#or he's just extrapolating because he knows what the internet is like

[bubblegum-gf]

the way dan talks about the horrible terrible things he saw when he googled the onceler makes it sound like we by extension are also doing horrible unspeakable things to him (as the onceler). And I’d just like to say that... yes we are he’s absolutely correct

[ungodly-amounts-of-godly-trauma]

wotw round 1

propaganda under the cut!

shen qingqiu:

Okay first a quick intro: Shen Qingqiu / Shen Yuan is the main character of SVSSS, and his deal is that he's a guy from the modern world who wakes up in the novel he read, in the body of one of the characters. Shen Yuan is his name in his original world, while Shen Qingqiu is the name of the character he became - that he uses for himself for most of the novel.

Now, what happened to him… The thing is, at the core of his woobification are his actual canon traits, but some fans really crank them up to the point where it becomes a disservice to the character. So you never know when someone saying "oh Shen Qingqiu is so oblivious" means "due to several intersecting factors Shen Qingqiu has some extremely specific blindspots regarding certain topics" (which is just true) or "haha Shen Qingqiu could get kissed by a man and still not realize that man has romantic feelings for him" (just one variation of the sentiment, but one i find particularly bewildering considering. in canon. a man kissing him was exactly what made Shen Qingqiu realize that man was actually in love with him. like my dudes the bar is low but its there!).

Stumbling into this second version in fic was funny a first few times, but now it's like… I genuinely can't tell whether any particular author is overplaying it for comedy, or genuinely believes the character is That dumb.

Also ppl often severely underestimate his power level. Like idk if that's because they compare him to the characters he often hangs out with, who are those genius top-of-the-world experts (despite him outpacing literally everyone else he ever fought against), or because of how he bungled his first-ever case (like, you know, two weeks after waking up in a whole NEW BODY, in a different world), or because he tends to downplay his own strength and also tries to avoid killing people… but like, this man took a technique that in the original was just "aesthetic and interesting" and developed it into something that could be super deadly within weeks, he's just not using it that way. And he also fixed og Shen Qingqiu's broken cultivation within the first few months of being in that body. So he's actually extremely talented and pretty strong, he just spends most of the book either nerfed by external factors (such as poison that disables his spiritual energy at random times) or surrounded by veritable powerhouses.

And this is for Shen Yuan-as-Shen Qingqiu. But the version that drives me completely up the wall is actually the portrayal of just Shen Yuan - in fanworks where he either never gets transported to the world of the novel, or wakes up as a different character. Because suddenly the traits that already get unduly amplified with Shen Qingqiu version become straight up caricature-like. He's not only oblivious to the extreme, he also gets painted as this completely naive soft babyboi (this is about a guy whose most well-known pre-transmigration canon trait is that he writes famously vitriolic rants about novels on the internet); plus, like, on the physical level, super frail and waifish which uh. wow. nice walking right back into the BL tropes the novel itself avoided?…… So yeah I'm super not keen on this portrayal. I know he doesn't appear as not-Shen Qingqiu version of himself in the novel, if we don't count the rant in the beginning, but like. please extrapolate from the character we actually have instead of writing this mega-woobie who shares nothing with the base version?

Terrible little bastard man who has a sad backstory but is actually genuinely a terrible person. Fans like to act like he is just a soft sad boi deep inside and make him lose all of his edge.

So the thing about Shen Jiu / og!Shen Qingqiu in canon is that we first learn of him as an unquestionably, almost cartoonishly villainous character. As in, he is literally a villain in the book our main character has been reading… before dying and waking up in the world of the book, as that very villain (hence the distinction of Shen Jiu being the "original" Shen Qingqiu, as our main character begins to use the name Shen Qingqiu for himself. Shen Jiu, however, is an old name that only the original has used). The original Shen Qingqiu that our main character knows is a serial child abuser in a teaching position, a murderer (killed his colleague, killed his old fiancee's entire family…), and a lecher (visited brothels and had designs on his female disciple).

Then, over the course of the novel, we learn more about Shen Jiu - in particular, that a number of things our MC "knew" about him were not true. He did not kill his colleague, but rather failed to save him, despite trying to; he killed his "fiancee"'s family because her older brother has abused him for years (and also, Shen Jiu was forced into agreeing to marry her), and also he only actually killed half of them (only men); he visited brothels because he only felt safe in the company of women, and he just went there to get a good night's sleep; and he only ever saw that female disciple he was accused of lusting after as a daughter. And in general, he had a horrible childhood, and was himself a victim of abuse.

However, not everything gets disproved. Shen Jiu still turned from a victim to perpetrator, abusing a child (coincidentally the protagonist of the og book) and trying to set him up to die/be killed several times. Canon is very clear on that point. The situation with Shen Jiu and the og book version of the protagonist is very much an illustration of cycles of abuse.

Also at a certain point, we meet the author of the in-world book, the one our MC was reading - who explains he scrapped Shen Jiu's tragic backstory because it would make him too controversial. Quoting from memory, something like: 'if you said he was a villain, he was also tragic; but if you said he was pitiful, he'd also done terrible things. All in all, a character like this was a hotbed for all kinds of fandom discourse.'

Prophetic fucking words.

Somehow, seeing all that, some 'fans' have decided to jump into a completely opposite direction: making Shen Jiu a poor little misunderstood meow meow who did nothing wrong ever and was a soft princess and totally was never mean to the protagonist ("the protagonist just has inflated sense of ego and misunderstood Shen Jiu's normal teaching as singling him out for abuse" was a take I had to see with my own two eyeballs. Theres btw an extra from Shen Jiu's pov where he laments that the fake manual he gave the kid has failed to horrifically kill him yet).

Which puts the rest of us in an awkward position of having to defend his canon assholery. Like, the whole point of this character is that he's complex! That he's both a villain and a victim! Reducing him to just one is doing him a disservice, and either extreme is equally incorrect! And this is something that happens with many similar characters, I know, but what boggles my mind about Shen Jiu's case in particular is that. it's spelled out. The whole deal with his character is spelled out in canon. And some people still go "oh so Shen Jiu was secretly the most morally pure and good character, got it". Like. how?????????????? ??? ?? ?????

noriaki kakyoin:

Uke-fied to the max so he can be shipped with jotaro lol

Ohmygod where do I even start. Kakyoin's the poster boy for twinkification and woobification of a canonically very capable, interesting (and not twinky at all) character who's so many things at once- a loyal friend, really smart, a bit of a weirdo, infodumping trivia at random times, quick-thinking in dangerous situations, reckless, polite and respectful, vengeful towards enemies but always kind to friends, depressed, determined and motivated in the face of mortal danger despite it all - even when he had the chance to leave the Stradust Crusaders and just come back to his normal life, he decided to stick with them. This decision eventually cost him his life since he got killed by Dio, the main villain. The fandom either calls him a cardboard with no personality (which is not true at ALL, where did that take even come from) or they downplay his canon badassery- Jotaro x Kakyoin shippers are often guilty of this along with twinkifying Kakyoin. The ship is fine, but they're way more interesting if you take into account their canon characterisation as huge weirdos who somehow work pretty well together- they're both different flavors of autistic that sometimes just so happen to align on the same wavelength.

[us-the-voices-and-more-voices-2]

My headcannons for what type of music the Batfam likes lol

Bruce: 40s love songs, mostly because Thomas and Martha are lovers of old music and art it’s a call back to Batman being such an old.. old character.

He also loves really, REALLY sad songs. Just straight depressing songs, like he knows all the lyrics to like the most downright suicidal songs ever.

Dick: he listens to very upbeat music, but like EDM and rap, he also loves circus music and really ridiculously old songs he knows all the words to “the flying trapeze” by heart ❤️

Jason: unironically his favourite album is Neil Cicirega's "mouth sounds" series of albums, he also would never admit it but he listens to Kikuo constantly. he's not a "fan" of vocaloid he just likes some songs. he also constantly listens to 80s and 70s hits as a call back to his character being popular in the 80s.

Tim: worst taste in music ever, he does NOT get the aux. it's all the most popular hits of the last 4 decades, for better or worse.

he also gets all the WE jingles stuck in his head, it's so bad.

it's mostly now video game OST's he got into FNAF lore at one point and actually solved it, and then got super into the music. he relates a bit too much, he calls Jason sometimes mike because they are both undead guys hellbent on keeping kids safe from the evils of this world, and Ra's afton because the bastard always comes back. he will BLARE "I hope you die in a fire" when working a Ra's case.

