#not sure how to depict their dynamic but they're cute as hell!

[rafora]

itty bitties

[allastoredeer]

Can I ask some of your pet peeves that will make you say ew, no and turn back to a fic? Far from the top Al/bottom Luci that you have talked about

I, for example, can't stand any fic where they punish Stolas or Blitzø for what led to the breakup, and there's a difference between exploring a perspective and rejoicing in crushing a character. I love the relationship between Niffy and Alastor but when they infantilize her? Yes, no, goodbye. If your found family dynamic is trying to crush the characters in the nuclear family boxes I DON'T WANT IT

Certaintly!

And I totally agree with you about Niffty being too infantilized. She is a grown ass woman, even if she acts childish at times. Also, I can't stand it when people put all the blame on Blitz's and Stolas' relationship on either one of them too. It's a very complicated relationship where they have both made mistakes and both of them suffer from unresolved trauma.

Here are my pet peeves:

The implication or outright statement that Alastor's love interest "taught" him how to love, or "showed" him how to love. It implies that there was something in him that was lacking, something in him that needed to be "fixed," and the aphobia is so real it puts a horrible taste in my mouth every time. Implying that a basic human emotion such as love is something that Alastor had to be taught (especially when in reference of his asexuality), sends me clicking out of a fic so fast my browser crashes.

Overuse of the word "deer" in substitute for "dear." Look, I know its a popular nickname. Yes, it can be cute. But terms of endearment like that are cutest when they're used sparingly. When its used a lot, it gets very old and very repetitive really fast. I can't get lost in a story when the words "my deer," or "yes, my deer," or "of course, my deer," or "no, my deer," is used every other sentence. It makes me want to pull my hair out. (Also Alastor using the word "dear" so much. He does say it, but not that often, even in the show. Like I said, endearments like that are much more effective when they're sprinkled, and not every time he opens his mouth).

Lucifer coming off as too naive or innocent. I'm okay with him being naive to modern day Hell, but the guy isn't stupid. And he sure isn't innocent either. When he acts too cutesy and sweet, especially for the majority of the story, I lose interest. Where's the spice? Where's his bite? Where's the guy that went from 0-60 in the blink of an eye and insulted Alastor within the seconds that he met him? (Also any fics that have him making a deal with Alastor so easily. Or Alastor manipulating him into making a deal. Or he's ever, at any point, scared of Alastor. That bitch is not scared of him, even when Al's in his big, creepy demon form. Lucifer would not be blink an eye.

Anytime Lilith is depicted as an abusive, shallow and neglectful wife, especially when that's also made to be the sole reason for Lucifer's depression.

Lucifer being overly obsessed with ducks. It's the same as the "dear/deer" thing. I don't mind seeing it sprinkled in through his character, but I hate it when its used as a defining trait.

Alastor coming off as too much of an old-timey gentleman. Or coming off as super masculine. If I can't imagine him sassily flicking his wrist or lounging on a bed, kicking his feet in the air, it takes me out of the story. I can't stand it when he's written so stiff. Too much like a prim-and-proper butler in an old movie when he's one of the most flamboyant characters in the show.

Over use of the word "picture-box" in reference to Vox. It's the exact same as "dear/deer." It has the potential to be cute, but it's so overused. It makes the dialogue sound clunky and unnatural when its repeated so often, and sometimes, it's when it's used that throws me off. It's the kind of word that clutters a sentence, and if its not used right, it sticks out to me like a sore thumb.

But what's probably my biggest pet peeve is when Alastor's dialogue is bland. Like, when he doesn't sound like a person and speaks like the walking personification of an instruction manual. When his words are too artificial, impassive, and formal. Alastor is very expressive when he speaks, he has a lot of vocal intonations, and he actually uses a lot of body language and hand gestures when he talks (see his entire first interaction with Lucifer). He can be very stiff, like when he's walking with his back straight and his head up, but he also spins his cane all the time. He flicks his wrist. He snaps his neck at 90 degree angles. He uses wide and expressive body language. He uses his cane to gesture at things. His face is very animated. And most importantly: he's an entertainer! That's how he keeps peoples attention on him. That's why is presence can be so big. He needs showmanship! And a lot of that showmanship comes from his voice. He deals in radio, which is all audio! He knows how to keep an audience with nothing but his voice. So when he sounds bland and impassive, I can't keep reading because I can't even see him as the same character. I feel like I'm reading an OC. Or an off-brand, less interesting bootleg version of him.

