#this turned out particularly ranty lol

[teruel-a-witch]

Hi, H50 for the ship ask thingy? 😉

Hee, how unexpected 😉 (heey *waves*)

Hawai'i Five-0

(bear in mind I've only seen up to 6.08 so some of the opinions are subject to change)

otp: Steve/Danny aka McDanno (they have completely taken over my life in the past three months which I'm totally not obvious about, nope, lol)

favourite canon pairing: McDanno and Steve/cats (both canon whatever do you mean)

worst pairing ever: in a shocking twist to nobody, Steve/Cath aka McRollins (poorly written, poorly developed, nothing but a heterosexual smokescreen, relies on tell not show, reads like 100% comphet on both sides because of forcefulness and abysmal lack of chemistry, it's a lavender relationship to me and taking it seriously would be doing the work of h50 writers for them) also the h50 writers/treatment of female characters (if I started ranting about that I'd never stop lmao)

guilty pleasure pairing: Catherine/Kono and Kono/Lauri (purely for the aesthetic because unfortunately they didn't get to develop much of a relationship at all, I wonder how many episodes would even pass the Bechdel test) and Steve/Freddie Hart (it's very sad and also my mcdanno heart doesn't like sharing)

a pairing you want to see more: Kono/more screentime and storylines that don't revolve around her relationship with Adam (a pipe dream right? *sigh*), Chin/more central storylines/not just his dead wife's family drama, Danny/more screentime and something interesting to do, a TV special in which McDanno reunite and grow old together :p

that pairing everyone likes but you’re like “lol no”: I didn't think anyone could ship McRollins but apparently it was kinda popular back in the day? Also not a huge fan of Kono/Adam, nothing against individual characters, but since it started that has been the only storyline Kono got to be a part of for 4 seasons <_<

favorite non-romantic pair: team ohana (especially the core four ♥️), Steve and Chin, Chin and Kono, Kono and Danny, Kono and Steve, Steve and Nahele, Danny and Grace, Uncle Steve Grace and Danno family and Cath and Steve as lesbian/gay solidarity (I don't care if that only exists in my mind :p jokes aside they actually make so much more sense as bros)

[cowboyjen68]

hi cowboyjen! how are you doing?

I (23F) was wondering if you'd be up to helping me with something. my girlfriend is coming to meet my parents next weekend. it's my first relationship, I came out to my parents three years ago, and told them I've been in a relationship (almost six months now) two months ago. my dad seemed pretty fine with everything. my mother however, coming from a more conservative background, has had her reservations, particularly about where we're going to sleep (as she'll be staying the night here). she asked me, "she'll sleep in the spare room and you'll sleep in yours though, right?", and I had just assumed beforehand that this wasn't gonna be an issue and we'd both stay in the spare room, as we usually spend the night at each other's houses anyway. so I said I thought we'd both just sleep together, and asked her if that made her uncomfortable. all she said was, "whatever you want", in a dismissive, disapproving tone.

now, my question lies in whether I should stick to what I want, which is sleeping in the same room, or given that my mother's probably gonna be uncomfortable enough as it is with the whole situation, give her this one thing, and sleep in separate rooms. my dad said it didn't have to be a big deal, and that it didn't matter, and I agree! I'm just overthinking now and don't want to give her any reason to hate my girlfriend or make her feel unwelcome or something...

sorry this is long and ranty and silly, it's okay if you never get to answering, I understand you're a busy person dealing with their own hardships and I do wish you the absolute best in everything! I've just always admired you and your blog and thought I'd turn to you in the hopes you might get a chance to read this in time and maybe answer :)

again, wish you the best and hope you're doing well 🤗 thanks for reading!

I am on a bit of a time crunch with a quick break between picking Jr up from school and my part time job but I know this weekend starts today.

When I was finally out to my parents and with my first girlfriend in my early 20's we did have the occasion to spend a night or two due to bad weather. My mom was clearly anxious about having us be in the same room over night and dad was like yours... he didn't see why it was a big deal either way. In my mom's mind she was thinking "they are haivng sex in my spare room" and dad was like "one less room to to mess up".

My brothers and sister had always been allowed to have their SO in the same room ONCE they were committed. If they were just casual or maybe not serious I think she would have had a bigger issue. We decided to stay in the same room. Bascially my thought was that mom was going to be uncomfortable either way since me being a lesbian was fairly new to her BUT I really didnt want my girlfriend to feel alone or isolated. Having her be in a strange place (room) by herself did not sit right with me.