Damian: despite what he holds himself to he really likes the same fandom sorta music, video game lore was the only thing that Damien and Tim talk about, they have usually ZERO free time to watch or play games they just extrapolate wtf the game is about from their friends WITH free time. that being wally and bart.

so damien has a bunch of the living tombstones, classic Chinese and arabic music but mainly Pakistani, some 80s hits. 40s love songs because bruce is right they are really good, and some mislabeled cassette tapes\CD's Damien picks up on patrol that he likes.

Steph: she didn't really get a chance to listen to much music, since Cluemaster was a dick. but she did bond and learn to love Ballet music ever since Cassandra introduced it to her, she gets whole records and albums and buys one time releases on Ebay for herself and Cassandra. otherwise she just listens to audiobooks or podcasts when working.

Cassandra: TONS of ballet music along with classic Oprah music and theatre music, she goes to plays and pirates them, she listens to every single play or theatre music she can get her hands on. she listens to "rocky horror picture show" "the guy who didn't like musicals" "Coppélia" "Jesus Christ superstar" "The Mousetrap" any and everything. she adores it all, she and Steph are constantly looking for more records and plays to watch and pirate.

Barbara: weirdly enough 60s music, Jim rubbed off on her and she honestly just listens to all sorts of 60s sounding music, she had a Elvis phase where she just was constantly listening to Elvis, eventually she found out there was a TON of other 60s and 70s black artists who were ripped off by Elvis and started listening to them, she then eventually got into punk rock and rock and roll.

Harper: she is fully into the Gotham punk music scene, she literally is one of the biggest supporters of the Gotham punk scene. only random punk song CD's, videos she converted into CD's, old gothamite punk songs on vinyl, digital releases, she just has so much merch half she made herself and half she bought, she is the epitome of Gotham punk fan. she actually has a whole ass internet archive account dedicated to JUST Gotham punk.

Duke: weirdly he loves very ethereal and bright peppy music, only instrumentals though, listens to the weirdcore playlists on YouTube listens to corecore, he just has very strange music tastes.

sometimes he forgets his entire playlist is filled with weirdly ethereal music and the rest of the batfam get so confused, and think Jean-paul is blaring church music again.

Jean-Paul: only church music, he has the most bland music tastes, he sometimes listens to catholic metal or something when he's working but other than that he just blares organ music and mass and church music, everyone tries to tell him that he CAN LISTEN TO ANYTHING ELSE. PLEASE. but he just doesn't lol.

Thomas: he listens to 40s love songs and old Sicilian and Italian songs, he's a old fart, he loves old movie soundtracks.

William Cobb: circus music only circus music, late 1880s and 1950s circus music. it sounds like a clown house and it triggers the shit out of bruce.

Jarro: he's a baby, he has no actual opinions the batfam put on nursery rhymes andcoco melon

and the rest (carrie, Bernard, huntress and the other ones)

I have 0 idea I have not read enough comics to figure it out lol

[tsugumichikaneshiro]

tsugumichi kaneshiro is a weak little bitch. here's why!

↑ if you don't know who tsugumichi is, that's him! he's the serial killer from kotoko's narrative, and who i will focus on. this post is 99% just overanalyzing subtext and extrapolating from (seemingly) unrelated information, so please bear with me. also its really messyyy

first thing i'd like to point towards is the nature of his crime. he is a 24 year old man who kills elementary school girls -> his victims are always inherently weaker than him. the question becomes: why the fuck did he do this. why are they his victims specifically. it seems very likely he was targeting them, after all.

it can't be because he thinks he can get away with it more easily; his father has enough power to get him out of any legal consequence. even his neighbors knew about his crimes, but he still didn't get arrested ever!! he might just like killing them, that is true. he might just like killing them specifically. but! i think it'd be more interesting if those are his victims because those are the only type of people he can kill. only elementary schoolers are weaker than him, so those are the only ones he can and will kill.

he tried to fight back against kotoko, by the way, he did try! he was just really bad at it and apparently ended up getting mutilated so so badly, meanwhile kotoko seemingly suffered zero severe injuries.

additionally, please look at this quote from YONAH:

K: How ridiculous... It's always like this... All of you weaklings always act like this... All of you enjoy seeing someone getting hurt... [...] All of you enjoy seeing a bad person falling down... [...] You keep asking for it, but as soon as it happens near you by your own choice, you all start complaining and evading your responsibility... You're always like this... Always such idiots!

of course, this could just be her talking about everything everyone ever. even herself, if you believe she's projecting. however i do think this was, in some way, referring to tsugumichi.

her generalizing weaklings, saying “it’s always like this, all of you weaklings always act like this,” as if she has personal experience with it... saying it towards someone she thinks likes when people get hurt, when it can be very easily assumed that tsugumichi also enjoyed seeing people in pain? i like to think this means she saw him as weak, at least a little bit

now whether she saw him as weak prior to or after killing him is a mystery! one that i won't really get into... both are possible options with their own merits and there's too little info to actually decide on one scenario over the other... i will say that i am more inclined towards her seeing him as weak prior to killing him, but that is mostly bias and such

there's also this one interrogation that could also be a vague at him, even if unintentional

yes i think he has a weak will (more literally a "weak heart") yes i also think it could be a vague at herself but this post is primarily about tsugumichi being weak... he is a weak little bitch and it's what led to him turning to evil, down the inferior path and such.

whether the thing that caused him to turn to evil was external influences (i really like the internet theory for kotoko so this could also be applied here, but that has less basis to it for him) or just him having some sort of power trip where he really really just wanted to feel some sense of power and does it by killing elementary schoolers... we dont know LOL. there's very little info on him and i am just extrapolating from as much as i can.

i think that's all i can cover that relates to this. some of it probably makes zero sense so feel free to ask me things if you feel so inclined and such.

[mecachrome]

extremely 👀👀 about this kind/nice spectrum u brought up and how alex oscar lando and anyone else on the grid are placed on the grid..... would love to know more.........

hi there!!! :D omg yes i would love to talk more about this, though of course disclaimer that these are my Personal Interpretations and i love to spout nonsense on the internet LOL. i'll just expand on oscar + lando + alex some more since frankly i don't know all the other driver lore Like That and i don't want to overstep in my analysis! also i'm deathly afraid of chirlies. ok let's move on

to start off... i think the way we talk about celebrity personas obviously requires some generalization + projection since we can only extrapolate what is already being consciously disseminated, and so although i frequently talk about the kind/nice dichotomy or someone's capacity for sympathy vs. empathy (which is kind of a parallel assessment imo) we are of course all complex people who contain multitudes, and i think it's mostly just interesting to examine strictly in the context of racing & racing mentality... if that makes sense!

also wrt landoscar's personalities → one thing i feel very, VERY strongly about despite their differing surface-level interests and social profiles (read: different flavors of off-track sports, both of them being gamers but to diverging levels of visibility, lando's higher degrees of hyperfixation, etc.) is that at their baseline they are extremely similar people, and honestly even very similar drivers and racing "characters," which ultimately kind of colors most of my analysis. if we peel back the layers then oscar and lando are both functional introverts who've been very well-nurtured by similarly robust, persisting, and loyal support systems—oscar spending 99% of his time off-track with his longtime gf, lando's best mates all being from his karting days, their dads being equally objective about yet also supportive of their careers, jon having trained lando since he was like 5 feet tall, etc.—so to me the overarching difference is that they have diametric approaches to how they externalize their convictions, and then obviously since that's what we see/hear day in & day out it generates the existing rift between their media images. per lando on btg: 

"Oscar is extremely down to earth. A bit like me, just a very normal guy who's in Formula 1, just a guy that loves to drive cars and compete against people, and that's it."

