#since people are getting so many out of context quotes here's the whole thing

[morlock-holmes]

A pointless, overly long, barely edited review of White Fragility

Well that book sucked.

The end I guess.

OK honestly the process of reading White Fragility was incredibly draining, I started out annoyed, then became amused and fascinated by Robin DiAngelo’s peculiar definition of “Individualism”, then got annoyed and angry again, then just… drained. It’s an exhausting book.

As I try to put my feelings out there I’m having trouble linking them together coherently but this book is just so exhausting that the idea of editing this and doing several passes is just draining to think about. So here are some scattered thoughts:

Before anything else, it’s just not well written or edited

White Fragility is very repetitive, ambling, and just kind of… not very well arranged in general. It’s clear that the book desperately needed a proper editor, or maybe it didn’t, since it became incredibly successful despite everything wrong with it. Here’s an example I’ve already mentioned. 

Towards the end of the first part of the book, DiAngelo puts together a list of a “common set of racial patterns” that are “the foundation of white fragility” and one of the bullets on that list reads,

“Wanting to jump over the hard, personal work and get to ��solutions’”

Not once, anywhere in the preceding 111 pages or the succeeding 128 is the idea expanded on in any way whatsoever.

And it’s a truly baffling statement if you don’t expand on it. Why are solutions somehow opposed to “hard, personal work”? Is hard, personal work not part of a solution to some problem? If not why are we doing it?

The whole book has a similarly sloppy vibe; there’s very little factual information inside and what ideas there are are explained very badly.

A Christian apology for non-Christians

The more I read of White Fragility the more it seemed to me to have in common with badly written Christian apologia.

First off, modern, right-wing American Christian religious material often contains a sort of confusion that anybody could respond badly to the Gospels. After all, the good news of Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection is both obviously factually true AND self-evidently good news, but somehow when you go out and preach the gospels, non-believers will often act with derision or anger.

And there is a certain kind of Christian who will respond to that anger, not by considering that there might be factual or moral objections to the gospel, but by essentially asking, “What kind of bizarre psychological condition would cause somebody to get angry about something that is obviously true and obviously good?”

This is an ongoing thread in DiAngelo’s writing, starting with the introduction,

“In the early days of my work as what was then termed a diversity trainer, I was taken aback by how angry and defensive so many white people became at the suggestion that they were connected to racism in any way…

“I couldn’t understand their resentment or disinterest in learning more about such a complex social dynamic as racism. These reactions were especially perplexing when there were few or no people of color in their workplace, and they had the opportunity to learn from my cofacilitators(sic) of color. I assumed that in these circumstances, an educational workshop on racism would be appreciated. After all, didn’t the lack of diversity indicate a problem or at least suggest some perspectives were missing?”

Well gosh, why wouldn’t these people be excited to hear about all the things they’ve been doing wrong? Truly a mystery.

Secondly, most of the arguments DiAngelo makes are made very sloppily, and are only really convincing if you have already been well-convinced. To demonstrate this I would essentially have to just quote the whole book to you, but for an example see the bit above about wanting to jump over hard personal work. You and I have spent too much time in the fever swamp, we can guess what she means from cultural context, but she never explains it.

Third, as others have pointed out white supremacy in this book takes on the qualities of sin in Christian theology. All of us white people, simply by virtue of growing up in a white supremacist society, are racist. This isn’t really proven so much as assumed. 

You might assume that in Christian circles the fact that everybody is a sinner might level out hierarchies. After all, the Pastor is as much a sinner as you are.

But in many cases there is this kind of passive-aggressive jiujitsu. Oh, sure, the pastor sinned, but why should we criticize him when all men are sinners? Aren’t you failing to practice the virtue of forgiveness? 

Oh, what’s that, you did something bad? Well that’s a different story. It sounds like you haven’t been really giving yourself over to God. Maybe we haven’t been doing enough to help stop you from sinning. You should talk to the pastor and really think about where you’ve been going wrong, and of course we would just be enabling you if we didn’t call you out publicly, it’s an opportunity for growth on your part, and of course if you disagree with how we think you should atone, that's just further evidence of your sinfulness.

Anyway, speaking of passive-aggression:

The Passive-Aggressive style in Woke Politics

Robin DiAngelo comes off as one of the most passive-aggressive people I have ever read. And also, ironically, one of the most clueless people I have ever seen when it comes to the most basic aspects of ordinary human psychology.

Here, have some examples:

“I am typically received well when speaking in general terms–for example, ‘Your requirement that applicants have an advanced degree rather than equivalent experience is automatically disqualifying some of the applicants that could bring the perspectives and experiences you say you are looking for.’ Yet when I point out a concrete moment in the room in which someone’s racism is manifesting itself, white fragility erupts.”

Oh, what, seriously? When you say, “We all need to try harder to improve at this” people agree, but when you go, “Especially you Greg” Greg somehow becomes defensive? Crazy!

“For example, in a conversation about racism, when white people say that they work in a diverse environment or that they have people of color in their family, they are giving me their evidence that they are not racist. If this is their evidence, how are they defining racism?”

I mean… Literally the same way you do? DiAngelo talks extensively about how white people don’t understand racism because we often have very few interracial friendships or relationships. Like a lot. Like it’s one of the major themes of the book and, in her mind, one of the major sources of white fragility.

I mean, imagine you are talking to someone, and you go, “See, here’s the thing that people who have never been to Cleveland don’t understand” they might respond with “Oh, actually I was born in Cleveland and spent the first twenty years of my life there” and their reasons for doing so are so incredibly obvious and natural that it’s kind of hard to even articulate them. Like… yeah of course if you tell a room that they don’t understand racism because of their shallow relationships with people of color, fucking of course the people who have deep relationships with people of color are going to bring it up!

“White people are receptive to my presentation as long as it remains abstract. The moment I name some racially problematic dynamic or action happening in the room in the moment–for example, ‘Sharon, may I give you some feedback? While I understand it wasn’t intentional, your response to Jason’s story invalidates his experience as a black man’--white fragility erupts. Sharon defensively explains that she was misunderstood and then angrily withdraws, while others run in to defend her by re-explaining ‘what she really meant.’”

Sharon, let me stop you right there. Can I just take a moment to completely ignore the substance of what you just said, while pointing out that you are objectively annoying to the people around you?

“When another police shooting of an unarmed black man occurred, my workplace called for an informal lunch gathering of people who wanted to connect and find support. Just before the gathering, a woman of color pulled me aside and told me she wanted to attend but she was ‘in no mood for white women’s tears today’ I assured her that I would handle it. As the meeting started, I told my fellow white participants that if they felt moved to tears, they should please leave the room. I would go with them for support, but I asked that they not cry in the mixed group. After the discussion, I spent the next hour explaining to a very outraged white woman why she was asked not to cry in the presence of people of color.”

Hi, thanks for coming to our meeting where we coworkers can support each other and connect. Before we start, I just want to tell Donna, Tammy, Jim and Bob that your coworkers don’t really want to support you too much, so if you need support please go somewhere else and get it from people other than your coworkers.

Look, I get it, that black lady finds the idea of comforting some distraught white woman in the aftermath of a black man being shot absurd. Maybe don’t handle that in the most ham-handed way imaginable though?

I want you to reimagine some of these scenarios as though they were addressing a less politically fraught issue than racism. In order to do that, we need something with the following qualities:

It is often unintentional;

The people who do it are often unaware that they are doing it;

It is genuinely difficult for others to live with and should probably be corrected because of that;

There is a social stigma to it so people feel embarrassed when called out for it.

I think having really bad body odor is the perfect analogue. But can you fucking imagine some of these if that’s what we were talking about?

Imagine somebody saying, “When I say that proper hygiene is important as a way to respect your fellow employees, I get broad agreement, but when I publicly point out that a particular person has bad BO and many of their coworkers have complained, instead of being grateful for the feedback, they often get angry or defensive”

That person would be a monster!

The dirty secret of Robin DiAngelo and her ilk is that as much as they talk about “systemic racism” they really think of racism primarily as an interpersonal problem.

Here’s another quote, “The dominant paradigm of racism as discrete, individual, intentional, and malicious acts makes it unlikely that whites will acknowledge any of our actions as racism.”

I mean… All the examples I just cited above involve DiAngelo calling out discrete, individual, intentional acts. I guess sometimes the discrete, individual, intentional acts are non-malicious.

That’s the kind of central hypocrisy and profoundly passive-aggressive style of this kind of discourse. You call out a specific person for a specific act in a very public way, and then, if they get defensive, you can talk about how sad it is that when you told them that the specific thing that they personally did was bad, they didn’t realize you were just talking about systemic racism and it’s awfully silly that they are getting so defensive when all you are talking about is systemic problems, not individual faults.

DiAngelo often talks about how whites need to be less sensitive because we are not in any danger, but, like, most of the concrete problems she addresses aren’t dangerous to black people either.

Which brings me to the last section,

What is the goddamned point of all this?

DiAngelo constantly talks about the absence of cross-racial relationships between blacks and whites, but never really addresses the question of why the hell a black person would want to be friends with a white person. Honestly it sounds like it sucks; we’re all racist. Frankly I don’t see what we bring to the table other than an endless parade of microaggressions and neuroses that could just be avoided altogether by sticking to making friends with your fellow minorities.

A couple of people responding to my blog have called the book racist against whites but that’s not quite right, there’s also this bizarre sort of… Apologizing for how much better off we are then everybody else. It’s taken as basically a given that black people all wish they had the position that we do, but we just don’t let them and they’ll never get it unless we shape up and learn to give it to them.

There’s a tremendous amount of guilt but it’s combined with a massive self-absorption. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that for DiAngelo, the entire world revolves around whites and our conception of ourselves. And I mean that literally:

“...[W]hite supremacy is circulated globally. This powerful ideology promotes the idea of whiteness as the ideal of humanity well beyond the West…

“In his book The Racial Contract, Charles W. Mills argues that the racial contract is a tacit and sometimes explicit agreement among members of the peoples of Europe to assert, promote, and maintain the ideal of white supremacy in relation to all other people of the world. This agreement is an intentional and integral characteristic of the social contract, underwriting all other social contracts.”

Like… All of them? Like relations between China and the Democratic Republic of Congo are underwritten by the belief in white supremacy? White supremacy is in fact integral to the politcal relationship between those two countries?

One of the things I wondered when reading the book was why on earth DiAngelo gets paid so much money to consult. In her telling there are two forces, a white supremacist overclass dedicated to ignoring and minimizing evidence of systemic racism and a minority underclass which is nearly helpless in the face of white supremacy. Which of these groups is paying her five figure speaking fees?

Anyway to continue that quote, 

“Mills describes white supremacy as ‘the unnamed politcal system that has made the world what is is today.’”

I mean… I feel like it has a name. It’s named white supremacy. Robin DiAngelo wrote a best-selling book about it that people only bought because they already agree about it existing and being really, really important.

Hey, so, how does Tammy from HR crying about the police shooting a black teenager maintain a global white hegemony that undergirds literally all other social forces?

One thing, at least, that made me glad that I finished the book was seeing DiAngelo state overtly something that I feel has been implicit on much American thinking about race lately:

“When white people ask me what to do about racism and white fragility, the first thing I ask is, ‘What has enabled you to be a full, educated, professional adult and not know what to do about racism?’...”

Uh… You’re asking me how I graduated college without knowing how to upend a massive collusion between every nation in Europe that undergirds all of global politics and economics?

I mean I didn’t actually graduate, maybe “Overturning the entire global paradigm 101” was one of the classes I didn’t get around to.

“If we take that question seriously and map out all the ways we have come to not know what to do, we will have our guide before us. For example, if my answer is that I was not educated about racism, I know that I will have to get educated. If my answer is that I do not know people of color, I will need to build relationships. If it is because there are no people of color in my environment, I will need to get out of my comfort zone and change my environment, addressing racism is not without effort…”

Hey, yeah, but what about the part where I make minimum wage and probably can’t even overthrow Luxemburg, let alone all of Europe?

“Next, I say, ‘Do whatever it takes for you to internalize the above assumptions’ I believe that if we white people were truly coming from these assumptions, not only would our interpersonal relationships change, but so would our institutions. Our institutions would change because we would see to it that they would.”

This is exactly what I have been saying seems to be the dominant belief in America today. If we just teach Sharon from accounting to stop talking over her black co-workers, if Sharon internalizes exactly the right ideas about white supremacy from exactly the right corporate consultants, eventually, once we get our heads straight, there will be a kind of spontaneous eruption of will which will end racism forever.

