#so a lot of them just felt like really unjustified. which is kind of the point I get that Amanda was just killing people.

[anothermonikan]

Guys not to be judgemental but like. does Saw get good again. genuinely.

[sarcastictissy]

Hi, Tissy. I want to thank you for the positivity you bring to this community. It's something that is in short supply around here, and it's greatly appreciated. You have also been fair and objective, which is also appreciated. That is why I feel it is safe to send this message to you.

The past and present QSMP admins deserve support, but only to an extent. There have been instances of them displaying terrible behavior, and the QSMP community needs to stop ignoring/excusing it. The xenophobic remarks made by Lea and Lumi. Lea's baseless speculation on Twitter that Quackity's brother was working for the QSMP is what caused people to dox Quackity. Lea showing no remorse for leaking Quackity's information and causing his safety to be threatened. Some of the admins were very insensitive about the doxxing. Quackity's safety was actually threatened, and they were saying/agreeing with someone saying "womp womp" about the stream where he spoke about how he felt physically unsafe. And now we have the actions of Puella and other admins defending them.

The QSMP community's continued parasocial behavior toward the admins is just very frustrating for me to witness.

🥺🥺 I really, really appreciate your kind words!! Thank you so much, they mean a lot, genuinely. Hearing I help people stay positive, or even enjoy my posts, on qsmp makes my day, honestly. I'm so glad I get to cheer people up and help them. It inspires me to keep doing just that! :D

Onto what you said, I don't know who needs to read this, but you ARE allowed to respect someone/ support them AND be annoyed by their words or actions. You are allowed to like someone, and dislike some of their actions. You can support the admins, be annoyed by how they were treated by QStudios, and also be disappointed by what they have said or done.

Personally, I'm disappointed by Lea's xenophobia in her interview that was strictly about her experience with the studios. She used this as an opportunity (whether it was intentional or not) to say xenophobic remarks towards the Spanish speaking community. Nevermind, the fact she never apologised for, and, even tried to justify, doxxing Quackity. She said that her doxxing Quackity was no where near as bad as what she went through during her time working with QStudios. Doxxing is NEVER the answer. I'm severely disappointed by her ignorance and xenophobia. That does not take away from the fact that she did suffer. I respect she was under poor working conditions and I support her in getting treated correctly and paid fairly. Absolutely I do. But I cannot support and will not support how she treated Quackity or the Spanish speaking community.

You can draw your own conclusions and do your own research on the matter. I am not here to tell you what to think. Those are just my thoughts.

In terms of Pomme, I'm not aware of much she's done. I know her support to Otipep and I read somewhere that she did not translate her statement leaving Qsmp into Spanish, but did so for all Portuguese and English. To be perfectly honest, if she had only posted it in French, I would not have cared or been mad. We can translate it ourselves or use an accommodation to do so. She should not have to do that for us, but she did and proceeded to and leave out Spanish as part of the transition, and, again, i dont know if that was intentional or not. But she didnt make an attempt to fix it. (Korean speakers were not yet added at this point).

I want to say one last thing about the admins:

You cannot fight xenophobia with xenophobia. It's inexcusable and unjustifiable. Support the workers rights and conditions, but under no circumstances, does that allow for xenophobia to go unnoticed. You can do both.

[generational-atrophy]

What if Japan and America taught p/o martial arts along with firearms because they wanted to be like John Wick? P/o stands for platonic other.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xSM_nz6gKOI&pp=ygUVam9obiB3aWNrIGZpZ2h0IHNjZW5l

hetalia japan and america teaching their friend martial arts

0.5k words ~ gender neutral headcanons

tw: guns, but thats it!

a/n: guys im so sorry i have 3 extracirculars n a full load of college classes with my high school ones and also russian lessons all the time im TRYING to get to requests 💀

Japan

Kiku would be a little apprehensive about teaching you that kind of thing. Although he can't help but maintain his skills, he likes to think that that stuff is behind him.

Although if you pestered him enough, he'd give in.

During feudal times, he felt that joining any clan would be betraying his country. By swearing his loyalty to an individual, he would be giving up his promise to protect his people above anything else.

Because of this, he lived as a ronin for many years. He trained extensively in kyudo, tanto, kenjutsu, and other now-extinct forms of battle.

But if you're serious about this, he is not going to be a kind teacher. He's going to train you like he was trained... or well, as close as he can get. It's hard to get completely connected to the natural world when there's a plane overhead every hour.

He acts completely different to how you've seen him. He's not afraid to be rude and hurtful anymore, to the point that he may hurt you pretty badly in your training. But, you can tell how much this is his element.

However, he's going to teach you the spiritual aspects of the fighting techniques as well. He expects you to follow bushido if you're going to use these skills. At least, as much as you can nowadays.

He's not big on firearms though. You'll have to go to Alfred for that. Kiku finds them too... gruesome. He believes strongly that it's an unjustifiably terrible way to die, so he wouldn't teach you to use them.

America

Alfred would be the perfect friend to ask for that kind of thing. Although he's lacking in a lot of technical knowledge, he's very good at pulling off those movie stunts.

(When he was younger and being trained by others,  he always insisted on doing the flashy stuff first. And uh... none of those mentors lasted very long.)

As a teacher, he'd be very patient but not very... good at teaching, exactly. He'd do the thing you wanted to do, but he wouldn't know the steps. It'd just be a lot of “Just do it!” which, obviously, tells you nothing.

He's quite good at teaching you self-defense stuff specifically. It's the only thing he's super good at. Though, he really has no handle on his strength. He might push you to the ground, or he might throw you out a window. It's a roll of the dice.

Also, he's a firearm collector! He's even kept some from when he was first born (Yes, he had guns when he was a baby. He's an American, after all!) You can't play around with the older ones, but the modern ones, you always have permission to take ‘em.

But he's gonna make sure you're super safe with them, also. Like, you can borrow them, but you can't take off even a single safety measure unless he's watching. Even after months of you doing crazy trick shots with them, he's still paranoid.

He loves you showing you cool tricks to do that you just... can't physically do. Like it's great that YOU can basically tear out your arm to do that, but I CAN'T!

But he'd be great at that (: he's a good friend.

[titoist]

to anon who sent me the previous two asks,

i understand. for all the spitefulness i might sometimes feel about the nature of anonymous messages in this or that way, the 'selfish' position i imagine it taking up with relation to my being -- it's not like i can deny the situational usefulness of anonymity. when it dares to present itself, when it is in a situation where it even presents itself as a feasible option, it also tends to naturally assert itself as almost necessary. of course, there is still a central vulnerability to anonymity. it is not a one-way street. i always felt a kind of shame in being anonymous. i do not mean that anonymity is 'cowardly', to be contrasted with just 'bravely' letting yourself exist out in the open or what-not. but for the person embroiled in it, there's a vulnerability to choosing to be anonymous at all. it's what makes it still so painful when, for instance, an anonymous message is mocked or poorly received. you cannot ever scrub yourself entirely. you still know i think about it with the intensity of someone who spent a lot of their years perversely valuing & craving the words of strangers precisely because i did not know them. i don't know, though. there's only so much that can be extracted from or about it. maybe the most crucial observation is just: i write all of my posts from the perspective of a general observership, a viewer. for any iota of expression, i instinctively presuppose judgement. each sentence is contrasted with how i imagine an omnipotent force might impersonally but viciously tear into my pronunciation of that sentence, and it is iteratively amended until i imagine there either being no room for such viciousness, or allow myself to feel that such a viciousness would, in a sense, be 'unjustifiable'. this observership is both far from being abstract, spread across a great number of things, & far from being concrete, individual. it is a gestalt consciousness -- and i think many people do have this vague quality of 'the gaze', habitually lodged in their minds. but here is, i think, the difference: my gestalt consciousness can, and often does... talk back to me! really! and that can be pretty scary sometimes!

while writing the last reply. i was half-worried that it was not vague, was not 'obfuscating' enough with respect to your expression. but i am glad that it is at least sufficient. tentatively sufficient, if nothing else.

right, right. i guess it is a bit dumb that, with 'textual', i ran with the assumption of... the literal act of communicating via text. i had considered 'textual' as a reflection of interconnectedness. or, rather, people as a reflection of textuality. but i thought it vague enough that i would rather have suffered the crime of wrongness via generalization rather than wrongness via specificity.

thank you. i do not really feel myself capable of taking responsibility for compliments or kindness which comes my way. i assign it to the kind nature of people which only happens to be directed arbitrarily in my direction. or, if i accept that it is a unique kindness, i feel that the thing complimented or valued is a quality not entirely my own. wrestled away or conjured or otherwise not 'innately' within me -- and thus, the compliment lingers through me like a ghost. this has always felt paradoxically selfish to me. as if, by constantly insistingly humbling myself in a kind of perverted altruism, i am taking other people's kindness & negating it, leaving it with no outlet, ruining it, taking it for granted. i will attempt to not take your kindness & appreciation for granted.

i forgive you for not being ready yet, even though i do not think you need to be sorry. it is okay. thank you for reaching out. much love.

[sw2-serials]

Anne Has To Try the Hairbrush

(you would think from a spanking like this one ^^^ that that’s all Anne would need to do!)

Anne can act rather strict at times but she’s not exactly scary.  Oh, she can give me a spanking I’d prefer to avoid and leave me plenty sore - but only because I deserve it.  And to be honest, the leather paddle is more for fun and the slipper is just to save her hand.  She’s been on the receiving end of a hairbrush or belt or even a cane but to say she’s mere hesitant to use one on me is more than an understatement.

But at some point, what could she do?

Among ‘spanking I don’t like’, they’re usually for being a brat, not listening, or not following directions (usually from not listening!).  The small ones are, anyway.  The big ones are usually for when she gives me serious advice and I repeatedly don’t follow it (because it’s hard!) or sometimes when I’m in a ‘procrastination rut’ and nothing else will get me out of it.  Maybe for embarrassing her, oh and, in case you missed it, when I needed one for saying the worst possible thing to Nicole about Megan.  (Hmm, I was thinking there weren’t many reasons but now that I count them…)

Honestly, from time to time I could really use more - a lot more (we’re working on a solution to this) - but I understand the she’s not comfortable with it and I’m not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.  Still, I know that she feels, sometimes, that she needs to suck it up and up her game.