(incoming egregious amounts of lando psychoanalysis...) despite oscar being the only driver i truly rep, i've always found lando's psyche soooo fascinating because he invites such extreme emotion in people (be it positive or negative), and i think part of it does go back to the idea of being nice vs. kind and ultimately the lens through which his intentions are interpreted by other people. in real-people fandom this is always interesting since it ends up becoming an unconscious exercise in how we perceive "sincerity" in others, even though the underlying paradoxical truth is obviously that any such assessment must always be dispersed and consolidated via a parasocial system (and thus everything is held relative to our own individual value systems... This is totally not the point of the ask. SORRY FOR THE MILLION TANGENTS) anyway as an extremely disillusioned sports fan i actually have a lot of time for lando despite how much visceral judgment he generates in quite a few people, which is totally fair since everyone is fully privy to feeling however they want to feel about any celebrity and i am not here to convince them otherwise lol. but that's just me!

i think to me the thing about lando is that there is almost zero pretense to his character, which some dislike because they find his bluntness off-putting, but imo just means his intentions are generally straightforward and easily digestible. sure, he lacks the spoken filter to not come off as occasionally callous, but at the end of the day i genuinely believe that he's an inherently thoughtful (and "kind") person, especially within the insular system of professional motorsport and the many mental pitfalls that accompany it. a symptom of this is how willing he is to resist more gracious media responses and how very inwardly critical he can be in specifically self-motivating ways, the latter of which sometimes gets misinterpreted due to the rigid yet overwhelmingly popular framework of what constitutes a competitive racing mentality. but like... to Me, lando is just entirely what you see is what you get, bad parts included, and he has zero intention of making excuses for that or pretending to be anything otherwise. which i enjoy!

and which again also goes back to the idea of niceness. (honestly the tl;dr for most of lando's pr scandals is just Oh okay so it's illegal to be neurodivergent now? but i'm trying to be normal so let me not just say that.) a good example is the entire debacle of saying he felt no sympathy for daniel at mclaren in 2022, because i think it elucidates a sort of kindness in objectivity that he very plainly participates in—to lando, being a top-performing athlete means never searching for excuses to soften the brunt of one's failures, himself included, and equally that there is no point playing sorry in front of journalists or trying to reshape their narrative scrutiny since at the highest level of competition any bold-faced externalization of "sympathy" is really just pity. and what point is there in telling someone else that you Feel Bad for their skill issue/struggles when the moment you extend that sentiment you essentially debase their position as a direct competitor and therefore disrespect them even more?

"I want to be the best in the world, I want to prove myself to people. But I've never had the mentality or the confidence to say that or feel like I need to do anything more than normal to show it to people. Do I have to do anything to go over the top and show that to prove it? I don't think so. People say you've got to be brutal and you've got to have this certain mentality. But I just don't think it's true at all. I think you’ve just got to get in the car and do the best you can."

i think the Separation of Church (treating everyone exactly as they are on-track, just another car to size up or keep at bay) and State (being friendly, supportive, and altogether well-regarded by other drivers off-track) is a primary tenet of lando's personality, and it's something he achieves by valuing kindness over niceness. you know the lando/maxf quadrant interview where lando is like: i'm not friends with you because of your achievements in life... i just care about your personality! and he's mainly saying it to take the piss out of him but he also 100% does mean that shit. that's the crasyinsane part about lando to me... god i'm so sorry i need to not go on for a million years but PERSONALLY, i think lando is very much the type of person who can go through an experience, or otherwise see someone close to him go through an experience, and approach it very empathetically to the point he continues carrying on this internal conviction about it even when he's survived or grown past it. like even as someone who mostly believes in Death to Relatable Marketing, i find it really interesting when lando talks about mental health in sports because we get to see both a) the fact that he's grown so much in his own mental resilience from his rookie self in 2019 to who he is now, but also b) that he continues to believe strongly in rejecting the presumed archetype of a successful formula 1 driver, and is steadfast in surfacing that even though... honestly? lando nowadays is a very consistent, well-rounded, and efficient talent who frankly doesn't experience nearly as much of the unproductive mentally-spiraling self-criticism that used to impact his performances to a far more pronounced degree when he was younger and rough around the edges. yet he still feels compelled to affirm that there is No One way to be an athlete (which is significant because "mentality" is such a harped-on concept in all sports, and everyone is always trying unfailingly to extrapolate performance-related projections via vague and completely subjective intangibles to a notably unempirical degree!!) because he does care, deeply, about how people enter and succeed in motorsport. honestly i always feel kind of iffy bringing up commentary re: Women In Motorsport because it often sounds unnecessarily adulatory, but at least in recent times i think he's also shown a decent amount of grace when talking about female fans, girls in karting, that one time he was like Bruh who are you? @ that misogynistic reporter, which...... i'm not going to say majorly influences my opinion of him, but imo being willing to quickly shut someone down like that is an anti-niceness to a productive end that i appreciate, since i think many personalities would kind of just smile bemusedly and try to quickly move on in the conversation.

tl;dr lando thinks feeling bad for people is useless and will never give you that one tidy sympathetic soundbite, but he does care for people vividly, especially off-track, which to him is the only place kindness really matters anyway. when you look at maxf (and i know this is mainly a portrait of codependency unique to their friendship but i do think it reflects his love languages in general) whose career cratered because he mentally couldn't handle the pressure, lando's response was literally to unfailingly engage in failcore househusband chores for him like leaving handwritten notes in his 3rd grade girl handwriting and ironing his clothes on stream........ which... i could go on forever but again. separation of church and state!!!

anyway with oscar on the other hand, i honestly think most things in his life kind of just exist as a function of motorsport LOL. and that he likes surrounding himself with people of similar interests/intellectual level/skillsets, down to his partner studying engineering and wanting to work in the same industry as him....... again, i think 814's baseline characters are Very similar and that they're both great team players with complementary professional approaches, so this is not a knock on either of their personalities, but imo lando is just generally more outwardly sentimental and has also had to do a lot of conscious growing up in the past ~4 years to become more well-rounded wrt off-track interests, whereas oscar basically came onto the grid as this already fully-realized product with far fewer dependencies who is just nonchalantly like, I see my family 3 weeks a year and my sisters just think i'm their lame older brother and don't care about my career at all, but i'm fine with that and i'd make all the same sacrifices i've made over and over again to get where i am!!! also re: oscar's abject lack of interest in engaging with fans one-on-one, an easy example is how lando genuinely values/treasures the friendship bracelets he gets and wears them consistently whereas oscar is just like. Erm. i respect it but that is not for me ✋😭 he's nice about fan things because he understands how much fan support and consumerist interest enable the circus that is formula 1 but he doesn't really value any of it much past the surface-level pleasantries......

why is this answer so long............... idk if you want to hear anything more about alex but i think he's very similar to oscar in terms of this measured external niceness/quiet ruthlessness, especially wrt how they weather team politics, interact with media (noted red bull marketing hater alex albon), and tend to simply Do The Thing To Do The Thing. alex is especially interesting because if you watch his high performance pod it reveals sooooo much of his growth over the years and his current mental framework ("i was having to be selfless, and it didn't really agree with me that much") and frankly even just the way he speaks about himself is fascinating to me but i digress!!! i do think much of lando's tactless impulse yet also apparent kindness comes from his considerably privileged background and the fact that he was shown a lot of Realistic But Also Unconditional Support and thus never had his career actively threatened growing up. so even though he's had to learn to not mentally catastrophize at the f1 level, he didn't undergo the reckoning alex did with his mother/losing rb's team backing/etc., which alex mentions in this podcast as specifically triggering his insatiable desperation to prove himself.......... and so on. alex and oscar to me are both quite similar in how they let more combative thoughts simmer and are very well-trained in responding palatably to the media, but they're also going to resist relating themselves too much to other people's struggles because That Is Not Their Problem, and at the end of the day oscar is uh.... sure he has a lot of appreciation for mclaren and has called prema a family before, but he really only wants to win for himself and is less inclined than lando is to romanticize the spirit of the Team. and so when he says things like "for me, there’s just not any point, especially in self-deprecation, destroying yourself in front of the media," it's a Niceness because his assessments are always entirely self-absorbed in the most productive of senses, as in he truly only cares about what he himself is doing and is never going to waste time worrying about or comparing himself to his competitors' mental approaches!

does any of this make sense. please excuse the monstrous rambling 😭 but also please feel free to follow up with your own takes/lore about any driver if you'd like to, or to tell me that i'm absolutely wrong if you'd like, because i always love to hear about these things!!! :3c

[kittyandco]

Hi! May I ask, how do you stay close to Hans in "this" world? How do you share experiences with him? I would love to have that closeness with my f/o but I'm finding it hard. Your post recently about him was beautiful and you two are such a lovely and perfectly suited couple!

hello! thank you so much 🥺💖

i've been with hans for almost 10 years (come december), and lately it's just... exploded. i've been able to connect with him on such a deep level that it's even surprised me a little bit! and on that front, i don't know how to explain it. it's just something i feel.

