#the arguments would be insane

[mostlyghostlyy]

SOMEBODY GET THESE TWO A PODCAST TOGETHER

[karmathehalflander]

Queer relationships don’t need to be validated or made canon through a kiss. There’s such a double standard that when characters of the opposite sex are so much as friendly to each other they are now canonically romanticly involved but characters of the same sex/those who are genderless can literally do all sorts of romantic things and straight people will rationalize it to an absurd degree. They will only accept it’s romantic when there is a kiss or an “I love you” (and even then they will find ridiculous ways to say it’s platonic) and that’s unfair and disingenuous to what romantic relationships are. Let characters be in a canonical relationship without the need for explicit physical intimacy.

That being said Eddie and Venom better make out sloppy style in this movie or I swear to god.

[lexumpysfunland]

May I give Insaine!Narrator headpats? (I love him sm. He is now one of my many Narrator sons/children.🫶🏻)

Only Stanley is allow to... unless you manage to be really close to him that is.

[triglycercule]

nightmare viewing the murder time three as little toys but more in like a little spoiled kid kinda way. because it would be funny and if you take into the account that he was like 6 before getting corrupted and do some mental loopholes it would be even funnier. like these are his dolls (killer dust and horror) and this is their barbie dreamhouse (his castle). they all have to stay in one room because nightmare needs to keep his toys in a toy box. the toys only ever come out when he wants to play but oh damn it they keep on breaking out!! silly toys,,, and then he locks them into the room again.

nightmare serves them food with plastic tea cups and plastic plates and there is no food. there is no tea. they have to imagine the food because dolls can't literally eat. there are food containers and stuff in the house but its all just a bunch of empty boxes. horror starts tweaking out after he scavenges the kitchen and finds a cereal box and milk carton that have NOTHING in it (why keep empty boxes?????)

they have to go where he wants them to go. nightmare gets to dress them up in whatever he wants because theyre his dolls they can wear anything he wants. it gets incredibly embarrassing when the trio is forced to wear pink pretty dresses and fight like that. or they have to go around the castle doing stupid fucking roleplays and it gets weird because theyre being forced to reenact a bullying scene and nightmare's giving them the death stare if they don't get it right (is this projection. this must be some form of coping mechanism dust theorizes)

and then you know nightmare's not exactly the best toy owner so he loses a few of his dolls here and there. maybe they get destroyed when he was playing a bit too rough with them! (killer dies in battle for like the 29th time) but its okay because he can just go back on down to the store (something new) and buy. wait no. steal another doll and then put it back in his dreamhouse and BOOM he has a full set again!! so sweet so cute. his dolls don't have consciousness what are you talking about theyre begging to be let go?? that's all just your imagination. what do you mean you're asking about the several slowly dying bodies with removed arms or legs in his dungeon. oh that's just where the broken but not yet destroyed toys go dw theyre fine its humane

[cultofsappho]

Ive come to the realization that the reason theres a small but loud group of people who are showing nothing but hate for the rwrb movie is because they have completely unrealistic expectations. People are forgetting that this is a cheesy romantic comedy, thats supposed to look and feel like a cheesy romantic comedy. This isnt going to be moonlight or gods own country or some other critically acclaimed, oscar nomintaed queer film that makes straight people go "hmm maybe they do deserve rights and respect🤷‍♀️"

Its gonna be a cheesy adult romantic comedy, thats gonna be a bit camp and over the top and thats exactly why its so good. I dont want to think about every gay movie I watch. I want to watch it and see two queer people fall in love and thats it. Thats how deep it goes. Maybe a sprinkling of politcal commentary in between.

There is this issue thats become bigger and bigger every passing year, that people expect every bit of queer representation to be the best thing ever. There can not ever be anything cringey or different or silly, and if it is then they send endless hate towards it, and in an industry that already hates to show queer people on screen, its this viscious cycle of someone finally being greenlit to make queer media, the media gets endless hate for not being perfect, the studio cancels the queer media before giving it a chance because theyve just 'proven that it wont make money', suddenly everyone is saying 'why do they keep canceling queer media😢', cycle repeats.

Im so over it. Let gay people be slightly cringy or cheesy or campy. Let queer media exist without putting it on this huge pedestal. Just enjoy things! And if you dont, dont watch it! Move on, find something better to do.