Recently I got a set of those ‘procrastination’ spankings that was really well-earned and, frankly, long overdue.  Multiple trips over her lap to get me started and keep me going - yeow!  I was sore in a way I hadn’t been since some early bike rides!

Unfortunately, there was another issue lurking beneath my procrastinating behavior (which, as I said, I failed to bring to Anne’s attention until it had gone on far, far too long (sort of like some of the spankings I got for it!)).  My absolute inability to pull myself out of this completely unjustified stalling without help was having a strongly negative effect on my self-opinion!  (I would go into more detail but telling you all about it would probably lead to the same kind of thoughts I needed to be spanked for.)

Anne felt that, for this, she would have to resort to the hairbrush.  I deserved such a spanking (though I didn’t want it) and understood that she was quite justified; I would have even if she had suggested something more severe.  That didn’t mean I expected to enjoy it!  In fact, I felt a little bad for making Anne do it (a feeling she discourages, so I minimized it).

Let's just say that Anne didn't seem to have all that hard a time overcoming her reservations - nowhere near as hard a time as I had trying to 'be good' and hold still for her! (I just couldn't!)

She ended up having to pin my legs down and hold my arm back but she was really encouraging, saying, "You’re taking your spanking admirably well, like always, sweetheart. Just one more minute to go, then you’ve made it through yet another punishment. You can wear those red marks on your buns with so much pride."

One more minute is a long time!

Then she switched back to her hand at the end, which felt 'nicer' somehow, (even though it still hurt!) and even rubbed some of the sting out afterward!

It was more of a spanking than I'd gotten for anything else so far and not anything I was in a big hurry to repeat (though, to me truthful, it made me feel all the closer to her!). And while Anne didn't feel like she had been worrying over nothing, she did say she was a lot more comfortable with the idea now that she'd seen that it was pretty 'safe' for my bottom (especially after some... mmm... lotion at bedtime!).

I guess you would have to say that, for good or bad, our 'hairbrush trial' was a complete success!

[count-doodoo]

dooku: jedi lost: part 3: liveblog part 1

ok. time for part 3!

god the snark is 10/10. a credit to her lineage.

side note the courage of star wars authors to describe weird gross slime aliens is beyond me.

IF I'M UNDERSTANDING THE SERIES OF EVENTS CORRECTLY YES KY. YES YOU DID FAIL HER. (you can just???? adopt a kid and take her into danger constantly without even notifying next of kin in case something happens to you????)

SERIOUSLY. WHAT HAPPENED KY. WHY. (especially since he keeps insisting that dooku is lying about the jedi abandoning him. which means, if this is really ky, that he abandoned the jedi. that he's the sole decision maker responsible for depriving asajj of a support system.) either way, 10/10 for asajj immediately picking up on making fun of yoda. she's gonna meet him for the first time and be like "do i need to uproot a tree for you??"

the icon we don't deserve honestly.

OLD FRIEND?????? YOU'RE SEVENTEEN SIFO.

(although i suppose when i was seventeen i also felt quite ancient. but i wasn't going around calling people "old friend" lmao. then again i didn't have any friends quite like dooku.)

ALSO 17 YO DOOKU HAS A DISTINGUISHED REGAL BEARD

y'all i love sifo the seer but. i was enjoying their stupid childhood shenanigans WITHOUT visions! let them run around breaking into library vaults ugh. and they were being so cute before!!!! sifo brought back a cute souvenir from his mission for doo!!!! and then he BROKE IT BECAUSE VISION??? I RESENT THE ANGST!!!!

if i were dooku here i would probably once again draw my saber on lene and be like SINCE HE LEARNED TO OPEN HIS MIND??? WHAT DID YOU DRUG HIM WITH

(seriously i feel like i see a lot more love for lene in fandom than i'm feeling for her here. maybe she'll grow on me by the end of the book? but right now it really feels like she's just dragging two bright eyed boys into stupid dark side shenanigans without real care for the consequences. or maybe i'm just crying because hindsight is 20/20 and DOOKSY DESERVED BETTER 2KFOREVA.)

now that i've judged lene's take on sifo's visions, it's time to judge yoda for his.

a WARNING would not go amiss sir??? like this isn't "my vision said to commission a bunch of clones" or "my vision said to murder this guy" or something like that. this is just "hey what if we warn them of a potential natural disaster so they can prepare". what's misleading there??? no you don't want to create unjustified panic but making sure emergency systems are in place is always good especially if you have any reason to believe they may be necessary. this is like straight up due diligence??

i am kind of fascinated by this bit. i have somewhat mixed feelings about it, tbh; not sure that i'm a fan of the "he's always been obsessed with fire and damnation" take on dooku. i mean it doesn't not work, such a serious kid probably would have a relatively detached and academic take on armageddon, but... idk. reveling feels a step too far?

anyways, the other side of the mixed feelings is that i really love that end bit. "i knew the universe would endure, and if it didn't, it wouldn't be because of gods or powers beyond our understanding" is such a banger line. i'm just not sure it feels like a line that belongs /here/ exactly yk??

DOO DOVE IN TO RESCUE SI!! SI INJURED HIMSELF IN A SEA OF BACTA!!! i'm not happy he's hurt it's just these boys are so fucking precious. and stupid. doo doo doo dum dums

THE OLD FASHIONED WAY IS JUMPING OUT A WINDOW. DOOKU IS A CHAOS GREMLIN. don't let him trick you into believing otherwise. he'll act like he's the most sensible one of the disaster lineage while he's the one who became a sith and is leading a separatist movement.

[bimboficationblues]

Elden Ring spoilers, here be dragons, etc.

my take on how much I enjoyed the main bosses of the expansion. overall the DLC has some of my all-time faves of the game (as you can see, I liked more than I didn't). unfortunately the final boss is up there with Bed of Chaos in terms of an "unpleasant time" I've had in contemporary FromSoftware games, its first phase being a rehash of a base game boss with a wonkier camera (and just generally aping the design instincts of other main fights like Godfrey/Hoarah Loux), and the second phase tanks performance so evading becomes guesswork. as for the "great enemy and below" bosses, I mostly liked them - the Hippo was fun, the Demi-Human Swordmaster was really great, the new dragons were cool, I find the Furnace Golems a bit tedious but they're at least unique. most of the humanoid enemies weren't really much to write home about, but I still have some minor dungeons to explore that might change my tune.

the new levels were generally fun to explore and there wasn't anything super aggravating like the Lake of Rot. the art direction of the levels was interesting - I liked the sort of "dark reflection" of the base game's world but think there could have been a bit harder of a lean into that quality, it sometimes just felt like a remix of areas we'd already been. there's a stealth section in the Abyssal Woods; it turns out rather underwhelming, but it's initially quite unsettling. I think the new upgrade system is pretty ill-conceived by essentially making exploration into a chore checklist, though I understand that the devs had to solve a tricky design problem (how do we prevent people from just steamrolling through this with their end-of-game characters from two years ago).

there's been a lot of hate about the story/lore writing but I think that's largely unjustified - the only real decision I dislike is, again, the reuse of Radahn instead of giving the opportunity to see Godwyn in his prime (Ghostflame/holy combination boss, which would make sense given the repeated use of Ghostflame dragons throughout the DLC) or something similar. I can see how that might have been hard to pull off given Ranni's killing of Godwyn's soul, but I think they still could have cooked up a more interesting take on the Lothric/Lorian redux type boss. the expansion of Marika, Miquella, and their personal characters was pretty compelling to me, as were various revelations around factions and groups from the base game, and overall I felt that it added a lot thematically to the base game's narrative. the NPC questlines seem cool and really tie things together into Miquella, but pursuing the quests felt mostly out of the way to me - I kind of managed to lock myself out of most of them inadvertently, which was a letdown.

ultimately I think it's pretty solid, definitely more enjoyable to me than e.g. the Dark Souls III DLCs, but that's not saying much given my general feelings on that game. not quite at the level of the Bloodborne or Dark Souls expansions, which now feel crucial to the main experience - I could see myself flipping a coin on whether I would revisit this as part of a new playthrough, whereas I usually feel super-eager to seek out optional dungeons and bosses from the base game.

[msfbgraves]

(to punish him for not accepting Terry's apology earlier.)

Of all the Knights and Pawns revelations, this one is the most hurtful. By far. Punishing your own spouse—after you have raped them, with your own children only rooms away, because they didn’t forgive you the next day—by fucking someone else. Just. OMG. That’s so terrible on every way. Drunk or not that’s not the point; that’s the excuse for being so incredibly, disgustingly vindictive. Then, after, keeping the cheating hush hush for several years, and having your spouse—who by then has forgiven you, given you two more beautiful kids, and still continues to love you—find out by having someone else, an outsider, tell them at a funeral. Out of the blue. So now, another person knows, so now there’s embarrassment and shame too that this domestic issue is known outside of the family. 

I don’t think there are words enough for how disgusting and foul and most of all—incredibly cruel and deeply abusive—Terry is for doing these things. It’s beyond awful in every single way. The sheer amount of emotional distress Daniel has to go through because of this total asshole. 

I suppose Daniel would only become the perfect spouse if he had just forgiven Terry the next day after what happened that night—then Terry wouldn’t have had to go off the rails even more and punish him!! See, it’s all Daniel’s fault of course. 

🤢 🤮 

Makes me almost wish Daniel had ended up with Kumiko or Johnny or even Chozen in this verse. None of them—not even Johnny—would ever do something like this, canon included. Hell, I highly doubt canon!Kreese would stoop this low. 

(He always asked himself if he wasn't good enough, somehow, but he's not too bothered by it) Arghhhh. I know he’s not bothered by it, but just the fact that he asks himself this question in the first place is awful. Clearly the poor thing who does so much and really is a wonderful spouse is either not being shown and told how much he’s loved, how good he is—or he has some deep insecurity thanks to Terry. Maybe all at once.

(But that fear soon proves unjustified.) Uh, okay. So Terry is nice to him after spilling the beans. How kind of him. 🙄 I hate that Daniel even felt scared, that he wondered if Terry was gonna act like a dick after…well, acting like a dick. Honestly, the parts of the fic where Terry gets nasty gives me domestic violence vibes. He sucks. 