From talking to more right-wing acquaintances I have come to the belief that many of them essentially agree with that premise. That racism sort of emerges as a kind of spontaneous emanation of wrong-think, and once we have used social pressure and the threat of being fired to get everybody to say the correct things about racism, racism will vanish.

And so the debate in America is no longer about policy; we don’t believe in a racial policy. The debate is about how we ought to talk about racism, with the parties disagreeing on what kind of talk will ultimately cause racism to disappear.

Do we solve police shootings by hiring a diversity consultant to tell the employees of our tech firm about white fragility, or should we hire a different consultant to teach them about color-blindness and treating people as equals?

[cerealxperimentslain]

let me show you an example of liberal zionist dishonesty and intentional misinterpretation

ID: a post by @transmascpetewentz:

“>oh look a new leftist youtuber who seems cool!

>checks their blog

>sees a video about "colonialism"

>asks them if they are talking about real colonialism or are just being antisemitic

>"what's the difference?"

>pulls out a chart explaining the difference between anti colonialism and antisemitism

>"it's a good video sir"

>look inside

>it's a 2 hour long rant about how (((they))) are in so many positions of power/are well respected for being good at their jobs and how that is allegedly bad because of palestine

#wentz.txt #antisemitism #this post is about dr fatima on youtube but can apply to others”

End ID.

taken at face value, this post would seem to point out a leftist youtuber who made a video of a half baked rant of nothing but antisemitic conspiracy theories. that would be bad, if that were the case. but since he so graciously mentioned the youtuber in question, i went and looked her up. Dr. Fatima has 12 videos total, and only one of them mentions colonialism in the title or thumbnail, this one:

i highly highly recommend watching the whole video (it is captioned), but it is quite long so the tldr is: this is a video mostly about the building of telescopes on colonised Hawai’ian land, specifically the sacred mountain Mauna Kea, and how scientific pursuit is not exempt from perpetuating colonialism. Dr. Fatima also talks about the genocide in Gaza, and the colonisation of Palestine, to contextualise and draw parallels between the two situations (Hawai’i & Palestine). Here’s a quote from two hours and ten minutes into the video:

“I spent SO much time back in grad school trying to understand why so many of my colleagues, who I knew to be reasonable and intelligent, seemed so wholly unperturbed at what our field [astronomy] was doing. And in recent months I found myself asking the exact same question about Palestine.”

this person either didn’t watch the video, or he did watch the video and didn’t understand a word that was said. there’s also the possibility that he did watch the video and understood perfectly what it was about, and maliciously decided to wildly mischaracterise the video to discourage his followers from watching it, or any of Dr. Fatima’s other videos.

because there is no good faith explanation for how you get “it's a 2 hour long rant about how (((they))) are in so many positions of power/are well respected for being good at their jobs and how that is allegedly bad because of palestine” from this:

Transcript:

“So I think we have enough context now that I can just come out and say the thesis of this video: the plan to build TMT on Mauna Kea, as well as the building of the telescopes that preceded it, is inherently colonial. Hawaii is a settler society where the self-determination of the native population that was nearly genocided out of existence is secondary to the utility their land brings to the United States, primarily as a military outpost, but also whatever else it can be useful for. At one point that was plantations, today it’s generally tourism, but on Mauna Kea, it is astronomy. The land the telescopes are on make them inseparable from the colonial power that controls that land. And this dynamic is underscored by the consistency of objections to their building by Indigenous voices.

And here is the really hard a to swallow part: any benefit astronomers careers gain from the use of telescopes on that land comes at the direct cost of indigenous people's alienation from it. If you think I'm being unfair because Hawaii's colonization already happened and building one more telescope doesn't change anything, you're still paying more attention to made up things like property laws and the American government than the material conditions of people's access and relationship to land. Calling the police to arrest native elders who are just standing on their land so we can build another telescope is not dissimilar to Israel bombing the shit out of Palestinians just living on their land so it can build another settlement. And if you think I'm being dramatic by comparing genocide in Palestine to building a telescope, then you're still paying more attention to the purported intention of astronomers than the long standing, violent, exploitative and still present colonial institutions that grant them power. (e.g. the police, the military, universities, government agencies, etc) Colonization is an ongoing process and the difference between Hawaii and Palestine is that in the former, there aren't enough indigenous people left to pose an existential threat to settlers, and the latter, the indigenous population is still the slight majority. Or at least they still were as of this 2018 report. [98] Honestly, this year might tip it.

And if you think I'm exaggerating the connection between the two, please remember that the United States government is involved in both far off places for exactly the same reason: their use as military outposts, one in the Middle East and one in the Pacific. That is the joint cause of both of these conflicts today: the geopolitical interests of Western imperialism. This is why you might have seen those multi-nation calls for liberation recently: Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Haiti, Free Hawaii, and beyond— not as separate issues, but as different interconnected manifestations of the same problem.”

End transcript.

in using this video to be anti-palestinian, he is also being incredibly racist and anti-indigenous by downplaying the colonisation of Hawai’i. implying that the desecration of the sacred land of a colonised people doesn’t count as “real colonialism”, interpreting “scientists in the imperial core shouldn’t participate in exploitative and colonialist practices” fucking somehow as “being good at their jobs and that is allegedly bad”. i guess?? honestly i have no fucking idea what that last paragraph in the post is even supposed to be about.

like i keep wondering if i somehow have the wrong video, but i don’t know of any other leftist youtubers called dr. Fatima who made a video over two hours long about colonialism that brings up Palestine. the more obvious explanation is that he just made shit up

i guess this bit 37 minutes into the video probably hit too close to home

ID: a quote in front of a green background:

"Let me be clear: Antisemitism in the U.S. is a real and dangerous phenomenon, most pressingly from the alt-right white-supremacist politics that have become alarmingly mainstream since 2016. To contend against these and other antisemitic forces with clarity and purpose, we must put aside all fabricated and weaponized charges of "antisemitism" that serve to silence criticism of Israeli policy and its sponsors in the U.S."

--Bernie Steinberg

End ID.

[lilyginnyblackv2]

A Japanese video talking about Riku - Mentions the "Love Triangle."

I just found a video talking about Riku (in a sort of "10 Things You Didn't Know About This Character" kinda way). The creator of the video is Japanese and the video itself is in Japanese. Here is the full video:

They talk about 10 different things in regards to Riku, the full list of things they talk about can be seen in this image:

But the point I'm mostly going to be focusing on is #4 - 恋愛事情 or "The Romance Situation."

When the creator gets to point #4, they call it "The Sora and Kairi Love Triangle" (三角関係).

Then bring up the whole "eating (sharing) a paopu fruit with Kairi" stuff. But before jumping right into that, the creator compares Sora, Riku, and Kairi to other popular shonen trios of the time:

First mentioning Naruto with Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura.

Then Ash, Misty, and Brock. The creator notes that this kind group setup (a trio with two guys and one girl) was really popular around this time.

And that such a dynamic (two guys and one girl) has a lot of potential interest for a romance/romantic situation to come about. Which then brings up back to the whole "sharing a paopu fruit" with Kairi situation.

Specifically the scene in KH1 when Riku races Sora and says:

That whoever wins gets to eat (share) a paopu fruit with Kairi. But, then the creator of this video notes that the reading of this scene isn't necessarily clean cut:

Rather that it is unclear if this moment is just a moment meant to tease and embarrass Sora or if Riku was speaking honestly. Then they mention what Nomura says about Riku and his motives in KH1:

"Riku trying to return Kairi's heart to her wasn't about his feelings for her [Kairi], but rather his strong need to repent for the sins he committed." The Japanese word 罪 (tsumi) can also mean "wrongdoing," but I feel like Nomura is talking specifically about "sin" here, since he used the word 懴悔 (sange) as well. That word is shown to have strong connections to Christianity and Christ. The Japanese Wikipedia page for the word is specifically talking about the idea of repentance and sin in regards to Christ and the like.

(Personal little sidenote here, but this bit of info adds an extra layer to the conversation between Riku and Esmerelda in DDD, since that movie is steeped in Christianity).

Bringing this back to the video and what the creator had to say about this quote:

First, they note how there was no reference to Riku having romantic feelings for Kairi.

So, while knowing about Sora's feelings for Kairi,

It's reasonable to assume that Riku was simply teasing Sora in that scene.

Now, for most Soriku fans, this is old news. Many Soriku fans are aware of this quote in some way, shape, or form, and that interpretation is how we've viewed that scene for ages. But, I think it is important to have someone who is Japanese, speaking in Japanese, and talking about Nomura's quote in Japanese actually bringing up this line as well.

This is even more important, because this Japanese creator doesn't appear to be a Soriku shipper (he might agree with the idea of Riku having feelings for Sora, but he doesn't seem to ship Sora x Riku). After all, he does specifically note that, in KH3, Sora and Kairi are "completely in love with each other" (完全に両想い). So, to this Japanese individual, that paopu sharing scene is meant to be romantic.

The creator of this video also points out that "Riku picks up on that" with the "that" being "Sora and Kairi are completely in love with each other," and shows the scene of Riku on the beach not looking bothered by this. (In Japanese, they state that Riku is 空気が読む - reading the room).

Then they end the video by stating that they "wish people would stop saying that Riku might like Kairi."

I wanted to share this video, because while I do think that there are a number of poorly translated moments in KH (especially in KH3), which either just do the character dirty or causes certain parallels and context to be missed or miss placed in the English version...I don't necessarily agree that the Japanese text makes Soriku or Riku having romantic feelings for Sora more obvious nor do I think that it makes Sokai come off as less romantic than it is intended to be.

When I first played KH3, it was in Japanese when I was living in Japan. The Sokai stuff came off as romantic, poorly written and on the same level as the usual battle shonen stuff (of which this creator made a parallel/connection to with the trio dynamic in a way), but still meant to be read as romantic. Riku and Sora moments still made my eyebrows rise though, as per usual. (Edit: Also, to clarify, I do still think that there were aspects of drifting apart or feeling left behind, especially on Kairi's end, and there was still a lot of queer subtext in KH3, but whether Nomura actually ever does anything with that...).

But, yeah, I think there has been some misconceptions spread about Soriku and Japanese KH fans in general. There seems to be this feeling that like every KH fan in Japan ships Soriku or what have you...but that really is not the case. Soriku fans in Japan ship them, they likely also have queer readings of their bond and the text, but the regular, run-of-the-mill KH fan in Japan will see Sokai as romantic and the official/canon pairing, and view Sora and Riku's bond as friendship.

Though, Soriku is still an extremely popular pairing and I do think that, like in English speaking spaces of the fandom, there might be more of a general acceptance that Riku has feelings for Sora. But, not everyone in Japan holds these views, just like in English speaking KH spaces.

Let's just take a quick look at the comments:

One of the comments that has 14 upvotes notes the heartwarming nature of seeing Sora and Riku go from enemies in KH1 to fighting together "as friends" in KH2. Another comment notes how Sora and Riku are childhood friends. One commentator states that "Riku has Namine, so he'll be okay." Meanwhile, another comment talks about how they think that "Riku is definitely in love with Sora" they use 恋 (koi, which is used when talking about romantic love specifically). One of the replies to that comment notes how they find Soriku to be "hotter and more emotional" than Sokai. The creator responded with a laugh and a general sort of "no doubt (lol)" statement.

I'm going to check and see if there are any other Japanese videos talking about Riku in general. This video was a great little insight into a Japanese POV on Riku and general Japanese fandoms thoughts on Riku. Like with any fandom space, it's a mixed bag.

If you do decide to check out the video above or leave a comment, please be nice and kind. I just thought this was interesting and a good reference / source to point out when it comes to that Nomura comment about KH1 Riku and his motives and Riku's feelings (or lack there of) for Kairi.

[yannaryartside]

THE NEW 'MENU" IS GONNA BE HELL FOR SYD

I have been reading Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line –by Michael Gibney because I wanted to understand more about Sydney's future responsibilities. I know next to nothing about the cooking industry, and this show particularly doesn't want to waste time explaining the context to the untrained eye (which is fair, we are here for the drama).

Man, this book was so awesome. It is literally like experiencing a The Bear episode in book format. It takes you through the whole routine, explaining who does what, the expectations, skillsets, and the emotional burden of each position. The protagonist is, of course, the sous chef, and what I have read made me feel scared for Sydney next season. So, every fact I display here is because the book presented it as the expected.

THE BEAR'S CASE

Now, a clarification: As I understand, the CDC supervises the whole kitchen, which is Syd's official title. But Carmy will technically still act as CDC since most executives don't move a finger; they are supposed to be there only to ensure rules and quality standards are followed.

