#thanks for being polite abt it

[alicentsgf]

i think removing daemon or dismissing his love (albeit toxic) for rhaenyra from the narrative like you and other fan of alicent/rhaenyra do is a great disservice to rhaenyra herself and i wonder if you even care about her at all or just alicent? i would never remove alicent from her story or dismiss her love because i know it’s fundamental for rhaenyra’s development. you have such nuanced takes so it’s really weird to see how you refuse to give some to daemon like even if you don’t like him idk

i cant think what i've specifically said (or not said) that warrants this ask but either way i would never claim to be unbiased at all and tbh i dont feel guilty about that u kno? i guess i just feel i dont have to have a reason for everything. i used to forget sometimes that i ran a fan blog not a newspaper and im not gonna do that again its dumb. its all just opinions at the end of the day. if i seem like im dismissing daemon from rhaenyra's story when i talk maybe its because i just dont think about their relationship really at all? not in any depth anyway... because it doesnt rly interest me personally and therefore i just dont think to include it when im sharing my thoughts. and like yeah it is totally possible i dont care about being fair to daemon sometimes. especially when it comes to the women in his life. sorry. i just dont really believe he loves any of them in any kind of noteworthy way. thats just my perspective.

and btw... no. just to clarify. i dont like or think about rhaenyra as much as alicent. its kind of obvious in how my blog is very alicent centric and i can be a bit critical of rhaenyra sometimes. i dont think that to enjoy a pairing you have to be invested in both halves as individuals equally? or at least i dont anyway. to me their relationship kind of stands apart from them as its own entity in my brain tbh. i enjoyed their early dynamic, i find every facet of what they have now very intriguing, and i like rhaenyra well enough, but ultimately i spend a lot more of my time considering alicent thats not a fact im trying to hide.

im just interacting with this show in my own genuine way and sharing my thoughts on it im not some kind of authority or anything just because i have a debilitating tendency to speak as though i have some lmao

[tangledinink]

For the beautiful twins, a gift of hope

@tmntaucompetition

[stealingpotatoes]

Hi, love your posts. Is the last 4 jedi a fic on A03? If so, could you send me the link or your username? I totally want to read it!

ok 1. nope just comics and 2. this isn't directed at you bc you've asked very nicely and politely, but I still wanna address this: I get a lot of comments on comics like "i need a fic of this op" or "someone write this!!" -- and i understand it totally on small hc comics, but on bigger comics it just feels rlly dismissive lol. like why do ppl want me to write a fic abt smthn, there is a comic telling the story right there!!!!

ig i'm just tryna say it'd be nice if everyone accepted comics as a valid form of storytelling and didn't see them as inherently subpar to fics?

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[skitskatdacat63]

I'm ngl, I think the fine is worse to me than forced community service. Ik they're all rich as fuck but. 10,000 euro for accidentally swearing? 10k!?!?!?!?!?! It's just a word??????? Just a little fuck???? I cannot believe the stewards are dying on this stupid fucking hill, oh my god. The world's most elite sport swear jar

Can't even say fuck anymore, because of woke.

[harpuiaa]

i've been dead and gone bc of school and jobsearching and everything happening all at once but ive been playing the boktai series games lately and i'm enjoying it a lot. I just got past the third boss in boktai 2. I don't know why but i'm enthralled with these games, i highly recommend them

[reegis]

if this isn’t appropriate or polite i’m sorry to botther i’m not exactly sure how this stuff works, but would you be willing to upload your new Nastya drawing to your red bubble? Nastya is my fave mech and your design for her is beautiful and i really want to be overindulgent and buy a hoodie. If i’m being annoying or this isn’t possible feel free to ignore

have some water and a nice day thanks for being awesome

not annoying or inappropriate at all! ill be the first to admit im the worst at remembering to upload stuff on there ahshshs but i will say.. check my redbubble 👁️👁️

[constantvariations]

K so, Semblances are connected to Aura which is a manifestation of the soul yeah?

In Before the Dawn, the father of the villains confirms that one of twin's semblance was active in the womb throughout a good portion of the pregnancy

Meaning, in Remnant, fetuses have souls. Wonder how legal abortions are

Edit: just remembered Pyrrha had to unlock Jaune's Aura in V1, so does that mean someone cracked open a fetus's Aura inside the womb? Was Gillian strong enough as a cluster of cells to unlock it herself?? Wtf is this origin story???