(It makes him feel lonely and unappreciated) 😭 😭 😭 Ooof that stings. Daniel of all people, even in canon, needs to be shown and told that’s he’s loved and appreciated. The moment those affirmations are taken from him…

(the puppies are BIG MAD at Daddy for that. Not. Again.) No no, puppies, by all means! He deserves it. Which makes me ask—do the older puppies know what’s up? Or do they at least suspect? Sam maybe. Even Robby considering how he’s a Mama’s boy. 

Arghhh. I just wanna give Daniel all the cuddles and snuggles. He’s too sweet for all this misery. 

Anyway, those are my thoughts. And I just wanted to say this is 1000% not hate. I very much enjoy this story, very much enjoy all the installments (even when they hurt!), and very much enjoy the world building, and still want them to be happy, curse my nasty Silverusso heart. I also very much enjoy your writing, and again, love this one in particular! So thank you very much for writing it, even if I now dislike Terry a lot lol.

Anyway, Daniel could do much better than Terry Silver here. That man will never deserve having this cutiepie in this life. Not one bit. 

Nonnie, first off, thank you for this incredibly kind and heartfelt message. Writers always want to evoke a response in people, and it's entirely fine if that response is anger at one of the characters. I do the same! So no hate, I get it <3

As for Terry - he married Daniel at gunpoint, knowing full well the boy didn't want him and the family wanted him dead. You'd need to be a certain kind of entitled and dismissive of other people's feelings to do that. Truly considerate people don't do that. They don't. So, did I expect that to never rear its head?

But he's sweet and loving and kind - yeah, because he wants to be. He wants a home, he wants genuine love, and he's arrogant enough to think that he should get it whatever he does. Oh, sure, he'll apologise, if only for himself, because he does feel guilty. But this whole marriage was begun on his turf, and he completely expects it to stay that way, because... Well, because he wants it to. And what Terry wants, Terry gets, that's how it works!

And then Daniel doesn't play. He straight up leaves, and that is not allowed. Like Michael standing up to him wasn't allowed. And he can't do anything and he feels bad and worried and vulnerable and other people are supposed to make that right for him and they're not. If he can't take Daniel, he'll take someone else that'll show him....

(Did Don LaRusso expect this would happen? He factored it in, he can't not have. But he needed a few years to get his strength back, after which he'd dispose of that Irishman and take his family home if need be... Conveniently forgetting that caro Daniele would again have to be hurt in the process!)

But now, there's love. Such profound love, because you can't marry Daniel LaRusso and not open up a well of love inside yourself you had no idea existed. Doesn't happen. And when Terry bodily feels the difference between his Danny and some other omega... after feeling the absolute shock in his house without that sweet boy.... How shaken his pups are without their Mama, how bereft he feels without his baby son, too...

Finally his ego shuts up long enough for his heart to feel "You dun fucked up, you lowlife." Nobody save John Kreese would ever tell him this and John Kreese he also doesn't always heed.

Should he have known this before? Of course. But people who understand this, in their soul, don't become Mob bosses, and if they do, they don't force people into marriage with them. In fact, a lot of people like that don't even realise what they're doing then, they simply go "huh?" when their wives put rat poison in their food.

The biggest issue now is that Terry knows he's had a change of heart - he really has - but in the ten years in between, Daniel can't know that. At any point, Terry can do something like that again and then where will he be? So in a way, it is a blessing in disguise because not only has Terry not done something violent to him again, after this happens and Daniel again decides to wait and see - he doesn't change. He doesn't have a tantrum, he doesn't try to get back at him, he doesn't get dismissive, he sincerely apologises and explains and in a very backwards way, this is actually a relief to Daniel because at least it gives him the opportunity to say: "Hey asshole, what did I ever do to you?"

And Terry is scared out of his mind because he knows, viscerally, what he stands to lose, he knows what it cost to get it back and he knows that he probably couldn't do it again.

So yes, Daniel is hurt and puppies are incensed - by now, the eldest are 16, 15 and 14 years old, Robby is nearly 13, and people at that age don't accept any excuses. They haven't had to compromise and they definitely don't understand why anyone should have to. If Mama inexplicably doesn't murder Daddy in his bed, they're not letting him get away with it. Sammy, Yasmin and Eli remember very well how Mama and Daddy had a huge fight and had to go away forever to make up. And they remember the feeling of being so upset when Mama was. No, in their way, they're tearing Terry a new one. For Daddy to endanger their safe haven, they won't have it and there's four or them and only one of him.

[kihteyu]

Whatre your thoughts on amitus arc?

(I'm assuming that was meant to say Amity so sorry if I'm wrong)

Amity’s whole character at the beginning was honestly pretty interesting to me. We’re introduced to her and immediately learn that she’s the stereotypical bully character and we aren’t meant to like her. However, it was hard to think about her anger towards Luz and Willow over what they did at Hexside as unjustifiable. I mean, I’d also be pretty mad if someone cheated at something I’ve been practicing hard at and making me look bad. Amity’s bullying was not okay, but it was hard to feel bad for her when she was the one being antagonized in that moment.

Then, almost the same exact thing happens again with the witch’s duel at the Covention except now we actually get to see just how upset over it Amity is. She isn’t just mad, she’s making it obvious that she’s the one who feels bullied and Luz gets to see it as well. I think that was probably one of the most important moments for not only Amity to understand that Luz isn’t trying to hurt her, but for Luz and us as the audience to realize that Amity might have something more to her than just being a bully. Then of course we find out about the Blight parents and Amity’s motives, and while it doesn’t justify her bullying, it does make her a little more sympathetic of a character. She’s just a kid being manipulated by her parents and made to do something she doesn’t have to.

My main problem, however, (and maybe I’m forgetting something) is that Amity was WAY too harsh on Willow. Her parents just said that they couldn’t be friends, not that she had to bully and berate her for the rest of their lives. Maybe it was to fit in with Boscha and Skara more or whatever, but it just felt kind of unnecessary? She could have just stopped talking to Willow and left it at that but she went out of her way to make Willow feel terrible all the time. Even if she ended up being just a minor bully who said mean things in front of her friends, it would still be more believable than when her first appearance had been her absolutely digging into Willow when they were completely alone and thought no one was watching. It almost felt like Amity actually liked bullying Willow.

I do wish that we could have seen more of Amity and Willow actually patching up their friendship, since the bullying was how we were introduced to both of them in the first place. Instead it was just Willow saying the mindscape incident was a start but they “weren’t friends yet” to them being back to being besties almost. You can use the whole “well a lot of time passed between then” excuse but the problem is that we don’t get to see that time passing, which is kind of a vital part for viewers. But don’t get me wrong, this is one point that im entirely blaming Disney for tho, not the writers. I’m hoping that if given the chance, the crew would have actually showed us more of that development.

I do think, for the most part, Amity’s redemption arc was done pretty well. She’s definitely a different person in S3 than she was in S1 and there’s a clear line of events that happened that made her that way. It’s really just that one aspect of her that I don’t understand why it had to happen in the first place- the bullying. It didn’t make sense to me. There was really no reason for it and it kinda just makes Amity seem like a genuinely bad person at the beginning. I hate to bring up Zuko’s redemption in ATLA cause I feel like everyone does that but it really is such a well written arc that its hard not to. With Zuko, we can see that he has a messed up goal but right off the bat, we know and can sort of sympathize with his reason for doing it. He’s been banished from his home and the only way he can return and make his father proud is to capture the Avatar. We might not agree with it, but we can understand it. With Amity, we don’t really understand why she was being a bully in the first place, even after finding out about her parents, and combined with the fact that we never got to see the resolving tension between her and her bully victim does make her redemption fall a little flat.

I LOVE Amity. I’m glad she got redeemed and I do think she deserved it. I just wish it had been a little more fleshed out than it was. Even if they threw in a dumb reason for her turning to bullying, it would still have been better than no reason at all.

In my head, I've been justifying it as Amity trying to emulate her mother, which makes sense, but if that's the reason I feel like it wasn't as obvious as it should have been at the beginning. We don't even get introduced to Odalia until well beyond the point we're meant to start caring about Amity.

[oodlyenough]

What did you think of TLOU ep5 and the changes to the game? I honestly thought they did things better in the show.

Honestly same, I really liked it. This segment of the game is fun to play but much of the story would be lacking on screen without that gameplay, and the action would've felt/looked too unrealistic on tv I think... like, Joel and co escaping a gazillion-strong army and infinite infected lol.

This got really long so it's under a cut. At the end I talk a bit about tlou2 spoilers although it's marked:

I thought Sam and Henry were great and I liked the changes that were made there, although I have to admit I'd actually forgotten the finer details of their story, eg I had forgotten there was more tension between Henry and Sam in the game. I don't mind them replacing it. I also thought Sam being Deaf and the use of ASL brought an interesting element to their story that wasn't in the game. I thought Sam and Ellie's bonding was adorable. Also... henry... 👀

In my ep 4 post I was worried maybe they'd make Henry somehow "deserving" of his fate, vs game Henry being an innocent. And I suppose they kind of did make him guilty... but it was an extremely sympathetic reason VS Kathleen being utterly unreasonable (more on that below) so I was fine with it in the end.

I gotta say even though I knew it was likely Sam and Henry would have the same fate as their game counterparts, Ellie's "my blood is medicine" got me fhklghldfkg I was like well that makes no sense but I'll allow it" bc I wanted poor Sam to be ok :( Ellie sis I feel u.

My #unpopular opinion, I think, is that I don't really like the angle the show is taking of "the infected are still themselves inside". I guess it's meant to be part of the body horror and stuff. Maybe I'm just being a game purist. It just seems a bit goofy to me and I can't really embrace it lol. Reminds me of the James portions of TWDG s4 which I fucking hated.

The action sequence at the end was incredible imo, felt simultaneously very game-like (Leo pointing meme @ the sniper) while improving adapting the source material well. The infected surging out of the ground, the Bloater, etc, were all really well done I thought. Also the child clicker omg hats off to the baby gymnast bc her movements were creepy as shit.

Joel nailing every shot made me laugh a bit because I fucking suck as the sniper LOL I always get everyone killed sooo many times.

