#not saying that makes on character intrinsically good or bad

[3rdgenlesbean]

Also Feyre is Toxic and we DO NOT see her take on what she has done or face what she did in the way we were given with Nesta tbh.

[chewwytwee]

I forget how fucking crazy it is that bojack horseman casually made one of their main characters definitively and canonically asexual, like they center his asexuality as the center of several plot lines. It’s def a good example of how easy it is to just do “good representation”.

[gothwineaunts]

Wow, hello!

So, I was actually feeling pretty motivated to write this post yesterday. But things have gotten exponentially worse, and I admit the pressure is getting to me. There seem to be a ton of expectations surrounding what I should be saying here, in order to… I guess, absolve myself? As if there’s a checklist people want me to go through to perform the “perfect” creator apology. But, I don’t see the point. I care a lot about this community and I think you deserve something a lot more sincere than some hollow chat-gpt apology. I understand that that’s foolish, on my part. Things are done that way so often because they work. But what you’ll find throughout this post, is that I’m kind of an idiot about some things. I’m stubborn and hard-headed and a little bit pretentious. And so, what I’m planning to do here is to simply tell you the truth about what happened. No cherry picking. All my mistakes, but also the context that goes with them. And at the end, my formal apology. This is a long and winding tale with a lot of characters. I’m going to be sharing some usernames as we go, in the interest of clarity and transparency. You’ll understand why with the context. But please do not seek these people out. Don’t pick fights with them. It will only make everything worse, for all involved.

Cool? Cool. But first I need to address the elephant in the room. This will probably seem like irrelevant drama at first, but this is the nuance and background that I wasn’t adequately able to articulate the night before last. In more ways than one, this is a story told in twos. The first set of twos is you, the readers. Who you are, and what you’re hoping to find out in this post.

1.      The overwhelming majority of you, are earnestly wanting to understand what has happened in the Nevermore Discord. You are concerned that I am not who you hoped I was. You are disappointed, and I understand why. To you, I am so sorry. I want to say that things are not as bad as they seem, but that is not for me to decide. You will need to draw your own conclusions from the words I write. And I understand, whatever you choose to do next.

2.      And there is a small, but incredibly vocal minority of people who are absolutely living for this. They are spreading complete fabrications with no screenshots to speak of. Horrible, horrible accusations. People who are more excited about watching a dumpsterfire than they are about the series that brought them here in the first place. I’m not going to attempt to cater to those people in this post. Because nothing will ever be good enough. Everything that can be taken in bad faith will be taken in bad faith. It would be pointless. But you’ll see them in the comments and reblogs. This is a known group to not only myself, but many others. I will share some of their names in a later section so you know who to watch for. They will make a lot of noise around this post because they’ve been trying to make something like this happen for actual years. And now that I had a genuinely concerning response that good people reasonably want me to explain, they’re lunging at the chance to throw absolutely anything at the wall. It’s parasocial levels of hatred. This is some deep and horrible lore.

The next set of twos is how two things can be true at the same time. And that is exactly what is going on here, in this situation. Let me be really clear, because I don’t want either truth to be lost in my explanation as they are intrinsically linked to one another.

1.      I did a downright terrible job explaining myself in the Discord when people started asking about crimson. I can give you all kinds of contributing factors for this, and I might later. But none of them really matter. It was incredibly careless of me to use “egging them on” and “cried wolf”  to describe what I understood. At the time I was really laser-focused on expressing what happened as simply and quickly as possible because the channel replies were paused and I felt like everyone was just waiting for me to be finished with my message. But after stepping back, I immediately understood how badly I messed up, because of course these idioms are routinely weaponized against survivors of SA and CSA. That is not how I intended to use them. It was an unfortunate case of one thing looking and sounding like another thing. Incredibly ham-fisted and irresponsible on my part. To the survivors who read my words and felt that it echoed their past experiences, I’m heartbroken that I did that to you. That lapse of judgement was a betrayal to both you and me. I don’t know where my head went, and I’m just blown away by my own lack of awareness in that message. So for that I am and will continue to be sorry.

2.      The second thing that can be true is that, while you are all absolutely owed an explanation and an apology, there are also some people amongst you who are using this fuck-up on my part as a springboard to take me down.  These people have been trying to get a call out post to pop off about me for at least a year, and they have been very quick to jump into the reblogs and comments about this very serious topic with complete lies and slander. Just, anything that might stick to the wall. We’ll address this later on as well. But please understand that me discussing the harassment I’ve faced from these groups is not at the expense of me also owning up to my faults and taking the proper accountability.

And the last set of twos is one I’ve alluded to in the first sets, concerning a pair of toxic side-servers that ran adjacent to the main Nevermore Discord. Completely unofficial cliques. And invisible to myself and Flynn and our mod team. We were eventually made aware that both of them were breaking laws and Discord ToS in ways that leaked into our server and affected our members negatively. As such, both groups were mass-banned. And the cliques are the ones running a majority of the discourse you’ve been seeing here, because while they are formally banned from the discord, we have absolutely no say in their participation on Tumblr. Now, keep in mind. Both of these groups were uncovered after crimson was banned the first time. That’s important later.

Clique #1

My understanding of the first group is that it started as a gaming server for people who met one another through the Nevermore Discord. I don’t know when or why it started being used to talk shit about other readers, but I do know that it got really vicious. And it was sort of an open secret for long before I knew anything about it. I found out after that there were a lot of people passively in this server, just observing. It was that much of a spectacle.

Now, this clique had been pretty rude. Like they’d try to start fights with me in the discord fairly often, both in the Patreon and free spaces. But it wasn’t grounds for dismissal until we found out about the baiting and the alts.  These people had a lot of grievances, but one really united them: they were extremely upset about anyone who would ship Prospero.

Many of you know, that Prospero is an aromantic character, canonically. And you may notice that canonically, he has no apparent love interest. But this group wanted to make sure other readers were not thinking about Prospero in relationships, or creating ship content of him for any reason on the grounds that it would be considered a “proship.” I told them (and I stand on this) that it’s not up to them to police the thoughts of other readers, and that aromantic people have widely varying lifestyles and experiences and do not need to be infantilized that way.

This turned out to be a bad move on my part, because it brought with it an onslaught of alt accounts coming in and "innocently" kicking up what I now refer to as the “prosp-aro” debate every time they had the chance. But because of this and what a common occurrence it was, we started being able to pick out the alts. And we realized that this group of people had been using the same alt accounts with different names to antagonize certain readers they’d decided they hated, and it had gone on for a long time.

I did a lot of investigative work in dms trying to figure out who all was responsible for the harassment, and settled on a list that was vetted by three different people who knew about the clique. And all three of these people insisted that, while Laci was in the group and in a lot of the screencaps saying pretty dubious things, that she was good people. So I believe them, and let Laci stay. This group was banned on April 3, 2024, and contained the following users:

-          lilnatx (nat)

-          suitino (sushi)

-          jj_the_jet_plane (layden)

-          rivsticks (jasper)

-          atheimee (athena)

-          jinxs.com (lanx/jinx)

-          smartestginger (nico)

-          thereallandofbugs (bugs)

-          rosienemui (rosie)

These were the names they were known by on the Discord. I don’t have the Tumblr accounts tied to these identities. But some might be the same. I know a lot of them are here.  It should be noted that jinx was later unbanned due to pressure from Laci that they had been banned in error, after the fact. We allowed them back in after a few days as a favor to Laci since the situation seemed like it was very stressful for her. This would prove to be yet another a mistake since, as you have probably seen in the screenshots from the night before last, jinx rapidly escalated things to another level while I was trying to figure out how to handle crimson’s unbanning and subsequent rebanning an hour later.

Clique #2

Phew. Still with me? Great. The second group we needed to ban was one that actually started long before the first one, but was a lot smaller and comparatively more subtle. This group, to my knowledge, cropped up around the time that ep. 39 of Nevermore was released. (11/10/22) We knew about this group but not who all was involved in it or in what capacity for a very long time. They would consistently post things on Tumblr trying to start a scandal. I recall posts alleging that we were racists, or SA apologists, or that we were sending death threats to a random confessions account.

To be clear, these allegations are completely false. This clique will say anything. Like a recent post one of them put up during this discourse said that hiwi (our mod) is both a r*pe apologist and a childhood friend of mine and that’s the only reason she hasn’t been banned. Hiwi is absolutely nothing of the sort, and I have never met her in person. In fact, she lives on the other side of the continent.

Now, this clique is a little different than the first. The first, to my knowledge, was a group of friends that got toxic and felt morally superior about their opinions and it all kind of got away from them. The vibe was a little catty, I guess. Gossipy. But this clique has more of a stalker vibe. It’s dark.

They’ve had it out specifically for me for as long as I can remember. And some of them (at least one, at all times) would subscribe to our patreon, both to sow dissent in our stream chats and also to leak literally all the content back to the others, including me talking about random shit like what I ate for lunch. Just so they could like. Laugh about it, I guess. I’ll never understand why. [Editing note: because in the final moments of proofreading this post I see one of these people has made some master post about what a terrible person I am? A lot of those screenshots are from Patreon channels and the guy STILL has them laying around. I’m telling you, they stole everything that wasn’t nailed down.] 

The biggest grievance this clique had is that any ship with Montresor is an “SA fetish ship” because to them he is a r*pist because of how he made Ada bark (?) and since Montrada is canon, that means we are supporters of SA, and that Morella and Ada should be together instead. Listen, I’ll level with you, this one baffles me. I don’t even know how to begin to untangle it. But if you see a lot of vitriol about us being SA apologists from these users, it’s because Montresor exists. That’s pretty much it.

You can ask them for screencaps ‘til you’re blue in the face, but unless they build fake ones from the ground up, they’re never going to be able to back up their wild claims. Simply put, they’re provocateurs, and they use the scariest words they can to whip people up into a panic.

We became aware that they were leaking patreon content when one of them was caught publicly referring to things that were being said behind a paywall when we knew they weren’t a patron. It unraveled from there.  People who knew about their antics shared screenshots and information with us, and we finally realized the scope of the clique’s hatred and banned whoever was even left in the Nevermore Discord. But they continue to be active in the community on tumblr. You’ll have seen them around. They were banned on 5/11/2024 and the names involved are as follows (again, a mishmash of discord names, nicknames, and tumblr accounts):

- percy (gremlinguy145 on tumblr)

- queenmorningrose (annabel-lee-nevermore on tumblr)

- spoopycactus630 (spoopy-nevermore-dump on tumblr)

- grif/horrorshow (conscience-grim on tumblr)

- unreqiknizd

- duke aralt (westofthestyx)

- eden (sapphic-mad-scientist on tumblr)

- priemium

Again I’d like to reiterate. The point in sharing these names is not to incite any sort of response against these people. But they are folding themselves into the fray and doing what they can to whip everyone else up into a mob, and all as we’re talking about a discord server that they have been banned from for months now. The above context is also relevant for the next section, which is why you’re all here in the first place.

What the hell happened with Crimson?

I hope it’s not confusing, but now we’re going back to 3/14/2024, before anything I just outlined above had come to light. The cliques were quietly doing their harassment and baiting and raiding and whatever-the-hell behind the scenes, but Flynn and I and the mods were blissfully unaware of how bad it was getting. We get a dm from Laci. The same Laci who was part of Clique #1 and was rescued from being banned with the others by her friends outside the group. Jinx’s friend, who managed to get them unbanned as well. You have probably seen these screencaps already, but I will show them to you again, just in case.

Sufficed to say, we were immediately alarmed by the information Laci shared in her DM with us. Now, I want to be very clear about this because it’s been lost in the game of telephone. What Laci outlines in her dm to me, were the events that occurred between six users (including crimson) in a group chat with minors. Everyone in the evidence was censored (pfp and username), as was the image that crimson showed them. When I asked, Laci agreed to give me one name of one of the minors in the dm. I’ll call them Alice, but that is not their real name. I asked if I could talk to Alice about this, I was told by Laci, no. Alice doesn’t want to talk. I was like, ok I understand, that’s fine. 

