#some of my friends: i know its problematic but its really good actually!

[panspy]

every time i see someone praise anything about h*azbin or h*lluva or any vivziepoop (not a typo) media i just sit and wonder.... are you sure? thats the one? yeah? you positive?

[teaboot]

you have some really evil, selfish and toxic ideas irt whos allowed to have friends, you know? i see pop psy people like you all the time making lists of things that are clear and obvious trauma induced behaviour, and then immediately flip to how if you have a friend who ever behaves like this they are evil and need to be cut off, theyre not allowed to have support systems to get better! you really hate bad victims, huh? if someone isn't demure and cowering and self effacing in their symptoms they don't deserve anyone? i got assaulted and when my friend group threw me out on my ass and called me too fucked up for acting erratic and strange in the aftermath and being unable to communicate why they used your posts to justify it. its sick that people like you will look at someone uncontrollably acting out their ptsd and go wow you aren't doing this nice enough to be tolerated! people like you talk so much about compassion but when it comes to people in actual crisis you don't give a shit. no, theyre acting too problematic. just cut them off! no one should help their friends!

original post

Please allow me to take this opportunity to make some things clear.

First, you do not know me. You do not know anything about me. You do not know where I've been, where I'm going, or where I am. All that you believe that you know is extrapolated from information I have volunteered to share. Information that is, by clear and honest choice, edited for both safety and personal security. Remember this.

Second, and I say this in the kindest of ways, because I have had to learn this lesson myself:

Nobody Owes You Shit.

Have you ever saved someone from drowning?

I have.

Do you know that a drowning person struggling to get air will instinctively drag you under them?

It's hard to save people in the water. It takes specific skills and knowledge that not everybody has. Not everyone can save a drowning person without drowning in the process.

The lifeguard needs energy, and strength, and expertise, and persistence.

The swimmer needs self-restraint, and composure, and the desire to be helped, and the ability to do what they can to facilitate their own rescue.

I believe in kindness, and generosity, and compassion. I believe in trying persistently, and in giving the benefit of the doubt wherever possible. I believe that people are good, and small, and trying. And I believe that I can give all the energy I have inside of me to help someone and still come up short.

So you're drowning? I'm sorry. That must be terrifying. That must be miserable. You must be experiencing the worst moments of your life. I hope someone nearby knows how to help you. I hope they have a raft you can climb into, or a rope for you to grab, or a float you can cling to. I hope things get better. I'll call for help, and give you what I can to get you to shore.

But don't you dare drag me under water and curse me for saving myself.

Now get out of my fucking inbox.

[calliesmemes]

YET ANOTHER ROUNDUP OF ASOLUTELY UNHINGED COMEDIC RELIEF

ASSORTED SENTENCE STARTERS FROM AROUND THE INTERNET, including quotes from Tumblr, Pinterest, TikTok, and X (formerly known as Twitter), for when a muse wants to be a bit silly <333

CHANGE gendered words and in-universe phrases as needed.

SPECIFY muse for multimuses.

❛ I am not merely a clown; I’m the entire damn circus! ❜

❛ I will bite you if you continue this behavior. ❜

❛ Being a dramatic ass bitch isn’t a personality trait; it’s a lifestyle! ❜

❛ Trauma? Oh … you mean, my lore? ❜

❛ why must I cite sources? is it not enough to just say ‘trust me, bro’? ❜

❛ sorry for being a perfect sweetie and a genius it will likely happen again. ❜

❛ forget about touching grass; I need to touch WATER I NEED TO GO INTO THE OCEAN I NEED TO DIVE INTO THE SEA!!! ❜

❛ I’m attracted to men with muppet energy and no i will not be explaining. ❜

❛ you want me to make friends with people? the thing that killed julius caesar? ❜

❛ what’s your birthstone? mine is rock bottom. ❜

❛ I absolutely hate that I’m not bioluminescent. Pathetic. ❜

❛ ohhhhh my god i have got to stop mourning the past or whatever. ❜

❛ you expect me to act like a normal human being? I’m wearing a turtleneck! ❜

❛ i don’t struggle with same sex attraction I’m actually very good at it. ❜

❛ unfortunately i often find out without even getting the chance to fuck around. ❜

❛ I’m bisexual which means that I’m attracted to anybody who can defeat me in physical combat. ❜

❛ all anyone needs to know about me is that i’m a dumbass and i love women. ❜

❛ sorry but philosophers aren’t impressive i came up with stuff like that when i was 12. ❜

❛ I pay my own bills; I can cuss all I want! ❜

❛ I don’t have rizz; I have sad eyes and a weird presence. ❜

❛ my demons are chasing me and they’re doing the Naruto run. ❜

❛ honey we are ALL doomed by the narrative. it's not that serious. have some fun with it. ❜

❛ dating me is like interviewing a psych ward patient. ❜

❛ being a girl with very large brown eyes comes with great responsibility. ❜

❛ i’m autistic in ways that you can’t even begin to imagine. ❜

❛ being a loser may be a phase to you but its a lifestyle for me. ❜

❛ entering a magical portal in the woods would fix me. ❜

❛ I’m lonely but not in a hot mysterious way; more like in a pathetic way. ❜

❛ life is so unserious just say womp womp and move on! ❜

❛ you’re vibing? In this economy? ❜

❛ just because I’m small doesn’t mean I can’t kick your ass. ❜

❛ my primary motivators are fear, spite, and aesthetic longing. ❜

❛ sorry about the chaos; I needed attention. ❜

❛ WHAT IS UP GIRL you look foreboding and malicious! ❜

❛ baby i can be your problematic bi wife. ❜

❛ i don’t think any of you understand how important i am to the plot. ❜

❛ what if we are both red flags? what then? ❜

❛ any dream can be a prophetic dream if you’re willing to do some really weird shit. ❜

❛ my hobbies include being right, being gay, and being a hater. ❜

❛ i have a phd in Loving The Color Pink And Also Glitter. ❜

❛ being a menace to society is a full time job and I am dedicated. ❜

❛ my life has been a bouquet of oopsie daisies. ❜

❛ i survive on spite, anxiety, and blasphemy. ❜

❛ if you’re not obsessed with me, why would I wanna be with you? ❜

❛ the hottest thing a man can be is a little afraid of me. ❜

❛ my love language is being a hater. ❜

❛ i don’t get enough credit for acting far less insane than i actually am. ❜

❛ the A in my name stands for always right. ❜

❛ Jesus is my homeboy but God has a lot to answer for and I will continue to be rebellious until he does so. ❜

❛ I’ll see a man with long hair and then remember that I’m not above temptations of the flesh. ❜

❛ i’m going to be honest with you I’m not going to be honest with you. ❜

❛ stop asking me if I’m ok I’ll literally make out with you. ❜

❛ part of my masculine charm is that I’m literally insane. ❜

❛ are you sure those are demons bro? or are they consequences from the choices you made? ❜

❛ i do not identify as a boy or a girl. i identify as a nuisance, an irritant, a fool, and a problem. ❜

❛ praying on someone’s downfall isn’t enough i need to participate in it. ❜

❛ we all need to chill. i won’t do it first but it’s something i noticed. ❜

❛ not to sound like a Victorian woman suffering from hysteria but going to the sea would fix me. ❜

❛ the silly goose convention called; they asked if you could be their keynote speaker. ❜

❛ i deserve unrestricted access to old castles and old churches i want to know all the secrets. ❜

❛ doesn’t matter if you’re cringe or based we’re all just here to suffer. ❜

❛ I’m no longer comedic relief I’m now serious panic. ❜

❛ this is getting difficult to romanticize. ❜

❛ done healing my inner child. next up is my inner teen. her highness needs a sword. ❜

❛ i am God’s silliest experiment. ❜

❛ i’m very vulnerable right now if anyone wants to take advantage of me. ❜

❛ sorry i overshared do you still think im hot? ❜

❛ I can yap for days and still maintain my air of mystery. ❜

❛ good luck sending me mixed signals; I don’t even understand normal ones. ❜

❛ not all of your life decisions have to be smart. some can be purely for cinematic value. ❜

[hms-no-fun]

What's your opinion on the new HS^2 update? I'm really excited it's back but I'm a little worried. Like, the fandom has had a real problem with pretending all the horrible shit that caused it to end in the first place never happened. Is this just gonna sweep that under the rug even more? Is James Roach heading the project because he's less "problematic"? I love James roach and I'm sure he'll do great but what about all the transphobia? I just hope they finally fulfill the Toblerone Prophesy and make June Egbert cannon.

short version is, i'm cautiously optimistic! but this is a loaded question you've given me on a lot of fronts, so i'm gonna try to take it piece by piece.