Probably the most contentious bit of the episode is Kathleen. I think she served her purpose well enough -- I've seen plenty of complaints that she wasn't compelling, or that she was too cartoonishly evil, and then I think about how in the game, Philly is just run by an-entirely-men-only military armed force who hunts down Joel+Ellie and every other "tourist" with completely unjustified determination because... uh.... because ? (I get they kill tourists for resources. Surely Joel, Ellie, Henry and Sam are not worth the resources expended to track them down across the fuckin' city lmao. It only works because video game.) So obviously the show had to do SOMETHING else

Anyway, I think Kathleen mostly worked. I don't think she was sympathetic at all but I don't think she needed to be -- whatever sympathy you might briefly feel about her brother is pretty quickly extinguished by her saying she knows he'd want forgiveness but she doesn't give a shit, and then again later by her being like "lmao fuck them kids". I also thought casting Melanie Lynskey to use her softest soccer mom voice while saying heinous shit was great... I feel like the "well she's not threatening" stuff is totally off base lmao I don't know how anyone could draw that conclusion tbh. Are entitled """""nice"""" white women leading a lynch mob not terrifying...??

TLOU2 discussion/spoilers:

Obviously the natural comparison here is Kathleen and Ellie and/or Abby. I think her story hits a lot of those similar notes -- she's blinded by her revenge to her own destruction and the destruction of those around her, etc. So I understand where people are drawing those connections. I don't think it's really, like, fair/accurate to Ellie or Abby to say that Kathleen is exactly the same. I don't even think it's a case of "well if we spent time in Kathleen's shoes we'd understand", a la what TLOU2 did/wanted to do with Abby. Neither Abby nor Ellie mobilize and jeopardize their entire community to exact their revenge -- the former Fireflies come by choice, and so do Dina/Tommy/Jesse. Clearly the collateral damage of their revenge is a huge part of the game, but Ellie and Abby also don't have any "Fuck them kids" scenes where they expressly want to murder children as a punishment for their guardian's sins, lmao. The closest you get is Ellie threatening Lev, which is the bottom of the barrel low point for her character and then she turns it around in the end.

So... I don't know. I mean yes obviously Kathleen serves as a bit of foreshadowing or a "parallel" or whatever, but I do think it's inaccurate to pretend it's hypocritical to judge Kathleen but like Abby or Ellie lol.

My final general thought/slight criticism is that the show isn't especially subtle. I've become a bit more sympathetic to television's lack of subtlety over the years as it has uhhh become clearer to me how much an audience will just straight up miss stuff, lmao, and I think part of the stuff that feels un-subtle feels that way to me as someone who already knows the story intimately and perhaps doesn't read that way to a first time viewer.

[baeshijima]

I NEED TO WATCH THE DONGHUA i told myself that i will... and never got around it 😭 i could read the entire novel in like 10 days including a one day break (haha... blackwater arc...) and yet i cant get myself to watch a single episode 😞 duality of a man

hualian is rly just having their little love story full of yearning and pining whle everyone else around them suffer </3 they didn't want us to be happy for too long i fear. we had to feel xie lian's pain or something because that man didnt catch a break in his life either 😭😭

YEAH RIGHT like i understand he xuan. i really do. i would be absolutely furious if someone just stole the life i was meant to have?? not to mention the terrible TERRIBLE fate his family and he xuan himself suffered... no revenge would be enough ngl </3 which really makes me wonder if he felt any kind of true satisfaction after doing it??? the man that ruined his life is dead and his life purpose has been fulfilled, but also sqx suffered a LOT because of that and... man he was innocent at the end of the day!! how do you move on from that!! especially since his relationship with sqx was already so complicated...

it makes me think how swd and hx are kinda similar honestly AAAA moving past the obvious that both are related to water (and funnily enough both sink ships but for different reasons), they both were willing to do a lot for people they care about... swd with the entire fate switching thing to ensure sqx lives a good life, hx with all the things he did during his mortal life to try to help his family... and they both kept things hidden from sqx 😔

DONT EVEN REMIND ME OF THIS AUGHHHH "you called the wrong person" man do you want me to cry. i think yes HAHSHSH IT PAINS ME SO BADLYYY absolutely heartbreaking moment, heart shattered into many pieces dont talk to me im unwell!! i haTE IT THEREEE

THE ART IS SO PRETTY BUT IT HURTSSSS literally cries and evaporates. sqx come on come here im gonna give you a hug MANY HUGS HE NEEDS THEM!!!! need to have a talk with mxtx because he went through all that FOR WHAT

... 😃😃 i do not wish to be a part of this symphony bye bye! count me out! i need to know what inspired that person to do this and have a nice talk why would they do that 😭😭😭 theres nothing sparkles dolphins happiness about beefleaf only despair anguish suffering and my tears

PLS i watched the donghua first when it first released on netflix like a year or two ago and then discovered there was a whole set of novels for the series and my life hasnt been the same since 🧍‍♀️ but yes same here... i really should just set aside time to reread the novel and refresh everything despite all the tears i most definitely will be shedding for the characters ;w;

fr 😭 honestly very much in love with the audio and art choice for the hualian drama tho bc it has both that romantic devotion of hua cheng + xie lian coming to terms with the fact he wanted this, as well as that eerie feeling that smth isnt quite right mainly with hua cheng and his condition + the dark stylistic choice of the art... huhu love it so much .... also qi rong was so 😭😭 he was such a menace i was crying

NO BC??? he xuan having to watch all of that happen to him and his family, watch someone else take the life meant for him, as his whole world comes crashing down from the unjustified deaths of his family and then himself, and then having to watch that person who ended up living his life be so carefree and innocent not knowing what it cost to live as such??? man. i genuinely cannot even begin to fathom how much pain and anguish and grief is in him. and then growing to care for that person, or at least the unyielding kindness in which they showed, must have been another blow to his grief and everything he stood for ;w;

and gosh my baby shi qingxuan basically being the collateral in this scenario and still being willing to accept death as punishment despite not being the one at fault, but if it meant atoning for the sins /him/ and his brother committed to hx and his family then he would go through with it.... and him rather choosing the option to sacrifice himself and switch his fate for one of the other souls as opposed to beheading shi wudu, arguing that its better to live a worse life then die a good life while swd is trying to get him to commit the alternative option bc a life without his brother is a life worse than death itself and he would rather die than see sqx become what would have been, only to switch up after and try to take them both down together bc he was convinced sqx wouldnt be able to live 😭

AND THEN when hx literally um. yknow. to swd arm to separate him from sqx while. um. yknow. despite wanting them both to suffer in some way, but ended up showing that, in his own way, he didnt want sqx to be in pain. sqx screaming crying and basically throwing up definitely moved him even tho he said he wouldnt be moved, and it showed esp during that scene 😭 i think swd picked up on that too bc he started laughing and taunting hx ("what are you laughing at?"//"i laugh at you, thinking you have the upper hand!") into killing him so that sqx wouldnt have to, betting on the fact he could create a third option by using the care hx undeniably has for sqx... he may have been a shitty person, but swd was a great brother ;w;;

also the fact that hx was literally in a lose-lose situation bc he gave them two options and told them they could only pick from those, only to lose composure when swd tried to take both him and sqx down, then got taunted by swd laughing at his misfortune and getting the last laugh while sqx is desperately begging him to stop talking and provoking hx, ultimately leading into hx killing swd himself, and then having to see sqx lose his will to live.... ourgh.... and dont even get me started on the fact he couldnt even move on as a ghost despite fulfilling his meaning for existence (the revenge), and how sqx is basically whats kept him tethered down but he can only watch from the sidelines as sqx lives his life... they shouldve just talked gdi.......

swd: he (sqx) really knew nothing from beginning to end! hx: that's why he's even more hateful! why doesn't he know?!

;w;;

hx: i gave you a chance!

the chance(s) in question probably not even being made clear to sqx and it was just hx assuming that sqx would know it was a "it's me or your brother" kinda choice but each to their own hx ;w;

swd: ...but qingxuan's crime is not punishable by death, you... hx: then who among my family of five is guilty? who should die?

WHEN I SAY THIS BROKE ME I MEAN THIS SHATTERED ME !!! swd saying sqx doesnt deserve to die and hx retaliating with the "then did my entire deserve their unjustifiable deaths?!" will never not destroy me and having heard it in the ad... its a whole other type of depression on god

hx: do you have anything to say? sqx: ...i want to die. hx: dream on.

FUCK THEMMMM I HATE IT HERE WHY CANT WE HAVE NICE THINGS WHY DO THEY HAVE TO BE SO TRAGIC WHY COULDNT HX JUST FULFIL HIS REVENGE BY MARRYING SQX BC WE ALL KNOW THAT WOULD PISS SWD OFF THE MOST BUT NO THEY HAD TO GO THROUGH THIS ARC AND THE WORST PART IS ALL THEIR ACTIONS ARE JUSTIFIABLE TO WHAT THEY WENT THROUGH AND OURGHGDFG

laughing through the pain like genuinely. it was so foul to have the hualian teehee but also not really teehee but still very much teehee scene and then go straight into beefleaf depression what is life what is the point of life why am i here just to suffer scene...

(we ignore the one para of hualian compared to the beefleaf essay bc hualian is a whole other bag i am not ready to open with everything they have going on 🧍‍♀️ i need another five years at least to mentally and emotionally recover from the blackwater arc audio drama 🧍‍♀️)

[inklores]

──SPOILERS FOR PDTG CHAPTER 6

the meta below contains a reply to a wonderful comment made on the ao3 mirror of chapter 6 that i wanted to explore further but once again, major spoiler alert!

