#the audience doesn't exist

[existential-dread-in-the-am]

Not me pacing around the livingroom for two hours, imaginary-lecturing an imaginary audience on many grand thoughts and ideas after reading a book written by a person with many grand thoughts and ideas

[bet-on-me-13]

Wes ruins everything

Wes had finally done it, he had finally realized why nobody ever belived him about Fenton and Phantom! It made so much sense now, he had been looking for an answer for years, thinking he was going crazy because everybody refused to see the Obvious!

He was Cursed!

He literally had an Ancestoral Curse on his Bloodline that made it so that all those born with the gift of Prophecy would be ignored! A Gift of Prophecy that he apparently had.

It was Cassandra's Curse, the one from Greek Myths. Apparently she was his Great×1000 Grandmother and passed down the Gift (and Curse) of Prophecy to him. And he knew how to break it!

All he needed to do was gather the right resources, chant the correct incantations, make sure not to accidentally summon a Demon in the process, and he could just foist the Curse onto some other poor schmuck. Sure it would suck for them, and he would loose his Gift of Prophecy, but Wes had been ignored for Years at this point, he needed validation!

So he did the Ritual, and he didn't mess it up, and he managed to get rid of the Curse.

Now all he had to do was convince everybody that he was right for the first time in his life! This was going to be great!

...

Cass didn't know what was going on.

A while ago, she had started getting these...gut feelings that she couldn't explain.

She would look over the details of a Case her Family was working on, and see a patern that the others were seemingly ignoring. Like when she realized that The Penguin was about to raid the Docks on the East Side, but the others were convinced it was going to be on the West.

But when she had tried to tell them, they had brushed her off. "We've already concluded that he will begin the Raid on the West side, no need to go to the East."

She had gone anyways, and low and behold she had been right. But nobody even acknowledged that she had been right at all, they had just wondered how they had missed the signs, not even questioning how she had known.

It wasn't limited to Cases either. Even small things, like telling her brother's where the TV remote was were brushed off, and hours later they would still be looking, never even having checked where she told them.

It seemed that no matter what, nobody cared about her point of view anymore. They kept brushing her off, telling her she was wrong, actively ignoring her ideas.

And it was getting worse. They were starting to ignore her more and more, forgetting she was in the room, not calling her down for Dinner, even forgetting to check in on her during Patrol.

She knew that there must be something going on, Magical or otherwise, but when she tried bringing it up with her Dad or JLD, they would also Brush her off.

Her Family was forgetting her. And they didn't even realize it.

...

Danny was not okay at the moment.

When he had gone to school a few weeks ago and noticed everybody staring at him, he didn't give it much thought. Maybe Dash or Paulina had spread another Rumor about him again, not too out of the ordinary.

When his name had been called over the Intercom, he hadn't thought much of that either. His grades were falling even more than usual, so he assumed his Guidance Counselor wanted to have another talk with him.

When he walked into the Principals Office to see both of his Parents and some GIW Agents, that's when he realized something big must have happened.

He didn't have much of a chance to react when the Shields went up, but he did react when the first Ecto-Blast scorched the wall behind him. His Parents began to scream at him as they fired their Blasters, something about replacing somebody? He didn't know, he was pretty preoccupied at the moment.

It took more effort than he cared to admit to escape the Room, but a stray shot to the hidden Shield Projector under the Principals Desk proved to be his saving grace. Unfortunately the moment he escaped the Office, he was met with a veritable Army of GIW Agents, all armed to the Teeth with Weapons he had never even seen before.

He managed to get away for a moment, hiding in the Bathroom as the Agents chasing him passed it by. That's when he met Wes.

He obviously hadn't been expecting him, but the moment he saw him Wes put on a smug look. "Oh hi Fenton, trying to get away from the other students?"

Danny had replied with confusion, "What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I finally managed to convince everybody about you, now everyone knows that you're Phantom! I'll bet you're hiding from all of the other Students hounding you for questions right?"

"...it was you?"

"Yeah, so? I finally get to be right!"

"...You absolute MORON-"

That was the last Danny got to say to Wes before an Ecto-Blast launched him through a Wall, seeing his face morph into a look of Shock just before the dust cloud covered it up.

Since that day, Danny had been on the Run. Nowhere was safe anymore now that the GIW knew both his Human and Ghost's faces, but he had to keep running. He crossed state Lines already, and was on his way to the next Ecto-Rich City he could sense, somewhere in New Jersey.