to start with, the sudden revival of Homestuck^2 (now minus the squared) took me by surprise because to my knowledge, it was entirely dead in the water. my involvement with anything Official ended at Pesterquest, and pretty much the entire post-canon crew i was friends with in 2019-20 has moved on to greener pastures. i share a similar sentiment with @pochapal in that i would have put money on hs2 staying dead forever. i have, quite frankly, dreaded the inevitable day when official Homestuck media would resume production, because the fandom at large seems quite eager to sweep the ceaseless harassment and transphobia that ended hs2 under the rug and pretend that it just, like you said... never happened. when that california cafe used older Pesterquest-like character designs that omitted short chubby Terezi and black-coded Roxy, however well-intentioned and ultimately harmless that was, it felt like a sign of things to come. that, as you fear, the sharper & more personal queerness that we tried to bring to this series would be erased, in favor of something meant to simultaneously appease both tenderqueers and redditors, two sects of the fandom most responsible for the aforementioned harassment.

luckily, that really doesn't seem to be the case!

to your worry that James Roach was made director because he's "less problematic," i'll just say that's entirely the wrong way to look at it. it's not like WP (such that it even still exists) were cruising to get HS2 back up and running. by all accounts, James is the only reason it's happening again in the first place. i can't stress enough just how small an operation this Homestuck business actually is (or, at least, was when i was involved). this is not a Huge Corporation making cynical cash grab decisions. this is someone who cares about the material pushing to get something made where otherwise there would be nothing. check the new About page, where the principles of the so-called Homestuck Independent Creative Union are laid out in plain terms. this is something the original hs2 team fought for, so for this new version to start from there as square one is huge and a good sign of the possible longevity of the project.

next, let's talk about the question of this new team erasing the legacy of the old one. Kate Mitchell is on the record that she was reached out to about this new hs2, approved it, and declined to be involved. i don't know if the other writers were reached out to, but i have no reason to believe they weren't. this is a tremendously important gesture of good faith and goes a long way towards easing some of these worries.

but let's look at the composition of the team itself. do you remember The Perfectly Generic Podcast? originally hosted by future hs2 writer Kate, pgen became a flashpoint for community discourse, often opening doors between official homestuck and homestuck fandom. what made that show special was that, rather than relying on the imo tired genre of the liveread, pgen focused on a different topic each episode and explored it with one or two qualified guests. Kate's goal with the show was to encourage a more adult and quasi-academic discussion of homestuck, of its successes and its failures. if you weren't there, the weight i'm putting on pgen might seem overblown (not least because you can't find it anywhere anymore except on the internet archive). but it's not! when they decisively criticized the wild contents of the Skaianet debacle in episode 19, Andrew listened and worked to bring a more diverse group of creators into the fold. in the months after the Epilogues were released, Andrew issued a statement through pgen on episode 52 about how the Epilogues are meant to create bridges and offramps for the post-canon fandom. it's an essential piece for understanding the epilogues and their relationship to fanworks! that it wasn't included as the author's introduction to the Epilogues in the book version remains to my mind an astonishing oversight, but whatever. point is, pgen mattered to the folks in charge.

so let's look again at the writing staff of this new crew. James Roach first guested on pgen in episode 7, and would go on to be a regular. Haven, who did the Vriska and Roxy sprites in Pesterquest (and probably more stuff i don't remember), guested in episodes 81 and 87. Miles guested on episode 87 as well (unless it's a different Miles, i'm not familiar with their work and ugh this damnable linkrot). Floral, creator of one of my favorite hs fanworks & huge godfeels influence Liminal Space, first guested on pgen in episode 47, and would go on to be a regular (including once during my tenure as host to talk about Jade). on the technical staff side, Kohi built the hs2 website and has remained a backend mainstay both on the WP side and on Vast Error.

all of which is to say, if you were looking for a crew to cynically erase the past and appease the haters, these probably aren't the folks that'd be at the top of your list. of course, if you *really* wanted to cynically erase the past and appease the haters, you wouldn't bother reviving hs2 in the first place!

and that's the crux of the matter here. what cash is there to grab? what clout could possibly be chased? i struggle to think of a decision less obviously profitable and popular than continuing hs2 with a new crew right where it left off. i have to believe this is happening because the people involved want to make it.

so, yeah, i'm cautiously optimistic. i like this crew, i like the contents of the first upd8, and i'm glad as hell it's not a reboot! i'm grateful that by reviving hs2, the hs:bc crew have instantly yanked the epilogues & the post-canon project back into relevance in the broader community. and i always liked hs2 a lot! i was excited to see where they were going! i'm really looking forward to seeing more YIFFY!!!!!

but the thing is, this won't be the hs2 i wanted. i know that, and i'm not expecting it. my greatest hope for hs:bc, for this crew, is that they get the chance to take up the reins and drive this thing in whatever direction they feel most passionate about. if that winds up looking like the hs2 that was originally planned, great-- but more than anything, i want everyone on this team to feel just as empowered to leave a profound and personal mark on this series as the original team did, as i did working on Pesterquest. i hope the outline changes! i hope they take some really wild swings! i want to be surprised!! i want to be challenged!!!

above all, i want them to have the chance to pick a course, sail it, and see it through to the end regardless of what the public thinks. they deserve the chance that the original crew didn't get.

i have plenty of bitterness and cynicism in my heart over the events and circumstances of 2019-20, but as far as i'm concerned it has no place here today. i would never, ever wish the trauma and stress of that era on anyone. let the fandom at large react in whatever way it will, but i want things to be different this time. this is a second chance-- not just for hs2/hs:bc, but for all of us. even people who hate homestuck post-canon! this is an opportunity for everyone to choose to be better this time, and to push back when others might squander that opportunity. this team is not a group of celebrities, not an abstract fiction on the other side of the world, they are human beings who took a job. they've earned the opportunity to do that job, and they deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity that was so often absent a few years ago.

as to your last point, about june egbert and the toblerone. i've been saying for years that andrew's confirmation of june was less "the granting of a wish" than it was "a spoiler shared without input from the creative team." that there is any doubt about june's providence in hs2 can only be attributed to willful, aggressive ignorance on the part of people who refuse to engage with the written word in any way other than plodding literalism. the original team didn't unveil june ~immediately~ because they didn't think of june as a wish, they thought of her as a character in an ongoing story who needed time to develop naturally. i have never not felt entirely crazy about how thick everyone has been about this!

but will the new team make june canon? obviously i have no way of knowing for sure, but i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that probably the answer is "yes, when they're good and goddamned ready." just, please, for the love of god, don't go after every upd8 like "where's june? where's june? why hasn't june yet????" this was one of the worst results of the toblerone spoiler and it put INSANE pressure on the hs2 team. so just... just let this story be what it is. let this new team make the homestuck continuation they want to make.

and in the meantime, if you're really hungry for june... there's always godfeels :)

[gingerbread-in-july]

Under the cut lies my personal ranking of all of Spencer Reid's love interests, both actual and potential, from best all the way down to worst, plus a whole lot of unfiltered sassy commentary that nobody asked for. Then again, nobody asked for any of this, but my brain was just on one of its neurodivergent tangents. There's 11 total. Some of this- probably a lot of this- will piss some people off and I am truly sorry. I hope there's at least some other people out there who share my strong ass opinions.

1. Dorian Loker- I will never forgive these bitch ass writers for never following up on that storyline. He asked her out in Russian, for Christ's sake! One of the only times in the entire series he actually initiates a date with somebody. He complimented her coffee! For him, that may as well be a pickup line. He was finally moving on from Maeve. That was a huge fucking step. He was shy and unsure of himself, but he was clearly into her, he was flirting the best he could, and he fucking asked her out. Don't even get me started on him being into her enough to set aside his germophobia and touch her hand by the end of the episode. Or his gutted little expression when he realized he spoiled the book she was reading. They were adorable and they could have been everything. Of all the one-episode love interests, she's the one I'm most pissed at them for never fucking following up on. 

2. Ethan- They were not just friends. I read somewhere that Spencer was initially supposed to be bisexual. They might have scrapped that, but bi Spence still found a way. They for sure hooked up. For. Sure. The chemistry was just there. And I am not one of those weirdo bitches who are overly fetishistic toward m/m pairings. I'm too fucking gay myself to get off on two men together. But those two men for sure were a thing- and good for them. 

3. Austin the bartender- She was hot. They had chemistry. More chemistry than he did with his actual girlfriends. End of. 