"nothing cuts like a scalpel. or a mother."

i wanted the depiction of a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship to be more raw so i felt that this two-sentence summary was pretty succinct. i went back and forth with developing xo's mother, including how their conversation would deviate and be manipulated by what is very clearly her disapproval, envy, and secret disdain for her daughter and the choices she made in her life. i was very heavily influenced by the line in barbie: "We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they've come."

and while that quote is so tearjerking and heartwarming and pure in a sense, my mind kind of went along with the idea of "what if the mother didn't WANT to stand still?" i guess that's what framed the riffs about aspirations and i hope it's alluded to julieta having had dreams that she had to hang up in order to raise two kids. especially having xo in her 30s (with glossed-over birth complications), it was kind of the nail in the coffin which—while unjustified—explains why she treats xo more of a chore or a laborious entity. and considering the bits and pieces of xo's life that i've dropped, she was seen as a daddy's girl, she got pregnant before marriage but was still able to balance being an accomplished surgeon and mother (though she wrestles with that confidence a LOT), i definitely think there's a bit of jealousy on julieta's end.

writing some of those nasty snipes from a mother to her DAUGHTER was definitely difficult but i like to think of it as a representation of how the apple really does fall far from the tree. it's cruel that a turbulent mother like julieta still has her child while xo was robbed off that. i also love torturing my ocs but yeah teehee :)

stephen variant was such a fun little scene to kick off xo's surgical life and while he is still the arrogant and ambitious guy that earth-199999's strange was pre-accident, he's still a good guy at his core and was certainly there for xo during the harder parts of her life <3

THE MIGUEL SCENE AS WELL HAS A SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART. xo's father, captain solano, is indeed alive in his universe (atsv didn't indicate whether miguel endured the loss of a police captain close to him... food for thought). also not sure if we'll get more of his backstory in btsv but i figured it was a good place to play around in and see what a spider does when (or IF) he ever clocks out. knowing that miguel survives off of guilt and bears many crosses, i wondered how that could be extended to his past and especially earth-928 xo. i briefly allude to this during the scene where he hijacks 510-xo's phone call, but i imagine he was a bystander to some of the fights that his xo and julieta had before her death and that hopeless pain is felt even more by watching history repeat itself. and clearly, with how completely broken the 928-solanos are without xo, i can imagine miguel feels culpable for witnessing that phone call and having dinner with them anyway.

this chapter is very special to me for multiple reasons:

1) it delves more into xo's backstory, career, platonic friendships, and her damaged relationship with what's left of her family. (also meeting victor for the first time but there's obviously some gritty distance between them!)

2) there are distinct cut-offs that are explored with 510-xo and 928-miguel's lives. she has the marriage and the child, and what miguel believes is the "what-could-have-been" ending while miguel is stuck with the "never-knowing." however, the complications of either being gone (a xiomara without a miguel and a miguel without a xiomara), are very different, and it's prevalent in this chapter.

3) just the mother-daughter mess in general 🥲 the fact that julieta is evidently more damaged WITHOUT her daughter than she is with her and it's just ajdfsbjhdfbsj

i'm sure there's more i can talk about this chapter and how xo's dysfunctional relationship with her mother is influenced by the relatively unstable/intricate relationship with the male figures in her life, ALONG with how it affected her own experience with motherhood and marriage but my laptop is quite literally at 1% 🥲

i promise this isn't gonna be a regular thing with my pdtg updates but i just had to explore this chapter a bit more <3 thank you to anyone who read this!!

[2shebears]

Hey! I have a ton of thoughts on this but I'm also just a rando who saw your post — you tagged it #judaism so it was certainly going to end up in my ecosystem. Feel free to read or not. My bona fides are that I'm a student of international law and indigenous studies writing a massive paper on Israel/Palestine and that I'm a well-educated Jew who spends lots of time online.

When news and activism become social media trends, it can be really hard to talk to people with different knowledge bases and backgrounds than you. Even highly uninformed people tend to feel extremely defensive of their opinions, to the point of searching for sources that play to their confirmation bias and strengthen the unitary narrative they were fed by tiktok/tumblr/instagram. If you want to have a productive dialogue, I strongly encourage you not to come at your Jewish friend with the presupposition that she's brainwashed and that your third eye is open, especially when you keep admitting you know next to nothing about Israel/Palestine.

If you want your friends to be safe and happy, including Jewish friends, I encourage you to work on how you treat and think about Jews. I know that's an intense statement but please don't click away.

You tagged this vent with #judaism and mentioned that "Her family is pretty heavily Jewish, the kind that teaches their kids Israel’s in the right." Instead of saying "her family is pro-Israel" (which you don't seem certain of? It sounds like you don't like her dad and are assuming he's pro-Israel? Idk, at 16 I had very different political opinions from my family and I'd feel so shit if my friends implied I was just eating up what they fed me) you chose to say "Her family is Jewish — the bad kind of Jews." You tagged this with #propaganda and #indoctrination when she didn't even say anything incorrect. A bit naive, to be sure, to think that Israel's warning system has any way to really help Palestinians without cell phones or internet, or that people can evacuate in time. But she's not incorrect that the warning system is in place, nor is she wrong that Hamas is a terrorist group that brutalized Israelis and wants all Jews dead. And I can't stress this enough — it is way more naive and way more shocking that you (an adult) have adopted your aggressive pro-Palestine stance seemingly without knowing about the October 7 massacre.

To be clear, I don't support this war. It's an extremely violent militarized response to a surprise massacre. I was around during 9/11 and the Iraq war, and in my earliest memories I was extremely devastated by that war too. But I can only imagine how I'd have felt if I saw the Iraq war happening without having ever heard of 9/11. This seems to be what you're experiencing right now, and I feel for you. You probably feel gaslit by the world when you see that anyone supports Israel. Of course this seems unimaginably terrible and unjustifiable if you think Palestinians are being killed "For no reason other than Israel not liking them." But when you ask for background info in your tags, I think it's helpful to know that on October 7, 2023, during a sacred holiday where observant Jews don't use electricity, members of Hamas as well as plainclothes Gazans and members of the press crossed the border into Israel and killed more Jews than have been killed in a single day since the Holocaust. Hamas used expensive technology including heavy weaponry, tanks, and paragliders to attack from land and air. If you're the kind of person who thinks Jewish sources are biased (many goyish leftists seem to inherently distrust us), you can look at the United Nations' own statements on the brutal murder, rape, immolation, and kidnapping that occurred on that day. Many pictures and Hamas-filmed videos are available but I wouldn't recommend looking for them.

Now, upon just having learned of this massacre, you told your friend:

"if Israel had never started bulldozing, massacring, and invading Palestine, the chances are so much lower that Hamas would’ve ever done those things."

Do you know that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005? While Israel has continued aggressive militaristic practices and certainly has immeasurable impact on Gazan life pre October 7, and certainly has invaded/encroached upon the West Bank, it sounds like you think Israel has been bulldozing Gaza leading up to Oct 7 (as opposed to bulldozing Gaza as part of its violent response). And since you were all up in arms about your friend "justifying a bombing," do you realize you're justifying the October 7th massacre with information that isn't even true? (I also don't think your friend justified it so much as provided pretty accurate context that was important to her in response to your blatant fabrication that Palestinians are dying "For no reason other than Israel not liking them.")

You're talking to your friend but you're coming into the discussion with your mind made up 100%. I know that's human nature sometimes. And again I am against this war and want a peaceful solution. But it's pretty scary to see you, an adult, ask tumblr how you can browbeat a child into believing your narrative of events, when you seem to have no idea what is happening or what has happened. After witnessing the suffering of Palestinians, you jumped to a moral narrative of "Jews bad and brainwashing their children" instead of "this war is bad and I want peace."

Your Jewish friend, like nearly every other Jew on the planet, has lived in fear since October and has seen countless snuff films of her own people. Half the world's Jews live in Israel and most of us know folks who live there. Something like 90% of the world's Jews are in some way in support of Israel or Zionism, not because we're brainwashed or bloodthirsty, but because Zionism is our landback movement, and is part of our religion's 2,000+ year history of longing for our homeland after exile. Not all Jews support displacing Palestinians, and far from all Jews support the current war unconditionally, given Netanyahu's miserable approval rate among Israelis and unpopularity abroad. (Bibi Netanyanu is the Israeli Prime Minister whose cruel policies are an essential piece of this equation.)

You and your Jewish friend can both expand each other's perspectives if you actually have a conversation about this, and if you're both willing to listen. From what I can tell, you're the one unwilling to listen to her, not even stopping for a second to process the enormous information that we were massacred before jumping to tell your friend we probably did something to deserve it. You are almost 10 years older than this person. If you want her to trust you or see you as someone she can talk about hard political issues with, you can't treat her and her entire people as brainwashed ghouls, and you need to understand that individual Jews have real feelings about this and we are all traumatized from October 7. Many of us know people who died or who were taken hostage on October 7. There are still more than 130 hostages in Gaza including babies.

Finally, while I do think NGOs are playing a vital role in this conflict and have donated to Palestinian causes, I finally want to address your final snark to your Jewish friend:

"the bundle is supporting the CHILDREN of Palestine. Not Hamas. Nowhere near Hamas."

So you've learned about Hamas, maybe before this, maybe from your friend (I am surprised you don't know about October 7, so I don't want to assume your background, and I don't mean that in a bad way). Hamas is the democratically elected government of Gaza (though they were elected in the mid 00s and haven't held elections since, so while they were democratically elected they've stayed in power through authoritarian means). They are supposed to manage Gazan life, infrastructure, education.

Do you know where Hamas got money for its advanced operations, its weapons, its luxurious lifestyle while its people starve? Where it gets materials for the tens of thousands of bombs and rockets it has been shooting into Israel for the last twenty years? Aid money. The reason you've seen so much direct aid like GoFundMes is that traditional aid is very hard to administer in Gaza. Hamas takes legitimate aid (and as Gaza's elected government that's not hard for it to do) and funnels it into its mission of destroying Jews and Israel (and its mission of supporting its own higher leadership in style). I do believe Israel is very responsible for the miserable conditions in Gaza. But Hamas is another enormously culpable party that has misdirected aid for decades. I still give, and I think it's best to give even if the money can be misdirected — but did you know that before talking down to your Jewish friend (who probably does know that already)?

The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund does have a statement on how it keeps money from falling into the hands of Hamas, which is reassuring. Many charities don't, and many charities are aligned with Hamas (which makes sense since it's the official government). So despite some controversies in its history, PCRF seems not terribly close with Hamas. But I don't think you should feel relieved that you got this right by accident; responsible activism means actually looking up who you're supporting.

It makes me sad that you're worried about your Jewish friend growing up in a web of lies when you went after her with no knowledge base and tried to push her into agreeing with you. You say you want her to form her own opinions yet want strategies to get her to agree with you. You're another one of the adults in her life and it would be great if your Jewish friend could talk to a non-Jew about Israel/Palestine safely.

Books:

The Israel-Palestine Conflict: a History by James Gelvin

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe (I think "ethnic cleansing" is the actual war crime that describes what Israel did to Palestinians in the nakba... this is possibly a hot take but "genocide," the worst war crime imaginable, is being used as holocaust inversion and to make the only Jewish state look like the most evil state on earth... IMO!!)

