#or the virtue signaling and lies

[ambelle]

Words need to mean something. If all it takes for 4x08 not to be racist garbage is a love scene then what are they really saying? This can’t be about deep rooted racism in the writing if it’s such an easy fix.

For example Bonnie getting a couple love scenes with white men did not fix anything. Because the root of the issue was that her purpose on the show was to die for her white friends and be happy to do it. It was repeated by her and them many times. Yay she and Enzo fucked…and then they killed him and she literally got shipped off to Africa. No that’s not a joke… they legit sent Bonnie to Africa in the finale.

SO if the writing was actually racist Kory and Dick sleeping together wouldn’t fix that. Did it fix the problems they had with season 1?

What people are complaining about is ironically what a lot of people wanted from season 1. For Dick to be there for her and support her. For him to fight for her and put her first. For Kory to be the center of the his world and the main plot. But because they didn’t get the kisses and sex (if there’s sex) by a certain timeframe now it’s racist. It’s just throwing around trigger words because your horny lol.

And yea the idea you and I “accept crumbs and are the reason the show gives us crumbs” is insane when there’s hours upon hours of recordings of us complaining during season 2&3. It’s also delusional to assume we have power over what the showrunners do if we whine and moan daily … but keep giving it ratings. Like yeah that’ll show em!Just because they are underwhelmed with DK doesn’t mean it’s problematic… it just means they are underwhelmed.

Once again they need to show me the ship on this show whose scenes and overall story is better. And it can’t be a ship with a black person since this is about race. There’s a reason they all pretend KomKon never happened because it blasts a giant hole through their theory that the writers find a bw being loved revolting.

TBH I think the most racist thing I’ve seen come out of this show is the way some fans said with their whole chest they resented Mar’i, a 3 year old black toddler, and not a single one of these SJW dickkory shippers checked them. No I’ll never forget that cause WTF company are you keeping while complaining about racism?

Then them writing fics wear Dick is swearing in Kory’s face, touching her while threatening her, making her cry and feel insecure, even having people hate crime her…People can truly get fucked LMAO. That’s insane.

Dick and Kory being supportive, kind, and understanding of each other and it ultimately leading to them realizing they are destined to be together… you can call it boring, underwhelming, unsexy if you want. But you can’t say this is a clear cut example of writers despising bw. Not with how loved Kory is not only by Dick but by her whole family. Not with how underwritten most white characters are on this very show.

You know who can’t relate Tara and Bonnie. No one gave a shit if they were breathing or not and getting fucked by white men did not change that.

I’ll be honest that I wanted DK as a couple for a whole season but I didn’t expect that because they are so unorthodox. I figured they’d be in a lot of scenes together and we would see them figure out they act married anyway. So I agree I wanted a full season of them. What I don’t agree with is discounting all romantic moments that don’t involve kissing and sex. That’s part of love but it’s not the whole thing. Frankly it the ONLY thing missing from their relationship.

Hi anon I definitely feel you!

I think people misinterpret my feelings because I just became frustrated with accusations about who I am as a person and how I basically support racist writing because I enjoy Dickkory’s writing. I think they are so kind and understanding of each other and I find couples that emotionally support each other so refreshing. They always have each others back.

My stance is that I love their relationship I just wanted to see more of it in season 2&3. It’s not that I think the show is flaw free. However…this season I can’t complain. I’ve been loving them and how much time they’ve spent together confusing Jinx and a whole town into assuming they were an item.

But also Brenton literally told us at NYCC that they confess at the very end of the season. So like… we knew??? And secondly we’ve gotten way more of them than we ever have and that includes season 1. But unlike season 1 Dick is openly affectionate and Kory is the focus of all his attention. Not daddy issues, not Rachel cause she can handle herself now , but Kory. Because he’s so afraid of losing her and so deeply in love.

Dick’s entire character arc in part 2 is about keeping Kory safe and confessing his feelings. Episode 4x08 wasn’t a useless throw away episode just because they didn’t have sex or kiss. They realized they both are in love. So we did get a full season of Dickkory- it was just a season of them realizing they belong together Vs them being an official couple (but having the exact same mission focused scenes because they don’t have time for Olive Garden with May running around.)

Season 1 when you look back at the fans commentary people said they were rushed, they were insulted by DickDawn being married, they were mad DK fizzled out so quickly. All valid complaints but also things people are pretending they didn’t say because they are laser focused on season 1 having a love scene and that being the most important thing. Just like they are pretending they didn’t say they wanted Kory to give Dick the cold shoulder this season. THANK GOD the writers didn’t waste time on her being mad at Dick for dating Babs when he was single lolz?

Anyway I decided to officially stop taking people seriously when they called 4x08 crumbs because that’s just ridiculous. And people who found this episode beautiful and romantic aren’t enablers of racist writing.

Such an outrageous and disgusting thing to claim LOL!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Jake Mackey

Published: Aug 2023

“Live not by lies.” —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

A “virtuous lie” is a false, misleading, or highly contestable claim that is promulgated without qualification as flatly true in order to serve a purportedly emancipatory end, despite the fact that evidence of its falsehood, deceptiveness, or contestability is readily available. We live by these lies. They underlie a great many communications in the media, in academic journals, in government, and at elite educational institutions like my college.

For example, a recent announcement for a talk read: “In this lecture, [the guest] asks, what can we do about unkindness? How can [we] grap­ple with this messy, borderless concept, which has influenced so much of our post-1492 era?” The announcement does not so much assert as simply presuppose, and ask readers to accept, that “unkindness” is a distinctive characteristic of the post-Columbian world. Readers are invited to draw the inference that “unkindness” had less “influence” in the world before Europeans arrived in the Americas. Like much of the messaging on elite campuses, this one implies that the West in general and perhaps the United States in particular are uniquely culpable in history’s evils.

Another example: I attended a talk by a prominent author, a journal­ist, at a super-elite private high school. He took pains to paint North American slavery in the most gruesome of colors, as well one might for the edification of young people, who are inevitably ignorant of its true toll. In so doing, however, he told two virtuous lies: first, that slave-farmed cotton drove the expansion of the antebellum U.S. economy and, second, that increases in cotton productivity resulted from increases in the torture of enslaved people.

These two claims, both of which come straight out of the “New History of Capitalism” and, via Matthew Desmond’s contribution, are central to the 1619 Project, have been debunked.1 And yet these lies are virtuous. North American slavery was a moral abyss. One can never overstate its horror or overdo one’s condemnation of it . . . even if one lies. The lies of the “New History of Capitalism” are virtuous, serving purportedly noble goals, such as reparations, as the speaker took care to make explicit in his talk.

A third example: on May 21, 2020, as if to foreshadow the murder of George Floyd that was to come four days later, Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at both UCLA and Columbia and coiner of the concept of intersectionality, wrote in the New Republic that anti-black police and vigilante violence represented “modern embodiments of racial terror dating back to . . . the reign of white impunity rooted in slavery and Jim Crow” and opined that such violence was part of a pattern that amounts to “a kind of genocide.”2 In a similar vein, star attorney Ben Crump ti­tled his 2019 book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People. Chapter two is titled “Police Don’t Shoot White Men in the Back.” Note that this was the tone of the discourse before George Floyd.

What we see in this catastrophizing rhetoric about genocide is the product of the virtuous lie that black people, and black men in particular, are being murdered by racist police with wild abandon. As Derecka Purnell put it in the Guardian: “We know how we die—the police.”3 This perception is the result of a virtuous lie. The lie promotes a distort­ed view of reality. It is a well-meaning distortion but a distortion none­theless, designed to bring attention to the cause, worthy in itself, of police brutality against black people.

The reality, of course, easily accessible to all online, is that while there are indeed disturbing anti-black disparities in the police use of nonlethal force,4 there do not appear to be racial differences in the way police deploy lethal force. In other words, police are, overall, no more disposed to kill a black person than a white person. This basic finding has been discovered and rediscovered again,5 and again,6 and again,7 and again,8 and again,9 and again,10 and again.11 And yet so taboo is this finding, and so sacred is the lie, that people have been fired for noting the former in order to correct the latter. Such was the fate of Zac Krieg­man, a director of data science at the news and information company Thomson Reuters. When he pointed out that Black Lives Matter, whatever the organization’s salutary contributions to our political life, was promoting a virtuous lie,12 he was fired.13

Indeed, Kriegman was not the only casualty of the virtuous lie that lethal police violence specifically targets black people. In 2019, a paper was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that found “no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic dispari­ties across shootings.”14 Due to an unusual set of circumstances, includ­ing a congressional hearing about policing, the article quickly became a flashpoint. First, it was officially “corrected,” though its findings were not altered. A few weeks later, George Floyd was murdered. Soon after, as the article began to be cited and contested in the ensuing debate about policing, PNAS asked two independent researchers to look into the article’s data and methods. They found that the article “does not contain fabricated data or serious statistical errors warranting a retraction.” Nevertheless, the article’s authors themselves retracted it, citing as their reason “continued use of our work in the public debate” about policing. PNAS chimed in, too, saying that “partisan political use” of the article warranted retraction.15 The virtuous lie and the political program it serves must be protected at all costs.

Virtuous lies are not confined to high schools, colleges, major media companies, and scholarly journals. Our government and medical estab­lishment increasingly run on virtuous lies as well. For example, in 2019, California passed a bill, AB 241, that requires “implicit bias” training as part of routine continuing education for physicians, nurses, and physi­cian assistants.16 The bill asserts the following: “Implicit bias, meaning the attitudes or internalized stereotypes that affect our perceptions, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner, exists, and often contributes to unequal treatment of people based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, and other characteristics.” And in case you missed the causal chain running from implicit bias through behavior to health outcomes: “Implicit bias contributes to health disparities by affecting the behavior of physicians and surgeons, nurses, physician assistants, and other healing arts licensees.”

AB 241 is wholly based on a string of interconnected virtuous lies about implicit bias. The first virtuous lie is that researchers have settled on a coherent and consistent understanding of what the term “implicit bias” means.17 The second lie is that whatever implicit bias may be, we know that it influences behavior.18 The third falsehood is that we know that disparities in health outcomes are caused by the behavior of implic­itly biased medical personnel.

The truth about implicit bias is easy to state: “[I]t is not clear precisely what is being measured on implicit attitude tests; implicit attitudes do not effectively predict actual discriminatory behavior.”19 Moreover, with respect to disparate racial outcomes, it is important to note that measures that attempt to use implicit bias “to predict behavior find little or no anti-Black discrimination specifically.”20 This is good news! It means that racial health disparities are likely not wholly or even significantly attributable to the implicit bias of medical personnel.