The CDC is the person in the kitchen that everyone answers "yes chef/Oui chef too. The one that calls the orders and keeps everyone in line. The one who has the final say about what goes out of the kitchen. Under them, there is the sous, making sure all the operations are in order.

So you will technically have two CDCs; just one of them will have the final say, and you will have Tina as the sous. But that puts Sydney in a position to act both as CDC and a Sous, so I am using the book to guide what we may expect her to endure. This as a report made last minute with only two sources (pretty good, but still only two). Now, lets begin.

A very inexperienced staff: The author created a fictional restaurant based on his experiences, merging people he has met over the years to give you an idea of the most common in the industry. But it made something very clear to me: the staff of the bear, especially the line cooks, do not possess the training to operate at the level that Carmy is requesting. They better send them to culinary school before officially opening. I don't know why (I actually blame Carmy for this), but they haven't prioritized hiring certified staff since the beginning. They should have never had an opening day without knowing their staff and, if they were as green as Syd described them, sent their asses to culinary school right away. The fact they only bothered to send Tina and Ebra is baffling. And even when training is essential, experience is what can make the difference in unprecedented scenarios, and everything that Carmy is asking is pretty unprecedented by definition.

With the menu changing every day, Sydney's job as a cook herself and as the captain of many cooks is going to be darm near impossible.

Actually, in the book, there were two sous chefs, one for opening and one for closing. Even if you delegate the administrative task normally reserved for the morning sous chef to someone like Natalie (managing schedules and callouts, checking deliveries, and inspecting the state of the food before opening), it would still leave a lot of things on Sydney's plate. I am gonna be quoting this article:

"Few are the kitchens I’ve worked or sta’aged in where the Sous Chef wasn’t doing all the work that the general public thinks the Chef is doing.  And don’t get me wrong, such is the natural progression of things and not without good reason.  But more often than not, while the Chef is the General, with his/her name on the line, the Sous Chef is the lieutenant, seeing to it that the work gets done in the trenches".

During service, the chef (CDC) plates the dishes in the pass, but before that, the sous has to check the food the line cook brings; they need to be aware of how the executive chef likes a particular dish, the consistency, temperature, and other culinary details. Again, Carmy will act as CDC here and Syd as sous. Even though I didn't see them do this in f&f, it will likely be necessary for the future. Carmy changing the recipes constantly is gonna make it virtually impossible for Sydney to keep up, with their particular preparation, and since they are gonna be the final portal after the food gets to be presented to the client, it could cause a lot of friction between them.

Not only that, the sous chef normally leads the preparation of the specials (since in most restaurants, the ordinary menu has been established, only the specials can change every day) For both sous chefs in the book, leading prep consumed most of their time before opening, since, again, the executive has already trained them in how he prefers certain parts of the recipe. Again, in the Bear's circumstances, this will probably also be Sydney's job.

Replacing staff. The book even includes a scenario when a line cook fails, and the sous has to cover that station. Sydney is kind of destined to experience this, too, considering how unreliable their staff could be. If that happens, Carmy will be alone at the pass, checking every element before plating, which will obviously cause a delay.

Tina is the sous, and it will be interesting to see how she manages that; she definitely doesn't have the experience, and these expectations are definitely no industry standard. It hurts me that Sydney may suggest hiring another sous to work next to her or another cook who actually has experience operating in the industry to level up her workload. That is where I think Luca's role will be next season, if he goes to work for them. He probably has the skill set to do it. There is no point in having two people manage desserts.

Evidently, with a menu changing every day, it also means that Carmy has to make Syd come early every day to explain this recipe to her and make sure she can lead the rest of the kitchen in making them. Most of their dynamic is gonna rely on how much Syd can actually fulfill Carmy's expectations; she came here to work for him, running away from psycho chefs, and yet Carmy's expectations are going to be the most reckless the industry has ever seen.

The closing sous has to prepare everything for the next day long after the executive and the other sous are gone, revising the mistakes that were made, and preventing the ones they could make tomorrow.

Regardless of the title and responsibilities that may go on Sydney for being the only other experienced chef in the kitchen, we are talking about a 15-hour day. And I know it can be expected in this industry, but the layout for having two sous made plenty of sense. I don't know if Carmy will take part of the workload. I hope that is the case.

But yeah, the line "so you can push me, and I can push you" is taking a new connotation in my mind. What Carmy is creating doesn't make any logistical sense, with an untrained/inexperienced staff and with a sous chef that he trusts and cares about, but he is basically asking to perform to a level that defeats reason.

It is not even the level that made him "the bear" in his years as the best CDC in the world. Because even if Carmy's past executive was abusive and cruel, their expectations had to obey certain logistic logic that Carmy was completely abandoning. Carmy is not gonna be abusive, but all of this is a whole orchestra he is creating for self-punishment because even he won't be able to keep up with it, he may push everyone away because there is nobody who can. All of this is his version of self-harming. And Sydney and everyone he loves will witness, it until he asks for help.

Edit: I had to make a correction, explaining Carmy's and Syd's will technically both do the job of CDCs. Again, please do let me know more about that or feel free to correct me.

[sokkastyles]

Hi,

Hope you are doing well.

Thank you for the answer on the Final Agni Kai. I had some questions regarding one of your favorite topics TSR.

Aang's line, "I forgive you, that give you any ideas?" which he uses when Zuko and Katara take Appa seems wrong to me in many ways. It really feels like he desperately wants Katara to forgive Yon Rah, not even realizing that its just not possible for Katara to forgive Yon Rah. In a way, it really shows his discomfort with Katara's darker emotions, but she had been feeling that way since her mother died, along with the fact that she had no idea she could even confront him till Zuko gave her that information.

Do you think that a huge moment of growth for Aang would have to acknowledge this side of Katara as well?

I would like your thoughts on this.

Yeah, that "I forgive you" line is Aang being desperate. It's also really condescending and tone deaf to even compare his "forgiveness" in this scene to Katara forgiving Yon Rah.

I put forgiveness in quotes because Aang absolutely does NOT forgive Katara for taking Appa. He just knows he can't stop her at this point. The sarcastic tone and "that give you any ideas?" make him look pretty hypocritical because he is neither being forgiving nor understanding, he's just being flippant and dismissive.

It's also really clueless for Aang to make this comparison in the first place because, once again, Aang thinks the way to get Katara to listen to him is to compare her to a murderer. People talk a lot about how hurtful it was for him to compare Katara to Jet, when Katara was strongly against the things Jet did and was hurt by him personally. But let's talk for a minute about how Aang's new tactic is to literally compare her to her mom's murderer and compare her forgiving Yon Rah to him forgiving her for taking Appa without permission after she repeatedly tried to get Aang to listen to why she needed to go and he shut her down.

It takes a lot less for Aang to forgive Katara here than it would for Katara to forgive Yon Rah, so this kinda puts a damper on his whole "forgiveness is hard" theme. And even so, as I said above, he's not really forgiving her, he's just making a sarcastic comment while still judging her. Aang is not being the arbiter of forgiveness here that he pretends to be.

Let's also look at the conversation in context because I have more to say here.

Aang is flippant and dismissive - while also implying that Katara taking Appa is comparable to her mother's murder. And I'm not saying it wasn't probably hurtful to Aang that Katara would take Appa without his permission, especially considering what Appa means to him, but it's not comparable to cold blooded murder motivated by genocide. In any way. And, like, considering how they left things in the previous scene, with Katara telling Aang she had to go, what did Aang think Katara was going to do?

I'm pretty sure I've also mentioned before how this plot point is manufactured to make Katara look worse. However, in the previous episode, Sokka tried to take Appa without permission and the only reason he didn't was because Zuko pointed out that it was a stupid idea and he happened to have a war balloon stashed away, which he conveniently no longer has as of TSR. This is basically a case of moral luck, where a character's morality is judged based on plot contrivance.

(I've also said before that Aang not killing Ozai is down to moral luck, but that's another conversation.)

So Aang is flippant and condescending, and Katara seriously and very directly tells him that yes, she is going to take Appa. Mae Whitman's voice acting is phenomenal in this scene, btw. She sounds so sad, because I think she does feel that she is betraying Aang by doing this, but she tried to tell him why she needed to do it. She tried. He didn't listen.

Then she says "don't try to stop us," and Aang says he wasn't going to and that "this is a journey you have to take," but, again, it doesn't feel like he's saying this because he really believes it. It feels like he's saying it because he has realized at this point that he can't stop them from going, short of attacking them. But if he thought he could, he definitely would have continued to try to stop them.

Which brings me also to Zuko's sarcastic comment. Because Aang's the one who sets the tone for this conversation. Zuko simply responds in kind. Katara, by contrast, continues to speak in the same sad, hurt, but firm and direct tone, and thanks Aang for understanding. She thanks him. For understanding. When Aang is offering none of that to her.

I actually think Aang could learn more from Katara about forgiveness, given how much restraint she uses towards Aang here and the way he's treating her.

I think Zuko saw that, too, and that's why he responds angrily to Aang here. Not because he disagrees with Aang's beliefs but because Katara keeps quietly but firmly telling him what she's going to do and he keeps ignoring her and acting like she's being irrational.

I've said this before, too, but that would also be triggering for Zuko to watch this happening, considering how he's been gaslit by his family. Notice how he's quiet until the end of the conversation (and didn't say much in the conversation before that, either.) Aang's language, even if well-intentioned, would probably set off something in him and he's not wrong to defend Katara.

[hadleysmis]

There's just so many things I want to say about the 1903 Su Manshu's translation of Les Misérables

It is a unique AU adaptation fanfic translation

I will put some kind of a list of observations that is sorted out, since right now all the information is falling out of my brain like a waterfall at the moment. There's just so many things one person can keep in about this liquid of an information.

If the translation is so different from the original, do we categorise it as a translation or an adaptation? I mean like, e.g. Jean Valjean tries to kill, then successfully robs the writer's political and religious mouthpiece Hero after he releases Jean Valjean from prison, etc.

The whole thing is so wild that "one of the main characters try to assassinate Napoleon but fails and thus dies from suicide" fact is mentioned in the footnote in the paper I'm reading; as if it's the least of our problems, because there's just so much going on.

Su was multilingual, but probably not in French. Instead, he translated from Charles E. Wilbour. And due to it being published in volumes, and it being hard to get by because how fast it sold, he only have access to volume one, apparently.

Even then, he minused Book 1 because it was too praise-y of Christianity via Bishop Myriel.

Oh, did I not mention? He hates Christianity, and he definitely hates the Bishop. That's why he deleted Book 1: it had too many nice things to say about the greedy and hypocritical Bishop.

「When in the English text Valjean asks whether the Bishop would like payment for his stay, the response is:

“No,” said the bishop; “keep your money. How much have you? You said one hundred and nine francs, I think.” (Wilbour, p. 48)

But Su translates:

孟主教果急忙答道：“不然，不然，一定要算饭钱的。你共有多少钱呢？你曾说你有一百零九个银角子。” (Su, p. 58)

Bishop Myriel answered in a hurry as expected, “Yes, yes, of course. You have to pay for your meal. How much money do you have in total? You told me you have one hundred and nine silver coins.”」

(Li Li, Su Manshu’s Adaptation of Les Misérables: The Manipulation of a Bridging Text in an Activist Translation. Translation and Literature. 2022)

Li Li suggests it might've also been because Su wasn't as fluent in English as we thought as well, since there are some misunderstandings of meaning (that bears no political or religious sway) in his translation.

On the topic of translation, there is also an excerpt I would like to share.

Su was writing during the nearing end of Qing Dynasty, and he was against the said Dynasty and thus was a revolutionist. If people were too critical and loud about their thoughts on the governing body and Confucianism, then the ruling class would've prosecuted him.

And thus, he had to cover his tracks and make sure he wasn't caught saying anything incriminating. He did this with his self-insert Ming Nande, and he did it with other contexts such as here:

[Quote:]

「In this moment Nande knew it was the girl that he was worrying about. Then he affectionately held up her slim waist and kissed her several times (This is a western custom, please don't be surprised!)."

这时，男德才知道是他心里所惦记的美人，急忙亲亲热热地用手一把搂住那美人的细腰，连亲了几个嘴（这是西俗，看官别要见疑）」

(Translation by Li Li, 2022)

I will definitely talk about this more at a later date because I have to go to Scotland, so I'm probably going to be travel-stressing xD

Even though I can't share the PDF of the essay paper that I have, I do have the link to a publicly shared webpage by the same author with her summarised thoughts on this translation, so please take a look if you're interested!

[writing-for-life]

So, you mentioned something about Thessaly in a 90s context in one of your responses to another post, and I was wondering if you could expand on that. Because yeah, I have no problem with her *existing* as a character, because obviously she has a role in the narrative, but I highly suspect that her perceived role has changed a LOT in the intervening years since the initial writing.

