#this is also mostly stuff i see on twitter but jesus fuck

[nicxxx5]

there are so many fandom ships that i want, so 911 is one of the very few times i don't want it because i think buck and tommy are really good together.

now i also get bashing a character that you don't like, especially when they're trash...but goddammit some of yall are so fucking nasty to tommy and he didn't do shit 😭😭😭

[fortemelody]

i check twitter every once in awhile and i don’t have the app becus i do not feel like brainrotting myself even more 😭 but for me it’s mostly becus it has some GOOD sonamy food (art). however, whenever i’m scrolling through i have to see the shit that the sonamy channel posts and my lord are they annoying. like jesus bro can’t handle people liking any other ship becus they aren’t canon, along with being based on biases apparently (which like…yeah mf that’s kinda the point…you just like what you wanna like???) also people say therye an incel too so that’s cute! and then non sonamy shippers will think we all agree with them and that is far from the truth. they are the epitome of needless discourse and feeling the need to defend something that is so minuscule and literally fictional constantly like you’re fighting for your life. and plus many of the posts that aren’t necessarily problematic are just a stretch sometimes. they’ll be like “omg do you think sonic and amy will have a super romantic scene in the third movie?!?1!1?1!” (this is not verbatim and i’m slightly exaggerating) and as a sonamy fan i can tell you that probably won’t be the case and what is the point in the extreme speculation if she isn’t even confirmed to be in the movie yet and we have like no fucking trailer at all yet. and i’m sad to admit i used to follow them on insta (where i didn’t know how much drama they got into becus there’s no threads and such) and i slowly had to realize how ridiculous their claims were over time and eventually unfollowed. like do they sometimes post decent moments and observations about sonamy? yes. but rather than in a wholesome “omg look at my cute ship” way, it’s like “omg sega did this right here so therefore my ship is canon and it’s the best and i hope they do this next pretty please”. i’m just. so done bro 💀 like i said this is why i don’t have twitter it’s actual bootycheeks on here. it goes even further than that and random people will start arguments in the sonic fandom every day such as which way sonic’s shoes are drawn is better or sonic prime vs mickey mouse clubhouse (credit to sonicbits on insta for keeping me updated without making me open the website, you a real one ong).

but uhhh yeah that’s all i got sorry i have finally risen from the grave to give y’all more sonic rants that i bet my whopping 30 ish followers missed after i was too tired and busy recently to think up anything so i just reblogged stuff for awhile 🙏

[lockandkeyhyena]

Tricks up my sleeves took YEARS to be completed and they want to pretend they didn't know about the drama until now? After admitting they unfollow anyone who DARES bring up what shitty things ppl in the community are doing?? It's such BS what are yall talking abt them acting reasonably. Have any of you read the actual comment they made, there's a reason they're being so vague about "problematic" stuff the artists did because both drew CP and one of them STILL HAS A PLATFORM. If you replaced problematic artists in their comment with "people who sexualize children" it'd sound insane hence why they're being so vague and weird about it. It's pure manipulation folks!! Also they supported JK Rowling with a drawing for her birthday on twitter and said they "didn't agree with her views" but were still gonna support her. This is that same attitude but for people who did something that is literally ILLEGAL what do u mean reasonable this is one of the worst responses I've seen in my life??

They made it all about "poor me the internet is so mean just bc I put some bad people who did bad things [they rlly don't wanna mention what was actually done LMAO] Im a grown ass adult who thinks I shouldn't have any responsibility to protect my mostly child audience pwease tell me I sound reasonable." We are not rewriting this narrative to be nice to them come on guys.

Their care about the victims to these people is SO PISS POOR, they won't even add A WARNING A WARNING a sentence in the desc saying 'hey these two people suck don't watch if that would upset you'. Then at the same time are telling people to just not watch it if they don't like it? HOW??? IF YOU WON'T WARN THEM WHAT'S IN IT THEY CAN'T AVOID IT?? Almost like admitting they have two abusers in their map would be like... A bad look or something and they care abt that more than others safety or comfort.

Also they deleted my reply to their comment saying all this so no, they're not "being reasonable" this is purely and simply protecting the horrible artists who did that shit. Let's not play devil's advocate for ppl who draw CP please-

jesus christ calm down i was just giving my uninformed opinion on the situation because people asked. did you not see my reply adding that if they purposefully blocked people warning about dangerous people in the fandom, they have no right to complain when people point out that they have unsafe people in their map?

how the fuck did you jump from that to me ‘playing devils advocate for people who draw cp’???

if i sound defensive its because i. am. obviously.

[vacantgodling]

Writeblr Interview

On the Tumblr Writing Community

How long have you had your writing Tumblr/Writeblr?

been on tumblr in some way since like 2013. been on writeblr specifically since like 2020-2021... ish?

What led you to create it?

ended up leaving twitter (back when it was still twitter) around the time the pandemic happened. i wanted to get back into tumblr because i'd been focusing mostly on twitter for awhile and the yeehan community/my old friends kinda weren't doing shit for me so i wanted to focus more on my original stuff. so i ended up making a writeblr when i heard that was a thing.

What’s your favorite thing about the Writeblr community?

how we really do just be on here talking about our blorbos and having a good time. its nice to have a place to escape with people who also get the importance of not being connected to reality at all times.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

i feel like ask games have kind of died down compared to how they were a few years ago so it'd be nice to make a resurgance of that.

What tips/advice do you have for someone who made a Writeblr today?

honestly just post what makes you happy and actually interact with other people. just trying to promote your own stuff doesn't really work (unless you're an artist tbh) but interacting with other people and making posts talking about what you're making with enthusiasm instead of the "woe is me idk how to talk about my wips but i hope someone will talk with me... :((" like bro idk just talk about it. have a good time. you don't have to follow for follow or follow someone just bc they're a writeblr either i kinda hate that shit. like only follow me if you're actually interested in my shit and vice versa. but that's just a pet peeve. tumblr isn't twitter we are about having a good time here not about promo.

WIP it Good

Which Works-in-Progress (WIPs) or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

that's a funny way to put this. rn its mostly been tcol just because i've been on a worldbuilding history kick because i've been cramming my brain full of a fucking alternate history youtube channel that my brain is mildly hyperfixated on. but my brain kinda flip flops around to any of my main wips when its convenient.

How long have you been working on them?

tcol's a wip i've had since i was 12 so like. pff 14 years at this point? jesus it sounds so old when i put it like that. paramour just had its 3 year anniversary on 6/19. vdtrt i've also had since 12. btaf is a couple of months old. like. maybe 2 months old lmao.

Do you remember what inspired them/what got you started?

tcol -> the video game etrian odyssey, lotr, history (in general) paramour -> there's so many influences frfr. but the original start was crimson peak and wanting to make something like that but also beauty and the beast and goth lit or whatever vdtrt -> percy jackson btaf -> twilight, but specifically the bella pregnancy arc

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

literally all day every day in some capacity

When someone asks the dreaded, “What do you write about,” question, what do you usually say?

"fantasy" i don't really talk to people about my writing at all in general irl anymore tho. just sets up for annoyance and disappointment.

What do you want to say (if it’s different from what you do say)?

"fantasy" like. i really don't like people knowing about my wips esp if i don't think they have the bandwidth to appreciate them. not to sound uppity but like ik the people who i'm around and the shit that intrigues them is just worlds away from what i'm writing whether it be because its fantasy, because it's horror, or because it's queer.