4. Ashley Seaver- I know y'all hate her and that she wasn't technically a love interest. However, I guarantee that she would have been if they'd kept her around. They were definitely setting it up to be that way. And, you know what? They'd have been a damn cute couple. I'd have loved to see it. And no, the "sorry for asking" moment was not grounds to disqualify it. Everyone else said as bad or worse to him at some point. If you can ship him with a psychopath who drugged him, framed him for murder, got him falsely imprisoned and nearly killed, kidnapped and tried to kill his mother, and lied about r*ping him and getting pregnant? You can ship him with Ashley fucking Seaver. If you can ship him with his fucking doctor who used her own loneliness as an excuse to violate all kinds of professional and ethical codes? You can ship him with Ashley fucking Seaver. If you can, perhaps worst of all, ship J*id? You can ship him with Ashley fucking Seaver.

5. Lila Archer- I think their worlds were ultimately too different for them to work long-term, but I do think they would have made a sweet couple for a while. They would each give the other things that their worlds were lacking. They wouldn't have been endgame, but they'd have stayed good friends. Also, "bUt aMbEr hEARD" isn't the dunk you think it is. Johnny Depp is a rich, 60-something year old white man who is problematic as fuck in his own right- and he's never going to fuck you. 

6. Cat Adams- Do I want them to actually be together? No. Does she deserve him? Hell no. Would the people further down this list technically be better for him than her? Probably. But......the chemistry, y'all. The chemistry was there. Matthew and Aubrey just play far too well off of each other. 

7. Maeve Donovan- I didn't hate her, but she was just a vehicle to give Spencer more trauma. I don't think she was "the one," "the love of his life," or any of that other stuff some say. I don't think they'd have lasted if she'd lived. They didn't really know each other. She lied to him about having a whole ass fiancé she never told him about. God only knows what else he didn't know. He started out as her fucking patient, for God's sake. The ethical violations were out the ass. I don't think she'd have crossed those lines if she weren't feeling so vulnerable and isolated from having to hide from her stalker. At least, not if she's as smart as everyone claims she is. Everyone- including Spencer- only puts her on a pedestal because of the tragedy of her death and not knowing what could have been. What would have been had she lived......probably wouldn't have been all that great in the long run. 

8. Linda Kimura- I'll be honest, I don't recall a single damn thing about this woman. I forgot she even existed until I saw her pictured on a potential love interest compilation. While I don't recall them having any chemistry whatsoever, I'll still include her for the sole purpose of ranking her higher than the rest of these shit bombs. And speaking of bombs, that brings us to......

9. Dylan Einstein- For the life of me, I just don't understand why people go so hard for this pairing. It's like she was generated in a Mary Sue factory to fit some stereotype of what AI might imagine Spencer's ideal woman to be. Her last name is Einstein, for fuck's sake. I'd probably respect it more if they did just name her Mary Sue. They were trying too hard to present her as Girl Spencer. The bitch even wore a purple scarf! She also just came across as annoying and overly eager and seemed like she didn't really understand when to fuck off. She butted in too much while Derek and Spencer were trying to work. Some poster here said that the actress who played her shipped the character with Spencer. That is more than obvious in the way she plays her. It's like she read a bunch of Wattpad fic and decided to use the character to try for her Y/N moment. Can't blame a girl for trying, but that is one "love interest" I am glad was a one-off. 

10. JJ- What could I say that hasn't already been said? The J*id plot was painfully forced. Spencer has more chemistry with a fucking paperweight than he does with JJ. Do I love their friendship? Yes. Do I love watching Spencer interact with her kids? God, yes. But, he's Uncle Spencer, not Stepdaddy Spencer. The only way Spencer and JJ are more than friends is that they're found family. Will is an absolute saint of a husband. Fuck them writers for doing him dirty like that. Even pre-Will, Spencer and JJ just didn't have the chemistry like that. I'm glad they scrapped that bullshit early crush storyline after just one episode. Also, am I the only one who remembers Spencer being totally unaffected and not even giving half a shit when JJ finally came out to the team about being with Will? He said something along the lines of "We all knew already." He was so unbothered. No way in hell has he been "waiting for JJ" this whole time or whatever these clowns pulled out of their asses toward the end. Such a waste of a plot. Literally any other pairing would have made more sense. 

11. Maxine bitch ass Brenner- Here we are. Last and least. Even J*id was better than this shit. What the fuck even was the goddamn point of this bitch besides having an excuse to have Rachael Leigh Cook guest star? Too bad this is who she had to play. She was just rude as hell with her snark, her bitchy little expressions and the way she mocked the kids- elementary school aged kids- she taught. As if it was beneath her grandiose idea of herself. How could they for one second think that somebody like Spencer- somebody who loves kids, loves to teach and to learn and values education as much as Spencer- could ever like somebody like her? They were already having to cram way too much into too little space that last season. It was already a shit show. What the fuck was the point of adding her only to never bring her back? I mean, good call there at least because she sucked. I can only assume Spence realized how much she sucked and ditched her ass. She was just a pointless waste of time and never should have been a thing. I'm glad Spence made out with Cat in front of her and I hope it chapped her ass that he never kissed her that way. Glad her family didn't die, but she and they can all fuck all the way off down the road.

Thanks for sticking this one out if you did.

[toorumlk]

what are your other fav ships from harry potter aside from romione! love love your art so much!

thank you friend!!!! ehehe i have a few ships i enjoy but let it known that im a full fledged canon enjoyer and some of these ships can be deemed “”problematic”” but please know i have the wherewithal to understand when its fiction and i just love a good story

- grindledore (!!!!!! huge old man yaoi enjoyer but also, the greatest wizard of his era had a torrid love affair when they were 17-18 with his generation’s most notorious dark wizard? they were next door neighbours but still sent letters to each other at night bc they couldn’t stop talking?? this horrible dark wizard is the great dumbledore’s one true love and his achilles heel and the reason for all his grief and suffering? SIGN ME TF UP)

- tedromeda (i find them so heartbreaking, the sunny muggleborn hufflepuff boy who stole the heart of the slytherin girl who comes from the most infamous blood supremacist family, i looovee andromeda she’s one of the few slytherins who deserves rights in my book)

- snily (i like them mostly platonically but i don’t mind them romantically either)

- tomarrymort *starts breakdancing*

i actually enjoy a lot of the snape ships bc i really like snapes character so, snupin (like what do you MEAN snape was making monthly wolfsbane potion for lupin in poa), snack, and… snarry (DONT WHACK ME there’s something i find titillating about a 30 year old harry with a 51 year old sev)

- LINNY

- i love ronarry but mostly as a tortured bi harry who has an unrequited crush on his clueless best friend

- wolfstar but only the middle-aged, life has beat them up, gary oldman/david thewlis version of them (i actually don’t find the fanon young version of them all that interesting…)

- jily (but within reason…. i think james potter is a dickhead and i don’t like him very much)

- oh!!! this is the one marauders ship i like i think the kids call it quillkiller which is bellatrix and rita skeeter ohhh hell yeah that sounds so good

- i also fw bellamort a little bit but only in an abstract messed-up concept way

that’s all i can think of, i know that some of these are unpopular and my reasonings behind a lot of them certainly are in the fandom but I’m speaking my truth.. romione still on top forever though

[stormoflina]

Because of common decency I will not answer the asks you sent anon, as it contained its fair share of problematic thoughts, but I just can't stay silent.

Let me be very clear: the idea of 'domitrent' is NOT REAL. I can comfortably say this in just not my own, but in all my mutuals name who post about the two of them being a thing, that none of us truly believe that they are together or have any kind of romantic or sexual relationship. It's a joke, okay? Something that entertains us, with keeping normal and healthy boundaries as we engage in conversations that are fiction. We don't know any of them, but it's more than likely that neither of them are bisexual/gay, and even if they are, it's none of our business. Please don't assume their sexuality based on a few photos and clips and then treat them as factual!

Now, I always try to be respectful, but I'm having a very hard time doing so right now, because I can't believe I even have to say this, that Dominik has every right in the damn world to have a girlfriend?! To say that he led Trent on and that he lied in that one interview?! Sorry to break it to you, but he's an actual living, breathing person with his own life. His life doesn't revolve around Trent! They are friends ffs, good friends, work friends, close friends, we don't even know that!

And I'm sorry, but to comfortably say something that Dominik is using his current girlfriend as a beard, because he could get into legal trouble for being in a same sex relationship? What on Earth are you even talking about? As someone who was born and still lives in Hungary, I will be the first person to say that homophobia sadly is still a major concern in this country, but it's not illegal?! Gay people are not being haunted down and physically or legally abused in the matter you are implying?! And leave that poor woman alone ffs!

Some of you really need to get a grip and go outside and socialise, because this is not normal behaviour.

[genericpuff]

Idk if my addition will matter.

I've been following Hanza since back when they were making my deepest secret, so I've seen the development of the guy upstairs first hand and how hanza writes it. Even back in the concept stages, it was so blatantly clear that it was supposed to be a thriller/cat mouse vibe where Adam (killer) was horrible and not to be rooted for. They've compared him to irl serial killers and how those guys will often use women as shields to hide their true selves from the public and how that's messed up and bad to do.