but here's more about how i am able to grow and feel very close to him and many of my other f/os:

a lot of it is just being naturally curious and wanting to know more and more about him. you might not know everything there is to know about your f/o. almost a decade later and i'm still learning about hans (and no, i don't mean with new content necessarily because he never really gets any!). i still find bits and pieces about him from people's archives/general internet archives like the wayback machine, from canon sources, from wiki pages, from new-to-me media (books i haven't read where he plays a major role). the more i learn about him, the closer i feel to him.

i also make it a point to make the fictional world in which we both occupy as immersive and detailed as possible. think about the little things. even if it isn't about you and your f/o together. think about your s/i and their world. make them more real to you, in a sense.

on that note, WRITE. write often about you and your f/o, or even your s/i, or just about your f/o. even if you don't write stories, you can just write about your f/o either from your POV or your s/i's. or you could use your f/o's POV to write about you!

you can also just write dialogue snippets or random moments you think of sharing with them. imagined them going to breakfast with you? great! write it down somewhere. what did they order? did they like the place you chose? why? why not?

think about the things (interests, characteristics, opinions, beliefs) you have in common, or that you bond over. it's probably more than you think! and you can always extrapolate if there isn't canon basis for literally everything you can think of (chances are, there won't be).

listen to your f/o's voice. often. in my case, it keeps me grounded and makes me feel safer

have an archive of pics you can look at. i use pinterest a ton. i have one board that's just hans. just his pretty face everywhere. but i also have a board that captures the vibes of our relationship, what my s/i is like (i.e. how do *I* fit into all this?), and the world we come from (so it could also extend to the vibes of whatever source your f/o is from too). i also have a board that visualizes my s/i. what does your s/i look like? what's in their closet/what do they wear? what do they like?

there's probably more but this is what i thought of off the top of my head!

and lastly, and likely most importantly: never be ashamed of your love. love unapologetically, passionately, and truthfully. with all your heart.

[tayfabe75]

It is clear that most of the songs were written before May 2023, but I am sure that after too. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived was obviously written after, so what's your take on it? This is the angriest she's ever been. Where does this lead us?

Anon, I'll preface this by admitting that I don't think any songs on TTPD are reflective of the past year (though, they have been cleverly disguised to appear as though they're about current events) - I personally believe they are songs about things from Taylor and Matty's past that she dared not share until now for a couple reasons: 1) They wanted to keep their relationship secret 2) She wouldn't dare "out" Matty for his drug use (it was not yet hers to share)

Meaning, I don't believe Taylor would make such direct references to drug use without Matty's blessing.

Now, I get that almost the entire internet would disagree with me on this, I'm well aware that fans are out there right now giving their "diagnoses" about how "unhinged" and "manic" Taylor is on this album…

I vehemently disagree.

I've been studying the woman the past year and I'm continually impressed by her character. Sure, she's aware she's on camera and knows how to turn on the charm. But too much consistent wisdom comes out of her mouth in a way that never falters and isn't easily fabricated or replicated. Also, I don't think that a lot of the public perception of her matches up with how she actually comports herself. For instance, I often hear that she's a "petty queen" for writing about her exes, yet she rarely ever confirms any of them as muses, herself - yet somehow, the fans run wild with speculation and parrot it back like it's written in stone when the actual foundation of some of these myths consists of one or two paparazzi photos. It has been one of the most fascinating aspects of studying this "story".

Of course, I do my fair share of speculating, too… however, I mostly do this based on their discographies or statements made in interviews, things they've actually said or written, etc, rather than fan lore.

Let me just lastly say that the collective take from the "tayfabe" crowd is that TSMWEL is about Kanye, Scott Borchetta, or Scooter.

But… as the resident clown of the group, the one thing I can offer you is maybe a different perspective, which is what you must want if you came here at all, right??

TSMWEL, in my opinion, has romantic undertones ("our bed", "it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden", "you'll slide into inboxes") that I doubt she would use for someone like Scott Borchetta. Aside from references to substance use, there's being "gone by the morning", themes we see in songs like 'Cardigan' and 'Question…?' and even in the music video for 'Me' by The 1975, and a reference to a car crash, something else that pops up thematically on The 1975's debut album - most of which seemed to also be reflective of an earlier time (and, lines like "slide into inboxes" and "hung me on your wall, stabbed me with your push pins" seem only to bolster my suspicion that this song likely predates even 2014...)

"Where does this lead us?"

I guess that depends on your perception! Do you believe a person is able to repair or maintain a meaningful relationship with someone who once wronged them? Can someone write a heartfelt song about a betrayal that they've forgiven and moved past? Or must it always be perceived as "petty"? Can a song like this be purely reflective, or must it be fresh, scathing, or indicative of current feelings? We can safely extrapolate Matty didn't leave Taylor because he didn't care - he seems to have genuinely thought she was better off without him. If someone did that to you, would you maybe understand how anxiety lies to people and... ultimately forgive them? (As someone with a similar "cyclonic" anxiety... I'm genuinely curious!)

I personally believe that TTPD, like all of Taylor's albums, tells a story. Taylor does not sugar-coat things, and neither does Matty. And they're so beloved because they are willing to share their most vulnerable thoughts and feelings, right? If, indeed, TSMWEL is about our boy, well, I'm sure Matty also understands that "the good and bad end up in the song".

Now, read this quote again, but without all that pesky catastrophizing everyone seems to love doing:

"This period of the author's life is now over."

If, truly, this is a reflective album about the past (say, 2014), then maybe it means she wanted to document this period as part of her self-mythologizing confessional songwriting repertoire, but no longer dwells in the pain of it. It's probably just me, but as a fellow woman in her thirties, I just don't buy Taylor processing trauma this way! So publicly, I mean. She learned her lesson in 2016. And this album seems to be more about teaching lessons, herself, now…

But truly, your guess is as good as mine, anon. Thanks for the ask!

[whysojiminimnida]

so let's out jhope as bisexual?? your insider info is just as bad as the stalkers bts have. totally inappropriate. but you're just a small tumblr blog why should it matter? it 100% does. there is something wrong with you. it's not your place to be giving this info to anyone unless you are an attention seeker. Dont read your blog right if you don't like it?? shame on you really. it's nobody's place to out anyone elses sexuality EVER.

Oh my Lord, Frances. Calm DOWN. I mean the man literally did this back in July in front of how many people? Are you even aware of Equal Sign?

I can't win with some of y'all and yet here you are to school me regardless. Which I would appreciate had I not my own Korean gay couple to explain things, had I not been intimately involved with the unstr8 community since before your birth most likely, had I not lost friends to AIDS when that was still a thing. And since I'm feeling generous I'mma school your sensitive ass right back so since you're here just have several seats and pay attention. SCHOOL IS IN SESSION.

"Somebody I know says he is openly bisexual" is EXACTLY THE SAME THING AS "someone I know says he's straight" WITH ONE DIFFERENCE. That difference is negligible in much of the world but in some places I will readily agree that it's not. Korea is one of those places. That's a dude on that bed, btw. In case you were unclear about the message.

We all knew Hobi was bi back then. You did too, don't lie because your white horse got a cramp. Give the crusade a lil rest and let's ride right along. See, in Korea it is one thing to BE part of the alphabet mafia. It is another thing entirely to SAY it. Out loud. And you are correct that in those exact words, Hobi has never verbatim-ly said it. But honestly, you're coming off with a lot of internalized biphobia or a serious denial issue if you can't extrapolate the message from the above imagery alone, much less his lyrics. To his own music. Which he released publicly and has performed in front of, what, a hundred thousand people or so? Live? Plus it's right there on Hulu and Youtube if you're concerned about his level of visibility. Of course he also did this:

And I don't know about you but for me it's a little harder to ignore the specificity of the color arrangement of those gloves in light of his performance. But see here's the thing, he's never really hidden his bisexuality from us. Very much like other unstr8 BTS members, he has openly chosen to use inclusive pronouns in his music. He has worn many, many items - far too many to list here - in support of inclusivity, knowing well that some, even most people would see support as personal identification. He has smilingly played the court jester knowing that some people would ignore him, some would validate him, and some would use him to virtue-signal as a cover for their own dis-ease.

To ignore that is to ignore the totality of Jung Hoseok as a person and is far more disrespectful, in my own admittedly tiny corner of the internet. You do you, if it makes you feel better. I just can't magine any straight man filming entire videos in a Gucci pride flag sweater without a certain amount of personal input.