Yes!!! Thank you so much anon for putting this feeling into words much better than I could have!

"I dont want to think about every gay movie I watch."

Thank you.

I want light-hearted rom coms about queer adults just being queer adults and havig fun. I want comedy adventures where the characters just happen to be gay. I want more horror where at the end the final girl kisses a girl and can't belive they lived but not because they're gay. (suprisingly several of these exist and I love it)

I don't always want to think about the plight and horrors of being queer today with every queer movie I watch.

Sometimes, yes of course, I want to be seen on that level.

(Nimona, which came this weekend is a perfect example of a queer movie where I felt very very seen but also had a good time and was an incredibly silly fantasy adventure movie. But, still had the queer expereince intertwined.)

I'm looking forward to a movie that will be 90% rom com, and 10% realism/heavyness. re: being outed is a real thing that happens to people. famous people.

Alex and Henry go through some heavy shit. There's seriously traumatizing stuff at the end of the book. They're both dealing with mental illnesses, complex families, and rock-or-a-hard-place situations. I want all of that honored.

And, at the same time, I'm expecting a straight-to-streaming, mid-budget, movie that had to pass through a LOT of straight hands and board meetings to get to us.

Not to say we should love and accept every queer movie that comes out automatically, they have been done wrong in the past. (example: I skipped call me by your name bc the age gap still makes me too uncomfortable to watch)

But we have to give queer movies a chance to fit the genre they were made for, the tone they are made to be, and give queer creators a chance to show they are us annd they know us. The director is Bi. He's spent so much time going on about how much he related to Alex that he needed to make this movie. It's his first directing role, and I'm giving him a chance.

[labyrynth]

why is the fact that pre-death wwx Didn’t Particularly Care about helping ghosts so controversial. like can we please just acknowledge that wei wuxian did not in fact set out to help all the poor widdle ghosties ease their grudges so they could pass on

rather, he set out specifically to weaponize as much hatred and resentment as he could, including using that hatred and resentment in ways that the original people had no control over, including turning their own bodies against their kin. he literally dug up graveyards. the spirits he used to gruesomely torture all the residents of the wen bases were never ever stated to be the “uwu helpless victims of the big meanie wens”

the point is that resentment does not care if it’s justified, it just wants to lash out and make others feel the same, but let’s be real: none of these spirits or corpses would be doing anything if not for wwx nurturing that resentment and letting it fester. the resentment wwx is using is his own. HE is the one channeling and directing all of this resentment.

[buddiesmutslut]

Buddie being together & possibly one of them being transferred out bc they can’t work together only to be put in a situation that they have to chose a patient over their injured partner a la Flashpoint

[kiwiihead]

high maintance... sorry i had to draw the enemies as lovers :^(

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

In sally and poppy's character page it says "Sally and Poppy are often depicted together and, according to recovered material, could potentially be best friends."

and to that i say, best friends my ASS!! those are lesbians right there

oooo i actually talked about this in the update stream when i was reading the updated bios! to restate!

a common Cover for lesbians used to be "best friends". why are those two women living together? why they're best friends, so why not! why do these women spend all their time together? they're best friends! why are those women so physically affectionate - well! they're best friends! an excuse that would never fly with gay men is perfect for lesbians.

and you still see this in recent years! remember all of the posts making fun of facebook moms / grandparents seeing photos of lesbians and going "well they seem like a lovely pair of Best Friends!" this still happens! i'm sure there are people today seeing lesbians and thinking that they're best friends. the amount of times i've pointed out to my own parents "they're gay" and gotten surprise and sometimes even denial is response because they genuinely thought these blatantly gay people were only friends

to me and my current knowledge, this addition to Poppy & Sally's bios is evidence worth considering with this context. a tally in the "canon Popstar?" box!

[soracities]

Hey! It has been on my mind lately and i just wanna ask..idk if it would make sense but i just noticed that nowadays ppl cant separate the authors and their books (ex. when author wrote a story about cheating and ppl starts bashing the author for romanticizing cheating and even to a point of cancelling the author for not setting a good/healthy example of a relationship) any thoughts about it?

I have many, many thoughts on this, so this may get a little unwieldy but I'll try to corall it together as best I can.