He cursed his Fenton Luck every day. Why had everybody believed Wes this time?! Nobody had ever belived him before, nobody even seemed to acknowledge his existence after a while! What had changed?

Danny just wanted to rest already.

...

Cass had taken to Patrolling alone recently. She had taken to doing a lot of things alone, actually.

After the first month, it seemed that nobody could remember that she was in the room with them, even if she was within their eyeline, she just faded into the background. By the 2 Month Mark they had stopped talking to her entirely, although occasionally she would get a Text or two from her dad. By the 3 month Mark she was completely invisible, and By the 5th she had been forced to get used to it.

She didn't know what was going on, was it a Meta Ability? Magic? Alien Tech? She had no idea.

She had begun to cook for herself after the first time Alfred forgot to set her Plate at the Table. The same with Washing her own Clothes, Cleaning her Room, and Paying her Phone Bills. At the very least the Automated Allowance Payments to her Account had kept up, or she wouldn't have been able to go to her favorite Cafe anymore.

It was bittersweet for her. She used to go to that Cafe every week with Alfred, but he didn't even come on his own anymore. Had he only come for her? Did she really mean that much to them? It hurt, she finally had a family that cared for her and suddenly she didn't exist to them.

She sat alone at a Table, ignored by everyone in the Cafe as usual, when a new face walked in. He looked about her age, a little roughed up, walking with a sort of cautious gaint, as if he was scared of something. His Body Language seemed to agree with her assessment, as his body practically screamed "Worry" in its movements.

Cass stopped watching at that point. Just another Gotham Teen, probably worried over something like getting not having enough money or getting mugged on the way home. It was a Common sight in Gotham.

She attention was pricked again for a moment when she heard a voice speak up. "Uh, can I sit here?"

She ignored it, he wasn't talking to her.

"Um, excuse me? Miss? Could I sit here?" He repeated.

She ignored him again, he wasn't talking to her. Nobody talked to her.

"Hello? Do you have Earbuds in?" He said, and he waved his hand in front of her face.

Her face. He waved his hand. In front of Her Face.

He was talking to her.

She looked up at him sharply, seeming to startle him for a moment before he asked, "So, is that a no?"

"You can see me?" She asked.

He looked a bit bewildered, but replied "Uh, yeah? Why would I not? Are you...a Ghost?". That last part sounded a bit suspicious.

"No. Not a Ghost. But nobody sees me. Ever. Nobody remembers me." She replied. She had never spoken this much to anybody outside of her Family, but in the past few weeks she had been starved for interaction.

He seemed slightly interested, and sat down at her table. He looked her in the eyes, and said "Do you...talk about it?"

She smiled. He could see her.

[mixelation]

there should be a ninjacon panel where 'experts' debate if fictional jutsu could be accomplished in real life or not

[classicslesbianopinions]

the thing about being a disabled grad student is that if you want even half a chance you constantly have to not only reveal but interrogate and explain your softest most vulnerable parts. while people around you act like this is just completely normal and actually that is not the softest most vulnerable part of you and actually you are exactly the same as all of them. so you feel like you are in disguise as exactlythesame while also completely exposed. and you just have to live like that. absolutely insane

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

something i've been thinking about:

Wally is set up as a sort of "main character" by the whrp. he's said in the site's description of the show to have introduced the main theme/lesson of the day's episode, and then the rest of the neighbors join him on his escapades. but then we have our first glimpses of everyone's actual dynamics and characters through the audios and you look at Wally and its like

first of all, thats an npc. second, nearly everybody else has severe main character syndrome

but its fascinating how Wally is just kind of... There. he doesnt talk much. he doesnt contribute beyond a couple of lines. its more like he joins the others on their shenanigans. he fades into the background. he's off to the side while everyone else holds conversations & leads the moment

Wally, despite being described as Thee character, is borderline background.