I hope it makes sense when I say that it is not feasible for us to moderate the things that happen in peoples’ dms. As you’ve seen above, the mod team doesn’t usually get involved with drama unless whatever is happening is directly affecting the experience people are having in the Nevermore Discord because that is all we can see and the only place we have any real authority.  But this was obviously a special case. We banned crimson very quickly without asking any follow-up questions, because of course we did!? I’ve seen people say I’m harboring or defending crimson or that we’re buddies but we barely spoke, ever. They were a stranger to me then, and they still are now.

But something about the entire situation wasn’t adding up to me. And I want to be clear that none of this is in any way meant to discredit csa survivors, I’m really just trying to put you in my headspace and walk you through my thought process. But I found that the evidence was just, sort of strange. Laci started her dm explaining that she found this information out because she and a group of people were investigating crimson for ‘art tracing’ which felt, to me, like a bizarre non-sequitur and totally irrelevant next to the evidence of them showing nsfw content to minors. Petty, kind of. Like I wanted to ask – why were you doing that in the first place? People trace Flynn’s art all the time. As long as they’re not selling it, it’s not a big deal.

Most of the crops are from a PC but the windows are oddly small, and only contain a couple messages at a time. Some have American formatted time and some have European formatted time. So different users, I assume? The names were blotted out, which I would understand for a public call-out but not for a private report to the mod team. Laci was not in this gc at any point in time, despite being the one to report. 

One of the users was apparently 12, to which I ask – what is a 12-year-old doing on discord at all? If we knew who they were, we would have reported the account. Discord is not a safe place for a child that age, let alone a small group chat. Along with 18-year-old Crimson, there was also a 22- and 17-year-old in the chat, which left us wondering – why hadn’t anything been done?

I had no evidence that anyone ever told crimson they were minors, and I feel if it existed, it would have been in the screencap dump (I find that sometimes a noticeable lack of key evidence is evidence in itself). No one seems to have tried to kick crimson from the group chat or report their account for inappropriate behavior. Then there’s the fact that this is a group chat. Anyone in it can leave at any time. 

Then I came across the messages that started this whole gc, and it only got stranger when I realized Alice started it, called it “Women Lovers” and created it “so we can talk about Nevermore women without having to filter ourselves” after they all reacted to a sultry but sfw drawing of Lenore that crimson had made and posted in our hideout channel. And all that made me wonder why Alice didn’t just kick crimson, if she had admin power?  Do you see what I mean? It’s just all a bit head tilty. I noticed it at the time. But I said nothing. Because it didn’t matter. Crimson, no matter what happened, exposed minors to nsfw content. And that’s on them. And I’ve never in my life defended it. We banned them.

Crimson was beside herself. She came off humiliated and apologetic, and insisted she had no idea and begged to come back to a community she said she loved. But we told her no, there’s no coming back from doing what she did.

Time passes and we uncover Clique #1. And while we figured out who the main players were, I dmed with Laci. And it was Laci herself, who tells me that it was Alice who made most of Clique #1’s alt accounts, and that it was Alice who used those alt accounts to harass people and try to get them to start fights or say something that might get them in trouble. 

And I’ll be honest with you, the mod team still didn’t think much of it, outside of – we need to figure out which accounts were the alts. So we did. We had several confirmed to us.  And those accounts were zeroing in on certain users that the clique didn’t like. At the time we noticed two notable targets in addition to the mod team. I won’t name them, it’s their business if they want to weigh in about all that. But in screencaps, they’ll be labeled Target #1 and Target #2.

More time passes and Clique #2 comes to light. As you can imagine, by now we’re feeling disillusioned, and very tired of trying to moderate shit we cannot see for ourselves. And that’s when crimson comes back to very hesitantly ask if they might be able to appeal their ban. It wasn’t until then that it occurred to us that Laci (on behalf of Alice) was the only one who ever reported anything to us about Crimson. 

And I want to just say that again. Because it’s gotten lost too. Laci was the only person who ever reported Crimson. There was not one single other person who ever sent a modmail or a dm or even a ping to anybody on the mod team. I have since (only yesterday) seen some screencaps that are rather skin crawly, but even those happened in yet another side server. Thinking on this, the mods went back through the known alt accounts Alice had used. And they found that Alice harassed crimson both on her main account and on the same alt accounts that she used to harass the other targets.

By now, Alice is banned for completely unrelated reasons. Not because of what happened with Crimson. I’ve seen that one flying around and I’m sorry it’s just not true. It’s because she was relentlessly harassing and cyberbullying people in the discord we moderate. Laci is still there, but had lost my trust, for being involved with both the drama I’ve mentioned here and more that I don’t care to dip into. It’s ultimately irrelevant. But what am I going to say to Laci? “Hey, did you and Alice, by any chance, coordinate some kind of bizarre trap together to get crimson banned from the discord because you suspected them of tracing their art?” And once again. Because I want to keep this top of mind. Even if that were the case, it doesn’t make what Crimson did alright, and it never will. Sharing nsfw content in front of minors is a disgusting thing to do. And one that we frankly are really irritating about in the moderation of the discord. I’ve heard people say that we over-moderate when it comes to art. 

But all this stuff about a “known pedophile?” If it was known, then we were on the outs. And to even this minute right now, I don’t have any conclusive evidence that Crimson is a pedophile. The evidence I have is that Crimson shared nsfw with a group of people whose ages they did not know. Which is fucking gross. It’s an adult’s responsibility to make sure they’re speaking with other adults before posting things of that nature. 

But at the time, the way I read the situation is that Crimson had only just stopped being a minor and was egregiously negligent in how they were speaking and what they were posting, likely in part due to them not being aware enough of their adult responsibilities.  And hey. I know some of you are chomping at the bit. You can call me naïve for this! This is what I’m referring to when I say that I can be a real idiot. But I feel everyone has been very quick to call Crimson a pedophile. I know this is pedantic to say, but the prerequisite for being a pedophile is “being attracted to minors.” Based on the information I had at my fingertips, I did not think Crimson sought out these minors. Crimson was invited to the gc, they did not ask to join. 

I have seen discussions about all the things crimson did to their victims since we unbanned them but I have not seen screencaps to support that whole ‘marriage proposal’ thing, and again I think it sounds a bit odd coming as a pedophilia accusation from someone only one year younger than crimson.  

But you know what? I don’t know crimson. Maybe we were wrong. But even if we weren’t, I realize in hindsight that it was a stupid decision for the mod team to give them a second chance. We didn’t have anyone to consult about what happened because all the other people in the chat had been obscured from me and I didn’t feel like Laci would give me a straight answer. 

The mods and I felt at the time that crimson, like the other targets of Clique #1, had been singled out and that they deserved another very closely monitored chance in the discord, which they said they still missed dearly. I’m a bleeding heart, alright? A total sap. I know that. But being honest with you, I felt bad. It feels horrible to be singled out and targeted. And I was probably too close to that feeling at the time, seeing as we were on the tail end of finding out the Clique #2 had pursued me so relentlessly for so long. 

So for my part, I’m sorry. I made a rash decision that was influenced by some very personal circumstances. And we should have left it alone. Based on the evidence I've seen, I don’t know if I personally would call crimson a pedophile and certainly I wouldn't call them a known pedophile, but I am regretful that we risked it either way.

When I was trying to explain all of this in the west common room channel two nights back, things had boiled over and were already getting out of hand very quickly. A lot of brand new accounts were joining the discord with one word intros just to start conflicts in the public server with crimson. Alts. Either from banned users or burner accounts. And I got panicky. One of the mods paused the messages in west common room but no one besides me was available to handle the situation at that moment. Reacts about being silenced were pouring in and I felt pressured to quickly take over and try to explain. 

In my rush, I stupidly didn’t backread more than a quick skim. And I ate shit, y’all. You saw. One thing I want to state outright. I’m talking a lot about my thoughts and my feelings and it’s because I don’t wanna speak for Flynn or for the mods. But I didn’t make this decision alone. In fact, I was dragging my feet and being really lazy about okaying the whole thing. Just because I was busy, not because I was fretting over it or anything. But I had to be pinged and then literally tapped on the shoulder by Flynn, asking me to respond to mod chat when this was being discussed earlier that day. That doesn’t change the fact that I was part of the decision. I agreed to unban crimson. Foolishly. I understand that, now. 

I hope that now it makes some more sense though, how it came to happen. I never meant to hurt anyone. My own past and present feelings got in the way, and I own that. But in the moment, my personal intention was to give crimson a second chance because I felt that they’d been targeted by Clique #1. Not to ignore anyone’s concerns or make them feel unsafe, even if those were the ultimate outcome.  

So, completely underprepared and defensive, I jumped into west common room and I just. Blew it. Totally fucking blew it. I knew it instantly but it’s hard to stay logical when people are telling you you’re vile and evil and they’re sick that they ever thought you were a good person and that they’ll never see you the same way again. My mind went blank and I don’t really remember much of what happened next. But I said what I said, and I should have done better. 

I wish there was a word bigger than sorry. I’m beside myself. I know there was probably a way to make everyone happy. To make everything okay. But I wasn't clever enough to figure it out in the moment, and it eats at me. So it’s like I’m sorry for my poor judgment and my terrible choice of words, but there’s another layer where I’m also sorry for not matching how wonderful this community is with how wonderful (or well, unwonderful) I was two nights ago. I promise I am going to work harder to be better for you all.

Again, to every victim of SA and CSA, my heart is with you, more personally than you might realize. I don’t think I could have handled my explanation in a worse way. And I’m so so sorry.

Moving forward, I am also going to take an enormous step back from moderating and participating in the discord in general. I feel like a lot of this happened because I was still treating it like it belonged to a smaller fandom, like Shiloh’s. But realistically, I don’t have time to both moderate and make the series itself, and I really dragged my feet on being honest with myself about that. And for that too, I apologize. We’re going to get more mods, they’re going to have full control of the moderation, and Flynn and I are going to do what we love more than anything in the world and just make Nevermore.

I understand if you won’t be there for it. This is not a flattering picture I’ve painted for you. And you’d be well within your rights, to decide not to give us another chance. But it's been a pleasure to lurk here in this wildly talented corner of tumblr. And I’ll never forget it. <3 Yours truly, -Kit Trace

[grapecherry]

“The Choice To Be Kind” - A Thematic Analysis

(ft. Eden, David, Teruko, & Arei)

For me, Eden is the heart of this chapter that the cast is revolving around, all serving to contrast her uniquely genuine sentiment.

“I chose to be this way.”

“I’ll still make the choice to be kind.”

Her intentions are very blatantly stated. This is a decision she actively makes everyday. It’s not a naïve default, it’s a continuous effort.

This is a very important distinction to establish going forward in examining other characters’ perspectives of kindness. Kindness was not something she was born with; it doesn’t run in her blood or her genes. It is not intrinsic to her existence.

Kindness is autonomous.

This alone is in conflict with how Arei, David, and Teruko, all address “goodness” as a trait instead of an acquired skill.

So there’s this constant reiteration of “you are good or you are bad”

This is countered by Eden saying “you can be good or you can be bad”

But then, most poignantly, it is Arei who concludes with the most self-realized perspective of “you are not good, nor are you capable of becoming good, just as you are not bad, nor capable of becoming bad, because there is no Good or Bad to become”

And this is by far the healthiest way to conceptualize self-improvement.

All we can do is hold ourselves accountable for bad actions and acknowledge that they will never render future acts of kindness futile.

None of this is to disparage the idea of change itself — it is to say that David, Teruko, and Eden have a much different understanding of what “change” implies here. For them, change is a means to be made from Bad to Good. We see this sentiment reflected in Teruko’s exchange with Whit.

And there in lies the issue: these concepts of concrete morality are unattainable! They’re not real.

But what can be changed is your behavior.

Just as Eden established, kindness is an effort, and you can make it continuously. But unlike Eden’s implied sentiment, Arei has realized that there’s no threshold of Good to be met through these efforts. The effort to be kind is simply that: an effort. No one is barred from making it, nor is anyone required to. The effort means something, just as a lack of it does, but there’s no permanence to it all. It’s simply a consistency of effort that credits you reliable or kind in the eyes of others.

But everyone wakes up a blank slate, capable of starting or losing that consistency just as easily as the next person. And because of that-

-no one is too far gone.

No one is too far behind, because there’s no finish line to be reached.

Everyone can wake up and try to be a little less shitty.