But honestly, I think sometimes being unable to separate the author from the work (which is interesting to me to see because some people are definitely not "separating" anything even though they think they are; they just erase the author entirely as an active agent, isolate the work, and call it "objectivity") has a lot to do with some people being unable to separate the things they read from themselves.

I'm absolutely not saying it's right, but it's an impulse I do understand. If you read a book and love it, if it transforms your life, or defines a particular period of your life, and then you find out that the author has said or done something awful--where does that leave you? Someone awful made something beautiful, something you loved: and now that this point of communion exists between you and someone whose views you'd never agree with, what does that mean for who you are? That this came from the mind of a person capable of something awful and spoke to your mind--does that mean you're like them? Could be like them?

Those are very uncomfortable questions and I think if you have a tendency to look at art or literature this way, you will inevitable fall into the mindset where only "Good" stories can be accepted because there's no distinction between where the story ends and you begin. As I said, I can see where it comes from but I also find it profoundly troubling because i think one of the worst things you can do to literature is approach it with the expectation of moral validation--this idea that everything you consume, everything you like and engage with is some fundamental insight into your very character as opposed to just a means of looking at or questioning something for its own sake is not just narrow-minded but dangerous.

Art isn't obliged to be anything--not moral, not even beautiful. And while I expend very little (and I mean very little) energy engaging with or even looking at internet / twitter discourse for obvious reasons, I do find it interesting that people (online anyway) will make the entire axis of their critique on something hinge on the fact that its bad representation or justifying / romanticizing something less than ideal, proceeding to treat art as some sort of conduit for moral guidance when it absolutely isn't. And they will also hold that this critique comes from a necessarily good and just place (positive representation, and I don't know, maybe in their minds it does) while at the same time setting themselves apart from radical conservatives who do the exact same thing, only they're doing it from the other side.

To make it abundantly clear, I'm absolutely not saying you should tolerate bigots decrying that books about the Holocaust, race, homophobia, or lgbt experiences should be banned--what I am saying, is that people who protest that a book like Maus or Persepolis is going to "corrupt children", and people who think a book exploring the emotional landscape of a deeply flawed character, who just happens to be from a traditionally marginalised group or is written by someone who is, is bad representation and therefore damaging to that community as a whole are arguments that stem from the exact same place: it's a fundamental inability, or outright refusal, to accept the interiority and alterity of other people, and the inherent validity of the experiences that follow. It's the same maniacal, consumptive, belief that there can be one view and one view only: the correct view, which is your view--your thoughts, your feelings.

There is also dangerous element of control in this. Someone with racist views does not want their child to hear anti-racist views because as far as they are concerned, this child is not a being with agency, but a direct extension of them and their legacy. That this child may disagree is a profound rupture and a threat to the cohesion of this person's entire worldview. Nothing exists in and of and for itself here: rather the multiplicity of the world and people's experiences within it are reduced to shadowy agents that are either for us or against us. It's not about protecting children's "innocence" ("think of the children", in these contexts, often just means "think of the status quo"), as much as it is about protecting yourself and the threat to your perceived place in the world.

And in all honestt I think the same holds true for the other side--if you cannot trust yourself to engage with works of art that come from a different standpoint to yours, or whose subject matter you dislike, without believing the mere fact of these works' existence will threaten something within you or society in general (which is hysterical because believe me, society is NOT that flimsy), then that is not an issue with the work itself--it's a personal issue and you need to ask yourself if it would actually be so unthinkable if your belief about something isn't as solid as you think it is, and, crucially, why you have such little faith in your own critical capacity that the only response these works ilicit from you is that no one should be able to engage with them. That's not awareness to me--it's veering very close to sticking your head in the sand, while insisting you actually aren't.

Arbitrarily adding a moral element to something that does not exist as an agent of moral rectitude but rather as an exploration of deeply human impulses, and doing so simply to justify your stance or your discomfort is not only a profoundly inadequate, but also a deeply insidious, way of papering over your insecurities and your own ignorance (i mean this in the literal sense of the word), of creating a false and dishonest certainty where certainty does not exist and then presenting this as a fact that cannot and should not be challenged and those who do are somehow perverse or should have their characters called into question for it. It's reductive and infantilising in so many ways and it also actively absolves you of any responsibility as a reader--it absolves you of taking responsibility for your own interpretation of the work in question, it absolves you of responsibility for your own feelings (and, potentially, your own biases or preconceptions), it absolves you of actual, proper, thought and engagement by laying the blame entirely on a rogue piece of literature (as if prose is something sentient) instead of acknowledging that any instance of reading is a two-way street: instead of asking why do I feel this way? what has this text rubbed up against? the assumption is that the book has imposed these feelings on you, rather than potentially illuminated what was already there.