Let’s Rotate Blorbos

Name any characters you created.

so as of counting (and not counting the plethora of flesh blood recently added to tcol) i've got 419 characters and counting. this also doesn't include any of the ocs i have with my partner which is a decent amount. i'll just stick with the mcs of the main wips. so those would be:

hyacinthus, amon, darren, sjaak, biscella, azelie, piper, forte, deux, san, clear

Who’s the most unhinged?

least to most hinged of this list:

SJAAK -> amon -> san -> piper -> hya -> clear -> deux -> biscella -> azelie -> darren -> forte

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

hya and amon are the easiest to write because i've written them the most. darren is a close second but not first because his whole thing about not using adverbs really trips me up.

Do you ever cringe at them?

nah. i don't cringe at them. i disdain at them. but not really cringe. i get really bad secondhand embarrassment so i don't tend to make characters that make me have that actually cringe reaction.

How much control do you feel you have over your characters?

kinda a weird question for me but tbh i feel like its sort of a 50-50 situation. i tend to make characters firstly out of some utility (aka i need a character to fulfill this role in the plot) and then as i develop them its like the two of us become collaborators on writing the story together. sometimes characters can be a bit stubborn about what they do or don't tell me about their backstories (hya is notorious for this) but for the most part they can't really "hide" things from me or wholly not do what i want them to do. a lot of times i'm going to put them in a situation anyway, they just need to tell me how they'll react to it. if any of that makes sense.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters?

of course :) i sound kind of dead in this questionaire because i'm at work ready to kms. but, sending me asks or talking to me on discord/tumblr messages about any of my idiots is always loved

On Writeblr Engagement

What makes you want to follow another Writeblr account?

i look at the vibes of the account, who they are, if they have an intro and what kind of wips they're writing. i mostly only follow people if i see that their wips interest me. some exceptions can be made, ie: if they interact with a lot of my stuff first and we become friendly and i'm not following them i'll follow after the fact and then get invested in whatever they're doing. but on initial contact i like to see who you are and if your wips are interesting to me.

What makes you decide against following?

wips don't interest me or have things in their wips/in their sphere of focus that i just don't care about or aren't really my cup of tea. like let's say someone puts in their wip/personal intro that they hate fantasy. i write fantasy all the time. so like. probably not gonna follow you. that kind of thing.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

not often? i wouldn't mind it bc i actually don't follow that many people (always under 100) but this is bc i can't keep up with people that much and i want to make sure i properly give attention to others if i'm going to be invested in them. but like. i enjoy talking to people about my shit so like. /shrug. i have way more followers than i follow which is why i mentioned i hate when people follow me just bc i'm another writeblr lol. i'd much rather you follow me because you have interest in Me but like, i can't control people frfr.

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

yeah! that's why i try to keep who i follow kind of in lower ranges. i have bad memory and it takes me awhile to warm up to people, but when i follow someone its because i want to be friendly and get invested in what they do. so like, i try to do that. i'm not the best but i do try.

[maskspurpose]

anon asked: https://x.com/maskspurpose/status/1711148987800023365?s=46 i need all your thoughts on where and how wataei fit on the butch-femme scale

okay see i dont really think either of them fit particularly well onto that scale and i would personally argue for the fact that like the scale itself is a somewhat flawed representation of like butch-femme dynamics as they exist?

butch/femme is a specific dynamic/subculture in itself basically and generally speaking butches & femmes aren't particularly big fans of the scale bc it misrepresents this dynamic as a sliding scale that everyone can fall on. i think the best and most concrete example i could use is the way it uses "stone butch" to imply that its just. the furthest on the butch side in terms of gender representation when its historical use is much more about sexual dynamics and specifically describes a butch who does not like to be touched in certain areas during sex. i know people also use it as a descriptor for gender presentation but i feel like not mentioning this would be like. an oversight. 

where were we...

 like it all depends on the person and im all for having fun with it sometimes but i also wanna like. ig preface the entire thing with like "applying the futch scale is fundamentally a bit of a joke" and thats in part why i made the joke about eichi unironically identifying as futch... hes 19 hes maybe not super well-read on the dynamics and mostly just applies them for fun and bc he doesnt feel like femme or butch suit him, he falls on futch.

 i know that in the past i've specifically said keito cares a LOT about this stuff and is really mad at eichi about it but ig this wasnt about keito. 

UMMM beyond this i haven't spent much time thinking about it for them. i like to call wataru butch and i think part of that is because the closest to like a fem counterpart to his general demeanor i can think of is kaoru seta from bandori. like a butch who has a drag queen alter ego. butch who presents like a flamboyant gay guy yknow? its about the gender nonconformity in either direction which is why i personally feel like making wataru into the popular perception of like a "femme lesbian" (aka a feminine woman) would fall flat and ignore a lot of the existing appeal of the character. 

(saying "the popular perception of" because theres plenty of femmes who very consciously and purposefully present in a gnc way but still identify as femme. theres actually like a really interesting... split i guess in "community" perception about this, where depending on the femme it's either straightforwardly about gender presentation or much more specifically about care and love for butches (this doesn't have to be like "being the caretaker for the butch youre dating" and i think that interpretation is pretty reductive too like it's smth that has historical background) who have historically been at high risk of violence due to their gender nonconformity. but like again this goes rlly deeply into these dynamics in a way i don't really expect people to explain and/or understand on fandom twitter LMAO) 

but like very genuinely you can do whatever the fuck you want. sorry for writing a whole essay about it jesus christ 

[Smile or comment on the answer here]

[angelofdykeness]

tbh im a recovering prude so i need some outside perspective on this. IMO lewd content can be nice but sometimes I wish there was, like, a more formal subtag system. cuz like. I want a place where i can talk about Blue Archive without drowning in the tide. cuz there's things i am Extremely Normal™ about. like how Neru jumped off a skyscraper to fight an invincible mech and almost splatted completely but got back up and kept fighting until she was completely numb and broken but victorious cuz if she didnt her friend would die. trouble is there's not really a good place that i can find to have a public discussion on that. sure, technically Reddit exists. but. reddit. yeahhhhhhhhhhhh. and Discord is only half public. Also this trend of replacing forums with Discord is nasty. tl;dr i want to talk about Blue Archive but h.

i mean first and foremost lemme just get this out of the way i am extremely not fond of terms like prude, anti and ESPECIALLY not shit like "puritan" like jesus christ what is wrong with you people. im pretty sure you were using it for yourself at least somewhat facetiously which is fine it's also far from the worst term to use it just reminded me to say something

but i mean honestly i think tumblr is a pretty nice place for it ?? for one people at least aren't ultra fucking weirdos about BA here like they are on twt (bc all the sobposters for some reason still avoid tumblr like the plague idk why but i pray to god it stays that way) and the BA tag is mostly going to be fanart but also a nice place to just talk about the series. that's what i do for stuff like bocchi and hsl

i kinda get what you mean but after ten years in the absolute hellspace that is the X formerly known as twitter even just having this very basic tagging system back feels awesome to me

the best advice i can give is to just start writing about the stuff you love and post it here. even if no one sees it it will at least be there for you to read over and maybe even share with your friends like Look guys at how normal i am

[genosthinker]

dumping my notes/feelings here. don't take all of it as serious analysis, ive been half bed ridden and sick all day LMAO so I'm still processing the TLs

-i think feelings, even if one sided, were there. also fubuki definitely did not mind kissing a woman because that pose and hand. plus the "smallest speck of hesitation line". no denying fubuki got her """little""" problematic side. queen still though. (please dont take this seriously again this isnt serious analysis of her)

-you know, I've actually quite liked these past few chapters. i mean despite my mixed feelings on time travel like most people, even in the end i liked those chapters and think we'll see longer term effects. but these ones, I dunno, i just have found veryyy interesting with manga editions, cohesive mostly even. and i felt are getting us back on track where we need to be with pacing and such. not holding back any shots either.