We did decide, out of respect, to not have sex while under my parent's roof just to keep any weird vibes out of the air. Mom was fine the next day. She greeted us at breakfast and even talked with Jen (my ex) about some family stuff while dad and I went outside to putter in the garage.

If it was me, and you can even put it to your mom this way, you don't think it is appropriate for your girlfriend to be alone in a strange home and you want to be with her both to make her feel "at home" and because you love her. Your mom is already uncomfortable and adding the weird stress of your girlfriend feeling isolated over night is not going to help. I think your mom will be fine and dad might be helpeful since he is not giving her fear any energy.

Do be respectful and maybe keep phycial contact around her to a little less than you are used to having. And probably no sex because you might think you being quiet but we all know how that can go.

Not wanting to hear your adult children having sex is not homophobic.. it is being a normal parent. (I can say this from experience LOL).

I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes.

[murasaki-murasame]

The moral of Ao no Flag chapter 44 is that Shingo is definitely the kind of person to be like ‘I vote third party because both political parties seem equally bad to me’.

Anyway, oh boy do I have some Thoughts on this chapter, which will be under the cut.

This is definitely gonna be a really polarizing chapter for a lot of people, and in a lot of ways I’m nervous about where it’ll go, and which characters Kaito is being more sympathetic toward here.

Since this whole chapter was about characters talking about homophobia from different angles, I may as well just jump straight into it as well and talk about the ideas and themes being discussed here.

To be blunt, Shingo’s attitude in this chapter pisses me off because it’s the kind of ‘neutrality’ that actively benefits oppressors and abusers. It’s the kind of attitude that just keeps victims from being able to defend themselves, and that allows abusers to keep hurting people. It’s the type of middle-of-the-road nothingness that supports the status quo, which in practice just means that people like him just end up sitting back and watching homophobes beat up gay people and all they feel like doing is going ‘hmm I dunno guys, both sides seem equally at fault here :/’. This is exactly the sort of situation where the idea of the paradox of tolerance comes into play. If you express universal tolerance toward everything, including intolerance, that just creates a situation where bigots and abusers get free reign to hurt people, which is obviously a bad thing. The only way to actually take any meaningful steps to punishing and preventing bigotry is to accept the fact that not everything deserves to be tolerated, and that punishing hatred is not morally equivalent to hating and hurting innocent people.

The situation with Touma and Kensuke pretty bluntly illustrates the imbalance of power and blame that lies at the heart of this. Literally the only thing that Touma did was being gay and having a crush on his best friend. And on the other hand, Kensuke decided to step into this situation that didn’t involve him at all and physically assault Touma over it. Acting like those two things are on any level meaningfully equivalent is cowardly and selfish. Kensuke’s own feelings and personal history are a separate topic that at this point have nothing to do with the immorality of how he treated Touma. Particularly because what Touma did has literally no direct connection to Kensuke. All Touma did was just tell Mami that he likes Taichi, and Kensuke was outside of the room eavesdropping. He wasn’t involved in the conversation at all, and he wasn’t even the subject of Touma’s feelings. He just went out of his way to force his own insecurities and baggage and bigotry onto a situation that has nothing to do with him. Maybe if it was a situation where, like, Touma had a crush on Kensuke and suddenly kissed him and Kensuke freaked out about it, then his past trauma might at least somewhat excuse it, but that’s not what happened.

Even though on paper the topic of male victims of rape is something that should be discussed and respected, I feel like it was kinda haphazardly thrown into this chapter to try and make Kensuke seem even somewhat sympathetic, even if it didn’t really work. As I said, the fact that Touma was talking about having feelings for someone other than Kensuke, and that Kensuke wasn’t part of the conversation at all, means that there’s absolutely no room to act like Kensuke’s trauma has anything to do with it. Him having past trauma because of some other gay person he knew doesn’t give him the right to randomly beat up any other gay person he knows about. Again, it’d be one thing if Kensuke was actually part of the conversation, or the subject of Touma’s feelings, or if Touma actually acted inappropriately toward him in a way that would be triggering, but, yet again, literally all Touma did was tell Mami that he likes Taichi, and Kensuke decided to go out of his way to barge in and assault him. Besides, if we’re going down the route of moral equivalency, it seems hypocritical for Kensuke to use his own past assault to completely ignore the fact that he also assaulted Touma. If they want to play the both sides card to get sympathy points, they don’t get to have it both ways and ignore Kensuke’s own assault toward Touma.