Not to point out the obvious but also, would a straight guy really voluntarily share a room with Park Jimin for YEARS?

On PURPOSE?

I mean we all know Jungkook was literally sleeping with Jimin in that bed on the left, we have the receipts and admissions, ain't nobody honestly and truly confused at this point. Again, it's a matter of degrees of difference, but in Hobi's case it's a pretty big degree. Being a single bi dude who also DOES IN FACT like and date women is a very far cry, Korean-militarily-speaking, from being a committed gay couple. It's not even in the same realm, honestly, and that whole military question is a hot mess I'm not going to deal with here. But I knew you were thinking about it so I thought I'd mention it.

Irene ain't care, bro. She's out there hitting the rainbow and fire emojis every damn time he posts. And if you need to take a deep breath and have another look at why you're so bothered that people around Hobi don't hide who he is, maybe go on and do that. Because his friends know him better than we do, okay. And they love him, as do (hopefully) we all. I do. And if I thought for one instant that my saying he is openly bi would hurt him, I would never. I run a "Jeon-Parks are gay/fucking/married in all but name" blog, for heaven's sake. I really don't think anyone expects me to be saying anything other than the blatantly obvious. If that suuuuuper hurts your feelings and makes you angry, please feel free to locate your nearest J-Hope "Under The Rainbow" photo and use it to vacate the premises.

There it is!

I did not out this man. He outs himself without my help.

[wafflebloggies]

the long con - part 4/7

a Don't Feed The Muse/Captain Disillusion crossover story. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

*

“I’m sorry, Alan.”

Alan stared at the Captain. He looked like a person who was seriously doubting the input of their own ears, and, in the dim cabin, the bright neons of the control panels and lights around them turning every speck of luminance into sharp glimmering point, his astonished expression wobbled. He did not actually burst into tears, but for just a moment he looked as if he might.

Only for a moment, though. It passed, and his expression sobered and settled, and he slowly sat back in his seat and leaned his head back against the worn leather, staring into the night.

“I… don’t believe you,” he said.

Blinking, almost as if the words were a question he was asking himself. Shaking his head, a numb little motion that grew as he spoke.

The Captain reacted sharply enough for both of them, flinching as if shot, turning towards him with an astonished, stung-to-the-core look.

“Alan!”

“It doesn’t make sense,” said Alan, calmly. He sounded more like he was talking to himself than the Captain, telling himself something important, with quiet, bewildered conviction. “There’s something you need me to do, or… something you’re not telling me, another temporal emergency that means you have to make me feel positive emotions, or- or something. There’s no other reason why you’d ever say that.”

The Captain bridled. “Alan, I don’t lie! This is me we’re talking about! I’m basically- thematically incapable of it! I literally spend most of my time telling people on the Internet not to lie because it freakin'- pisses me off so much!”

“Just back there, you told that ticket booth guy that vehicles of extra-terrestrial origin aren’t liable for parking tariffs under U.N law.”

“Come on, that was an exaggeration at most- and sixty dollars for a weekend? That is blatant extortion!” The Captain grimaced. “Okay, not the point. I wouldn’t lie to you!”

“You also tell people on the Internet not to accept claims without evidence,” said Alan, doggedly. “Sir.”

He sighed, glancing down, tucking his phone away behind him. “Captain… you’ve been acting strangely since Friday. Iknowyou. You gotta at least give me that, right? I know when something’s wrong, or- something’s upwith you, even if I can’t understand it because I’m just a dumb human, you could maybe at least just… tell me what’s really going on. Maybe-” He shrugged, looking away through the glass. “Maybe you’d feel better, at least.”

Feel better. It wasn’t hard to extrapolate from the tired undercurrent of apathy in Alan’s voice that what he really meant was stop acting weird. Quite easy, to go further and hear because, whatever this is, I don’t trust it, I don’t want to deal with it, and it’s making me uncomfortable. I’d just like it to stop.

The shuttle hummed, the systems purred and clicked. The Captain gazed out of the rain-streaked glass, shoulders slumped, following the faint smudges of lighter cloud scudding by above and below with his eyes. He looked wretched.

“You didn’t even remind me.” He swiped his sleeve quickly across under his nose, with a sharp sniff and a struggle into something more like his usual confident, upright posture. “About your talk. I... I’ve had a lot of other things to think about, you know. I’ve had a lot on my mind!”

“I know,” said Alan.

There were probably a lot of other things he could have said, but none that would have been so effective. Without meaning to, without meaning anything beyond just a simple agreement, he didn’t know how quietly, flatly damning he sounded.

I know. I’ve had a lot on my mind too. With everything we do, and everything it needs from me, everything you need from me. I know what it’s like, to have a lot to think about.

The Captain swallowed again, as if it hurt, flicking a couple of switches overhead as he stared through the windshield, the bright overlays and the HUD blinking between them. At last, like every word was a pulled tooth, he said,

“Fine. Listen, when I was on stage, I… I don’t know what happened. I’ve never felt anything like it before, or at least I…” He hesitated. “I… I just looked at some random guy in the audience, and the next thing I knew, I felt… it was like, I felt seen. Not in a good way, it-” He stopped again, his mouth pulled into a moue of discomfort and distress, gazing a hole through the clouds ahead as he struggled to explain. “It felt like... the tiniest part of something really, unfathomably big was looking straight at me and… it could see way more than you people can.”

“More?”

The Captain huffed. “Humans don’t exactly see a lot, Alan. Visual acuity isn’t really your species’ thing, you know? Your basic three dimensions, barely a million colours… well, you know, we made a whole video about it. But this, I felt like it could see… everything. Like it- it could...” He stumbled, stopped.

“It... wasn’t a great feeling.”

Alan frowned. “You said you were looking at someone in the audience, when it happened. Do you think it was anything to do with them?” He watched the Captain’s face, but saw only confusion, and that strange edge of fear- a mix of emotions which looked so out-of-place there that he felt pushed to try to help, to clarify, say anything if only to stop the Captain looking so frighteningly lost.

“What were they like? Maybe I would’ve noticed-”

“I hardly think that’s likely, Alan,” snorted the Captain. It was a relief for Alan, to hear him taking refuge in impatience. At least it was normal. “There’s no way you would’ve seen him from the booth, anyway. Some kid, hair all slicked back like George McFly, grey sweater, he was sitting in like centre-G with another guy- red check jacket, band shirt- that French prog rock thing-”

“Escalier,” said Alan. The Captain blinked.

“You saw them?”

“Not then. They- they were sitting at the same table I was at, after my talk, you literally just miss- sir, please maybe sometimes, um, actually look where we’re flying, you’re making me really nervous.”

The Captain finally returned his eyes to the windshield, where the low lights of early evening were gleaming through the soft rain, glinting across the dim landscape below. In grids and in tangles, towns and highways and the huge blackout zones of the Everglades, the state slipped through the rainy night under a blanket of cloud.

“I don’t like this, Alan,” he said. “I feel things, like my whole... vibe thing? Like when I say I’ve gotta go, because someone’s aunt in Des Moines is thinking of investing in crypto, that thing. You know?”

Alan blinked. “I… kind of always thought that was a bit?”

The Captain went to put his head in his hands, remembered he was supposed to be flying a shuttle, straightened up again. “No. Sometimes, people get all lined up to make exceptionally poor decisions- particularly ones involving the Internet- and wherever they are, I feel it. It’s like... someone sticking a Q-tip so far up my nose it tickles my brain. Ughh.” He shuddered, as if his silver skin was crawling from the inside out. “But it’s never been a two-way thing before. This time, it was. Like… like some super-terrible, super-toxic, life-altering decision, but- with eyes.”

Alan thought about this. He thought about Mark’s flat, hurried voice, how even in the middle of his pitch he’d sounded kind of frantic, more like a hostage with a gun to their head than someone nervous and eager at the chance to work with a favourite channel. He thought about the sinking feeling the whole thing had left him with, the anxious funk he’d been stuck with ever since.

“I don’t think I… understand exactly, but it sounds bad.”

“It is bad. I haven’t been able to stop- thinking about it, and...” The Captain trailed off, rubbed his forehead. “Other stuff. Whatever, the point is, this isn’t something we want to just leave roaming around loose out there. Look, I know tracking down some random guy we saw for five seconds at a convention full of thousands of people sounds like a pretty crazy, gargantuan mission, but honestly, the more I think about it, the more it feels like something I just gotta do.”

