#telling people what an awful story it is

[theravenlyn-art]

she was like an angel to me

[shorthaltsjester]

re the first three tlovm s3 episode title teaser fr. vex getting [redacted] while standing in front of percy . i will undoubtedly have Thoughts about plot n adaption once the whole season is out but i will say people acting like vex potentially dying again is a betrayal of the arc is . i say this politely. ridiculous. vex’s most common habit aside from haggling and flirting in campaign 1 was being knocked unconscious. she required full ass resurrection spells on four separate occasions. we currently have no idea what the shape of any arc in season 3 will look like beyond broad strokes and teasing shots. if they end up wanting to incorporate the exandrian magic lore of it’s harder to come back each time you die, vex seems like the obvious opportunity to do so. please at the very least save the panic posting for when you actually have something to panic about .

[natjennie]

i want to explain my mental illnesses to robin and have him like nod and grunt along while i talk and then hum really sagely and give some beautiful touching life advice like "brain not bad just.. different. I've seen a lot of people. we all different. world would be big boring if everyone was the same. you just better at some things and worse at other things. that why we all work together, help each other. sometimes you fight mammoth and sometimes you stay in cave with babies. it all come out in the wash."

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

"James Potter was a bully"

Snape was an abuser 💀

At least James fucked with people his own age. He wasn't a 30 year old man bullying 11 year old children. He wasn't a teacher with power over the students he tormented. He had zero power to expel or academically punish anyone. At least the people James messed with had the chance to fuck with him back. During Snape's worst memory, Snape literally casts a spell that cuts James across the cheek. He wasn't some helpless victim.

And before anyone comes for me, I'm NOT saying it's okay to bully people or anything like that. But if you look at a 15 year old boy bullying another 15 year old boy and look at a literal teacher who bullies kids 20 years younger than him and decide that the boy is an irredeemable asshole while the teacher isn't, you're insane.

[yourtipsygrandma]

I saw the Northern Lights and I’m having an extreme emotional reaction excuse me

[dent-de-leon]

rolling on the floor. what if in animated nein, we see Lucien as a young child, and his dear sister Aldreda, and his poor unfortunate older brother, and everything their parents did to them--

[gingermintpepper]

Reading reviews of the Argonautica on Goodreads was so funny because wdym y'all are mad at the Argonauts for -checks notes- being afraid of scary things and -reads further- missing their home??

Being a sailor is already objectively one of the worst things you can be considering how indifferent, hostile and inhospitable the ocean is to human life but then you add the fact that almost NONE of the Argonauts were career seamen anyway (some, like Atalanta, may have never even seen the sea before) and that a lot of them were kings or princes, noblemen who generally didn't do a lot of hard labour in the day to day and like, of course they're going to be miserable confined to a ship day in, day out, in uncharted waters with none of the luxuries or pastimes they've grown accustomed to??

I know people generally regard Book 3 as where things "get good" because that's where Medea is introduced but Book 3's catharsis only works because it's the result of months and months of endless open water, brief scraps of reprieve and trials to GET to Colchis in the first place. Sorry the story called "the Voyage of the Argo" isn't an action filled campaign where all the super badass children of the gods fuck women and kill monsters ig???

[telesodalite]

With Krok now on my mind, it's reminded me of like, the whole deal of him coping with the loss of his squad by believing they'd just become separated? Because that bit is such a fascinating aspect of his character to me.

It's vague in a way that doesn't totally confirm whether he truly 100% deluded himself, or if he just kept telling himself that to try and distract from the truth and memories he didn't want to face.

(Which, for some reason this pisses Misfire off? Which implies something really interesting there about Misfire and his own coping mechanisms and issues that we don't get much of a peer into unfortunately.)

Anyway, I spent way too long thinking about it when I was reading through the comics. And it's like, did studying battles and strategy play a part in this delusion/lie?

Like, you're a being that lives for millions of years, in the middle of a war spanning those millions of years. So, at some point, surely those battles are going to start to blur together. So you've got that, and then you go and face a frankly horrifically traumatic fight that quite literally rips the people you cared about most, and felt responsible for, apart.

Presumably, Decepticons aren't the greatest at handling shell shock and other such side effects of war. So they just take this freshly traumatized mess of a dude, take him off the front lines and plant him on a warworld to aid the fight from a more comfortable distance.