Which is it’s own thing, really. That most people who try and play the devil’s advocate centrist role aren’t actually what they seem to be. They’re usually not arguing in any sort of good faith. More often than not, they have their own biases and prejudices, and don’t in fact see everything equally. They just use the idea of politeness and tolerance to try and guilt-trip people who want to point out that it’s shitty of them to beat up a gay dude just for him being gay.

On the one hand, you can definitely say that Mami’s friends were inconsiderate and disrespectful toward Kensuke’s past assault, but honestly that whole plot point felt so transparently like ‘a plot point’, so to say, that I can’t even really suspend my disbelief over it, so I can’t exactly blame them for not caring. It’d be one thing if these were real people talking about real experiences, but since they’re just fictional characters, in this sort of situation I think what matters more is the author’s own intentions and methods in how and why they chose to bring this sort of thing up in the first place.

I was kinda hoping that there might be more layers to the whole situation with Kensuke, but nah it really was exactly what it seemed to be right from the get-go, and he really is just inexcusably bigoted and awful. But at least I expected that. I’m more disappointed with Shingo for deciding to completely throw Touma under the bus in order to try and protect Kensuke and his gross homophobic violence. He’s very rapidly losing points with me after this chapter, to be honest. Even on top of how incredibly rude he’s being to Touma by more or less accusing him of being just as bad as Kensuke, it seems really shitty of him to suddenly be defending Mr. “I have literally no choice but to treat men and women differently and to treat all women as sex objects and all gay men as rapists. I am just a smol creacher I cannut help it uwu” after the whole flashback with him sticking up for Mami and validating her desire to just be seen as a person and not as a woman. It kinda makes him seem really fake and two-faced in retrospect.

Not to mention the last minute implication that the blonde girl is apparently Shingo’s girlfriend, which makes his attitude seem even more shitty, honestly.

I honestly have to wonder if there’s some deeper reason why he seems to be pretty much abandoning his morals so he can aggressively double down on defending Kensuke’s actions at all costs. It just seems like a bit of an unnatural 180 for him.

And then there’s the whole scene with Futaba and co at the end of the chapter. Which is it’s own whole thing. I don’t really have much to say about it, but I do gotta admit that the whole way that they’re hammering in this idea of it being rude to Futaba for anyone to wish that Touma and Taichi could have gotten together is kinda feeling more and more uncomfortably meanspirited as time goes on. I dunno exactly how to put it, but especially after the whole “Touma’s apparently just as bad as Kensuke and apparently deserved to get assaulted for being gay” thing, it just seems all kinda of uncomfortable and loaded with all sorts of potential baggage that we immediately then had a whole scene of Mami basically going “you shouldn’t care so much about Touma’s feelings, you should just prioritize yourself and be happy about the fact that YOU’RE the one who ended up dating Taichi instead of Touma”. It really just seems like Touma’s getting shit on from all sides of the equation here. In a lot of ways it doesn’t really help that I don’t even think Taichi and Futaba’s relationship is that interesting or deep, so it’s just kinda annoying to see it get propped up and used as ammunition for this weird guilt-trip-y ‘if you want Touma to be happy, that just means you hate Futaba and her relationship with Taichi’ attitude.

Then there’s the whole thing at the very end of the chapter with Futaba unintentionally striking a raw nerve by being all cliffhangery and suddenly bringing up the [not-so-]hypothetical situation of Masumi being in love with her. I’m curious to see how that goes, but let’s just say that I don’t really want Masumi to also get shit on in the next chapter after what happened in this one, lol.

On the note of Masumi, we also finally got confirmation that she, for one reason or another, suspected that Touma was gay before she eventually became certain of it. I’m still curious to see if there’s any specific reason why she suspected it that early on, but I guess we’ll see.

Most of all I really wanna see more of Taichi’s thoughts on everything, since he’s been kinda non-existent for the last few chapters. Though I’m a bit nervous about whether or not I’ll even like what happens when we get a deeper look into his head.