Adding onto the above, another pet peeve is when Alastor's internal thoughts are as bland and formal as his speech. Even if he's being written intentionally super formal, especially as part of a ruse, his head is where he doesn't have to keep up the act. His thoughts do not have to mimic his charade. He has the freedom to 100% completely and wholly be himself, because his act doesn't extend to him. If he doesn't sound like a a person who had once lived on Earth, who lived a whole human life, in his own internal thoughts, I can't even force myself to keep reading. His mind is the perfect place to see who he really is, and I have a hard time believing the real Alastor is the charade he puts on for everyone else.

There might be more that I'm not thinking of, but I'll add to the list as they come back to me.

LOL as you can see, a lot of my pet peeves revolve around Alastor. I can be a very picky reader, especially when it comes to him.

But I will say that a lot of these pet peeves also depend on how they're written. I have read, subscribed, kudo'ed, and bookmarked stories that have had multiple of my pet-peeves, but they were written in a way that was either so small that I could overlook them, or the story & plot were so interesting that I ignored them and kept reading.

I can enjoy fics that have any of the above, it just depends on how the author writes it.

[sorryyourenglishteachersucked]

Possibly my biggest problem with trying to make hard and fast rules about what kind of Problematic Subjects (TM) people are Not Allowed to Like or Create At All is that it's always so EXTREMELY limited in scope, so reductive about what constitutes "problematic", that it functionally ends up sorting stories into "as common-sense-bad as serving fried babies in the stands at a puppy-kicking contest and thus depiction of it is just as evil because if the story is fun or cathartic in ANY way someone might take it as saying it's good to reenact (because that's what common-sense-bad means, that people can be convinced it's good that easily)" or "wholesome perfectly imitable aspirational goodness that you should strive to recreate in the real world, no flaws, this is what utopia looks like, this is the ideal", and NOTHING in between exists, CAN exist...

And because human emotions are an irrational mess, this ends up meaning that a LOT of stuff showing some MAJOR unexamined biases ends up getting defensively shunted into the latter category.

How?

Hey, booktok! Look at this far-future military culture bravely standing up against aliens who are, by both their culture and their very genetic nature, just too evil and warlike to EVER reason with! Nearly 30% of the named characters are women including our lead couple and we have two trans characters too and we EVEN take 20 whole seconds to address the reasons that a military still exists at all so there's nothing sexist or problematic here! It's all but a post-patriarchal utopia! Never mind that everyone still looks down on survival skills like textile creation and sewing and gardening and cooking as soft frivolous nonsense only applicable to homemaking, that's a TRUE FACT and definitely not just an internalized bias because the author lives in a society where those are ~for giiIiIIrrRrRrllLLs~, and there's nothing even slightly questionable about the fact that the innately evil aliens are basically orcs transposed into a sci-fi setting, shhhh, orcs have never been written in a way that carries any kind of baggage, no more questions, don't you want cute lesbians surviving against the odds? What are you, some kind of homophobe!?

This also carries over to relationship dynamics; consider how...for all they get held up as the height of wholesome cuteness, coffee shop AUs aren't ~unproblematic~ at all. Sure, in the context of the story we can tell that the character cast as the barista is interested, but if that were a real-life situation? The only one who would be able to know if they're interested or not would be them, thanks to the limitations of Customer Service Mode. You can't ethically enter a relationship with someone in a situation where they don't have a safe way to firmly and unambiguously say no, and guess what, that's what most coffee shop meetings are! You see unproblematic fluff; well, when you call it that I just see workplace harassment. I'm not gonna say anyone can't write or enjoy these AUs! But I AM gonna side-eye the hell out of anyone who insists they're ~perfectly wholesome goodness~...at least, as long as the characters don't have an age gap greater than 2 years or so; if they DO have an age gap (and yes it still counts if it exists in canon but not in your fic) THERE'S an irreconcilable power dynamic! The only one in play here. Everything else about this scenario is 100% imitable and wholesome and healthy and fine!

...yeah. No. That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

See, one of the big problems with the whole Irredeemable Media mindset is that it declares that if you DON'T make that argument, and make it convincingly, you're not allowed to like this thing and still call yourself a Good Person; if you do like this thing, and you can't justify why it's wholly Unproblematic and totally okay to reenact irl, you're morally equivalent to an actual, literal child molester (and that one is not hyperbole but in fact the most common accusation flung over this).