& whats even more interesting, within his individual secret audio files and interactions - he's almost chatty. not only that but the way he talks is more confident and faster paced. he's taking initiative. he can be kinda pushy. when talking to the qa/whrp/Us, he acts more like the character his descriptions portray. he acts more like a person instead of a puppet waiting for his next cue

I cant tell if - when around the neighbors - his tepid milk behavior is a purposeful act or if he's masking. and if he's masking, is it deliberate or involuntary? and in regards to both, why is he acting so different? It could be tied to what he's trying to accomplish. if he's trying to "restore" Welcome Home, it would make sense for him to act as he does around the neighbors - he wouldnt want to clue them in that he knows so much more than he's letting on, would he?

but then that begs another train of thought - what if he isn't acting or masking? if there is a time discrepancy between Wally's interactions with the qa/whrp/Us & the more 'official' audios, that could explain the difference in behavior. we could be getting glimpses into "future" (read: current) Wally, who's had much more time to figure himself out since we can safely assume he started out as a blank slate. we could be seeing a more experienced Wally than the one seen with his friends.

of course that line of thinking loses some merit when considering the 14 "bug" audios. or it could lend to it... if we're seeing a more experienced Wally but his friends are only seeing what he allows them to. it's still him, just... a carefully curated version.

in general it could really tie into the themes of identity and change and being other, to me. when you're so different - or you feel so different - that you can't bring yourself to be your most authentic you around your friends. when you feel like you have to hold back and be who you think they expect you to be, or what would be most palatable. most normal. will they accept you as you really are? there's always the fear and terror that the people you consider closest to you won't. or when you're so scared of change that you'll shove down & lock away parts of yourself so that you can keep things as you are. because once they know you've changed, so will they. and really, do you want to even accept that you've changed? what if that's what scares you most of all - that you're different, you've metamorphosized, you can't go back to the way things were because you yourself are no longer the person you were before. there is no reversing this no matter how much you try or pretend

[illmoraineakoi]

Fic where through Rocket Corp Shenanigans and/or Orange Power Craziness, the Color Gang, TCO and Victim all get spat out into the human world, where Alan then has to reveal to his wife that surprise! Living stick figures are real, he's made living stick figures, two of them don't like him, and one of those two is actively trying to kill him, while the other five see him as their Dad.

All while trying, and just barely succeeding, in wrangling a very ferally angry Victim who is trying his hardest to inflict great bodily harm onto Alan despite Alan being literally five times his size while the others are panicking trying to figure out how to help. Except for TCO, who is just WAITING for Alan accidentally drop Victim so he can return the favor of the Box beatdown.

And Kaori, who Alan never told that his animations were based on real events and real living stick figures, is just sitting there watching this lunacy like this:

[usercelestial]

literally have we considered that bts is just extra spice we get for marketing and stuff like if lfj isn't in it, there's a million explanations that aren't "the buddies yelled on twitter so tim fired him" like girlies come on get up off the floor and stop crying

[vimbry]

forget every "so tell us about dial-a-song" question in tmbg interviews, I still want to hear an elaboration of the vibe report where flansburgh's like "john linnell does not believe there should be music in films" and he goes "that's true :)" and they just move on

[sciderman]

howard the duck (1976) #10

[mirrorhouse]

putting this all under a readmore and not tagging i just wanted to put my thoughts down somewhere .. talking about marius and his fans & tw for mentioning csa / sa

personally. i understand that the marius/armand relationship has been a popular part of the book series for decades and it's fictional and yes i get it. but. i dont understand those fans who encounter people who find it purely horrifying or upsetting and then get mad at them for it. just because of how it's framed in the books as a beautiful gothic love story (filtered through both the author's intention & the skewed perspectives of the two characters involved in it) doesn't mean EVERYONE has to romanticise it and it's only babies or idiots or show only fans who "can't handle gothic fiction".

and then the people who try to convince everyone marius is armand's saviour who only ever treated him with love and kindness really confuse me. like, is it a wholesome relationship built on mutual love? or is it abusive and awful AND loving and caring at the same time? aren't the people who deny marius did anything wrong to armand really the ones who can't stomach enjoying gothic romances and have to twist it into something else?

it's a story of a fully grown man, a millenia old vampire, rescuing a teenager from sex slavery by purchasing him for himself, renaming him, showering him with affection, sexually abusing him, genuinely loving him, treating him like a child and an adult and student and son and lover all at the same time, making his entire world revolve around his master, punishing him emotionally and eventually physically whenever he gets too clingy or aggressive. and it's all done, not under just the 'guise' of love, but from a place of genuine love, and that's how both characters see it. it's entirely damaging and fucked up and the aftereffects of it on armand's mind and sense of self are present for centuries, compounded by everything else he went through. he still draws both comfort and pain from thinking about his past now and even tries to partially recreate the dynamic with someone else both in the book (with daniel, armand taking the role of the master; and keeping young 'mortal slaves' for a time) and in the show (with louis, armand taking the role of the slave)

it is a super fucked up relationship & i'm not one of those people who thinks you shouldn't be allowed to enjoy those in fiction. there's a lot of them that appeal to me obviously, and of course everyone has their own boundaries when it comes to that too. AND i know it's not all marius fans or even all marius/armand fans. i literally don't care what people like in fiction and i think we should all just mind our own business honestly

but it's the people who act like they're the only ones who get that it's just a tragic beautiful romance, that nobody else can read apparently, that 'marius haters' are just looking for things to be mad at that make me go ???????