“Oh, that’s easy, I got his number.”

“You may well ask why, Alan, but it’s a question of responsibility. I have to ask myself, does it fall to me, as the sole superpowered defender of verifiable truth and generally good digital decision-making in this entire galactic sector, to… wait, what did you say?”

Alan was wrestling with his seatbelt, trying to get into his back jeans pocket without loosening the strap. “He gave me a business card, Captain. His name’s Mark… let me just give him a call.”

*

Anthony, shocked silent in the wake of Mark’s outburst, struggling for something to say, had only just opened his mouth when the sound of Mark’s phone came buzzing, muffled, from under the jackets in the back seat. It pulsed against the upholstery, vibrating through the fabric covering it like a smothered wasp. Anthony barely reacted to it at first, but as the sound came a second time, the fabric of Mark’s jacket illuminated faintly by that small blueish rectangle underneath, he blinked, twisted in his seat. Relieved, maybe, to have any kind of distraction, a reason to move.

“That’s, uh- that’s yours-”

He was already fishing into the back, feeling blindly around in the clustered shadows with one arm. Mark, instantly panicked, took a hand off the wheel long enough to try to grab the phone himself, but even though his arms were longer the driver-side seat was directly in front of where his jacket lay, and he would have needed to be some multi-jointed tentacle-being to have even stood a chance of getting a hand on it.

“Leave it, it’s fine!”

Anthony was fumbling under the jacket, hanging out of his seatbelt with half of his torso leaned into the back. “No, I got it- gimmie a sec-”

“I said leave it!” yelled Mark. The rhythmic double-pulse buzz of the phone felt like it was wired directly into his brain, the scraping of an insect buried between his ears. He felt the car start to drift under his control, and returned both hands to the wheel in a hurry, heart lurching, gripping hard. “Just let it go to message-”

“I got it, dude,” said Anthony- puzzled, uneasy, not a little wounded still. “What if it’s your mom?”

He sat back, poked the screen. “Hey, this is- hello? Shit, missed it.”

“See? Put it back, I don’t care who-”

“Wait, I could check the number-” All of a sudden, Anthony’s voice stopped in its tracks. Mark, glancing desperately sideways in snatches as long as he dared, was in a perfect position to see the exact moment that his worst fears were confirmed, right as it happened. Anthony’s brow scrunched, his hands went still, and he looked down at the phone in silence.

“What’re all these notifications?” he said.

“Don’t,” said Mark, but all the volume had gone out of his voice, all of the force, and with it the ability to even try to sound in control. The word sounded more like a small winded plea, and it was ten to one if Anthony even heard it, his finger already tracing and flicking and tapping, his eyes glued to the small screen.

“Thumbnail edited successfully? Thumbnail edited… thumbnail… description edited successfully… video title edited- Mark?”

Mark couldn’t breathe.

“Mark, what’s going on?”

Mark could feel Anthony looking at him. He could imagine his expression far too well even without looking, his accusing eyes, floating in the darkness with the lights flicking past the windows like the last crashing embers of his oh-so-clever plan. He said nothing, swiping the tears from his face with a quick, hot palm, kept staring straight ahead.

“Why did you change the video title?”

One last try. One last try, to explain again what he’d been trying to explain all weekend, to make Anthony see, as if anybody could explain anything well while battling the rising fury and panic that the embarrassment of being caught red-handed only flamed and fuelled, like throwing water on blazing oil. Like he should have to feel guilty, like he’d done something wrong, when he was doing the only thing he could, the one thing left that he’d been forced to do. Anthony was even incapable of understanding how he had forced him to this, forced him to lie and sneak around and feel like some kind of traitor.

“No-one cares about our videos,” he said, as patiently as he could. “This is the only way they’re going to be seen.”

Anthony was shaking his head slightly, automatically, the harsh light from Mark’s phone casting ghastly blue-white shadows up across his shocked, hurt face as he dropped the phone in his lap and turned to look at Mark.

“You’re making us sound like some stupid contrarian clickbait channel-”

“Those channels actually make money,” said Mark, evenly.

Anthony let out a quiet, punctured breath, and Mark didn’t even have to glance at him now to know he had that maddening, sympathetic, pitying look on his face again. He didn’t want to see it, he didn’t want Anthony’s pity. As if pity wasn’t completely useless, as if pity would green-light his mother’s medical coverage, or save her life.

“Look. I know you’re in a tough situation with your mom,” said Anthony, gently. “I get it! But that doesn’t have anything to do with the channel-”

“No, you don’t get it,” snapped Mark. His hands were still neatly at three and six, but his nails were digging into the fake leather of the wheel and he might as well have been driving underwater, or on Mars, for all the attention he was paying to the road in front of his burning eyes. On one level, he was aware that Anthony was not going to be any more easily convinced by being snapped at, or talked to as if he was a particularly stupid six-year-old. On another, he was too angry to care. “My dad’s not helping, our insurance got denied- I have to take care of her!”

“I’m sorry, Mark-”

Injured, understanding, but even now full of a kind of petulant, aggravating sympathy, Anthony’s voice grated in Mark’s ears and on his fraying nerves. To Mark, he sounded just like a whiny kid whose favourite toy was being handed away to someone else. And maybe that was the last straw, to hear so clearly in Anthony’s voice that the channel, the thing that was being dangled relentlessly over Mark’s head as his last thread of hope, was in Anthony’s eyes nothing but a neat toy he refused to give up, something fun he didn’t want to let go of just because it was his too.

“-but this isn’t just your channel! I’m not going to let you ruin this!”

Because this, this, was really the only thing Anthony cared about. Fun. Keeping something fun.

“You asshole-!”

Anthony’s stunned face, his eyes flicking all of a sudden past him, to the road. In the tumbling slowdown of seconds, his mouth opened without sound, the betrayal in his eyes flaring into panic, horror. Mark turned back to the road, far too late, as the car completed its slow drifting slew across the empty road and hit the kerb with a sickening, bone-shaking lurch, mounting it in a series of terrible earthquake bounces. A final glare of light, a snatch of safety rail, before the car dove headlights-first into a black void beyond. A black and crowding host of branches slamming against the windows, a rush of wet wheels tearing at the soaking grass, a final heavy impact that ended in a splintering crash of glass.

*

Silence.

Slowly, his pulse a jackhammer in his throat, his heart loud as a marching band in his ears, Mark raised his head. For a moment- a jumbled collection of moments- he wasn’t even sure where he was, only that his neck hurt and he felt sore and shaken in every nerve. His grasp on the thread of the world felt as if it had undergone a terminal skip, and he could catch hold of nothing coherent other than the fact that it was horribly, hideously dark, and something awful had happened.

Was happening.

Reality overtook him fast. Everything tumbled into place, and he jerked forwards- tried to- but his seatbelt held him clamped across the chest, a mechanical death-grip too tight to escape.

“Anthony?”

The car was quiet, the headlights, dash, every system dead and dark. The road, somewhere above and behind them, was empty, hidden, lightless. The engine ticked slowly as it cooled, water dripped and trickled, crushed branches groaned in the damp black night.

“Anthony??”

Fresh air started to seep in, cool against Mark’s face, full of rain and the scent of churned earth and bruised growth.

“Anthony!!”

[captain-space-kin]

New Pinned Post Time

Hey y’all figure it was time I did a brand new pinned post rather then just editing the old one repeatedly lol

Anyway! I’m Captain! Or Cap, or Cappy, or capula, or Cappybara, or whatever other nickname you could possibly extrapolate out of that (Most people default to Cap though). I’m (almost) 20 years old, I use they/them pronouns, and I’m nonbinary + bisexual! Also my favorite color is purple :3

I’ve been in and around fandom spaces for a over a decade at this point but haven’t really participated in any until recently! Currently my main fandom is Ninjago but I’ve been known to partake in like a bajillion other things.

I’ve got four different ninjago AU’s at the moment in various stages in development. My main AU is Wayward Son, which is the entire show rewritten based on the concept of “What if Lloyd was a baby in season 1?” My co-writer, @carmelo-san, and I have roughly planned out all the way to Dragons Rising season 1! I’ve got a few fics for it up on my ao3 and more on the way soon!