They've shown Adam as a horrible irredeemable person and honestly there's little to no nuance with how they handle it, but that makes sense because how else can you handle an audience like what they've gotten without beating them over the head with the facts. How many ways can you outright show your main character despising and wanting to yank their best friend out of the jaws of a murderer before the audience realizes its not foreplay.

I think them going from an actual romance to a fully thriller non romantic story meant that the residual audience expected some kind of messy toxic romance, but Rozy to me has always explicitly read as Queer so idk why people aren't getting the hint.

I get their frustration and it seems like they might be shifting into a potiential issekai romance about a grandad and a middle aged woman who got reincarnated as his grandson's fiance (hard to explain but its hilarious if you want to check it out) without any thriller elements from their recent non comic posts. Whatever they do I hope they can find something to be passionate about again.

your addition VERY MUCH MATTERS actually because I don't read TGU and have very little context to the situation as a whole aside from what I've seen people talking about, which makes me reluctant to speak on it because I don't wanna go spreading misinformation in any regard. So I appreciate you taking the time to lay it all out for me, thank you!!! <3

And yeah, I've seen posts shared in the /r/webtoons sub from other blogs claiming that Hanza was being an awful person for "taking people's money" and "baiting them" into reading a dark romance story when that's very obviously not what it is? Even one excerpt that was literally like-

And I just... since when is any romance plotline that ISN'T abusive and problematic at its core (such as between a serial killer and a victim) considered "super conservative" and "pure"? It's really baffling to me how people have gone so far in the opposite direction of "purity culture" that they've started arguing on behalf of legitimately harmful and toxic relationships. It's extremely concerning especially when you know the majority of people saying this shit are between the ages of 16-21. IDK what the fuck we're doing anymore when it comes to the romance genre (and TGU isn't even a romance ffs).

Aaaand yeah in relation to where the Hanza topic came up, that's really why I'm moving away from WT as an audience and why I don't consider it a "loss" to not use WT anymore. Once upon a time I wished for Time Gate to be a contracted series, for it to have thousands of readers and be my job. But seeing what's going on with Hanza's work just informs me that I'd be dealing with a lot of the same shit - people expecting Uzuki and Mitsuhiro to be the endgame of the romance when they're literally NOT good for each other, which is the POINT. Like sure, unlike the main duo in TGU, they actually are a couple with a 'relationship' but it's not meant to be healthy and the last thing I need are 15 year olds thinking they're "couple goals". If you ship them in fanfic or w/e the fuck that's fine but please don't get mad at me when they don't wind up being the endgame couple, they're both terrible people and make each other worse when they're around each other (・_・;)

Either way yeah, I don't blame Hanza in the slightest for getting so frustrated with it all that they'd rather just be done with it. It sucks for the more loyal and sane part of their audience that the series is gonna be ripped out from under them like that, but at the end of the day if the creator is being harassed and decide they're done as a result of it... why should they have to keep putting up with bullshit just for a comic? I don't even blame Rachel if she was ending LO by choice due to the noise of the fandom, and unlike Rachel, I don't have anything in the slightest against Hanza or their work LOL But I also don't have the full picture on it all so maybe my opinion will change if I find out more about it. I just don't think any of this shit is worth directly harassing a human being over.

That said, can't get any better than someone who's read their work since before TGU, so again, thank you !

[alexanderwales]

I played Harvest Moon on the N64, and it was pretty much my favorite game of that era. I was in high school, and I would get done working on my uncle's farm and then go over to my friend's house to play virtual farm with him, switching off every other day. (I didn't have an N64 of my own until much later, because we were poor.)

When Stardew Valley came out, it was like ConcernedApe had been playing there with us and understood exactly what I wanted out of Harvest Moon, which for various reasons the actual Harvest Moon successors never ended up delivering on. I thought it was a little bit weird that people were praising its originality, as though it was doing something unique and unprecedented, since it was so obviously just an indie dev version of Harvest Moon rather than a unique game that had sprung up from nowhere, but I loved Stardew Valley, and played it a bunch. And then I kept thinking "how are was ConcernedApe the only one to do this?"

Well, we're now deep into the wave of games that followed in the wake of Stardew Valley, and I've played enough of them to start thinking that ... maybe I just don't actually like them?

I picked up Fields of Mistria, which had "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews on Steam, and is very much in the "copy what Stardew Valley copied from Harvest Moon" genre. Here's your dilapidated farm! Here's your shitty equipment! Here's your quest to talk to all the 20-some townsfolk! Plant some potatoes!

It might be the core gameplay loop that's irritating to me now. Watering the crops every morning is not actually that good from a gameplay perspective, and I keep scratching my neck and saying "come on, where are the sprinklers, where are you hiding them, I know you must have them". I think my watering-the-crops tolerance had just steadily gone down as the years have gone by.

Very possible if I keep playing Fields of Mistria, I'll find something that grows on me, but in spite of being a polished game in a genre I once adored, I think it's almost certainly going to get a refund. I've just played too many of these, I guess, and the prospect of romancing the villagers by giving them a gift every day is leaving me cold.

(Also I have always thought that these games would be much better if there was an option to romance every villager, even the ones who were married. If I want to be a homewrecker, I should be allowed to be. If I want a really problematic forty-year age gap between me and the mayor's father, that's my God-given right. Obviously I know those romance storylines, to be done right, require a significant amount of work, but still ... there's got to be a way.)

[thequietkid-moonie]

Hi hhi moonie-cutiee I wanted to ask for a narc anciel x gnreader that is a bit hyper and has a n̶o̶t̶ s̶o̶ secret crush on him

Don't forget to drink and eat well and good afternoon/morning mwah ily

Energetic reader has a obvious crush on him

[ HEADCANONS ] [ Marc Anciel ]

[ Miraculous Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir ]

This is my first time writing for him soooo I hope I made it right <3

it was quite an interesting prompt to write, it kept ne thinking on how it could go and it was funny to do so too! Thanks for requesting it Jana-chan 🩷

Marc is a rather shy person, he prefers having time all by himself and also has some problems relating to others, you two have to be friends before Marc feels ready to open up and actively spend time with you so, at the end, for him having a friend that is energetic and a little hyperactive is both, a bless and a curse

Marc kinda admires your energetic personality, being able to just go around doing and expressing yourself all you want is something he can see as positive and even envy it a little since he doesn't feel the courage to do something like that in the slighest, however he finds it a little problematic whenever you end up dragging attention ti him too, he doesn't like much being in the spotlight and gets easily anxious whenever that happens, so as much as he likes your personality he find it quite troublesome

Honestly it would take a while for Marc to accept that you actually have a crush on him, even when your liking for him is pretty obvious and his friends can confirm it Marc spend quite some time denying it just because he is too shy to think on something like that, besides he doesn't want to think about it, the only thought of you having a crush on him make him anxious because he has no idea of what to do or how to react about it

When Marc finally accept that you do have a crush on him, he will not be calm in the slighest, first of all he is quite flustered by it, he thinks you are awesome and admirable so you having a crush on him it kinda sounds imposible, just that it is actually happening; in the other side, Marc has no idea on how to answer that, even if you haven't say anything about it directly Marc can't help but feel bugged by it, he doesn't really knows if he likes you back or not, he doesn't know how to react, what to think or even if he should say something about it, it is all confusing and makes him so nervous that he just want to run away and hide

Marc needs to have time to think about this whole situation, and will probably avoid you for a while since he feels his heart heavy with anxiety everytime he sees you (even when he feels incredibly bad for doing it), it will take some time and with a lot of help from his other friends he will be able to finally calm down at some point, at least enough to think more clear and calm

Its also thanks to his friends that he will grap his mind around the idea of not doing or saying anything about it for now, if you haven't say anything directly and he doesn't know if he likes you that way it would be better to wait a little longer to take time to keep being friends like always until he manage to fully understand his feelings and give you a proper answer

Marc will go back to be quite shy again after coming back and apologize for avoid you, but with your energetic personality it wouldn't take him long to be able to feel comfortable again and just keep being the same as always

[gloomingstar]

Hey. Someone said on tiktok you were f@tph0b1c and a manipulator, and you drew NSFW with their OC. What's up with that?

Good evening/morning/afternoon to everyone it's Gloomy! And I'm going to talk about the people calling me problematic and pointing out the other shitty stuff, etc.. I have did! Before I start a reminder I don't want to start anything violent or a big argument about this I just want people to understand me. So let's get started

(English isn't my first language and sorry if I didn't talk about this sooner I didn't really pay attention much until it got worse)

As you guys seen the videos (video was made by ex), and screenshot, transphobic, fatphobic, etc.. I'll be talking about that.