Palestinian Identity by Rashid Khalidi (this is an incredible book and needs to be read by all the people who deny that Palestinians are a distinct group — but it also conveys pretty neatly that there was never an independent Palestinian state, and identity as a distinct people called Palestinians as we politically understand it today solidified in the 1970s well after Israel was founded)

Webpages and articles:

UN History of the Question of Palestine

Wikipedia: History of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict (this is an actually really well-researched article, don't knock it cuz it's Wikipedia)

Reuters History of the Conflict

Other basic points I would prob bring up if we were discussing this in person

1948 is not that recent for a state to be founded — tiktok really likes using this factoid to make Israel sound like some artificial modern construction as if states themselves aren't artificial modern constructions

Indigenous peoples are oppressed by the nation state system and the state system is designed to prop up the interests of western states; I personally don't think the modern state of Israel is good for Jews or Palestinian Arabs

Non-Jews can become Israeli citizens and about 20% are Arab Muslims (mostly Palestinian) and they vote and participate in society

Most Israeli Jews are middle eastern (Americans seem to imagine Jews all look like Scarlett Johansson so I feel like this is important, especially as a Jew of color myself) and they can't "go back to Europe" because they were never from there and because they were ethnically cleansed from Egypt, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, Libya etc. and cannot go back there either

I know this may come off as a lot and I do wish you the best, I just felt like so many of the things in your post deserved answering. I would be happy to continue this as a discussion if you're interested.

Vent time!

Hey all.

So, I know I said in my first post that I’m not comfortable with heavy/political topics, but I really need to vent.

I sent a friend the link to the YouTube video for that Palestine bundle. She wasn’t the only one I sent it to, but she was the first to respond;

“Sorry, I stand with Israel but seems like a good deal otherwise.”

So of course I was like “with all due respect, why are you supporting GENODICE?” and she said it was because she;

“[stood] with anyone whose agenda was eradicating terrorism.”

Me, not knowing the full details of the Palestine situation, but knowing enough to know that didn’t sound right, said;

“So innocent Palestinians are terrorists then? People who’ve lost their homes, their family, their lives? For no reason other than Israel not liking them?”

“No the terrorist group Hamas.”

Before I could think of an adequate comeback, she continued;

“Who pillaged, massacred, raped, and reaked havoc onto Israeli citizens on october 7th with full intentions to cause harm and destruction to the Jewish race.”

Me, having not heard about that, was startled long enough for her to send one last message;

“And my heart goes out to all citizens of any country who gets caught in acts of war, but they were warned beforehand when Israel bombed those places. Who even does that in a war?? A country and government who actually cares about its citizens and their enemy’s citizens. They only bombed those places to reach the underground bunkers and tunnels that Hamas was and still is using to hold weapons of mass destruction which would be used on thousands of Israeli citizens with the sole goal to kill Jews.”

…

Yeah. She justified a bombing.

It took me a while to come up with a decent response to that, and I’m not even sure it’s the most appropriate one, but my feelings were scrambled and I wasn’t quite sure how to convince my friend (who’s only 16 by the way) that terrorism doesn’t justify bombing a place with innocent people, but I tried;

“I’m not defending Hamas at all, they can go to whatever hell they believe in. What I’m saying is that they’re not the only ones doing that. There’s many sides to every war, and if Israel had never started bulldozing, massacring, and invading Palestine, the chances are so much lower that Hamas would’ve ever done those things. I’m not gonna force you to believe me. I’m just gonna end with: the bundle is supporting the CHILDREN of Palestine. Not Hamas. Nowhere near Hamas. It’s supporting the children who never should have to go through the things they did, who are hurting and starving because some adults believe it’s okay to go to war.”

She hasn’t replied. Her notifications are silenced. I don’t know what to do.

Her family is pretty heavily Jewish, the kind that teaches their kids Israel’s in the right (at least on her dad’s side, and that’s who she stays with mostly, which is a problem ‘cause he’s not a good dude and shouldn’t have custody of her, but her mom has mental/neurological issues, so he used that in court (I think, I was only 11 at the time)), and I’m now worried that she’s going to get dragged into things that’ll seriously hurt her.

Mom warned me against having this debate with her again until she’s older and more independent, since living with her dad’s made her sheltered + naive and she’s not old enough to deal with the idea that her family’s been telling lies her whole life.

She’s right, of course, but I’m just so worried now. I don’t want my awesome friend to be brainwashed by this bullshit propaganda. I don’t want her to stop talking to me because she thinks I’m supporting terrorism or something. I want her to form her own opinions and live her youth freely without her closest family shoving lies down her throat.

She and her mom stayed with my family when the whole custody battle happened, and our moms have been friends since, which is how I got back in touch with her a year or two ago. As such, I feel almost a sisterly responsibility as the older one to make sure she’s doing okay/staying safe/etc.

Just.

Argh.

Why is life like this?

Why do people support genocide and try to get their kids supporting it too?

What do they think that results in? Aside from a whole generation of kids who’ll grow up and realize their parents were liars, not to be trusted?

I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. I just want all my friends to be safe and happy. Is that too much to ask?

[magniloquent-raven]

as a kali stan first and a stranger things fan like....fourth, i have a lot to say about el's s4 plotline. and most of it is not complimentary 😅

i loved s2 ep7 okay. i know it's been criticized to hell and back, and i get that people think it killed the pacing of the season or whatever, but i fucking adore it. and the complaint i will never understand about it, is that it didn't have a point. or that kali was a superfluous character. because that's bullshit and i will not stand for it.

put simply, the lost sister was about el, someone who's been stripped of her identity since birth, trying to figure out who she is. it's the resolution to a personal arc that they did, in fact, set up earlier.

she literally. spends the episode travelling through her own past trying to find answers. starting with her birth family. she tries to see where she fits there, and finds that she doesn't. she's been hurt too much, she's been shaped by the trauma she's endured, she isn't the blank slate idea of a missing child that her mother went looking for. so she moves on. she isn't jane ives, so who is she.

the lab is where she was raised, so she goes to someone who understands that. who understands eleven. her anger. the pain she's felt. and kali teaches her to embrace that. but as much as kali wants to connect with her, loves her like her mother loved her, they run into the same problem, in reverse. because kali has made her pain her whole life, and el doesn't want to let go of her friends. she doesn't want eleven to define her future. so she leaves kali too. goes back to hawkins, and the family she chose for herself.

and she needed to make that journey. she needed to know who she was to know that she's grown. it's important to her as a character. not to mention the utilitarian plot purpose of her using kali's advice when she closes the gate at the end of the season.

but what does this have to do with s4? everything, babes. everything.

because not only did they do a weird retcon where el gets the "use anger to fuel your powers" advice when she was like, six, from some crusty white boy, but they framed it like her being angry was a bad thing. using anger causes harm to others, using anger made her lash out violently. it's only when, at the end of the flashbacks, she uses a memory of love instead that she's able to tap into a greater power.

which.

okay.

okay......her learning to harness the power of love is all well and good, i think it could've actually been used really well, but. it's a flashback? it's not part of her growing past the person she was in captivity, it's a fucking flashback. like. i cannot stress enough how much it bothers me that the entire drawn out flashback subplot is basically just "well no one liked that episode in s2 so we're just gonna....give them a re-do. but worse."

it either ignores kali's part in the story completely or reframes her as a villain, because her ideology is being paralleled in this guy who gets his jollies torturing animals. and i don't know which option i hate more.

and i cannot get over how much better it could have been if el had consciously run into a roadblock trying to continue using kali's advice while building the kind of life that kali rejected for herself. she keeps trying to use her anger, but finds she can't reach it anymore because she's not the scared little girl she was when it first made her feel powerful. OR it starts to conflict with the quiet life she wants to have. either way it's building off of a lesson she's already learned, and adapting to fit her trajectory as a character. she starts to struggle with her anger, not because kali's advice was bad but because she's grown past it.

like, it wouldn't have even required that much change to the season? el getting bullied and then lashing out violently, because it's what she knows? yeah. and then it starts to ruin her life. not because her anger in the past was unjustified, but because it's incompatible with her attempts to let go and be a healthy well-adjusted person.

i know that canonically el didn't remember any of the shit that happened with 001 so her receiving the same advice twice and not realizing it isn't like, a plot hole or anything, i just think it's sloppy storytelling.

[dreamteamspace]

They really went there huh

/rp (good lord I rly hyperfixated on this essay huh)

torture tw, abuse tw, manipulation tw, gaslighting tw

So the Dream SMP built a character, once maybe morally gray, who slipped straight into villany with little to no desire to change, and willing to cause a LOT of pain to get his way. Despite this, he doesn’t question what he does enough to stop, justifying his actions with a good intent that doesn’t come close to justifying what he’s done.

C!Dream is unremorseful of what he’s done, he’s quite literally manipulated and gaslit (like actually, not in the way everyone keeps throwing the word around) c!Tommy, almost drove him to take his last life- like, jesus christ. That’s not even to mention blowing up L’Manburg three times, encouraging c!Wilbur, wanting the discs JUST to have power over c!Tommy, etc.

SO, he gets thrown in a box for it so he doesn’t hurt anybody anymore, making his own hubris his downfall (narrative consequence my beloved). This leads us to a good finale - the bad guy, the person who’s caused objectively the most pain and destruction, is now unable to do so anymore, taken down by the person whom he tried to weaken. It is also revealed he was planning on blackmailing and threatening pretty much everyone, but now everyone gets their stuff back.

Good, right?

Especially for the finale, yeah! The message of the finale is good, c!Tommy manages to escape his abuser with nothing more but his clothes on his back and fights his way back to c!Tubbo and his home.

He doesn’t let his trauma (which is still very present!) let him become a terrible person (arguably the way that c!Dream DID let his frustrations make him a terrible person, c!Tommy, despite bearing quite a heavy weight, recognizes when he begins to turn that way and actively works against it).

It shows that while alone, c!Tubbo and c!Tommy were outfought by Dream, but because c!Tommy went the length to ask for help (which he didn’t even really seem to be relying on actually showing up), he wins! It truly is a good message.

C!Tommy escapes his abuser and manipulator, refuses and fights his trauma to not become someone he doesn’t want to be, and defeats his abuser by asking for help and receiving it, even more than he thought he’d get. He refuses to play c!Dream’s “game”, refuses till the very last moment to let c!Tubbo die, to surrender and say goodbye to him.

So, great! Good finale! C!Dream The Villain is boxed like a fish in a prison of, quite literally, his own making. It sent a good message to people. C!Tommy wasn’t expected to forgive him and did, in fact, axe him down twice, causing c!Dream to finally fall from his high horse.