[yellowocaballero]

Miguel is Fine, Actually (Being Spider-Man's Just Toxic As Hell)

Before I watched ATSV I said that I would defend my man Miguel O'Hara's actions no matter what, because he's always valid and I support women's wrongs. I was joking, and I did not actually expect to start defending him on Tumblr.edu. But I'm seeing a lot of commentary that's super reductive, so I do want to bring up another perspective on his character.

Miguel wasn't acting against the spirit of Spider-Man, or what being Spider-Man means. Miguel isn't meant to represent the antithesis of Spider-Man. Miles is the antithesis of Spider-Man. Miguel represents Spider-Man taken to its extreme.

Think about Miguel's actions from his perspective. If you were a hero who genuinely, legitimately, 100%, no doubt about it, believed that somebody is going to make a selfish decision that will destroy an entire universe and put the entire multiverse at severe risk - if you had an over-burdened sense of responsibility and believed in doing the right thing no matter what - you would also chase down the kid and put him in baby jail to try and prevent it. He believed that he was saving the multiverse, and that Miles was putting it in danger for selfish reasons. Which is completely unforgivable to him, because selfishness is what he hates the most. And then he goes completely out of pocket and starts beefing with a 15yo lmfaooo he's such a dick.

But why did Miguel believe that? Why did he believe that Miles choosing himself and his own happiness over the well-being of others was the worst possible thing? Why did he believe that tragedy was inevitable in their lives, and that without tragedy Spider-Man can't exist?

Because he's Spider-Man.

Peter Parker was once a fifteen year old who chose his own happiness over protecting others. It was the greatest regret of his life and he never forgave himself. Peter's ethos means that he will put himself last every time, and that he will sacrifice anything and everything in his life - his relationships, his health, his future - to protecting and helping others. Peter dropped out of college because it interfered with Spider-Man. He destroyed his own future for Spider-Man. He ruins friendships and romantic relationships because Spider-Man was more important. If Peter ever tries to protect himself and his own happiness, then he's a bad person.

That is intrinsic to Peter. Peter would not be Peter without it. A story that is not defined by Peter's unhappiness is not a Spider-Man story. If Peter doesn't make himself miserable, then he's just not Peter.

That is a Spider-Man story: that not only is tragedy inevitable, that if you don't allow yourself to be defined by your tragedy then you're a bad person. If you don't suffer, then you're a bad person. If you ever put anything above Spider-Man, then you're killing Uncle Ben all over again. Miguel isn't the only one that believes this - as we saw, every Spider-Man buys into what he's saying. There's no Spider-Man without these beliefs.

Miguel attempted to find his own happiness, and he was punished in the most extreme way. He got Uncle Ben'd x10000. He tried to be happy, and it literally destroyed his entire universe. It's the Spider-narrative taken to the extreme. Of course Miguel believes all of this. Of course he believes this so firmly. He's Spider-Man. That's his story. And the one time Miguel tried to fight against that story, he was punished. And like any Spider-Man, he'll slavishly obey that narrative no matter the evil it creates and perpetuates. Because if he doesn't, the narrative will punish him. The narrative will always punish him. It's a Spider-Man story.

I don't think the universal constant between Spider-Mans, the thing that makes them Spider-Man, is tragedy. I think it's the fact that they never forgive themselves. And Miguel is what that viewpoint creates. He doesn't believe this things because he's an awful, mean person. He believes them because he's a hero. He's a good person who hates himself.

Across the Spider-verse isn't really a Spider-Man story. It's a story about Spider-Man stories. Miguel's right: if this was a Spider-Man story, then Miles acting selfishly really would destroy the universe. But Miles' story isn't interested in punishing him. It pushes back against Peter's narrative that unhappiness is inevitable and that you have to suffer to be a good person. It says that sometimes we do the right thing from love and not fear, and that Peter's way of thinking is ultimately super toxic and unhappy. ITSV was about Miles deciding that he didn't need to be Peter Parker, that all he needed to be was Miles, and ATSV is about how being Peter Parker isn't such a good thing. Miguel shows that. Whatever toxic and unhealthy beliefs he holds - they're the exact same beliefs that any Spider-Man holds. He's a dick, but I don't think he's any more awful a person than Peter is.

TL;DR: Miguel isn't a bad person, he just has Spider-Man brainrot.

[autistichalsin]

My incomplete list of circumstantial bits of evidence for werebear!Halsin

Note: I can see the case for both Halsin knowing AND not knowing that he's a werebear- I'm going to include both here.

The most glaring: Halsin can't control his wildshape. This is highly unusual for any Druid, let alone an Archdruid of his age and power. He not only can't control the transformation when experiencing strong emotions, but he can't entirely control his actions when scared or angry; he tells the player, after being rescued from the goblin pens, that he will be unable to not attack the goblins threatening them. This makes no sense for a wildshaped Druid, but makes plenty of sense for a terrified werebear. 1B. No other Druids in the entire game have the wildshape problems Halsin does. 1C. Halsin can control all his other wildshapes properly, and behaves much more like other Druids when using them.

Werebears who haven't learned to control themselves yet (such as if they don't know they are one, are recently turned, etc) often transform unexpectedly when threatened.

Halsin's bear wildshape is treated differently than any other; it's the only wildshape he can't control, and it has a separate mechanic to other wildshapes in-game, being activated not with other wildshapes, but on the screen for abilities that are an intrinsic part of the character's skills. Yes, this is probably because it's only Halsin who can do this, but circumstantially... it is interesting.

Werebears avoid biting to prevent spreading their lycanthrophy (unless they have negotiated with the person they are trying to turn). As far as I've seen (I DEFINITELY could be wrong, though, please let me know if I am), Halsin only ever uses his claws to attack- no biting attacks.

If you look at the sky during the romance scene with the player, the moon is shown very bright and prominent; it isn't 100% certain, but it looks like it could be full.

Halsin is VERY different from his normal personality in bear form, excluding the romance scene; if you use Speak With Animals when he's in the cage, he'll say things like "time for blood" as he prepares to attack the goblins. Werebears in bear form are noted for being irritable and quick to violence, though they attempt to mitigate the effects of these impulses through self-isolation so no one innocent is harmed. 6B. Halsin in normal form tries very hard to not get violent when possible, noting that "killing is never [his] first choice", yet when needs must, he won't hesitate to kill- the opposite of the bear.

If Halsin doesn't know he's a werebear (explaining him not telling you), it's worth noting that it IS possible for werebears who weren't born as such not to be aware, with any actions taken during the full moon tending to get written off as bad dreams. Halsin could just think he has a recurring nightmare about losing control of his bear form.

Halsin resonates wit bears a lot deeper than most other Druids do with their favorite animals. Kagha comes the closest with her love of snakes, but even she speaks more metaphorically, whereas Halsin will do it literally, such as a new, as-yet-unimplemented line where he says he hopes "an old bear" can help the player, making jokes about poking the bear, etc. in fact, he refers to himself as a bear more often than he refers to himself as an elf.

Halsin makes reference to honey mead being his favorite drink. Werebears have a special honey mead concoction they enjoy. This drink is highly intoxicating to non-were, which means it might be more intoxicating than other drinks to were too.

Halsin is shown having an alignment that leans far more towards good than neutral, whereas most of the Druids in this game have a neutral alignment. Werebears are one of two weres in DND lore that have a good alignment.

Werebears usually live solitary lives. Circle of the Moon Druids are noted as being very solitary as well, with it being possible to go weeks without seeing another Druid (though Archdruids of this Circle will of course be more involved). Halsin, before becoming Archdruid, is implied to have fit this, such as him making reference to having hibernated in bear wildshape.

However, werebears are still noted to have a strong sense of community, and they often act as guardian of a particular area. Like Halsin protecting his Grove, then protecting his commune in the end, even noting that his urge to roam has dwindled after finding the latter. In fact, werebears are noted to often be sedentary and prefer not to leave their homes; Halsin is restless and roaming until the epilogue, when all his traumas are resolved, at which point he settles and shows contentment at having gone from "a life of high adventure" to one of anything but. (He says this to the player if romanced, worrying that he took them from just that life, but he repeatedly says he is happy to have given up adventuring.)

It is noted that when werebears don't isolate, one of the more common choices for werebears is.... you guessed it. Becoming a Druid.

Werebears have the ability to call local bears to them. The Emerald Grove has three bears living there.

Werebears don't marry, but might have favorite mates they visit often. Depending on player choice, Halsin might end up a bit more committed than the latter, but still less than the former. Also, this ties in well with Halsin's stated philosophy on polyamory, with him specifically stating that a bear's coupling habits suit him more than another animal's, like, say, a wolf, would.

It is well-known by now that there used to be a Bard Origin named Helia, who would have been either a Halfling or a Gnome. Helia also would have been a werewolf. While it's not known for sure that she was cut specifically FOR Halsin to be made playable (it's doubtful, given how early Helia was cut), there are signs that parts of her story might have been given to Halsin. For example, if one looks in datamined dialogues, certain goblin camp scenes still say that it could be either Helia or Halsin's bear there. Such as this one for the goblin kids running off to warn the adults: "Panicked, the kids run to the room with the goblin warriors and call for help, because the bear / Helia has escaped. After that they disappear." (Not sure if they still run in the final game, but the PAD is still in the files.) Or for the goblin kids throwing rocks before the cutscene is triggered, "One of the goblin kids that is throwing rocks at Helia or the bear." I don't want to speculate too much about cut content, but this suggests that Halsin and Helia's stories may have intertwined somewhat, and that when Helia was cut, parts of her went to Halsin. This may be why Halsin's bear wildshape was written more like him being a were instead; in a meta sense, he "became" a lycanthrope when he inherited part of Helia's story.

Halsin is wide/tall, muscular, and has body hair (though not facial hair), to the point that people repeatedly comment on how unusual he is for an elf. Unusual for an elf, but not a werebear, who are noted for being, you guessed it, wide/tall, muscular, and hairy.

Werebears who are bitten instead of being born as such are almost always transformed by a more experienced werebear and then taken as a protege, to become a guardian of the forest, which would explain a LOT about Halsin if he chose this.

Halsin shows a lot of empathy and compassion for Astarion and the Dark Urge. While of course it could just be his genuinely kind nature, it could also be him relating it to his own experience as a werebear.

Lastly, there's this art from the collector's edition; my guess is that this art was made after they decided Halsin would be playable, but before Karlach had an official design (the IGN interview indicates that Karlach was only added earlier this year, leaving a wide window for this to happen). While this is, of course, subjective, the pose and juxtaposition of the bear to Halsin looks a lot like the sort of art used in werewolf movies. Sort of like how one of Halsin's point-and-click lines, "the power of the bear lies within me," sounds very were-like too. This one is more subjective than the others, but I still wanted to include it.

This is all circumstantial, I know, but i thought it might be interesting to get out there nonetheless!

[nohaijiachi]

Why I Think The Fandom Has Been Doing Aziraphale Dirty Ever Since Season 1 And It's Only Gotten Worse With Season 2 And It's Killing Me Inside

Before we get into the subject matter of the title let me preface a couple of things:

1- All that will follow is, big surprise, my opinion and my interpretation of this character. Do I think I am The One And Only Who Gets The Blorbo Right and that my ideas are 100% the way the author(s) intended to convey the character? No.

More likely than not the way I see Aziraphale could be intensely different from the way Authorman sees him, or Actorman sees him, and I don't think that my interpretation is necessarily any more correct than anybody's else.

That said, if I also did not think that I am, in fact, correct on a certain level, I wouldn't have bothered forming such a thought out opinion of Aziraphale in the first place, nor would be sitting here, writing this post that I can already tell is going to be entirely too long and might probably ruffle some feathers.

So I'll be writing the rest of this post with the caveat that I while I do think my interpretation correct, I'm also not trying to change anybody's mind nor to discredit anybody's else interpretation of Aziraphale. We can sit here in the sandpit and hold different opinions and still be able to build sandcastles together, it really isn't that deep at the end of the day; I can assure you, I'm not here to fight nor cause fights with this one.

2- With the above point, comes also the fact that I won't bother continuously saying "In my opinion" for the rest of this post. You already know that. So, if something will come across as a bit caustic, do know that it is very much tongue in cheek and I am poking a bit of fun at general fannish habits that I am also very much quote-unquoute 'guilty' of having partaken into, and will partake into again plenty of times in the future, I'm sure.