The other big ninjago project I’m working on at the moment is a collaboration with @finn-m-corvex, but that one’s a secret teehee <3

As you can see by my blog description thing I am The (self-proclaimed) CEO of OppsiteShipping. To quote myself, I can, will, and have made everything about Oppositeshipping. I will take any random post, hold it up and say “This too is Oppo” and all my friends agree with me because I am correct every time. Look I even have the blinkies to prove this:

@inspectorghoul is my Co-CEO! He is very cool and awesome and has many good Oppo thoughts

To add on to that Kai is my favorite ninja! I will never live this down. And guess what? Another blinkie! (I also have one for Zane lol sorry guys I found a website that generates them and went all out)

I know everyone says this, but feel free to drop by the ask box, I do enjoy a good ask, even if we aren’t mutuals! (But ya know behave yourselves etc etc)

This is my one and only blog. I’ve tried sideblogs in the past and I could not for the life of me keep up with them so I just put everything here lol. My tagging system is a little all over the place though (and I frequently forgot to tag afsgdgdgf) In general though:

dope art! - My tag I use for when I like art/writing I did not make

captains craft, captains crew, captains log - my art/writing tag, the OC tag, and my talk tag respectively!

bestie [insert name here] - tags I use for my friends :3

Wayward Son AU - The tag for my main Ninjago AU!

internet safety, life stuff, art inspiration, writing inspiration- general save point tags I use for various purposes

I usually also tag the fandom on posts if I know it! I don’t usually tag for triggers though, so just lemme know if I need to tag anything extra!

[walkswithdave]

Dave Eggers the circle explores privacy and what it would mean if there was none anymore. I wrote this a year before that book came out, covering some of the same ideas, a one “true you“ Internet presence, ending missing people, etc. :

Here is one possible future:

At birth each child is given a URL, this could be an extension of the social security number.

All use of the internet will be traced through this

URL. You can sign up for a free Yahoo account, for

example, but you must give your URL as a reference.

All internet transactions will be recorded in each

person's personal storage area. The amount of storage

area a person takes up will be a measuring stick of some kind, the more experience you have, the more room you take up.

Since everything will be done through the internet,

your life will be almost completely recorded. What you read, watch, buy, where you go, who you talk to

and what you say, etc.

Peoples' "Electronic Living Space" will occasionally be

hacked and this "private" information disclosed. At first,

people cared about this.

Eventually, many, many years from now,

there will be no need to hack this "private" info because it won't be

considered private anymore. Privacy

will be a quaint, old fashioned concept. Want to see what someone is reading

today? Just look it up. The idea of keeping your

life private will seem strange and primitive. The way things are now will seem to these

future people they way the "Wild West" seems to us.

We can appreciate the freedom people back then had,

but are happy things are a bit more controlled now.

No one is walking around with six-shooters and there

is some law and order. To these people in the future it will be like "what

do you mean you could do things without anyone

knowing? What do you mean you could go somewhere

secretly? You mean you could actually lose track of a person? What a strange and chaotic time that must

have been!" To them it would be very unsettling to not be able to know what

someone is doing at any moment, where they are, what they are saying or thinking, and it would

be a horrible thought to have people not to know this about you.

It's a hard concept to grasp, there there would nothing to hide, no secrets, no private moments.

But remember, this is far, far in the future, not 20 years, These people are very different than us. But I believe this is not a far fetched extrapolation.

This internet, the thing that we feel gives us anonymity and freedom

is really the golden shackles we are all clamoring to

get, putting ourselves, of our own free will, closer

to the ultimate control we all so much hate but one day will love.

The new ending to 1984 could be:

"But it was alright, everything was alright, the

struggle was finished. He had won the victory over

himself. He loved Google."

[caffeineandsociety]

Sexism is genuinely fascinating in how uniquely reversible it is.

Yes, broadly speaking, under a patriarchal system, when all other things are equal, women get the shorter end of the stick. We know this. This shouldn't be controversial or disputable. A white man will be treated by society as Better than a white woman. A man of color will be treated as higher on the hierarchy than a woman of the same race and ethnicity. Between a man and a woman with the same disability, making the same complaints, the man is likely to be taken more seriously - partially because, thanks to "man up" standards, one might assume (correctly or otherwise) that he waited longer to complain, because that often IS the case, but mostly because sexism says that women just love to complain for no reason all the time.

But when all other things are NOT equal?

What if you have an abled woman and a disabled man? Well, then it's a complete toss-up as to which factor "wins" - maybe the misogyny wins, because, psh, come on, women are SUPPOSED to serve men, quit complaining and hop to it, he NEEDS you to completely give up your entire life to bring him things on demand, how ableist can you be to say that maybe he should have a support system that's more than just you if he needs more than one person can reasonably provide, or maybe even actually do the physical therapy his doctor recommended so he can get back to being able to do something for himself once in a while, as his condition SHOULD allow? Other times, the ableism will win out - and when it does, it has its own sexist bent to it. He needs to Man Up and stop whining all the time. He's failing the million dollars test because his lung disease turned rhinovirus or RSV into pneumonia? Oh, waaah, waaah, cry harder about your Man Cold. It often uses feminism as an excuse - no, he's not asking for his actual disability-related needs to be accommodated, he's just being an entitled dude who thinks women exist to bend over backwards for him, because that's ALL men do, right?

This is why we see so much bullshit infighting in queer spaces over Who Has It Worse based on gender, when ultimately, when you stop trying to play the oppression olympics, what we have here is an illustration of how thoroughly arbitrary it is. Gay men are treated as more of a threat, because a huge aspect of homophobia is straight men being afraid gay men will treat them the way they treat women - but lesbians are treated as thieves, yanking away something straight men are entitled to. Why does it matter which is "worse" when it gets both groups killed, with significant frequency? Queer spaces have a problem with treating women as a lesser "support class" to men, and it's worth addressing, but not at the cost of downplaying how queer masculinity and maleness is, in fact, treated as some kind of horrible threat, and that constitutes a major chunk of the grounds on which queer people are oppressed. Never mind when trans people come into the picture - society doesn't know what to do with us! Regardless of what direction we're transitioning in, society just treats us as whichever binary gender is more convenient to demonize us at any given moment! In fact, so do exclusionists within the community! And as it turns out - sometimes, it's more convenient to demonize us as men.

But the real proof of where all of this comes from, the most reliable place for the dynamic to be reversed, is when it can be invoked for racism. Show me a white woman butting heads with a man of color, and - while I must disclaim that this is not a 100% hard and fast rule, I might be surprised, because extrapolating society-wide dynamics to EVERY individual interaction is part of how you end up with terf logic - I will almost certainly expect her to pull something in line with a power structure that oppresses him on gendered lines. This is what Karenism was about, before the internet bastardized it into being just a generic name you call any woman who stands up for herself - a Karen is someone who will, simultaneously, pull a "don't you know who I am!?" and "how dare you, you horrible brute, trying to take advantage of a poor defenseless woman like this!?".

A Karen is the kind of person who will call the cops on a Black or brown man minding his own business and say he threatened her.

Note that yes, she will absolutely do this kind of thing to a Black or brown woman, but the dynamic will often be different. I do not mean to erase that. But for the purpose of this post - discussing specific dynamics that reverse the typical "men are higher on the ladder than women" rule - we're specifically examining what happens when, say, a white woman claims a Black man whistled or "leered" at her. What happens then? Maybe he gets shot by the cops. Maybe he gets lynched - sure, that happens less often than it used to now, but anything is only illegal if you get caught. Maybe his life just gets ruined by a whisper campaign. Maybe nothing happens to him, but her story is used to continue the idea that Black and brown men are "bad hombres" who need to be chased out of this country or at least heavily policed to keep them in line. Regardless, there is a very strongly gendered aspect to this - accusations of sexual violence are believed without a second thought when it's a white woman making them against a Black or brown man, and this has a massive body count. We know that false accusations of sexual assault are very few and far between compared to unreported sexual assaults - but we often fail to acknowledge just how many of those false accusations are made up for racist reasons.

Not only that, but I must also briefly call out that I've seen white girls on this very supposedly progressive website claiming that Asian men are "basically women", when they're not calling out all men of Japan for being violent repressive pedophilic perverts.

That's because ultimately, the patriarchal standards that we have are a tool of white supremacy. That's it. That's all there is to it. What they mean and who they apply to can be twisted around at a moment's notice to uphold some other aspect of the system. The "natural strength" that it superficially insists that men innately have can be twisted to become a threat, if it threatens the rest of the system. The supposed "inherent weakness" of women can be twisted around to become a cudgel - upholding the dominance of the Great Male Head of the Household is, under this system, nearly the only thing that wins out over "protecting white women".