-and of course shoutout to the humor. we all waited for That. rip forte. also have enjoyed saitama being saitama, crocs are amazing

-"""new guy""" is just a note in himself. really like the design personally. and hey third eye stuff of course

-I saw it pointed out in another post but we learn more about what child emperor probably saw. and jesus christ poor isamu. fuck HA. a lot. goes without saying atp though

-insane place to leave the year off, buttt leaves us with a strong place to start next year off. i think whatever murata is talking about on twitter might be something else?? he's working on marvel stuff right? but also has always been doing various stuff on the side. either way definitely last chapter of the year and he could just be getting a head start if hes talking about sketches for OPM...holidays art though?! couldn't imagine him not doing some.

- art was just Fine, i dont feel the need in these chapters for anything crazy to be done anyway. end of the year and save it for the fight itself. the art with younger fubuki with the eyes and shadow made it all the more unsettling though, I liked that choice and others throughout

-genos

[siouxiedadegenerate]

Heddo! My name is [REDACTED] but you can call me Siouxie.

Bi AroAce – Single – Mixed – Native American – Agender – MultiFandom – Artist – 3D Modeler

I’m also either watching YouTube (my personal tv channel uWu) or listening to music 24/7.

I’m currently 26 yrs old. My birthday is July 29th.

I tend to spend too much damn time on the internet and my phone.

I enjoy watching YouTube or roleplaying with friends.

I draw and write, even though I’m not good at it . . .

A B O U T M E

Hey! My name is [REDACTED] but you may call me Nyx or Xander.

I’m antisocial, so when it comes to making friends, I’m not that good at . . . But if you want to be friends that would be nice . . . 👉👈

I go by She/They. I’m a Cis Female but questioning. I’m AroAce and Bisexual Questioning. I’M AN ADULT, so what I do is 18+.

I’m also a single pringle but that doesn’t mean I want to be flirted with . . . So please, don’t hit on me unless you are a friend of mine and I KNOW you are joking.

I’m agnostic so please don’t bring your Jesus crap here, I have enough of it in my Real Life =_= . . .

I’m laid back and silently most of the time until I get to know you more and more, then I won’t shut the fuck up. XD You’ll easily get tired of me cause I always desire attention whenever I’m bored. I have undiagnosed ADHD. I’m diagnosed with Manic Bipolar Depression, Manic Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia, and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). I use Caps to show I’m either excited or yelling about something but I’m mostly not yelling at you.

I draw from time to time but most of the time I just hate my artwork >:| Damn these hands . . . But I also like to write whatever I’m hyper fixated on. *cough* SUPERNATURAL *cough*

F A C T S A B O U T M E

I’m the youngest of my family.

I’m Native American.

I’m Mixed.

I’m learning Japanese.

I’m a huge nerd for internet memes.

I’m from the United States

F A V E S

Fandoms I’m In: Supernatural, Good Omens, Boyfriend to Death, Anime, Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, Steven Universe, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Pizza Tower, Five Nights at Freddy’s

YouTubers: Game Grumps, The Boys, InternetCity

Ships: AziraCrow, Destiel

Music: Falling in Reverse, Set It Off, Ado, Anna Blue, Ice Nine Kills, Fall Out Boy, Vocaloid, J-Pop, Punk Rock, Pop

My Favorite Characters: Sam Winchester (Supernatural), Crowley (Good Omens), Lucifer (Hazbin Hotel), Adam (Hazbin Hotel Again), Rire (Boyfriend to Death)

Others: Chocolate, RolePlaying, Gothic Stuff, Emo Stuff, Edgy Shit, Drawing, Writing Crappy Fanfiction, Scenemo/Scenecore, Burgers, Watching YouTube

My favorite colors are lavender, blood red, and midnight black (yes, I like to describe my colors cause I’m a unique snowflake uWu )

My favorite movies is Coraline. Nothing else. My favorite show is Steven Universe and Hazbin Hotel (despite not having Amazon Prime. I watch clips and songs on YouTube uWu) My favorite song is Sick by The Boys, hands down. My favorite game has to be either Saints Row or Portal 2.

B E L O W T H E C U T (WORK IN PROGRESS)

What I Post

My Fics

Warning

Masterlist

Where You Can Find Me/ Social Medias My Links | Twitter | Instagram | BlueSky | YouTube

W A R N I N G

I post whatever I want including adult content. If you want to see my works, make sure you are prepared.

All my works that are ADULT will only be tagged as ‘Special Art’.

K I N K S

Noncon, Dubcon, Marking, Grinding/Thigh Riding Praise

Enjoy your stay and thank you for reading all the way to the end. You get a piece of chocolate!

M Y T A G S

Reblog – Like It SaysWhat the Shit – Shit Posts Naughty Naughty - Adult Works/Media

Thank you for reading this all until the end. UwUReblogs and Likes are Always Welcomed and Appreciated! Do NOT repost my work anywhere without my permission!

[motelpearl]

star trek: picard spoilers /

I'm gonna keep updating this with my thoughts (making threads is one thing I kinda miss about twitter so this will have to do)

somehow troi & riker having a weird horse girl daughter makes perfect sense like she does so much of the stuff I did at that age (making up fake countries & languages, drawing really well for her age, running around in the bush with an archery toy)

when riker showed up at the end of season one LORD JESUS I COULDVE KISSED THE SCREEN

also elnor is my son I love him. AND FUCK Q

omfg I know the modern day is near-dystopian but seeing 2024 earth not only referenced but actually depicted so starkly in comparison to the near-utopian future in star trek is so fucking bleak like UGH CAN THE FUCKING VULCANS COME TEACH US SPACE COMMUNISM ALREADY. WHERE THE REPLICATION TECHNOLOGY AT

the rick & Morty reference DID NOT AGE WELL IN MANY WAYS UGH IM GENERALLY ENJOYING THIS SHOW BUT SOME OF THE WRITING IS SO REDDIT

I hate to say it but agnes & the borg queen are the most toxic yuri in the known universe

speaking of toxic yuri I knew nothing about seven of nine going into this cause I havent watched ds9 but I fucking love her like if she & raffi ever need a third......tsahaha

ALSO WHY IS CHRIS SO DUMB IN THE 2ND SEASON. YOU WILL NEVER FUCK.

THE WAY THE 2ND SEASON RETCONS TIMES ARROW FROM TNG & THAT EPISODE IN TNG WHERE PICARD SEES A VISION OF HIS MOM & SHES OLD AS FUCK & HAS GREY HAIR & A FRENCH ACCENT BOTHERS ME GREATLY. NOT TO BE THAT KIND OF NERD OR ANYTHING.

ok nevermind him having visions of her as an old lady is explained.....except the french accent

was data the only soong who wasnt a total dickhead

"sweet picard, your guilt must've saved planets by now, countless lives in trade for the one you couldn't" SCREAMS OF AGONY

romulan with red bloodshot eyes....RED?