Which brings me to something else which is that it is also, and I think this is equally dangerous, lending books and stories a mythical, almost supernatural, power that they absolutely do not have. Is story-telling one of the most human, most enduring, most important and life-altering traditions we have? Yes. But a story is also just a story. And to convince yourself that books have a dangerous transformative power above and beyond what they are actually capable of is, again, to completely erase people's agency as readers, writers' agency as writers and makers (the same as any other craft), and subsequently your own. And erasing agency is the very point of censors banning books en masse. It's not an act of stupidity or blind ignorance, but a conscious awareness of the fact that people will disagree with you, and for whatever reason you've decided that you are not going to let them.

Writers and poets are not separate entities to the rest of us: they aren't shamans or prophets, gifted and chosen beings who have some inner, profound, knowledge the rest of us aren't privy to (and should therefore know better or be better in some regard) because moral absolutism just does not exist. Every writer, no matter how affecting their work may be, is still Just Some Guy Who Made a Thing. Writing can be an incredibly intimate act, but it can also just be writing, in the same way that plumbing is plumbing and weeding is just weeding and not necessarily some transcendant cosmic endeavour in and of itself. Authors are no different, when you get down to it, from bakers or electricians; Nobel laureates are just as capable of coming out with distasteful comments about women as your annoying cousin is and the fact that they wrote a genre-defying work does not change that, or vice-versa. We imbue books with so much power and as conduits of the very best and most human traits we can imagine and hope for, but they aren't representations of the best of humanity--they're simply expressions of humanity, which includes the things we don't like.

There are some authors I love who have said and done things I completely disagree with or whose views I find abhorrent--but I'm not expecting that, just because they created something that changed my world, they are above and beyond the ordinarly, the petty, the spiteful, or cruel. That's not condoning what they have said and done in the least: but I trust myself to be able to read these works with awareness and attention, to pick out and examine and attempt to understand the things that I find questionable, to hold on to what has moved me, and to disregard what I just don't vibe with or disagree with. There are writers I've chosen not to engage with, for my own personal reasons: but I'm not going to enforce this onto someone else because I can see what others would love in them, even if what I love is not strong enough to make up for what I can't. Terrance Hayes put perfectly in my view, when he talks about this and being capable of "love without forgiveness". Writing is a profoundly human heritage and those who engage with it aren't separate from that heritage as human because they live in, and are made by, the exact same world as anyone else.

The measure of good writing for me has hardly anything to do with whatever "virtue" it's perceived to have and everything to do with sincerity. As far as I'm concerned, "positive representation" is not about 100% likeable characters who never do anything problematic or who are easily understood. Positive representation is about being afforded the full scope of human feelings, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and not having your humanity, your dignity, your right to exist in the world questioned because all of these can only be seen through the filter of race, or gender, religion, or ethicity and interpreted according to our (profoundly warped) perceptions of those categories and what they should or shouldn't represent. True recognition of someone's humanity does not lie in finding only what is held in common between you (and is therefore "acceptable", with whatever you put into that category), but in accepting everything that is radically different about them and not letting this colour the consideration you give.

Also, and it may sound harsh, but I think people forget that fictional characters are fictional. If I find a particularly fucked up relationship dynamic compelling (as I often do), or if I decide to write and explore that dynamic, that's not me saying two people who threaten to kill each other and constantly hurt each other is my ideal of romance and that this is exactly how I want to be treated: it's me trying to find out what is really happening below the surface when two people behave like this. It's me exploring something that would be traumatizing and deeply damaging in real life, in a safe and fictional setting so I can gain some kind of understanding about our darker and more destructive impulses without being literally destroyed by them, as would happen if all of this were real. But it isn't real. And this isn't a radical or complex thing to comprehend, but it becomes incomprehensible if your sole understanding of literature is that it exists to validate you or entertain you or cater to you, and if all of your interpretations of other people's intentions are laced with a persistent sense of bad faith. Just because you have not forged any identity outside of this fictional narrative doesn't mean it's the same for others.