What discrimination there is in medicine—and there surely has been and is discrimination—is based on entirely explicit attitudes supported by pseudoscientific theories. For example, it used to be a common prac­tice among medical laboratories to adjust the renal values of black patients to take into account black people’s supposedly greater muscle mass relative to white people.21 Such adjustments might, however, have caused doctors to overlook kidney failure in black patients. Again, some white physicians are said to believe that black patients are less suscep­tible to pain than white patients because, the theory goes, they have longer nerve endings and thicker skin.22 These are not “implicit biases.” These are wholly conscious false beliefs that can be dispelled by acquaintance with the truth.

Nevertheless, California’s medical personnel now must pay the opportunity cost of submitting to training for implicit biases, training that we know to be useless. In a sense, the mandating of implicit bias training is a fourth virtuous lie, for the fact is, “most interventions to attempt to change implicit attitudes are ineffective.”23 What we have, then, is an entire government-mandated regime of healthcare education built atop the foundational virtuous lie of implicit bias.24 Articles appear regularly to bolster the lie in journals that could once be trusted. If everything you knew about implicit bias in medicine came from the latest article about it in Science,25 for example, you’d know very little indeed.26

We live by lies like implicit bias because we suppose that doing so makes us good people. To question them is to align oneself with all that is oppressive. Our moral credentials are burnished if we condemn European contact with the Americas as the moment at which “unkind­ness” became a force in human affairs. We signal our ethical seriousness with respect to American slavery and continuing black socioeconomic inequality if we applaud rather than quibble when debunked theories are presented as plain facts to high school students. We stand ostentatiously on “the right side of history” if we endorse BLM’s narrative that black people are “intentionally targeted for demise” by police.27 Similarly, medical personnel in California now attest their racial innocence by submitting, ironically enough, to the proposition that their implicit bias is causing them to mistreat racial minorities and to a highly profitable training industry that purports to remedy it.

As in the case of the narrative about police killings, to question any of the claims built upon the virtuous lie of implicit bias is to court personal and professional disaster. Edward Livingston, then a deputy editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), discovered this in early 2021 when he went on a JAMA podcast and made the mistake of suggesting that accusing doctors of racism was perhaps not the best way to resolve inequities in health outcomes and that the solution might instead lie in addressing socioeconomic disparities.28 This marked him for destruction. A petition against JAMA gar­nered nine thousand signatures, the podcast episode was scrubbed from the web,29 an investigation was announced, he was asked to resign his editorship, which he did,30 and he was made the subject of a “restorative justice session” at UCLA medical school, where he teaches.31 Yet the spread of the miasma was not stopped by these expiations. JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Howard Bauchner, who had had nothing to do with the ill-fated podcast episode, fell over himself apologizing for the incident but was investigated by an AMA committee and soon had to resign his editorship.32

The fates of Kriegman, Livingston, and Bauchner, as well as my own reticence to push back on the high school speaker, reveal a central feature of the logic of the virtuous lie: to correct these lies is tantamount to opposing noble goals. Nobody wants to be the one who points out that a virtuous lie is not true. In the case of the high school speaker, any pushback would have come across as a defense of American slavery. In the case of “our post-1492 era,” to ask for evidence would be to mini­mize the enormity of the post-Columbian devastation of Native Ameri­cans and of the transatlantic slave trade, just for starters. Regarding claims of a state-sanctioned genocide of black people, to gesture toward research to the contrary would be to affirm the status quo and to oppose much-needed reforms.

The Epistemology of the Virtuous Lie

Let us distinguish the virtuous lie from two adjacent phenomena—Plato’s “noble lie” and Rob Henderson’s “luxury belief”—and then consider the choice of the term “lie.”

The noble lie. Plato introduces the noble lie in Book 3 of his Republic. Socrates, the lead character in the dialogue, urges that in order to found his proposed ideal city, they would need to craft “one noble lie which may deceive” the city’s three social classes, that is, the ruler class, the soldier class, and the producer class:

“Citizens,” we shall say to them in our tale, “you are brothers, yet god has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron.”

The point of Plato’s noble lie is to reconcile people to inequality and their place in the social hierarchy, in order to create the ideal city, with a place for everyone and everyone in their place. The mechanism of reconciliation is a naturalization of the hierarchy not by analogy or comparison to metals but through the assertion that people of differing stations are quite literally made of different metals. The rulers are gold­en, the soldiers silver, and the workers brass and iron.

Luxury beliefs. Rob Henderson defines luxury beliefs as follows: “Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.”33 People crave status symbols and signs of distinction. Some such signs are expensive clothing or tastes that can only be cultivated by those with surplus time and material resources. Beliefs can function as another status symbol, however. Henderson uses the example of “defund the police,” which is endorsed disproportionately by those of high socioeconomic status, who, as a result of living in places relatively invulnerable to crime, would suffer the least from defunding. This belief is a luxury for them. It has no material impact on them, but it signals their high status to their peers, who are equally safe from crime. Yet this belief is often unaffordable for poorer people, who tend to live in places that make them vulnerable to crime. “Defund” is a luxury beyond their means. If the elites, who dominate the media discourse and exert control in government, get their way and succeed in defunding the police, the costs of the policy will be borne disproportionately by the poor.

Virtuous lies versus noble lies and luxury beliefs. Virtuous lies differ from both Plato’s noble lies and Henderson’s luxury beliefs. Plato’s noble lie promotes acceptance of an inequitable social order, depicting it as natural, inevitable, and just. In contrast, the virtuous lie invariably produces dissatisfaction with the social order, which it depicts as illegitimate or unjust. The noble lie reconciles us to social inequality whereas the virtuous lie is intended to serve a project of dismantling inequality. Finally, the noble lie is ultimately metaphysical. That is, it purports to offer an account of the underlying nature of reality that can be adduced to explain social arrangements. The virtuous lie, in contrast, is concerned with the social arrangements themselves in their historical, sociological, economic, and psychological dimensions, as the examples above show.

Virtuous lies share with luxury beliefs both a commitment to emancipatory political programs and a concern to signal moral goodness. As Henderson’s example of “defund” suggests, however, luxury beliefs are inherently normative. They depict a prescribed course of action. Virtuous lies, in contrast, are purely descriptive. They purport to represent states of affairs as they exist in the world, for example, “police hunt and kill black people,”34 or “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.”35 Virtuous lies like these provide the “factual” basis for normative luxury beliefs like “defund the police.”

Why call virtuous lies “lies”? A lie is, by definition, a false claim that is asserted despite its known falsity. A lie involves intent to deceive. I would not pretend to know that everyone who utters what I have called a virtuous lie knows that it is false (or at least highly questionable) and intends to deceive. Surely some do, but I imagine that many or even most who repeat virtuous lies do so sincerely, because they know no better.

Why might so many know no better? The term “lie” seems especially fitting here. Unlike the unwitting laypeople who repeat them, those who invent and promulgate these untruths, including activists, media compa­nies, and law professors, are in a good position to know better and have an epistemic obligation to the truth that should give them pause.

There is something gratuitous about virtuous lies, not only when they are uttered cynically by knowledge-economy elites but even when they are uttered unwittingly and sincerely. Respected professors of law who specialize in racial issues and major media companies whose own data scientists have alerted them to the truth have no excuse. But neither do laypeople, really. The information that problematizes or even de­bunks virtuous lies is not kept locked away. Anyone who even halfway cares about what the world was like before 1492, whether slavery was central to the economic surge of the early United States, whether there is an epidemic of racist cops murdering black people, or whether implic­it bias is a well-defined construct that has a clear effect on behavior can find the truth with the click of a mouse, or at least a vigorous debate, that should cause one to back off of strong claims.

Those given to whataboutery will have been champing at the bit to utter one word in response to my theory: Trump. The man is, after all, a liar of world-historic proportions. One of his most vicious lies is that the 2020 election was stolen. Indeed, according to a recent CNN poll, 63 percent of Republicans still believe that Biden “did not legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency.”36 But Trumpian lies, and right-wing lies more generally, are manifestly not “virtuous” insofar as they are outwardly self-serving, even if the teller believes in the ultimate truth of the cause. They make no pretense of serving an emancipatory project. They serve a project of acquiring political power and they do so nakedly. In a sense, this nakedness is refreshing. After all, virtuous lies, too, are promulgated in pursuit of political power, but under cover of the pretense of fighting it.

Vicious Consequences of Virtuous Lies

Why not just embrace the most emancipatory virtuous lies? After all, they promise to inspire the activism and political will needed to address some of our most urgent problems. The answer is that virtuous lies offer only a false promise. Let me say why.

First, the internet has put any citizen with even a modicum of curiosity and a free Sunday afternoon in a position to adjudicate these claims for herself. We are in an era in which you simply cannot keep information from people anymore, and you cannot lie to them.

Second, the lies will alienate at least as many people as they inspire. The virtuous lie is not a reliable formula for any political change apart from greater polarization. In other words, a commitment to these lies on the part of the media and our knowledge-producing class more broadly means that there will always be a number of Americans who embrace the lies out of ignorance or tribal loyalty. There will also, however, be a growing number of Americans who, as I have already suggested, will figure out that they are being lied to. This will create, or is already creating, a division in which a side consisting of tribally committed virtuous liars faces off against a side consisting of people who resent being lied to. This division is and will be toxic to our politics and hence to our democracy. It will only promote the rise of more Trump-like figures, who feed on and exacerbate the resentment of voters who dislike being lied to.

Let’s take just one of the virtuous lies discussed above, the lie about racist murders by police, and follow it through. Some might say, sure, perhaps it is not quite true that the police go out hunting for black people. But this fib is innocent because it has beneficial effects. The proof is right before us: after all, it has spurred a massive nationwide and even worldwide movement for change. What could be bad about such a lie?

I would answer that the lie is not worth it. The cost of the lie is paid as a psychological toll on all Americans, but on black Americans especially: the needless psychological suffering that results from hearing that you are being “hunted” by agents of the state in your own country. As Musa al-Gharbi put it in these pages, speaking of such narratives more broadly:

For people of color, getting “educated” in America is to be cud­geled relentlessly with messages about how oppressed, exploited, and powerless we are, and how white people need to “get it together” to change this (but probably never will). Narratives like these grew especially pronounced during the post-2011 “Great Awokening.” The internalization of these messages may contribute to the observed ideological gaps in psychic distress among women and people of color.37

The cost of the lie is paid as damage to our perceptions of black and white race relations. Gallup has polled Americans on this almost every year since 2001.38 In 2001, 70 percent of black Americans said race relations were good. In 2021, not even half as many, 33 percent, could make that affirmation. The drop-off began in earnest in 2013, right around when use of terms like “racism” began to rise spectacularly in the media,39 and the newly formed Black Lives Matter began its messaging campaign.