QCARD DIVORCE ANNULMENT 🥳🥳

ok I guess chris DID fuck sorry I wasnt familiar with his game

wow I can't believe I watched the entirety if season 2 in one night tbh everything I've heard about this show from people whose opinions i generally trust has been that its (and I quote) "laughably bad" & like ruined all of TNG for them & I was honestly scared it would ruin it for me too cause tbh I became a trekkie when i was 9/10 & a lot of bad things were going on in my life at that point & star trek was one thing that always gave me happiness & then later I got into it again during like the deep quarantine where no one was leaving their houses at all & just about everyone around me got radicalized into racist far-right fearmongering qanon shit but the idea that someday humans will be able & intelligent enough not only to put aside our own differences but to be able to befriend alien species & those aliens being willing to help humanity at one of its lowest points & someday even if it doesnt happen in my own lifetime, that people can exist who genuinely care about the needs of many & actively work to better the lives of people throughout the universe instead of just giving in to individualism & cynicism & irony poisoning which is such an easy trap to fall into gave me so much hope for humanity like yall I'm literally getting choked up typing this & I never cry & I was kind of worried that this show would stomp on everything i loved about star trek but thankfully it hasnt so far (though to be fair I like a lot of objectively bad things I mean my favourite decade of fashion is the 70s so maybe this is just jingling the metaphorical keys at me)

CRUSHERRRRRR SEASON 3 COMING OUT THE GATES SWINGING (no pun intended but im not changing it now)

ENOUGH NEEDLE DROPS I HATE TO SAY IT BUT ITS GIVING STRANGER THINGS/THE MARIO MOVIE (THOUGH IN A SLIGHTLY LESS CRINGY NOSTALGIA BAIT WAY LIKE AT LEAST THIS ISN'T USING TOP 40 SHIT FROM THE 80S) & at least it's mostly non-diegetic bc I feel like diegetic music has more of a chance of being used tastelessly

british accent is stored in the balls

its gotta be worf or at least some klingon giving raffi orders right....who else would call someone a warrior

NOOOOO THE DE-AGING CGI OR WHATEVER IN S3 E3 ITS SO UNCANNY VALLEY it was surprisingly pretty good on data in s1 & q in s2 though......where did the budget go

why is old man worf kinda *starts coughing*

amanda plummer is so terrifying in every role I've seen her in like even in catching fire when she was a protagonist

also why do so many people victim blame picard for being assimilated by the borg it's not like he wanted to get assimilated & become the face of a massacre. the whole motto of the borg is "resistance is futile" like there was literally nothing he couldve done to prevent it

jack better prove himself QUICKLY cause other than his parentage I don't see anything that would inspire me to fight for his life

& then cthulu was born

goddamn the changelings make the borg look like a bunch of peace & love flower children. on that note on that note if picard assimilated beverly's reproductive system with some fucked up latent borg sperm i will be disappointed but not surprised cause what is up with jack's crazyass visions

BLESS RO BLESS WORF BLESS RAFFI

if I weren't worried I might miss something important I'd skip all the scenes where jack monologues about benign shit for no reason BOOOO GET OFF THE STAGE

JUMPIN JIMINY

WHY IS THIS LITERALLY A HORROR MOVIE honestly the concept of beings that can make themselves look & sound human has always been one of the things that scare me the most which is weird because all my life I've been compared to robots & aliens WHICH IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY I LIKED STAR TREK SO MUCH IN THE FIRST PLACE BECAUSE I RELATED SO MUCH TO DATA so in theory I shouldnt be afraid of that because I'm in the same predicament & I can relate in many ways but I mean idk I guess theres a difference between feeling excluded & wanting to be the ones who exclude. my fear probably comes more from the idea of unwillingly walking into a trap thinking someone you trust was going to help you & then having to wonder "what happened to the real person?"

what I meant by that long ramble is: the tuvok scene........*shudders*

would it be for for best if the borg carried out one last forceful assimilation of the changelings......could they be trusted with that capability......*strokes chin pensively*

THEYRE DOING/WILL DO THE PICARD MANEUVER IM CALLING IT NOW ok wait heres my theory they do the picard maneuver -> it looks like theres another ship but it's just like a warp imprint or whatever -> vadic tries to beam aboard the fake ship & actually beams herself into space -> the main crew beam aboard the shrike & save riker & troi & possibly take the portal weapon -> beam back to the real ship & blow the shrike up while all the crew panic cause they just watched vadic explode in space

well.

BIG DADDY WORF COME TO LAY THE SMACK DOWN GOD BLESS GOD FUCKING BLESS BRUH IMAGINE YOUR FRIEND COMES TO BREAK YOU OUT OF DEATH ROW & IMMEDIATELY STARTS FLIRTING WITH YOUR WIFE IM FUCKING DEAD

GET DATA ON THE PHONE CAN THEY NOT DELETE LORE'S WHOLE FILES LIKE WHAT CAN HE POSSIBLY CONTRIBUTE TO ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY

nooooo data don't misgender spot

OOOOOOOH THEY ALMOST HAD ME THERE

THEY DID BLAST THEM INTO SPACE I WAS PARTIALLY RIGHT YEEEEEEHAW

wait. are the red door & the red lady the same thing

BORG PENIS I CALLED IT

what happened to the borg using their power for good....get agnes on the phone....

hooh I knew it was coming but....enterprise d my beloved

last episode prediction: picard will have to become locutus one last time to defeat the borg & whoever else

yknow right now would be a real great time for some q or some travellers/watchers to show up & do their thing. also imagine the insane drama of wesley crusher coming to talk his long lost brother out of becoming a fascist alien king

on that note i cant decide whether assimilation is a metaphor for fascism, addiction, sexual assault, stds, something else I haven't considered, or is just a wild crazy non-allegorical concept of the kinds of things that might exist in space

JUPITER IS NOT CLASS M

one thing that keeps catching me off guard & then making me laugh is how patrick stewart's high rp shakespearean accent has slightly waned over the years so I'll sometimes be like "why did picard sound like paul mccartney there" & then I remember that patrick stewart is actually northern (yes yes i know yorkshire & liverpool are two different places but the uk is so minuscule by canadian standards that they might as well be the same and no one outside the uk can tell the difference between the accents so dont lecture me) <- yes unfortunately I'm the laziest kind of linguistics nerd as well I'm honestly just exposing myself as annoying in this post

let me guess jack is the beacon & they have to kill him

did they clone locutus

GOD I FUCKING LOVE DATA

I love troi too like when the writing gives her a chance to be shes literally so smart & so aware & in tune with everything like she's such an asset to the crew but it's rare we get to see that in action

I'm getting too good at predicting things

well now that I've finished it I can say I really dont know why I saw so much hate for it like maybe I've just operated in weird spaces of the internet but I mean I really dont see what there is to outright hate about it (I mean early on some of the characters felt very stilted like agnes in the first season was just yapping & was giving millenial cringe to the highest degree but I think by the 2nd season she redeemed herself but then was that even canon considering the 3rd season? idk I definitely have criticisms but I wouldn't call it "laughably bad" & it definitely hasnt forever ruined my view of star trek thank god)

sigh I just love these characters yall. if that's key jingling then put my ass in the crib

also I'm just going through all the seasons of tng & watching my favorite episodes & some random ones & it makes me laugh so hard when they show picard wearing anything other than his uniform cause he's always just in the sluttiest outfits ever 😭 they had patrick stewart running around in a v-neck & booty shorts

gah the best of both worlds part 1 & 2 + family work so well as like a trilogy but they're also such heartbreaking episodes like borg assimilation is one of those things that just becomes increasingly unrelentingly more & more horrifying the more you think about it & the scenario of those episodes would literally be so terrifying for anyone involved like beverly seeing the guy she's sort of in love with become the face of this genocidal fascist species but then her son is on board the enterprise & just watched his mom be sent on an away team where it was possible she might not come back or worse & also wesley having to see picard be the face of the borg & probably feeling like he just lost another father figure & like it would literally have no good outcomes for anyone cause even the borg don't want to be borg but it was forced upon them