Most media would stop at this point, say the villain is now defeated and never show them again, or have them come back another one or two seasons later, escaped and seemingly unharmed and worse than ever.

Alternatively, there’s a throwaway line, (or, in good media, a genuine, reasonable backstory, complete with remorse and bad role models and complicated situations), that allows the villain to be redeemed.

In GOOD redemption arcs (See: Zuko from avatar tbh), the villain was already never quite as heartless, or stressed their good intent, or felt remorse for what they felt they “had to do”. Then, ideally, the villain takes a looooong time adjusting their habits, regretting their actions and changing until they’re considered redeemed.

Not on the Dream SMP, though.

They don’t stop at c!Dream’s defeat.

He doesn’t dissapear off-screen and is never spoken of again. His life continues on, everyone’s does, just like it would in reality. He doesn’t magically want to become a better person, far from it. So no redemption. But he doesn’t dissapear, either.

They go on to, slowly, stress how awful the conditions in Pandora’s Vault are. c!Bad says c!Dream should be imprisoned, but at least at slightly better conditions. We’re in very VERY morally gray territorry here. Nobody says c!Dream is a good person, of course not, but even c!Bad - who knows Dream was planning on keeping c!Skeppy in a cage to control him with - goes, “yeah, he should stay boxed, but does he really need to like... suffer suffer?”

Still, c!Dream seems to be kindof inconsistent in his behavior. Is he faking his pain? Is he not? His actions don’t fully make sense for either take. He acts differently to each person, but at the same time some things he does don’t make sense if he were just fishing for pity.

Then c!Sam admits to trying (and thinking he succeeded) to “break Dream’s will”, to quite literally starving him for weeks.

Okay, so now we’re a step further. C!Dream is now suffering even more, although already boxed and unable to hurt anyone. Pandora’s Vault is one thing, but now c!Sam just seems to be out for revenge and nothing more. Instead of spending his time with c!Tommy, he spends his time pickaxing(?) c!Dream.

C!Sam isn’t an angel, and we should all know that by now. He does what he thinks is right, but he’s deeper than that, all characters on the DSMP are.

He cares deeply for the Badlands, and would always choose them above anybody else. He’s a capitalist. He built the prison because it would benefit the Badlands resource-wise, despite knowing Dream would probably use it on his enemies, and it was no secret that ALL members of L’Manburg, especially c!Tommy, are his enemies. C!Sam, undoubtedly, knew that. He still built it.

Arguably, he didn’t know about c!Dream’s attachment obsession at the time, but the point still stands.

People have already latched onto the untold story happening between c!Dream and c!Sam, and frankly, we barely know enough about it. Does c!Sam torture him regularly? Do they talk? Does c!Dream try to verbally fight back? CAN he fight back? We don’t know! We’ve gotten proof for both, between c!Sam saying that c!Dream is terrifying even in prison and c!Dream going silent to go on strike. We don’t have enough of an idea how bad or how good it truly is.

So the people who prefer to humanize c!Dream and explore morality imagine c!Sam to downright torture him, people that prefer to see c!Dream as nothing but evil due to his actions imagine prison on the DSMP to not be equivalent to real life prison, and thus nowhere near as torturous as people are making it out to be.

Now all that is thrown out the window as c!Quackity quite literally tortures him.

So now the internet is faced with a question that, judging by some of the impulsive reactions *cough cough* celebrating torture *cough*, it didn’t turn out to be ready for.

Tell me.

How far do we go?

C!Dream hurt a LOT of people. He did a lot of things that caused irreparable damage. Now what? Do we torture him forever? Why? Because he deserves it? How do we determine that without comparing one kind of pain to another?

It’s custom and kindof generally respectful not to compare people’s pain too accurately, because different things vary greatly in severity depending on the person that experiences them.

At what point do we say he’s suffered enough without comparing exile to the prison?

And if we DO compare, does that even make the question easier to answer?

And if he’s never suffered enough ever, killing them would be a mercy...

At what point has a person done enough damage that they “deserve” to die? What if someone only did half of the things c!Dream did. But if c!Dream gets infinite punishment, and half of infinity is still infinity, do they ALSO deserve endless suffering?

Do you think every person that did something you can’t emphasize with deserves to suffer for eternity and die?

I’m not saying we SHOULD emphasize with c!Dream. He did things we cannot justify, that NOTHING can justify. He did things that were, by their nature, unjustified.

I’m also not saying anybody should forgive him. I think it’s a GOOD thing that c!Tommy doesn’t want nor is narratively pushed to forgive c!Dream.

But c!Dream doesn’t need c!Tommy’s forgiveness to be... a person.

There’s a saying that I’m sure you know, that goes “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”, because there’s things you wouldn’t want any human being to experience. Not because you like them, not cause you think they’re right, but because they’re human.

And perhaps this is my personal opinion, but I don’t think c!Dream being a bad person justifies dehumanizing him, because then we get into an area where someone needs to meet criteria just to be human.

-

I met someone once, whom, because of outside circumstances I knew I probably wouldn’t meet again. We’d been getting along just fine for people who just met, and were both getting into an interesting discussion about morality. They kept insisting upon something I kept refuting, so they said they needed to get something off their chest.

They proceeded to tell me that they had, years ago, while a teen, manipulated someone in a relationship, pushed boundaries and tried to convince them to do things they didn’t really want to do to get what they wanted.

They cried, while telling me, too terrified to tell anybody they know, terrified nobody would ever speak to them again, insanely regretful of their actions. They didn’t know whether to go back and apologize or just stay as far away as humanly possible, didn’t know which one the right thing to do is.

It had been years, by then, and I talked them through it. I said that what they did was bad, and there’s no going around that. But I also said what I saw, which is someone who would never do something like that ever again. I saw a human being. Someone who regrets a mistake they did and now, after enough time has passed, would do anything to make it undone.

Someone who is too terrified to be close to anybody in fear that they would do it again. I don’t remember if they already went to therapy or not, but it was definitly on the table, or in the near future.

They asked me how I could possibly even keep talking to them after they told me all that. They implied they felt like some kind of monster despite literally chocking back tears, firmly convinced they don’t deserve to be close to anybody in their life ever again.

I never swerved from the fact that what they did was wrong, and harmful. But I also told them they’re human. The universe isn’t keeping score. They want to be a better person now, and they were never going to learn how if they never let themselves be close to anybody.

I told them to seek therapy, and to slowly, carefully, try. Assured them that the fact that they regret it so strongly will at least help them in not falling back into the same pattern, and if they do, they can learn to recognize that.

They thanked me after the conversation, genuinely, especially for the fact that I didn’t sugarcoat what happened, because I know otherwise it would’ve felt like I was lying, like I was just sparing their feelings. I wasn’t. I was thinking about how to make sure they get to live without hurting anybody.

As per the circumstances, we didn’t speak again after that, which we knew basicly from the very start.

-

I still think about that conversation a lot.

Do you think they should’ve been locked up for life after it happened, instead?

Do you think this real human being, that I spoke to, that took years to realize their mistake - and never would have realized it if they hadn’t had the time to, if they’d been killed right afterwards - deserves to suffer forever?

Let me tell you something, from someone who’s been in more than one abusive situation: People that hurt you are human.

That doesn’t mean you have to forgive them. That doesn’t mean you have to like them. That doesn’t mean you have to make an effort to understand them. That doesn’t mean you need to go anywhere near them ever again.

You can hate them. You can be angry at them. You can (and should) go as far away from them as possible, and/or defend yourself.

But that doesn’t mean you have to dehumanize them.

You’re allowed to hate and dislike people that are human, because you’re human, especially if they hurt you. That’s how life is.

And to go back to my original point - c!Quackity torturing c!Dream is not something that should be celebrated.

There’s a difference between necessary measures (locking c!Dream up so he doesn’t hurt anyone), and torturing people for fun.

It’s not right. It’s never going to be right, and do not justify literal torture on human beings, and do not make someone lower-than-human to justify torturing them.

Taking revenge on someone for what they did tenfold is romanticized, I know, but I promise you it’s not actually as cool as it sounds.

[herinsectreflection]

Faith, Buffy, Dreams, and Secret Kisses

This is one of my favourite scenes in the series. Partially because it’s just my personal jam - I admit that I am Fuffy trash, and I have a real love for dream sequences. Buffy had great dream sequences, but this is where they take a step up. It’s a precursor to Restless in this regard and others. It feels weighty and meaningful, but also a little off and incongruent with itself, in that way that only dreams are. Lines are exchanged that don’t quite follow as direct responses to each other, clashing in interesting ways. It’s packed with foreshadowing, metaphor, and other juicy things. And beyond that, it’s a conclusion to Buffy’s entire arc this season about dealing with her shadow self, and it leads to what I think is the single most romantic moment in the series. I want to talk about this scene and unpack some of what I think it’s saying.

First of all, let’s talk about the setting. We’re in Faith’s apartment, bought for her by the Mayor. Essentially, the villain’s lair, where the two Big Bads plotted their evil plans against our hero. But it’s also a set where we saw most of the bonding and semi-familial love between Faith and the Mayor. A place of both evil and love. And for Buffy, a place of trauma. This is where she makes the decision and takes the action to kill another human. I don’t think she was unjustified in doing so, but it’s still an immensely traumatic act for her, and I think she loses a little part of herself when she does it. The location is very much a reflection of Faith, and Buffy’s relationship to her. I don’t think Buffy loves Faith romantically at this point, but I think she cares about her, and remains concerned about her, and I think it’s fair to call that a kind of love. Faith is also evil, a figure of betrayal but also temptation to the “dark side”. And she is also a figure of trauma, clear deep-seated trauma that she fails to resolve, and just gets worse over the course of the season. Buffy is essentially inside her own relationship to Faith, inside a stadium of sin, trauma, love, and shattered glass. Faith looks out of the broken window that they fought through, and we are reminded that their relationship too is broken, unrepaired, littered with the detritus of conflict. There’s no going back from this - even in dreams that window remains broken, and their relationship will always have this damage.

The props too are an interesting choice. TPN’s video on Graduation Day pointed out the painting of a giant snake with a man’s head on the wall. More conflicting feelings here - the Mayor is Faith’s closest connection to humanity and love right now, and also the reason for her betrayal of Buffy. Her redemption and damnation. We also see boxes of various things piled up - including the crossbow that Faith stole in Bad Girls. The image of packing up a room into boxes makes me think of moving away as a student. We must remember that Buffy is graduating today, on the verge of packing her life away and taking it somewhere else, and this reminds us of that.