The cost of the lie is not only ill-conceived campaigns to “defund,”40 but also damage to (already strained) trust between communities and police, especially black communities, whose disproportionate victimization by criminals shows they need policing, good policing, the most.41 The cost of the lie is black Americans’ sense of alienation within their own country. The cost of the lie is the creation of preconditions for destructive rioting the next time a cop is caught on camera killing a black person,42 whether under legally justifiable circumstances (such as to save lives) or not.

There is a final cost to be reckoned with. Police killings do not ultimately constitute a distinctly “black” issue, and a narrative that casts it as such has inherent limitations. First, the narrative’s framing is divi­sive: there are “black” issues and there are “white” issues, but there are no “American” issues that affect us all. This framing requires activists to leverage enough guilt or empathy among Americans who are not black to enact a “black” agenda of reform. Moreover, the “hunting black people” narrative is impotent to make common cause with those seeking justice for unjustified police killings of people of other races. (Almost half of the people killed by police are white.43) This impotence undermines the possibility of a broad-based, nonpartisan movement for reform.

For example, when police (both, as it happens, Latino) in Fresno, California, killed an unarmed white teenager, Dylan Noble, in 2016, and the killing was caught on video,44��Noble’s friends, family, and sympathizers initiated months of protests. But when protesters displayed “White Lives Matter” placards, perhaps inspired by Black Lives Matter, they were predictably decried as “racist.”45 What if there had been a movement for police reform not based on identity politics with which Dylan Noble’s family and supporters could have made common cause? Later, a young black man, a rapper, Justice Medina, organized a protest in Fresno for all the lives lost to police violence, including that of Dylan Noble. He named Dylan Noble in one of his songs, and he sought to distance himself from BLM: “I’m out here for the human race,” he said.46

Medina is precisely right: police reform is not well addressed through identity politics, in which one group’s grievances are pitted against another group’s perceived sins, biases, and privileges. The issue of police violence falls instead within the broader purview of American identity, which emphasizes our mutual bond and shared interests as citizens. Writing of the killing of a white woman, Hannah Fizer, by a police officer in June 2020, Adam Rothman and Barbara Fields point out that “a successful national political movement must appeal to the self-interest of white Americans” and advise that “those seeking genuine democracy must fight like hell to convince white Americans that what is good for black people is also good for them.” Only in this way will we find “the basis for a successful political coalition rooted in the real conditions of American life.”47

The upshot is that virtuous lies, whether about the police or about any other matter of concern, will get us nowhere. Only if the media and knowledge-producing classes eschew such lies and hew closer to the truth can we hope to depolarize our discourse, restore faith in our information-generating institutions, and bring together a broad swath of the country in solidarity to confront the challenges that face all of us as American citizens.

-

[ Sources: see Notes. ]

[oncamelliastreet]

it’s so concerning how obsessed people online are with celebrities relationships. the same people who say “they don’t know you and wouldn’t want you” when you stick up for a celebrity who’s done nothing wrong proceeds to drag a man they DONT know and will NEVER know based on RUMORS like we’re in HIGH SCHOOL and proceed to drag his looks like that is ever a good place to go.

[catcatb0y]

Auuughhh I won't go on a rant, but literally just hearing a family member- WHOM I HAVE ACTIVELY TALKED SHIT ABOUT TRUMP TO AND THEY AGREED- casually profess that someone in the family is cutting them off because they voted for Trump...

It just brings back all of the feelings I've had about this election.

I'm pissed off that they care so little about the future of human rights. I'm pissed off that I felt bad about distancing myself from them. I'm pissed off that the majority of the Republican Party has the dicipline and dedication to vote for someone they dislike, A CONVICTED FELON WHO SMUGGLED OUT GOVERNMENT SECRETS, and yet all the left can do is share the Suicide Hotline and say "Remember to donate to these other causes." Some of whom voted, others who professed they were 'staying out of it'.

I'd rather there be a second, useless capital raid than live with the fact that millions of people did nothing to contribute to the crumbling of American democracy. That millions of people actively participated in its slow demise.

I feel stupid for watching half a dozen other countries valliantly kicking out their shit ass right wing parties and yet America put a convicted felon on its highest seat. A man who attempted treason and smuggled out classified documents.

I feel so overwhelmingly pissed off right now.

[charliemwrites]

Part 3 for Nikto with his… handler? Living god? Owner? Who knows, certainly not the reader.

Content: Sexual Desire (Wet Dreams), Codependency, Mild Injury/Violence, Mentions of Dissociation

Snuggle in, you tell him. Every night, clockwork, a signal to calm, settle, rest. Leave the blood and bone of the day behind.

Like he’s not a man who barely remembers he’s alive most days. Like he doesn’t turn to you blooming human, a plant to sunlight. All because you tell him to.

Snuggle in, you bid, tugging at his thick bicep. Your fingers don’t even curl halfway around it. He’s huge, even without all the gear. Or maybe because he's out of his gear.

Snuggle in, you coo. A guilty part of you preens at the way his head cocks at that turn of phrase. He never hesitates to climb into the bed you’ve shared since he made himself yours. There’s really no choice but to snuggle on such a small mattress, but he still lets you move him, teddy bear-like, to the most comfortable position.

“You’re warm,” you hum, because he needs to remember his heart is beating, pumping blood. That he’s not a corpse.

“Too warm?” He asks.

“No,” you sigh happily.

He lies on his side tonight, always between you and the door. You pluck at the front of his t-shirt, urging him closer, away from the edge of the bed. It feels like you’re constantly coaxing him away from an edge. He always comes willingly at least.

His heavy arm drapes across your waist, as robotic as a cuddle can be. You don’t mind, he’s still getting used to this. Knows how to provide you comfort but not how to take it in for himself. He'll settle, you know, always does. Virtues of sleep melting all his harsh, rigid lines.

You wrap both your legs around one of his. Rock-like muscle flexes, twitches, settles. He’s wearing just his underwear and a t-shirt; he’s hard again.

You understand why he said no. Aren’t even all that disappointed. Not for your own sake, anyway. For his, perhaps a little. Wish he’d treat his body with more than just obligation, but small steps. One at a time. For now, you’ve got him here, warm, his breaths already lengthening in preparation to sleep.

You stroke your hand along his ribs like soothing a horse. It’s more for yourself than him, a silent affirmation that you’re both here and safe and bedding down for the night. Count the bumps of scars - one… two-three, four… and five. Five-and-a-half at his hip.

His cock twitches against your lower stomach. It feels thick. Big. You squeeze his hip and tuck your arm between your bodies again.

“Were you ever ticklish?” you ask.

“No.”

You snort in amusement and press your forehead to his chest. Feel his heart beating slow-steady. Always so, so calm. Inhumanly so. You never fall into the trap of letting yourself think he’s anything but a man.

“What do you want to dream about tonight?” you pipe up again.

You don’t know why you’ve started asking this. Maybe to remind him that he’s not dying for a short while. Maybe to figure out something of his mind, still so unfathomable to you. Maybe just to get his voice in your ear as one last nightcap.

“Winter,” he answers. “Snow.”

You make a soft noise. “I think I want to dream of that too.”

You do dream of winter, and snow. You dream of green-black trees and swathes of frost crystal. And you dream of Nikto. A smudge of black with ice chips for eyes.

You reach for him, drag him down to a pillow of snow with you. Even in sleep, he yields for you, doughy and soft. Drapes himself over you, clucking about the temperature until you shush him with kisses snuck between his shirt and mask. You press and pull, want him close, want him...

"Are you alright?"

You blink into the darkness, at ice chip eyes and a patchwork jaw of scars and stubble. Nikto's mouth is pressed thin, worried. A canine peaks out from a scar that healed poorly despite your best efforts, skin tugged back into a permanent little snarl. His canines always look so sharp.

"You were... having nightmare?" He drops articles when he’s tired. You must have woken him. Part of you despairs at ruining his sleep; he gets so little of it.

You lick your dry lips, swallow past an equally dry throat. There's a noticeable stickiness between your thighs. A needy ache throughout your pelvis. You're nearly shaking.

"Um," you rasp, rubbing at your face. "Not a... it was just intense."

His brow furrows a bit. This tiny line that emphasizes a jagged mark over his forehead. You trace over it absently, nearly grind down on his thigh again when you see how his pupils dilate further.

"Alright?" he asks again. Always so worried. So expressive with you, for you.

"Yeah, I'm okay," you sit up slowly, carefully. He sits back with you, eyes sharp as he looks for injuries, as if someone snuck in and attacked you while he slept. "Just need a drink."

He makes room for you to climb out of bed. You wish you could grab a spare pair of underwear on your way, but you can feel his eyes burning on your back. Don't want him to feel... pressured? Awkward? You swallow your lust and stumble into the bathroom.

A cold splash of water shocks you more awake but also cools your blood.

It’s been a long time since you got yourself off. Nikto all but lives in your pocket now; and whenever you do have privacy, you’re usually too tired to bother with getting off. Some days it’s all you can do to brush your teeth before collapsing in bed.

Not right now though. Right now you want to do sinful things to the man who’s entrusted you with his fragile psyche.

Fuck.

You rub at your eyes, discard of your soaked panties in the hamper. You’ll grab a new pair in the morning and just spend the rest of the night commando.

When you climb into bed again, Nikto is still wide awake, waiting for your return. You crawl in with him, chilled now.

“Better?” He asks, almost hesitant.

The heat of him seeps into you like honey, a sweet drizzle down your spine, diffusing through your bones. Sleep is already dragging at you again.

“Mhm,” you sigh. You don’t wrap your legs around him this time. But you can’t help hooking your calf around his, ankles locked together.

“Alright,” he whispers, almost to himself.

You hum, fingers curling loose around his wrist. “Settle in, Nikto. I’m okay.”

You fall asleep with your head against his tricep. This time you dream of nesting birds.

—

Anger, like most strong emotion, is something you thought a bit beyond Nikto. Not that he doesn’t feel it, more that the dissociation mutes it all. Makes it into something vague in his mind, a vivid color desaturated to pastel.

You were wrong. Or maybe you’re right in every other instance except this one.

The circumstances brew up a storm like so:

Kortac has sent you (and by default, Nikto) with a small team to yet another military base. Mundane by all accounts.