As someone who first read Sandman in 2022, I figured that her character role was to get us to question what we think we know about Morpheus. Can we really trust that he's changed or improved, or that he's even all that likeable, if he's literally jumping into bed with this thoroughly unpleasant woman who likes violent murder *way* too much and also seems to be transphobic to boot?

At the same time, though, I got the uncomfortable sense that we were supposed to *like* Thessaly. In a sort of, "You go girl, be a #girlboss, let's show these boys we can be JUST as good at killing as them!" sort of way. Which I rationalized as "well, that probably was progressive in the 90s, but the idea of cold blooded violence and emphasis on the possession of a womb being feminist ideals has aged poorly."

So, yeah, I'm wondering if that is anywhere close to how she seemed in the "intended" context.

[As always: Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!]

This is such a good ask, and I feel there are a lot of bases to cover here. Not sure if I’ll do it justice, but here goes…

Disclaimer straightaway: I absolutely detest Thessaly and everything she’s done narratively, and I’m neither a Thessaly-apologist, nor someone who loves her as a character. But I think we need to discuss her with a bit more nuance than I see in lot of fandom spaces.

I think first of all, we need to look at:

Thessaly as a fictional character

As you already pointed out, she naturally has a role in the narrative. I also think parts of her role in said narrative are sometimes a bit misunderstood. One prime example would be the idea she never loved Morpheus. And yes, she absolutely always put herself and her own interests first, so from that angle, she loved herself more than she loved him. That doesn’t mean she never loved him at any point though. Many people quote her saying that she never did as proof that she didn’t. But what people say doesn’t always align with what they feel or do: She says at his wake she swore she’ll never cry over him again—and cries while she’s saying it. That tells us two things: She *did* cry because of him before. And she *does* cry now.

Again, she is a selfish, utterly horrid bitch, but she loved him at some point, and she was mad at him for neglecting her and not paying her enough attention. That’s when it turned sour (and we know how absolutely shit at communicating with women Morpheus is, so they’re both as bad as each other in that regard).

I see her as someone who is totally disconnected/dissociated from her emotions, to the extent that she probably really believes what she says, out of some deep-rooted fear of any kind of vulnerability. Why that is—we can only speculate, because Neil never went into it, hence nothing we assume will ever be canon.

What can be considered canon, however, is that Neil has confirmed the fact that she *did* love him at some point—most notably in the Sandman Companion:

Hy Bender: […] Of course, she’s lying when she says she never loved the Sandman.

Neil Gaiman: Of course; I think that’s made explicit by the final panel, where she says, `I swore I would never shed another tear for him’ while crying. But after he’s won her and then returned to his duties, he wasn’t enough for her anymore. She wanted attention; and when she wasn’t getting it, she said, “Right. We’re done,” and walked out on him.”

I’d also like to point out that the most trans-exclusionary prick in the whole of AGoY is actually George, just that he’s not a woman, and hence, no one ever seems to mention it (he’s actually the one egging Wanda on, not Thessaly). Plus, walking the moon road is maiden, mother and crone to a T, and consciously so. Foxglove is the maiden, Hazel is pregnant, and Thessaly is ancient. So Thessaly’s choice was also based on that, and the only one who Wanda really could have *potentially* replaced would have been Foxglove; she presumably never had penetrative sex, unlike Hazel (in the archaic definition of what penetration means, so we don’t need to argue about lesbian sex practices now). We don’t know that about Wanda, no matter if someone sees her as a man or a woman. I didn’t mean to get that explicit about maiden status, but I guess it *is* important in this context (although yes, of course Thessaly said Wanda is a man, and I’m not arguing that either, but I still think it was grounded in her belief how moon magic works).

Which brings me to a very important point: Thessaly is ancient. Culturally, we can’t compare her to someone who grew up in the 20th century, also with regard to her violent inclinations. She is thousands of years old. She’s seen it all. She has a fierce sense of self-preservation, maybe even rooted in some fears or trauma of her own. All not very nice character traits, no, but that’s not the yardstick, and probably was never supposed to be. I also remember Neil saying he consciously wanted to oppose neopaganism and the watered down, new wave witchcraft of the time (late 1980s/early 1990s, and that, I really remember), which was all about the “divine feminine”, female empowerment, tarot cards and incense sticks. I’m being a bit flippant now, but it isn’t far off. It was more of a trend than anything. He wanted to consciously oppose it with someone who would still act according to ancient, rather violent codes and rules. And Morpheus will have known those, and probably found them less surprising than we do (doesn’t necessarily mean he’d condone them either).

The fact whether Thessaly should make us question Morpheus in the comics is a tricky one. What she definitely *should* make us question is: Morpheus could have quite easily broken some rules in the Kindly Ones when Thessaly had set up the protection circle for Lyta, and the consequences probably would have been less disastrous than playing by said rules. And we can safely presume he knew. We are also supposed to question the same when he lets Nuala call in her boon and doesn’t just say: “This isn’t really a good time, can we do this later?” (and he absolutely COULD have done that), but actually follows through with going ,“Well, what gives, I basically grant you your boon now and leave the Dreaming, even though I know the potential consequences.” So yes, Thessaly is supposed to make us question Dream’s choices, but probably not the way we think. And for that, we perhaps should look deeper into…

Thessaly the TERF and Feminism in the late 1980s/early 1990s

This might get a bit longwinded, and I am showing my age here. I grew up at the intersection of second wave and third wave feminism, and as a bisexual woman, I made a lot of experiences during the early 90s that feel wholly aligned with the plot of AGoY (which was written during that time). I don’t want to write a whole essay about feminism here, but second wave feminism was on its way out in the late 80s. A lot of the bad associations some people have with feminism today stem from that time (not always justified, because a lot of good was achieved during that period. But parts of it in specific sub-communities—definitely problematic). Equality vs equity discussions within the feminist movement were dominating everything, and the divide between radfems and libfems was getting deeper. People like Audre Lorde IMHO rightly criticised that failing to understand that not all women start on equal footing, that not all women are the same, is problematic (so you could easily see how this is incorporated into the narrative of AGoY).

Second wave feminism wasn’t just about making sure women had rights. It was very much about “all of us can do everything men do, and we want the same a man gets”. It was all about the workspace (so often very white, CIS, middle class), not being at home with the kids etc (of course there were also other topics, but this one was really quite dominant). You could even see it fashion (massive shoulder pads etc). All the while, actually *being* a man was vilified (again, just in certain quarters).

So I feel you’re on to something with your #girlboss comment, only that I don’t think it was intentionally set up to like her, but rather as a criticism of what certain quarters of the feminist movement were like at the time.

Personal anecdote: I got that type of schtick from WITHIN the LGBT community at the time. Bi-erasure was big. And there were radfem lesbians that would actually tell you that being bi doesn’t exist, that you are basically a traitor to your “sisters” and just a lesbian who isn’t fully out. The same shite they used to criticise about men who would say you’re only a lesbian because you haven’t found the right guy yet. And here they went, telling you that you can’t be attracted to men if you’re also attracted to women.

Third wave feminism has a much stronger focus on the individual woman and what it means to be a woman to HER. This also included trans women, much more than during the second wave. Judith Butler’s work is actually exemplary for this (in essence, there is no such woman as “the” woman—we’re all different despite sharing common traits and problems. Trying to make us all the same will only harm us in the long run).

And with AGoY and Thessaly, we are exactly at the moment in time (in the comics) where that shift happens. I think Neil got it right for the time, and understood a lot of what was going on. Many people in queer communities felt really understood and seen, myself included. I absolutely see how that translates differently today. But it always saddens me when the historical context gets completely stripped away, and people don’t take the time a work of fiction was written into consideration and only measure it from today’s viewpoint. We can, and absolutely have to be critical if the TV shows fails to address these points and just translates everything 1-2-1. Which I am fairly certain won’t happen, because Thessaly has already been stripped off a lot of her obvious TERFiness in the Audible. I’m not even sure if we’ll get her in the show—we’ll hopefully find out.

Phew, that was long, I’m gonna lie down 😂

[eternityservedcold]

an extremely thorough list of content warnings for jojos bizarre adventure

because the old one was made by a deleted blog so it isnt easily accessible any more (and i dont think it was good enough to begin with)

btw if you say anything to the effect of "why do people like jojo when it has x" or "you guys really excuse y?" on this post im just gonna block you. people who get angry about me saying to skip parts/episodes will also get blocked.

feel free to reply/send an ask with anything i missed, preferably with a chapter or episode number. parts 7 and 8 wont be on here in full until i finish reading them but feel free to send me cws for them and ill add them. also the warnings are just in the order they appear, and more specifically when they appear in the anime, so as to not have weird "x is more important than y" nonsense

general warnings

these are things that…. basically if youre triggered by these i think you should just sit this out tbh. its an amazing series but its not worth repeatedly triggering yourself. this ones just ordered alphabetically bc its throughout (read: in at least 3 parts)

blood, violence, body horror, gore, and death -amputation -animal abuse and death (especially of dogs) -decapitation -eye, nail, and mouth horror -impalement -parental and sibling death -police brutality -suicide and self harm

child abuse -child abandonment -corporal punishment -leering shots of minors bodies -pedophilia (still gets a warning every time) -physical abuse

christian themes and symbolism

drug use -alcohol -tobacco -underage drug use -unspecified white powder

fire and explosions

gambling

misogyny, both in-universe and on the part of the author

racism (gets specific warnings every time)

sexual misconduct -catcalling -rape (still gets a warning every time) -sexual assault -sexual harassment

unsanitary -eating/drinking gross things —being forced to eat/drink gross things -pee -poop -snot -vomit

vehicle accidents -car accidents -plane crashes

part 1: phantom blood

(manga only) ritual sacrifice

restricted eating

non-consensual kissing

(manga only) a dog is shown on fire

poisoning

chinese ethnic stereotypes

a baby gets eaten

part 2: battle tendency

okay im gonna rip the bandaid off now. there are nazis in this one, and its significantly worse than youd expect just reading that. im gonna quote the old list here: "there are so many nazis in this part and they’re not condemned like at all tbh". i would almost say its glorified, one of the main allies is a nazi and another main ally directly praises a different nazi. in the manga, hitler and swastikas are explicitly shown as well as nazis being called by name, but in the anime, they are removed and simply called german soldiers.

almost nothing from this part comes back in the future and what does come back is explained as it comes up or is understandable from context. so please. if you need to skip this part, just do it. i even understand if you skip the whole series because of this.

its possible some may find the mesoamerican aesthetic of the villains in this part to be insensitive or offensive. im mexican and i personally dont, but i could see why someone would

racism toward: -black people -mexican people —slavery and degradation of mexican women is explicitly shown -japanese people

hostage situation

kidnapping

human experimentation

ritual sacrifice

"man in a dress" gag and subsequent transmisogyny

unintentional incest. there are only two scenes of this, which are: -a character spying on someone (later revealed to be their mother) in the bath -going through said mothers belongings and talking about her panties

animal cannibalism

part 3: stardust crusaders

since fights in this part are much more self-contained than the other parts, its possible to skip some of these if youre triggered by them. those will be marked with chapter and episode numbers

a woman gets spontaneously undressed in the middle of a fight (only her bra shows but it happens against her will)

jotaro, a 17 year old, kisses an adult woman to save her from possession. i wouldnt really say this is pedophilia and it lasts for 1 panel/less than 10 seconds but i found it uncomfortable

while incapacitated from sickness, holly will randomly be shown naked with weird leering camera angles. this happens many more times in the anime than the manga

pedophilia (depicted as a bad thing and the victim is saved before anything happens) (skip chapters 17-19/episode 7)

native american stereotypes (skip chapters 20-22/episode 8)

"person gets replaced" trope (skip chapters 23-6/episode 9; chapters 76-79/episode 27)

infection

suffocation

drowning

"child acting like a pervert" trope (skip chapters 92-96/episodes 32-33) -in the same episodes, the child spends the entire fight naked which might be uncomfortable for some

stardust crusaders ova

this gets its own subsection due to being so different that i was having to say "this doesnt apply to the ova" for a lot of the warnings. unlike the main sdc section, since this ova is extremely pared down, there wont be skippable warnings. also note that this is in "manga order", so its 2000 ova then 1993 ova

the english voice actor for avdol (a black/egyptian character) is a white guy doing a vaguely "ethnic" accent

the non-consensual kissing thing above, here its with a girl jotaros age though

infection

suffocation

ritual sacrifice (used as the intro animation for the 1993 portion)

drowning

part 4: diamond is unbreakable

rape, pedophilia, and kidnapping mentions

physical abuse

electrocution

blackmail

yandere trope -emotional abuse -isolation -stalking -kidnapping

restricted eating

skin picking

(anime only) jumpscare

invasion of privacy (skip this part if this bothers you because one of the main allies power is just, doing this, and its constant)