on that note I kind of have a headcanon that the borg would have originated from like, a super technologically advanced planet's military putting cybernetic implants in all their soldiers for efficiency so they could have a hive mind & think as one & coordinate seamlessly & always be up to date on what other sectors of the military were doing & then deciding that instead of killing their enemies, they would forcibly conscript them into the military by assimilating them & by doing this they eventually took over whichever planet they originated on. eventually this wasn't enough for them so they started traveling the universe & assimilating whole planets & that's how it came to the point we see in tng & beyond

sigh they really wrote the episode hero worship for all us little weird kids who connected to data didnt they

if they really wanted to give geordi a romance with someone they couldve tried to put him with ro laren bc their dynamic in the next phase was so cute like his outgoing-ness + her aloofness & how he sort of brought her out of her shell in that episode UGH walk with me. or they couldve just made him gay which they were apparently considering but decided against? idk but I mean the man literally orders an ice coffee in the same episode where he falls in love with a girl just by watching her vlogs. how did they preemptively stereotype him before the stereotype of gay people loving ice coffee even existed (I jest) but like ugh ANYTHING EXCEPT THE PARASOCIAL INCEL SHIT THEY ALWAYS PUT HIM INTO & THEN IN THE VERY LAST EPISODE THEY SAY HE'S MARRIED TO LEAH BRAHMS LIKE NO. PLEASE. JUSTICE FOR GEORDI. END THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION. but the future in that episode isnt even canon & thankfully in picard they never outright say who he had kids with so like in my mind they are not the product of reply-guy-ification but a normal relationship (also justice for leah brahms & whoever she was married to.) idk why i even feel so strongly about this. I guess maybe because geordi is otherwise such a good character & the very concept of him is so ahead of its time & obviously characters need to have flaws but did it have to be Those kinds of flaws specifically </3

also cardassians should not have hair idc I know people think bald aliens are too cliche but what business do reptilians have with hair how would that even evolve

[theater-for-jocks]

Hi I’m chel I’m 30 wholeass years old and I accidentally got into wwe

some notes:

fairly casual, mostly just here to ramble and maybe occasionally reblog. and have a bisexual crisis. sorry about that.

I DON'T KNOW SHIT, SORRY IF I CHEER ON SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY SUCKS.

i love analysis and am incapable of thinking about stuff solely from a OH WOW FIGHT GOOD standpoint so i will talk about kayfabe or booking decisions or narrative choices A Lot.

….but also this may or may not turn into a chronicle of my bisexual crises. Sorry about that.

i will rarely use names (and only full names once in a blue moon) outside of reblogs because as broken as this site is stuff WILL come up and i don't want to be used as narrative discourse fuel. and also to spare a certain terror twin in case i decide to call him babygirl. Which I inevitably will. IT'S A BIT I SWEAR.

tags and shit:

#hot takes station: the tag for me to complain about takes i see online. twitter is a hellscape.

#chel critiques sometimes: the tag where I test out my wrestling critique skills

#[i’ll figure this out later too]: PLE predictions/reactions

Wrestlers themselves are generally tagged “file under: [nickname/gimmick]”, chosen at my discretion. I CONSTANTLY forget to use tags.

space for other tags here

faves etc. under the cut

Top Faves: TERROR TWINS MY BELOVEDS! Damian Priest is sliiiightly higher than Rhea Ripley but I usually refer to them together out of convenience. Rhea got me interested and Damian got me invested and now I am in hell.

Second Fave (third fave?): JEY USO I LOVE THE TERROR TRIO

Others I love to watch: SAMI ZAYN, ZELINA VEGA, ALPHA ACADEMY (especially maxxine my beloved mwah mwah), Kevin Owens, Bianca Belair, Jade Cargill, Lyra Valkyria, Bayley, Naomi, Street Profits, Candice LeRae, LA Knight, Wyatt Sicks, ANDRADE WHY DID I FORGET HIM, Jordynne Grace promoted to this section for reasons, PIPER NIVEN

SPECIAL NXT CATEGORY: Thea Hall (LET HER KICK RIDGE HOLLAND'S ASS), Tatum Paxley, Fraxiom (is fine), Kelani Jordan, GIULIA HOW DID I FORGET GIULIA, JE’VON EVANS HOW DID I FORGET HIM TOO

Love to Hate: Liv Morgan (holy shit she is so good at being the like Popular Girl Who Wants You Specifically Dead type), most of the Bloodline tbh, Tiffany Stratton, Gunther (motherfucking classist piece of—), the rest of the current JD lineup (except mcdonough fuck that guy for real, and I guess also except Carlito who hasn’t actively done anything to make me hate him he’s just vibin and I’m here for it), Chad Gable and the rest of his clown lineup ("American Made" god shut up), the rock I guess

Special NXT category 2 electric boogaloo: Ethan Page -.-, Roxanne Perez but it’s kinda complicated w/ her like I GUESS she’s a heel but one of those heels it’s hard to root against? WENDY CHOO I LOVE HER

Special Hell Category: I am alarmingly invested in Dom Mysterio’s future development but also every time he speaks I cry a little bit. I know that’s the point but god. My guy please break up with Liv and find yourself I really wanna see what you become when your storyline fully centers on you! ALSO CHELSEA GREEN. SHE ANNOYS ME SO BAD BUT I LOVE HER.

For legal purposes this is a joke: this is a Logan Paul hateblog. He’s frustratingly good at being a heel but also I have been around the internet long enough to Remember Things.

This is not really a Dave Meltzer hate blog I don’t have an issue with the guy as a person I just don’t think he’s very good at his job. (Update: this might be a dave meltzer hate blog.)

THIS IS HOWEVER A VINCE MCMAHON HATE BLOG. AS GOD INTENDED. JESUS CHRIST.

Well I guess I should prep a pinned post while I watch

[ahappydnp]

from you tag: “I something worry dnp don't fully understand why we love joint content so much and that's it's probably not for the reasons they assume”

If dnp were to ask you to explain to them what the difference is between what we actually want and what they think we want re joint content, how would you describe the difference? Like I think I agree but I also couldn’t articulate it well

Oof I will try but it's mostly just *wild hand gestures and grunts*

I think dnp sometimes still perceive us craving and wanting joint content as an excuse for 'fan service' (or phan service haha) with a focus on their relationship dynamic. Like our motives are based around wanting more ~heart eyes howell~ moments or #phanproof. Which I understand is a warranted assumption! They spent years seeing that kind of stuff and have been through a metric fuck ton of overstepped boundaries and feeling like their personal lives overshadowed the content they worked so hard on. So it's understandable that occasionally they're gonna have that mindset of "ugh they just want to watch us look at each other and see if we'll touch on camera now that we're out"

But like...that is so far removed from the case? Joint content brings out a completely different side in both of them. Phil unclenches from the AmazingPhil™️ persona a bit and it's like we get to see a more down to earth, human version of him. He just opens up so much more and shines when he's got someone pushing him. Solo Phil is fun and interesting, but you can tell when he's just going along with the AP approved list of reactions and script; it feels like real Phil isn't even in the room. But Dan (and maybe a handful of other people he's collabed with that he seems to feel comfortable with but this is about dnp right now) has the ability to nudge him out a bit. Because Phil is weird and funny and quick witted, but it's easy to play it safe when no one is pushing you to show it off. (Weird!Phil please return from the war)

And Dan!! First of all...joint content means he exists in the first place (god I miss him). Joint content Dan is so much softer and more approachable? Like twitter Dan and some of old solo Dan was what I can only describe as "I'm rolling my eyes that you're here invading my space even though I literally invited you". The walls are thick and high and you're wondering if you even know this person (*cough* ganp), but then you hear him on Stereo or he's chatting to us with Phil and you're like oh it's still Dan <3 I love Dan! And he likes us! He's such a kind and thoughtful and intelligent and fucking hilarious person, but some of that gets lost when all you have to go on is a generic Dinof tweet once a month. (And like Phil, there are people who've brought out those sides of him- like his interview with John which I could write an entire novel on dear god that was so fucking good).