Ursula K. le Guin made an extremely salient point about children and stories in that children know the stories you tell them--dragons, witches, ghouls, whatever--are not real, but they are true. And that sums it all up. There's a reason children learning to lie is an incredibly important developmental milestone, because it shows that they have achieved an incredibly complex, but vitally important, ability to hold two contradictory statements in their minds and still know which is true and which isn't. If you cannot delve into a work, on the terms it sets, as a fictional piece of literature, recognize its good points and note its bad points, assess what can have a real world impact or reflects a real world impact and what is just creative license, how do you possible expect to recognize when authority and propaganda lies to you? Because one thing propaganda has always utilised is a simplistic, black and white depiction of The Good (Us) and The Bad (Them). This moralistic stance regarding fiction does not make you more progressive or considerate; it simply makes it easier to manipulate your ideas and your feelings about those ideas because your assessments are entirely emotional and surface level and are fuelled by a refusal to engage with something beyond the knee-jerk reaction it causes you to have.

Books are profoundly, and I do mean profoundly, important to me-- and so much of who I am and the way I see things is probably down to the fact that stories have preoccupied me wherever I go. But I also don't see them as vital building blocks for some core facet or a pronouncement of Who I Am. They're not badges of honour or a cover letter I put out into the world for other people to judge and assess me by, and approve of me (and by extension, the things I say or feel). They're vehicles through which I explore and experience whatever it is that I'm most caught by: not a prophylactic, not a mode of virtue signalling, and certainly not a means of signalling a moral stance.

I think at the end of the day so much of this tendency to view books as an extension of yourself (and therefore of an author) is down to the whole notion of "art as a mirror", and I always come back to Fran Lebowitz saying that it "isn't a mirror, it's a door". And while I do think it's important to have that mirror (especially if you're part of a community that never sees itself represented, or represented poorly and offensively) I think some people have moved into the mindset of thinking that, in order for art to be good, it needs to be a mirror, it needs to cater to them and their experiences precisely--either that or that it can only exist as a mirror full stop, a reflection of and for the reader and the writer (which is just incredibly reductive and dismissive of both)--and if art can only exist as a mirror then anything negative that is reflected back at you must be a condemnation, not a call for exploration or an attempt at understanding.

As I said, a mirror is important but to insist on it above all else isn't always a positive thing: there are books I related to deeply because they allowed me to feel so seen (some by authors who looked nothing like me), but I have no interest in surrounding myself with those books all the time either--I know what goes on in my head which is precisely why I don't always want to live there. Being validated by a character who's "just like me" is amazing but I also want--I also need-- to know that lives and minds and events exist outside of the echo-chamber of my own mind. The mirror is comforting, yes, but if you spend too long with it, it also becomes isolating: you need doors because they lead you to ideas and views and characters you could never come up with on your own. A world made up of various Mes reflected back to me is not a world I want to be immersed in because it's a world with very little texture or discovery or room for growth and change. Your sense of self and your sense of other people cannot grow here; it just becomes mangled.

Art has always been about dialogue, always about a me and a you, a speaker and a listener, even when it is happening in the most internal of spaces: to insist that art only ever tells you what you want to hear, that it should only reflect what you know and accept is to undermine the very core of what it seeks to do in the first place, which is establish connection. Art is a lifeline, I'm not saying it isn't. But it's also not an instruction manual for how to behave in the world--it's an exploration of what being in the world looks like at all, and this is different for everyone. And you are treading into some very, very dangerous waters the moment you insist it must be otherwise.

Whatever it means to be in the world, it is anything but straightforward. In this world people cheat, people kill, they manipulate, they lie, they torture and steal--why? Sometimes we know why, but more often we don't--but we take all these questions and write (or read) our way through them hoping that, if we don't find an answer, we can at least find our way to a place where not knowing isn't as unbearable anymore (and sometimes it's not even about that; it's just about telling a story and wanting to make people laugh). It's an endless heritage of seeking with countless variations on the same statements which say over and over again I don't know what to make of this story, even as I tell it to you. So why am I telling it? Do I want to change it? Can I change it? Yes. No. Maybe. I have no certainty in any of this except that I can say it. All I can do is say it.

