women wasn't one of them #They literally invented a new word to describe his and penelopes love and it means to be so in love that you think the exact same way #Also forcing this narrative of odysseus cheating and penelope leaving to be a single girl boss is #Just the fake feminist mindset that stay at home moms are weak and wrong and live awful lives

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pyr0cue · 1 month ago

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Callum betraying ezran, a child ruler who just lost his entire kingdom while celebrating a wedding unaware of the destruction only to be immediately confronted with the guy who killed his father when he was like 10, because he’s dating rayla again. If I was ezran I would simply never speak a word to callum again tbh. He couldn’t be a little mad for like 3 days??

#i actually would never betray my sibling because of a relationship #also what happened to rayla being understanding and overly sympathetic to other people’s pains #like suddenly she has no patience for her CHILD FRIEND who just lost EVERYTHING #like they’re friends?? ezran and rayla are friends??? and rayla has no understanding that her like 13 year old friend might be a little upse #that she’s parading the guy who murdered his father in front of him #why is she doing this like girl yeah. your family was shattered. you know who shattered ezrans family? literally this guy #I’m hoping they won’t be really annoying about this #but like this is such a stupid conflict they literally could’ve talked it out 😭 why didn’t they just talk it out #ezran has every right to be upset for a little bit. let him process for two seconds #the dragon prince #yapping tag #the dragon prince season 7

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thesummerstorms · 6 months ago

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Jason Todd being sold out and lured to his death by his mother, still dying trying to protect her

Annabeth Wayne Chase being conscripted by her mother into a quest that her siblings have never once survived in a thousand years, succeeding only to fall into hell anyway as a result.

#I'm just saying between Athena and Bruce #and Bruce and Catherine/Sheila #Jason Todd #is going to be doing a LOT of projecting while he wraps his head around what happened to #Annabeth Wayne #in that AU #like I think it would intensify his desire to step back into her life actually #especially since I generally HC that as like a 6-7 age gap so he would have seen her as a little kid at the manor #but I would be shocked if his own personal issues don't actually hinder him and get in the way once the parallels sink in #his perception of her has been frozen in time as a dead seven year old for a little less than a decade and THEN all of this???#pjo x dc #dc x pjo #Annabeth Chase

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vi-is-badass · 1 day ago

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I really appreciate that you took the time to respond! This is all really interesting and I'd like to respond to your thoughts one by one.

I hadn't thought of the "feel" of this season like you described here. I actually would like to understand this point a bit more. I definitely think this season got way bigger than the last and leaned a lot more into the arcane rather than the personal and political stakes of the first season. Is that what you mean? Or does it have more to do with a shift in tone?

I think this bit in particular is very interesting because I don't know if I really think of the "vibe" of a show when I watch it, so I'm curious.

I definitely understand the "not enough time" complaint. It's a frequent and genuine critique of the show that I do feel like compounds from little things into much bigger things. And I agree that the pacing was too fast.

I've actually talked with quite a few people about aspects of this and even the best-paced act of the season (act 1) has this same issue where it feels like certain scenes were cut for time. One big one that many people have mentioned is a scene where the strike team decides to use the grey in Zaun. The use of the grey is a very important plot point in the first act. It's something that should be a major decision for Vi's character, but it's skipped over.

I agree that I would have liked expansion on a lot of the things you pointed out as well.

I will admit that Vi is my favorite character (obviously) and I felt like a lot of corners were cut in regards to her character and arc. I absolutely love her writing in acts 1 and 2 (I do know that others have mixed feelings on it though. I'm curious about your thoughts if you're willing to respond!) but the lack of screentime makes it so her resolution is ultimately unsatisfying to me and a lot of the character arcs they set up for her felt incomplete.

In season one and the first two acts of season 2 Vi is struggling to find her place between the cities of Piltover and Zaun. She doesn't quite fit into either one. In the first season she's alienated from Zaun because she's just gotten out of prison after 7 years and Zaun has changed without her so she doesn't recognize the city or its people. She struggles to find the community she once held dear in a Zaun morphed by the man that killed her family. In the second it's due to her choice to join the strike team. Even if it was with good intentions she still joined their oppressor and became a "traitor". And she doesn't fit into Piltover because of the prejudice held towards Zaunites even though her only real tether after getting out of prison is Caitlyn-- a pitovan.