So first of all I'm not transphobic some not only just me messes up with people's pronunciation and sexuality! Everyone can make mistakes about that and I hope you know that I have apologized to the person I have offended, I respect trans people and I have a trans friend, About the fatphobic, I'm not a fatshamer, well it's ok to have many different body shapes and I respect peoples body but saying it few times doesn't mean I'm completely a body shamer! Not to mention that the kid I have said about IS a body shamer and lowkey racist himself too, and don't say that I'm making fun of people's name I'm just calling my seat mate "carbonat" because I'm preventing to say her real name, she's ok with that calling her that, my classmates doesn't have to be included in the situation !! And what do you mean by I'm a "manipulator" do you even know the meaning of that word? I have no idea how I manipulated anyone maybe I wanted to be friends again with the person they made the video about me? I'm just trying to be friendly and forget about the past, if you really see me that way then you should just say the truth and say don't want to be friends with me again, saying the truth can't be that hard. If people will may ask "will you continue to do this", "will you continue to be problematic?" No I won't! I'm a changed person now all of this have happened way back In summer around June or July! It's very weird cus the person just making video about it all of sudden now after breaking up with them.

And the "nsfw" arts, I don't see the nsfw in the arts cus do you also know what does nsfw actually look like and the meaning, btw the arts was meant to be a joke and for shits and giggles!! Learn to take a joke without taking it as a high offensive way, and I don't like my doodles and sketches getting shown to other people if you really was uncomfortable with it why didnt you just point it out instead of just laughing it off and then show it to your "friends" and THEN posting it! thats an another level what took you so long to realise that and you know I could've understood it and stop drawing it in inappropriate way its your fault too, and I also feel guilty and ashamed about how I drew that person's oc with mine and I'm sorry about that, and no I did not draw all of the hellpark characters as a "nsfw" and i drew only once, all artist atleast draw one bad thing but why even care? Please stop spreading fake rumors about i drew all of the hellpark characters in a inappropriate way! And I know I got carried away with the arts, I looked at the comment that was in the video saying that I have drew more inappropriate arts, no i did not and i dont know you, i have never seen you, and i NEVER interacted with you unknown person! And that doesn't mean you have to bring the past and something happened literally alot months ago or while in the summer, get over it!!

Second of all, about my behavior getting called as "immature" and "insensitive". Not all teenagers have to be matured in their age, you were more immature than me, there is something called having fun, hope you know that. I'm not insensitive, I struggle with trying to comfort someone and understand someone's feeling doesn't mean I'm insensitive well I admit that i didn't listen to that person vent and I feel sorry for them and still feel guilty about it, I have apologized to them many times, maybe you have should stop hiding the truth and not forgive me it can't be that hard to not accept someone's apology if they actually did something bad to hurt someone like that. And yes I understand that it was hard for you. You could've just left me at the spot. Feel disgusted and sick about me , block me everywhere yall you want but I'm stating the facts and ok I admit that I have a bad temper and get mad easily and I have offended someone's partner writing alot of shit about the server and about them (srry about that bro.) Also calling me a "proshipper" are you trying to gaslight me or other people or what, if I ever shipped an adult with a minor I'm very sorry about that but I just don't remember how I shipped a minor with an adult my memory is bad, my apology.

Third of all, let's not bring my irl friends into this kind.. of situation (my classmates includes), they have said that they don't want to be included in it and they are not comfortable doing anything about it, maybe if you haven't said anything offensive about my friend she shouldn't have said something back too! And you don't even know what we are saying in our language so why point that out. And I apologized to that person afterwards. If you may ask if I have evidence of them, no I do not have evidence of them most of the time me and the person are in a call so I don't voice record, screen shot person's stuff, I respect peoples privacy and it would be weird as hell to just screen shot someone's screen like that and I wouldn't want to do that but someone said to me that they leak people's stuff and leaked someone's phone numbers, leaving friends, and body shaming ex friends and making fun of people! And I also don't want want my things to be screen shotted and get leaked in the public I understand that you had to do it but you have screen shotted other things beside than that, it's really weird and uneasy and mostly disrespectful for me too. I trusted that person too much, lesson learned. Like is there a problem about me talking shit about other people i hate and other problems to that person without getting them offended when it's NOTHING related to them, know your limits I have boundaries and privacy too and I want that to be respected! A reminder that learn to listen to other people's stories and think twice before attacking!

Fourth of all. No I did not ruin anyone's mental health neither I didn't ruined the person health I broke up with. I don't understand how can one ruin someone's mental health through virtual screen, let's just say that I have my own life I have things going on in real life too I don't just look through my phone all day and getting online, I have school, alot of homework/assignments, etc i have alot of things to do beside than drawing, I only draw in my free time and I know I'm not drawing everyday like I used to post. I need some times for myself too, and I feel very much sorry about that to that person I didn't pay attention enough and I just want to say im sorry for everything's I did. But this time they took It too far by posting a video about me? Please don't blame your mental health on people it's wrong thing to do to cover up that they are wrong and just more shittier than me in GENERAL! Get some common sense instead of immediately start blaming the person about their aftermath relationships.

Another thing I want to say that not everyone is always kind and innocent and full of joy, everyone has atleast did one mistake or many in their lifes you just deny that because you don't want other people to see you as a bad person, just learn to get over the past, if you don't want any problems then you should keep it to yourself instead of spreading it. Reconcile with fate.

Fifth of all, this one kinda targeted so. Do you really think you are a good friend when you are literally just leaving out your other friends just because they are quiet and doesn't talk much, introvert people exist and you know that, what do you mean you used to talk to me alot I don't remember talking with you much? You just make other feel very left out for your "cool friends" maybe you should pay attention to your other friends that is trying to talk to you and you just leaving them like that the next months.

Sixth of all. This one is very important. I have seen many anonymous sending death threats, grape jokes to me because of what, you just can't accept the fact that you can't say to me in my face, dms, without being yourself an coward anonymous, do you think it's funny? It's not I assume that you're one of ex's server member coming after for my blood, please tell your members to not send death threats in my inbox just for my reaction I do not need to give a fuck about that thank you.

One thing is I have permanently left hellpark ri, I'm not interested and I don't like it anymore, so don't attack me on that.

So that's all I have to say for, I hope you all understand this that I'm very ashamed and guilty about my actions and offending people, I apologize for everything I have did and I'm sorry if I didn't talk about this earlier. Please forgive me. Thank you for reading all of this. I do not want to come out as an problematic person.

[absolutebl]

Hiii, I'm glad the ask box is open!

Idk if you already did a rec list on this, but can you recommend me old bls, like 90/2000s? I watched Seven days movies and its really good

Oh yay! Seven Days is the best. Actually, I have never done this. Here's a list of...

10+ BL's rated 7/10 or higher that aired prior to 2018

Just Friends?

Korea 2009 Gaga

This is Korea's first (kinda) upbeat version of a BL featuring already established boyfriends, one of whom is on military leave, trying to decide on coming out, family life, and the future. All of these are themes Korea will pretty much never tackle again, retreating as they would to their bubble. But what a fun little offering this little show was and is to this day. You should watch it.

Love Sick & Love Sick 2

Thai 2014 YouTube

This is one of those BLs that owes almost nothing to yaoi, although it started a number of tropes that are now endemic to Thai BL. What it is, instead, is a well scripted story of bisexual self-discovery and the inherent chaos of loving someone of the same gender for the first time, all wrapped up in hormones, existing relationships, and communication issues. It is high school queer angst at its messiest. Nothing is going to be easy for these boys because queer isn’t easy but also because life isn’t easy… welcome to adulthood sweethearts.

I'm actually considering a rewatch of these beginning of 2024 in honor of the 10 year anniversary if anyone wants to join.

Seven Days

Japan 2015 grey

The asker already mentioned it but still, never doubt my ability to recommend this show. One of the best live action yaois ever made, with perfectly structured angst, fantastic characters and acting, and no problematic tropes (rare in Japanese BL). The leads have excellent chemistry although it’s low heat there’s still some really cute mutual kisses.

Addicted: Heroin

China 2016 Viki

When Chinese BL was good it was very dirty good and when it was bad it was censored. This is the model for that statement: rich kid falls madly for the genius poor kid in his class, starts an aggressive pursuit, includes kidnapping for love, obsession, stepbrother trope, plus some cheating. I love this BL because of what I could have been. Just stop watching it after The Sex Scene. Okay?

SOTUS & SOTUS S & SOTUS Our Skyy

Thai 2016 YouTube

This is the BL that launched a hundred BLs. No literally, it was SOTUS’s international success that pretty much built the Thai BL industry into the juggernaut it is today. People have baggage around SOTUS, I have nostalgia. Trigger warning on bully hazing. Review and discussion here.