At least for the time being I’m not going to personally judge Kaito for what happened in this chapter, since at the very least everything the characters said is more or less realistic for how teenagers talk about these things, but the big question is just which side of the argument Kaito wants us to sympathize with more in the long run. It’s one thing to just present different sides of an argument in a piece of fiction, but when it becomes clear that you as the author personally advocate for one over another, then it’s something worth talking about, one way or another.

This was really negative and ranty, but it’s not like I hate the series or anything, lol. I mean, my opinion on it might take a sharp downward turn if it becomes clear that Kaito just wants to throw Touma [and Masumi] under as many buses as possible while cozying up to violent homophobes, but we’ll see if it gets to that sorta point.

I’m just particularly sensitive about these sorts of centrist, willfully ignorant attitudes because they’re so directly at fault for so many of the world’s current political problems.

[gingerteaonthetardis]

1, 12, 23, 35, 47, 58, 61, 77, 82, and 94 for weird asks

1. coffee mugs, teacups, wine glasses, water bottles, or soda cans?

mugs of all kinds!! (and my one glass water bottle that i take absolutely everywhere because i'm chronically dehydrated.)

12. name of your favorite playlist?

2019. starting last year, i began making a new playlist every year, and i add to it throughout the whole year, so it turns into a collection of songs i discovered or listened to a lot. it's sort of like a time-capsule, and i love listening back through it.

23. strange habits?

i'm sure i must have some, but i can't think of any. i have some tics, but those aren't really the same.

35. average time you fall asleep?

my sleep schedule is utter chaos. bedtime is anywhere from 10:30pm-3am, depending on my mental health, my caffeine consumption, what my friends in other time zones are up to, whether i'm in creative mode or not... the list goes on.

47. favorite kind of cheese?

vegan cheese, because i can't eat real cheese anymore! before my bodypocalypse, it was brie. now i make yummy cashew "cheese" and it's delicious, but really not the same at all.

58. four talents you're proud of having?

oh gosh. this is hard!!

- i think i'm pretty good at making people laugh? my ranty commentary on the things i love actually translates a lot into real life. i watched a (sort of corny) movie with my mum the other day and made her laugh until she cried with all my joking and trash talk. it's a good feeling, to make people laugh, and i love doing it.

- i can spin bullshit out of nothing. i've always been good at writing top-marked school papers, and actually, i used to write papers for my friends because i could do it so quickly and about almost any subject. although, i probably shouldn't be proud of essentially doing other people's homework for them... but i'm pretty good at writing in general!

wow, let's pause, because trying to think of stuff you're good at is hard!! and subjective!!

how are you doing today? feeling well? how's the weather where you are?

okay. back to business.

- i can sing. i studied music in school, and have done some competitions and solo shows, though it's been many years since i sang anywhere other than the shower. i'm waaaaay too shy to actually be a performer.

- i'm pretty empathetic, particularly for someone who was raised by... not empathetic people, and i'm proud that.

61. favorite line you heard from a book/movie/tv show/etc.?

oh, there are so many! the first thing that comes to mind is, "what are men to rocks and mountains?" from pride and prejudice, because i watched that yesterday and it's such a good quote! i also very much love mary oliver's instructions for living a life: "pay attention. be astonished. tell about it." doctor who quotes also abound. i love this bit from storm warning:

"you feel that pounding in your heart? that tightness in the pit of your stomach? the blood rushing to your head, do you know what that is? that's adventure. the thrill and the fear and the joy of stepping into the unknown. that's why we're all here, and that's why we're alive."

eight has so many good quotes. i wish i could just list them all here.

77. best plant to grow on a windowsill?

jade or ivy. i have little pots of both. i'm also partial to basil, but that's because i like growing things that are useful.

82. pc or console?

i use a pc because my partner built one for me! but i am a Fake Gamer Girl™, because i know a lot about games, but don't play many. (in all honesty, i don't care what device i use, so long as it has stardew valley and terraria on it.)

94. favorite season?

i'm a basic af white woman in america, so... autumn, lol.

but seriously! it's my time! as a ginger, the whole world starts to match my personal color palette and it's when i feel most at home in nature. i love the slate gray skies and the changing leaves and the fact that everyone wants to stay home. (that was a very taurus thing to say, hah. i am predictable!) 🍁🌾🍂 i look forward to autumn every year.

thank you @galaxiesandmoons for the asks!!