Writing, and art in general, are one of the very, very, few ways we can try and make sense of the apparently arbitrary chaos and absurdity of our lives--it's one of the only ways left to us by which we can impose some sense of structure or meaning, even if those things exists in the midst of forces that will constantly overwhelm those structures, and us. I write a poem to try and make sense of something (grief, love, a question about octopuses) or to just set down that I've experienced something (grief, love, an answer about octpuses). You write a poem to make sense of, resolve, register, or celebrate something else. They don't have to align. They don't have to agree. We don't even need to like each other much. But in both of these instances something is being said, some fragment of the world as its been perceived or experienced is being shared. They're separate truths that can exist at the same time. Acknowledging this is the only means we have of momentarily bridging the gaps that will always exist between ourselves and others, and it requires a profound amount of grace, consideration and forbearance. Otherwise, why are we bothering at all?

[tenwhiteandalusians]

so no one was going to tell me if i got literally one episode further tenax drops that he’s the one who saved scorpus from his mom’s pimp AND that he’s intimately familiar with scorpus’ dick when he was younger. guys. guys.

[aquapede]

why are people saying the princess is too nice to you in the pristine cut all of a sudden. what the fuck were you guys playing. where the hell are we

[koraesrambles]

More Winchester vs Batfam thoughts

Dick and Dean bonding over being inhumanly beautiful people who were sexualized from an early age and using their sexual nature as a shield.

Sam and Jason bonding over feeling like they'll never be as good as their big brothers.

Sam and Jason bonding over love of literature.

Dean and Jason being total nerds about guns and Jason feeling so vindicated about his gun stance.

Dick talking to Sam about how everyone deserves a chance to reform and that resonating with Sam in a way that frightens him.

The four of them bonding over a super overprotective parent that also was cool with them being child soldiers.

All four of them bonding over living nomadically (or homelessly) in their younger years, and rheir various experiences with poverty (Sam and Dean totally make fun of the other two for becoming rich boys.)

Endless hours of morality debates that absolutely end up with someone with a broken nose.

Giving each other lock picking tips

Dick and Sam bonding over being The Smart Kids that then get shown up by a computer super genius (Tim and Charlie)

Winchesters making fun of the bat boys for being citykids, batboys mocking the Winchesters for being small town hicks.

All of them bonding over their love of cool cars (Sam acts like he doesn't care, but 100% has Opinions.)

Sam and Jason bonding over college dreams

Sam and Dick bond over being mathletes (nerds!)

Dick and Dean bond over thinking school overall was a waste of time.

Dick and Dean bond over having to take care of their dads when they were young.

Dick and Sam bonding over their desperate desire to be good but also harboring a lot of deep anger.

Jason and Dean not used to having to compete for being the funniest person in the room.

Jason and Dean bonding over their desire to protect young kids.

Dick and Dean commiserate in being the older, but shorter, brothers.

The four of them trying to compete in a trivia game. It does not go well. No one has a good time.

Dean: wait, so you two aren't real brothers?

Jason: I will shoot you in the face.

Dean: that's not what I meant!

[thursdayinspace]

I have now seen Aziraphale called 'manipulative,' 'intentionally cruel,' and 'selfish," and I swear to Whatever we're not watching the same show.

He's panicking. He has no choice but to go back to Heaven, but he's seeing everything he's ever wanted slipping away from him and he can't do anything about it. He is losing everything. Everything he says is him begging Crowley to come with him because he doesn't want to lose him, whilst he already knows he won't change Crowley's mind.

Crowley is in the exact same situation btw. He can't go back to Heaven just as much as Aziraphale cannot refuse to go, and he too sees everything he wants falling apart.

They are desperate. Both of them. Nobody is manipulating anyone.

[tonydaddingham]

woahwoahwoah why am i only noticing this now

[crimeronan]

started writing the raine and eda confrontation and. it really is incredible what a Fucking Mess eda is. i'm not even doing it on purpose, like it's not part of my chapter outline. she just sees raine and immediately all thoughts, feelings, and rationality fly out the window. eda is like "i'm gonna have a calm discussion with my ex" and she plans for it and thinks about it and truly means it, like she really is as well-prepared as she could be.

and then raine shows up and eda is immediately like "lmao, omg. isn't it crazy how luz looks like she could be our daughter????"