"child acting like a pervert" trope

bodysnatching/"person gets replaced" trope

theres an uncomfortable scene where a child gets attacked in the bath (non-sexually). both the child and the attacker are naked for the duration of the scene

part 5: vento aureo/golden wind

gang violence/the mafia (main crux of the plot)

bullying

(anime only) racism toward japanese people

reckless driving

torture

rape (not shown just heavily implied)

terminal illness/infection/disease

(anime only) pedophilia

forced childbirth (its like, magical childbirth and the mother doesnt register it)

possibly offensive depiction of systems (systems, feel free to correct me on this)

medical malpractice

a guy gets swapped into a girls body and gropes it

part 6: stone ocean

(anime only) heavy use of chromatic aberration, which may be eye straining for some

this part is really horny, comparatively speaking. this isnt really a bad thing but depending on your level of comfort with that you may want to skip

(manga only) misgendering a trans man

hallucinations

memory loss

abuse of religious authority

(manga only, only in some translations) homophobic slur

grooming

gang violence

"disposable sex worker" trope

creepy stalker-ish behavior (the person who does it becomes a main ally & never stops or eases up)

cult

drowning

electrocution

unintentional incest

the kkk (in the anime its a generic racist mob) -lynching

part 7: steel ball run

possibly offensive depiction of native americans (feel free to correct me if youre native)

a 14 year old girl: -is a child bride and im pretty sure this isnt condemned at all -gets hit on by adults -experiences a rape attempt? -gets pregnant?

the entire plot is about curing a disability

medical malpractice

capital punishment

(only in some translations) r slur variant

homophobic slur

attempted pedophilia/rape?

"bisexual sex pest" trope (grown woman making advances toward a minor/trying to rape her)?

part 8: jojolion

ableism?

rape?

part 9: the jojolands

"unsettling gender reveal" trope

pedophilia

[utilitycaster]

Whoaaaa holy shit something just snapped into place reading you mention the concept of creating a shape of negative space bc i've been thinking so long abt the "unspoken things/quiet part" of characters. I've often had this feeling that fandom will go a million and nine yards to red string board an ocean of depth for their favorite blorbo over.... what comes down to what's technically extrapolating based off of xyz canon, but said canon will be like "this character fidgets once, half his dialogue is quoting an in-universe play he tries to recreate (by ruining ppl's lives), and he doesn't understand why someone wouldn't want to be called a monster, therefore he is AUTISTIC and that drives his logic," or "this character has xyz vague background and is TRAUMATIZED because of WAR" inventing an entire character and it's like. Oh boy. This might be a matter of not being invested enough in these characters to TRY and delve so "deep" but I keep thinking that none of this is actually. written or feels purposeful in the context of How Storytelling Works/the Narrative to MAKE me invest or think that it's worth doing so. I always wonder how many people are trying so hard to project a better story onto something without understanding that the story actually needs to BE THERE and ADDRESSED, even subtly, and token moments aren't enough. But then that gets me thinking about how Thereness needs to exist for something to be subtle but written as opposed to Conspiracy off loose projection.

I was kinda thinking abt Laudna and how to use her as an example, because she's one of those characters for whom like, yeah I as a person totally understand the cycle of being upbeat and normal and everything and then having a random spiral of Bad Upstairs before being normal again, but narratively how do you portray that and why does everyone do it so much better than her. With equal screentime, everyone feels like they have so much more meat to their motivations and psychology despite some being significantly less fraught backstory wise. What's happening here because things just feel like they come out of nowhere with her with "oh so that matters all of a sudden?"

Hi anon,

Yes to all of this! With regards to your first paragraph - I feel that a lot too. It's a tricky situation because I think it's completely valid to project things onto characters and imagine them to have specific qualities that either you have or simply that you wish to see in fiction. It only becomes difficult in a fandom sphere when people insist that this is a fully evidence-based endeavor and not a personal interpretation (especially because a lot of that evidence is, as you say, either very much open to interpretation, or else totally spurious. The number of times I've had to shoo people off my posts for talking extensively about how an immensely self-absorbed character who never thinks about others unless forced to clearly has ADHD...but I digress). And as for the conspiracy element, especially when works aren't as good - absolutely. If you haven't read this, which I reblogged a few weeks ago (has Good Omens 2 spoilers) I highly recommend you do because what you're saying resonates a lot with OP's post, both in terms of our need as fans to project or find similarities with characters, and the fact that when people are disappointed by a work sometimes they try to create a better one, but instead of just writing fanfiction and calling it fanfiction they go full conspiracy theorist and assume there's some secret twist, and fall so hard into that all-crumbs-no-schnitzel (to borrow a metaphor from that post) fanon echo chamber they forget it is, in fact, only fanon.

Which brings us to Laudna. Before I go deeper I want to cover three things. First: for me at least, this criticism comes because I know Marisha is capable of doing this negative space work. It didn't come up much with Keyleth since we kind of knew her whole deal very early (which, to be clear, is valid; not every character needs this), but it's present with both Beau (her relationship to her father is masterfully done; the hallmark of good negative space work is that when the reveal comes you say oh of course) and to a lesser extent Patia, who, like all the Calamity characters, conveys a story much greater than the one that unfolds over a single night. Second: I think part of why a number of us in the fandom are so frustrated is that we have been doing that work of generously interpreting Laudna since the beginning, but nothing ever sticks, so it's becoming less and less worth the effort.

I'd have to go back through my archives pretty extensively, but early on, the going expectation for Laudna was that she would explore the idea of being one of the bystanders in a larger story as someone killed simply because of a passing resemblance to someone the Briarwoods wished to send a message to; that we'd get insight into Whitestone during the occupation from someone who wasn't freed by Vox Machina but rather killed, indirectly, because of them. However, not only have we not gotten that, but she also was chosen for being special: Delilah chose her as a vessel because of her inherent sorcery. So then it was perhaps about that tension between finding power in her sorcery vs. warlock levels - Pâté seemed like a clear setup for Pact of the Chain, after all - but then Marisha admitted she had no intention of taking that third warlock level, and always just planned to play Laudna as exclusively leveling in sorcerer, until FCG attacked. And meanwhile, there's no exploration of those sorcery powers, either.

Speaking only for myself, I've been interrogating "hey, why is her backstory that she was chased out of everywhere but for the most part everyone is mostly fine with her?" and "in 30 years she did nothing about Delilah? Really?" for quite some time. There's a number of questions that are not just unanswered, but lack the hints that this negative space work would provide. And to be clear there are ways to explain those things! This meta does a good job of talking through why she may have been chased out, and I've floated, in the past, that even Delilah's unwelcome presence was better than the absolute silence of being truly alone. But the work to support these fandom theories, again, is not really being done at the table, and moreover, even if it starts being done...it's episode 70. It should have come up in some capacity.

Marisha said (to be clear, somewhat jokingly) in the 2022 ComicCon panel that "Yeah. I don't want to think anymore. I'm tired," re: Laudna but the thing is...honestly, in my opinion? A character with Laudna's premise requires far more work than Beau or Keyleth to do well. Not only is she tied into one of the most famous events and entwined with one of the most famous villains of Campaign 1, but she's got 50 years of backstory! Beau and Keyleth are in their early 20s! (I could make a whole other post about this but character intelligence does not equal how hard they are to play; Imogen is an immensely tough concept that Laura's doing a good job with and she's lower INT than Laudna. I'd rather play a wizard than a character like Grog any day of the week because I genuinely believe that the acting burden for making a character like Grog sympathetic and believable without going into cheap mockery and parody is immense).

Going back to that statement, it really does feel as though every 4-Sided Dive episode or panel, when Marisha talks about Laudna, it's always just that she was envisioned as being over her trauma, and the premise was always just "make that creepy girl from her nightmare". And even then: it's fine if she'd done that - simply made a creepy character who was here to be creepy and cheerfully macabre - but through gameplay it's become clear that Laudna is not over that trauma (her arrested development being one of many options), and has acquired new traumas to boot, and for that matter never was really over it given that she displays intensely but they come up so inconsistently that there's never any follow-through. I agree with you completely that the idea of her often seeming fine and happy and then having spirals is believable and true to life, but one does need to actually follow through on the spirals - I think a lot of us finally threw up our hands when Laudna's believable, well-played, and justifiable anger and resentment after being thrown across the world away from half the party, essentially pushed into a fight that isn't her own, being betrayed by Bor'Dor, and feeling Delilah's return melted away without resolution. If you want to make a character who's over their trauma and go-with-the-flow, I feel as though step 1 is to not have an eternal reminder of one's trauma permanently stuck in one's head. "Warlock who dislikes their patron" is actually a premise that requires quite a lot of thinking and effort, and we are consistently not seeing it.

I think what's most telling is that the defense of Laudna for the weird freakout this past episode is both vehement, and in conflict with itself. Is Marisha just making a joke (that didn't really land with anyone at the table nor much of the fandom, and was taken at least semi-seriously by both)? Or is it actually great and good that Laudna is incredibly traumatized and clingy and we should all hope she becomes even more clingy and codependent? When even the people who are shielding Laudna from even a whisper of criticism can't agree what Marisha's doing, it's pretty dire, especially when that criticism is "this character feels directionless and incoherent."

So getting back to negative space: It's my hunch that there just...wasn't a lot of clarity to Laudna's motivations, and the questions in her backstory weren't answered. She's creepy and she's kooky, Sun Tree corpse, Delilah in her head, met Imogen two years ago, was friends with a little girl at some point (which we only know from 4-Sided Dive, which is, to be clear, bad that it's never come up in-game). We don't know how she feels about her sorcery powers other than a vague enjoyment of their creepiness...but she also sees them as a way out from Delilah...but she also barely engages with Delilah and hasn't done anything to get rid of her. We have no sense of how she got to "the worst thing that's happened to me already happened" because while it's completely fair to play her as feeling that way 30 years later, I highly doubt she felt that way as she cut herself down from the Sun Tree. So as a result, it's hard to pick a direction because that foundation is lacking.

The thing about that negative space is that to do it well, you really need to know what you're trying to convey. Which is also why, as you say, characters with much simpler backstories are fine; Fearne was basically hanging out at her grandmother's place until EXU and her parents left when she was very young; she is curious about her parents and loves her grandmother and is a chaotic fey entity who was sent into the Material Plane with the Weave Lens, and mostly she just wants to explore and have fun and hang out with her friends. Ashley just needs to...play Fearne like that, which she does with aplomb. The complex setup for Laudna demands a huge number of answers in the backstory, and my guess is that Marisha does not have them. I think the problem isn't with the acting (in fact, I'm fairly confident it isn't, because, again, I know from past characters Marisha can do this); it's that Laudna's concept prioritized the aesthetic, mechanics, and facts of the backstory, and didn't adequately fill in her beliefs and motivations, so she's just flailing. I also suspect from the most recent 4-Sided Dive and the most recent SDCC panel that Marisha is specifically looking for interparty conflict, and to be clear that's valid...but again, to do that believably and well, Laudna's philosophy and motivations and characterization need to be much more clearly established than they are.

[1moreff-creator]

Happy Birthday Nico Hakobyan!

Meow meow! (Our favorite cat person's birthday has arrived!)

Mrow. (As always, small character analysis + fun facts + songs!)

CW Transphobia, bullying, blackmail, death threats, murder attempt

-Nico is the Ultimate Pet Therapist! This is because, as they've explicitly stated, they like interacting with animals more than humans. They feel as though there are many unwritten rules of human conversation they don't fully understand, while animals are a lot simpler by comparison. Mood.

-Their secret may also play into why they prefer interaction with animals. It was "No one accepted you for your identity. You were constantly mocked by your family, your peers, and everyone else." Basically, people made fun of them because they're non-binary, to the point apparently they threw rocks and mud at them :(

-Speaking of secrets, the quote on Mai's page associated to them is "Everyone confided in her." Presumably they came out to Mai out of their own will, instead of being essentially outed by David (which is one of the many morally wrong things with David's whole "sharing secrets" operation, but this ain't about him).

-And speaking of secret quotes, the one on Nico's page's source code is "Why should I own up for the mistakes that someone else made?" A bit vague, and one which will probably only make sense with future context. Although, it may actually be referencing something we already saw.

-Time to talk about The Gym Incident.