They've acknowledged before that they know they have amazing on screen chemistry and an ~it factor~ as a duo, but I hope they know it's so much more than romantic (lol). They're just fun to watch and it’s so obviously THEY are having fun too? Like their happiness is palpable and it transfers to the audience instantly. And going to back to the conversation from yesterday, them together brings back a lot of really good memories and it's a safe place for a lot of people. Like yes the world is a on fire trash can, but Dan and Phil are still around being wonderful humans who can bring an unbridled amount of joy.

And to close I will admit that yes, it's also still a little bit of the "dear god what happened to the closed ice cream shop jesus please stop telling us things there was SO MUCH room on that couch why are y'all like this". Like no one..and I mean no one wants y'all to make out on camera or anything, but I don't think anyone can look at them and not feel something. Because I am, at my core, a gay who's spent over a decade now looking to them for hope that we sometimes do get happy endings and love and best friends soulmates arch enemies whatever the fuck else Howell has said

[shinystars-stuff]

Hello everyone. It has been 9 months.

I apologize for no longer posting but my mood for Tumblr came to a downhill and so I just stopped posting. I moved on to Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Discord.

Well… let’s just say… I’m doing a shit ton better on those platforms.

I came back today and only today to update you guys on how much my life has changed.

So nine months ago… that was before I graduated, which would mean that would be February. Jesus, this is about to be long.

So February 28th of this year, I ended a one-year relationship with a boy only to get with someone else. Now, keep in mind that both of these relationships were online. When I got with the new boy, my behavior and actions started to change. We tended to fight a lot and I made him upset quite a lot just as he made me upset. Well, July 18th, he had enough of my lying and my behavior that he broke up with me. Oh yeah, I skipped something important. I graduated on May 28th! 👩‍🎓👩‍🎓

I was pretty upset over the breakup and I stayed single for a while until drama happened and I got with somebody else. I realized how stupid I was and I called off the relationship. My family situation has worsened. A few months ago, my brother officially came back to live with us after his girlfriend cheated on him. He’s been a total pain in the ass, btw.

Me and my brother hardly get along, but the good news is that we are semi-bonding now these days. My mom’s leg situation has worsened for she can hardly stand up now these days. My uncle… he got a rare disease and might not be making it for much longer, plus I’ve lost a lot of family members as of late. I luckily have my Switch to keep me distracted and well organized.

Well- after I graduated high school, I found out that I have social anxiety. I was placed on an anti-depressant pill and bumped up more on my ADHD medication. My parents have been nagging at me to get a job, but with the shit I see happening in life today, plus the things I hear from my family, why would I even want to work in a society like this?! Also, my whole family thinks they have the right to say that I should get a job when I take the fucking trash out, I get shit like drinks and stuff for them, I bring in all the god damn groceries, I check on them everyday. I do the shit willingly and never get asked to be fucking paid!

Let’s uh- change the topic for now. So- well- I’m still making videos and stuff. However, my original TikTok got banned over a dispute with a best friend and uh- I lost three friends by them ghosting me. My videos have actually really improved. In fact, I have them right here.

Well, I only have this one, but this is my biggest and longest working one. This one took me three hours. I mostly make edits on TikTok but on Discord, I have a little roleplay server :3

My Twitter and YouTube, plus Twitter stays quiet most of the time because usually I’ll just scroll and save videos and stuff on the platforms.

My proudest moment and my best moment of this year is this photo right above this. If you don’t know who that is, that is me and a VO actor known as Bob Carter. Bob Carter is in many animes, but when I looked at the top of his poster, my world changed. As you know, I am a huge Fullmetal Alchemist fan and the character he played was Izumi’s husband, Sig Curtis.

I was legit amazed and he was absolutely friendly. I asked him for a hug and he gladly accepted it because I told him I had watched the anime a million times. I really wanted to show him an FMA edit I made, but I was too excited to show him. I even got to meet the singer for Sailor Moon, only to look later and find out that Bob photobombed it XD

So yeah, even though I’ve gone through a lot of shit this year, I’ve had a pretty good year. Anyways, I think I’m going to go ahead and finish off the post here.

Thank you guys for supporting me on Tumblr. If you wish to add me on Discord or anything, my Tumblr ask-box and messages are still open, so feel free to. I love you guys. Thank you for giving me a home.

[undoundue]

i don’t know anything except how stories go

i don’t know anything except how stories go

the music isn't as good as i thought it would be

i'm not sure if i've taken enough drugs or too much

when i take too much, i get grandiose: big ideas. little follow-through.

when i take not enough, i also get grandiose, but i know it,

and i sound like a graveyard glass harmonica when

the wind passes through. when i take the right amount, i do not ask

whether i've taken enough drugs or too much.

instead i hallucinate that i'm a cicada, an elegant disgusting jewel

smithed by mommy nature to reproduce a tinny song,

and i'm grateful to my parents

and the 17 years i spent gestating

and this morbid cherry tree

because nobody buckles their tymbals like i. also, cicadas lack

the relevant receptors altogether,

so the dosing question doesn't apply.

(beat) say,

have you noticed that zoomers are really into columbo?

(you nod)

i've seen him on twitter twice lately, asking "just one more

question—which would you prefer as an afternoon snack?"

and there's a poll, cheez-its

or little debbie snack cakes.

the appeal, i think, is to a generational forgetfulness, to

a generation most in need of alarm clocks and aricept,

to the desire to see forgetfulness as a superpower, as an

equivalent to innocence, to be so impervious to

reality's demands. but haven't we been here

before? didn't milennials all die for the sin of inventing "retro

gaming"? and by the way,

did you hear the one about the guy who gave himself three-hundred

and ninety-one concussions, each time suffering retrograde amnesia

which knocked out his memory of his last pokemon red playthrough?

ah. ah yes. it is not a tale the jedi would tell you.

when i take too much, i get despondent. when i take not enough, i

get grandiose. but the line breaks are for the poet's benefit anyway.

besides, there are kids smoking brick weed in lebanon, we should be

thankful for what we have.

and hex maniac is pretty cute. her pupils spiral

counterclockwise,

going from out to in; in some of the fan art they go the other way but

you can tell those guys don't "get it"; the allure of a counterclockwise

spin on how you are perceived, to have your silhouette distorted

and your details properly misunderstood, to lose at games you've

never heard of it, to eat with chopsticks incorrectly,

to trip and fall and look at the sidewalk and say "thank you.

yes. i had grown complacent in my patterns, my

nucleus accumbens

was running on fumes; and i certainly wasn't expecting that!" and

mean it. i did this once. i was in a state of rare tranquility after

masturbating for sixteen consecutive hours (essentially a

performance enhancing drug for meditation—which is why,

in the tibetan olympics, strict no-fap is required for a week

before competition—and they take semen samples to be sure!)

so (you nod), when the buddha saw me

so grateful for life's misfortunes, he made a "look

at this fucking guy" gesture to ganesh and then said "look at this

fucking guy" as if the gesture wasn't enough. naturally,

i was offended, and besides i recalled the old koan "If you meet the

Buddha on the road, kill him," which i had read in a collection

of koans for children titled "If you meet the Buddha..." which

my Mom had purchased for me in the novelty gift section

of an urban outfitters in santa barbara ("Mom, why are you shopping

at urban outftters?" "son, yr mama just tryin' ta stay cool. say, you

heard of this MF DOOM cat?" "ugh! Mom!") and which had

such thought-provoking aphorisms as:

"If you meet the Buddha in an airport, buy him a cheeseburger."