Make it Right 1 & 2 (but not Beach)

Thai 2016 YouTube (Cheewin warning)

What to say about this show, the origin of the Thai BL pulps? It’s objectively terrible, and not just the leads but the side couple too - yet I love it. I tend to call myself the “world’s foremost Make It Right apologist.” I recognize the issues but I find it utterly charming, especially Tee’s utter devotion to Fuse the baby bi disaster.

Long Time No See

Korea 2017 Gaga

Catfishing assassins on either side of a turf war who fall in love not knowing they are on opposite sides. Or do they? Good fight sequences, mature characters, high heat, very suspenseful, AND an HEA. If you like KinnPorsche or Kiseki you will LOVE this one.

HIStory Obsessed

Taiwan 2017 Viki

I weirdly love this but you should know what you are in for: that title. It has a stalking theme meets fated mates and quite a bit of dubious consent. Uke obsessed with seme to the point of losing himself and his identity dies after being rejected, and then has a chance to reboot his life. He decides to save himself by never falling in love. But destiny is a bitch, and this time the seme becomes obsessed with him. This one owes a lot to dark Chinese and Japanese BL, but kind of corrects for the expected sad dead finale by ending happily and playing with a ton of BL tropes. The leads have good chemistry, it's higher heat and the first time Taiwan starts to push that, and VERY DRAMATIC.

Some Others you might consider

Candy and Kiss - Japan 2015

Silhouette of Your Voice (Hidamari ga Kikoeru) - Japan 2017

Red Balloon - Taiwan 2017

(source)

[glittering-snowfall]

At the time even the film's creators seemed nervous about what they had created. Like, when Diablo Cody in defending the film's same-sex kiss talked about her intense female friendships, how she "wanted to sleep at my friend's house every night, I wanted to wear her clothes, we would talk on the phone until our ears ached." Yeah Diablo, I had that with some of my guy friends as a teenager too, it was called being gay. The article that quote is from still finds the time to chide Cody for not doing good feminist representation, though, and I guess that makes me somewhat sympathetic to Cody here. Did she know that culture was in fact going to be too dumb to get the way Jennifer is both a predator and victim, the way her love for Needy is at turns beautiful and toxic, the way expressions of queer desire get warped into complicated, problematic forms by a diseased culture?

The film is full of uncomfortable joke/horror ambiguities, which were at least grasped by some critics (the film did have a number of favorable reviews, though they couldn't compete with the horrible marketing). As far as I can tell, the developing blogosphere, on the other hand, understood none of this from the moment they got their grubby cheeto dust covered fingers on the script before the film's release. Diablo Cody had amassed a considerable loud hatedom at that point, of both the aforementioned cheeto boys and their female counterparts,  going apoplectic over the "fantasy" that "Diablo Cody is a magical snowflake who can spray her unique pixie dust on an otherwise conventional script and give it indie cred". Perhaps the film's obsession with female relationships characterized by violence, jealousy, and crab bucket behavior cut too close to home for such critics?

Or maybe they just genuinely hate Diablo Cody's "twee dialogue". You hear about this? Yeah, Diablo Cody writes twee dialogue. This mantra seems completely unassailable now, basically accepted by even her defenders. What's so god damn twee about it though? To be sure, I remember mentally grouping Juno in with Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine. Jennifer's Body reveals just how much "twee" is a function of the film in its totality, though. I mean, I feel like this should be obvious but the exaggerated quippy dialogue comes across a little differently in the context of a film featuring sexual assault, people being burned to death, ritual murder, demonic possession, and teenagers being sadistically eaten alive.

In that context her dialogue comes across more like a nightmare funhouse mirror version of Joss Whedon's now eye-rollingly ubiquitous quips. Whedon and his bazillion interchangeable hack studio vat clones never aspired for much actual wit beyond the "umm well THAT just happened". Cody's dialogue on the other hand is baroque, in love with weird wordplay and uncouth associations. Needy refers to Jennifer affectionately as "Vagisil". Jennifer, in a line that caught me totally off guard midway through taking a big sip of water, jeers that Needy needs to "Move-on dot org". Yeah, no man, you're right. This isn't how "real" teenagers talk. Also, Jennifer's not "really" possessed by a demon, it's a thing we call "Movie Magic".

Though, actually, it's not totally unreal. This baroque, warping dialogue feels now like how teens trash talk under ideal conditions: on the internet. This movie's dialogue is posting. Like Homestuck, the point is not to capture a literal representation but instead a vibe of the kind of unrestrained, often vulgar and offensive dialogue of teens shit talking each other over America Online Instant Messanger or replies to their friends' Xanga posts. It makes perfect sense that both Jennifer and the various Homestuck teens would call each other retards, for example. There's a real sense in the film of characters pushing boundaries, testing the limits of their ability to perform adulthood. It's not just an act in the sense that it's a movie you plodding dullards, but in the sense that these characters are performing their idea of maturity.

There's nothing of that performance when Jennifer, in the back of a van going who knows where, sobering up and getting a grip on her real situation, asks the members of the band Low Shoulder, "Are you guys rapists?"

The climactic flashback, late in the film, when we witness the band's brutal murder of Jennifer, still has plenty of quips, of course. It's just that now Jennifer's ability to perform any kind of mature confidence has been brutally ripped away by a bunch of third rate emo douchebags. All the quipping, over top of her desperate pleading for her life, issues from the douchebags, who treat the whole scene as a joke. The affect of this scene feels complex to me. It's still Diablo Cody's script so there's some pretty good one liners. Megan Fox, though, is playing the scene for pure horror, so the humor adds to the horror for me. For these guys, rape and murder is just, like, kind of a fun night out. They can sing pop songs while ramming a bowie knife ("Bowie! Nice!") into a teenage girl's body because their biggest concern is whether or not they can get their shit band on Letterman. 

I think it's notable that for a solid number of people--particularly though by no means exclusively women--this scene is not damaged in its horror by this dissonance. At least not now. And why should it be? Horror has never just been about what's "scary" or worse about startling people with jump scares. Horror has always partaken of a complex mix of affects: fear and visceral startlement, yes, but also grief, shock, disgust, rage, contempt... attraction... humor. The best horror might fuck with the viewer's head, prompting arousal or humor simultaneous with disgust or fear. Why play these things off each other? Maybe to destabilize us. If we feel a moment during Jennifer's brutal murder where we're just a little bit charmed by these self admittedly cute boys, maybe that prompts a question like: what other monsters might be hiding behind charming façades?

The post-9/11 years and incipient Obama cultural revolution were unfortunately for Jennifer's Body a time for dumb affects. We pretended Rudy Giuliani hadn't spent several years turning NYC into a characterless, facile police state before bungling the 9/11 disaster response. Clear Channel, now the insipidly named "iHeartRadio," banned numerous songs for fear of causing even a shred of offense. The FCC got more censorious, waving its own dick around to far more culturally degenerate effect than any superbowl nip slips. Even researching this period is tedious: the articles I access are full of euphemistic phrases ("Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable") so tortured they could have been dreamed up by the Bush admin's army of Eichmanns. I did discover that the maximum penalty for saying "fuck" went under Bush from a draconian $32,500 to a wild-eyed spittle-mouthed $325,000. People who objected to the dogshit state of culture and politics were drummed out of society, as The Dixie Chicks were. Or, more commonly, folks sorta slipped out of the public eye after getting played off at awards ceremonies, quietly shelved.

The primary objection to all this unfortunately did not come from anything really resembling a left but libertarians, constitutional bill of rights fetishists, and South Park. Democrats, never willing to lose an opportunity to supplicate themselves in spineless nematoad subservience to reactionary forces, attacked the Bush FCC for not fining stations MORE for Janet Jackson's sexual harassment by Justin Timberlake. Cool!

I wanted to talk about how this extended into the Obama years but here's the weird and ominous thing: a lot of the statistics and research material on the FCC's censorship actions just sorta stop in 2006. A lot of the relevant links from the FCC's own website are dead now. I doubt that means things improved under Obama. I mean, why should the FCC have stopped fining people for saying "dickhole"? It's not like any of the natsec state's border wars ceased, or the detaining of people without trial in the torture pits of Guantanamo, or the deportation of migrants, or the wiretapping of civilians. The prosecution of whistleblowers actually increased drastically under Obama, as did the lobbing of drones at wedding parties.