-Ace got Nico's secret at the start of CH2, and because of his own set of issues, he decided to use this power over Nico to bully them relentlessly. Now, Nico also got Ace's secret, but for one reason or another never brought it up. Possibly because they had a "better" idea for how to stop the bullying: in the heat of the moment, Nico threatened to kill Ace. I mean, killing the guy is a lot simpler than the blackmail equivalent of mutually assured destruction, and we know how Nico feels about complicated social rules and norms.

-Thankfully Hu stepped in before things escalated further, although her method might have been, uh, flawed. Giving her friend the benefit of the doubt, she blamed Ace for everything and slapped him. Which, yes, Ace was horrible to Nico. But the death threat should probably be addressed, shouldn't it? Or should they "not be forced to apologize for someone else's mistake?"

-One thing led to another, and Nico tried to kill Ace in the gym.

-To be fair, the whole situation is still surrounded in speculation, but they have admitted to it. To be clear, I don't actually think this is the situation their secret quote refers to, since they did say "I shouldn't have done that" in the trial, so they presumably feel enough remorse to feel like maybe they should apologize, even if Ace is far from blameless. Or maybe I'm wrong and this is the situation the quote refers to, who knows.

-Additionally, they never denied stealing Rose's turpentine to pull this off, so it's very possible they did.

-Oh, yeah! Nico and Rose and friends :D (or at least they were before the turpentine thing). They shared an FTE, which only had a 0,4% chance of happening apparently :O

-It's a very sweet one, where they vibe for a few minutes without talking, then call each other cats, and talk about their issues with communicating their feelings. It's revealed Nico has a pet cat named Tractor (because he meows very loudly), which is pretty old, and that they miss other cats they knew before the killing game. Also, when Rose brings up she's scared of what she knows because of her memory, Nico drops this while thinking of the killing game:

Nico [thought]: Everyone here probably is afraid of themselves and what they might end up doing.

Foreshadowing is a narrative device-

-Their numeral in the the David MV is VIII (8), which is "even if I try to think, IDK!!!". Explained at 1:58:22 in this video, though it's not too complex.

-According to Color Theory they get light blue, with the words "cry, cry, idk!!!" I don't think I need to explain why this applies to Nico, who might actually have more crying sprites than the rest of the cast combined (I don't think that's true, but you get the idea). Mood.

-Their birthday, December 19th, lands on National Hard Candy Day, National Harry (yes the name) Day, National Oatmeal Muffin Day, and National Emo Day, among others. At this point I'm no longer surprised by these things.

Fun facts!

-They like cat-themed things and dislike bathtubs. Cat behavior.

-Like most of the cast, they're American, right-handed, their sexuality is unconfirmed and their hair color is natural.

-They don't have a favorite color, as they are not interested in such things, but their least favorite is white. They find it unsettling.

-Nico cuts their own hair, as stated in their FTE.

-Their favorite ice cream flavor is "the flavor." No elaboration. Mood.

-They smell like a kitty-cat.

-Their favorite food is unprocessed and natural food.

Songs!

(I was really tempted to give them some of Muu's songs from Milgram, but whether or not they work depends on what their secret quote actually means so :p)

+The Chattering Lack of Common Sense by Ghost & Pals

+Scapeg∞at by Ghost & Pals

+God-ish by PinnochioP

+Karma by CreepP, CircusP

+Nobody Makes Sense by PinnochioP

+Monster by KIRA (listen evil Nico lives rent free in my head ok?)

+The Spider and the Kitsune-Like Lion by MASA Works Design (So about the evil Nico thing-)

+And Happy Birthday! Sung by kitties of course.

(Wow I did not have a lot for them rip)

[br1ghtestlight]

getting war flashbacks to the bobs burgers fanfic where louise is doing math homework in the restaurant when nobody else is around and then bob has a heart attack </3 that shit was TRAUMATIZING

love linda shouting four whenever there's a math problem or anything related to numbers. best recurring joke. FOUR!!!!

you can do it gene :D also im so bad at math I 100% would not be able to help either. dumbass rep family

bob trying to help gene with his homework is cute. even if he is Not very good at it. he wants to be an involved dad :(

gene im not gonna lie that math question has gotta be fucking with you. rhat is not a real question. i could NEVER do that not if i was given 100 hours that shit is fake

see this is where when I was in math class i would just write a random number and move on bcuz im never gonna figure it out anyway im not gonna waste time. so that's my advice gene. just Give Up

he says "maybe your mom or tina could get you started" because they're older but I genuinely think louise has a better chance of helping bcuz she is so smart. if she'd WANT to help is another question entirely

because I'm stuck in a safe 😐

AND THEN HE BLINDFOLDED ME ON THE WAY HERE??? HE BLINDFOLDED YOU??????

teddy I think his guy is gonna murder you im gonna be so real right now

unfortunately im kinda following teddy's logic now like. it isnt like fischoeder isn't doing this type of shit everyday just for fun. rich guys are just like that BUT getting their money is nice

"gene was doing homework?? that's new"

WE'RE NOT ALL ECONOMICALLY COMFORTABLE LIKE YOU ARE

"Why did you tell me the whole long story about the sandwich in the drawer if you're running out of battery LOCKED IN A SAFE??" "Context!!!!"

also bob and teddy have such great comedic chemistry lmao they bounce off each other so naturally

louise isn't lying she Does have a certain set of skills 😭 if anyone could find him it WOULD be her the lockpicking genius nine year old supervillain

miss you. see you soon. gotta go!!

has he gotten a new cellphone since that MIDDLE OF THE DAY AND YOUR PHONE IS AT 23% argument or is it that same shitty 2008 blackberry phone that dies almost immediately lmfao

bob is a real one for doing this bullshit for teddy he did NOT have to. they're ride or die fr

I'm not entirely unconvinced that gerald isnt a serial killer but thats okay <3 men can have hobbies

also I'm choosing to believe this gerald is the same one from the taxes/weed cookie episode even though it ABSOLUTELY is not bcuz i think that would be funny. by day he's a regular tax agent by night he is a creepy rich kidnapper who pulls mind games on all his handymen

OH I FORGOT THE SUBPLOT FOR THIS EPISODE IS ABOUT SPORTS PEOPLE why did they do the whole thing with gene's homework then.... are they connected. what is the gameplan

WE PICK A NEW LOVER FOR MOM

i love how bob is apparently the only thing keeping his family from going completely off the fucking rails like. he's the only thing standing between his family and their restaurant burning down with everyone inside fr

your dad never loved that dream :/ because he's a hater :/ AND SO JEALOUS :/

you're not gonna break the world record. another hater. STOP THAT

I might be having a panic attack 💔 I CANT TELL BECAUSE IVE NEVER HAD ONE BEFORE OR IM ALWAYS HAVING ONE soo real teddy

WE LOST HIM 😭😭💔

aww I love them all wearing their lil aprons <3 (crappy photo of my tablet bcuz the app im using to watch this episode doesn't allow screenshots)

SAY SOMETHING SMART LIKE UHH HOW WOULD YOU FLIP A GIANT BURGER. OH GOD THEY DIDNT MAKE THE GIANT BURGER DID THEY. WHO WOULD EVEN AGREE TO EAT THAT. AN OVER FOURTY CO-ED BASKETBALL TEAM. REALLY 😯

sorry this episode has so many good ooc quotes FJDMDJSKSKKM

gene STOP calling him father

bob is being like a whole ass detective meanwhile linda and the kids are currently making The Worst Decisions Ever

h jon benjiman is doing such a good job voicing bob in this episode idk it has so much personality and sounds natural. or it's always like this and im just now appreciating it but either way A+ work

cute bob and teddy moment ❤️❤️

(ignore the awful camera quality. nothing I can do there) also love the fact that teddy can easily lift up and manhandle bob. Good to know

there's so much going on w/ this gerald guy I dont even know WHERE to begin. what a guy. wow

this is so cute and sweet im so happy!!! YOU DOUBLE FAKE WALLED HIM :D YOU SMART SMARTIE. YOURE A GENIUS BOB

"I knew I asked the right person to come help me. Yeah. Mort wouldn't answer."

"What? You called Mort first?"

"No..."

HE ASKED MORT???? LMFAO big win for tedmort shippers. I fucking guess

MORT NEVER DOUBLE FAKE WALLED ANYONE why is bob like genuinely jealous of mort and teddy right now 😭 chill out man you've got a wife at home

"let's just say it's twelve" FINALLY bob follows my very smart advice when it comes to math homework smh

ALSO THIS IS TECHNICALLY THE FIRST TIME WE'VE SEEN THEM EATING BOBS BURGERS FOR DINNER OR IN GENERAL!!! I mean it's a giant hamburger loaf but it technically was served at bob's burgers so it counts

GIANT FRENCH FRIES

aww this episode was so fun and cute!! I love the more adventure-y type episodes where they explore a new location so this episode was great and very stressful lmao. also very funny. I love bob and teddy's dynamic/back and forth throughout the episode and the weird mort mention at the end felt like they were soft launching his and teddy's relationship even though I KNOW they aren't actually. mort could replace kathleen if we believe. very solid 8/10 episode :)

[melodyswishes]

Hey you. Yes you. Want random context about oc x cannon things? Well I’ve made many things just now out of boredom while my art block is getting on my nerves. Enjoy this random lore I thought in my head, Regarding the Lego monkie kid show. Enjoy. And if not here for these type of content, Then please scroll on. Or simply leave.

The moon base.

Chang’e resides here with Lina. Earning Lina to roam freely around here and explore. Whenever Lina would stumble upon things she would scramble to something chaotic with it a bit before cleaning it up and continuing on. However in her point of view, This is a lovely idea of her relaxing in the moon base. And since cooking with Chang’e was a cooking show lina has picked up a few cooking tips here and there appearing on the show a couple of rare times. Either in the background help prepping the ingredients or washing the dishes quick and easy for Chang’e.

If you didn’t (which you really didn’t) know about lina is that she has a little tiny robot bunny that follows her around now after season 3.

The mech bunny is Lina’s companion as a little digital pet. Since Chang’e didn’t know what to do with the fella after Mk shrunk the poor bunny, She rewarded Lina from her good deeds by gifting her the mech bunny. Having Lina to decide she would name that very mech bunny Chi-Chi.

Sometimes Mei would see lina carry the lil dude around and ask if she could pet it, Only to be met with metal. Forgetting that the mech bunny is metal and wires instead of fluffiness like people would expect.

“At least it was cute though.. But I wonder if I could have one of those!!” -Mei (not cannon quote)

Outside of the moon base

Lina goes to pigsy’s noodles to get a quick snack and probably hang out around the gang for a spare couple of hours before heading back to the moon base. It’s either pigsy sometimes not recognizing Lina since she’s often not really around as much in season 1-2 due to Chang’e asking for quick errands but season 3-? is when Lina is really committed to know what the heck is going on nowadays.

Sometime around when the emperor had fallen from his place, Lina oddly felt a similar heart pulse around Mk, Macaque, Wukong and nezha. Lina shares a deep connection with feeling chang’e emotions rarely at times. Even including what she feels and it applies to Lina as well.

Lina has often hanged around the gang and picked up a few things from each and every one of them. Mk, His small sudden clumsiness when in situations that are clearly dangerous. Mei’s confidence for getting the things she wants to know out of people. Pigsy’s common logic in situations that are dangerous, Hence from around the time back in season one when mk called himself INVINCIBLE! On the same day he got his invincibility taken away on the same day (lol.)

Sandy’s calm, Cheerful manners to situations even not resorting to violence sometimes even if it’s not that serious. There would be some way to try and get past the situation from that point. Tang’s knowledge for many things even if so going full on dork on explaining a whole chapter to everyone to know about the information for one tiny thing. You’d say that Lina kinda is the same like tang. Going on about his knowledge for things like she goes off telling about her knowledge about the moon goddess, Chang’e.

Other characters

Aria is a polite older woman than Lina. About 4 years older if you’d know, And is friends with redson about things. Apart from her being snobby at some times, Aria means well from things. I can imagine Aria became friends with redson by sharing relatable things with him at times. But this will not form a relationship between the two as they will continue to be friends only.

I can imagine as a gift of redson being close friends with Aria, Aria is rewarded by her very own harp design. Aria plays the flute but never the harp. So this was difficult for her at first, But soon later on she’d get use to it and practically helps healing the crew with her sounds of her harp strings being played gently.

Aria is rarely around them. If anything when Lina and Aria met, They clicked together like a friendship bracelet. With a little help of Lina constantly gifting her with things that Lina shouldn’t have— Lina has a special curse of talking to random people without even knowing them for a long time. I’ll talk about Lina and Aria’s relationship in a little while ahead, I wouldn’t wanna give away too much information now would I?