So, with that: Here's Why I Think The Fandom Has Been Doing Aziraphale Dirty Ever Since Season 1 And It's Only Gotten Worse With Season 2 And It's Killing Me Inside

A large part of the people comprising this fandom prefers Crowley. There, I said it.

This fandom's preference blatantly skews toward Crowley. Can we admit that openly? Let's admit that openly.

To be clear, this isn't meant to be an accusation or recrimination or any other -ation you can think of, I am merely stating matter-of-factly a phenomena I've observed in the last four years.

It is also not a wrong nor bad thing in any way, shape or form. I adore Crowley myself. I love them both so much it's unreal.

But I started with that because I think it is very much a symptom of the fact that a lot of people don't get Aziraphale.

I remember back with S1 there had been plenty of times when I found myself reading discussions and opinion exchanges about Aziraphale and Crowley, their dynamics, all the things that went unsaid behind the things that were said, and found myself genuinely surprised by seeing how some people interpreted certain moments wildly different from how I personally saw them.

I look back at that and I think "Oh, sweet summer child". Nothing could have prepared me from the onslaught of takes about Aziraphale that make me go "Good lord, what???" in the wake of S2, and the infamous Last Fifteen.

Now because I don't want to be pointing fingers at specific things and risk upsetting somebody more than I already am by being open in admitting that, guys, yes, some of the takes y'all have been sharing make me go "Yikes(tm)", I'll move on the interesting part and what I would actually love to discuss, aka cracking Aziraphale's head open and see what that actual fuck is going on in there.

Another preface: Because this duo is intrinsically linked and woven together it is downright impossible to only focus on Aziraphale without also mentioning Crowley, so... Let me circle back to our fav demon bae for a sec, here.

I think the reason why it seems that a larger part of the fandom favors Crowley is because I feel like Crowley is a much easier character to grasp. He is very open in his thoughts and feelings, at any given moment us, the audience, have a much easier time watching a scene and sort of ruminating in the back of our heads about Crowley's motivations for saying the things he says and doing the things he does.

That isn't to say Crowley is a less complex character than Aziraphale. They are very much equally complex and multifaceted individuals with their strengths and weaknesses, their issues and the way they each cope with them, how differently they approach their existence and so on and so forth.

But whereas Crowley as a character presents itself with a certain dynamism and a far more outward openness about his complexity, Aziraphale does the exact opposite; we can say Aziraphale is downright hermetic about it.

For us, the audience, he presents a challenge that requires a good deal of thought being put into him to see over the facade he presents at a more superficial level; he requires time and effort to fully dismantle him in our minds to try and see what makes him thick (other than his thighs), and thus I think it is entirely natural that more people latch on the far easier to identify-with, and relate-to, Crowley.

And that is the inevitable consequence of everything that makes Aziraphale... Well, Aziraphale.

So, where to start? Let's try and jot down what Aziraphale truly is at his core.

He is a contradiction.

This man-shaped being is a walking contradiction, constantly existing in a state of being coated in three thousand layers of misdirection and obfuscation and double thinking.

Why is that? Well. He's an angel.

Aziraphale loves being an angel. It is a tenet of his entire existence and something he cherishes. He wants, so very much, to be his ideal of what a good angel is: An entity who is kind and loving and understanding and forgiving.

Of course us, the audience, know that is utter bullshit, because we know angels can be individuals just as complex as the humans Aziraphale loves so much, with all their inherent flaws and capability for cruelty. And, on a certain level, Aziraphale knows that too.

So there we have it, one element of contradiction: Aziraphale wants to think that angels are always Good and Righteous and Never Wrong; Aziraphale knows that angels aren't, in fact, always Good and Righteous and, by god, can they make plenty of mistakes, too.

What else? How about Aziraphale sitting there, being in love with a demon, fully knowing that at the end of the day demons really ain't that different from angels, and also desperately hanging onto the concept of Good vs Bad.

And he sits there, existing with these two contrasting idea equally taking space in his mind, neither side ever capable of taking over the other.

What else do we have? Aziraphale loves God and wants so hard to believe in Her love for humanity and Her ineffable plan, and Aziraphale also time and again does things that very blatantly go against Her will, lies to Her face, and Doubts. He Doubts, a lot, and that requires the capital letter because those Doubts are what spur him in going against everything he's ever told to believe in order to do the right thing.

Aziraphale's very existence is a constant push-and-pull of things he wants to believe and things he knows are real; things he's told to do and things he wants to do. That's how we get "My side" and "there's a bit of good in you" and "you are the bad guys".

And nothing he's lived through has managed to break him out of this unhealthy way of existing quite yet; that's why he acts the way we see him act in the Edinburgh flashback in S2, or at the start of S1 when Crowley has to ease Aziraphale into the idea of trying to stop Armageddon with the usual song and dance of "temptation" and "plausible deniability" and "you'd be thwarting me", even though from the start we can tell there's a little part of Aziraphale who is clearly not at ease with the idea of the end of the world, and once he's been given 'permission' by Crowley nudging him, he is all the way in with the whole saving the world business, not take-backsies.

Both the moments I mentioned here are very important for different reasons, but of the two is very much the Edinburgh flashback that gets a lot more flack by the fandom and is blatantly misunderstood, which I think is the inevitable consequence of that minisode immediately following the glorious, beautiful, heartbreaking piece of art that is the "A companion to owls" minisode.

I've seen a lot of people lamenting that Aziraphale acts obnoxiously in the Edinburgh flashback and, yeah. He does. But I feel like the fact that we are seeing this after watching Aziraphale struggle his way through saving Job's children, even being willing to go to Hell for it, is a though act to follow and probably soured Edinburgh-Aziraphale for a lot of people, made them think that the character had regressed instead of progressing.

But, see, the way he acts is wholly congruous with who Aziraphale is and has always been and keeps being up to the very end of S2. Yes, even after what he does for Job's children.

If you get down to it, Aziraphale had been ready to give up and let the children die, in episode 2. For a brief moment, after Crowley told him he 'longed to destroy the blameless children', Aziraphale was walking away, having tried all he thought he could try to do to stop this senseless act. That was until Crowley tested him by making the crows bleat, cuing Aziraphale to the fact that his impression of Crowley wasn't wrong, and the he could count on him to do the right thing.

To be clear, I don't want to undermine Aziraphale's action by only giving the credit to Crowley but... It is, also, only thanks to Crowley cajoling him and giving him the right excuses, that Aziraphale feels safe in doing what he's always wanted to do all along.

He'd wanted to save Job's children, and thought he couldn't until Crowley threw him that hell of a lifesaver. He wanted to save the world and thought he couldn't until Crowley nudged him on the path of plausible deniability.

He wanted to save Elspeth's eternal soul, blinding himself to the hardships she'd have to endure in her not-eternal life, and was smacked right in the face by the reality of human suffering multiple times.

The way Aziraphale acts in that flashback can't be a regression, because there never was a progression in the first place: He'd always walked the line between Heaven's and God's will and his own, personal morality and sense of justice.

By all means, if we look at Uz-Aziraphale and modern-day-Aziraphale at the start of S1, his reticence about the whole saving the world business should, by all means, appear as a regression as well. You mean to tell me that he'd been ready to become a demon for the sake of three mortal children, and then suddenly a handful of thousands years later when faced with the prospect of the whole world going up in flames he'd just be all like "Heaven will triumph over Hell and it will be all rather lovely"? Like, fuck off, Aziraphale, you lying double-thinker, you (/pos)

Aziraphale constantly exist while being at war with himself. Circumstances have allowed him to rebel the will of Heaven and God more or less safely time and again, but he never quite managed to break free entirely. He'd always ended up being reeled back in, being fed the party lines, being made to feel shame for his independent thinking, until it all becomes too much and he is forced to step back from that freedom he'd been inches away from grasping.

Back and forth, back and forth, never stopping.

And all of this, all of what he is, makes it so hard for us, the audience, to truly see him. To truly grasp him. To truly watch any given scene with him and figure out what he might be thinking or feeling.

To understand Aziraphale is to understand what he is not saying when he says something, which is a good deal harder to do than it is to understand and relate to a character like Crowley, who very much revel in saying exactly whatever the heck he thinks whenever he damn well pleases.

All those layers of obfuscation and misdirection and double thinking that Aziraphale coats himself in are as much an armor that makes it harder for the audience to understand him as they are his very own downfall because, good lord, if you exist like that, if you exist forced to keep things hidden from yourself, well... It's inevitable that at some point you are going to stumble into pitfalls of your own making.

And I love him for it.

So, there? I hope I managed to explain something with this post, and that it wasn't just the rambling of someone who spends way too much time thinking about her blorbos. To be clear, I don't think people who haven't spent as much time as me trying to dissect and better understand Aziraphale's character are like, dumber than me or anything. It's just that this pair of angelic-demonic blorbos take too much real estate in my mind, lol.

Feel free to let me know your opinion and if you think I am wildly off mark and my Take Is Bad. I might answer, I might not, it all depends on time and my mood ◝(ᵔᵕᵔ)◜

[literaila]

Do u think gojo is a good partner in a typical family? P.s I really like all the nuances you've added to all the characters but I was just wondering ur pov on this

gojo is not perfect—despite what he claims—but he is intelligent, and he cares. he cares maybe a little bit too much, sometimes.

and sure, he sprung two kids on you when you were freshly graduated and he hadn’t spoken to you in the six months prior—but that’s because he trusts you. it’s because if there’s someone he knows will be there, even ghosted, it’s you.

plus he was only eighteen so give him a break.

but gojo is prone to growth. he always has been.

when he was a kid and people watched him become an anomaly—the kind of sorcerer that they couldn’t teach, simply because they would never understand. or when he was a second year at jujutsu high and he changed radically. in an instant. because that’s who he is—that’s who he’s always been.

gojo doesn’t do well with change, and maybe that’s why it’s so drawn to him.

but he started out just annoying you, and a couple months in, he began to care about you.

and then he admired you, and trusted you, and wanted you to be there with him while he navigated a newfound responsibility—and gojo hates change, but if you’re there to change with him then who is he to argue?

yes, he’s too quick, he’s too insensitive, he jokes too much and he struggles to let anyone in—maybe because he doesn’t want to be misunderstood, or maybe because he’s protective.

but you’ve never been the type to turn away from a struggle, and you do understand him. in a way that gojo can’t even comprehend—for nine years, at least.

and before he was even your boyfriend, or your husband, he was a good partner.

gojo might not understand humanity, or simple morals, but he’s always had that intrinsic need to take care of you. to protect you from harm, and find a way to reassure himself that you’re not going to leave too—that he’s not going to give you any reason to leave.

so what if he takes at least seven years to kiss you?

so what if you’re twenty five when he finally admits that he’s in love with you after knowing you for almost a decade?

you’re the one that taught him that actions speak louder than words, anyway.

and gojo might be good at lots of things. he might be a natural at everything he’s ever tried.

but being in love doesn’t come naturally. it isn’t something you can control, something you can cater to.

being in love is about growing.

and if it comes to you, gojo is willing to grow until he dies.

he’ll learn how to communicate better. he’ll learn the fine line between amusing you and pissing you off (though, that one takes more practice). he learns how to soothe you when you’re upset, how to pick out dinner for you when he’s out with megumi, how to buy you birthday presents.

he learns what your favorite color is and wears it whenever he wants to make you blink. he learns what your favorite flowers are and keeps them on the counter at all times.

and most importantly, he learns how you interact with everyone. he recognizes the sound of your voice, and can guess what you’re going to say when one of the kids is in trouble.

gojo will learn how to lean on you eventually, but you’ll just have to give him some time.

and would it really be so bad to teach him how love? to learn with him?

[erideights]

Little pieces here and there (5)

Pairing: Buggy x Fem!Reader (One Piece Live Action)

Chapters: one, two, three, four

Word Count: 3K

Warnings: light flirting, light metion of sex, a lot of feelings, super fluff (in their particular way)

A/N: I'M BACK WITH THE NEW AND LAST (????) CHAPTER OF THE SERIES AFTER AN HIATUS WEEK. I wanted to post something good, something beautiful, true to the characters and the story you all enjoyed reading as much as i writing! (sorry for the possible grammatical mistakes!)