But the problem is, Liking Things is an emotional response, not a rational choice. Liking Things is not something you consciously decide to do after evaluating that the Thing is 100% consistent with your worldview; it's just something that Happens.

So, look. To simplify it to a short paragraph, media analysis is supposed to work like this: you examine the piece of media and the events in it and the world it illustrates, you ask yourself what context it was written in, you ask yourself about the culture it originated from and how that influence shows in the end result, you ask yourself what about it resonated with you, for better, worse, and neutral, and from there, at the end of the process, you draw your conclusions about What It Means and how it relates to real-world issues and human behavior and whether or not you'd recommend it to others, and if so, to whom.

But when you follow this liking-media-is-a-one-to-one-reflection-of-one's-real-world-values mindset, what often ends up happening is that you get the process backward and engage in some dangerous circular reasoning: You Like This Piece. You Are A Good Person. Therefore, This Piece Is Good. You Like It, Therefore It Reflects Your Values, Therefore Its Values Are Good. It Is Not Problematic, Otherwise You Would Not Like It.

Ironically, that approach is far more inclined to make you want to accept some really fucked up ideas because your favorite piece of media contains them, than delighting in liking problematic trash ever would. Why?

Because you're not analyzing a piece of media, you're defending your own entire character. Your value as a moral human being. Your inherent goodness. Your ticket to heaven. You're defending all of this as if you're on trial. In order for You to still be Good, your favorite piece of media must also be Good, meaning everything about it must be Good. Those space orcs don't have any racist baggage, because they're not human! There is certainly no history of Black and indigenous people being compared to races of inhuman monsters; in fact, anyone who points out how their broad noses and war paint and the dark tones of their blue skin do indeed have some Implications in racial coding, those people are full of shit, those people are the REAL racists for making the comparison! And, and anyone who suggests that your coffee shop AU, when read through a lens of realism, is just as questionable about consent as any pulp bodice-ripper, and that both of these subgenres use romance genre conventions as a shorthand for consent instead of showing it explicitly and that's okay as long as the target audience also understands what's going on - no, absolutely not, clearly this is just a bad-faith argument to hold up an ACTUAL problematic ship, you're nothing like those trashy edgelord authors, see, the barista laughed at and leaned into the flirty joke, no one in the history of customer service work has EVER done that as a professional courtesy or to prevent a conflict from escalating while silently wishing the interaction was over and wondering if the customer is going to stalk them after their shift, or at least no one is a good enough actor that if they were thinking that you wouldn't be able to tell, the consent was totally clear and totally illustrated 100% realistically!

Whereas, if you just admit to yourself that, yeah, okay, the author of Fight The Aliens And Make It Lesbian definitely tried to make something overall positive, and oh boy did they ever deliver in terms of letting a diverse cast be action heroes and examining how that kind of stress can affect a person and how people can still find joy in the direst of situations, but they still had some unexamined biases that show through and it's worth addressing so we can do even better in the future; or that actually, yeah, the reason the customer/barista meet cute is fun to fantasize about is because the nature of the narrative eliminates the uncertainty about everyone's intentions, even though it's every bit as inimitable as professor/student in reality (and holy shit more people need to be aware of that actually, workplace harassment is fucking rampant) - that shows far more moral integrity than trying to jump through hoops to justify these things. Under the other model, you were bending over backward to give these things a pass to prove you weren't a Bad Person for liking them, and in the process defending some genuinely indefensible ideas and irl behavior. Now, you're just letting yourself be a human person with emotions that don't necessarily equal something you should act on, or even that you would ENJOY acting on - I mean really now, when you stop and think about it, would you actually want to try and flirt with your blorbo over the cafe counter when you get nervous even just ordering coffee from a normal person?

[atlasotherside]

My Thoughts On Demon Slayer Swordsmith Village Arc

(Spoilers)

-Starting off strong with beautiful animation and a proper introduction to the rest of the upper moons. All of them are quite the characters. And of course, Muzan is a dick. Who knew.

-The we get another flash back with the creepy sword guy in the last arc, along with a dude who looks like Tanjirou. Not much to bite except it's clearly important.

-My boy is awake! He's alive! And I get to see my butterfly girls!

-More sword problems. I'm sure this will end well. Smart on them for keeping the place hidden.

-Mitsuri is adorable, and when paired with Nezuko is even cuter.

-Yoriichi lore, and a sword.

-And demons. Can't forget that. One asshole became four assholes and one of them looks like he's wearing a tracksuit. Which is objectively funny.