Until then, IM GONE! (I did this last night and assume that I fell asleep after typing this.)

[joyswonderland1108]

I'm.. Confused?

Okay i will be completely honest here, i rarely very rarely watch any content that isn't purely BTS when it comes to, well.. BTS. So when it's something about Bang PD talking about BTS sometimes i only catch snippets on my tl and i end up watching it very later solely because there was a mention of BTS.

Now this popped up on my TL because someone qt tweeted it, i'm not sure about what this interview was all about, i still didn't watch it, i don't have the whole context but anygays :

(My Tumblr isn't giving me a preview of the post so i'm linking the ss of the post anyways)

After i've been sitting here reading this over and over again, reading comments and quotes i was like.. If this is real, well it most probably is since i didn't see anyone correcting OP yet on the take, just how many times were BTS lied to, gaslighted up until this day about things they are doing..

And if you think about it it's actually pretty scary, imagine being manipulated into thinking you are not doing good enough and you need to do this and that to be able to achieve XYZ goal that you have, but at what cost? How do we even know that those "motivations" aren't backed up by a selfish desire of seeing BTS grow just for the financial gain the company gets from that? How do you even know that the way they are being led won't strip away what the members themselves wanted to achieve by choosing a path that was wrongfully introduced to them?

I don't know if i'm making sense here and i hate how people are quick to call BTS company's puppets when shit like that is being talked about, but honestly? Personally if i've been working under someone who is supposed to be a leader helping me, someone who so far through years has been a person i've looked up to, respected and trusted to seek advise from to continue to push for my dreams, just for them to end up being liars about the advise they gave me, because maybe the most crucial part of my dream was never going to be fulfilled following the advise i was given, maybe the advise helped me grow and through me that person was able to grow as well leaving the part i might've been in desperate need from the start..

I feel like i'm still not making any sense, i also don't know how much i should rely on a single post and comments and qts backing it up but as i said, if it's all true, if it's all not just some misunderstanding of some sort, then goddamn it's really scary!!! I wouldn't want to imagine our boys trusting someone enough to see their advise as something precious they might feel it should be considered, they make them believe that they are given full freedom to chose while maybe even the choices that are out there presented to them are still not on a wider scale presenting a potential to reach what they were made to believe would make them achieve what they want for the future.

Many artists don't only seek the artistry recognition, some people want or NEED a recognition on different aspects including who they are too as a person not just as an artists, but the mere thought that this can be stripped away from an artist just by using this gaslighting tactics.. *Sigh*

I'm rambling, i don't know i just poured all the thoughts that came to my mind after reading that. All i ever want is for our boys to be happy with their career, their artistry, their creativity, their professional and personal lives, i just want them to find comfort in both and always feel no type of restriction or barrier out there for them to reach the peak of their happiness..

[squarebracket-trickster]

Characters Out of Context Tag

Another tag game I've been sitting on since August??? Thank you @serenanymph and SORRY!!!

Rules: Include one character quote of your choosing ⁠from each chapter of your WIP (or as many chapters as you'd like). Give absolutely no context, save for what's between two parts of an interrupted sentence, should that occur. You may mention who said it.

No pressure tagging as many people as I have chapters: @sunset-a-story, @touloserlautrec, @mjparkerwriting, @captain-kraken, @authoraemoseley, @star-studded-whales, @ryns-ramblings, @athenswrites, @moonandris, @breath-of-eternity, @tabswrites, @dontjudgemeimawriter, @talesofsorrowandofruin, @kjscottwrites, @words-after-midnight, @sarandipitywrites

Quotes below cut. I am only doing them for draft 3, and the chapter of draft 2 I am currently editing into draft 3. Because I am not skimming 77 000 words for this.

Chapter 1 (draft III) - Isolde

"I wonder how long a person could live without skin? I heard that the eyes of severed heads sometimes follow the executioner as he walks off the gallows. Do you think that means they are still alive? Do severed heads feel their body still attached like a phantom limb? Perhaps someone should invent a language entirely in blinks. Then, when you are all beheaded you can tell me."

Chapter 2 (draft III) - there is no dialogue in this chapter and the internal monologue was very straightforward.

Chapter 3 (draft III) - Isolde

He might as well have called me Aldus of Pussy.

Chapter 4 (draft III) - Henry

"Assuming she did not drown or get swallowed whole by a shark..."

Chapter 5 (draft III) - Alan

"Welp, there goes peace in the region…”

Chapter 6 (draft III) - Isolde

This will only stop when Henry has me pinned - oh no. I can’t keep the grin from my face...

Chapter 6... this was a long chapter so it gets two (draft III) - Uthman

“It’s amazing, truly, how agreeable a person becomes when faced with a knife to the throat.”

Chapter 7 (draft III) - Alan

“Good fellow, find a pond and look at yourself. If you wished to bed a princess all you’d have to do is ask.”

Chapter 7... another long chapter, gets two (draft III) - Isolde

“There go your glorious plans to duel every man in the camp.”

Chapter 8 (draft III) - Isolde

“So that’s why you can’t breathe without flirting.”

Chapter 9 (draft III) - Wulfrith

“Find yourself a rich man then, best if he’s old or sickly. Have his son, do away with him while the boy’s still young and needs his mother to manage his inheritance, and… don’t get caught.”

Chapter 10 (draft III) - Isolde

Stop thinking about food, Isolde. You don’t want to know what was in that soup.

Chapter 9 (draft II) ... will be chapter 11 in draft III - Henry (Sorin)

"Up to you what sex you want to be here. But either way, you have to wash your face.”

There were too many good ones in this chapter. Here's a few more. - Isolde (Isadred, in disguise as Adris)

“No, actually, I’m not Adris... you’ve been captured by witches and I’m here to steal your voice and sew your mouth shut.”

- Isolde (Isadred)

“Sewing by the fireplace is a slippery slope. Next thing we know we’ll be dozing off together in these chairs!”

- Henry (Sorin)

"Option two: kill us. Pros: we’re dead. Cons?”

- Also Henry (Sorin)

“You mean, let’s assume they know that we know that they know why we are here.”

[adickaboutspoons]

The Curse of "The Curse of the Seafaring Life"

So now that I've had some time to come down from the euphoria of watching two middle-aged men kissing in the moonlight, I've got to admit episode 5 is... bad. Like the kiss is divine and perfect and I love it with all my heart and soul, but the rest of it doesn't make a lick of sense, within the context of what we've seen this season, or within the themes of the show as a whole. And it's not just a matter of inserting a couple of lines of dialogue to fix it as with episode 4. To me, it requires a full tear-down to the very studs.

I understand that for future plot purposes implied by the trailers, it will become important that Stede knows how to do fighty pirate-y stuff, but the way they get there challenges credulity. Stede states that he "hasn't really felt [that he is the captain]" since they got back on the ship. But... why? He's called and led at least two all-hands meetings in the past two episodes (letting the crew know Ed was not dead after all, and mediating the non-pology sesh), collected votes for the decision to exile Ed (and stayed with the crew rather than going with Ed, even though finding Ed was, like, supposedly his entire motivation, god that still makes me so angry writers I am in your walls!), and convinced the crew to, at least temporarily, let Ed be un-banished. No one is challenging him for his position. No one is questioning his authority. No one is being insubordinate or any less respectful to him than they generally are, considering he encourages open and honest dialogue (which sometimes invites less-than-respectful expressions of ideas with this crew.) No one is even suggesting that his feelings for Ed might negatively impact his objectivity or his ability to perform his captainly duties. For heaven's sake, half of the crew (eventually) followed him in applauding Ed's feeble scrabble at an apology. And quite aside from all that - how many times, exactly, does he need to prove himself? He JUST orchestrated a successful escape plan using fucking TOWELS. He's ALREADY captain material! So why would he have that less-than-captain feeling?

And the only thing that I can think of is that they needed to get him to train with Izzy somehow (why did it have to be Izzy, though? More on that in a moment). So how to get him there? Well, Izzy's mean, right? So maybe Stede needs to think that he needs to get mean, so he'll go to be trained at the foot of the master. But why would Stede suddenly think he needs to be mean? Especially considering how delighted he was when Yi Sao clocked his energy as soft? Well, maybe Ed tells him the way to Feel More Captain-y is to be more assertive.

But as much as Ed-in-a-collar asking Stede to order him around is going to find a forever home in my fanfic plotbunny document, that just... doesn't make any sense. Ed LOVES that Stede is out here doing things completely different from anyone else. One of the main theses of the show is that Stede's people-positive management style is CORRECT, actually, and another is that living life as your authentic self is more important than duty or obligation. Stede needing to "butch up" to be a proper captain runs antithetical to both those ideas AND to the established dynamic between Ed and Stede. Honestly, it reads a lot more like validation of Stede's insecurities about not being enough for Ed, and that whole dream sequence that opened the season. Which would be fine if Stede was going through an arc where he thinks he needs to be more manly and learns in the end that he's fine just the way he is, but that doesn't seem to be the case? As such, it's frankly pure contrivance, and just sloppy writing.

So taking out that pin about training with Izzy. I'm gonna be real, this feels like pure fanservice to me, and I'm not just talking about Con O'Neil's magnificently sculpted tits. Izzy's "redemption arc" (and, yes, I'm putting it in scare quotes) feels completely unearned to me. What - he's absolved in his suffering? Even though we've seen not one hint of remorse for what he's done to others (only for how the repercussions of his actions actually impacted him)? Not even the barest scrap of a non-pology? Then Why Isn't Ed? Ed who has suffered too. Ed who was so fucked up he made MORE THAN ONE attempts at suicide by proxy in episode 2? Ed who keeps getting kicked when he's already down and NOT extended the same sympathy and understanding from the crew? It's a real bad look, y'all. In fact, it looks a lot more like Izzy is not going through a "redemption arc" so much as an "he's already redeemed, trust us" arc, and training Stede is more about him proving that he's part of the community by offering support and expertise, and resolving his personality crisis ("who am I to you?" and "what even are you?") - roles which, by all rights, would be better filled by Jim (who had JUST given up on their vengeance quest to try and see what being part of a family might be like, only to be caught up in the Kraken's shit and having to fight for survival, and could now have an opportunity to work through their trauma by using their skills to HELP someone rather than hurt, and learning how to be soft - like the flesh of someone becoming human after so recently being someone's puppet) or Ed (who needs to learn to reconcile the various aspects of his personality, and that violence doesn't have to come coupled with the baggage of being unlovable, and who needs to relearn how to trust and be trusted by Stede, and how to earn the crew's forgiveness). Because the fact of the matter is? Stede MUST be lying when he tells Izzy that Ed attributes "everything he knows" to Izzy's teaching. The whole point of the escape from the Spanish relies upon the premise that there is knowledge that Ed possesses that Izzy doesn't and can't. Look at Stede's face when he says "More specifically, he said you taught him everything he knows.":

(corporate needs you to find the difference between these 2 pictures) It's giving very "Stark Revelations" vibes. I'm thinking Stede is getting Izzy to buy in to his training by using a little of that weaponized empathy he picked up studying at the feet of the master: Yi Sao. I don’t love Stede pandering to the ego of a mediocre white dude by conferring upon him the responsibility for Ed’s achievements and brilliance in order to get what Stede wants out of him, but it’s immeasurably better than the suggestion that Ed’s achievements and brilliance actually ARE down to Izzy. Neither way of interpreting the implications of the scene are great, though, which is uncharacteristically sloppy writing from this show. All the more reason why Stede’s training should be in the hands of anyone else EXCEPT Izzy.

The training montage itself is… not a training montage. It’s a cringe compilation. Just scene after scene of Stede being bad at things and no follow-up scenes that show him improving. The line about him just letting his body take over in the field and it working out for him is just bad and wrong. First, it conveys Plot Armor on Stede, and obviates the NEED for training. Second, really, Stede? How about the time you almost stabbed Doug for the crime of *checks notes* putting his hand on your shoulder? Or the time you blacked out and walked barefoot to Bridgetown after Chauncy shot himself? Like, let's please not suggest trauma-induced fugue states are Stede's super-power. Third, that's really not how we have seen Stede earn his victories up until this point, and it really undercuts the fact that Stede is VERY smart, clever, and resourceful, great at improvisation and using his environment to overcome mightier or more skilled opponents (think of the way he bested Izzy at their first encounter, or even, more recently, how he used his habit of putting scent on his towels and how everyone inevitably wanted to breath it in deeply to knock out the prison guards and orchestrate their escape - again, using towels as a zip-line). One of the things about Stede that I think gets under-acknowledged is that he's actually kind of low-key a master of seeing a thing once and figuring out how to do it. In spite of what my Advanced Maneuvers  fic would have you believe, the Unhand Me Or Bleed move actually comes from him observing the bar brawl in ep 2, and then there’s all the stuff with the duel with Izzy and the butt swat and taking it on the left that Ed had shown him only once and only a few nights previously. But what does any of that matter if he’s just going to Dead Zone it and let his body do what it will?