You and Nikto bunk together, also by default. (“Snuggle in,” you chide as he glares at the door. It’s not your door; it’s not your base. It makes him twitchy. It even seems like he hesitates for a moment before climbing in.)

You, by virtue of being novel and shiny and discouraged, are viewed as a tempting commodity. Think you even hear one of the men you’re supposed to be working with mutter “dibs” to someone else. Also pretty mundane.

What is not mundane is someone seeing Nikto at your side and apparently thinking, that’s a place I want to insert myself uninvited.

The clouds roll in at the gym. You’re setting up the squat rack while Nikto finishes up his last set of pull-ups. (You’re trying not to ogle. You might be failing.)

Someone sidles up to behind you, just in the corner of your eye. Standing closer than a perfect stranger should. You think it’s Aksel and turn, wondering if he’s already done with cardio. Instead, you find a man you’re only mildly acquainted with.

You’ve run some drills with him, saw him in a briefing two days ago. But you’re generally so wrapped up in the microcosm you and Nikto have formed that you don’t even remember his name.

“Need a spotter?” He asks, smiling.

You shift your weight back, trying to put more distance between you two. It’s strange. Nikto stands even closer than he is on a regular basis and you’d feel bereft if he didn’t. But this… feels invasive.

“No, I have someone,” you reply, perfectly polite. “But thank you.”

“Ah, you mean the Nobody?” The man chuckles. You clench your teeth. “Someone else ought to get a turn, no? Your teammates said you are not romantic.”

You frown. Whatever they said, you’re sure that was not the verbatim answer. You don’t know what you and Nikto are — it’s something that defies any language you know. But it’s certainly beyond “romantic”.

(Waking deep in the night, sweating and panting and aching for the man already awake, worried for you. Dreams plagued with pale blue eyes and scars that still ache. Phantom sensations of skin that only breathes in the safety of your room.)

“No,” you answer, “Nikto is my partner.”

A shadow passes behind him, Nikto returning to your side, faithful as always. His eyes don’t even flick towards the other man.

The man, however, locks eyes on him and sneers.

“What, does your guard dog bite?” He mocks. “You don’t owe it anything just because it humps your leg.”

Your temper flares, white hot and mean. “The only dog here is the one yapping for attention.”

Anger ripples across his face, he tenses like he’s going to move. The start of some derogatory name on his tongue.

And then between one blink and the next, he’s on the floor and Nikto is standing over him. Metal flashes beneath the lights; a wicked knife held in Nikto’s tight fist. The man isn’t getting back up any time soon though, he’s bleeding from… somewhere on his face. You can’t tell with the way he’s covering it.

“Knife away,” you tell Nikto quietly.

It’s gone in an instant.

You hook two fingers in a chest strap and tug. “We’re done in here.”

He follows you out, silent as ever. Follows without question or complaint until you stop between buildings. Let out a sigh.

“Fuck that guy,” you huff, running a hand down your face.

“I could still gut him,” he offers.

You’d laugh if you didn’t know he meant it wholeheartedly.

“He deserves it for what he said about you,” you mutter.

Nikto cocks his head, stares. Doesn’t understand, you realize.

You shake off the last of your ire and turn your full attention to him. Step in close and take his gloved hand in both of yours. The same one that had held the knife. There’s a little smear of blood on the knuckles.

“I don’t know what anyone says about me,” you explain. “You know who I am, and that’s all that matters.”

His eyes bounce between yours, something stunned in smooth skin around his eyes. You smile a bit.

“But what I won’t abide is anyone trying to take your humanity from you. Not ever again, you hear me?”

He mask moves like he wants to speak, but no sound comes out. You wait a moment to see if he’s just picking his words, but nothing comes. After a long moment, he just blinks, and you continue.

“You protect me, right?” He nods instantly. You tilt your head. “Well, I take care of you. You let me decide how to do that, yeah?”

His voice comes out shredded. “Yes.”

You hum, pleased. “C’mon, let’s get a bite to eat.”

First | Previous | Next

Masterlist

[heliads]

Ok so I saw how you said you wanted to write for narnia in your request guidelines so, imagine if you will:

Reader and Caspian with a sort of rivals to friends to lovers. Charting the transition from "My prince" (Sarcastic) to "My prince" (playfull, joking) to eventually "MY prince" (loving). Hope this makes sense, lots of love <3

when people check the request guidelines <333 also this request was so good that i had the people vote upon it. soldier reader for the win

masterlist

You’re not sure what makes you more angry, the fact that you broke your sword or that the prince was there to see it. If it were not enough of a ruination to your day to have your blade break in half like a child’s wooden toy, if it were not enough to have to retreat through the storms of other fights and clashing metal and skulk to the background to get another, you were witnessed by the one person you detest most of all.

You should not be hating Prince Caspian. He just makes it rather easy to do so. He is the physical embodiment of this world, the crown on high, the savior of your every waking hour, all because he happened to be born into the right family at the right time. It is not his fault that he is one of the most powerful men in all of Narnia, but it is not the result of his labor, either. He is simply the prince, and there is nothing more to say on the matter.

That is quite different from you, then. You had to claw your way up through the ranks, sacrificing skin and sweat so you could eke out a win time and time again. Your trials served you well, gilding your brow with the title of captain of the guard, but it wasn’t like anything was handed to you. No, not at all. Yet, by virtue of his predestined position, Caspian technically has control over every soldier in Narnia. He outranks all of your efforts by the crown put on his head when he was just an infant.

This is the way of the world, and the way that it has always been. It makes no sense for you to hate him so fervently over something he cannot control. Caspian is an easy scapegoat, though, a figurehead for you to heap your regrets upon like laurels. It is not his fault that he was made prince. It is not his fault that you despise him for being one.

You’ve had time to grow accustomed to your life of blood and sweat, however, and today should have been no different. This morning was an amalgamation of at least a dozen different mistakes, though, and that ruined your day before it hardly even started. You woke up a little too late, you snapped at your friends then regretted it half a second later, and now you’ve gone and broken your blade, too.

It wasn’t your best weapon, at least that counts for something. Your finest sword is your most prized possession, and lies in careful hiding back in your quarters. This was merely your practice weapon, one designed to be battered and beaten all in the means of furthering the skills of you and your men.

Still, it stings to see it lying on the dusty ground of the training yard, shiny metal fragments already beginning to cloud over with grime. You sigh, signaling to your partner that you’ll have to abandon the match for now, and carefully pick up the pieces. When you stand, cradling the shards of your sword like a child, you look up and see Caspian of all people staring at you from across the training yard. Evidently he’s arrived just to see your sword fail.

Wonderful timing as always from him. You have to marvel at how he does it. You half think Caspian carefully plans his excursions into the swordsman's arenas when he believes you to be least ready to see him. You meet his gaze for a moment longer, then turn, heading back towards the rows of equipment on the far side of the yard.

You murmur at least half a dozen curses as you go, running them over your tongue like a prayer. The broken pieces of your sword can be turned into the armorer in the hopes that something will become of them, but you highly doubt that. In the meantime, you’ll have to dig up the coin to buy yourself a new sword, and risk damaging your primary weapon in the meantime. How splendid.

A voice sounds from behind you, one that makes you grit your teeth despite the soothing intonations. “You know, if you’re stabbing our own men so hard your weapon shatters, I’m afraid to see what you’ll do to our enemies.”

You grimace to yourself, then turn around to face Caspian, expression resolute. “Fear not, my prince, your men will be spared from me today. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of time to break swords when a battle arises.”

Caspian arches a brow, perhaps at the tone you direct towards his title. “If you speak with that much thrill over the thought of war, I’m beginning to fear that you may not be my best advisor regarding the maintenance of peace.” 

As if he’d ever listen to you long enough to consider you an advisor. The two of you snap at each other’s throats every time you get within shouting range. “Perhaps I just like a chance to fight.”

“I think I’ve noticed that,” Caspian murmurs, bemused.

It takes great strength to keep from glaring at him, strength that fails you by the second. “You’ll have to excuse me, I must go to the blacksmith for repairs.”

His face falls. “You won’t be continuing in the ring today? I had hoped to best you yet again.”

His lips quirk up as he says it, making the insult lose some of its barb, but it still makes your temper flare. “I’m afraid not. Blades are not as easily bought by soldiers as princes, I must see if I can salvage this one before going to the trouble of a purchase.”

Caspian seems half a second of self control from rolling his eyes. “There are more swords in the yard, L/N. Simply select another and we can go for a round or two.”

He gestures towards the training yard expectantly, and you feel the weight of your difference in stations come crashing down around you. Caspian will not stop asking until you fight him, that is his birthright. He does not know what it means to be disobeyed. And, as the captain of his guard, you cannot argue. This you know to be true, even if Caspian is unaware of just how he’s wielding his influence. There is nothing you can do to circumvent him.

You force your expression to go icily cold, devoid of any and all emotion. Even the anger, which was sparking through you so readily before, vanishes from your disposition. Caspian blinks in surprise at the sudden change, more so when you abruptly drop the pieces of your broken blade to the ground, where they send up a small storm of dust.

“Of course,” you say, even-syllabled, “how could I ever think to do anything else? Your word is my command, my prince.”

You pack as much loathing as possible into those syllables. Caspian flinches as if you’ve hit him, and then his confidence is gone, his eyes downcast. “If you don’t want to–” He begins in a whisper, but you’re already moving briskly towards the rows of extra blades.

“I most certainly want to,” you answer him, the borrowed blade seeming to cut into your hand despite the smooth leather grip, “you have asked, and that is all the motivation I should ever need.”

Caspian swallows hard, opens his mouth to say something, but you swing your blade at his head before he can manage it. This is utterly wrong behavior for a soldier towards a prince, but Caspian has never seemed to have a problem with your actions before, no matter how challenging. It’s as if both of your prides are so strong that they could overcome any class barrier set in your way.

Caspian barely parries your sword before it cuts into his head. Grunting with effort, he twists his weapon, forcing you to step back as he disengages, striking towards you in return. Seizing the opportunity, Caspian presses his advantage, taking a few quick steps and maneuvering the two of you further into the training yard and into the designated spaces for fighting.

Words are clearly still clinging to his tongue, begging to be spoken aloud, but this is no longer a place for conversation. It takes everything in you to counter his attacks, to spot when he’s off balance and lunge with piercing precision towards every gap in Caspian’s defense. You may hate the dark-haired prince with every fiber of your being, but you cannot deny that he is skilled. He might be the only one here capable of providing a challenge to you. You might hate him even more for that, or worse, not at all.