-Also Genya has a gun. Unofficial American.

-Mitsuri is good. I've legit got flutters. We should kiss. For science.

-Also, she must have insanely good control and aim to use a sword like that accurately.

-Two things to note with the blood sword. I'm curious as to how much Nezuko understands. In some ways it feels like only a little, and others it's feels like a lot. The other thing is I'm curious if there is meaning behind the sword finally turning red when she also uses(Not quite uses it but helps) the sword. Because without her, he has no chance. And without him, she has no chance. They're two halves of a whole.

-What the hell is up with Genya.

-Another interesting sibling dynamic added. I'm into it.

-There has to be some sort of meaning in all the emotions protecting this tiny lil wimp.

-Sword guy is comically lost in the sauce.

-Sword guy is hot.

-Yet another sibling dynamic. This one also hurts. Genuinely fucked up thing to happen to these kids.

-I still fucking love Mitsuri. Her backstory is cute and in some ways oddly relatable. There's nothing to not love.

-Animation got way too beautiful something is gonna happen.

-Nezuko is in the sun, and they're currently doing a beautiful job depicting Tanjirou having a panic attack as he has to choose between his sister and the villagers.

-She's ok and now I'm crying! And she's speaking! And the villagers are helping him walk to her!

-The whole thank goodness thing is really cute. So is Mitsuri's reaction.

-My boy finally getting the appreciation he deserves.

[ngardgni]

Re-watched "First Kill" and have some thoughts:

1.Juliette being super into Cal never grows old.

But also, like, any relationship that starts with a biting and staking probably won't end well? Just a thought.

2. We'd watch clips of Sarah Catherine Hook being dorky Juliette all day long. In fact, Sarah Catherine Hook can read from the phonebook all day and we'd still watch it. In fact, can we have more Sarah Catherine Hook shows, pls? Thank you.

3. We can't watch that intimate scene in the woods without laughing. It's hot, sure, and who hasn't tried public sex at least once? But also, what's up with the fruits aggressively falling from the tree and what does that symbolize?!? We're still confused.

*edit* Runner-up: that Garden of Eve scene. Can't get through it without laughing. It's hilarious. Dunno why. LOL

4. Everyone saying they don't get how these two could've fallen in love in such a short time clearly skipped that phase when they were young. LOL If we had a nickel for everytime we took a look at a hot girl, fell in love and declared we'd die for them after only having known them for less than 3 days, we'd be rich by now. So, yeah, it tracks. And is very gay. Haha

5. We weren't paying attention the first time, but seeing the Elinor-Juliette dynamic and the Burns' family dynamic this time around makes what happened after hit us harder.

6. Juliette finally seeing Elinor for what she truly is - a psychopathic serial killer - and making the decision to betray her, strangely, accurately depicts the kind of intense love-hate relationship sisters have. Note that Cal doesn't have this kind of relationship with the brothers.

7. Like we said, we weren't paying attention the first time and hadn't realized Juliette had turned Theo. Juliette has had a lot happening the back half of the season: realizing her sister isn't perfect, accidentally turning Theo into a vampire, breaking up with Cal. This is heartbreaking.

8. Turning the spotlight on the Burns family, and seeing how each one responds to Theo turning into a vampire, and how each one has to contend with what it means - really upped the drama, intrigue and interest for us. It humanized them. Which is strange because they're the humans in this monster vs. humans story. In fact, the vampires here seem more human than they are. But a family of monster hunters now having to confront that one of their own is now a monster? Not entirely new territory, but powerful still. The family now has to take sides and it's just an effing punch in the gut. Props to Aubin Wise. She shines as the mom who still aggressively loves her (step)son and is willing to save him even though he's now a vampire. Watching Aubin Wise act the hell out of those scenes made us realize why she was cast and why she is perfect for this role. She elevates the material. The writing may be uneven at times, but she makes it shine.

9. That break-up scene though. It's probably every intense queer relationship everyone's ever had. There's always been something intense about queer relationships. Especially ones you've had when you were young. Cal and Juliette breaking up is so hard to watch, particularly because you see their relationship progress from the meet-cute, to the hot make-outs, the giddiness, the exhilaration, then you see them have to confront each other and break up? A sucker punch to the guts. Sarah Catherine Hook and Imani Lewis really sell the scene. It works even without that ridiculously obvious Romeo and Juliette reference - you can see how heartbroken they are.

And so, now we're really so into it and want a season 2.

This is surprisingly re-watcheable.