We bore this because Obama offered an alternative to divisiveness and the stale politics of the Bush era. We didn't have to tear down and dismantle what the Neoconservatives and Bible-brandishing Evangelical cultists had built through rancor and strife, we simply had to present a different way. A way that would unite the country. A way of hope. THROUGH THE TREEEES I WILL FIIIIIND YOU I WILL HEEEEAL THE RUINS LEFT INSIIIIIDE YOU

Now Needy's increasingly frantic sense that something is very wrong and all the memorial rallies and posters in the world can't fix it resonate pretty strongly with me. And, of course, after watching Low Shoulder brutally murder a teenage girl the whole grief and recovery (with a hit song!) thing feels like a cathartic confirmation of what I felt a lot during this period: that all sorts of cynical fucks were exploiting tragedy to their own ends. It never seemed to be quite the right time to bring up how cloying and often disturbingly fascistic a lot of the Strong In The Face Of Tragedy pop culture was. It was either offensive to the victims of terrorism, or offensive to Our Troops, or, extremely conveniently, before the critique even had a chance to be levied it was suddenly old hat: the Village Voice sneeringly dismisses this film's "routine “risky” digs at 9/11 kitsch". It was hard to tell Republicans to go lick a d*ckh*le when President Obama was wearing flag lapels and having grotesquely performative "beer summits" to bring together a completely innocent black college professor with the racist pig that arrested him. You wanna talk kitsch? Obama was so fucking kitsch, homeskillet. Kitsch and twee to a degree no Diablo Cody dialogue could ever sink.

Here's something that's not kitsch or twee: Needy finding the sacrificial knife that stole her friend/love interest, and using it and inherited succubus powers to murder the shit out of every member of Low Shoulder. That's cathartic as hell. I said earlier that no one in this film really deserves what happens to them. Low Shoulder are the exception, and it's so satisfying to see that knife buried to the hilt in the lead singer's shitty torso.

from We Were Too Stupid for Jennifer's Body

[codajaiden]

I don't get the gist of Nightbow (Rainbow Steve x Nightmare) like, how does that work??

(warning I might rant so much y'all would explode, correct me if I'm wrong tho)

"enemies to lovers!" No. Lemme clear this up for you

Nightmare and Rainbow were created to kill each other, hate each other's guts, there is no conversation or part in SS or RQ where they went and be normal people talking to each other and stuff (not that I can think of anyways)

"for fun" I don't care if it's for fun, sure it's funny but like????? How is it y'all's favourite????

I'm someone who likes to go insane just watching plot, WHILE YES, STEVE SAGA WAS JUST A RANDOM STEVE SERIES AND WAS VERY RANDOM WHEN IT COMES TO PLOT, ITS SILLY, ITS RANDOM

But y'all are like "I can fix them", there is nothing to fix???? they are literally people wanting to kill each other and that is their goal.

Oh and let's not forget, I have my eyes on the people who write in Wattpad, don't think I have not seen their "freaky" writing at all.

It's not only Nightbow at least, I see the people here who ship Rainbow and Void together, same thing, but if we're talking SS then there was still no good interaction of them both to be on the level of actually being good friends. Still, Wattpad people are freaky about them too.

This can be implied to Favremyrainbow ig, but to me it's very bland and boring. I admit I did in fact ship them, but as time passed I just stopped because it was so cringe 💀💀

I don't want to be mean and rude when it comes to this but it bugs me every time.

Okay the only thing I can counter this is Alux x Petro.

Petro and Alux are basically Anna and Hanz in Frozen, gaslighting and manipulation exist but dynamic and trust are important. There is communication towards the two that leads into something in the plot.

Nightbow has none of that, they hate each other's guts. People say they can fix them, nah, with Palux you can make them worse (/j) HEJWJEJWJSJA

"Petro and Alux's entire dynamic is mainly built off of manipulation" YES but thats on Petro's side. Most people ship it due to it being tragic on Alux's side because everyone in this fandom likes doomed mlm i guess (I'm one of those people but again the plot reasons goes on for both of their dynamic)

"But he stabbed him" YES. I have not seen a single person who ships them currently its mainly a one sided ship. For alux its built off genuine love and care for Petro, knowing he's the only REAL connection in his life. The people who ship them (from what I've seen) mainly do it for tragedy and narrative purposes. no one is actually here WANTING alux to be stabbed and abused

And for Petro it adds much more conflict to his character if you add like any romance to him. like, loving the person your meant to kill and killing them anyways is a really interesting narrative plot idea. Its also really funny tbh but oh well.

Narratively it adds more to their characters as long as you dont romantize it and treat it like it'd be healthy especially at this point in the story.

This is literally doomed Yaoi (it's funny I wanna say that) and it works so well because of how they were narratively written this way towards each other. This cooked better than some enemy wanting to, excuse my language, have freaky SHIZ going on with the Hero 💀

Okay I'm done with my ranting I'm sorry for the people who like Nightbow but I'm sharing what I'm saying and y'all are gonna respect it and not be problematic. I feel like I should not be on the internet for a good while late and night this is how freaky I get when it's past midnight lmao

[coldsaturn]

Bookrecs 2024

Ok I received an ask requesting bookrecs, and I realized I haven't added anything in years to this blog. Truly tragic.

The thing is, the past few years have been hellish enough that my reading habits changed from "hunger for literature" to "desperate coping before sleeping". So we're talking about a lot of Jikook fics and gorgeous videogames (which I tend to equate to books and movies etc. in terms of ability to deliver a compelling narrative), but not that many books, let alone the indie ones I used to hunt for fun.

But. That doesn't mean I am empty-handed, so here a few titles that still hadn't turned up in my tag. I'll add a TW next to the titles that IMO contain sensitive topics (I don't differentiate between positive/neutral/negative depiction), so mind where you walk.

Contemporary

Circe

I am a sucker for Greek mythology always and forever, so this didn't have to try that hard to be a win, but I was still left pleasantly surprised. It wasn't earth-shattering or anything, but I really appreciated the character-driven slow pace of it, the way we follow a woman finding herself and then discovering others through herself. One doesn't need to know about the mythological events we encounter to still follow along with the journey, but if you catch all the references, the POV is a nice twist. The end-game pairing is also the sweetest <3 Just good vibes all around.

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things TW

Intro: Back when the anti-shipping wave truly hit social media and equating fiction with reality became the norm, I started making a list out of spite. Every time some random fan on tumblr.com screamed against another fan because their fanfiction or ship would bring the end of our society, I added one more title to the list. It's published books they wouldn't be able to fathom they exist, so utterly convinced they are that the only way to deal with problematic fiction is by writing on ao3 and then being cancelled for it.

All the ugly and wonderful things is an incredible journey. I deeply respect books that challenge the reader into stepping out of their comfort zone, and this one demands to see the greys, asks you to sit with your discomfort and shut the hell up if you want to keep on reading. Many didn't. It's one of those stories where people give 1 star and DNF not because of how it's written, but because of what is written. If you stick to the end, you're rewarded with a story of humans being humans, in all their ugly and wonderful sides.

Flowers in the Attic (the entire Dollanganger series actually) TW

Another title on the list. This one is a Classic for older generations as it was a school read for many. Back when school reads were fun, apparently. You keep on reading, book after book, not exactly because of its writing style, but because it's a delightful trainwreck, and you just keep on sticking around to see where the characters end up after that absurd (and amazing) premise. If "this might as well happen" was a book.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

This was just a genius idea. Full on "I hate I didn't think of this first" I don't have many books where the very opening line forces me to stop and stare at it for 20 minutes because of how brilliant it is writing-wise, and how successfully it immediately sets the tone for what you're about to read.

"I forget everything between footsteps."

I assure you in Italian it somehow manages to sound even better. They did a fantastic job with the translation. This was such a fun read I took two whole weeks to finish it, even though I really could have done it in 2-3 days. But I liked what I was reading so much that I deliberately slowed down, savoring every word. What a fun experience.

Only downside: I didn't like the ending, it wasn't where I would have gone with it. Still, incredible job, double thumb up.

Classics

The Age of Innocence

I wasn't really expecting this, but I was vibing so much. I was sending screenshots to friends screaming about how scandalous our pompous, self-important protagonist was acting in certain parts. Like fellas is it proper to touch the naked wrist of the woman you have a crush on, when you're all in theater and your fiancée is sitting a few feet away? Things like that. Absolutely delightful. If not for the ending where I was screaming because of course it's 1921, what was I expecting.

Les Liaisons dangereuses TW

Well I can't defend Age of Innocence at all because this was 1782 and it delivered so hard. Really this book had no business being this fun. I read it because of a book club here in my city I join every now and then, and I had sectioned the amount of pages I needed to read daily to arrive at the date of the meeting with a finished book. I ended up reading it in less than 2 days. I could not put it down. I strongly suggest finding a good translation because with classics (especially ones not in your mother tongue), translations will make or break the book for you. I looked around reviews and blogs before I selected the Italian translation that I knew would match my vibe, and oh my god. I was giggling and gasping and "no way!!!!"ing my way through the entire thing. Instant fav.