[nomairuins]

i like overthink everything now it makes me feel so dumb. i used 2 be able to just talk 2 ppl but nowadays every single thing im like Is that actually going to make them hate me. Yes probably. and then i just dont respond which makes ppl hate me. this is how it is

[polaroidcats]

Question of the day: if your otp didn't exist (maybe the whole story gets poofed from existence, maybe they just got written out during edits) what ship do you think you'd be obsessed with instead and why?

ohhh what a fun question, thank you!! 🫶🏼🫶🏼

hmmm ok so if wolfstar didn't exist I wouldn't have come back to the hp fandom. There are definitely other ships in this fandom that I love or used to love like Jily, Jilypad, Prongsfoot, Hermione/Ginny,.. but if it wasn't for Wolfstar I wouldn't be here. Wolfstar has been the only ship ever, across all fandoms that I read a lot of fanfics for, I think I can count the number of non wolfstar-centric or at least non remus or sirius-centric fanfic that I've ever read on two hands. Idk what it is but I'm stuck on them...

BUT if they didn't exist I think it would either be Snowbaz (Simon Snow/Baz Pitch from the Carry On book series) or Crowley/Aziraphale from Good Omens. I came back to wolfstar because I was looking for Snowbaz stuff on tumblr and ao3 and the fanart looked so familiar I just literally jumped ships and fell back into this fandom after years of being away 😂 And when s2 good omens came out I got very close to reading some GO fanfic but ultimately, wolfstar just always win, they're such a comfort ship for me. But if they didn't exist, yeah definitely ineffable husbands and/or snowbaz.

[jrueships]

who would you most like to read jrue being paired with in a fic?

Me .

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

are we talking about spy and masculinity and his dainty little hands. I think hes fine with his hands being the way they are because it’s fancier to be dainty even as a man and I think his masculinity is less like the ‘masculine like engineer covered in engine grease and working on machines’ way and more like ‘masculine in the Don Draper getting with his secretary’ way. Like he gets chicks and buys them fancy jewelry that they wear on dates and he looks like some sorta fancy top dog. and spy’s thing with scoutma works because she’s a little bit of a gangster wife kinda gal. she likes to wear expensive things and let people wonder where she gets the money from. she’s definitely strongly implied that her boyfriend will kill someone if they aren’t nicer to her.

I am ATTEMPTING to talk about Spy and masculinity and his dainty little hands yes! Yeah this is basically exactly what I'm saying, people are applying a standard of masculinity to Spy tf2 that is clearly not the standard of masculinity he would apply to himself (I can PROBABLY make some kind of claim about it being a very American kind of masculinity being applied to a very non-American character. tbh.). "Spy tf2 likes to fuck women" is basically one of his defining character traits, its part of his joke, it's a CENTRAL part of the genre he comes from/is parodying (yknow, Bond girls?), and yet people still don't seem to like Get that that's what he'd value lmao. Like the whole thing where "Spy chases after anyone who tries to get with Scout because Dads Are Protective About Dating", something which doesn't rlly make sense to me bc a) men, sons, as Scout tf2 is, canonically, are almost never "protected" from dating by their parents in the way women are and b) CLEARLY Spy tf2 of all people places worth in getting laid, one of his biggest things is trying to help Scout be good at getting laid, and he would WANT his son to adhere to the kind of masculinity that he adheres to, which is extremely reliant on getting laid. This isn't to say that this kind of masculinity is "better" than a masculinity reliant on physical strength and having giant manly hands, both have the ability to be harmful in their own ways (I find the big manly hands one harms men more while this one harms women, who can be objectified into like a "status symbol" for men), but it's definitely different. You can have both (Scout tf2 is an example of a guy who "fails" to perform masculinity because he is not physically large or strong and he does not get laid) but I think Spy definitely has just one. TL;DR Spy tf2 would not be dysphoric about his hands because he is French

[unproduciblesmackdown]

among the boundless billions zaniness like laugh track as it definitely has that moment of expressing "rolling my eyes as The Left makes a kerfuffle of Acting like they have a stance as a veneer over the true belief that [xyz] is cool & chill actually" like what, approximate 0.000% chance wendy isn't, as usual, given the Objective Stance of "yeah yeah ohh we are cancelling involved parties talking about how we Don't watch this But. we all love this damn epic movie & already have it memorized so shut the fuck up, kids today" like. don't wanna really delve into how much billions thinks taylor or anyone is "really" trans / nonbinary like not too much benefit of the doubt in this material including what does provide info abt that specifically