It also bothered me that, when his training is “complete” and he’s going on raids, he's just brute forcing things? Like, his plan was the same every time - run in shouting and waving your blade around. Where’s the clever planning? Where’s the distraction? Where’s the style and finesse? What happened to his rapture over fuckeries?

The resolution of the curse storyline/training montage is bothering me in a way that I feel is emblematic of the bigger problems with the season as a whole so far. The whole point of a training montage is either to payoff with a scene SHOWING the use of all the accumulated skills, or a subversion of that; why they CAN'T use those skills (like in Galavant where he over-trained for the joust and therefore couldn't move when it came time to actually participate). But instead, we get exposition fairies. "Wow - that sure was an epic battle we just did! With us fighting back-to-back and Archie swinging from a rope!" All the interesting and important stuff is happening off-camera, and we're just being asked to accept that it happened. Just like we’re asked to accept that the Swede’s time with Jackie is more fulfilling in some way that his time with the Revenge was not. Just like we’re asked to accept that everyone’s just cool with Izzy now - even the people who last saw him when he was marooning them, even to the point of working together to make him a peg leg and calling him their new unicorn. Just like we’re asked to accept that Black Pete or Olu missed their SOs, even to the point of “crying every night” for the former, but never seeing them actually mention it/crying about it.

And about that - although I was initially overjoyed by it, now that I’ve had some time to reflect, I'm not sure I'm so happy about the Proposal. Like, Lucius is still clearly in a v. vulnerable and traumatized state, and it's maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe not the BEST time to be making big life choices? Juxtapose with Ed finally learning to maybe not charge full-speed-ahead. Maybe handing the U-haul keys to another couple isn’t all that great an idea, actually?

Now on to the Curse. What the dying priest literally says when Stede and Jim enter the room is "We were voyaging to the Vatican to seek an exorcism." My auditory processing is sub-par, especially when more than one person is speaking at the same time, so I can't really make out most of what he says after that because Jim keeps babbling about curses (which? I’m sure Vico had lines they were written for them to be saying, but it to present as a translation something that is v. much NOT what the person is actually saying in the mouth of a native speaker of the language is SO weird to me), and maybe it's me splitting hairs, but exorcism is v. much a casting demons out of a PERSON thing - not a "cursed artifact" thing. But fuck it. Let’s go with the “translation” Jim gives us and stick with cursed items instead of bedeviled people. There’s a real missed opportunity here to have done something extremely clever linking the "curse" and the crew's trauma and, through the process of coming together to formulate a plan for how to free themselves from the curse, managing to take the first steps toward exorcising their own demons. I mean, this is just surface-level metaphor stuff, and it's troubling to me that instead we got Stede the Rational White Dude pandering to the superstitions of his mostly POC crew.

I LOVE that Fang reached out to Ed, and that he brought to Ed’s attention the fact that Ed often defaults to problem-solving mode, trying to FIX problems. Which is great when you need to make an impromptu lighthouse to escape the Spanish, but is not necessarily the best approach for emotional problems, where the better answer is sometimes listening rather than talking, or even just actually sitting and dealing with negative feels (though I am not loving the implication that Ed's a non-stop chatterbox. Sometimes he is, but there are plenty of examples of him being introspective - like literally any time he stims with his silk - and also, sometimes soundboarding is an effective tool for processing complicated or painful concepts, too. And also, we see MULTIPLE scenes of Ed crying alone. He’s clearly sitting with his feels. Admittedly there is a huge difference between wallowing/indulging and PROCESSING, but Ed sitting alone in silence with his feels is v. much NOT the problem). But I HATE the messaging about retributive justice in that scene.

So retributive justice - the idea that a person who has caused damage has to be punished to an appropriately equivalent degree in order for 1) justice to be meted to the wronged party, & 2) the wrong-doer to be redeemed for their wrongdoing - is all kinds of problematic to begin with, but especially when seemingly exclusively applied to a MOC. And we have two examples of that in this episode - we have Ed offering to let Lucius to knock him over the rail so that they're squaresies (v. eye-for-an-eye, that), and we have Fang explaining that he's cool with Ed because he brutalized Ed's unconscious body after Jim knocked him out with a cannonball, so that makes them square for all the shit that Ed did to him.

With Lucius, we see that it DOESN'T actually make things square. Lucius is still traumatized, and just as obsessed with Ed as ever, possibly even moreso. With Fang, we see the exact opposite. He and Ed ARE cool, and Fang doesn't seem to have any lingering issues.

So not only is the scene with Fang kind of gross and reductionist, and reinforces the "broken people do broken things" idea that's been uncritically floated earlier in the season, instead of recognizing that sometimes people have maladaptive behaviors in response to suboptimal circumstances and insufficient support systems, but also, when juxtaposed with the scene with Lucius, the show is refusing to come down one way or another on the topic, and I think that's pretty cowardly on the "toxic masculinity and racism are unequivocally wrong" show.

So how would I fix it?

1) Frame Stede’s practical pirate training urges as Stede self-enriching by re-taking up the reigns of his pirate lessons, not as him needing to learn how to captain

2) Make Ed his teacher, and thereby allow for a gradual rebuilding of trust and strengthening of their relationship (and also some flirtatious banter and UST because they're both trying to hold back and re-figure things out, but also that undeniable chemistry is still there. For me. As a treat)

3) I guess Izzy can help. But HE has to ask. As a "trying to find my place now that so much has changed for me" kind of thing, and also expressing some fucking gratitude to Stede for saving his rat ass

4) My training montage would be an ACTUAL training montage with the comedy failboating at the beginning, and showing actual progress until they're ready to do the Curse raid (which sets up the subversion of payoff for the training montage because they ARE ready, but there's nothing to fight on a ship of the dead). Nix the second raid altogether so I don't have to get cranky about expositing the action sequence. Also that line about blacking out and just letting things happen would be erased from history, too. 

5) Ed's participation in the "exorcizing the demons" plot is what starts to mend bridges with the crew and starts to bring him back into the community. (Also, I want Ed to be able to see Stede feeling himself in his red suit, and it is a CRIME that we were denied that.)

6) It’s my drastic re-write, so in my version, we’re gonna nix the Fang line supporting retributive justice, but we’re KEEPING the Lucius interaction. Maybe in the 'exorcize the demons' brainstorm sesh, Ed proposes that he dress in the devil suit and Lucius be allowed to push him overboard (a 2-for-1 expurgation. Also, there would be a line where Ed goes up to Stede and is all "I really need to get you out of those clothes", and Stede breathlessly replying, "Oh, Ed!" and then Ed awkwardly having to walk it back with hasty explanations, and Stede apologizing for making assumptions, and Ed having to beat a hasty, flustered retreat, because even though he has 100% seen Stede naked before, there’s an unbearable tension to the idea of seeing him like that now). But the overboard plan doesn’t work on EITHER front. Once Ed is back on board, still wearing the devil suit, something goes wrong that convinces the crew the curse is still there (maybe it's Stede doing target practice in the background with Izzy, and THAT'S when the sail falls on everyone's head), and Lucius' can still have his "That didn't actually give me the closure I thought it would have" mini-arc. Ed can start in again, pitching more ideas and talking over people, and Fang can gently suggest that Ed doesn't have to be the one to come up with all the plans. Sometimes it's ok to just sit back and listen, and realize that sometimes your input is doing more harm than good, and it's ok to take a step back.

7) Lucius and Pete aren’t getting engaged. Sorry. Maybe Lucius can propose, but Pete would gently tell him that, while he absolutely wants to and plans to spend the rest of his life with Lucius, he’s concerned that Lucius is moving a little fast, and maybe flailing for something to make him feel better immediately rather than taking the time to work through his trauma, and as much as Pete loves him, he’s not going anywhere; Lucius can take all the time he needs to come to terms with what happened to him, and then, when he asks again, Pete will say yes.

8) After the Curse plot is resolved Ed has been sitting and stewing with the bad feelings that your input can be deletory and unwelcomed. THEN Fang can impart the "sometimes you just have to sit with your feels and let it be uncomfortable" wisdom. Maybe Ed shares what he’s been going through on his own and hiding from the crew. But knowing how to process your emotions instead of just ruminating on them is a learned skill. I don’t know if Fang is the person to teach that to Ed, but honestly I don’t know who IS since Lucius would NORMALLY be the emotional intelligence guy, so I guess Fang can be the one with emotional insight since he is quite the softy under it all.

But also I still want moonlit middle-aged men kisses, so maybe Fang also suggests that just because your input isn't needed in some places doesn't mean it would be unwelcome in all - and sometimes it's a matter of redirecting your energy, and him indicating Stede (in his shirt) brooding over the rail at the loss of his awesome (I am only saying this word for Stede’s sake, because I actually fucking hate the hideous cutaway tailcoat with its tacky, poorly applied appliques) suit. And things are better between them because of training montage, but still awkward, and Ed is now the one taking the initiative to meet Stede where HE'S at and complimenting the shirt, "wear fine things well," etc.

(And, hell, since this is essentially a fix-it fic in essay form, there may or may not be a plotbunny brewing in my head about them agreeing to "take it slow" and then sloooooowly walking together to the captain's cabin and Whoops! they forgot there's only one bed now. Should one of them maybe take the pile of furs on the floor? No! they can totally share a bed platonically. Yup. Just two platonic buds sleeping and nothing else at all in the same bed. Except Stede DESPERATELY has to masturbate about what just transpired between them. He is not as stealth as he thinks he is. And maybe when he wakes in the morning, Ed informs him that he was moaning Ed's name in his sleep all night…)

[fallingsunflower]

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/showbiz/harry-styles-sex-confessions-4-28007809?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=star_main&fbclid=IwAR1j1fBT9G1xsvujRjvqMEzej91Cx5Cd4YO5sUuFHCd8amNwLLu4LlgCAX8

Mod is any of this true because if so then so disgusting he even said he constantly wore protection incase he got girls pregnant

It really disturbs me that this is the content people are writing and clicking on. This isn’t directed at you, anon, but just generally.

A lot of you weren’t around for the 1D sexualization of Harry. It wasn’t pretty. He was finally starting to come out of it and then history repeated itself all over plus some. I think part of Harry talking about sex is to regain some control over it since many people are obsessed with the conversation.

That source you linked is pure garbage. It’s entirely taken out of context to promote Harry’s “raunchy” lifestyle because people eat it up. I’ll break it down for you.

Harry admitted he feels ashamed of sex - well no shit. This was a quote from a recent article is Better Homes and Gardens. I’d feel ashamed too if people were constantly speculated who I had sex with and how many people. Again, I think him talking about it is to regain control over the subject.

Wearing condoms - I’m not sure you read this correctly or if there was misinterpretation. He spoke about how he was scared he got the girl pregnant the first time he had sex, which is a natural fear. And he said it’s too much of a risk to not wear a condom because if you’re not ready for a kid, don’t take that risk. I think that’s a rather responsible thing to say. Not sure why you’re insinuating condoms are a bad thing. Condoms are good.

Getting in bed with his friends mom - Taken out of context. I’m not quite sure where the original source is but seems like it was a teenager dare spun into something sexual. Here. And I won’t even get into the topic of older women.

“Gay sex and sexuality” - This whole segment is entirely fetishized. Talking about sexuality doesn’t automatically equal talking about the physical act of sex. And then they pull a quote of Harry talking about sexuality and gay sex from My Policeman as if that makes it better.

Pulling 3-4 girls a night - probably my favorite segment. First, when you read an article they often either 1) lie 2) embellish. Niall’s “quote” either fell into one of those two categories or was completely sarcastic/a joke. They were 19/20 at the time.

Also take a look at the time stamp. I googled the quote where Niall supposedly says Harry’s pulling 3-4 girls a night. There’s also a mysterious and totally real other source who backs it up. The original date for that quote came from around March 18, 2013. But people seem to forget Harry, a 19 year old, was grilled by an adult interviewer into telling her how many people he’s slept with. She guessed over a 100. Do you know the actual number? 2. And that’s timestamped AFTER the Niall “quote” on August 1, 2013.

•

Long story short don’t believe everything you read especially from those trash websites. They’ve been trying to make Harry this sex crazed womanizer gay fetishizer for quite some time now