With all this, the mind is bound to be fickle when faced with such sudden loss and change. But Krok obviously did his job there, or at least he was very knowledgeable on history and tactics beforehand.

Either way, he studied battle after battle, went through records of fight after fight, planned for what's next and reconsidered what had already happened. Hundreds of wins and losses.

So did it get jumbled there? In having a head full of battles, did some of them blur and mix with the one that took everything away from him? In trying to solve the failures of past battles, did he try and find where a victory could've been had against the wreckers that day? Did he find a solution that would've had his squad still whole and alive?

From there, did it slip into delusion, or a desperate lie to keep himself going?

I feel like his "mental health matters" moment was an interesting insight into it and possibly the average soldier's rough outlook on trauma. But it was still very surface level I think, but I guess going too deep into the why's and how's wouldn't have been important until maybe the Scavenger centric comics that uh, never happened :/

[emeraldcity1900]

reminder that it’s okay for people to have emotional reactions to shows. Yes, even the cringe ones. In fact, if you do cry over fictional characters, that means the storyteller accomplished what they set out to do. Which is to tell a story that entertains and touches people. “But they’re a grown adult crying over something I think is stupid!” Well guess what? You are also a grown adult, and as such you should know better then to bully someone for being “cringe”.

One of the best parts of being a creator, is the joy that your creation touches people. That they relate to the charecters that you made yourself. We make jokes about creators having mugs full of people’s tears from crying over an emotional plot point, but in all seriousness there is something beautiful knowing that this story you wanted to tell, that you worked so hard on, has affected millions of people in ways you hoped, but never thought would actually happen.

it’s okay to be emotional. Because even if it’s over something “stupid” at least it proves you HAVE emotions.

[clingylilhoneybee]

Thinking about how many of my social insecurities would’ve been fixed if I could simply pick up cues that people are flirting with me

[nonconstories]

HEY GUYS so I'm working on STUFF and for context before it gets posted (whenever that'll be lol) we're doing a bit of a retcon with Pack Noctifer.

Kase is trans now. (Yes, someday I'll be re-writing Teeth and Karma to make this well and truly canon). Most of the other pieces won't need to be AS re-written, because I'm seizing this retcon as an opportunity to work in a new piece of canonical Werewolf Magic: RiverSkin*.

RiverSkin is an ability that certain werewolves have/can learn (it is very hard to TEACH and many/most wolves straight up cannot do it). It boils down to a very fluid and easy ability to shift between human and werewolf form that eventually evolves into an ability to alter human features (hair color, sex characteristics, age, size, etc etc) at will and sometimes even take on other animal shapes. As of right now, Kase is the ONLY character who can do it in the current cast. Jasper can do it a teeny bit, to keep humans from noticing his healing factor (he's an amateur boxer for extra cash, he's gotta fake somehow). Caelum has a very "easy" shift between his forms, but he cannot alter his human form at will (side note, Caelum is the only member of the "cast" who's eye color does not change at all between forms).

Why did I do this, you ask? Because I answer to no one.

And also there's a mild...allegory in Pack Noc that's much more blatant and COMPLETE if I make this one change. AKA born werewolves being Cis and Bitten ones being trans. This is, for now, only going to extend to Pack Noc. They are, themselves, an overlapping allegory for...well, gosh, my internalized fears and bitterness about masculinity as a gay, disabled, severely mentally trans guy, if we wanna be UP FRONT with ourselves here! So, this ANOTHER allegory (or, no, they just become the same allegory, then? i'm UNTRAINED) works best for THEM.

Pack Animus exists more as a way to A)expand werewolf lore B) contrast Pack Noc with less toxic dynamics and C) provide more ingredients for my smut gumbo. THEY GET THEIR OWN ALLEGORIES.

*RiverSkin is an English translation of the British Isles American werewolf language. Other languages use different names or words to invoke high degrees of fluidity in form: some use words for 'snow' or 'grass' or 'pine needles' or even invoke the moon themself; others do not reference the skin, and instead call the gift A-Body-Like-Water or Blood-Weaving or The Actor's Trance, to name a few unique examples.