"If you meet the Buddha at a dive bar, play him some new wave—the

Buddha is big into that shit." the idea being, you're prepared for any

circumstance, which is what buddhism is all about. so i did a

bunch of fast attacks; the buddha blocked; i said "shouldn't

it be all the same to you if i kill you?" the buddha said "it would,

except i want to get home and watch columbo, and i don't

want to wait to respawn." i said, "jesus. just—jesus." then the buddha

kicked me through a brick wall. everyone in the WeWork

screamed and fled, leaving their kombucha behind, and

for some reason the sprinklers went off. then, after the initial

impact, a lone brick fell (because of torque—force times the length of

the lever, remember) and hit me comically on the head, causing a

concussion. i said "guh."

yup, (you nod sympathetically),

i was feeling mighty grim. then it occurred to me: why don't i

play pokémon red? unfortunately, on my cellphone i only had

the romhack version, you know, where all the pokémon are allegories

for depression. so you got your depressionmander, depressioneleon,

depressionizard, and for pokémon where that doesn't work

they use it as a suffix, e.g. bulbadepression, ivydepression,

venudepression. also you can't leave the starting room and

your character moves really slowly. the indie gaming press

loves it. one of the features that reviewers single out is

that, instead of a lone Stand By Me reference, the TV in your room

goes line by line through Aguirre, the Wrath of God, except the

murders are replaced with pokémon battles and at the end

aguirre tries to command a horde of mankeys ("depressionkeys"),

which is a metaphor. dark stuff. it makes me think back on my youth:

lying on my child-king sized bed, masturbating to polyhedral

stellations, suffering from severe geometric dysmorphia as i

compared myself to the grandeur of those idealized forms—god, i

used to hate myself for those wasted hours. i mean, i still do, but i

used to, too. only after years of therapy have i developed a mantra

that eases the pain:

"i am mostly a cylinder.

i am mostly a cylinder." presto. you can get off to anything, even

loomis.

(you nod, hesitantly.) on saturday night,

i throw open the window and scream at the children: "you'll get old

too! an abstractome of brittle opinions even as your bumbling

homunculus drops the data you once used to back them up!"

the children reply "not necessarily, given the rate of advances in

biotech. also, no one cares, grandpa." they play soccer. my

mad pilgrim hair blows in the wind. i scream: "suffer! suffer! i am

omniscience!" they say: "oh yeah? how many fingers am i

holding up?" "four! five! four!" "it was five, you old fart." "the thumb

doesn't count as a finger! you should have a specified!" "OK, new

game: what sort of person am i?" "you are—you are—!" and so

i peer into their souls and know the answer, but i can't

find the words. the words do not come. i have forgotten them.

silently i draw away from the window. the children smirk, but only for

a moment. for they know i am right.

ah, to reveal the soul's heist, to be seen through by the omniscient

and powerless, what a delight! who among us would not cheerfully

kill the buddha when he's comin' through the rye? who among us

has not been blessed by the kind words of a stranger? and yet, we

shouldn't incentivize people to be strangers. society would collapse.

besides, we are no longer strangers to ourselves, you and i.

(you nod.) we will have much to discuss about that.

[nevermindirah]

I've been drafting and redrafting this meta post for weeks now. It's about to be 5781 and my country that was founded on settler colonial genocide and slavery and a deeply flawed but fierce attachment to democracy might go full dictatorship in about 6 weeks and it's time for me to post this thing.

All our immortals are warriors, all have been traumatized by war. But only three of them died their first deaths as soldiers in imperial armies. This fandom has already produced gallons of meta on Nicky dealing with his shit, because Joe would not fuck with an unapologetic Crusader. But there's very rich stuff in Booker and Nile's experiences and the parallels and distinctions between them.

Nile was 11 when her dad was killed in action - that was 2005, meaning she and her dad both died in the same war that George W Bush started in very tenuous response to 9/11. Sure, Nile's dad could have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan, or in a training accident or in an off-the-books mission we won't know about for a hundred more years, but he died in the War on Terror all the same. I had to look it up to be sure because Obama "drew down" the Afghanistan war in his second term, but nope, we're still in this fucking thing that never should've happened in the first place. The US war in Afghanistan just turned 19 years old. A lot of real-life Americans have experiences like the Freemans, parents and children both dying in the same war we shouldn't be in.

I know a lot of people like Nile who join the US military not just because it's the only realistic way for them to pay for college or afford decent healthcare, but also because they have a family history of military service that's a genuine source of pride. Military service has been a way for Americans of color to be accepted by white Americans as "true Americans" - from today's Dreamers who Obama promised would earn protection from deportation by enlisting, to Filipino veterans of WW2 earning US citizenship that Congress then denied them for several decades, to slaves "earning" their freedom through service in the Union Army and in the Continental Army before it. As if freedom is a thing one should have to earn. Lots of Black Americans have the last name Freeman for lots of different escaping-slavery reasons, but it's possible that this specific reason is how Nile got her last name.

Dying in a war you know your country chose to instigate unnecessarily and that maybe you believe it shouldn't be waging is a very particular kind of trauma. It is a much deeper trauma when your military service, and your father's, and maybe generations of your ancestors', is a source of pride and access to resources for you but your sacrifice is nearly meaningless to the white supremacist system that deploys you. That kind of cognitive dissonance encourages a person to ignore their own feelings just so they can function. How do you wake up in the morning, how do you risk your life every day, how do you *kill other people* in a war that shouldn't be happening and that you shouldn't have to serve in just so that your country sees you as human?

We see Nile do her best to be a kind and well-mannered invader. Depending on your experience with US imperialism, Nile giving candy to kids and reminding her squad to be respectful is either heartwarming or very disturbing propaganda. We also see Nile clutching her cross necklace and praying. From the second Christianity arrived on this land it's been a tool of white supremacist assimilation and control, but like military service, it's a fucked-up but genuine source of pride and access to resources for many Americans whose pre-Columbian ancestors were not Christian, and it's a powerful source of comfort and resilience. This Jew who's had a lot of Spanish Inquisition nightmares would like to say for the record that it's not Jesus's fault that his big name fans are such shitty people.

Nile is a good person trying to do her best in a fucked-up world. "Her best" just radically changed. Her access to information on just how fucked up the world is has also just radically changed, because everything's so fucked up a person needs a lot of time to learn about it all and not only does she have centuries but she won't have to spend that time worrying about rent and healthcare and taxes, and because she now has Joe and Nicky and Andy's stories, and because she now has Copley's inside scoop on just what the fuck the CIA has been up to. Like, I want a fic where Copley tells Nile what was really behind the brass's decisions that led to her experiences on the ground in Afghanistan, that led to her father's death, but also I Do Not Want That.