The first thing of real substance we see is the cat, which jumps up on Faith’s bed. This is one of the aspects of this dream in direct conversation with Restless, where a cat symbolises the Slayer - a specifically feminine, solitary predator that stalks the night. In Restless, we cut to Miss Kitty stalking the camera from shots of the First slayer stalking Willow. Here though, the intercut images are between the cat and Faith, lying bruised and helpless in a hospital. The cat (and the Slayer) is, as far as Buffy is concerned, not a danger but a creature in need of help.

Buffy: "Who's going to look after him?" Faith: "It's a she. And aren't these things supposed to take care of themselves?"

They’re very clearly talking about their respective approaches to slaying, and to life in general. Buffy tries to encourage ties to humanity, telling Faith back in Revelations that she is on Faith’s side. Faith retorts that she alone is on her side, and she repeats that sentiment here. But Buffy is obviously proved right - Faith is lying almost dead because she rejected all help and care.

Buffy: "A higher power guiding us?" Faith: "I'm pretty sure that's not what I meant."

If the cat is the Slayer in this conversation, then the “higher power guiding us” could refer to the Watchers. It makes sense that Buffy delivers this line with a little wry smile, given that she’s just resigned herself from the Council. This allows a little bit of ambiguity in their debate - Buffy has taken on a little bit of Faith’s advice in emancipating herself and so making herself as the Slayer more self-reliant. The show agrees that that too is the right move. A little independence is good and healthy. What Faith means when she talks about “taking care of herself” is not self-reliance or independence, but emotional hardness and self-marooning to avoid hurt. This is something that Buffy will continue to struggle with for the rest of the series. Faith is kind of right when she states that the Slayer is alone and must take care of herself, and it’s up to Buffy to find a healthy way of dealing with that.

"Oh yeah. Miles to go - Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0.”

The scene shifts a little, and we get some foreshadowing for Dawn (Little Miss Muffet), and for Buffy’s death (730 days from now). This is done with the the lighting too, as Faith faces the camera, and the light of the dawn hits her face, in a shot extremely similar to the end of The Gift.

Interestingly, Faith is repeatedly used in this way. In This Year’s Girl, Faith talks about “little sis coming” as she and Buffy make the bed in her first dream. In Restless, that scene gets a callback (”Faith and I just made that bed”), in a scene that ends with the most anvilicious foreshadowing (”Be back before dawn”), as well as a callback to the 7-3-0 line (”Oh, that clock’s all wrong”). In Graduation Day, Faith refers to Buffy as being “dressed up in big sister’s clothes”, however to me Faith has always felt more as being the “little sister” in this relationship. She looks up to Buffy yet is also deeply jealous of her. She wants to be Buffy, to have her friends, her life, the love of her mother. She’s kind of a precursor to Dawn in this respect, so it makes sense that she’s a prophet for her coming.

Slayers having prophetic dreams is well-established, so it makes sense that a dream shared by two slayers would allow them to prophesise a little further ahead in time. Faith hints at this, remarking "Sorry, it's my head. A lot of new stuff.". You have to wonder what other “new stuff” Faith is becoming aware of. Perhaps a new perspective on everything Buffy’s been saying all season. Sharing a mind temporarily is often helpful in seeing another’s point of view. Faith does seem unusually thoughtful as she looks out of the broken window and remarks "They are never going to fix this, are they?".

This is perhaps my favourite line in the scene. It’s a slight mislead, as it comes right as we get a flash of the cat-as-Faith in the foreground. So we assume it’s a reference to her own injuries, which she is expected to never recover from.

But the Faith that’s talking isn’t looking at her own body. She’s looking at the broken window. The symbol for her broken relationship with Buffy. She has become us, the audience, looking at Buffy and Faith and saying “boy, those crazy kids really are never going to work it out, are they?”. It’s true for Faith, it’s true for Faith&Buffy, and it’s true for Buffy herself. When that knife entered Faith’s gut, all three were irrevocably changed forever. You can never put back the life you had before after it’s broken like that. All you can do is take what you can work with, and try to make something new.

Buffy: "What about you?" Faith: "Scar tissue. It fades. It all fades." Buffy confirms that the previous line was not about Faith specifically by asking “what about you”, in a lovely expression of concern. After everything, Buffy does still care about Faith. Faith’s reply of “scar tissue” is an obvious reference to the literal wound she is now carrying (emphasised by the shot of the knife that Buffy sees afterwards), but it’s interesting that she gestures to her face when she says this. It feels like a reference to her entire self. If we accept Faith as Buffy’s shadow self, then “scar tissue” is an accurate description of her. As Buffy herself says, Faith is who she could be if her life was worse (or, perhaps, who she would be if she allowed the tragedies of her life to rule her). She is the part of Buffy’s unconscious self that is revealed after receiving violence. She is the physical proof of trauma. The self that remains after pain. 

Buffy: “Is this your mind or mine?” Again, hitting that note of symbiosis; emphasising how inextricably tied these two characters are. The lines between their psyches are blurred to the point of no longer existing. This is such an intimate moment, almost sexual, with Buffy and Faith unable to tell where their own mind ends and another begins. Imagine the intimacy of that - entering another’s mental space and allowing them into yours, so wholly that they become one and the same. It becomes a mutual recognition of unity and shared pain, and an affirmation of the eternal divisions between them.

I love the ambiguity of the “human weakness” line too. One way we are invited to read it is that Faith is doing a heel-face turn, and intentionally giving Buffy the means to defeat the Mayor. But we’re not allowed anything that easy, to wash away Faith’s sins with a quick redemption before the climax. Faith has miles to go before she can achieve that. It’s just as likely that Faith is talking about herself, and the human weakness that led her down a dark path, or that Buffy is talking about Faith through the Faith in her head, or Buffy is just working it out on her own, etc, etc. This is the information that saves the world, and I like that it remains an unknown. A permanent “maybe”, just as Buffy and Faith’s relationship is. 

Buffy: "How are you going to fit all this stuff?" Faith: "Not gonna. It's yours." Buffy: "I can't use all of this!" Faith: "Just take what you need. You're ready?"

As the scene reaches its climax, we see the most obvious recitation of the season’s themes. S3 is about Buffy coming into conflict with her own shadow self, and here the show tells us how she does that - by taking what she needs. I mentioned earlier that we saw the crossbow from Bad Girls, from the “want/take/have” scene. Here, Faith is telling her the same thing, but in a more healthy way. She cannot just hedonistically consume everything like a crazed id-monster, but she also cannot deny herself things that she needs. 

Most importantly, the “stuff” they are referring to is Faith’s, but as Faith says, it’s also Buffy’s. Everything that Faith is, Buffy is too, because she is her shadow self. Buffy must recognise this, accept it, and incorporate the shadow self into her own identity. She cannot be consumed by the shadow self and simply become Faith, allowing her shadow to consume her conscious personality (”how are you going to fit all this stuff?”). Instead she must recognise her dark mirror, and take the healthy parts, and integrate them into herself as an individual (”take what you need”).

It is at this point of healing and merging between Buffy’s self and shadow self that Faith reaches out, almost touches her in an action that feels so tender, and Buffy becomes conscious. She literally becomes her conscious self by making peace with her dream (unconscious self). She stands up, and walks over to Faith’s bed. This is the moment that their relationship all season has been leading to. She leans over, and places a kiss on her forehead.

This kiss is everything. It’s an act of thanks, as Buffy realises Faith may have given her what she needs to save the day (at the cost of Faith’s one familial figure). It is an act of service, as Buffy literally gives Faith the kiss she asked for when they started to fight in Graduation Day. It could also be an act of forgiveness. We know from I Only Have Eyes For You that forgiveness, Buffy learns, is done not because somebody deserves it, but because they need it. Faith at this point probably does not deserve it, does not want forgiveness (she wants to be punished), nor can she recognise it in her current state, but Buffy gives it anyway, adding another layer of heartbreak. It is given not for any purpose, but for its own sake.

Above all though, this is an act of recognition. We must consider the previous forehead-kiss that these two shared, back in Enemies, and Faith’s words directly before: “What are you gonna do, B, kill me? You become me. You're not ready for that, yet.” And in Graduation Day, just after Buffy stabs her: “You did it. You killed me.” And her words in the dream, just a few seconds ago: “You're ready?"

Now I don’t think that Buffy stabbing Faith to save Angel is morally equivalent to Faith voluntarily killing people to help an evil guy become a big snake. I don’t think the show wants us to think that either. But the line is firmly blurred. Angel says in Consequences that the act of taking a life will change Faith irrevocably, and Faith agrees. She sees herself as tainted from that point on, and if Buffy took her life, she would be tainted too. And though it’s understandable and morally defensible, there’s no doubt that a part of Buffy - her innocence - dies on that balcony when she sticks that knife in. That act is forever. The choice to do violence is permanent. 

So when Faith says “you killed me”, she is saying “you have become me”. She identifies a common nature in them. And when Buffy kisses her, returning it in the exact same way as when Faith first said those words, she is saying “I know”. She recognises and responds to Faith’s mirror by holding up one of her own. She matches similarity with similarity. She is finally “ready” to assimilate her shadow self, and does it by telling her shadow self that she sees her, and that she was right. 

The beautiful part of all this is that it is silent. Faith would’ve been aware of their unification in the dreamscape, since it was happening in both of their heads, but she has no way of knowing about this. I wonder if Buffy would ever tell her. I doubt it. This is the core of the Faith/Buffy tragedy. This is why I find this relationship so compelling. Buffy performs this act of recognition and devotion entirely in secret. It is a stolen kiss and a private confession. A whisper made to a sleeping lover. A letter written, sealed, stamped, and set on fire. It is an act of love and tenderness made entirely for its own sake, without witness or reward. 

This is the single most romantic moment of the show for me. In this show that in many ways about how when nothing you do matters, all that matters is what you do, what could be more romantic than this gentle kiss that changes nothing against this aching hole of violence and betrayal between them, but exists anyway, just because Buffy felt it needed to be done. It’s a silent moment that nobody but Buffy and us are privy to. Neither Faith nor the rest of the world will ever know it happened, but I know I for one will never forget.