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[tippenfunkaport]

Every writing class I have ever taken has assured me that you don't have to spell everything out because the audience is smart enough to read between the lines and, the more time I spend in fandom, the less I believe that.

[disappearinginq]

I hate that people on a whole don't understand a narrative. Like...your English/literature teacher should've flunked people over this.

Probably the people who understand it best are the ones marginalized in life, because hey, we see ourselves in those characters. Other people have the luxury of just going "eh" and moving on.

But when hugely popular shows and movies and even books keep killing off their marginalized and suffering characters as the "only way this could've ended" I want to reach through a screen and choke them out because stop telling me the world is better without me in it., Or I will take you with me, and we'll see who's mourned.

It's not even just Bury Your Gays. In Outer Banks, they kill of the kid who is told from season 1 that you'll never make anything of yourself. You will always be poor, homeless, unloved, and alone. And then spend three and a half seasons showing you that this character absolutely will beat his own narrative - he finds friends that are his family, he finds a life he loves with the people he loves and they love him back, and then - they kill him. BUT THE RICH BITCH FUCKING PSYCHOPATH GETS A REDEMPTION ARC? I don't care how good the actors are, the narrative has now wildly swung from 'you can make it if you don't give up' to 'don't even bother - life will find a way to beat you down to where you belong' and airing two days after the catastrophic American elections - where the billionaires and greed and hate win?

The Umbrella Academy had three seasons of fun, quirky, broken people who tried so hard to fix their mistakes, to fix what they broke, and canonically, are representing marginalized groups that never get the happy endings. But dammit, this family tried. They didn't always get along, they were dysfunctional, but they still came together in the end, and loved one another despite the bad they have done. And then - the narrative again spins a wild one eighty and the story ends with "the world is better without you in it - die". Which is a very real narrative a lot of us live with.

The MCU - kills off Iron Man/Tony Stark, one of the very first popular characters who suffers from extreme CPTSD along with an alphabet of mental disorders; Loki, who is the adopted child and queer across the board, loses absolutely everyone and everything; Steve, who while he isn't dead, his character most certainly is because he goes from the one who does sacrifice everything to making a selfish, personal decision that winds up fucking over everyone; Bucky, who again isn't dead but he is openly blamed for the things he did while he was a prisoner and a mind-controlled assassin for the bad guys against his will by his mental health professional. And the narrative is "no, you should sacrifice yourself so the rest of us who treated you like shit can live a better life."

The stupidity of wanting to punish your audience who is punished enough in the real world often enough we don't need it or want it in fiction is just...mind boggling. And when those are the real words used by writers to justify their shit decisions?

I hope your death serves a narrative purpose, since you seem to think that is the noblist way to go.

[fiona-fififi]

The way people sometimes refuse to acknowledge that writing choices that clearly go against established canon should mean something is endlessly frustrating to me. We don't have to agree on the interpretation, but these writing choices SHOULD mean something.

Otherwise, it's shitty writing.

[mxnster-soul]

Wowza, NGL, I wasn't expecting so many viewers for the silly lil updates I post when it comes to Bill being around.

And there's a buncha stuff in the mailbox I haven't gotten to answering yet, and it's hard to list everything into chronological order.

As much as i'd like to keep every posted according to the day/time it's recieved/answered.

I'm losing track of everything, plus there's a limit to how much I can add to the pinned post.

I won't be able to keep things in order, and I wanna catch up with the things i've missed.

TLDR: The #[Blog with Bill] tag will have ALL the updates with Bill searchable through it!

Anything without #[Blog with Bill] has nothing to do with the updates

-The blogger

P.s: Sorry if I reply to an ask late/when whatever stuff has happened has long passed.

[rainingmbappe]

The rise of "let people enjoy things" is single handedly the backbone of the rise of anti intellectualism