[kinetic-elaboration]

May 25: The Finale

So here's how I stand with The 100 now that the finale has aired.

I still haven't watched anything past 4x10, but I'm reading spoilers on my dash and keeping up with the general outlines of things. Before the finale aired, I was starting to get curious about developments again and thought I might just wait for the last ep to air and then binge the final arc maybe over the long weekend or something. Now that I know how the season ends up, my interest in watching has plummeted and while I think it would be silly of me to say 'I'll never watch it ever' (those are very much the sort of words a person like me later eats), I have no interest in watching it any time soon. Maybe over the summer. Sometime. Eventually. Who knows?

The biggest reason to watch the last episodes is to be able to have an actual leg to stand on for complaining purposes but frankly not being up to date on canon hasn't stopped me yet, lol. I just disclaim all complaints with 'I'm one of those annoying people who bitches about developments in episodes I haven't seen' and leave it at that.  

I don't want to be like the anti's, hating the show and talking about how much I hate it but sticking around in fandom anyway, raining on everyone else's parade. It worries me that people might come across my ranty posts and think that of me. But... okay, look, I have done a lot of complaining going all the way back to season 3 and I'm up front both about what I don't like in the show and about why I'm here in the fandom anyway. I like the fandom, I like the characters, I like the universe, etc. I still want to engage in the transformative-works aspect of the fandom. And honestly I've never been a meta writer or engaged in speculation or predictions so looking only at what I produce, content-wise...whether or not I like the canon or even whether or not I'm caught up on it makes no difference. It will matter even less now that we're in the hiatus and there's no new material to speculate on in the first place.  

Finally, and most importantly, I'm really honestly not here to ruin or even put a damper on anyone else's fandom experience. I tag my negative posts as negative. I censor names when I'm talking shit about specific characters or ships. I don't go into people's inboxes and I don't even have a Twitter but if I did, I wouldn't use it to harass other users or people who work on the show. Like, I just want to sincerely love the first two seasons, the general concept, and the characters, while bemoaning the state of the show as it is now. (Also, tbh...sometimes complaining is fun and the vast number of people who leisure-complain on any number of topics is evidence enough of this phenomenon—at least I'm honest about taking pleasure in the occasional bout of this is so fucking stupid inconsequential-rage.)

As for what I actually think of what I've heard of the finale.... I've tried to write this up a couple of different ways and I think (hope) I've FINALLY distilled my thoughts.

The two things I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT WANT out of the finale were (1) for the characters to go to space and (2) a time jump of pretty much any sort. So now that those two things have happened, my brain has basically short circuited. I cannot even comprehend this. I literally don't have the words. Maybe I sound hyperbolic, but I'm just trying to explain how much disdain I have for these two plot points. I can't even fathom how anyone ever thought this would be a good idea; it's like I'm in an alternate entertainment universe. It's ludicrous.

My problem with the space launch is that it crosses the disbelief line for me. Obviously there's a lot of faux-science in this show and everyone has a different line as to what is reasonable-enough if you don't think about it too hard, and what is just absolute nonsense but, for whatever reason, this is my line. I don't know what the details were on the actual show come launch-time but just the concept of launching a space craft from a post-apocalyptic wasteland is so ridiculous that I cannot imagine a way to squint or turn my head or angle my screen so that it seems even remotely tenable. A ROCKET LAUNCH. FROM THE RUINS OF POST-NUCLEAR NEW YORK. Like ?????????????????????????. I previously described this possibility as sounding to my ears like riding a pegicorn to New Jersey to get the magic potion from Raul (s/o to my freshman year roommate for the Raul in-joke, so useful to me so many years later), and that's still how I feel.

My bigger problem is with the time jump. To put it briefly, it's a new show now. The combination of Radiation 2.0 and the time jump has cemented that.