Caspian feints to his left, then his right. You ignore both distractions and plunge your weapon straight towards his heart. Expecting your belligerence in regards to his ploys, Caspian parries the strike and returns it with one of his own. You move to take a quick sidestep, but the ground is slick beneath your feet with mud from yesterday’s rain and you stumble. It’s the slightest of missteps, but for someone at Caspian’s level, it is enough.

He lunges forward, and you feel the shadow of the stone wall on your back before he pushes you into it. The rock is cold against your back, driving the air from your lungs. You try to force your way towards the center of the yard again, but Caspian has his sword at your throat, and any movement would lead to you cutting your own neck.

Unwilling to yield quite yet, you stay silent. You and Caspian breathe in and out, the deep gasps for air first discordant and then slowly, steadily, joining in a shared rhythm.

Caspian speaks first, you know he’s been waiting for it. “You hate me.”

You scoff. “You hate me. This is not an exclusive feeling.”

He exhales harshly, exasperated. “Stop deflecting everything onto me. We could have been friends.”

You laugh, tilting your head back to give him a better chance to slit your throat. “You are a prince. I would never have been anything but nothing to you.”

Caspian’s eyes widen. He moves away from you unsteadily, first closer than he’s ever been, then gone, halfway across the yard in what feels like just a second. You let your eyes shudder closed, exhausted from the intensity of the fight but perhaps something more as well. When you open your lids, he is gone. He had just arrived, but he is nowhere to be seen now. That could be no one’s fault but yours. He is not your friend. But. He could be so, so much more. 

Three days later, a gift arrives in your quarters. You unwrap the cloth bindings to reveal a sword nestled within the folds. You can tell at once that it has been perfectly selected for you– the heft is just right for your level of strength, the grip matches your hands exactly, and the edges are razor sharp, ideal for those slashes towards the forearms you’ve been so fond of as of late.

It comes swathed in a rich purple cloth, the sort of color you’ve only ever seen decorating Caspian’s frame as he walks with his troops or speaks to his nobles. An angrier, more bitter part of you wants to reject the gift entirely, to toss it from your room like refuse or return it back to him at once. Still, it is a fine blade, and you know that were you to just pick it up, it would feel exactly right, an extension of your arm into shining metal.

So, the sword joins the rest of your collections, and the purple linen ends up tucked away in your desk, carefully folded into a neat square of color and creases. You cannot explain why you do either, not even to yourself. 

The next time you’re called out with your regiment to guard the prince and some foreign powers on a diplomatic mission, the sword is on your belt, your hand resting on its hilt. Caspian sees and something changes in his expression; a deepening of a smile, a pleased spark in his eyes. For some reason, you cannot hate him for being proud. Not today.

He finds you later, once the crowds have dispersed and he doesn’t have to be a prince, just a man. “What a fine sword that is,” he remarks pleasantly.

You narrow your eyes. “Don’t. Don’t even.”

Caspian spreads his hands, the picture of innocence. “I have no idea what you could possibly be talking about.”

“You had better not,” you grumble.

He nods solemnly. “Of course. Just a random thought, however, it really is a nice blade. It must have been picked out by an exceedingly good swordsman. Perhaps even the best in the castle.”

You should be irritated with him for being so bothersome again. Instead, you find yourself fighting a smile. “It’s a shame, then, that the only swordsman here worth his salt is me.”

Caspian’s mouth drops comically. “That cannot be true.”

“It is,” you reply as casually as you can, “I come to you with only the best information, my prince. Only the best.”

He starts to respond, but something stops him, something that makes him smile quietly. Your stomach flips with the unsettling feeling of having missed out on a joke, but for once, you don’t entirely mind it. Instead, the two of you walk all the way back to the castle, and only when the diplomats arrive again must you be parted. It is not the worst use of your time.

Caspian finds you again two nights later. You’re on a shift guarding a section of the castle walls, which gives you an excellent view of the foreign powers riding away into the darkness. They’ve been here for days now, testing Caspian’s patience like no one else, not even you.

He joins you soon enough, exhaustedly leaning his arms up against the stone battlements. “I think I hate politics,” he murmurs into the night air.

You chuckle, the quiet sound abnormally loud in the darkness. It should make you self conscious, and it does, but not as much as it would for anyone else. The hot prick of awareness in your stomach is both doubly strong and doubly weak because you are next to Caspian; why, you cannot explain, but it is true.

“You are a prince,” you point out, “politics was always something you would have to do.”

Caspian groans. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it. That’s why I always envied you, you know. You got to carry the banner and fight the battles without any political conniving.”

You stare at him in shock. “That cannot be true. No future king could ever want to be a mere soldier.”

He laughs derisively. “As if you’ve ever been a mere soldier. Not to me,” he adds on afterthought, and you’re not sure that it was even meant for your ears, “no, not to me.”

You shake your head slowly. “But I thought you hated me. All this time, you’ve merely wanted to join me in fighting without a care?”

Caspian’s brow furrows. “Hate you? No, no. I never hated you. I never could hate you.”

He straightens up, slowly walking over to you. There is no one else on the castle wall to see you, no one below. Even still, your eyes feel like more than enough of an audience to find some reason to stop this before the pounding in your heart blocks out your ability to breathe properly.

“My prince,” you say, a warning. It doesn’t make him flinch like it used to, a blow grown familiar, worn down to the weight of a feather instead of that of a blade.

Caspian sighs, the listless air leaving him and vanishing just as quickly on the wind. “Don’t tell me you haven’t wanted this. That you’ve never thought about it.”

“I couldn’t,” you whisper, and something in you cracks in half when his face falls, “but you could.”

Caspian’s eyes dart cautiously up to you again. “Are you sure?”

Neither of you have to specify what he means for you to know. “Yes,” you breathe.

You did not anticipate this night to end with you kissing the crown prince of Narnia. That being said, you would not want to have it any other way. There may be foreign dignitaries out there plotting the end of his reign, or political turmoils present to claim most of his time, but tonight, Caspian is yours and yours alone. It makes you smile into him. It makes everything that much better.

narnia tag list: empty for now!

[hainethehero]

POC can forgive Tommy. That's a valid opinion, and it's not my place to inform them of their feelings on racism.

However, both Hen & Chim never imply forgiving Tommy after Tommy decides to treat them like they are humans (Chim specifically mentions still being isolated because of his race years after he started). They treat him kindly because they are kind people, even before he acknowledges them. Nor does Tommy ever apologise for some of his behaviour. Hen even goes as far as to state that she is not friends with people who had left the 118.

As a woman in a historically male industry, I've heard women get negative descriptions/comments for things men are praised for and had their opinions/requests ignored only for a man to bring up the same thing and it be heard. Tommy's brand of misogyny is still around. Based on his comments/tone in 7x03, I'm hard pressed to believe he's changed in that aspect.

A lot of people tolerate people who hurt them because it makes situations easier. (Not any less painful)

Y'all really need a crash course in contextualising/comprehension/media/plot literacy.

AGAIN-

Tommy's character was never intended as a mainstay. So all the redemption/reconciliation that happened, was only able to be shown in a small montage. The show isn't going to allocate a lot of time or a full episode for a redemption arc for a character that was not meant to be permanent.

The montage however, did show that Tommy Hen and Chim all reconciled. IT IS IMPLIED. That's why in later episodes, Chimney could still call on him to put out the house fire that nearly killed Eddie. And that's why he could still be trusted to be contacted when they needed to rescue Bobby and Athena.

Because Tommy's character didn't have the luxury of a full episode to redeem himself, the audience is expected to contextualize their reconciliation. We didn't see Tommy actually apologize, but we do see him and Hen and Chimney embracing each other after having a farewell party for him. That shit wouldn't happen if Hen did not like him/reconcile with him. Therefore IT IS IMPLIED.

We're not even sure if he'll be a mainstay in season 8. Or of he'll just be a peripheral character like before. The point is, his character won't be fully fleshed out until they decide if they're giving him a full arc as a main.

So y'all are crucifying his character before it even gets a chance to flourish because he's getting in the way of your preferred ship. It would be so much better if y'all can just admit that instead of virtue signaling & using racism as a means to justify your horrible behaviour towards not only Lou (who's just doing his job & now have to deal with delusional fanatics who send him death threats & make up lies about him as a person when they don't know him at all), but also fans of the show who like the BuckTommy ship.

Additionally, y'all have taken to socmed and have made the entire show about this, being absolutely INSUFFERABLE in all of the cast's comment sections whenever they post anything remotely related to buddie or Tommy. It's why Oliver deleted X, and it's why Ryan has a hard time being on socmed, why Aisha has her comments limited & why Tim Minear had to make a post about y'all sending him death threats after he didn't include the karaoke scene. It's insane behaviour.

It's also not lost on me, that y'all typically do this to female characters who get in the way of your preferred ship.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

was in the process of starting writing an eridan centric no sburb au and the more i write the more i’m like goddamnit pale erikar is happening without me even trying you’ve 100% gotten me invested

YEAH. Even if you just go purely by canon, their personalities just wind up meshing so well.

Like how Karkat gives Eridan special treatment and is extra nice to him because he knows how rough it is to be in Eridan's thinkpan.

Or how Eridan is willing to immediately shelve his own problems whenever he hears that Karkat isn't doing well emotionally and basically demands to give him emotional support.

Or how Karkat lies to Vriska that nobody listens to him talk about quadrant stuff when we've seen them talk to each other and we know they gossip about that shit all the time.

Or how Eridan is basically the only person who's ever succeeded in getting Karkat to calm the fuck down, by virtue of his incredible obtuseness, like, he doesn't even need to try.

Or how Karkat makes a bunch of death threats to Eridan and Eridan takes it as "ironic repartee," meaning that Karkat's usual problem with mixed signals is not a problem to Eridan, because Eridan is honestly just happy for the attention.

Or how they're so in sync with each other that Karkat telling Past!Eridan that their pact is over led to Eridan assuming they have a pact, and Past!Karkat hears about it and just rolls with it, because apparently it makes sense that they have a pact or something with a caveat that they be nice to each other. Of course.

Or how they talk so often that Feferi outright laments how it leaves Eridan with nothing left to talk to her about.

Or how, even before he knows that Karkat is a mutant, Karkat is still one of his best friends, and their relationship doesn't change after Eridan finds out - in fact, unlike Vriska or Equius or Gamzee, who make comments about his blood color (Gamzee calls him a punchline blooded motherfucker), Eridan never even bothers to mention it. (Because he doesn't actually give a shit about the hemocaste, it's basically all performative).

Or how Eridan knows Karkat well enough to know that Gamzee's advice to just be chill and w/e doesn't work for Karkat.