Unless you want to believe that the answer is simply "by Cailtyn's side" that thread isn't resolved. At least not in a direct way.

She also doesn't know her place in the world. She was never allowed to be an adult and discover what she wants to do or what she wants to be. League lore dictates that it's eventually to be an enforcer, which I guess we can infer she became off screen either between the meeting and the final battle or between the final battle and the epilogue, but the fact that it's not really addressed and doesn't happen onscreen I don't really count that.

They don't really allow Vi to move past her guilt and responsibility. She feels responsible for what she did to Powder as a child, she feels responsible for what happened to Mylo and Claggor and Vander at that warehouse, she feels responsible for what happened to Caitlyn and her mother. She feels immense guilt and responsibility due to her parentification as a child and what she perceives to be her failures as a big sister to Jinx. I am a little confused at to how the last act allowed Vi to move past any of this. Maybe I missed something the writer’s implied or something, but I didn’t see what moment or beat was meant to be Vi moving out from under the weight. I get that Jinx tells her that she isn’t Vi’s responsibility (absolving Vi in a sense of the responsibility she feels for her and what Jinx went on to do) but if that’s the conclusion (plus her getting together with Caitlyn) it felt half baked to me.

Why would Vi move past her guilt after all that? Wouldn't the way that Jinx "died" (Jinx isn't dead but she believes that Jinx is) just add more guilt onto her shoulders? Wouldn't she view this as another failure on her part? She "made the wrong choice" and Jinx had to sacrifice herself for Vi as a result. (I don't view it this way but Vi likely does unless she worked through it off-screen)

Maybe other people felt differently. If you have a different view of Vi's arc or the conclusion to it please let me know. I think it would be interesting to hear.

Caitlyn is very interesting because the writing for her in the first act is incredible. I loved the writing for her in the first three episodes even if I was frustrated by her actions. But I feel like the rest of her arc fell flat.

Though I do agree that Caitlyn’s arc ultimately didn’t work, I think I differ from other people in what section of the story ultimately hurt her arc the most. I felt like it was the second act that hurt her arc the most rather than the conclusion. I want to explain a bit more.

I think the way they framed her eventual betrayal of Ambessa is the biggest issue for me. Her half of the story in act 2 is centered around her growing distrust of Ambessa rather than confronting her actions against the undercity or showing the self-hatred over her actions she tells Jinx about in act 3.

This makes it so that what she says about her actions "We can't undo our crimes" and "hating you, I hated myself" rings hollow.

I think this hits me as especially odd because Arcane really likes to make characters have to look at the consequences of their actions. Look at Vi and Jayce. They're the two most consistently well intentioned characters in the show and despite those intentions they constantly make mistakes that the narrative makes sure they have to confront the consequences of.

Jayce's decision to resort to violence over peace when he raids the shimmer factory leads to the creation of hextech weapons and the death of a child at his hands. It warps his dream and puts them on the precipice of war. He has to face the consequences of how he gave ground on his morals and confront the privilege he has had. He immediately shifts focus to broker peace and destroy hextech weapons.

In season 2 Jayce's creation of hextech-- his dream-- is revealed to have worsened the class divide between piltover and Zaun and will lead to thousands of deaths. Even though his intentions are good he is forced to face the negative ramifications he didn't consider in his desire to bring about his dream through his experiences in the future. As a result he resolves to destroy it and stop Viktor.

Vi is an even more extreme example. She constantly loses everything despite her desperate attempts to protect those she loves because of her flaws. Her impulsiveness and anger led to her leading the heist that kicked off the series. Her impulsiveness and struggle to accept change in season 1 inevitably push Jinx further away. Etc. It's only when she grows from her flaws that her actions bring about the outcome she desires. The end of episode 5 is only possible because Vi trusts Jinx, sees her as an equal/adult rather than someone to protect, and embraces this changed version of Vander, something she wouldn't have been able to do in season 1.

It's a very basic “character does things with negative consequences and they are forced to face the consequences and grow” type narrative. This it makes the moment they change feel earned and you understand their change. Caitlyn's arc in act 2 lacks this.

Caitlyn doesn't have to see the police brutality happening at the barricades and checkpoints that we see in the "paint the town blue" montage.