[scorndotexe]

you never really want to be asking yourself "how was i THE EXCEPTION for necrophilia accusations" but here i am

[horsemage]

I think we should bring back basic etiquette lessons such as shutting the fuck up when you’re watching a movie in a group that is not exclusively your friend group 🙂

[ethersierra]

i wish people were more open to saying "its not for me" rather than being like "this is objectively bad and here's why"

[howlsmovingmind]

I used to love Superheroes when I was a kid. I loved Spiderman, the X-men, the Hulk, Captain America, Superman, and even Iron Man. I loved the cartoons and the movies. I loved what they stood for. I even loved stuff like Transformers (mostly because I had a massive crush on Megan Fox when I was like 5) and Star Wars.

Being such an imaginative child, I loved to dress up and play pretend as these characters. My brother had an Iron Man toy that I played with endlessly. I used to try to climb up walls or swing by ropes so that I could be like Peter Parker. I had Luke’s lightsaber when I was maybe 4 or 5 and I would practice with it all the time.

I believed in these characters. I loved how they chose to do what was right and did their best to help others. They were smart, courageous, and able.

As I got older though, my love of these superheroes dwindled. I thought they were harsh, destructive, and crass. A money grab that reenforced military propaganda and toxic gender roles for both sexes. Men and women in tight suits, inadequate communication, convoluted plots. And for what? Just to be a show of power? Violence? Exercising one’s own skewed view of justice?

I ended up despising the heroes I grew up loving. I hated their hatred. Their stoic personalities and their inability to truly fix anything. I hated the unnecessary destruction and violence. I hated how powerless they truly were. I hated their imperfection and the way they were so human, no matter how much they tried to be more than what they were.

I especially hated heroes like Batman.

Batman is a playboy billionaire who fights those who are victims. Victims of the system, of abuse, or who are severely mentally ill. The Joker is the only one you can really argue is a true villain, through and through. Simply an agent of chaos who wants the world to burn (if Alfred Pennyworth in the Dark Knight is to be believed).

Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed in front of him at 10 years old. And what he decides to do with all his fame and wealth and trauma is go after criminals with fancy gadgets and beat them within inches of their lives? Put them in a crumbling asylum where they are tortured and abused?

WHAT?

And the thing about Alfred is that he is the poster child for the military. I love Alfred as a concept, but as an actual character with his morals, I’ve learned that I don’t actually like him.

The Batman story and comics advocate for the justice system, not choosing who gets to live and die, trusting your police officers, and rehabilitation for villains and criminals. That sounds incredible! But the way it’s executed does none of that.

And if you take into account that the Joker is most likely to be “The Oscar Wilde Sort”, or pretty damn gay, the worse it gets. Because he’s just trying to create chaos! Corrupt your children! Crime will rule the streets if he is allowed to run wild!

Sound familiar?

Superheroes had disappointed me. The stories that used to inspire me now made me lose faith in how we view the world and how we view the disenfranchised or those who are “othered”. How we view the homeless, poor, sick, disabled, mentally ill, queer, non-white people of the world.

These characters and stories were written decades ago, when that was the narrative they were trying to push. It makes sense why these stories look like this. But we can explore these stories in a different way, and they will still resemble the original material. Telltale Batman did a great job of that. I think it was a great way to explore the darker themes that we see within Batman and make a more realistic version of his story.

The villains were victims of the elite, the government, domestic abuse, mental illness, death, and grief. They explore Bruce Wayne’s parentage and how they would have accumulated their enormous wealth without push back. The corruption of the government and branches of the police and special forces. How hard it is to truly balance justice and bias. It’s the best way to write the Batman story, in my opinion.

It’s the best way to write a superhero story, period.

We are only human, at the end of the day. We aren’t perfect, and neither are these heroes. We can only do so much. So, with what we can do, I think we should be kind.

Just an end of post disclaimer: I am aware that The Batman villains are murderers and are genuinely hurting those around them in the story. They are genuinely dangerous villains. Okay, thank you.

Criminally Other,

Howl

[flufflecat]

anyone else finding it really, really personally nauseating that the pjo show would remove gabes entire character and replace him with someone less abusive to make sally a Strong Female Character. like wow, im sure glad that youve proven that women who are abused are the REAL threat to feminism, and they should just try talking back more!! what a good message to send to abused kids. sorry, kid. i guess you just didnt argue hard enough and #Own your abuser into seeing how cool and strong you are. what do you mean that arguing with an abuser will only make them hurt you more? but look how snappy and cool and feminist sally is now!!! youre clearly just being abused wrong.