Side note: this chapter is to be read with different time frames, so changing the lights of the room and their resting positions in bed!

"Say it."

"Nope."

"Why not!?" he whines, his beautiful dove eyes pleading. "C'mon baby. Say it. I deserve it. All the awards. All the honors." The fact he’s beneath her, trapped between her body and the mattress, doesn't help make him look less submissive. She has to admit, it’s extremely pleasant to see how his dignified ass drags himself for her.

"But it would be a lie," she says, sticking out her tongue in a gesture intended to make him suffer a little more. Unbelievable that this is the same man who forced her to beg for sex a couple of hours ago. "and I’m no liar."

''Didn't seem like a lie to me when you were moaning my name and cumming on my cock for the third time some minutes ago.'' Ah, there it is, his ego is back again. Or at least, a glimpse of it. Took a while to appear. 

In front of him, (Y/N) just smiles devilishly, which makes Buggy growl and look at her with pleading eyes again. "Look, we already established I know and even like how you need to play difficult, it's part of your charisma, but I need to hear it, okay? I will give you anything your wayward, fussy heart could desire. Consider it a prize."

''Anything?''

''Anything.''

Hmm. She plays along, and pretends to think about it for long, torturous seconds, shaking her head from side to side in slowmo, taking a deep breath. 

As expected, soon enough she decides to give in-- she’s satisfied after making him beg in her own particular way.

''Fine.'' She takes a breath and starts her dramatic performance, with one hand on her own chest, eyes closed. ''Oh, Buggy, you were right, you are the best lover I’ve ever had, thanks to you my soul has ascended and I have seen the One Piece.''

That is not the praise he was expecting about his sexual skills. Not even close. But was so /him/, so dramatic, exaggerated, and incredibly hilarious, that despite faking offense on his face, eyes half-closed, lips pressed together, fingers pinching her hips as punishment, he has to admit -he will not-, was funny.

''You're a moron'' That’s about everything he has to say on the matter.

‘’Like Ol’Axe-Hand?’’ She asks, raising an eyebrow, hoping he gets it. And of course he does. He's so surprised that he widens his eyes, smirking. Is she actually admitting how incredibly funny he is? ''You still remember that joke?''

''Was so bad it stuck with me since then like a fucking nightmare.'' Hit and sunk.

''Ouch''

"Don't worry, there's still time to improve the quality of your jokes. But for now I'll take the prize you promised.''

''Ugh, fine. What do you want?’' Buggy thinks he knows (Y/N), so he’s convinced she will ask for something impossible. A challenge that will ridicule him or an astronomical sum of money. ''If what you want are berries I’m sorry to inform you, sunshine, I'm broke, I still have to find...'' but the clown shuts himself when he feels the girl's fingers slowly caressing his sharp jaw, finally pulling him by his chin towards her. He leans in too, eyes fixed on her lips, yearning for the kiss he can see so clearly written in the dreamy way she looks at him.

There’s no need to announce it, nor to start it with their usual flirting or provocations. It's slow and doesn't demand anything at all, nor is intended to be the trigger of their next round.

It's just a kiss. Something so simple and intrinsically complex at the same time. And in the same way as if it had been the most fiery and passionate of his life, as not long ago, this kiss leaves him breathless, unable to form a single coherent thought that has nothing to do with her.

Oh, he’s down bad. Just like she is.

              …

And there they are on the mattress, she’s sitting on his lap, legs around him, his hands on her hips, hers on his abdomen in a relaxed pose. The scene is typical of two lovers who have known each other for a lifetime -or at least for years- and not of two people who just had the wildest sex of their lives less than a couple hours ago. For the first time. 

They tell each other anecdotes, surreal stories, and laugh together inside that little bubble they don't even know how it was created, where it came from, or how the hell it could have absorbed them so much, making them completely ignore the outside world.

"What do you mean a giant bird!?" she screams in laughter, her stomach hurting, her lungs burning. "Aha, yeah, laugh all you want but imagine thinking that you’re about to die turned into damn bird feed. It would fucking piss me off."

As it can’t be otherwise, (Y/N) ends up laughing until she cries with the story of how Buggy arrived at Loguetown, and the clown finds himself exaggerating his story more and more with each laugh he manages to get from the girl, eager to hear it again, knowing he’s the only cause of this beautiful melody.

It’s absurd how he would love -kill- to know more about her, ‘cause if he stops to think about it, he doesn't know this woman at all. He knows nothing beyond her name, her crew, and the fact that she has a bold sense of humor. She’s brave and sarcastic, keen, sharp, and much more intelligent and savvy than -in his opinion- all the idiots around her.

And this is how and when he realizes the post-nut clarity theory hasn't worked for him. Getting her out of his twisted mind will not be as easy as fucking her a couple times, get his needed ton of personal satisfaction from making her beg for him, and moving on to the next thing to do/achieve on his list.

Goddamnhim.

"Alright, as much as I love and enjoy being the main character, it's time for you to drop your femme fatale facade and show me who you truly are."

"Awh,’’ she smiles tenderly, reaching for one of his cheeks. ‘’you see me like a femme fatale? That's so cute."

"Cut the crap.’’ The clown slaps her hand away, not in a violent way, but offended. ‘’You're not easily intimidated and I noticed you're good with knives too. That's sexy, and it makes me curious as hell about what you did before you joined those shitty heads."

Fair enough, she would be curious too, so she thinks about it, a bit wary of talking about her private life because there is a part of her that prefers to keep it intact -in case she wants to come back to it-. However, she reasons, mentioning what she did without being very specific doesn’t reveal anything at all. It would piss her off if Buggy casually knows her mercenary name -by which she’s fairly known among marines and pirates alike- and connects some dots all of a sudden. 

Is he actually that smart?

"I was a mercenary." She says calmly, shrugging her shoulders. "With that angelic face?" He retorts in disbelief, raising both eyebrows, even though he knows it fits her personality just right. "You'd be surprised what you're capable of with it."

"No, no, I actually believe you." He cracks an amused smile, looking directly into her eyes after carefully scanning her face. ''I mean, If someone like you tried to sneak onto my ship I would know it’s a trap, either to kill me or to steal from me but I would end up saying ''whatever you say beautiful'' and would actually let you do your thing.''

He's an idiot but still, once again, he manages to make her laugh. “Looking like that, anyone would give you anything,” he adds because he is, in fact and undoubtedly, willing to give her a little more of himself. More time and more attention, because he should definitely be out there gathering his crew -only God knows what they'll be doing- and figuring out how to get to the Grand Line without a damn map.

The idea of asking her, or even suggesting she steals it for him, doesn't even cross his mind. Not even after having shared this /intimate/ afternoon together. He knows she won't do it, she doesn’t own him shit, she’s not one of these women who fall in love and suddenly do everything, and leave everything behind, for the man of their dreams.

And of course Buggy can see the way she looks at him, without an ounce of contempt or distaste for his extravagant appearance or the atrocities he's sure she knows he's committed and of which he's not one bit ashamed. She sees him as he is and still, she’s here, offering him back something as valuable as her time and company.

But she won't give him more, he is aware of that. That's why he didn't offer (Y/N) to run away with him when he escaped from Arlong Park, because as much as she enjoys his company and maybe, just maybe, the clown imagines, feels something for him, he has the impression she’s a disgustingly loyal person, to her principles and her people, and as much as she likes to flirt with him, she would have said no.

He must admit, that's also how he likes her. Strong, capable, independent. He would kill no matter who to have her by his side as part of his crew, although he knows it won't happen. He would settle, however, with the -hypothetical- opportunity to meet from time to time on the high seas or on any random island. To sneak away from their crews in secret, to disappear for a few hours in which all his attention, his entire being, could focus on her, lower the curtain just a little, leave the spotlight behind and relax.

There is a small part of him, the one that makes him unable to stop looking intensely at her with those blue eyes that mirrors his own soul, that truly hopes she feels the same.

…

''You know'' she starts, absently stroking his hair, the clown's head in her lap. ''I imagine-- no, I know the whole nose topic is a sensitive thing for you but honestly, it shouldn't-- big noses are incredibly attractive, and yours? Believe me, anyone would want to sit on it.’’

What.

He's so taken aback by the suddenness of the comment he completely forgets what they were talking about before and on top of that, he's unable to reply for some seconds, looking at her like she just started speaking in another, incomprehensible language.

He ends up raising an eyebrow, running his tongue over his red lips. ''Including you?''

''Including me''

''Well, sunshine, today's your lucky day then'' Sitting up, in a blink of her eyes he turns, catches the girl's hips and drags her with him, lying down, leaving her sitting on his chest while he rest his head on the pillow. Buggy winks at her, licking his lips again, this time cheekily rather than thoughtfully. “I’m about to make another one of your dreams come true.”

''Horny bastard.'' she whispers, swallowing saliva. What a view, having him between her legs again. ''Never denied, sweetheart'' with a low, erotic, and breathtaking laugh, he surrounds both her thighs with his arms and pulls her body up in a quick movement, causing a sudden brush of his nose against the inside of her thigh.

(Y/N) shudders and takes a deep breath, spreading her legs a little further as she settles them on the pillow. ''Show me what else you can do, captain.'' To that he just groans, already getting hard with just having her on top of his face and her way of talking to him, pushing his buttons just the right way.

In no time she’s a complete, total, and absolute mess, writhing with pleasure. Hands grabbing his hair, hips rocking over his mouth, forcing his nose to rub against her clitoris, she softly moans his name, an occasional insult or any other possible blasphemy.

''Oh, fuck-- Buggy.''

…

Worn off makeup all around her body, sun setting, long hours spent together in which they have told funny, long stories about each other's life and of course, in which they have ended up letting free -once again- that suffocating sexual tension that attracts them to the other like a month to a lamp. Buggy, surprisingly, ends up letting his guard down to the point where he falls asleep, and not long after, he starts snoring.

(Y/N) knows, it's time to leave and look for her friends. She also knows she warned them about her obsession with the city and that the chances of her getting lost were high, and in that case they should not worry about her, blablabla, because she would come back sooner or later. She didn’t even remotely expect the reason for her disappearance would be a self-declared enemy -Luffy’s enemy- of her crew, tho. Neither was she going to spend so much time away from them to be with him.

The excuses she will need to cover her tracks are endless, and a pain in the ass without even started to think about them yet.

Will Zoro still be lost somewhere on the island? Because she obviously assumed, he got lost as soon as they split.

Still in bed, she takes a moment to calmly look at him. (Y/N) is aware of how this may be the last time they ever see each other, and -not- surprisingly, this thought sparks a pang of sadness in her. She really likes him. She wouldn't say she is in love with him, because those are big words and they barely know each other yet, but... he was right, the chemistry between the two was something impossible to deny. And it hasn't weakened, nor disappeared a single bit after sex. Quite the opposite-- It has become something more, a kind of deep and sincere fondness that in this precise moment, dark outside, distant voices over the window from drunkards and bastards around the streets, his breathing calm for a fraction of second, his eyes closed and the fresh breeze that enters the room, invites her to caress his blue hair while he sleeps, sighing.

It’s been a long, long time since (Y/N)’d enjoyed this kind of genuine, absolute peace, sharing with someone she cares about, a room where time does not exist and life is just a thought instead of reality.

Part of her wishes or better said, acknowledges, she would stay here the entire night if she could. The other says that’s ridiculous, and that those are her hormones talking and nothing else. It would pass.

But does she want it to pass? To fade away?

Finally getting out of bed -all her willpower at once- after long minutes in which she simply memorizes every possible detail around her, she begins to retrieve her clothes scattered throughout the room and get dressed in silence, trying not to wake him up.

Through all this process, in the depths of her head resonates a single thought, ringing as loud and strong as an alarm. She’s unable to shut it up. She can’t ignore it either. It's another kind of thought she shouldn't have, and at the same time… feels so natural, so logical, she doesn't feel guilty for having it.

But should she listen to it? Should she follow it?

Taking a seat in the chair that fulfilled its great purpose a few hours ago, she sighs, again, head resting on her hand, elbow on the table. With a small smile, her eyes fall back on that ridiculous, snoring clown. And then, she just knows.