Or how Karkat's response to Gamzee going murderous is "oh god oh fuck oh man oh fuck" and his message to Past!Gamzee is "get out of here, this barely even concerns you," but his response to Eridan going murderous is a very personal "fuck you, BACKSTABBER, HOW COULD YOU???"

Or how Karkat has a double-v typo once and there's a point where Eridan drops his double-letters and yells at Feferi in capslock 👉👈

And that's all JUST CANON. That's all stuff we've SEEN them do. If you start making some extrapolations, there's so much more.

Karkat's dream has always been to become a threshecutioner - a member of the Empress's strongest troops - seeking to find some sort of acceptance within the society that outcasted him if he could prove his worth that way. However, Karkat's the weakest fighter on the team, and given that Eridan's pissed off angels scared everybody else off his planet, it's likely he's one of the best fighters, if not THE best. Combined with his noble status, Eridan was on the fast track to, if not becoming a threshecutioner, then otherwise achieving some great rank or prestige within the Condesce's army. (Even Dualscar, laughable as he was, was still Mindfang's superior).

Karkat would think Eridan is badass.

Meanwhile, Eridan's problems nearly all stem from the pressure he feels to live up to the expectations on his shoulders, as a highblood, as the orphaner, as the person keeping his friends alive, and as a sea dweller. His is a world of constant anxiety and anguish, not helped by his innate troll/highblood volatility and his own knowledge of how dangerous he is. And Karkat is their self-described "fearless leader," who will happily tell everyone what to do.

Eridan would be relieved that the pressure is off his shoulders.

Karkat's had to live in fear for his life for nearly all of it; when Eridan got added to the group chat, Karkat was probably fucking terrified, especially when Feferi got added right after. Like, oh, fuck, it's a sea dweller (noted as being so hostile that even GAMZEE is nervous about being by the water for too long), oh fuck, he knows the heir apparent, oh fuck, he's an insane murderer.

And then... the sea dweller respects his authority. The sea dweller takes him completely seriously, once he gets past all the slurs and talk of genocide, which the sea dweller obviously doesn't actually mean (Eridan's contradictions are REALLY obvious, which is part of why nobody else takes him seriously). The sea dweller doesn't give a shit WHAT his blood color is.

Like, I think Karkat finds a weird sense of safety in having a violet-blood friend that he can make death threats to. Their last memo together implies that such "ironic repartee" is completely normal for the two of them, and I personally like the idea that Karkat at one point took issue with one of the insane shitty things that Eridan likes to say, went off on a classic Karkat Rant, and then went "oh wait. shit. fuck. im so dead," only for Eridan to completely laugh it off and treat it like casual joking around.

And Eridan just craves attention, positive or negative. He desperately wants people to take him seriously and care about him. Kanaya, Vriska, and Feferi don't, because frankly, they don't really get why he's got so many problems - they're all privileged and they like it! - and Terezi is like "yikes. wow. glad that's not my problem," while Gamzee just tells him to chill out (he can't, that's his entire issue) and Equius avoids (void joke ha ha) him. He doesn't really talk to the lowbloods, but given he doesn't express any casteist anti-lowblood sentiment specifically until he's mad at Sollux (and has totally caste-neutral opinions on Sollux before that), it's not even because he doesn't like lowbloods; one has to assume he's got a different reason for avoiding them - like his canonical guilt over all the murders, or an extrapolation of his general anxieties in that he doesn't like talking to people who are going to be dead before he's even 1/100 of a way through his own life, or that the lowbloods tend to avoid him because... yknow, -gestures to all of Eridan-.

But he always had plausible deniability when it came to Karkat, because Karkat was always anonblood; even if he assumes Karkat's an "assblood," he had no way to know for sure 'til he found out Karkat was an off-spec. And Karkat DOES take him seriously, or at least more seriously than anybody else, by a longshot. He's even willing to outright tell Eridan that it's not Eridan's fault Nepeta doesn't reciprocate his feelings. WHO ELSE WOULD DO SUCH A THING???

And on that topic is pity. They both extend to each other a pity that they don't really afford anyone else, and Karkat - with his uncanny romantic acumen - outright says that pity is the driving force for all non-pitch relationships. Because he's the only person who even acknowledges that Eridan's probelms are PROBLEMS, it's clear he feels pity for Eridan's utterly fried thinkpan. Meanwhile, Eridan seems to recognize how sensitive Karkat really is, IMMEDIATELY putting everything else on pause to try to provide Karkat emotional support whenever it's brought up that Karkat is sad.

Eridan never extends this kind of consideration toward anyone else, too busy grandstanding and putting on the Big Bad Sea Dweller act; Karkat never even extends this much sympathy to Gamzee, never once bothering to understand his religion, or comment on his shitty lusus or crisis of faith. Even when he tries to cheer Terezi up, it's not really with outright sympathy - he tries to build up how awesome he thinks she is, or take on the blame for the situation. But with Eridan, he just goes, yeah, okay, shut up. I know it's tough being you.

I think it's also pretty notable that although Eridan comments about how HYPOTHETICALLY Future!Karkat can't reject him because he's not Eridan's Current!Karkat, he has never actually hit on Karkat in any quadrant, as far as we've seen. And I'm even willing to believe that he never has - when he met Karkat, his pale and pitch quadrants were filled, and he was always pining after Feferi in flushed; it probably never even crossed his mind to see Karkat as a viable dating partner, and I think he likes their unofficial moirallegiance friendship exactly the aay it is - when he thinks Karkat is hitting on him pitchwise, his reaction isn't "yes let's date," it's a surprised "whoa, coming on kinda strong, there."

And just. Just. The way that Karkat took Eridan's murder spree so fucking personally, especially compared to Gamzee in the same memo. You BACKSTABBER. I HATE you (not enough to not talk to you for an extended period of time but still). How COULD you. I thought you loved her...

Like. Man. I think it would require a third party to point it out in order to get them together - Karkat seems to be kind of embarrassed by how often he talks to Eridan (because it's, y'know, ERIDAN), and has convinced himself that Eridan is SUCH a pathetic dumbass that OF COURSE it would never work out between them (keep telling yourself that, buddy, you're the one who started thinking about that in a conversation where Eridan literally was not hitting on you), and Eridan is, uh, a dumbass.

But even that's kind of tricky, because Karkat's mixed signals make their friendship read as weirdly pitch-coded (I don't think you're normally supposed to threaten death upon your moirail and call them slurs), and also, nobody really wants to imagine Eridan being in a happy, loving relationship. You run into this problem sometimes even in real life.

But he's kind of basically in one?????

Literally, society if Eridan and Karkat made it official -

[gulfiya007]

On lukola fandom

Here’s some venting about the lukola fandom, and its ways, and consequences, from an ordinary polin, Bridgerton and Luke fan.

Starting from the way Luke’s loved ones and friends are treated by its adherents. Especially his girlfriend. The hate towards her is visceral. The whole phenomenon of bullying and stalking someone just for existing and posting on their SM account from time to time probably needs to be studied by social studies scholars and parasocial relationship specialists, cause it’s new heights apparently.

So, what if she’s proud of Luke as her boyfriend and wants to show it? What if she wants to mark her territory sometimes, to which she has a right btw? What if she trolls haters and delusional IRL shippers occasionally? Hers is probably the most relatable behavior. I myself, as an introvert millennial who doesn’t run one single SM account and cringe from the exhibitionist nature of current SM posting practices, still recognize that there’s nothing unusual about that kind of posting per se. Why was Luke’s former gf, Jade, allowed to post him all the time (which is totally alright btw), but Antonia hinting at having, say, a dinner with Luke is shady, attention-seeking, desperate, needy and despicable?

It's not that I care particularly about her. In fact, I couldn’t care less if she’s replaced by Luke with some other woman in a couple of months or if she is his future wife and mother to his kids. I still believe, regardless of her status in the relationship, she deserves basic respect and decent treatment as a human being that we know pretty much nothing about. She does not deserve the vilification and demonization that she gets.

Luke too, has a right to privacy and respect for his personal choices that are nobody’s business. He owes no one anything in terms of disclosing his dating life and confirming his relationships. If for someone, Luke bringing the girl to almost all his travels and events with himself, is not a proof or statement in and of itself about her being his girlfriend, then that’s on them. No amount of intentional misreading and skewed takes on photos will trump this simple fact.

Also please don’t bring up virtue signaling and other cancel culture stupidities, such as moral judgements passed on Luke and his close ones for political or other values purportedly held by them, of which we in fact know zilch. It’s clear that this is just another useful tool in a shipping crusade.

Nicola too, deserves, for a change, to have her numerous statements taken seriously. Let alone, privacy. She’s being stalked by her so-called fans to insanity. I am sure she, to put it mildly, is uncomfortable about her “queen” and “goddess” status among the cultists, and being a projection vessel for a myriad of sad women. Cause she knows very well this type of passionate idolatry is an inch away from hate, and the plus sign switches to a minus sign the minute she does something not to their liking, a wrong brand or person supported, or not enough disciplining of Luke is exercised. The most delusional thing about lukolas is them truly believing themselves to be Nic’s or Luke’s fans.

Which brings us to the crux of the matter. That IRL shipping is bad, period. Some lukola bloggers on tumblr, TT and IG half-heartedly try to reign in and admonish the more unhinged segment of the fandom by telling them to behave and not bring their bul..t to the actors' feet. However, this is what the lukola discourse platforms, by simply existing, still do - breed crazy fan behavior. Because the problem lies in the belief system itself. No amount of reservations, house-keeping and discipline by lukola discourse 'leaders' will do away with the tenets and premises of this religion that seep through and twist every discussion and speculation about the figures involved (Luke, Nic, etc). Since every reasoning should work towards a certain end goal, all means and distortions are good to achieve it. Finding faults with Luke's character and behavior and demanding a 'redemption' from him, hating and criticizing Luke's friends and family, attributing motivations to the actors and their loved ones that best suit theories, online stalking etc. A myth about Luke ever publicly stating he was single during promo, a ridiculous myth about Bridgerton cast and showrunners shipping lukola (news flash – nobody in the cast cares about their co-stars’ private lives, stop the kindergarten), or the “papgate” affecting in any way Luke’s job prospects. Myths upon myths that build the house of cards of the lukola dogma. I myself wouldn’t care a damn about this fandom if it really contained itself to its close corners and group chats, however, unsurprisingly, they spill over in a grand fashion and permeate all discourse.

You really believe the innocent delulu fangirling has no by-products? These are the staple manifestations of the lukola and of any IRL shipping fandom, and popular lukola theorists are pretty successful in justifying and reinforcing them. And it should not be surprising that some followers, the most zealous and stupid ones, take it too far and actually harass people and be annoying in SM.