It's all white supremacy all the way down.

[theradicalscrivener]

Has Trevor's internet porn career taken off yet?

Not so much. It hasn't been that long since he has started, and there's a lot more logistical aspects to it than he expected. He's a tiny guy, and there's def a market for that, but his size makes it difficult for him to really branch out.

This kinda ended up getting long Soo...

His first vid with Simon was a hit, but a lot of that was thanks to how massive Simon's meat is. Simon ended up getting more of a fanbase than either of them intended. Trevor's ecstatic, and he's doing his best to be a hype man for his boyfriend, but Simon is less thrilled.

Given that Trevor has a very unique size, it's not like anonymity was really an option. Even trying to post under a pseudonym, it quickly became obvious that the guy in the vid was little bigger than a Lego guy which lead to his identity being easily searchable which lead to Simon's identity being easy to extrapolate. So now Simon's friends, family, classmates, and coworkers know that he not only put out a sex vid with his boyfriend but that Simon is slinging my sausage than a butcher shop. Most people have enough decorum not to mention it, but every so often Simon will be out shopping and have Trevor with him and someone will catch sight of Trevor, do a double take, look at Simon, do a quick glance down at Simon's crotch, and give Simon a knowing nod. Simon is very glad that it isn't super noticable when he's blushing.

Although, the biggest issue Trevor runs into is how to use his size to his advantage. If he just does wank vids like everyone else, it's easy for him to get lost in the shuffle of all the other hot guys on those sites. He's tried doing some more tasteful pictures of him posing with objects, but then it's easy to just ignore that those objects are actual size. Plenty of other people have done photosets with super sized objects. Trevor needs to somehow really carve out a niche for himself.

To make matters worse, it's very difficult for him to operate a camera. The remote controlled webcam that Simon has set up only goes so far. It can tilt and zoom, but it isn't easy to relocate the entire camera, especially not for someone smaller than the camera itself! If Trevor wants to get fun angles, he'd need help from someone who can work the camera. Simon knows how to work a camera, but he's hardly a photographer, and he's definitely not trained in microphotography. The duo needs to get a lot more practice or get an outside set of hands to handle the production.

While not an issue in the traditional sense, there have been others asking to do a Collab with Trevor. Trevor's not a prude, and Simon doesn't have an issue with Trevor fooling around with other guys. However, even tho Trevor is sturdy for his size, he's still tiny. They'd need to do a fairly rigid vetting and interview process before either of them agrees to have someone else join the fun, and everyone who has reached out about a potential collaboration has been shot down.

Most guys who offer don't realize Trevor really is that small. They think it's special effects or trick photography. They wouldn't know what to do with a tiny guy. Trevor does tend to take control when it's he and Simon messing around, but that's because he knows Simon so well and knows what makes Simon tick. Having to walk someone he doesn't know through the process is awkward and not at all fun.

There's also a bunch of guys who only want to work with Trevor to make their dicks look bigger. It's easy to go on an who trip on your size when your partner has a literal micro penis. Trevor is basically thumb-sized. All his potential patterns have dicks that dwarf his entire body. This again has much of the same issues as the first group of guys. They don't know what to do with someone like Trevor, and Trevor isn't interested in doing all the work with someone he's not emotionally invested in.

And of course there's also the sebsection of guys who want to lord their size over a tiny. These are the ones that Trevor and Simon are most wary of. As mentioned earlier, Trevor is sturdy for his size, but so is a spider. If someone wants to get violent, there's little that Trevor can do to stop them. So it's better just to stay as far from them as possible.

[fipindustries]

see, there is this interesting implication hidden in the premise of that, we talk about being “smart enough” to do “the kind of works that its creators are doing” wherein intelligence is this single axis that you can linearly improve upon and “creating AI that is smarter than self” is this specific milestone along that axis, which elides a lot of hidden complexities and subtleties hidden under the hood for what has to actually happen and all the million little conditionals that have to come together just right for any of that to work like that.

ill take this as a chance to go onto another tangent, GPT is made to predict the next word that one might come across on the internet. we dont really understand how it actually does that but a phrase that has been thrown around a lot is something akin to “in order to predict the next word someone is going to say it needs to understand who that someone is and what are they thinking” as a form of extrapolation of the idea that “in order to simulate a single grain of sand you must simulate the universe that contains it and the principles by which it came to be”. 

so essentially if the AI can descrive to us all the words that a smart person would say when asked a question, then in a sense the AI has to be as smart as that person and have the same understanding and awareness that person would have. and the thing is that in practical terms that is kind of truth, in the sense that we wouldnt be able to tell the difference, and so we should be treating it as a very smart person and expect it to act in the ways a smart person (or rather a smart alien) would. which is to create novel plans that go beyond the scope of its current toolset and ennact behaviors to increase the scope of that toolset.

but i dont think that is as much of a garantee as yud thinks it is, he hides under the phrase “giant inscrutable matrixes of floating point arithmetic”, the concept of the black box. but just because we dont know what is in the black box that doesnt mean we have to assume anything at all is equally likely

now to be clear, if the day of tomorrow some lab is like “we gave the AI autonomy and agency to create its own desitions about what to do next within the scope of the real world” yeah that is a cathegorical and qualitative step that puts us much closer to doomsday scenarios

[kedreeva]

do you think eddie would still be a good, lovable person if he sold opioid pills? the pills in his stash are most probably benzodiazepines. they're harder than ket and they cause addiction if taken regularly and i love him so much but i'm worried it would mean he would let his loved ones take it, too. do you think he would?

Not to get tetchy on main but my dude, it's called a headcanon for a reason. Stuff like this is the canon of your head. I don't know shit about fuck when it comes to drugs, drug dealing, or drug using, because I just... Don't care about them. They're not in my wheelhouse. I rarely even drink alcohol, like maybe 2x a year.

My opinions on Eddie's behaviors are limited to 2 things: a) what I can easily extrapolate about narrative and plot from what I see on screen and b) what I care about thinking about. I have less than zero interest in drugs, or what Eddie does with them, and I'm not here to soothe someone else's issues with drugs. If you want to think he'd do the thing, then headcanon it. If you don't like the thought that he'd do the thing, then don't headcanon it. That's the great thing about them not telling us anything, you can just make up whatever you want.

And in the end, I'm not his creator, as unfortunate as that is. I'm just some dude on the internet looking at narrative devices and patterns for blorbos from my shows. And the narrative only needed the drugs to get Chrissy to his trailer and throw shade on him to the community. Everything else is not my business.

[rosepetalsthings]

You know, even though I was pretty bummed that a lot of my fav blogs left hella quick (I respect it, even though our opinions on the matter are different) I wouldn’t have started following other cool’s blogs like you if I didn’t my fav blogs didn’t leave☺️ I think the reason why it feels so heavy in the fandom rn is cause of everyone has something to say, and it can be draining depending on how harsh their opinion is. So imma just vibe by myself for now and keep in touch with blogs like you🥳

😊 aww thank you! In glad you think my blog is cool

Yeah, I think the thing that made a lot of people (myself included) get so distraught was less because of anything Dream did (or didn't do) and more because such a large and involved community practically split overnight. A lot of people took a step back, but unfortunately that left people with a lot of paranoia and distress left over, and people who tend to over react or over exaggerate stepped in when they probably shouldn't have. Misinformation ran quickly apparent, people looked too deep into both Amanda's and Dream's words, and extrapolated from them until there was an admission of guilt they could deal with easily.

People in situations like these, especially when they're in young heavily online leftist internet spaces, don't do well with space outside of black and white. That there is nuance to situations like this, and that what we have been shown isn't a moral bankruptcy or admission of guilt. What you'll probably find now is that people will probably slowly reform their opinions now that it's somewhat died down. People have the time to consider the situation and themselves. Many may not come back regardless, and many may still do so. There is a lot to confront about yourself after this, and that's okay if it includes no longer being as involved.

Many will probably just choose to double down than live in that uncertainty, regardless of whether they're right or not. If Dream wins, it'll only be because he has the money to afford it and pay off his victims. If Amanda wins, it's because she's exploiting true victims stories. It's easier to continue stacking bricks than it is to question the foundation of what your stacking on.

The fandom and community at large on Tumblr will never be the same again. And that's okay. You go on to make new communities or reshape old ones. You learn and grow and you keep going.

Either way, I'm gonna keep vibing here too. And I'm gonna see how this ends.