Reaching to a little secret pocket in her pants, she takes out a small piece of folded paper and starts to open it slowly, being careful to not tear it apart, leaving it on the table of the room once the copy of the map of the Grand Line can be perfectly seen. When (Y/N) suggested her crew make a couple of copies in case something happened to the original, she never thought she would use hers like this, but she doesn't regret it in the slightest.

Biting the tip of her tongue, her eyes scan the partially darkened room, jumping from side to side. When she finally finds what she was looking for, she leans over the table, and taking the pen from the inkwell, she writes in the upper right corner of the map "I will be waiting for you right here, come find me" .

If someone asked her why she does this, why she feels this, why does she decide to ignore her common sense and give something so important to someone as -objectively- miserable as him, she would simply answer that there are things… or better said-- not things, but the little pieces here and there, pieces of himself left in her during conversations, shared glances, laughter, flirts, light touches and the deep strong ones that came after those. It's the way he tried to make her laugh at all costs or how he didn't give up trying to win her over. Those blue eyes so intense she would swear, they reached her soul, or the small, genuine smile she knows she has seen this same afternoon, really far from the forced, crooked, exaggerated ones he usually has.

It is all of this and much more, and opening the door of the room, closing it again so that no one disturbs Buggy while she escapes the building and heads to her ship to find her crew, she knows she can't wait to see him again.

She knows she will. Her sixth sense tells her so.

[olive-enthusiast]

Defending Aziraphale cause I KNOW y’all are gonna come for him:

1. a lot of people say that him deciding to go back to heaven is a character regression and doesn’t make sense- but it does! aziraphale has 6000+ years of repressed trauma from doing what heaven tells him! and even if he does seem to be taking steps forward (shades of gray), he never fully takes that big leap away from heaven (very LIGHT shades of gray). you can’t just recover from it!

2. also, we never actually see him get over the demons bad angels good thing. crowley is the only exception to this rule, in his eyes. he still views the Fall as a bad thing, which is why he wants them to be angels together!

3. people are also saying that it’s crazy ineffable bureaucracy got together so fast without too much internal conflict, unlike the (now divorced) husbands. but it makes sense because GABRIEL AND BEELZEBUB RAN THE SYSTEM. AND CROWLEY WAS CLEARLY A HIGH RANKING ANGEL WHO FELL VERY EARLY ON, MAKING HIM VERY DISILLUSIONED WITH THE SYSTEM. aziraphale mever got that chance- he was a lower ranking angel that was beaten down by this system, and as such doesn’t see that it’s the system that’s corrupt, not just the angels within. he still believes that heaven is a GOOD place filled with BAD angels, because he has literally never had the chance to learn otherwise.

and this is why it narratively makes perfect sense for him to become the supreme archangel- he’ll finally be able to see that the idea of heaven is corrupt because he’ll be in charge of it!

4. aziracrow have also been shown to be a direct parallel to nina and maggie. in the last episode, nina says that they’re not ready for a relationship because she just left her incredibly toxic and abusive partner. aziraphale and nina are in very similar situations! he literally just left heaven, which was incredibly toxic and abusive, and might not be ready for a relationship with crowley yet! however, unlike nina, he doesn’t fully believe that his previous situation was toxic, so he goes back- because he hasn’t seen enough to understand!

5. he clearly wants to FIX the system, not just be a part of it, because he is intrinsically such a selfless being. he still hasn’t learned to put what he actually wants before what he thinks everybody needs yet, because, again, he doesn’t understand how heaven works!

in conclusion i love aziraphale and i haven’t slept because i’ve been thinking about the finale so lmk if this doesn’t make sense but i will not be changing my thoughts about aziraphale

ALSO KEEP REWATCHING GOOD OMENS WE NEED SEASON 3

[acepalindrome]

I’m still thinking about that post about needing to acknowledge your own capacity for evil, and how influential Monster was to me in breaking down the idea that people are intrinsically either good or bad. Because the thesis statement of Monster (or one of them, because Monster has a lot to say about a lot of things,) is that everyone has the capacity to become a monster, and being human is about the choices you make. The kindest, most altruistic character in the entire series, the nicest person you ever met, starts the story by being complacent in corrupt hospital politics that value wealthy patients over the poor, and never bothered to think about the consequences of what he was doing until a patient literally died because of that shit and the grieving widow screamed in his face about it.

It was obviously the wrong moral choice! But Tenma was content to keep his head down and follow orders to further his own career, until he is literally forced to look the consequences in the eye.

And he changes after that! He makes the hard moral choices and loses everything in the process! And he keeps doing it, keeps sticking to his morals, even when its hard, when its painful, when he has to question everything he ever believed it. He keeps choosing kindness and mercy and compassion.

It's a choice! It's always a choice! No one is inherently good or evil! All that counts is your choices! And you can change! You can always become better!

[lala-blahblah]

I absolutely cannot sit down and write a nice version of this bc my brain says no, but i would like to let you all know I'm thinking of a fanfic where older Edgeworth is moving back to the US (or japan, whichever universe you subscribe to) and runs into Nick in the store while buying mass produced art to hang on the walls of his new house.

And Nick is like "dear god do you want your house to look like a dentist's office. Please do better" (in a friendly way, they are too old for rivalry at this point) and so Nick invites Edgeworth to come over and take any of his old artwork from college, since it is just sitting in a portfolio in a closet somewhere. And Edgeworth agrees to come over and look through Nick's old stuff together. There are themes of 1) growing older and like reflecting on the past and 2) Nick's character trait of finding meaning in challenges vs Edgeworth's tendency to stick with what he does well. In my head I imagine that Nick was good at art and it came somewhat easily to him and that bored him, and he was drawn to law in part because it was hard and it excited him and made him want to try harder. And i think tying that in with fatherhood, like it being unexpected and hard but something he thrives at because he feels good when there's a challenge. Potentially also touching on how like, when he lost his badge he felt very listless and depressed because he wasn't being challenged anymore, there wasn't anything to drive him and motivate him. And I think Edgeworth would be impressed by seeing Nick's old pieces (I assume he hasn't seen much of his art before) and wondering why he didn't choose to pursue art further. He also thinks about how art had always put him off personally because he couldn't get it "right" right away, and on the other hand how the structure and logic of law came easily to him, which led him to become a lawyer. I think he measures his self worth by his success in his field because he never had the support to believe he had intrinsic value as a person and maybe wasn't so good at making emotional connections with people. So that big contrast between them is so interesting... I think Edgeworth would be jealous of Nick's bravery in pursuing something he was bad at without giving up and Nick would be jealous of Edgeworth's success in law, but in a subdued way as they've grown older.

A far as actual scenes in the fic, I think I would use Nick's art as a conduit for my own agenda to have them talk about topics that are of interest to me... I would like Edgeworth to feel out of his depth for once and for nick to be the confident one as he talks about something he is well versed in, and for edgeworth to have to face that discomfort and also be a little impressed intellectually with Nick. I think I would do that by having them look through some abstract art Nick did (my intro painting classes were all abstract so we could focus on color mixing and getting comfortable with the medium). Edgeworth compliments Nick on a painting with a bunch of colored squares in gradient clusters and then gets embarrassed when Nick tells him those were just color mixing swatches. Alternatively, in my mind they are both asexual and I think even though this feels like a hallmark cliche I would have Edgeworth flounder and be very embarrassed over Nick's old figure drawing piece. I feel like Nick would be like "no you don't understand it's all very professional and normal when we draw them, like it's just about learning the shape language" and Edgeworth would be like "this is very improper and I don't know how to react can we please not look at naked people!". I don't think i would do both, but something to upset the power dynamic for a moment would be interesting! Nick is always the awkward one I want to see him shine for just a moment enough for edgeworth to go "wait what... i've known him for so long but perhaps i don't really know him at all..."

I would want Edgeworth to end up taking a series of 3 canvases Nick did in an oil painting class that were still lifes of objects the teacher had set up around the classroom. I headcanon that Nick actually far preferred drawing people to objects and rebelled against the assignment by hiding his reflection in one of the objects in each drawing- the top of his head is hidden in an ornament on a christmas tree, his eye is reflected in the shine of a china vase, etc. So it's a little secret, and Edgeworth kind of likes that... it is sweet in a way to see a much younger Phoenix captured in time like that. Something Edgeworth will be reminded of when he sees the paintings but nobody else will catch onto

I would want to layer this with a fatherhood storyline... I think i would frame it as nick inviting edgeworth over to dinner with him and Trucy and Edgeworth stepping into this domestic family life as a visitor and witnessing how its transformed Nick, like seeing him from a different lens. I think after they pick out paintings and have dinner they sit around talking. Trucy had been sitting with them, earlier she showed off some magic tricks and gave Edgeworth a picture of hers from the fridge to add to his new art collection (it's a rainbow dolphin and a sea turtle wearing top hats. Nick says she's in her Lisa Frank era). But she's been quiet for awhile and Nick realizes she's fallen asleep and it's like 11. He's like, crap, i screwed up i should've paid attention and gotten her put to bed, I'm a bad father and I have an audience for this failure. And on top of that, I already failed at being a lawyer, no matter what I try I always disappoint everyone. It's an unexpected moment of vulnerability there... like he's seemed so put together and grown up to Edgeworth this whole time like a whole different person, but he's not a different person he just has different sides to him. And this moment is one where edgeworth can be like hey, no, you're a great dad, and I'm impressed by you and everything you achieved. And I think that could lead into vulnerability from Edgeworth about his relationship with his dad and how he misses him/how he feels like he hasn't really been loved by anyone since his dad died, and how Trucy is lucky to have someone like Nick in her life.

Nick excuses himself to carry Trucy to bed and Miles starts cleaning up the kitchen. I would give a moments pause here to talk about the strange intimacy of going through someone else's kitchen cabinets and drawers, you feel like a stranger there trying to put yourself into someone else's shoes to understand how they live in this space. Maybe he guesses the right drawer for the silverware first try and he feels a little spark of connection. like "we are different in many ways but we are alike enough that we look in the same place for our spoons". Details on the kitchen too about the kid safe plastic bowls and knives that indicate a child is part of the household, that the household has been built around the child, in fact. Edgeworth lives alone and I imagine things are kind of fancy for him (he's a man who wears a cravat so he probably has fine china right). It's completely different from this shabby mismatched cutlery that Nick has, but this kitchen has personality. Maybe he wouldn't mind having a kitchen like this so much. This is a hint at him being lonely, being included in this family unit just for a day has given him this curious sense of longing, for what he isn't sure... does he want kids? Does he want Nick? Does he just want to be part of a family? These are confusing questions and he would much rather not feel anything at all, but unfortunately it is late and he did have a glass of wine with dinner so emotions are Happening.

He hears Nick sigh tiredly as he comes into the kitchen, and Edgeworth starts to ask him where his tupperware is when suddenly Nick is wrapping his arms around him and Edgeworth is Very Tense because he's never good at knowing how to act in situations like this and he and Nick have never been on a hugging level before and he's not sure what this is even for. Then Nick is like "I keep thinking about what you said earlier, about feeling alone ever since your dad passed away. I didn't know, that's such a long time to feel alone. I don't want you to think you're on your own". Edgeworth relaxes a little bit because now he knows what the hug is for and what he's supposed to feel from it. Its very kind of Nick to worry but its unnecessary and he says so. He has colleagues he's friendly with and people from law school he keeps in touch with, he's alright. And Nick says he knows but he also knows it's difficult living the way they do, and what he means is single and in your thirties. Because everyone else is getting married or living with a long term partner or at the very least dating and their lives are focused on that relationship as the center of their being. And when you don't have that, not only is it harder to relate to the people around you but it is harder to feel like you matter in people's lives, because they all prioritize their partner before their friends. And maybe their situations aren't exactly the same (Nick has a daughter while Edgeworth lives alone) and maybe their choices were made for different reasons (Nick used to date and didn't mind it but didn't see a need to prioritize it. Edgeworth found himself unable to distinguish with certainty whether or not he was actually romantically interested in people, and rather than make the wrong choice he decided he would rule out error by choosing no one at all). But regardless, they both know first hand the isolation that comes with trying to carve a path for themselves that does not include a life partner in a world where everyone else comes in pairs. And Nick is reaching out across that emptiness saying hey, we might both be building different lives, but there's room for you to be a part of mine if you want.