Jane Eyre

This one I had already read when I was a teenager, but decided to give it a fresh, more adult spin on it by rereading it after a careful dive. I rediscovered the pleasure of studying what gets a book to be created in the mind of the author and its place in the literary trends of its time, as much as getting to know its story. The more I grow, the more I find out that no, mum, it wasn't just a phase, I'm really a sucker for everything gothic.

The turn of the screw

Another classic that I had already read and studied in high school, but that I decided to rediscover through a more mature lens. I decided to follow the advice of the Hardcore Literature book club about reading it in the original installment order and pacing, and it absolutely paid off. This was already a story that I loved because hello - horror and goth and psychological damage and if you take a certain way to read the events you'd need to add a TW to the title, and it was really beautiful to discover how I could still make it new and dive deeper into it by simply changing how I approached the text as a reader.

Self-publish

Underland

Have you ever played Bloodborne and hoped you could find a book that gives you the same lovecraftian gothic vibes? Well, look no further!

I have a love/hate relationship with RR and the dudebro high-brow stories in it, but occasionally I find something that catches my attention and also manages to keep it. Great worldbuilding, and a very nice ability to portray it by the author. Of course, being a serialized story on RR, sometimes it drags and/or indulges a bit too much in the vibes rather than in the actual juicy part of the story where things happen. Bloodborne sits undefeated in story and lore and everything in between, but this was still a nice experiment by the author.

As writing paradigm, we are diametrically opposite fanfictions. Which makes it a very interesting read even just because of that.

[andros-paidophonoio]

My other controversial trait is I don't care for but I also don't hate Lore Olympus lmfao. I think it's frustrating to me for various reasons but all of them are completely different from the main reasons I see people hate it and I rarely see MY complaints and critiques come up which is pretty funny. Not that some critiques don't have merit, but a lot especially I remember from several years ago were ur run of the mill "sexualizing fetishizing & the young women r being led astray" from the same people also being nostalgic about their effervescent Twilight phases and problematic cartoon husbandos and it's like, let's be fucking real

I understand the being concerned about it giving the Wrong Impression of the mythological characters etc but it's just visually and stylistically SO different and distinct and basically looks and comes across like Teenybopper Inside Out. I feel like thinking it represents anything realistic to the irl material feels a little idk.....losing chess to a dog-ish. Losing chess to an archie comic. Personally I get more concerned about adapations that have an appearance and sheen of being "accurate" or educational and serious while peddling more misinformation XD So that in mind, most of my evaluation of the story is a bit separate from that aspect, which has already been discussed and analyzed a lot–i generally try to evaluate based on the internal world that a story creates and how it comes across to ME.

More of my thoughts (playing defense AND personal haterisms)

I personally find the main Fantasy of the comic to be extremely vanilla LMAO and Fine...its basically "what if I was a super hot and pretty girl but ALSO sort of underdog-ish but ALSO I had sexy older BF who was kind and listens to me and wants to worship the ground inwalk on and we have cute little fluffy conversations and dates and ALSO I'm super sexy and evil and powerful but ALSO Good and Innocent and Blameless--" it's kind of an incoherent mess, but it's trying to appeal to a variety of fantasies all at once, and I think the desires that are expressed are pretty basic ones lol. I know there's also the rumor (?) of the Hades basically being authors self insert Mads Mikkelsen au crush or whatever which ppl made fun of but like genuinely What is Wrong With That. It's a bit silly but how is that problematic or my business.

I actually liked Perse's character and parts of her arc, I think the strongest parts of the comic was parts like the gentle romance portions where characters got to "be themselves" and just hang out in more slice of life style stuff (before it weirdly delved into therapist talking). There are some really great expressions of emotion and nervousness around sex and desire and shame. And the fantasy of having an understanding person to be a friend and talk to and open up to and speak in a respectful way was pretty sweet, and a lot MORE gentle than tbh a lot of Edgy Romance where theove interest is just Mean and Insulting for a while. So while I find aspects of maybe the characters getting flat, I found that personally kind of more positive in terms of "lessons and takeaways." So it's funny to me when ppl talk about the comic as The Most Evil Fetishizing Ever when so much of it honestly feels sanded down to Niceness lmfao. I also weirdly found that it felt at times very sexually or sensually restrained–like I get it's for more younger audience, but the kind of coy dancing around stuff at times (I wonder from webtoon meddling) felt weirder than maybe being more open about it. In a weird way, the rape scene from earlier on in the story felt more explored in how it had an impact than later parts. I wonder if that's because it was before it became so popular and also started getting more attention and criticisms that then seem to have subsumed into the work in weird ways.

I guess it's overall, in the end, one of those stories that is very much speaking to the modern age and the modern (straight ig) young women; where the OG Story and hymn was about grief of losing child to a marriage out of ur control (and includes the comfort of other mothers or matriarchs), I feel this (clumsily) speaks to a kind of different struggle. Aka the issue of wanting to express and enjoy sexuality freely but being faced with the prospect of interpersonal sexual violence, or people seeking to control said sexuality either out of protection or their own gain, the idea that you become seen as "evil" once u express ur sexual desires or become "tainted" by association with a man in a way that isn't a Socially Sanctioned way. It's clumsy, but it's real, and a lot of stories I see in this subject are grappling with this a lot. Esp for an era where many women do have a lot more freedom to pursue and find partners by choice than in ancient times, but the journey to that kind of happiness can be held up by such adverse experiences and subsequent emotional states/expectations.

I think my problem with a lot of romantic stuff, including this, that wants to balance these twin fantasies–one of being Very Powerful and Dangerous, but also of being Blameless and Good, are often kind of at odds and can result in some pretty Bad Storytelling that often ends up kind of trying to backtrack and do apologism for the Bad Actions in a way that just feels weak And noncommittal (if ur gonna be evil girl BE EVIL), and also kind of gets weird because The Protagonist, and the Couple(tm) must Always Be Good, and this cannot always be the case!!! In fact, it can make characters end up looking worse lol. Solomon's Crown does this too and that I am offended by for the same reasons!!!

Anyways, I haven't finished the whole comic, although I found a lot of the later arcs very intriguing although it took too fucking long to get to it because of the other problems that irritated me which consist of the following in no particular order:

THE VERY UNFUNNY HUMOR. I hated the jokes so much. I feel this is a problem with a lot of serials where they try to stay topical but boy I do not give a shit. That and when characters started speaking more like therapists, it brings the Drama to a screeching halt. And we are supposed to be HERE for drama!!! This is the main reason it always takes me so long to read like there will be an interesting serious scene and then the jokes will be so bad and deflating the impact. Sad!

Minthe. Treatment of her character left a bad taste in my mouth; last I left off I kind of liked more time spent on her, but in general i just felt really weird about the role her character played

Generally disinterested in all the other characters aside from the main couple. Perse is really fun and I feel there's the most "real" experience poured into her mixed with fantasy.

The opening episodes are indeed extremely off-putting to me so I don't blame people for not getting into it bc it starts off with some bro-y behavior that is corny. And it never quite feels "established" in its setting which is an issue to me with a lot of webtoons but for here especially it feels very like I said earlier like Teenybopper Inside Out. These characters are fantastical concepts, but only at times do they feel real as People

Anyways it's one of those things where I can genuinely see the charm in it--i can see exactly why it blew up how it did, but also like most webtoon it invites the most simplified types of comments ever where every single character has to be Good or Bad and if anyone does anything complex everyone throws a riot. So I don't doubt that the environment in which the story was produced affected the way that it is formatted and created. In this sense it's an interesting work to consider culturally and sociplogically. I think it is part of the greater conversation of why such works connect to people for greater or ill at all. Still, the Bad Jokes will keep me from probably having the true knowledge and I definitely will continue going my own way

(I do have a few AU concepts tho I'd like to think about sometimes....infeel like some aspects of the story I think a transmasc perse is interesting to think about, especially the whole weird definitions of the "fertility goddess" and "pure maiden" aspect, and the desire for LO!Apollo to want them to embody kind of an Ideal Wifepartner to gain power and prestige...more disturbing but also interesting implications and stakes to think about. canon LO I see seems to be about moving from maiden to the fertility goddess aspect but what if there were other identity avenues to be explored? Also I was thinking that a lot of the LO haters I get it we don't like cringe heteros that's fair but I know a lot of y'all r reading BL that use the EXACT SAME TROPES but even more corny and it's like.....sometimes humans crave corniness I get it. It would be too many layers of gender for the original to even be considering lmfao but since a lot of the story is about finding the Self and also facing resistance for it, I don't think it would be unthinkable....the fantasy worldbuilding going on is like ??? But sometimes it produces some stuff I think more deeply about)