As a Luke and polin fan, I am annoyed by this, but I am 100% sure this sh*t is affecting the actors, and you all can kiss goodbye to the chemistry between Luke and Nic naturally displayed during promo. I am sure polin will not be affected, for L and N are excellent actors and friends, but you all soon will look sadly back to S3 promo tour as magic that will never come back.

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem 4387:

I'm not really sure when this change happened but at some point people decided that the burden of not interacting with anyone you don't want to interact with lies with everyone EXCEPT yourself.

We see this in DNIs, that range from "no racists / no Nazis" to "you must have the exact same opinions on every single cartoon as me". (First off, do you really expect extremist bigots to respect your DNI? That people like that just won't bother you if you ask them not to? If anything DNIs function only as a virtue signaling tool to tell people we deem Good People that we are also Good People.)

Just friggin use the block button, that's the only reliable way to make sure you never have to see or talk to anyone you don't want to, be it because they're racist extremists or because you don't like their headcanons about your favorite anime character, wherever you decide to draw the line at.

Another way is people yelling at people for "making gross fanfic and fanart!!" just, don't click it then? wtf it's not hard.

But bottom line, this is the internet. Before you even log in anywhere you need to prepare for the possibility that you're gonna see some cursed shit sooner or later. It's just part of being online. Shock sites have been around forever. "But the kiiidsss!!!-" shouldn't even be ON here if they aren't able to manage themselves.

Also this whole attitude that "everyone adult is an eeeviil pedophile groomer out to get you, EXCEPT *ME* OF COURSE YOU CAN TRUST *ME*, I AM YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL LOOKING OUT FOR YOU BUT NO ONE ELSE CAN BE TRUSTED!" Is DEFINITELY going to make it much easier for actual predators to hide in plain sight. Also? People could just be lying? Anyone could SAY they're a minor, to get the trust of other minors. IF kids are going to be on the internet, at least give them the tools to protect themselves. This means, don't list out every single thing that could be used to identify you and then slap "pedos DNI!!!" at the end and expect them to just leave, cause that's not gonna work. And don't assume everyone is always being honest, someone could SAY they're 15 and trans to try to relate to you, but you can't be sure WHO they are really, so don't give out any information that could be used against you.

And no, it's not "victim blaming" to say we should teach kids basic internet safety, any more than it would be "victim blaming" to teach kids not to dart into a busy street. "Stranger danger" isn't new but it sure seems like a lot of people have forgotten about it. Everyone has a responsibility to keep themselves safe. If someone--of any age--can't handle that responsibility THEY SHOULD NOT BE ONLINE.

[unofficial-estonia]

why is ur pfp 🇺🇦 it has nothing to do with estonia

Alright, I’ll humour you. Really, nothing to do with Estonia?

What exactly is Ukraine currently doing, huh? Could it possibly be fighting for their independence against the terrorist organisation that lies to East of both Estonia and Ukraine? No?

Would you imagine that Estonia is very invested in Ukrainian victory and that Estonians very strongly support Ukrainians???

That includes us having Ukrainian flags everywhere, to remind ourselves and people outside Eastern Europe that r*zzia is still invading Ukraine.

Could this be considered virtue signalling or whatever else buzz-word? Maybe. I’ll happily virtue signal Ukraine’s right to self-determination though.

Next time you need to take a verbal shit go to the bathroom, not my inbox.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Only delusions and lies require artificial support. Truth can stand alone. Therefore the true word has no need of superficial, solemn ceremonies. Only lies need such devices." -- Leo Tolstoy

Blasphemy laws and cancel culture betray lies.

[sunder-the-gold]

I don't think anyone who wants to play only Black cards in [Magic: The Gathering] is a bad person, or that anyone who wants to play only White cards is a good person.

I'm going to repeat something that a lot of people probably didn't read about my last, long post about the White and Black Colors of Magic: The Gathering.

====

Back when video game studios weren't terrified of offending anyone, they used to provide "Morality Paths" in their games.

No one lied to you about which path was Evil, or at least Anti-Heroic.

To deny that the Pacifist Route of Undertale was Good and that the Genocide Route was Evil would be to insult your intelligence and rob both paths of any meaning.

HOWEVER, if anyone tried to argue that only "Evil People" wanted to play as evil characters, everyone knew not to take that person seriously.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with someone who only ever wants to play with Black cards.

I only think there's something wrong with a person when they try to tell me: "The Color Black has nothing to do with Evil, and the Color White isn't actually Good".

If someone tells me pepper isn't spicy and salt isn't salty, it only reveals how tasteless they are.

====

Bad people can like playing nothing but White cards because of White's wholesome aesthetics. For the same reason that bad people can like beautiful sunsets, lovely music, sugary sweets, and being trusted and praised by the people around them.

Real people who want to deny that they have any character flaws, or bigoted opinions, or any capacity to do harm or evil will surround themselves with wholesome, clean, cutesy iconography and symbols and associations. This is called "Virtue Signaling".

The most toxic people in the world have the most vested interest in appearing harmless.

Before Harry Potter became a dirty word on the internet, people could rightfully reference Dolores Umbridge, the cruel, petty, paranoid, hateful monster who tried to convince herself and everyone that she was nothing but sweetness and light and righteous.

As a person, Dolores Umbridge would play nothing but White cards and would clutch her pearls to see anyone playing Black cards. She would pretend to faint if she so much as touched a Black card.

Which is funny, because if a fictional character like her were accurately represented as a Magic card, she would be pure Black. She may not have been Dark Lord levels of ambitious, but no one who was pure White could have "inventing instruments of torture" as a HOBBY, let alone take delight in making other people suffer, or pledging allegiance to an actual Dark Lord as soon as he replaces the legitimate government as the ruling power of the land.

Because while Magic HAS to choose Colors that accurately reflect fictional characters, real people can choose Colors that have nothing to do with their personalities at all.

Be honest: In terms of real personalities, Blue must be over-represented in the Magic: The Gathering player-base compared to Red. How many impulsive, athletic 'dude-bros' would rather learn the rules, collect the cards, construct the decks, and sit down to play this game... instead of going outside to touch grass and kick balls around? Or at least playing a video game like Call of Duty.

By the same token, if only bad people played Black cards, almost no one would play Black at all.

Good people can like Black's horror aesthetics for the same reason good people can like Halloween, horror stories, and slasher movies. It can be fun to play the villain!

Games are safe ways to explore our darker fantasies because we're not causing real harm to real people. It's all make-believe.

But it's a Red Flag when someone says, "Actually, the villain is the hero."

Not in the sense that the villain is the protagonist, or the protagonist is an anti-hero fighting a worse person, or the protagonist only looks like a monster, or the protagonist is actually a hero being framed as a villain by an actual villain.

I mean in the sense of, "I think Pennywise the Clown, the child-eating boogieman, is an ally to everything I want to see happen in the world."

Or, "I think the mass-murdering psychopath is a decent fellow as long as he only murders people with a skin complexion I don't like, or if she only kills men."

Or, "Morality is subjective or a lie, there is no truth but power, and there is no inherent, sacred value to all human lives."

[darkeagleruins]

From David Thomsen:

An Open Letter to Leftists: On July 13, 2024 things CHANGED. For too long you have mistaken our TOLERANCE for weakness and it emboldened you. That TIME has come to an END. Things are going to happen FAST now and you will find yourself wondering HOW you got here. So, here’s how.

You called us RACISTS while we were standing together as WHITE, BLACK, & BROWN Americans. You overwhelmed us with images of races unable to COEXIST. Then came DEI, reparations, & constant ATTACKS for even the smallest perceived slight. You needed us DIVIDED, which was the GOAL.

We supported GAY marriage and didn’t notice the TQIA’s at first. Then you went after OUR KIDS, openly flaunted your sexuality, & made PRONOUNS a weapon. You had men competing in WOMEN’s sports and invading their private spaces. And again you demonized those that DARE push back.

We got behind “ME TOO”, not knowing the intent. The slightest accusation became grounds for MOB RULE. You cancelled and shamed. You made being a MAN the problem. Toxic MASCULINITY was the phrase of the day. So we watched you TEACH AND RAISE a generation of SOFT, feckless boys.

WE’RE ALL immigrants and our ancestors did it RIGHT. They learned English, got JOBS, and assimilated into the culture in order to be a part of this GREAT NATION. Then you allowed an INVASION, gave them handouts, and let them do as they LIKE. Hell, you even wanted them to VOTE.

You changed the NAMES of mountains, and buildings, and teams to ERASE our history. You took the pledge out of schools, knelt during the anthem, and burned our FLAG!! And did it while proudly displaying those of OTHER countries and movements. You made PATRIOT a dirty word.

You took away our VOICE. Media STOPPED even talking about OUR side. You PREACHED to us during our shows, on the NEWS and in the theatres. VIRTUE SIGNALING at every turn. And you LIED. Telling us not to BELIEVE what we were seeing with our own EYES. We felt isolated, even CRAZY.

Then HE came along. He was brash, RAW, but grew on US. He wanted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. He spoke to the helplessness we FELT. You said RUSSIA was his handler. You attacked his CHARACTER, his family. And yet, HE WON. You didn’t let us CELEBRATE though. You said he CHEATED.

So you took to the STREETS. You PROTESTED, and BURNT, and THREATENED, and ATTACKED. Our fascist response was to remain SILENT. We heard every single day that, ORANGE MAN bad. The economy was STRONG, the world was SAFE, and the WALL was going up. You couldn’t let that STAND.

Then came your VIRUS. You locked us in OUR HOMES, hurt our businesses, stole moments from our CHILDREN they won’t ever get back. Keeping us separated became LAW. You killed our ELDERLY and VULNERABLE. Then you FORCED us to inject a CURE. If we refused, you SHAMED and fired us.

You LIED some more. A lot more. You covered up LAPTOPS, mobilized your ARMY of celebs, and smeared the man’s RECORD and reputation. Worse yet, you CHEATED. At least you told us the BLUE WAVE was coming. We didn’t expect it to happen while we were SLEEPING. You STOLE an election.

The best of US finally stood & took to the STREETS. You provoked us and let us walk into that BUILDING. You killed a woman and PROSECUTED the rest. You locked us up. You CENSORED us. Made sure we couldn’t RISE. You weaponized LAW and laughed as YOU DID IT. You thought you’d WON.