Caitlyn doesn't have to confront the fact that people and children were imprisoned in Stillwater without true cause by enforcers and ambessa's soldiers in episode 4. She only sees Warwick's rampage and comments on the fact that she thought she'd seen the most warped creations of Zaunites, but apparently she was wrong.

She doesn't have to confront the fact that illegal arrests were happening under her watch or that some of those people were beaten for information as well.

She doesn't have to come face to face with the brutality that's happened with her at the helm. The show doesn't have her acknowledge or confront the fact that she has become the oppression she swore to Vi she would oppose in season 1.

Even if Caitlyn opposes these actions (something the show makes sure to remind us of), it doesn't change the fact that she's made the oppression of Zaun worse and actively participated in it through her role as the strike leader and the commander.

I can in some ways be okay with this because Ambessa is implied to be hiding the worst from Caitlyn so she can keep her hold on her (at least I think that's what the show was implying), but with that in mind I wish the show had scenes where we got to see her hesitation and self-hatred.

There was a cut scene of Caitlyn breaking down alone that I feel like the second act sorely needed. She hates this and she hates herself, but she feels like she has to continue because she's already in too deep.

Or even have Caitlyn look conflicted in the background when she realizes Ambessa plans to attack a peaceful commune. Just some sort of conflict over her actions towards Zaun.

If there had been some variation of these things I would have found her turn more believable. As it is it's incredibly abrupt and they rushed Caitlyn and Vi's reconciliation and them getting together IMO. (I love them as characters. I promise.) The lack of time left also made it so people forgave Caitlyn too quickly too.

This isn’t meant to hate on arcane, but rather to point out the fact that I think this is very noticeable when it comes to Caitlyn’s arc in act 2 for me because of how well Arcane does it with every other character. It’s one of the biggest strengths of the character writing.

Wow. I talked about about Caitlyn a lot and I didn't even fully scratch the surface of what I thought of her arc and I’m not sure if I articulated it well. Sorry for the ramble. If the second act worked for anyone please let me know.

Even with these issues I definitely had a lot of highlights too! I bawled in the finale when that shot of Vander looking at little Vi and Powder after he adopted them while Warwick and Jinx fall in slo-mo in the present. I tear up thinking of the remember me montage and what it says about Vander and Vi as characters. I love episode 5, the interactions between Vi and Jinx, and the family hug! I love the "To ashes and blood" sequence in episode 3. That was so well-edited and built to the climax of the act perfectly.

The animation is also absolutely gorgeous. You can see the love and care in every frame of the show. It’s the most incredible piece of animation I’ve seen purely from a visual standpoint. Fortiche Production is so talented and brought so much flare and life to this show.

There's so much to love, but a lot of things that bothered me as well. That doesn't make this a bad show. I still really like it. And I still absolutely love the first season. It affected me in a way that literally changed the course of my life (which sounds hyperbolic, but it's true. That's a story for another time haha) and I will remember and love it forever because of that.

If people have different opinions on any of the things I just wrote about please let me know. I genuinely want to hear other people's thoughts!

youtube

I actually think this video is really interesting. Not because I fully agree with it (there are a lot of points in the video I don't agree with and a lot that I do), but because I appreciate its intent.

I also fall in the same boat where I really liked the second season, but I didn't love it like I did the first and I appreciate that this is a video that wants to start a conversation. He wants to talk about why things didn't necessarily work for him, why it didn't seem to have the same impact as the first, and about how he wants to hear why those things might have worked for others.

So much discourse about this season has framed it as either the best thing ever, above any criticism, or the worst thing ever with no redeeming qualities and it's made it very frustrating and demoralizing to try and talk about it online.

I want to talk about how I loved aspects of this show and that I was also let down by certain aspects of the show as well, but anytime I try and talk about criticism it's rarely met with a genuine conversation.

I would love to hear how people interpreted things differently from me, why they felt that way, how it connected with them, because I feel like that's the purpose of stories. It's never going to resonate with anyone the same way and there may have been things I missed.

I also know I haven't always worded what I've wanted to say and my criticisms the way I want to get across what I mean. It has never been my intent to sound like I wasn't open to discussion, different interpretations, or counterpoints. I would like to actually talk more about this season and hear other people's thoughts as well.

#arcane #arcane Netflix #arcane league of legends #league of legends #this is intereting #if you're willing I would #like to hear more

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