Nile was 19 when Alicia Garza posted on Facebook that Black Lives Matter. She grew up in Chicago well before white people on Twitter were saying maybe police violence against Black people is a problem. She knows this is a deeply fucked up country, and she put on her Marine uniform and deployed with her team of mostly fellow women of color, and maybe she and Dizzy and Jay marched in the streets between deployments, maybe they texted each other when a white manarchist at a protest sneered at one of them for being a Marine. Nile's been busy surviving, and she knows some shit and she's seen some shit but she hasn't had much time to think about what it all means. Now she's got time. And Joe, Nicky, and Andy are willing to listen. (Is Copley willing to listen? I could see that going either way.)

Booker might also be willing to listen. The brilliant idea of cleaning up the rat Frenchman so that Nile can have millennia of emotional support and orgasms sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and holy shit do Booker and Nile have a lot of shared life experience as pawns of imperial wars. Obviously Booker is white and a man and that makes a very big difference. (Though G-d help me, Booker could be Jewish and France was knocking its Jews around like ping-pong balls in the 18th-19th centuries. Jewish Booker wouldn't make him any less white but it does add a shit ton of depth of common experience: military service as a way for your country to see you as a full member of society who matters, because who you are means that's not guaranteed.)

Booker was hanged for desertion from the army Napoleon sent to invade Russia as part of his quest to control all of Europe. We learn in the comics / this YouTube video that Booker was on his way to prison for forgery when he was offered military service instead of jail time. While we don't know how he felt about the choice beyond that he did choose soldier over inmate, it's unlikely he thought invading Russia was a great idea, given he tried to desert because Napoleon like a true imperialist dumbass didn't plan for how he was going to feed his army or keep them from freezing to death in fucking Russian winter.

I find it very interesting that the French Empire was at its largest right before invading Russia and fell apart completely within a few years. My country has been falling the fuck apart for a while now - see aforementioned War on Terror, growing extremes of economic stratification in the richest country in the world, abject refusal to meaningfully deal with climate change that US-based corporations hold the lion's share of blame for - but between Trump's abject refusal to meaningfully deal with the coronavirus and strong likelihood that he'll refuse to leave office even if a certain pathetic moderate I will hold my nose and vote for does manage to earn a majority of votes, ~y~i~k~e~s.

Our only immortals who have never known a world before modernity and nationalism happen to have been born of wars that were the beginning of the end for the imperialist democracies that raised them, and I think in the centuries to come that's going to give them some very interesting shit to talk about.

Nile's a Young Millennial, a digital native born in the United States after the collapse of the USSR left her country as the world's only superpower. She's used to a pace of technological change that human brains are not evolved to handle.

Napoleon trying to make all of Europe into the French Empire was a leading cause of the growth of European nationalism and the establishment of liberal democracies both in Europe and in many places that Europeans had colonized. Booker's first war produced the only geopolitical world order Nile has ever known and I just have so many feelings ok. Nile the art history nerd is probably not aware of this, and why would she be? This humble meta author is, like Nile, a product of US public schools, and all they taught me about world history was Ancient Greece/Rome/Egypt/Mesopotamia and then World War 2. Being raised in The World's Only Superpower is WEIRD.

Nile the Young Millennial is used to the devastating volume of bad news the internet makes possible. But she has absolutely no concept of a world where the United States of America is not The World's Only Superpower. In order to get up in the morning and put on her gear and point guns at civilians in Afghanistan, she can only let herself think so much about whether that American exceptionalism thing is a good idea.

She's about to spend many, many years where the only people who she can truly trust are people who are older than not only her country but the IDEA of countries.

She's got time, and she's got a lot of new information at her disposal. But there comes a point where my obsession with her friendship and eventual very hot sex life with Booker just isn't about sex at all. Nile needs someone to talk to about the United States who Gets It. Booker the rat Frenchman coerced into Napoleon's army, and Copley the Black dual citizen of the US and UK who's retired from a CIA career that he half understands as deeply problematic but half still believes in hence his mind-bogglingly stupid partnership with Merrick, are the only people on the planet Nile can talk to honestly about, and really be understood in, all the thoughts and feelings and fears and hopes of her experience as a US Marine.

And one more thing before I go get ready for Rosh Hashanah: Orientalism was a defining element of the Crusades and that legacy is painfully clear in current US-led Western military activity in Afghanistan, Syria, Israel/Palestine, you name it. Turns out memoirs by French veterans of the Napoleonic Wars are full of Orientalist language about Russia as well. I am maybe/definitely writing a fic where Booker spends his exile reading critical race theory and decolonial feminism and trauma studies monographs because he can't be honest with a therapist but maybe he can heal this way and become the team therapist his own damn self. I just really need him to read Edward Said and Gloria Anzaldúa and then go down on Nile, ok?

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hawkeye S1E6 (vague spoilers)

SIX FOR FUCKING SIX!!

Officially my favourite Marvel D+ Series, it was so enjoyable. Satisfying ending for me, and I loved the post credits scene. I know a lot of people on Twitter are *MAD* at it, but like.... get over yourselves?!? I’m GLAD the post-credits scene was so happy and lighthearted.

People on Twitter are also angry because of someone’s departure.... We didn’t see it happen, ffs, they’re coming back, hence the “Echo” series next year, Jesus. I’ve never read the comics the series is based off of and even I know that 🙄

OH and they’re mad about a certain character NOT making a big cameo in the show, like.... THIS IS HAWKEYE. The other thing was the OTHER CHARACTER’S. Jesus. That’s the problem I’m finding with these D+ shows: people get mad about cameos that don’t happen. Ugh. I thought this show was SUPER generous with REALLY BIG LONG cameos for the fans. So confused.

SORRY I had to gripe, it just bothered me, I need to stop checking the Twitter tags after these shows. Maybe I’m just overly protective of Clint because he was my favourite Avenger since his intro, and he’s often shat on, and FINALLY he has the limelight and people are upset about it. :/

This series was FANTASTIC. I’m looking forward to re-watching it all in one go. 

D+ Shows in order of faves, now:

Hawkeye: liked 6/6 episodes, fantastic story, felt realistic. Has a lot of flaws but I was super invested every single episode

Loki: liked 4/6 episodes, and mostly because I loved the story itself. I like time travel / magical stuff, so it’s always super interesting to me and I want to see where they go with that. PLUS I like the dynamic of Mobius and Loki. The canon Syl*ki thing, though, was weird and turned me off. The story itself was fantastic, but just those parts were SO awkward for me. I audibly groaned when they kissed at the end

Falcon and the Winter Soldier: liked 4/6 episodes, couple episodes were weak for me; I liked the character episodes and the action stuff, but some of it felt REALLY disjointed and you could tell they changed the story at last minute

What If?: 4 of 6 episodes, loved the first 4 episodes, and I found it went downhill at the end. I only liked bits and pieces of the final episodes, and I liked the “protector Strange Supreme” thing. And the Clint/Natasha stuff. That was really it. Otherwise the animation was fantastic all the way through

WandaVision: 5 of 9 episodes; unpopular opinion, because I know this is like everyone’s FAVOURITE show... I personally wasn’t super invested until it focussed more on Wanda’s character and Monica’s story. The last 5 episodes were the best ones, but I hated how it just... fizzled out at the end. I dunno. Hoping the Harkness series will build up more upon this show, and my opinion might change.

Looking forward to the new stuff next year, see where they’re gonna bring these characters. I REALLY wanna see more of Kate and Clint and want an S2, but realistically I don’t think there will be because this series was so unliked by a bunch of people.