We sat and watched you destroy our COUNTRY. You defunded our POLICE, allowing crime to run RAMPANT. You spent to the point we couldn’t AFFORD to live. You abandoned BASES, and EMBASSIES, and allies. You made us WEAK. Then OTHERS began to awake. So you became DESPERATE, more vile.

You convicted him of CRIMES he didn’t commit on CHARGES you didn’t define. You tried to take his FORTUNE. Your leaders called him a THREAT and a fascist. You called him HITLER. And you DEMONIZED EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US. We lost friends and FAMILY. MSM spent everyday on our EVIL.

Then SHOTS rang out. YOU NEARLY KILLED HIM. But the man ROSE. He lifted his FIST in the air and told us to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT. This selfish, HATEFUL, ugly man nearly gave all to save a COUNTRY he LOVES. And we’d been afraid to wear a RED HAT? Our eyes teared with ANGER, respect.

He withstood all you could MUSTER. And in doing so, he EMPOWERED us. And so now you see, the REAL men and REAL women are coming to take our COUNTRY back. We won’t be SILENCED, we can’t be STOPPED. You will watch as every ounce of POWER you once held is returned to the PEOPLE.

We will restore LAW AND ORDER and ILLEGALS will be shown the door. WE will retake our SCHOOLS, our cities, and our STATES. The minority will NO LONGER dictate to a once silent MAJORITY. We the PEOPLE of the United States of America LOVE this man and country. We will and are MAGA!

[maxdibert]

Hi I have read many of your James posts and so far I agree with all of them. What gets me wondering however is someone like Lily Evans - potrayed as the saintly morally good character - dating someone like James - an entitled bully who kept his jerkish behavior even after he supposedly changed. Who do you think she was? Did she excused James's behavior because she found him attractive and thought she could change him? Or that he would change for her? Was she downplaying his faults because she fell in love? Or was she simply too naive? I cannot believe a person who would marry a person with so many faults like James wouldn't also be far off from being jerkish themselves. And what about her relationship with Severus? Was she as attached to him as he was? Why was she friends with him for so long if she was excusing his prejudice for years? I'm so conflicted about her. The author implies she is something but the text kind of goes against that. As someone who is pro snape and knows Lily was a big part of his life what do you think about her, her motives, actions or relationships? I love your opinions a lot btw never stop sharing them😄

I looove to talk about Lily because her character sucks. And not because of her, but because HOW Rowling portrays her. Sooo.. Lets go! Lily is emblematic of a significant issue in the series: the tendency to use female characters as tools for male development rather than as complex individuals with their own arcs. In Lily’s case, her character functions primarily as a moral barometer—she exists to reflect the “goodness” or “badness” of the men around her. Her choices and relationships with James and Severus are less about her own desires, values, or growth and more about how they impact these two men. This framing does Lily a disservice, stripping her of agency and interiority while simultaneously burdening her with the narrative role of deciding who is worthy and who is not

Rowling’s portrayal of Lily is heavily idealized. She is the perfect mother who sacrifices herself for her son, the brilliant and talented witch who stands out even among her peers, and the moral compass who chooses “good” (James) over “evil” (Severus). This construction paints her as infallible, a paragon of virtue, and the embodiment of love and selflessness. However, this saintly image is rarely interrogated within the text.

The problem lies in the dissonance between how Lily is presented and the decisions she makes. If she is meant to represent moral perfection, her marriage to James —a character whose flaws remain evident even after his supposed redemption—creates a contradiction. James, even as an adult, retains the arrogance and hostility that defined his youth, particularly in his continued disdain for Snape. If Lily was as discerning and principled as the narrative suggests, why would she align herself with someone whose values and behavior contradict the ideal of Gryffindor bravery and fairness?

This contradiction weakens her role as a moral arbiter, making her decisions feel less like the result of her own judgment and more like a narrative convenience to validate James’s redemption. By choosing James, she implicitly forgives or overlooks his past bullying, signaling that his actions were excusable or irrelevant to his worthiness as a partner. This not only diminishes the impact of James’s flaws but also undermines Lily’s supposed moral clarity.

Lily’s role mirrors a common, harmful trope: the woman as a moral compass or fixer for flawed men. Her purpose becomes external rather than internal—she isn’t there to pursue her own goals, ideals, or struggles but to serve as a benchmark for others’ morality. It’s as if Lily’s worth as a character is determined solely by her relationships with James and Severus rather than her own journey.

By failing to give Lily meaningful contradictions or flaws, Rowling inadvertently creates a character who feels passive and complicit. Her saintly veneer prevents her from being truly human, as real people are defined by their contradictions, growth, and mistakes. Yet Lily is static, existing only to highlight James’s "redemption" or Severus’s "fall."

This lack of depth reflects a broader issue with how women are often written in male-centric narratives: their stories are secondary, their personalities flattened, and their actions only meaningful in the context of the men they influence. It’s a stark reminder of the gender bias present in the series, where women like Lily, Narcissa, and even Hermione are often used to drive or validate male characters’ arcs rather than having their own fully developed trajectories.

Regarding Lily and Severus relationship, their bond begins in a world where both feel alienated. Severus, growing up in the oppressive and neglectful environment of Spinner’s End, finds in Lily not only a companion but a source of light and warmth that he lacks at home. For Lily, Severus is her first glimpse into the magical world, a realm that she belongs to but doesn’t yet understand. Their friendship is symbiotic in its earliest stages: Severus offers Lily knowledge of her magical identity, while she provides him with acceptance and validation. However, this connection, while powerful in childhood, rests on a fragile foundation—one that fails to evolve as their circumstances and priorities shift. When they arrive at Hogwarts, the cracks in their bond begin to surface. While Lily flourishes socially, Severus becomes increasingly marginalized and becomes a frequent target of James Potter and Sirius Black. This social isolation only deepens his reliance on Lily, but for her, this dependency becomes increasingly difficult to sustain.

It’s important to recognize that Lily’s discomfort isn’t only moral; it’s also social. By the time of their falling out, Lily has fully integrated into the Gryffindor social circle, gaining the admiration of her peers and, most notably, James Potter. Her association with Severus, now firmly positioned as an outsider and a future Death Eater, risks undermining her own social standing. While her final break with Severus is framed as a principled decision, it’s difficult to ignore the role that social dynamics might have played in her choice.

It’s worth considering that Lily’s shift toward James wasn’t necessarily a sudden change of heart but rather the culmination of an attraction that may have existed all along, one rooted in what he represented rather than who he was. James Potter, as the embodiment of magical privilege—a pure-blood, wealthy, socially adored Gryffindor golden boy—offered Lily something that Severus never could: validation within the magical world’s elite.

Though Lily was undoubtedly principled, it’s plausible that, beneath her moral convictions, there was a more human, and yes, superficial, desire for recognition and security in a world that was, for her, both wondrous and alien. Coming from a working-class, Muggle-born background, Lily would have been acutely aware of her outsider status, no matter how talented or well-liked she became. James’s relentless pursuit of her, despite his arrogance and bullying tendencies, may have been flattering in ways that bolstered her sense of belonging. James’s attention wasn’t just personal—it was symbolic. His interest in her, as someone who could have easily chosen a pure-blood witch from his own social echelon, signaled to her and to others that she was not only worthy of respect but desirable within the upper echelons of wizarding society.

This dynamic raises uncomfortable questions about Lily’s character. Could it be that she tolerated James’s antics, not because she believed he would change for her, but because she enjoyed the social validation his affection brought her? Interestingly, this interpretation aligns Lily more closely with her sister Petunia than one might initially expect. Petunia’s marriage to Vernon provided her with the stability and status she craved within the Muggle world. Both sisters may have sought partners who could anchor them in environments where they otherwise felt insecure. For Petunia, that meant latching onto the image of suburban perfection through Vernon. For Lily, it may have meant aligning herself with someone like James, whose wealth, status, and pure-blood background offered her a kind of social and cultural security in the magical world.

If we view Lily’s relationship with James through this lens, her character becomes far less idealized and far more human. Rather than being the moral paragon the series portrays, she emerges as a young woman navigating an uncertain world, making choices that are as practical as they are principled. While it’s clear she disapproved of James’s bullying, it’s equally possible that his persistence, confidence, and status were qualities she found increasingly difficult to resist—not because they aligned with her values, but because they appealed to her insecurities.

It’s also worth noting that Lily’s final break with Severus coincided with her growing relationship with James. This timing is telling. Severus, a social outcast from a poor background, represented the antithesis of James. By cutting ties with Severus, Lily not only distanced herself from the moral ambiguities of his choices but also from the social liabilities he represented. Aligning with James, by contrast, placed her firmly within the Gryffindor elite—a position that would have offered her both social protection and personal validation. And this whole perspective is much more interesting than her image as a moral compass for the men around her. Unfortunately, as with many of her characters, Rowling didn’t put any effort into giving us definitive answers; she just insisted on that unhealthy, idealized view of motherhood and the idea that everything is forgiven if you're on the "right" side and rich and popular.

Sorry for the long text, but whenever the topic of Lily comes up, I tend to go on and on, haha.

[allaboutalf]

Getting ready to drag out the old stan X/Twitter account cause wtf do you mean people who have watched the show for about two weeks & have only interacted with toxic buddie shippers are now jumping on the Tommy hate train?

There’s someone who got some traction live tweeting their watch about a week ago & it’s mind blowing to see them go from being neutral but into buddie to a full on easily led hater cause they’ve only interacted with vocal toxic fans.

Asking why people like Tommy when “all he did was be awful to Chim & Hen, apologise offscreen and kiss Buck”. If they just watched the eps about a week ago how did they forget that Tommy, Chim & Hen resolved their differences on screen & that Tommy literally risked his job & life to rescue Bobby & Athena just cause Chim asked.

You don’t have to love Tommy but the forced hate & ignoring his character development is frustrating.

It also is weird that they’ll double down on hating him over it all (& I know they’re doing it cause he’s the LI in the way of their ship) but hand wave away anything any of the other characters have done. None of them are perfect.

Plus, this whole virtue signaling narrative they’ve invented that he could have outed Buck to Eddie over a snarky closet joke that only Buck and the audience had context for - Eddie had literally just mentioned closet space - is so ridiculous it’s laughable. None of them cared when the episode aired but cause it’s gained traction within the toxic buddie fandom as something they can use to turn people against Tommy they’re now all jumping on to use it as a reason to hate.

I’m so so close to joining the few buddie and bucktommy/Kinley shippers over there I see trying to push back (& I do see you guys, I know you’re on here cause it’s a nicer environment, & I thank you for being willing to try to get through to those who are willfully ignorant). But while I like to vent here I really don’t want to engage with them.