& the general like [head in hands. what do you think any of this could possibly be about (you're the one that made your show at all about Power)] of "yes, it's bad/wrong to be someone that someone has done something to / victim of something" like that to be anti misogyny All Women Must Be Epic Winners b/c there's something to be proved: that they don't Deserve to be victims (of misogyny), not taken as a Given. while when we see some epic winner men stepping on other men (who need not all be guaranteed Winners so as to say misogyny is wrong), that's often Good, well beyond any assumption that various forms of basic disrespect / violation / patterns of emergent/entrenched power difference as Bad (for being things done to people, not for there being people they're being done to), & generally billions has to take an extra step when ppl get shitted on & tell us the Specific Cases when it was undeserved actually & someone was being mean to a specific person who didn't deserve that. & the specific cases when hey guess it wasn't that bad(tm) or when hey It's Okay that you're someone something was done to, in this case. & tell us what we were supposed to know all along like when someone who something was being done to (wrong Of Them, whether b/c they inherently deserve it no matter what, &/or b/c they failed to be someone who could make it Impossible to do anything to them, which, how do you do that besides being The Authority / Superior yourself, exactly? nonrhetorically? what if the in group vs out group / fascism / authoritarianism protected Me?) was actually being treated Too Well b/c ah well the abuse meant you were getting any attention, maybe it meant you were claimed as any superior's property, maybe it meant you weren't Already disposed of, as all Losers were in the end, You're Welcome.

obviously referring to winston where it's spelled out all the abuse towards him was deserved, & More than he deserved in the case of rian having more access & taking advantage of that, all for billions' enjoying its own sendoff there of, again, maximizing violation & violence short of [real violence is physical & leaves bruises / draws blood / Literally kills] which would be distasteful in general But doesn't it make wags look like the winner & winston the loser is that the former's completely unrelated completely impersonal ego blow gets way amplified taken out on winston, the most vulnerable recurring character when spyros as [first & ultimate Everyone Hates Him role] is more entrenched in there & billions still magnanimously pities tuk, as it does winston too, just not quite as much. again that like completely surface level realized power fantasy of forcing the mirror up to the Inferior so they're like nooo my inferiorityyyy & in doing so like, the projection in that lmao, we get it re: the valuing of & need(tm) for such Power Tripping & Reaffirming My Superiority & My Ego Restored; Everyone Claps like good god. & then for all ben & tuk are the slightly softer Two Too Nice Boys duo to the rian & winston quant duo, also like too nice i guess but not as much, ben is in charge of tuk but Any instance of rian being in charge of winston outstrips them in that "yay interpersonal abuse" dynamic, like then in the end billions may be like "yeah it's possible to be mean to them unlike how being mean to winston is actually Nice b/c he deserves everything he gets, we only vicariously enjoy it vs Feeling Bad for tuk & ben sometimes (still magnanimously & it's Not That Bad / just goofin)" like ben & tuk still Fail by not being people it's impossible to do anything to. & not Exceptions who anyone is really being Too Mean to. like if they were women, in which case, no problem surely with a "positive" kind of victim blaming where there is something Inherent that Will be victimized so hey how about to cancel that out there's this special Paternal Protection you Need always, Or Else? :) but instead they are men who are asian & is ben gay & w/tuk & winston nobody mentions glasses or fatness but billions doesn't really do much or very in depth textual mentioning of Anything, even w/nonzero mention that there may be gender & race in this world. a gay man, once. no disability. we just Know who are the inferiors who deserve it when they're treated inferiorly, or if they don't, they start deserving it when they fail to stop/avoid it, but if you start mentioning the factors behind who we all totally agree is inferior like whoa nobody was Saying any of that? being the real agent of oppression on the basis of the factors only You spelled out, much? nonbinary? i never say anything about the Gender Binary when i'm subscribing to it, sounds like You've created & enforced it. obfuscation & deflection onto [so Just Normal nobody has to label, explain, or argue it] couldn't serve a purpose & protect the existing power differences as they are. maybe You're the problem? perhaps you brought it upon yourself & now you're causing too much trouble standing up for yourself while everyone else's criticism is laser focused on you as the prior & continuing negative actions done to you are taken as a given / unquestioned / covertly protected to overtly encouraged?

anyway so wild if the Completely Normal(tm) Victim Blaming is uncritically recreated & oft embraced for "if you're watching this & don't wish you were axe / find him appealing" [billions as a sequence of vicarious power trips] purposes in this series....but a bit wild considering like this is your multiseason show that wasn't just purporting to be those power trips for [enough demographic & apparently specific personal tastes overlap w/creators] & was at all purporting to question the matters of power at play in the material, or yknow, at least to not be completely superficial material while said material is textually & thematically all about power difference being leveraged, how, the consequences, & so on. thus i will have to intermittently talk about it forever like this like lord unbelievable. & the funny little & sometimes less funny less little characters it has trapped in there so that those of us who were never meant to be in the audience can be cursed with this knowledge. like i have some feedback. "imagine not victim blaming" & "imagine adjusting your perspective can go beyond superficial layers added to politely defer to some other ppl while they're present but really like cmon do they deserve that. am i not just saying what we're allll thinking"

[communistkenobi]

I know being like “communism is religious” is an extremely annoying thing to say but I’m reading a book called red demiurge which is about the legal history of the soviet union and honestly that title is not hyperbole

[my5hiningstars]

.

[madeimpact]

Remembering Sora's smash reveal and crying a little