Outloud, Nick says "Really, Miles. You aren't alone in this." and Edgeworth says "Well, Phoenix, neither are you". And he stands there and lets his friend hug him, and it doesn't feel like butterflies but it does feel solid and warm and good. And he doesn't even worry about whether he's supposed to let go by now or not, because it's nice, not being alone.

They stand there in comfortable silence for a long moment before Nick speaks again. "hey, remember when you used to hate me? And look at us now." Edgeworth turns his head sharply. "I never HATED you, Wright. I simply thought you were foolish and a waste of my time." He realizes a little too late that this is probably a rude thing to say to the person that just gave you a pep talk, but Nick just laughs, his head still resting on Edgeworth's shoulder. Looking at him from this angle, face almost fully hidden, Nick could be any age at all. It's easy to imagine for a moment that he's the same nervous version of himself that stood across from him in the courtroom for the first time all those years ago. The only thing breaking the illusion is the subtle streaks of silver that cross his temples. Not entirely sure why he does it, Edgeworth kisses the top of Nick's head. He feels odd about it the moment he does so, realizing it comes across not as a platonic or romantic action but as a gesture suited for a dog or pet of some kind. Nick looks up, looking confused but not displeased. "What was that for?" "It was a thank you I suppose". Miles steps away now, still uncomfortable with perceived failures even if those failures are just in social interactions, and begins to gather his things while Nick gets down a tupperware from a cabinet. "Thank you, for the dinner and for the paintings." Edgeworth continues. "I'd like to repay the favor once I get settled into the new house. Trucy's invited too, of course". As he says it, he realizes he genuinely is looking forward to seeing them again. Nick walks him to the apartment door and they say their goodbyes while Edgeworth tucks the paintings (and Trucy's dolphin drawing) under his arm.

He gets halfway down the hallway when he hears Nick calling after him. "Hey! Miles! Take an art class with me sometime" Newfound friendship or not, Edgeworth just looks at him in disdain. "what, so you can show off your superior art skills? No thank you, Wright" "No, for fun. You can make things of your own to hang on your walls. We can do something I've never done before so we're evenly matched. Like printmaking? Origami? Um, pottery?" Edgeworth bristles at the suggestions but takes a moment to acknowledge why he's feeling that way; again, it's that fear of failure. But he's enjoyed himself today and deep down he thinks it could be fun to try something new, not with the goal of being perfect at it but with the goal of spending time together. Nick surprised him today. Maybe he can surprise himself. "... I would consider pottery" Edgeworth admits. And Nick looks really happy about it. "Great. I'll book us a session then. It'll be fun, you'll see. Edgeworth shakes his head, but there's no malice behind it. "Have a good night, Phoenix" "You too. Get home safe Miles".

Edgeworth gets home a little before midnight and props the three canvases against the moving boxes still stacked up in the foyer. Tomorrow, he'll figure out where he wants to hang them. Right now though, he walks over to the bare fridge and carefully pins up Tracy's dolphin drawing. There's a lot more work to do, but it's already starting to feel like home.

[acaptainbyanyothername]

Moc Weepe is an incredibly done antagonist and I love him so much.

First up, straight off the bat: he sucks. He sucks really bad. Willy Swinzy apparently was responsible for a lot of deaths just for funsies. Moc Weepe betrayed Saskia and the entire Breach just to fuel his own greed, abandoned Midst to a tearror (that he’s indirectly responsible for…), then decided it would be swell to helm a cult so he can kill MORE people. He’s selfish, greedy, megalomaniacal, and cruel. So yeah, he’s a good antagonist because he actively furthers the plot in negative ways.

But here’s the thing that makes him so special: we’ve been personally following him as a character since the very beginning. He’s an antagonist protagonist! And he is so fun, and so human. He’s the only one of our three protagonists with a sense of humor. We see him “sing” with Saskia, be confused at brunch and manicures, roll his eyes and poke fun at Imelda, and be the weirdest fucking person alive at the post office. On the flip side, we see him deal with chronic pain. We see him cry out in pain while being tortured. In the most recent episode, we see him sob and beg and plead for a loved one not to die. He represents both a sense of fun and whimsy while also being literally and metaphorically consumed by darkness. That’s incredibly cathartic, actually.

Moc Weepe is so fun to watch. He’s so, so desperately human. He is not intrinsically bad, but he continuously makes terrible decisions. We can relate to Weepe while berating his choices. We can enjoy every minute he’s on screen while he’s actively making things worse for everyone else. He’s a a victim and a perpetrator, often both at the same time. Weepe is an incredible antagonist because he is as human as every other character and feels just as loved by the narrators.

All this to say: I love Moc Weepe and I can’t wait to watch him die <3

[seven-meds]

Have you seen Joker: Folie à Deux yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

Spoilers, obviously.

It was tonally and philosophically very similar to the first. And I suppose I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm part of the closest thing to a "target audience" that it has. Personally, I would have felt spat on and kicked like a dog had it depicted a charismatic criminal duo leading a revolution. My displeasure at the concept of a sequel centered around my belief that it would abandon its nihilistic, antagonistic perspective to give the average fan something they can easily get elsewhere. It's a belittling, hateful couple of films, which is what interests me. Whether they're good or bad is irrelevant. Whether they respect me as a person is even more irrelevant because I am not meeting them where they are at.

In many ways it was deeply erotic, fetishistic, and honestly pornographic. The treatment of Arthur is gratuitous in its sadism, it's often lip-bitingly intense. The pleasure it takes in torturing him is transparent, and so openly sexual. In the most obvious case: hands grabbing and clutching his clothing to strip him bare, the display of his contorted body and exposed stomach, water and paint dripping down his neck and onto his chest. If you prefer fandom terms, it's whump. There were a few instances where I thought it should have gone much farther, where the way it held back felt cowardly or dishonest. Was any of this its intention? Difficult to say. The line between the emotional intensity of sex and the emotional intensity of pain is hard to distinguish.

Arthur's relationship with Harley mirrors his relationship with his mother, someone else he has to put a mask on for. Her painting his face before allowing him to fuck her is the equivalent of her having put a paper bag over his head. I enjoyed her manipulative and unpredictable nature. She's attractive in the way Lou Bloom is. And the very immediate and inappropriate whirlwind relationship that spawns from two people who connect entirely through their own suffering is familiar.

Hurt and pain is an intrinsic part of Arthur as a character, he's simply designed to suffer alone. This is what makes him so incredibly easy for certain people to like. Maybe they feel similarly about themselves, maybe they like the idea of healing him, maybe they just like to watch harm befall a man until he breaks. There are many reasons to find him beautiful just as he is, even if he was never intended to be.

To me his story was taken to its logical conclusion, a conclusion it could easily have reached in the first. A different outcome would not have made sense. And despite it being so logical and obvious I didn't expect it to happen at all. But it did.

[stardustdiiving]

The way some people talk about “misogynistic writing” with the female genshin archons—specifically Nahida & Furina— kills me a bit, because while i do feel there’s valid criticisms of genshin’s writing to be made (especially regarding Ei, who I do feel was done a massive disservice writing wise), often I see people seem to come from a place of not understanding the writing/characters well, and/or leaning into like…very reductive ideas of what makes a female character “good” that honestly says more about their biases than Genshin’s

For example, a common complaint I see against Nahida & Furina is about them being made to be “weak/unserious” and how this is bad writing because genshin is unwilling to take their characters seriously—but the way this is argued seems to suggest Furina & Nahida would be better characters if they were more physically powerful, mature, or “cooler” in some way. But I really dislike the notion of girlbossification being seen as the one standard of good writing for women. A girl being strong and independent and able to punch things really hard isn’t a marker of inherent good writing

Nahida and Furina not being physically powerful or completely sure of themselves is the point. Their lack of life-experience-based maturity and overpowering physical strength are intentional and points of strength for their character writing, not flaws or weaknesses:

Nahida is the God of Wisdom—her primary source of strength is her intelligence, which comes from her curiosity about the world that is intrinsically linked to her being very caring by nature. The reason Nahida is at a disadvantage in physical strength with the antagonists—Scaramouche and Dottore—and doesn’t have an epic moment where she brute force overpowers them, isn’t because Genshin is treating Nahida like an incompetent joke, it’s because her character highlights the overall theme in Sumeru’s AQ that power isn’t everything and strength/wisdom comes from many places.

She outsmarts both Scaramouche and Dottore through her ability to strategize—if you’re trying to sell Nahida as a character who embodies wisdom, it’s far stronger writing wise to have her use her wisdom and mind to overcome narrative conflict than have her be all powerful. If you don’t think Nahida revealing she’s trapped Scaramouche in a dream loop after he tries to rip her gnosis from her, or her standing her ground against Dottore and forcing him to bargain with her when he attempts to intimidate her into giving him what he wants doesn’t make her “cool” or interesting….idk ! Maybe it’s not the writing and just your personal preference for character appeal

Furina —without getting too deep into 4.2 spoilers—has an arc revolving around the loneliness & conflict of needing to mold yourself into a performance for a greater purpose, and grappling with personal identity and autonomy in the aftermath of performance and repression shaping your life. I really don’t understand how people watch how she’s handled and come away with the conclusion her character gets bent around Nuevillette’s man pain/the fact he’s just so ~much more competent than her unless you’re just really not interested in trying to engage Furina’s writing or taking it in confusingly bad faith

Her struggling with lacking the physical power/competence a god “should” have is, again, the point of her character and they are very clear where that lack of ability comes from within the writing. Her narrative actions follow an arc that revolves around this internal conflict she has—she feels very established to be her own person and they certainty don’t shy away from expanding on Furina’s emotions without it only being done as footing for other (male) characters

I think Nahida & Furina were just not what people were expecting the Dendro & Hydro Archon to be like, I also see a lot of complaints that neither of them “act like gods” or “seem very godlike” but see, in my opinion, one of the central themes to genshin overall is to examine the relationship between humanity and the divine. Part of this also includes calling into question what a god should be, especially in relation to humans/having a sense of humanity

The center conflict within Nahida & Furina’s characters is that their sense of humanity is at odds with being held to what being a god “should” be. Nahida is imprisoned by the Sages who treat her with disdain for being a child and not being inhumanly perfect enough to be useful to them as a deity. We see Furina try to engage with her people earnestly in a more human way before realizing she needs to put up the performance that proceeds to shape her life & state of deep loneliness for the next 500 years to be taken seriously and fulfill her duties. You aren’t supposed to look at Nahida or Furina and think they’re all powerful otherworldly divine beings. You’re supposed to view the, as people—people who are young and inexperienced regarding their position in life. Venti and Zhongli act like people in the same way—the only difference is they have more experience and have had the time to accomplish more feats as original members as the Seven

Again, it’s not that I don’t think there’s criticisms to be made. Genshin to me sets up Ei to be a character who requires a lot of self reflection/growth and thought with handling her moral dubiousness, and then out of desperately worrying she won’t be likable enough, seems to bend over with trying to insist on Ei being palpably appealing while not following through on a lot of what her character really needs to feel well handled. (I feel they barely even address Ei needing to rebuild trust with her people and it’s only more clear when you now see Furina spend a lot of time handling something similar despite doing less um, government oppression thsn Ei did for instance HDJNDJDJ. But I guess me pinning where my personal dissatisfaction with her writing comes from is another post in of its own and more based in general issues with Inazuma vs viewing it as misogynistic writing alone) The trend of not letting a female character grapple with her morality and try to push her being livable at the expense of addressing her complexity does honestly feel it falls into a misogynistic writing trends. I am really bummed out with Ei’s execution when genshin has proven through other characters along with Nahida and Furina they are capable of handling a character like her writing wise imo

But I really think, again, if someone thinks none of genshin’s women are engaging or interesting, or that Nahida and Furina aren’t taken seriously enough narratively while seeming to not really understand the intent of the characters’ writing, or want to take them seriously unless they’re cool/girlboss-y enough, I feel it may say more about their ideas of handling women in fiction than it does about genshin. I get personal preferences and not being really into a character, but people so frequently frame it as a possibly misogyny pattern with how genshin writes the female archons and I can’t help but disagree. I think sometimes people don’t consider what the story is trying to say with the characters vs what they think is cool or want (and of course what we all think is cool or may want/expect narratively is always informed by our own biases). There’s a level of subjectivity in how you can interpret writing and narratives of course but they’re just not interpretations I feel fit into what’s presented in the text !