I've felt for a while now that whatever it is I'm watching now isn't what I originally signed up to watch. I've seen a few other posts to similar effect, and even my mother (who acts as my Typical Casual Viewer one-person control group, even though quite obviously she is not representative of a typical cw viewer at all—still she's not in the fandom so she is completely untainted by what goes on in these parts)--even my mom said she thinks JRoth/the writers are basically telling a completely different story now than they were initially. I've had, and am still having, a hard time articulating exactly what makes it fundamentally different (as opposed to merely a show that's evolved over time, as long-running shows do), or even when exactly it happened. But I guess at its core the complaint is: this is supposedly a show about "the hundred," and of that group almost all have been killed or lost to the ether, and the remaining members have had their screen time chronically cut short to accommodate a growing cast of characters who have increasingly little to do with that core group or its original purpose or journey. The complaint is  partly one of frustration at the large number of delinquent deaths and the small scraps of screen time given to other alleged mains, and partly a more general annoyance at the loss of the whole meaning of the affiliation "the hundred." What does it mean to be a member of the hundred anymore? Basically nothing. And when it ceased to have meaning (by which I mean S3), the show became, in essence, a different show.

Obviously there's a counter to this whole general complaint (that the show is too bloated with characters generally and/or Grounders specifically), which I've also seen floated out there recently, which is that destroying everything on Earth will allow something more like S1 to flourish again, and a new emphasis to be placed on the core young people. To this I say, first, it's way too early to tell what S5 will be. And I'm in a particularly bad place to really engage with this argument, given how much of even the current canon I've missed. BUT I am skeptical. First, we were told S4 would feel like S1 again and IMO it most definitely has not. Second, most of the hundred are dead and/or gone—I'm not just talking about the toll among the original mains or even the original named characters, I'm talking about how 42 of the original captured teens made it out of Mt. Weather and all but 4 of them were never heard of again. So even if the show returns to caring more about, say, Monty than it does about Grounder of the Week, nothing can undo the destruction to the original concept; nothing can really solve the problem of which I'm complaining. And third, I don't think the writers think they're writing a bad show; I mean, they're the ones who brought us down this path in the first place. This, what we've seen over the past 2 years, IS JRoth's vision. Yes, sometimes showrunners make a mis-step and readjust course, and I thought perhaps that would happen for S4, but it hasn't, which means that he doesn't think S3 had the problems I think it had, which means there's no reason to think S5 will be any better than S3 or S4 were, at least from my POV.  

But anyway as I was saying—

Maybe there's been room for argument about this same show/different show question up to now; it's a fuzzy sort of concept in my mind with which I'm not entirely comfortable—I feel a bit like I'm just Complaining About Change like an old grandma, tbh. Despite how it sounds, I do want to be open-minded about others' creativity and to give the benefit of the doubt to ongoing projects/unfinished stories. Regardless, ending S4 in this way is a pretty big sign that the theory, whether or not it was right before, is right as of now. Is there any way to more effectively raze the ground and salt the Earth than to literally raze the ground and then skip ahead 6 years? I have a million problems with this large time gap, but on the top of the list is that, like everyone over the age of 25 knows, a person changes dramatically between the ages of 18 and 25, or 16 and 22, just in the normal course of events, apocalypse(s) not withstanding. The writers have given themselves carte blanche to do literally absolutely anything with these characters. Even for a show that's barely cared at all about consistency over time in pretty much any aspect, that's troubling. (Also, like, I signed up for a show about a bunch of teens in the forest, not a group of twenty-somethings...doing whatever they'll be doing in season 5. I feel a tiny bit like a promise has been broken, sorry.)

So having basically established that whatever this show used to be, it's not that anymore, I guess the question is: what is it now, and do I like it? I think this is the question every viewer basically has to ask themselves, consciously or no. For me, what I've seen the last two years is some mismash of GoT, general dystopia, repetitive story lines, action sequences, and nonsense "science." The plot is ridiculous,  the pacing is terrible, the emphases are (for my taste) in all the wrong places, the characters are shoddily drawn, and often times, it's fucking boring. It's a bad show. Things like loyalty to a few characters, interest in a few story lines, and sheer curiosity/inertia have kept me here despite it all, but at this point I feel the balance has just shifted imperceptibly the other way. Jasper's death has a lot to do with it (he was my favorite, he had the only good or even coherent story of S3, and the way his death and its aftermath were handled were so insulting one could easily justify a decision to stop watching as mini-protest), but I think that it was more the (very heavy) straw on the camel's back than anything else.

I guess the tl:dr version of this is GOODBYE BITCHES I'M DONE and yet I still can't even promise I won't be watching Season 5, like I can't predict how I'll feel in a year.