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Morality of Mabel and Dipper Pines

Warning: Dipper Levels of Overanalysis Ahead

I’d like to make it clear at the start that I love both of these characters equally and they’re both good people, just in different ways. But I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Mabel’s flaws and less of Dipper’s, so I’d like to contribute to the discussion of their respective characters by exploring a divide between them I haven’t seen talked about much.

Mabel really wants to be a moral person. She places a lot of intrinsic worth in the concepts of ethics, like kindness and fairness and the wellbeing of others. Being a bad person could be considered her worst fear. It’s definitely up there with her other greatest fears of losing her relationship with Dipper and the inevitability of change, and those fears developed later largely in response to Ford and the baggage he brought with him.

Dipper just doesn’t care about that as much. That isn’t to say he’s a bad person! He's compassionate, selfless, brave and unquestionably heroic by the end of the show. They both are. But it sticks out to me how differently they think about ethics. For example, Dipper literally kills Wax Sherlock Holmes, while Mabel is so averse to hurting someone’s feelings that she can’t bear to break out of a false, one-sided relationship with Gideon until Dipper's life is at stake. You see what I’m getting at here? But I have more evidence! Buckle up, this is gonna get long.

Compare how they treat their rivals, Pacifica and Robbie. These are ordinary humans with no real authority over them who, age and class gaps aside, they're basically on even footing with in confrontations, so this is a good metric for how aggressive they are when upset and how much they hold grudges in mundane situations.

In “Irrational Treasure”, Mabel is deeply hurt by Pacifica’s mockery to the point of giving up her silly identity, and sets out to prove her wrong that she can be competent. But at the end, when presented with the opportunity to destroy the Northwest family’s fake prestigious legacy that they use to justify putting others down, she declares, “I’ve got nothing to prove” and lets it go. She’s secure in herself. Her motivation is satisfied. Why bother putting more pain and strife into the world? It’s Dipper, who has been only been hurt by proximity to Mabel, who insists on exposing the truth specifically to spite Pacifica and takes away that “Man, revenge is underrated. That felt awesome!” Revenge is arguably a form of justice, especially in this sense of revealing an unfair lie, but still, he takes great pleasure in bringing an enemy down for the sake of it, not to fix the damage they did.

In “Fight Fighters”, Dipper’s vindictive streak returns. He manipulates the ridiculously powerful Rumble McSkirmish into brutally beating up Robbie on the fraudulent charge of murder, threatening Robbie’s life. He didn’t realize Rumble would try to kill Robbie, but he was fine with him severely injuring him. Rumble is a fighting game character, a superpowered master martial artist. Robbie is a normal fifteen-year-old. This is not a sportsmanlike matchup. By the end Dipper learns his lesson and takes responsibility, but so does Mabel about hurting people to try to have a perfect life and people still complain about that!

In “The Golf War”, Mabel is again the twin with a bone to pick with Pacifica, but Dipper takes her rivalry more seriously than her and is more willing to be mean about it. He encourages her to cheat when she doesn’t want to, justifying it because Pacifica is “cheating at life”. Understandable, but still underhanded. While Mabel bonds and buries the hatchet with her rival by the end, outright declaring their rivalry to be stupid, Dipper holds onto it, refusing to forgive Pacifica at all. He disapproves of Mabel's offer to give her a ride home afterward, despite the pouring rain and her absent parents. He still wholeheartedly considers her “the worst” and tells her so to her face at the beginning of “Northwest Mansion Mystery”, even though he saw her and Mabel help each other in their fight against the Lilliputtians and Pacifica thank Mabel and accept her apology.

In “The Love God”, Mabel’s compassion is on full display. She makes it apparent that she wants everyone she knows to be happy, to the point of making a chart to show her friends’ feelings with stickers, and goes out of her way to help Robbie just because she doesn’t think any human being should be so lonely and sad. Dipper initially has no sympathy for Robbie’s misery and sees the twins and his old friends leaving him to rot as a good thing.

Dipper is more emotionally invested in hating people and willing to play dirty. Mabel prefers to see the best in people, forgive, deescalate conflict and turn enemies into friends whenever possible, and has more respect for honour and sportsmanship.

Compare the insecurities they highlight in "Society of the Blind Eye". These could have been their last words spoken with their memories of the summer, so they are fully candid and vulnerable.

Mabel confesses, “I only love some of my stuffed animals and the guilt is killing me!” She reprimands herself for not having sincere affection for all the people in her life… who are inanimate objects, hence this being a joke about how immature and overly sentimental she is. But she’s telling the truth! Not being honest about your feelings toward someone who loves you (as toys are assumed to love their kids) is wrong. It’s something a bad, or at least flawed, person would do. We also know that it’s something Mabel can do with real consequences - she loves Dipper unconditionally, but her frequent teasing of him instead of letting this on damages his self-esteem more than she intends and often realizes - and when she does realize as in “Little Dipper”, she’s ashamed of herself. Her guilt is that she’s failing morally, that she hurts the people around her despite her good intentions.

Dipper admits, “Sometimes I use big words and don’t actually know what they mean. I mean, I’m supposed to be the smart guy! If I’m not the smart guy, then who am I?” He primarily thinks of his worth in terms of competence. Dipper is generally not that confident, at this point in time. He has an intense drive to prove his worth. He is acutely aware of his physical and social shortcomings. But the one thing he knows that he does well is analytical, deductive and strategic thinking, and so to always have value he’s built his entire identity around being particularly intelligent. He’s the planner, the mastermind, the guy with the specialized knowledge and important big words who people have no choice but to respect and listen to, because a lifetime of loneliness besides Mabel has taught him that given a choice, they probably won’t. Except just like Mabel’s all-loving attitude, there’s an element of performance. He doesn’t know everything; he’s inherently irrational to a degree like everyone else. So he tries to seem smarter than he is. His guilt is that he’s failing intellectually and practically, that he isn’t contributing enough to be worth something.

This is where Dipper diverges. He wants to be ethically good less than he wants to be good AT things, and respected for it. But they both beat themselves up when they don’t live up to their self-assigned archetypes of All-Loving Hero and The Smart Guy, when they aren’t good enough by their own unreasonably high standards.

"The Last Mabelcorn" deconstructs Mabel’s fixation on her moral perfection. Celestabellabethabelle, who I will henceforth call C-Beth for short, manipulates it to keep her out of the unicorns’ way. She makes manifest Mabel’s fear that she isn’t good enough no matter what she does. We see Mabel push herself further and further to try to prove herself, much like Dipper in episodes like “Dipper vs Manliness”, and emotionally unravel until she’s miserable, self-loathing and openly listing her vices in a way never seen before. But this isn’t productive! Wallowing in shame doesn’t motivate her to be better! She needs to learn that although she isn’t perfect, the virtues she has are good enough to work with to both get out and kick C-Beth out of her head. She decides to stop worrying about meeting an impossible ideal of goodness and just focus on doing good, by using efficient (if violent, and therefore immoral under certain paradigms) methods to protect her family. Her plot in this episode has its detractors and I understand the criticisms that the message wasn’t handled as well as it could have been. But I think it does okay. Mabel definitely reevaluates her need to feel like a good person here. She switches from prioritizing what’s important to her, the validation of being "pure of heart", to what’s important to others and in the bigger picture, simply getting the unicorn hair to keep Bill out of the Mystery Shack.

Finally, compare the twins’ disastrous errors in judgement in “Scary-Oke” and “Dipper and Mabel vs the Future”, when they both accidentally unleash terrible forces of evil upon the town and set in motion a local apocalypse.

Dipper recites an incantation from Journal 3 that causes the dead to rise as bloodthirsty zombies, desperate to prove to the government agents before they leave that the supernatural is real and warrants their help investigating, driven by both his desire for knowledge (his tool to feel secure in himself) and more immediately his fear of being dismissed as unworthy. He is emotionally vulnerable, but still creates the dangerous situation on his own initiative. Since he doesn’t need a blacklight to read the spell and the beginning of the episode established that he’s already familiar with all Journal 3’s visible entries, he knows what the spell would do. He doesn’t realize how many zombies will appear or how dangerous they’ll be. But he is aware that there are risks. Plus, the Shack is hosting a party full of innocent civilians and Mabel has explicitly asked him not to interfere with weirdness. The one thing she told him not to do that night was raise the dead! And what does he do? Raise the dead.

Mabel is actively deceived and manipulated into giving who she believes to be Blendin Blandin, an expert in time-altering technology, what she believes to be an item of such technology, with the intention of warping time to extend the summer for the town. This is a selfish choice. But on top of how emotionally compromised she is, sobbing in despair after “the worst day of [her] life”, consider her internal logic: the end of summer is going to mean the trials and tribulations of growing up for both her and Dipper, and they won’t even have each other if he gets his way; Wendy is already going through that and has told her how awful high school is; she overheard at least some of the Stans’ conversation at the end of “A Tale of Two Stans”, meaning she might know that Stan will have to give up his home and business once the summer is over; and she and Dipper both have true friends here who they will miss and be missed by, as opposed to Piedmont where we only see them supporting and comforting each other and never hear of any friends. And it isn’t like she’s the only one having fun! Stan is happier than ever, Ford is back home, Dipper’s come into his own more than she could ever have anticipated. He’ll still get to delve into the mysteries of this town that he loves so much. But she’ll be there too. If you want more Gravity Falls, you can see where she’s coming from. She genuinely thinks that “just a little more summer” would be a positive experience for everyone, with plenty of good reason. Yes, she’s recklessly messing with powerful forces that she doesn’t understand. Yes, she isn’t nearly as suspicious of this sudden miracle solution as she should be. But she has no evidence that this would harm anyone.

Their responses after making their mistake are also noteworthy. They’re both horrified and remorseful. But Dipper expresses no concern for the agents for the rest of the episode when it looks like they’ve been killed due to his actions. He even nonchalantly remarks that he thought they were dead when he sees them again. Mabel, however, reaches to stop Bill and begs him to “wait” before he knocks her unconscious. Then she’s imprisoned in Mabelland, which is designed to make her never want to leave and based on how it only occurs to her after she renounces it that the neon colours and repetitive background music are too much even for her, may additionally have a direct, though subtle, influence on her mind. So she’s a little distracted from her guilt. But by risking her life to fix the repercussions of her actions and save the town, she shows much more responsibility for the townspeople’s lives than Dipper showed for the agents he’d tried so hard to impress. He just happily went about his business for weeks believing he had two people’s deaths on his conscience. Never even looked into whether they survived.

These differences in their personal moral philosophies add another layer to the parallels between the two generations of Pines twins. Typically, Dipper parallels Ford and Mabel parallels Stan. But less so here! Like Mabel, Ford very staunchly believes in abstract moral theory, namely that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. He holds a grudge for weeks against Stan saving him from being lost in the dimensions through the portal, because it endangered the rest of the world by creating the Rift. It was a good deed with good intentions… but it didn’t only make life better for everyone. To Ford, that means it isn’t good enough. Hmm, which younger twin has a problem with judging anything short of ‘pure good’ to not be worthwhile? Also like Mabel, Ford’s self-righteousness is often hypocritical, considering his pride, selfishness and willingness to disregard the possible negative consequences of his actions, e.g. trusting Bill and building the portal in the first place.

Like Dipper, Stan is willing and ready to use underhanded methods to win against his enemies, to lie, cheat, steal and leverage assets he doesn’t really have the right to. He’s more inclined to be aggressive, spiteful and smug. As for holding grudges, even to an unreasonable extent, he personally despised a nine-year-old child even before he knew that the child was a bad person. He would absolutely summon Rumble McSkirmish to attack a rival for him. He prides himself on his cunning, another form of intelligence, and prioritises being good at what he does best over holding the moral high ground. He is shown to have lifelong insecurities about Ford being better than him in other fields (and thus explicitly valued more by their father); so his pragmatism is his way of trying to always be useful to the people he loves, and indeed a key way he shows them his love.